STILL ALIVE AND WELL
Jared Walnum

PART 2: GOOD & BAD WOMEN

     So while women were apparently a modifier to drinking, they did not necessarily lend to my overall well being and security in life. I never thought of myself as having had a lot of girlfriends but as I look back I did date a fair number of girls. More than I would have thought my feeble self would have managed. Some were one dates. Some were weeks. A couple as much as a year. Some I slept with. Some I did not. And I had plenty of lonely times in between.

     In my crowd we had a very casual attitude toward sex. I think being “sexually liberated” was just a handy justification for doing what we pleased.

     I think one of the largest detriments of a casual attitude toward sex is that it's hard for it to really remain casual. Sex is not love but it can confuse relationships. Lust can be mistaken for love. And I found myself being in “love” with girls I really barely knew. Sometimes I allowed myself to realize terrible heartache for the sake of so called love which was driven more by sex than knowing and respecting that person.

     I once told a girl, “I have to feel like I'm in love with a girl to sleep with her even if it's only for tonight.” Loosely translated that meant, we had some wine with friends and at the end of a nice evening I find the idea of sex with you particularly appealing.

     Before I met my wife of more than 30 years I had had 2 pretty serious affairs. Both girls I lived with. We already know from a Christian perspective that this should not have been. But wait... there's more. Both girls, though separated, were still married to other men. One I was with the very night she left her husband. I had met her in a bar we were playing at but had not spent time with her before that night.

     I'll just refer to them a P and S respectively. Anyone who knew me then will doubtless know who they are.

     The first girl, P, had 2 beautiful daughters. They were very young; not in school yet. When it ended I hurt as much for loosing them as I did their mother.

     The long and short of this relationship was that the husband (not quite really ex) was a drug addict and a bit of a maniac (though nothing compared with the husband of the second). My girlfriend has serious issues as well. Her troubles were due in part, I'm sure, from growing up in the foster system, though I never learned all the details of that. They were also due to a large degree from being abused by her husband. I knew more than I wanted to on this.

     She always assured me that he hit women but was really a wimp. Shortly after she told me this he came into a bar where we played and knifed the bartender. I have to admit that was pretty unsettling.

     He came around a few times but we never had any confrontations. I don't think we ever even spoke to each other. We may have nodded warily at each other.

     The most shattering thing that happened was one night when P and I had been arguing over something. When P started acting funny I started questioning her and finally discovered she had taken an overdose of pills. When I tried to go call for help she blocked my way threatening me with a carving knife from the kitchen drawer. I remember wondering if she would actually do it. Long story short, I got passed her and called for help. She wound up hospitalized for a number of weeks.

     During this time my parents allowed me to bring the P's girls home to their house where they helped me take care of them. When P was released my parents opened their door to her as well.

     When she left my parents house I didn't go with her but we continued to date seriously. I don't remember why I didn’t move with her.

     Other men began to be an issue. She wasn't honest at first but she did finally break it off officially with me when she moved in with another guy. I was crushed and humiliated.

     Months later she called me and asked to see me. I visited her in her new apartment. She wanted to get back together but by now I was involved with someone else. I guess it was kind of like honor among thieves but I was always pretty faithful to whoever I was with even though it was an adulterous relationship going in.

     While I was there, the younger of her girls crawled up in my lap. She clung on to me. It broke my heart. After I left that night, I never saw them again.

     There were important women in my life that did not involve sex and adultery.

     One was a woman named Joy. She had know my family my entire life. She worked in a coffee shop my father owned when I was born and remained friends with both my parents when they were split. She gave me my first guitar. She became one of my best friends in my teens and twenties. Not a Mrs. Robinson thing. It was completely platonic.

     I knew Joy pretty well. I knew things I probably should not have known. Suffice it to say I knew she was no saint. There had never even been a vague reference to God except as an expletive in the several years I had known her.

     About the time I was between P and S she began talking to me a lot about Jesus. She wasn't talking to me about her church or any denomination. She was talking about Jesus just like he was a person or something (of course, he is). I had been taught about Jesus as that guy back in the Bible but she talked about him like a present tense person.  Based on my upbringing I did believe to an extent but I had no idea!

     A year or so before I had written a poem addressing God about all the things He created and the closing line was this: “And for all this I still do not believe.” I was probably ripening to be harvested.

     Joy brought two sisters for me to meet at the club one night. There were 3 sisters in all but I think only 2 came that night. There was Nancy, Debby and Linda. I also knew their mother, Lois, and much later their Dad, Johnny.

