Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating (3 page)

I was running out of time as the second verse to my
favorite song had just started. I navigated frantically through the other
desperate sixteen year olds that had already latched on to one another.  I
finally reached Kennedy just as Full Force kicked in with the “take me, take
me, take me home” part of the song. 

Confidently, I asked her to dance.
Confidence
will take you places you never thought you could go.
She smiled and said
yes. We awkwardly danced for the last thirty seconds of the song, eight inches
apart, careful not to draw the attention of the chaperoning nuns. Even so, it
was magical and evidently it was enough.

The next day in school my life went to bizarro world
as everything went from Betty Boop black and white to full blown Toto-we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore
color. There were notes being slipped into my locker and upperclassmen eyes
being batted at me for the first time. Unexpectedly, every girl at my school
started to check for me and I owed it all to Kennedy. She was one of the most
popular girls in our town and every guy wanted her. Here was the first lesson I
was to learn regarding women only wanting guys that other women wanted, and I
was the showcase winner.  

We dated through senior year of high school, all of
college, broke up during my short stint in LA, and then got married shortly
thereafter. We’ve been married for eight years.  None of that mattered right
now because her brow was deeply furrowed into the crease between her disapproving
eyes.

I had screwed up before, but this felt different. She
was seething. Usually I could sway her with an easy smile and turn her frown
upside down, but not this time. Nor would I even try. I was pretentious,
arrogant, and pompous—all synonyms meaning the same thing. I was an ASSHOLE!

I thought the last straw was a year ago when she
clicked on the ten o’clock news and there was my face being praised as a local
hero.

I was out on one of my “lunch dates” when this
dumbass at the table next to mine began choking on a tiny jumbo shrimp (double
oxymoron).  As my luck would have it, I was the only person within earshot
who knew the Heimlich maneuver and promptly administered it to him, saving his
life.  I was a fuckin’ hero. 

Unbeknownst to me, a local news crew was doing a
special down in Red Bank on Healthy Lunch choices for under $10 and they
happened to be in this particular restaurant of all places.

Red Bank was fifty miles away from my home in Edison. I made it a point never to shit where I ate, so I would take my little indiscretions
out of the immediate area. I slipped the busboy $20 to take credit for saving
the man’s life when the news crew decided to interview the Good Samaritan.

Of course, the Mexican immigrant barely knew English
let alone the Heimlich and the jig was up pretty quickly. He folded like a bad
hand in poker and confessed that I was the real hero.  Even when I tried
to do the right thing, it somehow ended up being the wrong thing to do. 
And to add insult to injury, Kennedy and I were in bed making love when the
story came on the ten o’clock news.
Fuck!

So there I was, plastered all over the news, and
being praised as a fucking hero over one hundred miles away from where I had
told her I would be.  Naturally she was pissed and “preferred” to go up to
Martha’s Vineyard to “clear her head” since she was sooo distraught over what
I did, allegedly. 
Who you gonna trust, me or your lying eyes?
 
She came home a week later and we never spoke of it again.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Nope
.”  And I didn’t care. She already
knew where I was and what I had been doing. “The credit card company called and
said you took out fifteen hundred dollars in cash advances in Chicag-hoes?”   Her
bottom lip trembled as it took her every ounce of composure not to slap the
shit out of me.

 “So?”

“So that’s
my
money, motherfucker!”

“Whatever.”

I chuckled as I pushed past her toward our bedroom
then pivoted on my heel and spun back around. My head was throbbing and I knew
I needed a shower to wash the sweet stink of coitus with Baton Rouge
off
of my worn out body. She had drained me of most of my bodily fluids, replacing
it with her own mixture of saliva, sweat, and love juice. Since my wife was
part bloodhound, it was just a matter of time before she caught wind. But just
for good measure I decided to take my level of arrogance to another level.

“If you’re so unhappy then why don’t you just
divorce me?”  No reply.  So I poked my chest out a little further,
deciding to be an even bigger prick.  “I thought so.”  I was
confident that would never happen.
Too confident
.

You’ve Been Served

Kennedy was up and at ‘em early as she had done on
every Saturday since I had been married to her.  She started her morning
with an 8:00 yoga class, and then she went to the cleaners and post office
before going grocery shopping and returning home by 2:00 like clockwork. 

It was typical in that most women can’t stay in the
house on Saturday, making lists, running errands, and doing all the stuff they
couldn’t get to during the week.  However, men usually won’t leave the
house on Saturday, concentrating on lawn work and home improvement.  I was
on my brown, tattered sofa from college, passed out and cradling a half empty
bottle of Johnny Walker Black.  Kennedy gave me a big, juicy kiss on my
lips to awaken me.

“Happy anniversary,  baby.”

I didn’t realize that our anniversary had snuck up
on me once again.  It was hard to keep up with anniversary dates as many
times as Kennedy and I had broken up and gotten back together.  I didn’t
even bother to wake up and wish her the same.  I remember opening my eyes
just long enough to see her grab her keys, Versace sunglasses, and gym bag as
she scurried off in her dressed-in-spandex-from-head-to-toe ass. 

My cell phone hummed for what seemed like an
infinite amount of times before it finally jarred me.  After I could no
longer ignore it I unconsciously searched for the Talk button, careful not to
move too quickly as to exacerbate the tidal wave of a hangover headache I felt
coming on.  I felt like I had been drugged.  I probably was.

“Hello?”

“Baby?”

“Who's this?”

“It's your wife. Baby, wake up. This is really
important and you need to hear every word clearly and I need to make sure you
understand.”

“Huh?”

“Wake up!” she screamed.

