Over Share

I am awake right now at 4AM. I'm not certain as to why, but I can tel you my fucking back is so sore I want to cry. It was sore the other day too, I may be sleeping wrong, or maybe I twisted it in some crazy sex act or whatever, but it is killing me. Fucking Irish people and their weak ass backs. I'm going to be a total grump pants if ever I have to be like 8 months pregnant, sheesh.

I actually think I wanna catch some more shut-eye, but my tossing and turning keeps waking Aaron up and I feel guilty about that. So I'm down here, have popped a couple Bayer Back&Body (since I am luckily NOT 'with child' and can dope myself up as I see fit), and have decided to blog just a bit.

So there's this really great guy at work. Aaron knows him from working in the system already, and has mentioned him before. Like my husband this guy is AWESOME with kids. And just such a sweetheart. Kind and generous and funny (in that kinda dorky teacher kinda way), and not bad looking either.

So Aaron says one day: I really like Mr. (Let's change the names to protect the innocent, shall we?) um.... Saunders, let's say. I really like Mr. Saunders, but I think I'm a little freaked out by him.

Why? I ask Aaron.

"I dunno. It's almost like he's too good with the kids or something."

"So? What's creepy about that? You're really good with the kids too..."

"Yeah... I know, but I don't know. 30-something guy teacher, not married, super nice and friendly... I guess I just wouldn't be shocked if there was something OFF about him..."

Ok, flash forward to when I meet him at this summer program.

Me: "I really LIKE Mr. Saunders!"

Aaron: "Yeah, isn't he great?"

Me: "But you're right, something seems... amiss?"

Aaron: "See?!?!?!"

But we decide we SUPER like him and sincerely hope there is nothing serial-killer-y about him, because he really is SUPER nice! And warm. And awesome.

So I decide I'mma start trying to be friendly and be friends with Mr. Saunders. One day I stop him by the snack table and declare: "Mr. Saunders!" At which he looks slightly alarmed, though unfailingly polite, "You have GREEN eyes!!"

**Sidenote: Green eyes seem to be far more common in Sharon than ever I have seen them in my whole and entire life of living in Brockton MA (but also even NYC). What's up with the awesome eyes in Sharon, MA?**

Anyway, they are, they're green, but light green, very cool color of eyes, especially on a man.

He smiles and laughs a little and agrees, "Yes, They are green" and proceeds to relate to me a little tale about how he has his Mum's eyes (I know, melt, right? I'm insane for that shit, little does this poor man know... LOL, I'm thinking: Aww, like Harry Potter, or Awww, Like Grey from my story! Geekazoid.), and how they get paler and lighter every year, so now his Mom's eyes are practically yellow and how his are headed that way.

I express how cool I think that is and then we smile and laugh and gee whiz, Mr. Saunders is super nice. I decide, and relate to my husband, that besides him I believe Mr. Saunders to be the nicest fellow at summer camp.

To which Mr. Waite responds warmly, but then naturally: Do you have a crush on him?

Fair question. But silly. Yes the man is attractive enough, but he's no Aaron. My hubs is the sexiest man in the world to me, and honestly, if he's standing in the smae room with almost any other man, my eyes are likely to see only him. Exception being: this insanely ripped 19 year old fucking lifeguard at the lake. But Aaron was looking at that guy too, so all's fair. How can you not look at some shirtless fucking lifeguard? It isn't like I wanna DO the lifeguard, but I mean, someone's put alot of work into that body, the least one can do is appreciate it.

Other exception: A redheaded girl of reasonable age. But aaron understands this and has accepted my particular obsession. Sigh.

Ok. SO moving forward...

One day after the lake we're waiting for the bus to come pick us up (the bus makes two trips, my group is second shift and Mr. Waite & Mr. Saunders also end up on that bus because they have to put all the Lake toys and buoys away in the shed and so they end up missing the first bus), and we start talking about why I'm not "Mrs. Waite."

This can be a subject of great fascination for some folks, especially Men of a certain generation, of which there was one present-- Mr. Jensen (real name because this story ain't about him.). So Jensen says his wife changed HER name and kept her maiden name as her new MIDDLE name and just dropped the 'marie' or 'ann' or whatever.

Ok. To which Mr. Saunders replies: "That's what my wife did. She's now Blankity, BlankBlank, Saunders."

Hm. Um. Huh.

I distinctly recall some of Mr. Saunders' creepiness stemming from the fact that he was SINGLE. So I discreetly cast my glance toward ring finger. No ring. Mr. Jensen and Mr. Waite have rings. Mr. Saunders wears no ring. Hmmmm. Ok.

So this is a topic of much discussion later between Mr. Waite and his liberal wife who never bothered to change her last name, much to the consternation of fellows above a certain age or of a particular upbringing.

"I thought you said he was single!"

"I thought he was!"

"He said 'my wife'! He talked about his wife, and how she changed her name to his and everything!"

"I heard, I heard!"

Puzzled, we wondered if he might be divorced, but he had definitely referred to her as 'My Wife' and not 'My EX-wife', and then we posited that maybe he was a widower, but I wasn't sure a nice guy like Mr. Saunders would take off his wedding ring if widowed, so were were a little stumped.

