The Brown Jug

I was watching The Shining last night. It’s not one of Kubrick‘s better films, and I really don’t think it’s a horror movie, and am always surprised when I see it so highly rated as one of the greatest horror movies of all-time. It’s really more of a family melodrama and a cautionary tale of alcohol. But anyway, there's that scene where Wendy is walking down the hotel hallway and sees in one of the rooms a dude in a bear costume on his knees blowing another dude, and it reminded me of something from long, long ago. Something I hadn’t thought about in decades. Something my first wife told me. This was very, very early in the relationship, months before I stupidly agreed to marry her. I’ve always been very emotionally retarded, very immature, juvenile, a late bloomer, if I ever did bloom, I don’t know. But back then for sure I didn’t have a clue about life, had no idea we could attempt to manage it, or at least direct it towards some outcome that could redeem the time. In His sermon on the mount, Jesus rightfully advised take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. I certainly adhered to that teaching back in the day, but probably not in the correct fashion. For example, Jesus would probably think it’s OK for a person take some thought about who they were going to marry.

Anyway, as I say this was very, very early in our relationship, you know maybe third or fourth date or whatever you want to call it. We were dining in at Taco Bell, eating our tacos and burritos off of plastic trays. In hindsight, I imagine that she, being more mature and knowledgeable about how to conduct a relationship, viewed this as the ‘getting to know each other’ stage. Personally, I’ve never put much stock in that. I’d like to believe what I see is what I get, and if I like what I see I figure I’m gonna like what I get. But anyways, I guess she wanted me to know her, to understand her. So she told me the story about her last boyfriend. The story of the boyfriend whose antics prompted her to enter her lesbian phase, which she, at that point there in Taco Bell, was contemplating leaving for me. We hadn’t had sex at that point. She had been heterosexual until the events I’m about to relate which she related to me that night.

As I said I hadn’t thought of any of this in decades. Probably the last time I thought about it was 25 years or so ago, back when I thought I could salvage the monetary wreck of my life by becoming an author. I was trying to think of material that would make a good short story, and I remembered what my first ex-wife had told me. I never wrote the story because I couldn’t grasp the main character’s psychology, the main character being the last boyfriend of my first ex-wife before she began the lesbian phase of her life.

Anyway, here’s what she told me, and what I remembered for the first time in a long time after watching that scene in The Shining.

She and her boyfriend were living in a ground floor apartment on Oakland Avenue in Ann Arbor. That’s a pretty lively section of student housing on the University of Michigan campus. She had a job as a waitress at The Brown Jug, a popular bar/restaurant. If you happened to be on the Michigan campus back in the early 1990s, you know what kind of wait staff The Brown Jug had. Madonna wouldn’t have been able to get hired, too heavy, not pretty enough. Anyway, my ex-wife left work early that night because she had a migraine. As she was approaching the porch to her apartment house, she saw her front door open and an older male come out, like a late 50s or early 60s male, like even older than her dad. What the fuck? she thought. She couldn’t think of any reason for an old man to be coming out of her apartment.

She said she clearly remembered hoping there would be some benign explanation, but she felt nervous and sweaty as she was about to go in, the feeling of unease on top of her migraine making her feel terribly sick.

Each detail she observed as she stepped into the apartment hit her like a shock wave. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. No matter where she looked, it was like an assault. Everything revolting. Her boyfriend dumbly exclaiming your home?? as he, wearing a pair of pantyhose so small and tight they only reached up to his knees, scrambled off the couch.  A piece of feces dropping from his asshole to the floor. A homosexual orgy playing on the VCR/TV. A pair of her dirty panties that had been in the bedroom and was now laying on the floor. She looked back at her boyfriend. Pantyhose? Where did he get them? She didn’t even wear pantyhose. But there was one of her bras draped over her boyfriend’s chest. As he stumbled past her he stuttered got, got to go, go to bathroom and she saw several large gobs of semen, still wet, sliding down his belly. A little brown bottle on the floor by the sofa. The boyfriend coming out of the bathroom nude, with most but not all of the semen wiped off his stomach. The boyfriend rushing into the bedroom and pulling on a pair of sweatpants.  By now she was so sick, so stressed out she could barely stand up. She went into the bedroom and laid down.  The boyfriend tried to talk to her.  She told him to be quiet, her head was killing her, could he please just get the shit off the living room floor and let her sleep.

I said oh my God in a half laugh a couple times when she was recounting this incident, and I could see that this was off-putting, but I have never been one to pretend or try to react so-called ‘appropriately.’

Anyway, my first ex-wife said the boyfriend never admitted anything.  Ever.  An older male in the house?  No!  Homosexual pornography?  What?? No!  She broke up with him a day later.

A couple months later my ex-wife hooked up with Sharri who was also a waitress at The Brown Jug, and began her lesbian phase.  Sharri's brother worked with me at a store on the campus. One day Sharri and my ex-wife came in to see Sharri's brother. We all ended up at Pinball Pete's later that night. And that was the beginning of that.  My first ex-wife and I got married before she even graduated college. Ridiculous. Her family couldn’t stand me. For good reason, I guess. I was going nowhere. They probably wondered what she was even doing with me. But I have always been able to make girls laugh and I do whatever they say. That can carry you a long ways. 

Well, now that I think even more about the past, I don't always do what they say.  That was the beginning of the end for me and my first ex-wife, me not doing something she wanted, as that memory now comes back.  Shit comes full circle or whatever.  Maybe I'll write that up for tomorrow.