They don’t have a support group for women whose husbands have gone off the rocker, but I did start attending this group for mothers of twins.  It’s something I would have naturally avoided, but you said I needed to get out there and start hanging out with people again.  The group is called the MOTLee Crew.  Gag me, I know, but it gets worse.  The woman who founded it is named Leeanne Falcon this very proper southern Belle on the surface with a husband named Mordecai like Children of the Corn, and they have twins named Billie and Ellie, how precious.  So you got the name MOT, Mothers Of Twins, and then she tacked on her name. Very corny but it’s something to do.  Sometimes Leeanne has good ideas, but most of the times they’re boring things Lee tries to spice up by saying, “Isn’t that wild? We have to do it.  Like last week she said, “All night Karaoke, ladies, isn’t that wild?  We have to do it.”  At least I met Amanda Odalon there.  She’s nice to talk to, and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about her later.

Now to the story I really wanted to tell.  Leeanne found out there was a local Motley Crue cover band, so she said, “Isn’t that wild?  We have to go.  It’s too, too perfect.  It’s MOTLee Crew meets Motley Crue.  Isn’t that the most?” It was sad that I couldn’t find a good reason to say no.  When I hesitated to respond, Leeanne said, “Your girls are staying with your mother.  Your husband’s off on a business trip.”  That’s what I told them.  “You have no reason not to go.” I didn’t have the strength to argue.  I already agreed before I found out it was a masquerade like Halloween in May.  The top act was an all girl Alice Cooper cover band called Million Dollar Babies, and they had this annual masquerade at this bar called The Changeling Child.  I could’ve said I didn’t have a costume, but it was too late.  I looked in my closet and found I still had that angel costume from the Halloween before everything fell apart.  I was an angel.  Karl was Superman.  The costume still fit, of all the miracles.  I wanted to use the costume fitting as a way to be proud of myself, like you said, finding little things to be proud of, but I felt more like, since it was an angel costume, it was some sort of miracle out of the bible.

So we were out at the club, and it was pretty awful.  The guitarist for the Motley Crue band was wearing the exact same costume except she was about ten years younger which just pissed me off.  Everybody was about ten years younger.  Why do college kids care about an Alice Cooper cover band anyway?  But Leeanne and Amanda and all the others who had been in the group for a while were half drunk before we got there so they were up front dancing along, mumbling lyrics they didn’t even know.   I sat there at the table nursing a drink that just made me sick because it tasted like watermelon Kool-Aid with a twist of lime.  Then across the bar there was this guy in a skeleton costume.  I caught myself staring, and unfortunately he caught me staring about a second before I could stop myself.  He started walking over.  I would’ve dreaded it except he was gorgeous, dark hair, dark eyes like he was Arabic or something, very exotic looking, so different from Karl in every way, confident, uncomplicated.  Maybe I was projecting, maybe I thought the miracle power from the angel costume was extending outward, beats me.  Thinking it was imaginary made it a little easier.  Otherwise, I would have been nervous and excited and put off and pissed off by his brazenness all at the same time.  I would’ve thought, didn’t he realize I was married?  I would’ve thought, what’s with college guys wanting to nail everything that moves?  But thinking it was imaginary just allowed me to accept it.

When he got to my table, he said, “I think when an angel is alone and sad looking, it’s probably the saddest thing in the world.  Do you want to come join me and my friends?”

I said, “I was expecting a corny pick up line.  That one wasn’t as corny as the ones I thought you might say.”

He said, “I wasn’t trying to pick you up, just invite you to hang out with me and my friends.  Are you saying you wanted me to try to pick you up?”

Then I said, “So I’m not worth being picked up?”

He said, “Let me try again.  What were the corny lines you thought I’d say?”

“‘Girl, I knew you were an angel the first time I saw you,’ or ‘I can show you what heaven is really like.’”

“Okay, I’ll try again then.”  He went over to where he was standing, gave an exaggerated pantomime of seeing me, came over, and said, “You want to take a ride to heaven with me, angel?”

“Good one” I said.

I immediately asked him his name and how old he was.  He said his name was Abraham Masoch, and he was twenty two.  I said, “Me too.”

He said, “Your name is Abraham Masoch too?  What a coincidence.”

Long story short, we ended up back at his apartment making out on his bed.  I could make the excuse that I actually started drinking those drinks I had been avoiding, but then everything about the situation was so different from all this mess with Karl that I just fell back into it, fell back like falling on a bed with clean sheets and down pillows after a long day.  But then, while I was making out with this gorgeous boy, I started crying. 

He stopped and said, “I’m sorry.  What’s wrong?”

That’s when I confessed.  I told him I’m thirty.  He said he didn’t care. I said I was married and had two kids.  I told him I was still in love with my husband, but things were complicated.  Then I started just pouring out everything about myself.  I said when I was his age I was traveling around the world.  I was working for this guy named Dante, and I was totally in love with this brilliant, unattainable older man, probably about the same age difference as Abraham and I.  I was really doing something with my archaeology degree.  But then I met Karl.  It was his imagination really, all I wanted was adventure and there seemed to be so much adventure going on inside that man.  It took me so long to figure out it is all inside, he doesn’t let anybody else in, and the way he was didn’t work with the real world.  By that time, I was pregnant, and he only got worse, and all that love became bitterness about the loss of my old life.  I wish it could all fit together, I said.  I wish the real world really did have a place for somebody like Karl or the adventure in his head had some place for me.

Abraham sat there listening to me.  He was pretty amazing.  The more I found out about him, the more I thought I really did make him up.  He wasn’t a college student like I thought.  He was some kind of entrepreneurial genius who made his first million at eighteen and now traveled the world buying and selling antiques.  I flashed back to what I used to do before I met Karl.  I knew there had to be some down side to Abraham, and maybe if I got to know him more I would find it.  But I guess I already knew one flaw.  He wasn’t Karl.  I know, based on all I’ve said, that doesn’t seem like a flaw.  But Karl is my Karl, no matter how many troubles he has.  I thought about a future with Abraham traveling around the world looking for antiques, and I thought about a future with Karl, when Karl worked through his problems.  God help me because only God knows why, I liked the future with Karl better.