"I coulda sworn I heard him refer to himself as 'a single guy' one time..." Says mr. waite, non-plussed.

"Well--" Says I, reasonably, "Maybe he just doesn't wear a ring." Being a combination of liberal and forgetful myself, I generally walk about without my ring, and people comment on it all the time. As if I'm trying to creep. Jesus, can you imagine? Yeah, me, I'm out there trying to dupe guys into thinking I'm single, look out, I'm on the fucking prowl. Sorry, that's just absurd to me. Maybe If I was like 100 lbs and hot, but christ. I just don't wear the fucking thing. I love it (the pearl) and don't want to lose it, which, with me, is a very very real possibility, especially at a goddamn summer camp.

Ok. SO here's Mr. Waite's big scheme: "You should ask him."

Wait for it...

"WHAT?!?!?!?!?"

"You should ask him!" He insists. "Find out!"

"How the fuck do I do that without being a creepy asshole?"

"Just ask- you always just say whatever the hell you want anyway, so just ask, just be like: Heyyy, You mentioned your wife the other day, I didn't realize you were married..."

Mr. Waite, it is worth mentioning, was thoroughly embarrassed by my telling Mr. saunders he has great eyes and that whole convo, so this is WILD to me.

"What if he's divorced? Or WIDOWED?!?!?"

"Eh, so what? What's the harm in asking? What's the worst that could happen?"

Yeah. Is anything good EVER followed by that hypothetical query?

So yesterday, waiting for the bus, sitting around chatting, and I get myself into a position where it's me & Mr. S, and Aaron has distracted Crazy ass Mary (story for another fucking day!), so I'm like: "Hey, Mr. Saunders, you mentioned your wife changed her name when you got married?" As I was instructed to do.

"Yeah, It was Blankity Lynn BlankBlank, Now She's Blankity BlankBlank Saunders."

Deep breath, swallow, here we go: "She didn't like the Lynn?" Pussy! Grab hold of your cock and just ASK!

Polite laugh "Yeah, no, she didn't care for it so now it's Blankity BlankBlank Saunders."

Ok, unless he's Norman Bates she doesn't sound dead, so here goes nothing:

"You don't wear a ring--" I teased lightly, ready to commiserate because, well, neither do I but uh-uh, look out:

"Oh that's because we're getting divorced."

Awesome. Not "are divorced", but even better, even more painful and open-wound-y, "are GETTING divorced." Yup.

"Oh, Mr. Saunders, I'm SO Sorry!" And boy am I EVER.

"Yeahhh, It's ok, yeah, we've been separated for two years..." Jesus Christ almighty. Aaron is preoccupying crazy Mary a few feet away, but our eyes lock and I know he's hearing this. I want to kill him dead.

"I was just going to tease you because I never wear mine and Mr. Waite is always giving me a hard time about it.." Says I, trying to keep things light.

"Oh I wore mine every single day. Never took it off." Yipes. "Until we separated."

Sigh. I feel like the biggest asshole. "Ohh." What the fuck do you say next? Well, If you're Beth Reardon, a crazily empathetic soul who has grown up in and around the theatre where everybody shares everything you HUG the MAN, HUG him, which you don't even do to your HUSBAND at work, and say: "What Happened?"

And normally this might produce an 'oh, it's a long story, we grew apart, blah blah, end of story.'

But yesterday? Holy shitshow. "Oh it's a long, crazy, complicated story" I nod sympathetically, ready to gracefully recieve the polite brush-off and shut my mouth and comment about the weather or something but nay, Mr. S KEEPS TALKING!

"I mean, CRAZY." He says. "Like a soap opera. I mean if we had an evil twin and demonic posession or something I'd say we WERE a soap opera, but basically everything else? We had it. Lies, betrayal, seduction, affairs, all of that."

What my face might have looked like, I'll never know. I could hazard a guess, but I will never be sure.

"Oh, wow." Says I, scrambling. I never want to make people feel awkward or bad that they've just opened up, so I continue to engage: "Lots of drama!" I'm a drama teacher so we share a small laugh. "Maybe you should write a book!"

"Oh, I COULD, I probably could. Actually SHE did, well, sort of, she kept a diary throughout the whole thing and it is pretty insane, I mean PAINFUL, for me to read it, but..."

"You read it?"

"Yeah, she sent it to me, in e-mail form."

What the fuck is happening in my pleasant little summer camp life right now?

"So what HAPPENED?" Why can't I keep my mouth fucking SHUT???

"Well, a condensed version, a super-condensed version, is that basically in the winter of 2006 she tried to kill herself for the 3rd time--'officially'--and I finally had to throw her in Sinai for treatment."

Je-sus-chr-ist.

"Ohh--"

"Yeah, and she was pretty pissed at me, about that, but, I mean later she was grateful, obviously, and really she was more pissed that she hadn't succeeded, but yeah, she was pretty pissed."

"Well," Says I, wanting very much to disappear and shrink away, but feeling very much like I want to be present and sympathetic and there for the guy, "You had to do it, what choice did you have?"

