I am a sex addict among other addictions. I have four; spending, eating, drinking, and the drug of choice, sex. This is not a 12 step self help book/blog. I am not going to 12 step anybody here. I can say that when I stepped out of the car that day, I looked back and the car was gone. It was dark, windy, and I think a little rainy. It wasn’t that cold, I mean I gotta cut myself some slack on the metaphor here otherwise it would just be some kind of loony unbelievable fantasy. If it had been cold, snowy, lightening, and maybe a tornado, well, come on that’s just ridiculous. No, I had walked a number of steps, just enough so when I looked back I could not find the car. It was dark, windy, and rainy. I immediately realized I was in a world of shit. No biggey though. Who hasn’t been there?
As soon as I realized this I just stayed put. . . for about 6 months.
On the afternoon of November 21st of 2005, I was visiting my wife and kids in Colorado. The kids were at day care and my wife came home for lunch. I think we had lunch together and I know we had sex. This would be the last time we would engage in the activity and when she left to go back to work the the next time I would see her would be three days later, Thanksgiving day, at the local psychiatric hospital. It really was local. It was like right across the street kind of.
A little background here. I took a job in another state at what turned out to be a really good place of employment. I would have to notice stuff like this if I were to survive the climb. I made the decision unilaterally to take the job and expected my wife would follow. I actually took the job one year and a couple of months prior to the events about which I am writing. She would not move with the kids until I got my sex addiction under control. So I would go back and visit about every three weekends or so. I went back for the Thanksgiving week. I got there on Friday and was supposed to leave the Sunday of the following week.
That prior year and few months we would have very big verbal fights about once every three months or so. My visits up there were getting icier and icier. Yeah, no crampons or ice ax. Like I said, just shorts, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Our previous blow up happened in September so we were due. Okay, so I was due.
She was to go out with her friends for her birthday and told me she would definitely be back by 10:30. She said she would call if she was going to be late. This wasn’t quite in line with me being the center of her universe but it was her birthday and I thought I would be magnanimous and let her have some fun with her friends. What the hell.
My oldest son who was 5 at the time was having a hard time getting to sleep and asked if I would lay down with him until he got to sleep. My other two boys, three and two years of age were in the same room. The three year old up on the top bunk and my five year old, two year old and me were on the bottom bunk which folded out into a double sized bed. We all went to sleep together. Everything was in alignment or so I thought until I woke up at eleven o’clock and my wife was not home and had not called.
I went down stairs and listened to music to calm myself down. Finally at eleven thirty she called and in very slurred speech told me she wasn’t going to be home for a while.
“Uh yeah. You told me you would be home by ten fucking thirty. You told me you would fucking call if you were going to be late. And here you totally drunk out of your fucking mind. Get the fuck home now.” And I hung up and got a bottle of vodka and drank six shots one right after the other. I think I may have called her back but we somehow got on the phone again and she said she was getting a taxi and would be home. About ten minutes passed and once again I may have called her or she me and she said she was having a hard time getting a taxi and was going to stay longer.
Some how the conversation ended up where I am saying I am just a total fuck up and she would be better off without me. To be honest I don’t really remember. While I was talking to her, I went out to the garage which was directly under my kids’ bedroom. I turned on the car and told her that when she got home she would find me dead. And I remember for some reason I told her I was listening to some CD in the car and it was an artist she did not particularly care for. Of course I thought she should like this artist because I did. But I remember telling her something like, “Oh yeah, and I am listening to so and so, you know the guy you can’t stand. So fuck you.” and I hung up. She called back and I pressed the hang up button. She called another time. Once again, I press the hang up button. She calls back a third time and I think, “okay, enough is enough. I’m done. This is ridiculous. There is no fucking way I am going to kill myself. I am going to answer. However, I mistakenly hit the hang up button when I meant to press the green answer button. Ooooops. Big ooops actually.
I tried to call back but it went directly into voice mail. I tried again. voice mail again. I tried again and again and again. Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail. and then ringing until voice mail. I tried again; ringing until voice mail. She wasn’t on the phone anymore and she wasn’t answering. I vaguely remember thinking that this can’t be good.
I went back into the house and a couple of minutes later a cop car shows up. They knocked on the door. I opened and I told them that my wife, the one that just called you is out drunk at the bar. “You should be going after her.” They started questioning me about what was going on and I started lying. They were on to me and finally asked if they could go out to the garage. Of course they smelled the exhaust and determined that my wife’s story was checking out. I think they then called her on her cell. She told them about the conversation about the CD that was in the car’s CD player. They asked to see it. The artist’s name on the CD matched that of the artist I had told her about in that oh so stupid “By the way” rant. One of the cops repeated back to me almost verbatim what I had said to her. At that point I gave up.
So while my kids slept (I so fucking hope they slept.) in the room above the cops put my hands behind my back, zip tied them together and led me out to the squad car. Red and blue light passed over the houses as they opened the squad car door, put one of their hands on my head, pushed me down into the fiberglass formed bucket seat and closed the door. To my right was a door with no handle and no feature to unlock it. To my left was steel mesh that went from the floor up around the back seat and on up to the roof of the car. In front of me was the front seat with steel mesh going from the top of the seat to the roof and behind me a glass window.
I sat there for about a minute or so and then started to panic. I writhed in terror. My neighbors were coming out of their homes and looking at me in the back seat as I was gyrating and contorting myself into odd improbable positions. It seemed like I was in the back seat for an eternity.
I couldn’t see out the left side of the car. This was the side the house was on. Further the squad car was parked to the rear of the house. For about an hour I sat there in the car alone with no idea what was going on.
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