saltdawg

Remember the crazy husband of my childhood friend?
Yeah, I forgot all about him too. He just sent me this:



I hope this email finds you well and genuinely in better spirits than myself. Much has taken place in the life of my family since we last spoke. For instance, I did tell Ange that we spoke, as I told you I would. She wasn't happy about it but, also wasn't surprised.

Rebuilding my marriage has been a painful process and every day I ask God to press in harder and give me what it takes to be an effective husband and father. I never imaged that I would one day walk through such a low valley and I find myself leaning in on my faith more than ever. Daily I have to ask God for the strength to take one step at a time and continue my climb toward the peak I aspire.

Recently, when my wife asked me to forgive her for the relationship you both shared, I had to ask God to carry me. Today, He is still faithfully doing so and I'm humbled - blessed to know His love. His ways our greater than our ways, and His thoughts our greater than our thoughts. The depth of His love is beyond my understanding, and as a minister of God this is the only way I can explain why I'm writing this email.

If you feel a fraction of what I feel for the loss of a relationship I understand your pain. I want you to know that I forgive you and I won't stand between you and God, but will pray for Him to heal you. Go seek Him, He will carry you too brother. He is a compassionate God, and He will forgive you too.

I'm freeing you from this trespass and extend you my hand.

May God's blessing be upon you and yours,

William

His wife had to ask his forgiveness? For the relationship we shared? What kind of fucked up world do they see when they look out the window? We were talking about fucking grammar school on facebook for chrissakes.

I just thank my lucky stars that he has freed me from this trespass. It's a tremendous weight off my shoulders.  What a magnanimous and beneficent son of a bitch!

Well!

That certainly was convenient, now wasn't it?

Holy shit. I just got off the phone with this dude I don't know whatsoever, or at least I didn't before the past two or so hours. I feel sick and don't think I'm even going to be able to eat that lobster now. My hands are shaking, and I wasn't going to be drinking tonight, but that plan is out the window now.

There is this website called "facebook". I have an account over there. It's this place where you end up reconnecting with old friends and aquaintences that you never thought in a million years you'd ever "run into" again.

So I have this facebook account, and at first I tried to keep myself under the radar from certian people from my past. I don't even use my slave-name on the thing and have all kinds of blocks and proxies and shit to keep myself invisible. BUt if any of you have a "facebook" page, you well know that once you see someone you would really like to re-connect with, add them as a "friend" and they are friends with all these other people you really don't want to be in contact with, they all start asking to be your "friend" and before you know it you've amassed 200+ on your flist. Half of which you don't give a rats ass about. Present FB friends excluded, of course.

Anyway. There is this girl that I literally grew up with. We went to school together from Kindergarten all the way through Highschool. And then after that, nothing. We were never particularly "tight" but we were always close, if you get my drift. We cared about each other though we didn't necessarily run with the same crowds. She, I'll call her Angela (because that's her name, and there is nobody here with any connection with that part of my life at all...) was always the sweetest person. I mean real honest to gosh, kicking a pebble around with her toe, sweet and genuine and kind. She was one of those horse girls that was always riding horses, talking about their horses, leaving school early to go ride horses and whatnot. Oh, and drawing pictures of their horses. Anyway. Throughout school, my father always teased me about Angela, and told me that she was the girl I was going to marry and shit like that. In grade-school it embarassed me, and by puberty it started to really kind of turn my stomach because she was more like a sister to me than even my real sisters. Or even the nun-sisters that raised us!

So anyway. "facebook." added a friend from High school against my better judgment and then this flood of HS people came beatiing down my door. Being the pushover I am, I added most of them. Well, angela was one of the few people that popped up in that mad rush that I was actually happy to be in contact with.

We exchanged long messages. Me telling her about my adventures and life a-sea, and she wrote about God, her children and her wonderful husband. I made the mistake of telling her about the criminal stuff in florida...No details, just that I was facing some serious shit down there, and she became a regular "I'M praying for you" face book friend. Born-again? What ever makes her happy. I don't judge on such matters, because I have my own curious beliefs about the nature of G_D and shit like that.

I was always happy to get those "I'm praying for you" messages. It showed that one of the three most genuine, bonified, gosh-darn nicest people I've ever known in my life actually cared about all the troubles I've been having, in spite of my cadgey-ness about the details. For all she knew, I could have been a fucking child molester, murderer or rapist or some shit. But because she and I were like brother and sister...She knew that I was really not capable of those flavours of evil.

So, yeah, anyway. The past couple of weeks I've been ashore, I've been getting these weird incongruent messages from her. The one that stuck out was when I IM'd her: Hello! and got no response until a day later when she said "sorry for not responding yesterday, my husband was around". And I was all WTF? She can't talk to her kindergarden practically brother because her husband was there? What kind of an asshole is he anyway? But, because she's so sweet, I refrained from saying anything. I know from born-agains and didn't want to rock her boat when jesus was about to tell his apostles to pull in the nets that were going to be full of fish for the first time in ages. And then walk across the water (paging: Mr. Chauncey Gardner...!)

Anyway, The past couple of weeks I've been ashore, I've been getting these weird incongruent messages from her. Qand a couple of hours ago, I take this stupid FB "quiz" about what kind of plastic army man are you? (I got the guy throwing the grenade) and she pipes up with...hold on...let me go copypasta..."where is the hero to deal with collateral damage, the one that picks up the pieces no matter where they fall..." and I was all like: that's a really weird thing for HER to think up. But I let it go...

