Crash and Burn

Or: Fling, Ain't No Thing!

OR: Wow! That Was Fast! part deux

Lisa, it turns out, is beyond jealous. It's a fucking neurosis with her.

Last week we had a fight over my looking at the ass of a woman who Lisa had, prior to our ever meeting, determined was a slut, a woman who sat across the table from us and had attempted to engage us in small talk like everyone else around us. To Lisa, this woman was hitting on me. Never mind all the other men around the table that she talked to, but when she talked to me, I was the next target for her lustful machinations.

Still, with all this happening in Lisa's head alone, I nonchalantly looked at the woman's ass when she got up from the table to go to the bathroom. Hence the fight, and Lisa's statement that, if I'd rather be with the other woman, then I should just go with her.

??!

We made up, at which point Lisa seemed to accept that the hanky-panky was going on only in her head and said that it would "never happen again." I nursed tender wounds to my psyche for a few days, but it had seemed like a breakthrough in our understanding of each other, and I was confident that she finally believed that I wasn't using her until something better came along.

Fast forward to Saturday night. It was Lisa's birthday, and the organizer of the Wine meetup group had invited us over to his place for a few celebratory drinks before the scheduled group Wine Crawl. We all had a buzz on by the time we got to the first place, a wine shop with a small party room. There, among many people — many of them men who gave Lisa hugs and kisses hello, and then hugs and kisses for her birthday — I was introduced to an interracial couple.

(It is here that I have to interject with an aside: Several times in the early days of our relationship, Lisa had mentioned certain co-workers of hers, past and present, who are African-American. The ones she didn't like she referred to as "nigs." She justified this by telling me that, due to her own slightly darker complexion in comparison to her Cuban and Spanish family, her relatives affectionately call her negrita, or "little black one." Regardless, her use of the term "nig" never sat right with me.)

The woman in this couple is black, and is very outgoing and gregarious, and she and Lisa hugged like long, lost sisters when they saw each other. After the introductions I immediately fell into comfortable conversation with both in the couple. They seem to be really neat people.

The crawl moved on to a Tapas restaurant. Lisa and I shared a shrimp dish and wine, and lots of kisses. The interracial couple stopped by our table for a few minutes and the woman and Lisa were hugging and seemed to be having a great time. So, using Lisa's camera, I took a bunch of photos. When the couple left, Lisa leaned in to me and said, "You like the black chickies, don't you?"

I replied, "Not as a 'thing,' but she seems pretty cool."

After an hour and a half or so at the tapas place we moved on to a bar that was way too overcrowded, so the organizer moved the festivities back to his condo. After another glass of wine — and another shot or two of tequila for Lisa — I walked up to Lisa and the black woman where they were talking. I put my arm around Lisa and joined the conversation. After a few minutes the black woman left, and Lisa said to me, "She came here with her man. She don't need to be hanging around getting in our business."

I said, "I don't think she was getting into anybody's business. She's just engaging in conversation."

Lisa said, "You don't know her like I do. She's bisexual. Believe me. I know what she's up to."

??!

Finally, one of the women that Lisa counts as her friend, — also single, also unattached, though apparently in a friends-with-benefits relationship with her younger male roommate — had a little too much to drink throughout the evening, and had made a dash for the bathroom to puke. Later on she was passed out or semi-passed out on the host's couch. The organizer-host had tuned his cable TV to the salsa music station, and Lisa was dancing up a storm in front of the TV. After a few songs' worth of dancing solo, dancing with me (if you can call what I was doing dancing), and dancing with a couple of the other women, Lisa ducked into the bathroom. A little concerned, I sat in the armchair next to the couch where Lisa's friend was passed out. I read the little information blurbs at the bottom of the stationary graphic screens on the TV until the bathroom door opened. I jumped up to see if Lisa was okay.

"Were you over there making sure [passed-out friend] is okay?" she asked me. She had that familiar suspicious look in her eyes.

I replied, "No, I was reading the stuff on the TV."

Lisa then placed her hands on my chest and gently pushed me. "Go back to her if you want to be with her."

