Two Drunks Leave a Bar...

Nate had barely left for his new job and home in California before he returned for a visit. I was at work when Tina informed me that Nate was picking her up to go out. She said I could meet up with them at the Doghouse when I got done.

I walked into the dive bar, very overdressed in a suit and tie, around 9:30, expecting that everyone would already be there, but I was the first to arrive. I tried calling Tina to see where she was but she didn't answer. I texted her, "I guess I beat you here" and waited in the lot for nearly an hour before I took another wander around to see if anyone had snuck in yet.

Nate was seated to the left of Tina at the bar. She had a drink before her and he was ordering food.

"There you are," I said.

"Yeah. We just got here," she said.

I wondered where they had been all that time, why she didn't bother getting back to me and where the rest of the expected gang was. It was very noisy and not conducive to conversation. I sat to the right of Tina. She was leaned in talking to Nate, but I couldn't hear either one of them. After a while, she turned to me and asked if I'd be OK with Nate taking her to his brother's wedding as his plus one.

I shrugged. "Sure."

The wedding was in a few weeks, so Nate would be back in Minnesota again, soon. "Can't get rid of this guy," I thought, a bit irked. I knew little about him, but I did know he had a one-sided romantic interest in Tina. Despite that, Tina assured me he was harmless and said she'd been very clear that she didn't like him that way. "He's just a good friend."

Amber, and a few of her other friends showed up an hour later. Tina seemed excited to see one of the gang: A guy who I only knew by the moniker, "purple." It was the name Tina assigned his number when she put it in her phone for reasons unknown. I'd picked up that it was a reference to purple eyeliner that had been applied to him whilst passed out, drunk. When and where, I also didn't know.

It was Jessie's birthday so I bought her a shot. Tina hit the floor to dance and Nate followed her, awkwardly dancing around her. He reminded me vaguely of one of those convulsing fan men you sometimes see at car lots and gas stations.

I made an effort at conversing with Amber. She said she was somewhat concerned because she had to work in the morning and was expected to drive the usually sober birthday psychic home, but Jess was getting her drinking groove on.

"Bummer," I sympathized. "Maybe I could give her a lift back if you need to cut out. I don't have to work tomorrow. Knowing Tina, we'll be out late, anyhow," I suggested. 

Tina and I shot a game of pool and we all chatted in the back of the bar for a while. I was surprised when Tina suggested calling it a night, kind of early. "Are you getting tired?" She asked, "want to get going pretty soon?" I shrugged. I was in no hurry and was willing to follow her lead. After a while, she approached Amber. "Well, we're going to have to get going. Dan has to work in the morning," she said apologetically.

I cringed. Why would she lie? Of course, she couldn't have known that I had just told Amber the opposite.

Amber shot me a quick look. I couldn't quite read her expression. It was forced, perhaps, or I didn't understand the subtext. Embarrassment, maybe? "Uh, OK," she said.

Tina picked up her purse. "I'm just going to say my goodbyes." She disappeared into the crowd, leaving me and Amber standing awkwardly together. Without further word, Amber wandered off, too. I said a couple quick goodbyes to other members of our group that were nearby, wished Jess a happy birthday again and waited near the door. Tina came up to me saying she wanted to stay later and could get a ride back with Amber. "You can just head back. I'll meet you there." She explained that she'd been tasked with helping Amber drag Jess out of the bar at a reasonable time.

Sadly, I recognized Tina's transparent manipulation. When she was drinking, she thought she was clever. I didn't know exactly what she was up to, but I knew she was trying to get rid of me and to say it made me uneasy would be an understatement. She was probably used to getting by with a lot of poorly executed lies and manipulations because I was rarely in a mind to question her.

I initially thought her scheming might have something to do with her interest in the "Purple" guy. It didn't occur to me at the time that it could also have been to do with the decidedly unattractive Nate.

I resolved to stick around and see what I would see.

"No. I'm cool with staying as late as you want. I don't have anything to do tomorrow."

"I just figured you weren't having any fun with my friends and would want to go," she said.

