My wife wanted me to help her off the floor.
I stood over her and said give me your hand.
She said can you just reach down and pick up my hand?
I said no reach up and grab mine.
She was so stubborn she wouldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t give in.
After ten minutes she got up without help and went to bed.
My wife and I know each other well enough so that if one of us says something boring, there’s nothing to keep us from seeing how boring a thing that is to say.
Today many things happened, and my hand was wrapped in a bandage. Dr. B did it. I spoke with my mother-in-law about diabetes. It is very dark in Long Island, away from weirdos on bicycles singing songs in loud voices.
I was surprised and delighted when I came home and my wife was not in bed.
She said did you drink?
No do you want to have sex now?
She said she had a stomach ache and has to wake up early.
Click here to start at Part 1.
Why couldn’t I leave my wife and do whatever I wanted? I wasn’t strong enough, that’s why. I had never really broken up with anyone, and I had also never really had a confrontation with anyone, thanks to my uncanny diplomatic abilities.
And so that meant I had to make it seem like I was a good husband. I had to do everything I could to make her happy, and besides that I had to avoid having a fight with her. I couldn’t stand to fight with her, and besides, I had nothing to say to her in a fight. I had no will of my own. Why should I have an opinion when nothing can be proven or disproven.
So we had no fights, except the ones over my drinking, which was out of control. I would drink and not text her because I didn’t want to have to fight about it and I knew if I texted her I was drinking she would say something snarky and then if I got drunk enough I would drunk text her a long nicely worded ‘fuck you.’
But those were our only fights and we didn’t delve too deep into why I was drinking like that.
So with no fights our relationship didn’t really grow much from when we had started. I was a different person than the guy who started dating her years earlier, but I acted the same towards her, only now I drank.
Since I was too weak to break up with her, I had to maintain some kind of normalcy, even though I had these self destructive urges. I had to keep them in check. So I resented her for that, but even then I knew she was kind of keeping me alive.
Now, looking back, it’s crazy how my whole life seems to have revolved around women. I guess that’s not very original, but I didn’t see it coming.
Anyway, I guess that’s what I’ve got to say about that. I am ready to have real fights and really get to know her now, and hopefully one day I will be strong enough to tell her everything that I ever hid from her. As for now, I’ll just do my best not to create new things to hide from her.
The girl with whom I was formerly obsessed and I still hang out and talk. It’s possible I made up her reciprocation of my feelings for her, but even if I didn’t I haven’t given her a reason to feel heartbroken if I never make a move or tell her how I feel about her. She is smart enough not to trust married men, I’m sure.
I guess, like many children who were raised as Christians, I’ve always had a problem with sex. I didn’t even have actual sex with my girlfriend of three years from the age of 16 to 19 because it was one of the hard lines of Christian morality that I would not cross. All I did as a teenager was think about sex, but I knew I mustn’t act on the thoughts. I even felt super guilty when I masturbated.
When I met the woman who became my wife, she was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist her. I didn’t tell her until months in that I was deeply religious and had felt that all the sex we were having was a sin. She thought that was weird and kind of hurtful. Immediately after that conversation, we had the best sex we had ever had up to that point.
Two years into our relationship, I stopped believing in God. I derided any kind of belief in anything, even that the color of a t-shirt could be known, and prided myself on not being delusional. I began to internalize that life was a cruel joke.
Sometimes after that, my wife would want to have sex, but I wouldn’t feel like it. I would be too busy thinking about how I’m going to get myself out of this hell. I thought the answer was make more money so that everyone could leave me alone, so that I could stay home and brood and not have to do shit.
One of the few things I still enjoyed (with the other things being eating and doing drugs, mostly alcohol), was courtship: the parts leading up to sex that you were technically allowed to do as an evangelical. I assumed it was too late to court my wife, so I would court girls at work. Mostly they were girls I didn’t find attractive, so there was no danger of me getting caught up. Sometimes they were girls I found attractive, but who were used to the game and would play along with no interest in going any further.
But on two occasions, it seemed that I had found a soulmate.
The first girl did a lot of drugs, so we were able to forget about our problems and just live in the moment. Before anything happened sexually, she had some kind of breakdown and disappeared for a few days. In the time it took for her to re-establish connection, I seriously contemplated suicide one day and got fired from my job for blacking out at work and being creepy the next.
The second girl, this recent one, doesn’t drink, so instead of just checking out, we have long talks in which she challenges everything that I believe.
I had to ask myself, did I make a mistake getting married? At first I thought the answer was yes. Slowly, very slowly, I realized that I didn’t really love this girl. I loved the idea I had of her, and what my life could be like if I wasn’t bound by the only thing that kept me in the world of the living: my wife.
Why hadn’t I broken up with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, when I decided that life was meaningless and cruel? If nothing mattered, why couldn’t I just leave her and do drugs and listen to music and fuck the world?
I showered and put on my best clothes, excited for the night. We would act like strangers. Forget all we knew about each other and come together based only on animalistic sexual attraction.
