Always Playing The Bad Guy
Not all heartbreaks are loud—some whisper across decades.
The girls really didn’t like me. Kim, Anne Marie, Jessica and Cherie all made it clear.
So did his sisters—though somehow I still thought we were friends. They’d gossip with their cousins and friends from back home that they’d bring up to camp with them, then apologize.
Nobody wanted my attention.
I was an interruption to all of their fairytales.
But even still, I captured his thoughts and captivated his mind.
I don’t know what it was about me that attracted him.
I was awkward and constantly trying to fit in.
Maybe he appreciated how I sang and danced like I didn’t care who was watching?
Maybe it was because all the kids he hung out with made fun of me and he wanted to be nice?
Maybe momentarily he recognized me for who I would become—the woman of his wildest dreams.
He was sweet to me when nobody else was around, though in front of his friends not so much.
I got the hint and didn’t mind most of the time. Not being seen always sort of worked out better for me anyhow.
They say that any attention is good attention but I beg to differ. I always wished I could just simply blend in.
“Just be normal!” he yelled at me.
But I cannot.
Because I am not.
I’m extraordinary—but normal is forever what I would strive for.
Even though we weren’t all that interactive at camp, we’d keep in touch by phone between outings and funerals—sometimes staying connected for many hours, until one of us would fall asleep on the line.
Usually our calls were done on my dime.
Back then, there wasn’t such a thing as free long distance. He must have called once at least, because apparently his father got a big phone bill and he got in trouble for it.
I worked, and paid for my own phone line so we could talk. I always covered the cost of our friendship.
I also did all the driving to see him and picked up the hotel tabs for every visit.
I wonder if he’s ever realized that.
He held onto getting into trouble for talking to me for years.
Like his pain was all my fault.
I have always been the bad guy—always having to learn how to hide better if I wanted to have any relationships.
It was the same outside my house as it was within it.
Early internal programs are formed through experiences. The deeper the wound, the more we will do to avoid re-experiencing the consequences.
Despite all the drama, I went out on a limb and invited him to my school dance.
I didn’t think he would come, but figured maybe in an environment where nobody knew him he’d be nice to me.
Or maybe I just wanted the chance to be mean back to him. Get him to a place he wouldn’t be surrounded by all those assholes.
Where his girlfriends wouldn’t approach me wearing the clothes I’d bought for him as gifts.
Maybe I just wanted to have the chance to let him know how he made me feel.
Frustrated. Safe. Scared. Sad.
Happy. Giddy. Hurt. Helpless.
Maybe all of the above.
I don’t know how I made him feel.
I don’t know what he ever thought about me or said to others.
I wanted to believe that he cared about me, despite all reflection upon his behaviors saying otherwise.
I was a pawn to him.
An excuse.
A scapegoat.
And apparently, I never minded.
How did he become so successful at reeling me back emotionally, every time I’d move on?
I don’t know.
And I don’t know why.
The never ending saga of desire in my life belongs to him.
Every time I’d break away enough to imagine happiness with any other, he’d reappear as if out of thin air.
I came back from Montreal for a brief stint and picked him up one night after his football game.
Was I invited to watch him play?
No. Just to pick him up in the parking lot and let him drive my car.
He took me out to one of the chain restaurants nearby. It was fun.
Before taking him home we got to kissing in the car.
It wasn’t long before a police officer knocked on the window and threatened us.
He got mad at me about that too.
Back in Montreal I resettled into life—making new friends and getting on with things.
One day, out of the blue, I received a letter from Parris Island.
“I asked your father for your address” he wrote.
“I remember when you turned 13”.
He told me that the sand fleas would eat him alive while having to stand on the beach at attention for hours, and that he thought of me to get through his tough times.
What did this guy even want from me?
Years later he confessed that I wasn’t the only one he wrote.
He told me that I wasn’t really that special to him.
He sent letters to all the girls from camp, and went to their dances too.
Sort of like it was his charity work.
At 19, I was dating Mike—the one guy who ever really treated me appropriately.
We met while I was bartending at Club Crescent—a hot downstairs nightclub in the popular downtown Anglo district.
Mike and his friends were cadets, up for the weekend from West Point.
He was cute and shy—though strong, with Strawberry blonde hair and one of the greatest smiles I’d ever seen. I can still see it now.
He kept coming back to my bar throughout the night and making conversation with me. I even kept his coat for him underneath.
Despite it being firmly against my personal rule book not to go out with customers, I invited him to join me for breakfast after closing—after all, he was just a tourist so probably wouldn’t be back.
Or so I thought.
Mike actually liked me. He did come back up to see me and also invited me down to visit him.
He introduced me to his friends and made no qualms about hiding me.
He inspired me.
I looked at my life one day and decided that I didn’t want to wind up like all of my friends—bartenders and party people in their 20s and 30s whose lives revolved around the night scene. Not that there was anything wrong with it. I just wanted more.
I called my old boss, Steve, who I had worked for at the sports club back home.
He put me in touch with his friend Avi, who had a sports marketing company and could use some assistance with the upcoming Muggsy Bogues Charity NBA All-Star Game, benefiting Baltimore Reads—an inner-city literary project.
I called up my father and asked if I could move back in so I could take the apprenticeship. Of course he agreed. He never wanted me to have left in the first place.
Dad drove up in his red Ford pickup truck to take me home.
Wouldn’t you know that on our drive back down to Maryland, the NBA announced it would be going on strike.
By the time I got there the apprenticeship was off, but Steve put in a good word for me with his old boss at the Bullets.
I was so ready to build my career in professional sports management and happily accepted a sales executive position in their group sales office.
One day at my dad’s house I found myself on the phone with the boy from camp. He had finished bootcamp and was stationed in New Orleans.
He seemed to like it there, though hoped for an opportunity at 8th & I or at Quantico for his next assignment.
He started talking to me about the future, as if I was somehow supposed to be part of it.
He asked me to come to his ball—an annual event that celebrates the Marines legacy. I told him I couldn’t get away.
He told me he wanted to marry me and have kids with me. That was a lot.
Shook, I considered it—not really recognizing what that would mean.
I had to break up with Mike.
He was down in Georgia at that point doing jump school. I wrote him an email citing a need to focus on my career.
He was cordial and understanding in his response. Truly a gentleman.
That quick move was one of the few regrets I ever had in my life. It haunted me.
I just figured that it wasn’t fair for me to even think about possibly getting involved with the boy while dating someone else.
Of course I thought that my first love was being serious.
Late one night, I got a phone call. It was him.
Not Mike.
The other one.
He was crying—something I couldn’t believe was even possible.
He was a warrior.
He was strong.
He was a man.
I never even saw him shed a tear at our friends’ funerals.
The words he was saying were so rushed and so raw.
He was scared.
He was lonely.
He was apparently drunk—though I had no knowledge of that at the time.
He said he needed me.
Despite the fact I couldn’t afford it, I thought the best thing I could do would be to drive down and surprise him and to go to his ball.
That didn’t turn out so well.