It was taken out of context. It was misguided, misheard, misunderstood, misrepresented, or just made up.
Accountability is out; ask our president if he’s found any WMDs lying around Iraq lately. I was a creature of our times, someone who otherwise couldn’t have existed.
Which is not in any way an excuse.
No.
I might’ve scored sympathy points long ago by going the Oprah route and dredging up my childhood for national TV. Sprinkling my public absolution with select anecdotes from the Valle childhood album.
One anecdote, at least.
After all, these days the only thing more popular than denying your sins is going on television and confessing them. It’s okay to do bad stuff, America keeps reminding us, as long as you’ve got a reason.
I resisted that temptation.
I still resist it.
Speaking of temptation.
This is what it looks like.
LIKE ANNA.
We were sitting in Violetta’s Emporium, the two of us.
Our table came complete with glazed netted candle that threw a soft, flickering light on the remarkable face sitting across from me. Not that it was in any particular need of mood lighting. Not with those eyes.
The table was cozy enough to make it hard to avoid touching knees. As if I wanted to avoid them, as if I didn’t do everything within my power to brush against her knees again and again and again. Two years ago, on my cross-country journey into ignominy, I stopped at a resort in Arizona and blew my last remaining cash on a hot-stone massage. That’s what Anna’s naked knees felt like-smooth hot stones sending shivers of fire shooting down my legs. And in the opposite direction.
I know. Mush, of the most egregious kind.
I’m simply trying to paint you a picture, to sit down with my inner police sketch artist and re-create for you what hit me.
We ordered matching pastas, though I did little more than move the vermicelli around my plate.
Women who’ve had the misfortune of going on first dates with me generally came away with the misconception that I wasn’t much of an eater.
I can eat with the best of them.
It’s simply that my hunger for one thing generally takes precedence over my hunger for another. I’m perpetually famished for love and approval-this according to Dr. Payne, who tried mightily to delve into the underlying reasons for my sociopathic behavior.
You had an absent father and an alcoholic and abusive mother, he concluded, so what else would you do but seek massive and extreme pats on the back?
Sounded sensible to me.
After all, it would help account for why so many first dates failed to materialize into second ones. Apparently neediness wasn’t an attractive quality in a man. The one woman who did find it endearing married me. She lived to regret it.
Anna and I made small talk.
She asked me about working for a newspaper.
“I took journalism classes in college,” she said, with a small pout meant to convey, I think, her ineptitude at it. “What, when, where, how… what’s the fifth one? Anyways, it wasn’t me. I’m not an observer. I lack objectivity. I flunked.”
“Okay, you’re not a reporter. What do you do? It didn’t say in your profile.”
“Sure it did. I play the conundrums-remember?”
“Yeah. That was cute.”
“Ya think?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“I work for a nonprofit organization,” she said. “Very Berkeley, even though it’s in downtown Santa Monica.”
“Oh? A nonprofit organization for what?”
“The usual. Clean planet, clean politics, dirty movies, the stuff near and dear to a blue stater’s heart.”
She ran her middle finger around the edge of the candle glass, catching a small drip of hot wax, then holding it up to the light, wincing. “Ever try it?”
“Try what?”
“Hot wax.” She giggled, took another sip of her Chianti.
“Try it how? You mean, like have it dripped on me?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Does dripping it on myself count?”
“I don’t know. Were you practicing self-abuse at the time?”
“I was filling bottle caps for scully. I was 7.”
“Then I’d say it doesn’t count. What’s scully?”
“A New York street game. You fill bottle caps with crayon wax, draw this chalk square on the sidewalk, and try to knock the other guy out of the game-it’s like bocci with soda caps.”
“New York, huh?”
“Yeah, New York-you mean you didn’t spot the accent?”
“I thought it was Lithuanian. Stupid me.”
I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t stupid at all. Even though I knew she was just being funny. I wanted to tell her that she was the most dazzling, most special, most alluring woman I’d ever seen. Of course, that’s something I’d told other women at other Violetta’s Emporiums. I had the unfortunate habit of falling desperately in love after two drinks. Just seeking massive and extreme pats on the back, Dr. Payne.
“What’s a New Yorker doing here?” she asked.
“Working on my tan.”
“No, really. Why are you here?”
“I needed a break.” It was one of those answers that a government commission might term deceptive, though not actual perjury.
“From what?” she asked, not letting go. Her cheeks glowed with matching wine-blooms, crème brûlé topped with raspberry swirl.
“I had a rough time on my last newspaper job,” I said. I needed to change the subject.
“So, do you have a boyfriend?” I asked.
“Boyfriend? What’s that?”
I felt a sudden surge of sweet, seductive hope. “Been awhile?”
“A long while. I’m married.”
“Oh.”
Hope said see ya, exploded into flames like that car on Highway 45.
“Don’t look so depressed,” she said. “I’m seriously thinking of dumping him.”
“You are?”
“Well, he’s living with a 24-year-old Pilates instructor. So, yeah, it has crossed my mind.”
“So, are you going to get a divorce?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Eventually. Sure. It’s not that easy. We have a son.”
“Really? How old?”
“He’s 4.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cody. Can I be a boringly cliché mom and show you his picture?”
“Do I have to be boringly cliché and ooh and ahh over it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
She pulled out her wallet and held it open for me. “Go ahead-ooh.”
A blond munchkin pumping away on one of those toddler pedal bikes, with Anna hovering right behind.
“What’s that thing you’re holding on to?” I asked her.
“You haven’t seen the newest contraption for instilling self-confidence and independence in your preschooler?”
“Guess not.”
“It’s a push-and-pedal. Your kid pedals while you push. They think they’re charging down the open road like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, but you’re the one really steering. Dirty trick, huh?”
“Yeah. Can I get one?”
“The next time I hit Toys ‘R’ Us, it’s yours,” she said. “So, what about you?”
“Me what?”
“Single? Married? Divorced? Divorcing?”
“Number three.”
“Ahh. What’s it like? Getting a divorce?”
I hesitated just long enough for Anna to apologize for being nosy.
I answered her anyway.
“It was pretty much my fault. I kind of fucked it up.”
I remembered something. I didn’t want to-someone starts talking about their failed marriage and the toxic memory drifts over you like secondhand smoke. My sweet and stalwart bride going out for some Starbucks and never coming back. Muttering something about vanilla frappuccino and needing to figure this thing out just before she went through the front door of our apartment. This thing being the very public fraud I’d perpetuated on a major American newspaper-on my marriage too, I guess, since she’d said I do to a bona fide investigative journalist who wasn’t. My ex, an architect specializing in high-rises, tended to see life in structural terms-the blueprint for a good relationship being a foundation built on trust. I’d put too many cracks in the retaining walls, and the structure would not hold.