My mother once told me I was smart about books and dumb about men. I was nary 15 or so, so the comment hurt deeply. But in fact she was accurate. Perhaps in some sense it was because I had very little in the way of a role model, my mother and I were never the type to sit behind closed doors for a “girl talk.” She was, to say the least, conventional in her thinking (her actions I later found out were not quite in sync with that, but no matter). I gave her a copy of “Love Story” the must read for young women. She thought it “dirty.” So you get my drift.
Given that I had but about three romances during my entire public school career, and none of them long-lasting by any standard, I had little to work with but what I saw around me. Of course, what I saw were girls wearing huge class rings, wrapped with tape and then embellished with yarn, standing a mile high off the finger. (Tape was wrapped in cubes and positioned under the ring, making it sit up sometimes a good half inch above the finger.)
As I mentioned earlier, my group of friends were mostly unattached so I had a very active social life, but no steady for the majority of my years in high school. The same could be said about college, although I don’t know as it troubled me so much then. I had roommates and we had male friends, and we always were engaged in lots of fun things. The same was true of law school, but for different reasons. I had virtually no social life outside of those who were engaged in the same process of getting through school. I spent time with friends all day and into the evening often, but no dating and mostly no socializing but for a beer or two after a long day.
When I joined the Defenders’ Office, first as a researcher and then as an attorney, a new world opened to me. Men surrounded me day and night, and shocking to me, expressed a fair amount of interest in me. I was flattered, and well, the heat was on. I “expressed” my happiness a lot in those first couple of years, but finally fell madly, crazily, and mind-stupidly in love with a cop.
Bill was a court officer, mostly because he always looked for the easiest way out. And the hours were better, straight days. Precinct work required shift changes every month from days, to afternoons and then nights. It was also a tad more dangerous. Bill was as they say, not inclined to do more than was required to get the same paycheck.
He was a lovely looking man, and easy on the eyes in every respect. He was “built.” The irony was, he never once worked at it. He was a natural with huge biceps and a huge chest. He was 6′ and about 230. Very little but muscle and he had been like that since his youth. He was also amazingly fast as a runner, and won a fair amount of spending cash winning foot races with unsuspecting coppers who thought he was too large to run.
We hooked up at one of the ubiquitous parties so common to our work environment. It was near Christmas as I recall. Soon thereafter, things took off and we remained “together” for about nine years. Together of course is not what you might think it was. Bill was married, and had a history of liaisons that stretched from the beginning of his marriage. He was a player, not inclined to leave his excellent wife, but the type of man who can never settle for just one.
I of course, told myself that I couldn’t change a man, ignored that proviso amost immediately, and set out to win his heart. The morality of the situation didn’t affect me; I was not the person then, that I would like to think of myself today. I set out to be the best. That entailed being ready and willing at every moment to do his bidding. If he showed up unannounced at 11 pm and only had an hour but was hungry, I cooked. If he needed a ride, I got up, dressed, and found him, and took him where he needed. I lived for him, he was kind, but did as he wished.
I have no illusions about his “faithfulness” to me. I agonized over it, but knew that I could not expect it. I cried more tears in nine years than a normal body could hold in 50 I suspect. A wise and gentle friend once said, when others chastised me for being such a doormat, “Who among us has not been a fool for love?” And I certainly was a fool.
The ironic thing was that Bill’s marriage collapsed some years into our relationship, around year eight or so. His wife had left her bank job, become a cop herself, and mostly no doubt due to her deep love for him, and knowledge that he was that player, became a severe alcoholic. He finally left, and got his own place. Now free to see each other at will, I found myself falling out of love. I stayed until I was completely out of love, then said goodbye. He smiled, assuming I would come back, but I never did.
By then, I was involved in another one. This was different only in the respect that Bill2 was a nicer human being, more caring and not the self-absorbed person that Bill1 was. He was once divorced and in a second marriage that was the result of a pregnancy. He told me clearly that much as he cared for me, he would not leave his son. He has left two children in his first divorce and it had hurt him badly.
Bill2 was also a cop, but a precinct Sergeant. He was also the leader of a drug crew, working undercover. This gave him the ability to drop by easily enough. He was a very decent sort, and frankly, we were well enough aligned that had things been different, we probably could have had a good marriage. Bill1 and I never would have, he would have been a womanizer all his life. I got to know Bill2’s crew quite well, as I got to know most of the narc guys. I worked with them in court every day. Some were friends, others not. They didn’t, for the most part begrudge me calling them liars in court, it was part of the game we both played. They lied, I tried to expose it. Sometimes they won, sometimes I did.
One of his crew, a great little guy, was killed on a raid. Shot accidentally by a crew of street cops who some how got signals crossed and busted in on a raid in progress, mistaking Giancomo as one the bad guys in his long great coat. I never remember deeper sadness or hurt as I saw at the funeral home. A number of the guys were shocked and overwhelmed that I had taken the time to appear. The information made the rounds in Headquarters, and for the most part, I was accorded some extra courtesies by other police personnel, making my job a little easier sometimes.
I knew of course that Bill2 and I were headed nowhere, and little by little, I tired of the one-sidedness of the situation. I began to be “unavailable” more often and slowly he got the message, and stopped calling. It was easier I guess than ending it face to face for both of us. I was at that time planning on moving out of the city, and thus it would end of its own accord anyway. No point in dragging it out.
I always got along with cops for the most part. Surely, some were idiots but so is every other segment of society so composed. Mostly we got along in our dance. We each had our thing to do, we did it, and didn’t “take it personally.” Living in Detroit, I had an alarm system on my home, and it went off frequently. It did not take long before the precinct cops knew the address. When they got a run to my address, they came quickly.
Of course, affairs that go on for nine and three years respectively, have tons of anecdotes to relate. But frankly, I am simply bored with the subject of both. I was in an arrested development as far as romance was concerned. I made tons of amateur mistakes, probably every one in the book at one time or another. I learned somethings, but never learned them well it seems, since I repeated them more than once. I’m not so sure that my near perfect marriage today is the result of lessons learned so much as pure luck. I don’t know as it can be known. I know I know enough now to realize that. I didn’t then.
I guess that shocked me. How damned intelligent, logical and mature I thought I was. I guess you can’t know you’re stupid, illogical and childish until you have the chance to experience things from a totally different prospective. I never questioned that I became interested in new things like boxing and science fiction after dating men who were. I didn’t realize that I was attempting subconsciously to like what they liked so they would like me better. I didn’t realize that until someone, for the first time, liked what I liked because they liked me. Then I realized. It takes time, and the right experiences to be able, it seems, to put things in perspective and actually learn lessons. Kind of backwards, but that’s the way it worked for me.
So, I don’t know as I learned a lot of things from bad relationships. Mostly I learned what was bad from the good one, the one that stuck. I have a lot of things to be grateful for in the superb husband that I have. This was one of those least expected.
There is one other relationship I will tell you about, but that is much further down the line, and needs a context, so I’ll save it for when it comes up chronologically.
Next: wandering through life and law and asking “How can I do this shit the rest of my life?”
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Existential Ennui 