I said. "I wasn't even looking at her! She's asleep. I was reading the stuff on TV."

Lisa said, "If you weren't talking to her, then why are you being all defensive?"

I lost it. I grabbed Lisa by the waist and yelled, "I was watching TV. She's passed out on the couch. I couldn't even talk to her if I wanted to."

Lisa then said "What-ever," dismissing me and stepping away from me. I grabbed her again and shouted, "Do you want to go home alone tonight?"

She replied, "That's fine. I'll call a cab, or someone will take me home."

So I went and started putting on my snowboots. She came up to me and said, "Are you leaving?"

"Yes."

At first she started to gather her things, but then the group organizer-host came up wanting to know what was going on. I tried to explain all of the above in a breath, and then Lisa was saying, "Let him go, I'll make it home somehow."

And I left. I was one minute down the road when Lisa called me and asked if I would drive her home. Being the nice guy that I am, and her ride to the event, I turned around and said that I would. Just as I got to the door of the organizer-host's building, my phone rang. When I answered it, I heard Lisa talking to someone near her. "…no, if he doesn't want to be with me then…"

"Hello?" I said.

"Never mind," she said to me. "Someone will give me a ride home."

Shortly after I got to my apartment I received a text message from Lisa, presumably at her apartment: "Wow. I can't believe how you over reacted in front of my friends on my bday."

After much thought, I texted her back: "You pushed me away and said, go back to her. You believed a whole scenario that didn't even happen. I don't need that kind of drama every time we r in a room where there r other single women u feel threatened by. It was u who overreacted. I simply got angry. And fed up. Sorry u chose your own bday 2 screw up a good thing."

That was followed up with "When r u coming 2 get ur stuff?"

Sunday morning I drove to her place to pick up my things. I had spent the night there Friday and had brought extra clothes because we had planned to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sunday afternoon performance, and my backpack with my laptop computer was there as well.

She buzzed me in to her apartment building, and when I got to her door she was putting my things out in the hallway. We exchanged hellos and I asked a question to make sure everything was there (some clothes had been folded and not put in my bag the day before). Then she kissed her fingers and waved to me. And I left.

I was through with the relationship when I left her at the party. After the first blowup over her belief that I wanted to fuck someone else she asked my forgiveness, and I gave it. It was a mistake she said would never happen again. The second time established a pattern. That she was drunk changes nothing. Being so removes any filters; you say what's really on your mind. The suspicion, the neurotic belief that I was talking up her friend, on her birthday, while she was in the room, is only proof that no amount of talking about it, no amount of proving my trustworthiness, no application to my eyes of the biggest fucking pair of blinders on the planet, is going to make her believe that I don't want to fuck every woman she mistrusts or dislikes, or that every woman she mistrusts or dislikes doesn't want me.

But she asked me first when I was coming for my stuff. So I don't know if she just figured I had dumped her, or if she feels she dumped me. But all day Sunday I was in the dumps.

Well, either way, it's bye-bye Lisa.

--------------------------

I thought it had been clear that it was over, but this evening, as I was composing this post, I received a text message from Lisa: "I miss u."

It took a lot of thinking, a lot of fighting the desire to keep it going because it would be the easier — that is, less unpleasant — path to take. But finally I called her and told her that I wasn't going to play this game. I will not accept her pathological jealousy. She kept saying that I overreacted and embarrassed her in front of her friends. And maybe I did overreact, but when someone repeatedly accuses me of doing something I didn't do, and then dismisses me as I try to defend myself, well, I get a little upset. Apparently some of the others there saw it as it really happened, and one of Lisa's friends told her that I "didn't even do anything" at the party to deserve Lisa's suspicion. She even admitted that she has a problem with the jealousy issue.

Despite Lisa's contrition, and my super-nice-guy urge to pick up where we left off, I definitively broke it off. I told her that I enjoyed spending time with her, even with our clothes on, but I will not put up with her constant suspicion that I'd rather be with someone else. I told her that if she deals with this problem and still wants to be with me, then we can try again later, but as for now, we'll just be friends.

S I G H !