"No. I'm having a good time. It's all cool. I can hang in there... Unless you're just trying to get rid of me, then I certainly could go," I said with a teasing tone.

"What? No. Of course not," she said.

I spoke with Amber again about these apparent concerns about Jess being able to leave the bar at a reasonable time. I offered suggestions and assistance.

"No. It's all cool. We made a deal and I'm going to stay out an extra hour and her friend is going to pick her up at my house so I don't have to drive her all the way back."

Mere minutes later, Tina, looking deflated, told me she was ready to go and I drove her home. I was mightily puzzled, but it all makes much more sense in retrospect.

Well, if it isn't Doug (again)!

About three months after I moved out, I drove past Tina's on my way to the storage locker I had unfortunately located in Farmington. I happened to notice a familiar, hooded dirtbag puffing a smoke out on the driveway. Go figure. Tina's barn-banging fuck buddy is already coming around, I thought.

Douglas. her mom's sort-of-boyfriend's son had recently earned himself a third DUI and according to Tina, he'd been hitting his pretty little fiance, Olivia. Of course, Tina lied to me so much, it's hard to know what's true. She may have just been trying to put me off the scent of infidelity after I'd expressed misgivings about discovering surreptitious messages from him on her Snapchat.

Tina told me she hadn't had any contact with Doug in a year and didn't want to, because, in her words, "he's a scumbag." I suspected otherwise. I knew otherwise.

And there, he was.

I was still setting up my new bachelor pad and had to visit my storage locker again the next day and... lo and behold! Glancing ruefully at Tina's place as I drove past, I scoffed to myself. There he was again! Doug, unshaven and unkempt was alone in Tina's driveway tapping the ashes off the end of a cigarette. He must have spent the night, I figured.

I wondered if maybe Olivia caught him banging Tina and forced him out of the house, so he had to  bunk with his mistress for a while. It seemed likely, but there are certainly plenty of other reasons he could have been put out on his ass, or maybe he said he was somewhere else. I wondered if Olivia knew where he was. I wondered if she'd care. This younger generation, at least in Farmington, didn't seem to get as caught up in quaint old notions like honesty and faithfulness.

For her part, Maura didn't seem to think Olivia would have minded if she knew Doug was snapping flirty messages to Tina, or so she told me when I asked. I thought she probably would, but maybe that's just because it offended my silly out-dated morals.

Back in June, Tina and her mom were helping Doug's grandma for about a week with a garage sale up the road. Naturally, I wondered if Doug was hanging around at all, but never inquired until a Friday when Tina came back home mid-sale to get some things. One of those things, I noticed, was her weed pouch. Knowing that Doug was once Tina's favorite smoke-bud, my antenna went up. She asked me for a ride back to Lina's. I had time to kill before work and agreed, asking if I could hang out there with her for a while before I had to go. She said "sure." and we headed out in my van.

I stopped at the gas station on the way to get some caffeinated beverages. Pulling out of the lot, I asked Tina, "So, is Doug going to be hanging around the sale?"

"No. I don't think so. I haven't seen him all year," she said. "He doesn't even have a license and he never goes around Scott's anymore."

We arrived at Lina's where she and Maura were sitting in the back of the garage, keeping out of the hot June sun. Dressed for work in a black suit and Tie, I was pretty warm, and definitely overdressed for a Farmington garage sale. Tina introduced me to Lina, after quietly coaching me, "firm handshake, look her in the eye." I'm a gentleman who has worked in politics for 10 years, so I know how to greet someone, but I just nodded and I stuck my hand out as I approached.

We all sat together and talked about a plasma TV Lina had for sale, but mere minutes after arriving, Maura locked in on something behind me said, "Oh, look, Lina. Your grandson has come to pay you a visit."

My heart sank. I glanced back towards the driveway and saw Doug sauntering up towards us.

"Oh my God, Mom," Tina started, "Dan was just asking me if Doug..."

A subtle look from Maura shut her up mid-sentence. I knew that censoring look. 

I watched Doug closely, waiting to greet him, but he never so much as looked in my direction, let alone acknowledge me. It got pretty awkward in that garage and my blood was heating up.

