The Exception and the Rule

       It was the end of my first mistake marriage to my best friend in 1993. I was miserable. He was a great best friend. We'd played D&D together until the sun came up night after night until we got involved - then the game died. As soon as moved it, it was over. He sat in his chair and expected me to cook, clean and otherwise ignore him. I was 19; I wanted to live!

        
         
 My cousin had moved to a Christian Commune several hundred miles away and was bringing her boyfriend and his friend from there home to visit... and that's how I met Him. The moment our eyes met we knew we were met to be together. We sat in a park, beneath a sign that said "No Reservations" and we took it as a sign (yes, I like the pun). We just stared into each other's eyes for hours and spouted romantic prose. Though my cousin and her boyfriend honked over and over, we couldn't hear them. We were in love, everyone around us knew we were, and remained JUST that in love for seven years... or so I believed. 

         He was the only man I ever enjoyed sex with, and "enjoy" is an understatement. Sex was hot and transcendent. I felt like we literally became one and like I'd lost myself entirely in the experience. For the first time, I felt orgasms over and over again, and we did it several times a day, every single day - no foreplay, just right into it. It was everything I wanted... a thought that disturbs me to no end now.

I seriously wondered why...

          

           There were moments here and there that seemed "off", but I brushed them away, because they were him. * For example, his Father, he claimed, was Russian Mafia, yet I'd never seen or heard anything of his family. He wouldn't even let us talk on the phone when we got married. * His ex-wife left him and took the kids because she was caught cheating on him, yet he'd often encouraged me to have sex with other people. * When my Dad's best-friend called me for the first time to apologize and I was having a crying fit, he had no reaction, no support at all. * When my brother asked him, in front of me, "What's it like fucking my sister?" He nodded, smirked impishly, and said, "Pretty good." * AND Whenever I was babysitting my Niece, he'd attack me with kisses and groped me against a wall in front of her. While we always were lustfully affectionate, the timing never sat right and I seriously wondered why.

          Somewhere in the middle of our sixth year things changed. I'd begun modeling by now, but things were slow going. My best prospect, and the one which launched me into the public eye, was several hundred miles away. Where my husband had once lavished me with compliments and encouragement, he seemed to become insanely jealous of the incoming fan mail. After an extremely bad miscarriage, brought on by childhood uterine damage, he ignored the situation and began taking to great moments of drunkenness and cruelty.  It's then that my 10-year-old Niece confesses, very delicately, how, when I was away, he would hold her down and have his way. She said he told her that I wouldn't believe her... and that was a mistake. 

          I told her that through everything I've been through I have no choice but to believe the victim. After all, my entire family has worked SO hard to cover up the truth and demonize me for trying to tell it; I couldn't be that person, so I hugged her and cried like my heart was going to come out. 

          Of course he swore he didn't do it, but, like my current  husband says, "who gains?" I still have the worst time dealing with trust issues from that marriage - issues with love, with sex. Was I enjoying sex because the man was behaving like an abuser, with me the victim? That's so fricking creepy! I mean, he was 10 years my senior still. And love... I had what the storybooks consider true love, but it was twisted. He was... my worst nightmare. He was tight with my brother, too, did he have his blessing for what he'd done to my Niece? A wink and a nod? 

         It's 13 years later now; my Neice wears the scars every time she attempts a normal sex life in her marriage, though I'm unsure how much was him and how much her Father may have been contributed. I know she has a lot of similar issues I do. When asked point-blank, she told me, nervously, that he hadn't harmed her, but I'd have lied the same at her age. She added, adamantly, that she didn't want me to do anything to hurt him. She's been very oddly protective of a man so manipulative and cruel, physical abuses aside. All I can say if I hope she's right and there's nothing repressed in there. The memories of my ex are more than enough; she needs a good life now.  

          Meanwhile, I don't have the bells and whistles in my current marriage, but I have trust. I'm thinking that's got all of the Hallmark b.s. beaten by miles.

-DC