And then I get an IM a little while later. I really didn't want to respond, but because she's a sweetie, and she's been sending me all these IM's lately when I've been logged in and passed out, I figure I'd throw her a bone. This ois a slightly edited (to protect MY id) copypasta of the IM:

Angela
care to discuss the healing process
6:43pmMax
Which one?
6:44pmAngela
aftermax
damage control
6:45pmAngela
if this is too personal let me know if you can pick up the phone
6:46pmMax
Damage control is a constant battle. You build up this level that you get so used to...You never really understand how close you are to the edge until that one little last tiny thing happens and then you fall apart.
I'm terrible on the telephone.
6:47pmAngela
that seems accurate, local hotel records would indicate the same
6:47pmMax
Are you OK?
Holly and I were discussing you fondly last night over dinner.
6:48pmAngela
u can stop
i'm looking to help my family
need to work from baseline
so, ohw about a friendly chat to sort things out
it will be pleasant
be strong man, take courage
take repsonsibility
even now, if you where dying i'd lend you my hand
6:51pmMax
I'm confused as what we are talking about here.
6:51pmAngela
why don't i get off of fb, clear the chat history and sort this out with you. are you local or in ri now
6:52pmMax
I'm in ri 555-555-555, the same number I've had since we were in kindergarten.
6:52pmAngela
i have the number already, ty. standby

So then the phone rings. I'm thinking I posted some stupid drunken thing on her FB wall that this asshole husband that won't let her IM with me went all biblical on her ass for.

The phone rings and it's this guy. This dude. THE dude she's married too. Apparently there has been some marital discord and angela has moved into a hotel. I know nothing about any of this. Dude does the dude thing and probably has a keylogger or something and somehow decides that angela is cheating on him. WITH ME! Honestly, people, like I said, the thought of romantacalisticilism with Angela is actually abhorrent to my twisted libido...Not only that, but because she was all like: Jesus Christ FTW! I held back on a little of my all-too-honest nature and "neglected" to let her in on exactly what a libertine I really am. Never mind sending her sexythoughts over the interwebs and shit.

Anyway, this dude decided that I was having an affair with his wife. Called me up, and confronted me with his suspicions.

I was totally thrown for a loop. Blindsided, like. And because I was expecting a call from this girl that I probably last spoke with in June, 1988, having her husband on the other end threw me into apoplexy...I'm sure that at first it sounded like I was backpedaling and lying. I'm not good on the phone (see above!) and was detailing my exact movements for the past couple of months from RI to Cali to FLA to LA to FLA to RI...sputtering and stuttering along the way.

But he was cool. Eventually, at least. He told me that he had been reading my FB trash and decided that I was, indeed, a man of my word. And my word that I had not been "local" (which turned out to be Pennsylvania...I didn't even remember that's where she lived until I asked) was good enough for him. In order to establish that Yes, I cared about Angela dearly, but that no, it was not in THAT way, and that I was not having an affair with her took all of about twenty minutes.

But then the conversation got even weirder. He talked about G_D, of course, his faith, his history of "POT ABUSE", and so much more I wish I had a phone tap so I could transcribe it all. He went into a monologue about how moving it was to stand in the very jail cell that angels had divinely intervened and set the "apostle" Paul (misogynistic homo) and how he wept reading the epistle detailing this "intervention". And so on. Gawd! I feel so bad for him and angela and their two kids, but I have absolutely nothing to do with the situation whatsoever that all I could do was try and remember my Jr. Psychiatric jargon and platitudes to help assuage his pain. It was a really bizarre conversation, which I'm sure you dig by now, but what it all boiled down to is this:

He is the scion of Greek shipping Magnates. He was supposed to be a Merchant Marine, but gave up on that calling for his calling to Christ, our lord and Savior and Angela. And the family. Also, he's felt the calling for Africa since he was young, and openly admitted that he was jealous of my experiences there. and other stuff about me that he'd only know if he was a creepy keylogger and shit, unless Angela was really open with him, which would beg the question of her fidelity, actually. Anyway, I file his comments and innuendos away in the: Jealous of my (perceived) freedom and lifestyle. Projecting his imagined possible life upon me and coming out with the conclusion that Husband is jealous of Max=Angela wants Max=total hardcore fucking in his home. I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but it seems that a lot of my contemporaries ARE indeed jealous of the lifestyle I lead (present company excepted, again, as you faithful readers know how empty and lonely my life really is...). Anyway. It ended up with him telephonically crying on my shoulder, as I said the salty equivalent of: "there, there...What ever happens will be the right thing to happen..." which seemed to assuage him a bit. (note the introduction of Buddhist thought into his comfort. Subversion FTW!)

Yeah, so I have no idea what I actually just typed, and I may edit this some later, but I had to get this all off my chest, to you, the only people who really understand me. Besides I made a vow to him that "I would never talk about this to anyone else". I'm not TALKING, and this is the interwebz, not "anyone else" Talk about a certain moral flexibility!

ETA #!: He seems to have a friend in the PD or something and did a local hotel records search on my slave-name and came up with a preposterous amount of hits. He questioned me about my car, make, model and plate so he could x-reference his results. Apparently there are a great number of people with my exact same slave-name taking up residence in Penn. motels around where they live. I explained to him that my slave name is, in fact, a slave name. And that many of my Scots clan were taken to Penn. and WV as indentured servants in the 1600's and 1700's. And then gave him what-for about how "indentured servitude" was worse than actual slavery. Like owning a car Vs. renting a car. But I'll save THAT rant for some other time.

God Bless the children of New Bedford.

[Error: unknown template qotd]I LIVE ON A FUCKING BOAT. THAT GOES EVERYWHERE. HOW DO I ANSWER THIS DRECK?

You picked a fine time to leave me Lucile!