The Further Adventures of Lying P. Whorebag... (the 'P' is for 'Paranoid'.)
My Ex would sometimes imagine that I was cheating on her. She'd see all these little signs that I was being unfaithful. Every now and then, she'd call me at the office to demand to know why I was working so late, or tell me she had a funny feeling that there was something suspicious going-on. The only thing was: I never even came close to cheating on her. Furthermore my every well-intentioned act could be twisted by her mind into a ludicrous melodrama in which I was unfairly taking advantage of her in some sneaky way.
It was all in her head. All a figment of her imagination. Hence, the title of this essay. The 'P' is for 'Paranoid'.
Any pop-psychologist will tell you that if your partner often (groundlessly) accuses you of cheating on him (her), then it probably means that your partner is the type of person that would be likely to cheat on you. Their explanation is that their fears are a projection of their own temptations to go cheating. I was dumber than a bag of hammers to not wake-up and realize this. Yessir, dumber than a box o' rocks.
One of my friends, Artie, has been married and divorced. (He's 32) he was telling me about his experiences:
"My ex-wife would accuse me of cheating on her. She would imagine signs of my infidelity everywhere she looked. But, I never cheated on her ever." (He's one of the most honest people I know.) "After we divorced, I found-out that she was actually getting more dick on the side than I care to think about."
"Oh, in other words, she was getting more sausage than a kosher deli." I said.
"Right."
"She was getting more strokes than a golf-course."
"Um.. yes."
"She was getting more-"
"NiceGuy, that'll do."
"Sorry."
Yup, women can be cheatin' dogs. Worse than men, in fact.
But more about Lying Whorebag:
She would periodically invade my privacy. She had no respect for my possessions, either. Every now and then, when she had a little too much spare time on her hands, she would attempt to look through my stuff trying to find hidden pornography or evidence of my infidelity. She would rummage-through my old letters, old correspondences, old emails. She would look through my old photos. She even went through my old grad school papers, looking for evidence that I was cheating on her. (I mean, come ON! My old grad school papers?! As if I’d be slipping love-letters into my old sociology homework!)
She didn’t like the fact that I had so many female friends. It made her jealous to think that I would enjoy being around women other than HER. Maybe she felt threatened by them, or maybe she was just very territorial when it came to ‘her man.’ Whorebag was exactly the type of woman where if she saw a strange woman put her hands on me (hypothetically), she’d run-up and scratch the stranger’s eyes-out. I was flattered by that, but also a little scared at the same time.
Whorebag was free to invade my privacy under the pretext of making sure nothing ‘funny’ was going on. One time, I said to her “Whorebag, I feel like you’re violating my privacy when you dig-through my old things.”
“YOUR privacy??” She shot-back incredulously. “Why should you hide things from me?! What do you have to hide??” She scoffed as if the idea of me having privacy was totally alien to her.
“No, I have nothing to hide. Hon, I’d never cheat on you. It’s just the principle. If you’re going to dig-through my old things, then I think I should be allowed to read your diary. it’s only fair.”
“NO, that’s different! Those are my private thoughts!” She began to keep her diary under lock and key after that point. I really didn’t care what was in her diary, but it was just the unfairness of the situation that bothered me. I had no privacy, but she did.
I never cheated on her. Never. Not once. Yet, she still labored under the delusion that I might be. (If you’re reading this Whorebag: just because you actually DID cheat on me with your ex-boyfriend, doesn’t mean that *I* ever did!)
Nonetheless, she had me constantly terrified that she might ‘accidentally’ come-across a 2 year-old letter to a female friend. She might take this letter totally out of context. She would distort and magnify and skew every word that looked like I was a ‘bit too friendly’ with one of my friends. She would act as if the letter was evidence of some secret life that I was living... in my imagined ‘secret’ life outside of her sight, Whorebag thought I was getting an enormous amount of sex on the side. On at least one or two occasions, she had a dream where she walked-in to our bedroom and I was having wild sex with another (more attractive) woman. She woke-up after she beat the crap out of the woman, and then she beat the crap out of ME (in the dream, that is).
When I heard about this dream, I thought “Hah! No such luck. Come on, a really gorgeous woman having sex with ME??? Hell would freeze over first!”
Anyways, I want you to imagine this scene: NiceGuy at the office one fine morning. It’s an ordinary day. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. I’m in my cubicle. I’ve got a stack of papers on my desk, and I’m busily working-away. Out of the blue, the phone rings. I pick-up.
“Hello?”
“NiceGuy!!” It’s Whorebag. LOUD. And she sounds Pissed with a capital ‘P’.
I jerk my ear away to a comfortable distance.
“Um... hi?”
“NiceGuy!!!” She is practically screaming into the phone. “You’re going to tell me just what the HELL is going on!!”
