Rodney, my ex-boyfriend, called me out of the blue yesterday. Just out of the blue! He called to pledge is undying love for me. WTF!! It’s Sunday, the Sabbath for goodness sake! Don’t call me with this shit on a Sunday. Call me on a Monday.


Now, I’m going to rant here but trust me, it has a point or maybe it doesn’t but still…it’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to: 


Rodney and I had a complicated, dare I say, volatile relationship. He was the last man I dated before I married my beautiful Greg and, in a way, I’m glad it happened in that order.


We met through work. He was an engineer and I a programmer (yes, there is a big difference). There was no gray area with Rodney. Either you loved him or hated him so when we became friends people were amazed. What I liked about him was his dogged dedication to his family.


What I didn’t like was his disregard for others; he had zero respect for people in general. He was the guy that would insult a waiter for no good reason other than he needed to be entertained. Now, he didn’t take this attitude with me so I figured my hippie beliefs would in time penetrate his callous shell and make him a more agreeable person. Boy was I wrong. This guy was a world class dick!!


Anyway, we dated in secret for two months before I quit our place of employment…then it was safe to lift the veil. Things were going pretty well for the first year and a half. And, eeww, we even talked about marriage. Thank God that never happened, however he did move in with me for a month while the new house he was building was complete…which also happen to be the same time I was preparing to move into my first home.


By now you should have a mental picture as to what my apartment looked like at the time with all of our belongings scattered about.


I’m cleaning the apartment one night while he and his friends meet with his contractor. I go to pop one of his comedy tapes (I love stand-up comedy) into the VCR and what do I find? You guessed it…a sex tape. I sit on my coffee table aghast. I can’t believe it. I remove the tape and pack it away because it happened before me so it’s not my business, right?


Later that night, I ask him about it. He confesses that it happened before we became a couple. So, all was well in the world until….cue needle scratching across vinyl….I pop the tape back in and realize that they’re fucking on the sofa that WE bought together only a few months ago!


At this point most of you would have lost it but not me. No, seriously I don’t flip out. I call him into the room and point out what I’d discovered and he beats me Ike and Tina style. No kidding folks! Besides my Dad and my brothers, I have never been hit by a man. Ever! Needless to say, I kicked his ever-loving ass and then called the police to take him away.

Long story short, we broke up and, according to our brief conversation, he married the video sex vixen and they’ve been divorced for two year now. He rambles on about his mother and sisters, our once-shared dog, and then out of nowhere he apologizes for the way he treated me. WTF!! For as long as we were together, this guy never apologized for anything.


We chat a few minutes longer before the desire to re-close that chapter in my life hits me and I tell him so. He says he still loves me…I tell him to take care. I hope the conversation ended the way he expected it to. It did for me. In some ways it felt good to finally hear his apology though my life isn’t the better for it. Maybe it was his reluctance to move on with his life that I found gratifying. Maybe it was the knowledge that he now understood that he had my heart and lost it because of his negligence. Either way, I’m happy with where and who I am today.


Thankful for what I have, I went and curled up under Greg. He asked how it went.

I answered, “profoundly pathetic and surprisingly cathartic.”