     That night Nancy really caught my eye. At the time my day job was at a print shop and I had printed myself a bunch of business cards. I'm pretty sure I gave one to Nancy. It said this: “The Amazing Bunno.” It also had my phone number. I know, sounded like a magician or something. I was not. Bunno was my nick name at the time. Not to be confused with Bono the word famous rock singer. Pretty stupid, huh. I began spending a lot of time with her at her house. She was also coming to see me occasionally at the club.

     But then came door #2.

     S was another married girl. This time she had one child, a little boy. On the night she left her husband, a band mate and his wife began giving her shelter. I went home with her to the band mate's house.

     If you think the business card was bad wait till you hear this one. My line to her was this: “How'd you like to lay down with the Amazing Bunno.” The sad part is that it worked. And thus began a year of heartbreak and looking over my shoulder literally wondering if her husband would kill me one day. I would not be at all surprised if he was in prison for murder or something today. He was a true sociopath.

     One night Nancy came to club and I was there with S. If I remember correctly Nancy knew I was seeing someone else. At the least we had no understanding that we were an exclusive couple. Never-the-less I kind of pushed Nancy to the curb that night saying that the other didn't know about her. I think now that was very rotten and would take it back if I could.

     The simple truth was: S was having sex with me.

     I hope that I did not hurt Nancy but at the least it was insulting and unkind. I don't remember but I'm sure there must have been at least a brief parting between us after that. But to her credit, she and her family remained friends with me.

     I'm not sure how this fits in the chronology of everything, but I remember her sister Linda picking me up wandering the streets of Manchester totally bombed. She brought me back to their house to get me off the street and keep me out of trouble. The treated me with kindness and love and without judgment. But what is this Jesus thing everybody's talking about? They began sharing a lot.

     BTW, to this day Nancy is still friends with me and my wife.

     As I look back, I'm thinking S was not real strong on conscience either.

     What can I say about S. Under her influence I learned to help pay my bills by shoplifting and passing bogus scripts. There was a couple of stores at the time that would allow us to return merchandise for a cash refund without a sales slip. We stole it and then returned it for cash.

     To get the fake prescriptions we stole slips from the pads whenever we went to a doctor. You'd be surprised how sloppy the were about leaving the prescription pads laying around when you were alone in an examination room. She knew what to write on them to get drugs with street value.

     Though we were together for nearly a year, this routine was relatively short lived, Stores began to recognize us on the returns, Then one day at a pharmacy the pharmacist began questioning us. Then he went to fill it and seemed to be taking way too long. We got nervous and left. I'm not sure if we ever tried it again but we were pretty spooked. We continued to shoplift groceries.

     To say that she was unfaithful would be an immense understatement. The first I became aware of was when she was regularly cheating on me with her husband! Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But none-the-less that was my perspective at the time. S would find reasons to go off by herself. I finally stumbled across them parked in his van when I walked to a nearby store one day. He was an extremely violent person. He threatened me once but never actually went after me. I did see him attack other people on occasions when he showed up at places we were playing.

     On one occasion he came to the house. S and I had rescued a dog from the pound that had belonged to her and her husband. Lucky did something that angered him. He bolted out the door and returned with his hammer. He was reputed to fight with a hammer when he couldn't take a person with his hands. The dog had retreated upstairs. I stood on the steep blocking the way and he drew back the hammer threatening me. I backed down and he went up stairs and beat the dog to death and left.

     S refused to call the cops and didn't want me to. So I did not. This whole event still plagues my conscience whenever I think of it.

     Beyond her continuing to see him secretly there where also others.

     At one point we were no longer living together at the band house but were still “together.” I had returned to my parent's house and S was staying with friends. We talked on the phone daily and I would sometimes spend the night with her at whichever friend's place she was staying at the time. When my parents went on vacation she stayed with me at my parents house.

     In one phone conversation she told me she had had an abortion. At the time I believed it was my child. In retrospect it's entirely possible it was not. I cried.

     Again I'm not sure where this fits in the chronology but S told me that she had had sex with the married band mate that she had stayed with when she first left her husband. I chose to believe that it was not consensual, that she had been raped. Apparently she had convinced her husband of the same. He stopped me one night while I was setting up at a club. He wanted me to help him set up the band mate to be homosexually rapped by thugs he would hire. He said that she was with me by choice so that was okay. But he was going to get even with the other guy. I declined and he never went through with it. Maybe he was messing with me to see how far I would go.

     Knowing what I know now, I doubt she was raped in the first place. She wound up taking a room at a local motel, There I found her with another guy. She also had no money and was more likely than not paying for her room with favors. If that seems harsh consider that I had found out while we were even still living in the same house, S was sneaking to work in a massage parlor. I'm not talking legitimate massage for health and well being. It was a thin guise for selling sex.

     This is pretty much the state I had come to at the time. If this all sounds kind of dark, some light will begin to shine soon.