I pause. ‘Going on’? What did I do?? I have NO clue what is ‘going on’. I woke-up, I came to work. All I know is, she’s called me-up and starts screaming at me.
“What?! What is it?!?!” I’m starting to panic. I can feel my adrenaline start to kick-in. “Going on? I don’t know what is going on! What do you mean, what is going on?” I am totally, 100% clueless as to what is ‘going on’ in her mind.
“I... FOUND something!” She snarls. I feel a little icy ball of lead starting to congeal in my stomach. Ugh, what did she find this time?
“I was looking through your old photographs and I found- I found a whole roll of pictures of you and Miriam. And you two are HUGGING!!!”
Oh, THOSE! I smile in relief. Holiday photos. I’d totally forgotten about those. Miriam is a very close friend of mine. We’ve known each other for about 11 years. And she does NOT find me sexually attractive at all (God, how I wish that wasn’t true, but that’s another story.)
“Oh, those pictures were taken about a year before I even met you, Whorebag. We were going on a road-trip in those pictures. We were just hugging for the photo. You already know that Miriam is just a friend. We’ve known each other for more than 10 years.”
But then- uh oh. Now I remember- there was another occasion a few years back on which Miriam, my brother and I spent a ‘slumber party’ at my old apartment. All three of us were just fooling-around, taking funny photos of each other on the bed. There was this one picture of Miriam and I in our robes, pretending to kiss. It was just innocent fun. I hope Whorebag didn’t find those...
“You look a little like you’re a bit more than just ‘friendth’.” She imitated my voice with a mocking lisp when she said ‘friends’. “And oh, I almost forgot...” Her voice started to raise in intensity. “There’s a second set of pictures- tell me... if you’re just ‘friends’, why the FUCK are you in BED with her?!?!” She was totally unable to control her rage at this point. I could HEAR the dam bursting in her head.
“Oh, THOSE. There’s a good explanation for those...”
“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT, YOU- YOU FUCKING LIAR!!”
Oh, yeesh... Yeah, I can understand her anger... those pictures probably LOOK like we’re in bed, but we were just *pretending* to kiss. Our lips weren’t touching. And my brother took those pictures- he knows it was all innocent.
“Whorebag- call my brother, he’ll tell you the truth! He took those photos over a year before I met you. I know it looks bad, but we weren’t-”
“Oh, YEAH! SURE!” I could hear the sound of ripping. Rip. Rip. Rip. Oh no, what is she destroying this time? “I’ve HAD it with you!! Now I KNOW you’ve been lying to me!!”
I look-around the office frantically, people are starting to give me funny glances.
“Look... I’m going to come home immediately. We can talk this over.”
She starts screaming a long list of obscenities at me. Imagine me holding the phone handset a foot from my ear as a bunch of $@!Ø?#*& symbols pour-out onto my desk. I turn-down the volume of the phone; I hear something smash- yeesh, something of mine just got really broken.
“I’m coming-home now, I’ll be there in 40 minutes. Please don’t rip-up anything else, okay?”
More screams come from over the phone, and I hang-up.
I rush-out the office. I leave a whole PILE of work on my desk (I’ll have to do that later, I guess... my boss will be angry at me, but I want to stabilize my relationship!)
I come home- my apartment looks like it was hit by a tornado. There is paper all over the floor. She has turned my drawers upside-down. She has flung books off my shelves. She has scattered stuff everywhere.
Whorebag is in the middle of it all, ripping-up practically everything she can lay her hands on. (I used to have a lot of pen-pals.)
She sees me come in and shoots a look of pure intense hatred at me. Tears are streaming down her face. “Oh, and in THIS e-mail, you call her ‘honey’!” She rips the printed page in half.
“Please stop, I call a lot of people ‘honey’!” I sit-down in front of her and try to put my hands on her shoulders. She slaps them away.
“Don’t touch me!!”
“I would never cheat on you. Not in a million years. Those pictures were taken a year before I ever met you. My brother took those photos, and he’ll explain everything.”
“I don’t ever want you to talk to Miriam ever again! Got it?? She’s exactly the type of bitch who’d sleep with you just to break us-up!” (She’d met Miriam ONCE. For a few minutes. Immediately, she didn’t like Miriam- probably because Miriam is more attractive than Whorebag will ever be.)
I survey my apartment. It’s a mess. I’m exasperated and totally in disbelief that one person could make such a mess. “Whorebag, WHY do you keep digging through all my things?”
She held-up a fistful of ripped photographs and shakes it in my face. “You GAVE me a reason!”
An hour or two later, I manage to calm her down. But, I swear, from that moment forward, she forbade me to have ANY contact with Miriam ever again. That’s right, she required me to sever any and all contact with Miriam, my friend of 11 years.
Would I cut-off my friends? Well, that’s another story.
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"I fall down just to give you a thrill;
Prop me up with another pill..."
-- Garbage, "I think I'm paranoid".
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