She said, Why are you dressed like a bartender?
It’s Sunday. Somehow we got here again. Halfway through the week I didn’t think I would make it. Somewhere around Thursday I thought that was it for me. The girl I am obsessed with wouldn’t text me back fast enough. My wife wouldn’t text me back. I couldn’t focus on my job. Time was going so fast and weird.
I reached out to my nihilist friend who moved to France last year. He understood what I was going through, as best as anyone can over text messages. He sent me a video and a podcast and we talked about how annoying everything was.
I didn’t have time to listen to the podcast or watch the video. I went back into dinner service not sure how I was going to make it. I told a sympathetic coworker, who has been in a bad relationship for years, about my wife and I getting ready to have kids and how I thought I might be trapped working in restaurants forever.
I didn’t know how I was going to make it through dinner service. I ate some Altoids.
I decided to get a haircut the next day. My hair was crazy and I hadn’t slept much, so I figured that was probably the problem.
On the way home, the girl called me and we talked about nothing because her phone was broken and I couldn’t hear anything she was saying. She said she was going to get a flip phone. I said cool yeah that’s badass smartphones are for tools. She said something I couldn’t understand. I texted my friend who’s a barber now and made the appointment.
On the bus ride, I watched the video and my mind was blown. The guy basically taught a class why thinking people are nihilists these days and how that’s not much different than mental illness but it is just a little different. And a whole bunch of other stuff too. And that’s when I remembered that life really was suffering, which is such a relief to remember because when things aren’t going right I always think what did I do wrong? Of course, there are plenty of things that I’ve done wrong and continue to do wrong.
At the barbershop, we gossiped about people we both knew and how we couldn’t understand the things they did, and we laughed about that. We talked about how awesome we were, and my friend said I looked like Don Draper now that I’ve been working on this hair style for three months.
When I got home I decided to focus on bringing sexy back so I made my wife cookies and I pulled out my chest hairs one by one and I shaved and trimmed and did some pushups. Then I went to work and I didn’t text anyone and then I went home and went to sleep.
In the morning, I fucked my wife for the first time since she went off birth control. Then I walked to work and treated my customers like apparitions.
On my break, I told the girl I am obsessed with to meet me at a bar when she got finished working. She said she would so I sat in the bar drinking beer and listening to the podcast that my nihilist friend had sent me. The podcast was amazing, but as time went on, she didn’t appear, and I got sad.
Then I walked back to work and to my locker and there she was, getting ready to leave. She hadn’t come because she hadn’t gotten off work yet. I asked if she was eating at the restaurant before she left. She said yes. I said good.
I put my plate at one table and she put her plate on the table right next to it, instead of across from my plate so we ate together diagonally, so not really what I had in mind. She asked if anyone had made a will and my bar manager said she didn’t need a will since she had nothing of value, no family, and no partner. I said oh well there you go, easy. Then she seemed like she was about to cry. I said she had friends, but I didn’t know what else to say. I should have told her to remember that life is suffering.
When the girl that I’m obsessed with left, she texted me that she hadn’t seen me on the way out but that she hoped I had a good night.
I told her to have a good one, too, and then my bar manager handed me a pint of beer to chug because she had made a mistake and poured the wrong kind.
Later she gave me four ounces of vodka and people asked me where I was from. They said I had an accent.
Then it was midnight and it was time to go and I polished glasses while the chefs and cooks drank Modelos that a customer had bought them from the pharmacy across the street.
On my way out the door I checked out with the manager and she told me to get a pint container. She filled it with Jameson and told me to come out with them to the bar. A chef asked me three times if I was coming out. He told me that he had wished his ex-girlfriend happy birthday last night and they ended up fucking. He asked if I thought he had a problem. I said no I texted her happy birthday, too, what’s the big deal?
The other chef handed me a Modelo and I chugged it and went home. Last night I got home around 1:30 and chugged a quart of water, hoping that today could still be a productive day.
I woke up at 1:30 PM and went outside. It was too warm for the clothes I was wearing and I bought an iced coffee. Tonight I’m going out to eat with my wife, her sister, and my in-laws.
Y’all I need more real life friends, specifically a nihilist friend who won’t judge me for things or try to improve my life with advice after I tell them some fucked up shit.
Also, I need more alone time. My wife is gone for the morning, and the morning consists of about 30 minutes before I go to work, and I am accomplishing all kinds of shit that would take me pretty much an entire day off with her here. Also I get to listen to music. She hates listening to music in the morning. In fact she refuses to do it, so I never get to wake up like Will Smith in I Am Legend, which is what I want to wake up like every day.
Today she left the building and I immediately played The Wizard by Black Sabbath. It was awesome. But then right before the climax it cut out because she was playing Spotify on her phone. Then I realized that my sister-in-law was still in her room. And I was really rocking out to that song.
How can I say I need more alone time to my wife? I don’t think I will. Doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Anyone's Ghost 