Fact Stranger Than Fiction

Okay, so it started out with Reel Deal (RD) and I meeting for drinks and music the other night. Brokeback texted at 9:30 saying he was still at dinner and was wondering if we had made it out. I said we had and to text us when he was done. Well…RD and I were having a good time and it got to 10:45. At that point, RD said to me honestly, “You know if he texts you at any point from now on this evening, you shouldn’t respond; it’s gotten too late and you should not be too convenient for him.” She was right. So after the minute it took me to come to terms with what that would mean (I wouldn’t get to see him that evening even though I had been looking forward to it), I got to the point where I was done, so I turned my phone off and put it away. I felt disrespected, so he lost his chance with me for the evening…until he showed up a half an hour later.

For a moment, I was internally celebrating because I thought I had just earned a little more hand in our relationship – when he couldn’t get a hold of me (according to my phone he had texted at 11:00, to which of course I hadn’t responded)…apparently that got the better of him and incented him to just show up.

Earlier in the evening, RD had asked me if I minded if she asked him about his ring/marriage/wife. She mentioned that to me casually at first but since she brought it up a couple of times, I knew she really wanted to do it. I was fine with it because I wanted to know as well but was getting no answers myself since he wasn’t being forthright with me. She didn’t pounce on him right away but let himself walk into his own trap. We were chatting away when he mentioned his wife. And so it began.

RD started by saying, “so can I ask you a question?” and I knew what was coming…although, I didn’t actually realize how far it would go. And honestly, I don’t think she did either but at the pace things transpired there was nothing we could really do but get caught up in it and let it take us where it did.

RD should be a CIA spy interrogator, or at least a renowned trial lawyer. She doesn’t berate witnesses…she converses with them so they don’t realize what’s hitting them. But when you know her, you can tell she flips into another mode because there is a change in her tone and in the style in which she interacts. Defendants are gently guided into a place where they feel in control, so they answer…most of the time vaguely…thinking they can get away with murder…while appearing to cooperate. But this is when the fun begins. Little do they know the level of her patience and laser-like focus allow her to inch in closer and closer to the truth and actually get a bigger confession in the end than the guilty, I mean defendant, ever imagined giving.

She did hand it to Brokeback though. She could see how he could sidestep my questions, like I had explained to her earlier. She ended up calling him the Artful Dodger because he was pretty good with quick, vague or witty responses in his effort to derail from the topic. But she’d be there toe-to-toe, if not 5 steps ahead of him, ready for his every move and ready to put him back on her agenda. It was like watching an animal in a snare trap – the more he fought, the tighter the trap got. After he thrashed and thrashed, I watched him deconstruct right in front of us. What eventually came out was a confession that he’d been married for 4 years to a woman he loved but who, a year ago, told him that while she loved him and still wanted to be married to him for the rest of her life — she also wanted/or was having additional relationships with women.

Excuse me?

Of all the explanations I had considered up until this point…this was nowhere near any of them.

Before he realized he was going to tell us all of this, he wanted us to believe that while he had a wife who doesn’t like to go out…she was great because she’s not the jealous type and doesn’t mind him going out without her, even though she also knows he’s a flirt. (AKA…This is why it’s okay that I’m out with you two right now, can say I have a great marriage but all the while have been flirting, pursuing, emailing, IM-ing and texting Seiner in the late hours of the night all week.) Okay…so that plan busted.

Then after he revealed his truth…or as RD summarizes it “Brokeback Dan is married to Brokeback Diana”…he tried to make us believe that he had two choices after he found out – (1) Let the marriage end or (2) Be an open-minded adult and accept this about the woman he loved and reap the benefits of reintroducing female friendships into his life without jealousy by her (apparently, he read my last blog about the merits of female friends…not). Sure, those might be his two choices and he might be valiantly trying to achieve the second…but in all honesty, I don’t think he’s cut out for it.

In the end, I do feel badly for him. I think he’s in a situation that he still doesn’t understand nor truly accept, like he’d want you to believe. You can’t blame him but like I told him, while I have compassion for him and his situation… everything that RD put him through that evening was fully deserved for trying to drag me down a path that was inappropriate and then act like he was not at fault for it. Lesson for all you men…don’t do that.

I do hope he’s able to work out what he needs to move on but he will be doing it without the grace of my company. That fish already has a big bite taken out of it and it is too damaged for me. I’m throwing it back in. I hope it can eventually make its way back upstream.

— Ballyhoo Backcaster