"Have you met, Doug," Lina asked me.

"We've met," I replied, far more darkly than I intended. My tone didn't go unnoticed.

"I've gotta go," I said abruptly and started down the driveway.

Tina chased after me, grabbing my arm and guiding me aside the garage, out of sight. "At least let me give you a proper goodbye," she said, leaning in to kiss me. I let her, but I was pulling away from her grasp.

"I'll talk to you later," I said, hastening to my van. I had a lot of time, still before I had to be at work but I was afraid I'd be unable to remain civil around Doug and I was very concerned that I'd just been lied to.

I texted Tina a little later. "I'm not OK with this."

"I was as surprised to see him as you. However you feel, I feel worse about it. It's like you summoned him. I'm home now. We couldn't even look at each other and he left right after you did," she replied.

I was skeptical.

When I got back to the apartment after work, Tina insisted that she had no idea Doug was coming over and went on about my amazing prognostication. It wasn't psychic power, just simple observation and inference. I know Tina. It wasn't hard to guess. I'd just not wanted to be right.

Disinfecting with Sunshine

When I first thought to write about the adventures of Dan and Tina, I'd thought it would be a mostly humorous endeavor, with anecdotes from the often strange and amusing experiences we'd shared. In fact, we'd often talked about it, saying "that's going in the book," when something memorable, outrageous or funny would happen.

There remain humorous memories to relate but this project has presently become more of a therapeutic outlet to order and understand my thoughts and share my story.

I am embarrassed and ashamed that I allowed myself to be subjected to an emotionally and psychologically abusive, often humiliating relationship.

There are stories I've never told anyone, because I knew how my friends, family and therapists would react. I knew what they would say and I didn't want to hear it. I was also deeply ashamed of myself for sacrificing my self-respect on the altar of love for a compulsive lying, promiscuous, uncontrollably impulsive alcoholic and drug addict. I didn't want anyone to know how pathetic I'd become. I couldn't face it, myself.

I'm disappointed in myself. I think of myself as an intelligent, logical man, but I lost confidence in my ability to reason, the veracity of my own memory and I allowed myself to be debased. I allowed a mentally ill woman to induce strife in my other relationships. My loyalty and defense of her cost me good friends. Everyone who knew us warned me away from her. I threw sense and caution to the wind and dashed myself repeatedly into the rocks trying to hang on to the illusion of a beautiful, intense, almost supernatural love.

To better make sense of a confusing few years when my sense of reality was being deliberately warped and managed, I'm setting order to my thoughts and memories. To overcome my secret shame, I've decided to be open about the abuse I abided in the hope that getting it out will defeat it's power over me. I'm going to tell my stories. I feel a visceral need to reassert objective reality. Maybe it will help others in similar situations. Maybe it will help restore my sanity and self-worth. After realizing myself, the potential to overcome my shame by airing it, my therapist reinforced the idea when he suggested it in a session. He had done his dissertation on shame and told me that daylight was the best cure for it.

I am sharply aware that I don't come off well in my stories. I've been a deluded sap and a fool. Ultimately, I am responsible for my own misery and misfortune. In my defense, since I had essentially married my "high school sweetheart," and met Tina just months after my divorce, I'd never had the dating experience most of my friends did. I'd never been much exposed to women who live by deceit. My brain rebelled at obvious red flags, because what I sometimes thought I was observing simply could not have been reality in the world I was familiar with. It would be too outrageous for me to wrap my naive mind around. When I went through rehab for alcohol abuse, one of my peers in group told me that I was dangerously naive - that I was so naive as to be a danger to myself.

I couldn't or wouldn't see the forest for the trees. I looked at everything as isolated incidents and refused to acknowledge the overall pattern of behavior. I know some people reading this will think "what a fucking idiot." I think that of myself, often.

I'd never previously understood how and why battered women stay with their abusive husbands. My experiences have provided me new insight. I don't fully understand the psychological mechanisms at play, but I can sympathize with it. I can't judge too harshly anyone who stays in an abusive or toxic relationship. Love and denial are powerful forces that trick and cloud a rational mind in unexpected ways.

