And the beat goes on...

Time heals all wounds. Perhaps these words are true. I've experienced the salving effect of time. My woman is messin' with another man...broken heart...pain...derision...depression...denial, anger, acceptance. I move on.

But then 2-4-05 arrives, I have the day off, and Sara says she's heading out for the day...I discover, using the deductive powers of the repeated cuckold, that it is with her German beau. He finally materializes. Howard wins the bet.

Markus Fuchs has been a part of the entirety of my marital life, or is that strife. Sara threw out that "Have you ever thought that maybe 'you're' the other man?" In her mind, I came after Markus, marrying her while he was still her boyfriend. Maybe he was the man done wrong. Can you believe such rubbish. Oh yeah, right around the third child I started thinking, "Gee, I sure hope ol' Markus doesn't still harbor any resentment against me."

Meanwhile, she has kept him close to her all along the way. Her allegiance to him for these 11 years negates all that we may have ever had: An 11 year sham.

It has been one full week of Markus in No Hope, PA (actually, 11 days all told). There's Sara's car parked outside his motel room. "I'm napping and he's watching a movie." There's Sara's car outside of the Giant supermarket, and there they are on the check-out line. "Tim, this is Markus." She calmly introduced us. After 11 years, there he was, in the flesh, as it were. He was absolutely clueless and befuddled. Whatever lies and half-truths she has been feeding him left him mute and deaf (deaf because he doesn't understand English all that well, not to mention the fact that I speak my own version of the language at lightning speeds). Outside the market I relieved him of carrying my children's groceries (what if the kids had been there with me), and began laying into him. He wouldn't speak, out of deference to Sara who stayed between us and wouldn't shut up. I kept the spectacle to a minimum. I didn't forget for a moment that she was more deserving of any derision on my part.

She's been staying at The Hawke, three hours of "sleep" and then back to Kiltie at 5 AM, slipping back into bed naked beside me. "Christ, Tim, we've been married for 11 years." The couple lunched and cavorted all week long, karaokeing on 2-7-05 with all of Sara's drunken, coke-snorting friends.

copied from an e-mail between she and I: I'm fucking devastated, but doing great with it. My phone reads ?Inactive SIM. I imagine it has outlasted its life span. I'll get a new one. Mr. Problem-Fixer, that's me.

I've informed my prof I'll be a no-show for tonight. I can neither see straight nor concentrate, not to mention that I haven't completed the required assignment due this evening. I believe that I am seriously peaking and at the top of my game. Now I'm dealing with the fact that I am a social retard and you're the Belle of the ball. When did I enter Bizarro World? Seriously, you've always been the belle of the ball in my eyes, and the world's eyes, too.

I need some serious help. I have been trying so hard and still am met with disaster. "Don't ever give up," my ass. Where's my goddamn white flag. Yesterday I was berating a disconcerted, mute German in the parking lot of Giant, with my erstwhile wife (and best friend -- peshaw) defending him from my rabid, imperialstic tirade. "Wazzup?!" I'll tell you wazzup. MY PHONE DOESN'T WORK, CHARLIE. I TALK OVER PEOPLE. I'M LOUD. I NEVER LOOKED AT YOU IN PUBLIC WITH THE SAME LOVING GAZE AS 'YOUR BOYFRIEND.' wazzup. Please. It's over. Enough. I late you.
-----Original Message-----From: Sara Love [mailto:sara@wanderingstar.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 8:18 AMTo: Timothy StraubSubject: wazzup
with your phone? Want me to call t-mobile? How are you?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Sara sent me divorce papers to print out. I need to seek counsel. My heart has been subverting what are my best interests, from the IRS and credit debt to arrangements for the children. She wants everything to be left open-ended, no doubt inviting future wrangling and disputes over where the children will be on any given day. In other words, when she has improved her own situation and social pressure bears down on her ever-changing sensibilities, she will do her worst and swoop in to reclaim the children just as Sandy did all those years ago. "You don't know me, Tim. You really don't." Alas, I've gotten to know her pathology all too well, and it scares me.

Last evening Sara and I enjoyed some real quality time together, speaking about what's to come next over heaping plates of Reservoir Chicken Savoy. She did her usual emotional bullying, guilt tripping, tear-welling-with-anguish best. Before I knew it I was assuming responsibility for all of our debts, relinquishing any claim to the children, the war in Iraq, and nuclear proliferation. And then I asked her one last time: "When you went to London last year was he there to meet you?" Without any hesitation or remorse in her voice, came the lone syllable, "Yes."

With that came the brunt of my foolishness. I have been played over and over and over again. Even Markus denied this when I asked him the same question two weeks ago. "Nein." And then Sara went out to party down at The Hawke with Sherry the bartender, only to return home two hours later, drunk and sprawled unconscious across our bed, with me, the Fool, lovingly stroking her head. Is it pity? Is it scorn? Is it low self-esteem? Is it fear? Is it hope? I need to seek professional counsel. I can't deal with her. I will lose. I'm a fool.