The urgency in her voice finally got my attention. Very
rarely did Kennedy raise her voice. Usually she spoke softly, making me crane
my six-foot-three-inch frame down nearly a foot to hear her. But not this time.
She spoke with conviction, bluntness, and decisiveness. Finally sensing the
seriousness of the situation, I sat up to talk to my wife. “Baby, what's
wrong?”

“Everything.  And it has been for a long time. The
drinking, the partying, the not coming home, not being here even when you are
home. I need a man who will listen to me, respect me, and grow with me, not to
mention go to work once in a while. I can't do this anymore. I'm getting a
divorce.”

Those words have echoed in my mind many times.
I’m
getting a divorce
. Not “I want a divorce” or “I’m thinking about getting a
divorce.” It was “I’m getting a divorce.” The finality of it all was agonizing.
  I must admit that this woman had the patience of Job.

A few years earlier during one of my drunken stupors,
I passed out with one of my various email aliases still visible on the
computer. My dumb ass, being technologically challenged, didn’t know that if
you threw something in the recycle bin, you still had to delete its contents.

She dug out and read every email that I had sent my
mistress. Several of them detailed the many vile and disgusting things I had
planned the next time I saw her at our regular rendezvous spot. Don’t you know she
held onto that information for six months before finally revealing that she
knew about Anastasia and me all along? What kind of sick person could hold onto
that kind of info and climb into bed with me every night and not say a word? That’s
scary. If the same thing happened to a man, he would blast his wife literally
and figuratively the second she stepped in the door.

It was so quiet that I could hear my carotid artery throb
until I thought it would explode.  I tried to understand it, but I just
couldn't seem to wrap my mind around what she was saying. Or maybe I just
didn’t want to.

“Dapper?” 

Unconcerned, I drifted back asleep with the phone cradled
to my ear.

“Dapper Carter! You're such an asshole,” she screamed as
she hung up.

I really didn’t give a shit. I had heard her threats
so many times before that I didn’t pay her any mind. That was my last mistake.

Eventually the phone fell to the floor with a loud
thud,
awakening me. Stunned, I rambled to the refrigerator.    I had a
dreamlike moment, stopping in my tracks to take notice of the barren living
room. The fifty-inch plasma TV was gone.  The $1,000 Italian marble coffee
table was gone.  Every picture from the wall, including the Matisse, the Picasso
print, and even the
dogs playing poker
hanging in the den was gone, too. 
The shit was there yesterday.
The seriousness began to tighten like a
noose as I struggled to get my heart and lungs to cooperate with one another.

Opening the refrigerator door, I saw nothing but the
rear of the empty refrigerator staring back at me. There was one thing: a
Post-it
hanging from one of the empty shelves. It simply read
"DAPPER, IT'S
OVER!"

What?
 Being taken aback isn’t the usual
for me but this time I was blown away. I walked through the whole house barely
able to comprehend what was taking place. Everything of value was gone along
with the China from our wedding, the sterling silver, the Xbox 360.  
Not one damn thing was left. I stumbled into the bathroom as my legs started to
weaken from having realized the gravity of the situation. Another
Post-it
on the mirror reminded me:
"I MEAN IT! IT'S OVER!"

 
I thought to myself that this had to be
some kind of terrible joke, but we were just getting started. The water in my
nightmare was just starting to rise. The doorbell rang. I frantically rushed to
the door like a chicken with my head cut off, praying that it was Kennedy, but
it wasn’t.

Things were getting worse because it wasn’t Ed
McMahon coming to give me my million-dollar check from Publishers Clearing
House either. It was an official-looking dude in a cheap, black suit with
scuffed up wingtips and a five o’clock shadow.  He looked down at the
envelope he was carrying to make sure he had the right person.

“Dapper Carter?”

“Yeah.”

“Great name.”

“Yeah I know.  What can I do for you?”  He
smugly handed me an envelope.

“You've been served. Have a good life Dapper Carter.”

What an asshole.
The asshole pivoted on his cheap
wingtips, leaving me standing dumbfounded in my soon to be former doorway. I
quickly opened the letter. It was an official notice of suit for divorce.
I'll
be damned. She actually did it.
Time slowed down to an excruciating crawl
as the magnitude of the situation began to set in. I didn't even mean what I
said to her about getting a divorce, but once again me and my big mouth wrote a
check that my ass was not going to be able to cash. I brokenheartedly sat on my
ex-steps and began to sob.

Find a New Best Friend?

Caesar’s grandfather left him an enormous brownstone
on 145
^th
St. and Amsterdam Ave. in the historic Sugar Hill section
of Harlem. Once upon a time it was a popular area for wealthy African
Americans. Who would have thought that the day would come when Black people
would be a minority in Harlem? Gone were the pimps and drug dealers, replaced
by Europeans pushing blonde-haired, blue-eyed children in strollers down 8
^th
Ave.

But also gone were great Harlemites like Thurgood Marshall,
Adam Clayton Powell, Joe Louis, Billie Holliday and Puffy
.  I knew things were
different when
I witnessed a young white couple arguing on 125
^th
St. and MLK at
four o’clock in the morning without a concern in the world. But why would you
be concerned if you had the advantage of a constant police presence ‘round the
clock to protect your assets?

I was going to be staying with Caesar for a couple
of weeks since Kennedy had sold the house months before unbeknownst to me, so I
had to get out.

Women have a funny way of knowing the relationship
is over way before you and have mentally and financially prepared for the
breakup. Then they drop the bomb on the guy, and most of us never see it coming
because we’re too wrapped up in our own shit to realize our wife is unhappy.