My optimistic innocence is part of what makes me me and I'd mourn to see it lost because of Tina.

Through it all, as much as I came to hate Tina for warping my sense of reality, for humiliating me, for emotionally crippling me, a part of me still loved her and I hated myself for that.

Two Dicks at a Bar

I witnessed and experienced things when in Tina's company I'd never come up against in any prior relationship. It got bizarre in some cases and I wondered how it was that Tina attracted such trouble. Some of it was just happenstance and she and I went to some questionable establishments on occasion, but some things were so strange and outrageous, I sometimes suspected that she was bringing them about by subtle signals or just by way of being a magnet for trouble.

She and I had gone to a local bar that had changed hands a few times in my life and with each new owner, the establishment, now called the Howe, became more gentrified.

Sitting on the back patio to sip our drinks with cigarettes in hand, we engaged in friendly chatter with some fellow patrons. One was an obese, twenty-something man overflowing his black metal chair, legs posed how some radicals might call 'manspreading.'

After some time, which I say so as not to give the impression that it was the first thing my eyes were drawn to, I noticed that not only was his fly open, but his bits were plainly visible in the yawning opening.

Outside of an accidental glance in a restroom, I've never seen a penis exposed at a bar or anywhere in public before, so I denied I'd seen it at first and had to look again. Yup. his little beige dick was plainly visible.

Tina was chatting with a girl off to her side and I wanted to subtly share this unusual experience, so I texted her, "OMG. Dick out!!!"

After she read it, she glanced around and her eyes settled on the thing. She nudged me and stifled a giggle, mischievous eyes twinkling. Tina absolutely delighted in any form of naughtiness. After a few moments of consideration, she decided to dive right in. "Excuse me, but your fly is open," she said.

The man glanced down, but probably couldn't see his crotch over his belly. He shrugged.

"Um. We can see your uh, package," she said.

Unperturbed, he shrugged again, saying, "OK. No big deal," and he took a swig of his beer.

"Aren't you going to..."

"Nah. I don't care."

Tina and I looked at each other, wordlessly acknowledging that this was another moment destined for our pending great memoir of strange and funny anecdotes.

 The overweight exhibitionist excused himself to the restroom, shuffling back inside the bar and was soon replaced at the table by a man with longish wavy blonde hair. He seemed to be acquainted with the girl Tina had been talking with and joined our little conversation. We learned that he was a partner in a new recording studio that had opened up the road. Since I was trained and experienced as an audio engineer, we pleasantly talked about the changes in recording tech over the years, with Tina chiming in about instruments.

Rather abruptly, and to my great surprise, the man turned his face to Tina and asked, "Can I buy you a drink?"

This is going to be interesting, I thought for less than half a second.

Without the slightest hesitation, she just replied, "sure."

The man stood up, gestured for her to follow and the two disappeared into the bar before I could even wrap my head around what was happening, let alone speak.

I flashed for a moment on our first date in Farmington, where a drunk and drug-addled dilettante with a trust fund offered to buy both Tina and I a shot of "good brandy" if we'd drink it with him and write "because drugs." on his forehead in sharpie. This was not that.

I sat there, stunned, looking at the empty table in front of me. I guessed that they must be soon returning, so I lit another cigarette while I waited alone on the patio and pondered the situation.

After finishing my smoke and not seeing my fiance or her new benefactor, I went in to the bar. I noticed the two of them sitting together at the corner of the bar, backs to me, leaned in to talk to each other, fresh drinks before them.

I went to the restroom to relieve my bladder and to take a pause. When I came back out, they were still seated at the bar. I was apparently just forgotten about and abandoned. The flash of wounded ego was fast replaced by indignation and anger. I glared from across the room, arms crossed, considering how to comport myself. The recording studio guy glanced over at me and Tina followed suit. She saw me icily posed, staring daggers, but just turned back to her new company without even so much as a wave in my direction.

