The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (A)

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Well here we go again, you've found yourself a friend, that knows you well
But no matter what you do, you'll always feel as though you tripped and fell
So steady as she goes"
- Raconteurs, "Steady As She Goes"

Suburbiaville's sleeping. The birds are silent, the grass slicked with dew. The sun has just peeked above the Target sign. The August humidity will be brutal in a few hours; right now, the air's just the tiniest bit shimmery... sexy underwear in fog format. Thanks to a few early-rising type-As, the town's parfum is an intoxicating combo of gasoline and fresh-mowed lawn. I breathe deeply. Rest my head on the steering wheel. Count backwards from ten. Then scream.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

At an hour when most people have yet to pay a visit to Mr. Coffee, my world has already disintegrated into ludicrous intensity. Some people are prisoners in their own homes. I'm a prisoner outside of mine. My husband's boxy little SUV sits in our driveway. Snuggled alongside it is a shiny, unfamiliar sedan. While I can't tell for sure, I strongly suspect that the vehicles' owners are similarly snuggled... sharing the same IKEA mattress which has been brutalizing my spine for years. Me? I'm parked across the street, bawling in a dumpy little Civic. I have a set of house keys. I've got my name on the mortgage statement. I've got more irrational fury than a squad of drunken strippers. I've got every right to go in the house. I need - more than anything, it seems - to go in the house. So why can't I seem to move?

---

It's Sunday, six o'clock AM. I was ostensibly meant to spend this weekend camping - communing with nature, unburdening my soul to sympathetic squirrels. While camping did occur, it was by no means the defining event of the weekend. The previous forty-eight hours were, bar none, the most debauched of my young life. There was rum 'n Coke, sex 'n drugs, bad and really, really bad. Boundaries were pushed. Taboos were flaunted. The word (well, make that "pseudo-word") "WOOOOO!" was utilized, unironically and repeatedly. Milestones were reached, celebrated, lasciviously rubbed against.

My first solitary weekend since my son's arrival.

My last weekend before moving out on my own, turning the already-massive disconnect between my husband and myself into something tangible.

The first time in years that I'd violated my personal code of ethics.

The first time I'd - so help me god - semi-inadvertently attended a swinger's convention.

The last time I would turn to my spouse when crisis hit.

---

I wasn't due home until Sunday evening. At four o'clock in the morning, however, I reached a point of bucolic breakdown. I was hungover, sunburnt, confused, teary-eyed, alarmingly sore. I was in dire need of comfort - of both the "emotional" and "sleeping surface not studded with chisel-like rocks" varieties. Under the guise of "having to write about that cah-raaaaazy swingers' convention", I busted down my tent, bid farewell to my companions and hit the highway.

I drove home at roughly the same rate that I drove myself out of my mind… which is to say, terrifyingly fast. “I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” I muttered, rhythmically clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, “Who the fuck does these things? Me, apparently? What was with the swingers? Why did I whip off my top? Why did I do that? And that? Do I hate myself? Should I?”

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an endless ribbon of industrial ugly. The sunrise was Thomas Kinkade by way of Egon Schiele, freakishly luminous smears of orange and gray. They were a perfect external complement to the contents of my head, which grew progressively nastier over the course of the two-hour drive. By the time I screeched to a halt in front of Thumbscrews Manor, I was a twisted, smoking wreck.

"I need my husband," I hiccuped, wiping my eyes on my tank top... then catching sight of the other car. Her car.

And whaddya know... apparently, so does someone else.

Life in the Thumbscrews household has been monumentally awkward over the past several months. We are bright kids, both fully aware that we're separating (and most likely divorcing). We're attempting to remain civil during this odd interstitial period, both for our small son and our sanity. We've given one another our blessings; our respective extracurricular activities now occur sans subterfuge. I've been staging my own controlled-scale rendition of "Girls Gone Wild". He's been seeing OtherWoman at every opportunity. Despite occasional spots of friction ("So... who'd you do for lunch today?"), things have been strangely copacetic. I shouldn't be surprised (I'm not due back for another 12 hours! Those crazy kids are in love!). Nor should I be infuriated (my own "camping trip" having featured more penises than squirrels).

So why am I falling apart?

---

"Pick up your phone! Pick up your phone! I need you, fuckstick!" I mash the numbers into my cell again... by my count, this is the eighteenth time. At this point, I'm actively arguing with his voicemail . "You can't pick up the phone right now? Can't pick it up because, oh yeah, you're fucking someone else? Pick up anyway! Never stopped Paris Hilton! And she's got her own fragrance! Do you have your own fragrance? 'Eau de Fuckstick', perhaps?"

And so it goes. Spew bile at a prerecorded greeting. Wail into the upholstery. Hate my husband. Hate myself. Hate my car ("I'll bet the backseat of an Accord would be big enough for me to properly curl up and die!").

I decide to get a hotel room. HBO, clean white sheets, $15 club sandwiches... these niceties may very well stave off total jibbering insanity. I drive to the local Holiday Inn, only to find that frugality trumps self-preservation. "Eighty bucks to sleep two miles from my own damned house? Hell, no... I'll show you where to stick your so-called Continental breakfast...muffins, nothing but muffins... always..." I sniff, driving back home.

On a whim, I activate the tiny SUV's car alarm. The neighbors are annoyed. The lovebirds are not roused.

I decide to seek guidance from above. I've never held much truck with Yahweh. Radio waves, however, are a different story.

Seconds after flicking on the radio, I start giggling.

"Steady as she goes," advises Jack White, "So steady as she goes."

I love this song. Always have. I also love "Under Pressure", which immediately follows.

"This is our last dance... this is our last dance... this is ourselves... under pressure."

When Jack White tells you to stay steady, you stay steady. When Freddie Mercury tells you to jump, you say, "How high?" Or perhaps, "How fabulous?" Whatever the case may be... you take action.

I walk up to the door and ring the bell. Seconds later, my husband appears, bleary-eyed and bathrobe-clad.

"Huh? Why aren't you camping? What's wrong?"

Tears immediately dribble down my face. "I had to come back. Muh-make her go home. Right now," I sob.

Amazingly... he does.

ROUSING CONCLUSION COMING SOON...