"Yeah, she, well basically she had clinical depression but also diagnosed with a mild border-line personality disorder too." He says it like I ought to know what that means.

"Wow." Fake I. "And, um, can that be managed? at all? like with medication and thera--"

"Oh no, not really, no. Most people, well it's usually young women who get it, and they say that either they 'outgrow' it, kind of, like, something chemical 'balances out' somehow, so they either grow out of it or are dead by 25."

Shit. "Really."

"Yeah, I mean, dead because they've killed themselves."

Yeah, Mr. S, I got that much. "Yes."

"And My wife's thirty three, so..."

"So you've probably saved her life a fair few times." I want to hug him again, but the first one was so painfully awkward I refrain.

"Yeah." He says, those yellow-green eyes far away. "Yeah. Sometimes quite literally, I mean quite graphically, and other times just... by being there, you know?"

I do know. I want to tell him that besides the borderline personality disorder of split personality or whatever, He and Aaron might not be all that dissimilar. But how do you share that with a stranger, at a summer camp, while 4th graders are running up to show you their gimp keychains or complain that someone stole their towel again? Oh, because that all happened, while we were having this heart-to-heart.

Like, right in the middle of telling me how she was institutionalized for a year and how he visited her every single day there, a kid comes up to him and is like: "Mr Saunders look! I can do the circle stitch!" And without even batting an eyelash the guy exclaims about the stitch, asks a follow up about the colors or something, the kid says he's going to start a business for making and selling gimp, Mr. S enthuses about that, and only when the kid wanders away of his own volition (I mean Mr. S didn't scoot him, didn't once say: I'm having a grown up conversation, show me that later...), did he resume his tale.

"So they tried a form of electro-shock therapy, to try to fix it...:"

Mother fucker. "Did it... did it work? At all?"

"Oh no. no." This is the awesomest. Neat. I send Aaron dagger eyes and he sends me "HOLY SHIT?!?!?" eyes, while pretending to listen to whatever crazy mary is saying.

"No, that didn't work, but it did result in giving her short-term memory loss for a while. Which was pretty awesome."  Sarcastic awesome.

"Eeek."

"Yeah. YEah. Let me tell you, you can have some pretty spectacular fights with your spouse when one of you has short term memory loss!" He gives one of those humorless, slightly manic little laughs and I wish I could re-wind the day.

"I'd imagine!" I sympathize. "Like fireworks."

"Oh yeah. Ohhhh yeah. yup." He's remembering. "I mean she'd yell at me for not doing things that just moments before she'd told me explicitly NOT to do!"

Where's the fucking bus?

I don't remember everything, but after a while the convo dwindles, mostly because, what the christ do you say to all this? I let him vent and commented here and there, and really really wish we were out having drinks instead of standing around in a field in our wet bathing suits with 3 dozen or more campers romping about.

"It sounds like you still... care for her... though." Says I, wondering why the fuck I don't shut my mouth.

"Well. Yeah. I mean. I do. I still like her and admire her. It just. There was no way it could work between us."

The unsaid thing was this: He'd be a great father. He wants a family. She's damaged forever and will never, never, get better. So they had to call it quits.

I mean we talked for a long, long time. He'd been with her since '98. That's as long as me and aaron. With her for a long time before they even got engaged, and a long time more before they married. He married her knowing she was a little bananas. And loved her anyway. Again I'm thinking about aaron, because I'm more than a handful in that department. So naturally I am feeling really protective and empathetic for the guy.

The bus comes but I don't rush to break off our discussion. I walk with him toward the bus, letting my other counselor Jess, worry about our students.

"Do you, Date? Mr. Saunders?" I ask, not hitting on him, but just asking in a way that a married woman can do without being suspect.

He says he doesn't, even though he's been separated for two years, because he doesn't think it's fair to whoever he dates that he isn't yet divorced.

Hmm. "And why? Aren't you? Divorced yet?" I inquire, after verbally applauding his effort to be on the up-and-up and honest.

He has some more excuses about real-estate and how she's having 'a hard time' with signing the papers.

Sigh.

And its time to get on the bus. Holy Moly.I'm not even sure how we wrapped the discussion up. I believe I told him very sincerely that he was "an awesome guy" And then we're on a noisy bus, scattered among students, and it's all over, like it never happened.

But it DID fucking happen and now that's all I can think about. Plus when he was leaving for the day I accidentally called him Mr. Jensen and I just about wanted to kill myself (bad choice of words...) because it was like: he just shared his WHOLE and entire backstory with me and I just fucking called him the wrong fucking NAME?!?!? I felt, and still feel like the biggest asshole.

And then I NEEDED to talk to aaron like WHOA! Because he got the jist, he heard most of it, but needed deets.

So Awesome Mr. Saunders (not Jensen), great with kids, tons of emotional scarring, wonderful man, not creepy anymore, just lonely and sad and a little complicated. And apparently, a bit of an over-sharer at this present stage in his life.

But really, such a sweetheart.

Now how do I go back to work and let him know that it was totally alright that he shared all that? That I still like him and want to be his friend? ESPECIALLY after I called him Mr. Fucking Jensen?

FML.