I'd thought up a few rejoinders to address the situation, like "are you going to buy a drink for her fiance, too," or "Thanks for your generosity, but I can afford to buy the drinks for my date," but seeing Tina's non-reaction to me turned everything red and my impulse was to turn around, walk out of the bar and drive home, leaving her behind with her new friend. Maybe he'd drive her back to Buffalo when he was finished with her, I thought.

I stalked up behind and leaned in between them."I'm leaving," I seethed. "Now."

Tina wrapped a small hand around the tumbler in front of her. "At least let me finish my drink first," she replied glibly.

"Bye." I turned around and made for the parking lot. She didn't make any immediate move to stop me or follow. I climbed into my van, started it up and lit another cigarette, the lighter trembling in my hand.

I'd dated a sketchy girl or two in my youth, but no one had ever treated me this poorly. I'd never felt so insulted. Ever. I felt humiliated, disposable and rejected. My world was crashing in on me. If any other woman on Earth had done something like this on a date, I'd never have seen her again. But here was the love of my life, my bride-to-be. She'd earlier professed her profound and unshakable love for me, now displaying dismissive disdain. I was still in shock from the audacity of her rude behavior when she stepped up to my open window.

She looked at me wordlessly for a moment.

"I'm leaving right now. If you want me to give you a ride home, get in." I put my foot on the brake and set the van in reverse. Tina glanced back toward the bar, seemed about to say something, but thought better of it and came around to the passenger door.

"I thought we were staying at your place tonight. What's the problem?" She fastened her seat belt as I slowly backed out. 

My head was spinning. I couldn't answer her right away.

Once on the road and down the block, words came to me. "What the fuck, Tina?"

"What, that guy buying me a drink? What's the big deal? It's free alcohol."

I stammered incoherently, unable to formulate a response to such glib inanity. Finally, "You don't realize the kind of signals you're sending when you accept a drink from a guy at a bar? To him and to me and everyone else?"

"What?"

"I can't believe I'm explaining this. That's how guys come on to girls and you showed him and me that you were receptive."

"It's just a drink. It's free alcohol. You should be happy I saved you some money."

"I can afford to buy our drinks, Tina. I've never been so insulted in my life. You just fucking left me sitting there like an asshole while you ran off to flirt with another guy. I was so shocked I couldn't even comprehend what I was seeing. It actually took a while to register..."

"He said I shouldn't be with you," she interrupted.

"What?"

"When he saw you staring at us, he said, 'who is that guy?' and I told him, 'oh, that's my fiance.' 'You shouldn't be with that guy' is what he told me." This was an example of "triangulation," but I didn't know about that narcissistic tactic yet.

Head spinning. wordless spluttering, then,"Why the should either one of us care what some stranger who's hitting on you in a bar thinks about our relationship? What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you serious?"

"Jeremy," she said.

My head jerked incredulously. "I don't give a fuck what his name is."

"I'm sorry. I didn't think it was any big deal. It's not like I was going home with him."

You very nearly had to, I thought. I also wondered if she'd exchanged numbers with Jeremy before running out to the parking lot to secure her only sure transportation back to Buffalo.

We argued about it. Tina smoked some weed. I got another drink at home and I eventually decided to chalk it up to Tina's naivety about dating and the bar scene, but it was I who was being naive. I forgave her and we had sex and slept in each other's arms. All was right again in the world of Dan and Tina.

For about a year afterwards, every time I drove past the Minnehaha Recording Company, I flipped the building the bird. But, while Jeremy was undoubtedly a dick for reacting as he did when he learned that Tina was engaged (if he even said the things Tina related),  I can't really lay the blame on him. After all, Tina showed him how easily her head was turned away from me. It's Tina who deserved my scorn.

Triangulation is a deliberate manipulative tactic of narcissists wherein they invoke a third person to make their victim feel inferior, insecure or threatened. It was clumsily done with Jeremy, since it was nonsensical that either of us should have cared about his opinion, but it was crazy-making, nonetheless.

More often, she'd triangulate members of her family or other people I was acquainted with, but the third-parties couldn't be too close to me or I might ask them questions. Tina had a way of driving wedges between certain people to prevent too much communication.