I feel like Atlas in reverse!
My wife left me today. I saw it coming a mile away. Actually, I saw it coming four years away. I think I'm going to miss her. A little. Who's going to clean the house now?
I met her in '96 while in port in Turkey. A couple shipmates and I got lost while exploring and found a little, and I mean little, sex parlor in a back alley. She was waiting tables and occassionally dancing. She didn't dance very often because she only had one leg. She had lost it, I think, in a collision with a truck while riding on a moped with her brother. He only lost an eye. She brought us a round of beer and then sat on my lap. Not intentionally, mind you, she slipped on something on the floor and fell in my lap. I was in love. She couldn't speak any English, but that didn't matter, we just connected. Got to see her dance and man, that was awesome. I took her back to my C.O. and made arrangements with the Navy, INS, and the Turkish government to marry her. Oh yeah, she was 15.
She turned 16 after we left port, so that made it easier to get the paperwork rolling. We pulled back in Turkey in mid April and tied the knot April 22, 1996, at the American embassy. Her parents couldn't make it, she hadn't seen them in almost three years. So, she used her brother to give her away. I took two weeks's leave, flew her back to Norfolk and found an apartment. It wasn't spectacular, but for $350 a month, it was nice. Bought a television, a used sofa and some toiletries and flew back out to the boat. I called her about once every week and a half, but we couldn't understand each other, so the calls were short.
We pulled back in to Norfolk in late May, but she wasn't on the pier. I think I forgot to tell her. A couple friends and I went to Hooters to celebrate our return. We celebrated for two weeks. I remembered I was married and finally went home. The place was a mess, she was starving and the bathtub was plugged up. I guess I didn't buy enough food. I unplugged the tub, cleaned the apartment and then went shopping. I showed her how to clean the place and she took to it like a fish to water. Still couldn't speak any English, even after watching t.v. for an entire month. Unreal. She was a great cleaner though, wriggling around the house on her butt, cleaning everything in sight. It was great.
I got out of the Navy in August of 1997 and found a job as a janitor at an old folks' home. Good pay, great hours. I got to go to the bar and hang out with my friends when they were in port. It was nice, but the anchor was getting antsy. So I bought her cable. She got to clean the house, watch television all day and occassionally cook something edible. She still couldn't speak a lick of English. It was beginning to become irritating. It was like talking to a wall. I took her back to Kentucky to meet my parents. That didn't go very well. She slipped on a pile of something in the yard and twisted her ankle. She managed to break her fall with her head, though, bouncing it off an empty keg in the yard. She really looked like a refugee then, all bandaged up, using my dad's old crutch. My parents didn't seem to mind her inability to speak English or her prior career, considering my sister was doing the same at the local truck stop. We stayed only a day, then went back home to Norfolk.
I lost my job in 1999 after the home burned down and they let me go. After a few weeks I got another job mowing highway medians for the state. We also gave birth to a boy. Man, that sucked. I made too much money for WIC or welfare, and with the formula getting too damn expensive I tried to get fired. I wrecked a tractor, totalled a mower and ran into a utility pole. I finally got fired for using the office computer in an inappropriate manner. I filed for unemployment, WIC and foodstamps the same day. That was a godsend. I got all the cereal I could eat and I would take my stamps down to Portsmouth and trade them in for cigarettes and beer. Life was good.
After about a six month vacation, I lost the unemployment and had to find another job. Worked late nights stocking shelves in a grocery store and some mornings picking up garbage for beer money. Still got to go to the bar and hang out with my friends, so no big loss. It worked good until 2000, when the wife started getting fidgety again. So I took her down to Portsmouth, by the shipyard, to a little strip club and got her a job. She was great, waited and danced like she had never stopped. It was interesting to watch, a one legged woman who couldn't speak English, stripping and dancing, but they loved her. I got to go to the bar and watch women. Granted, they weren't the prettiest, but they were naked! I told all my friends, trying to drum up some more business and money. It worked, she made great tips. I'd take the money and put some in the bank, buy stuff with the rest. We were living good, gave the baby to an Indian neighbor lady to watch and lived large.
It was fun for about two years until the club got shut down for drug trafficking. I figured if she could make that much in a dive, she could make a killing doing it in our apartment. So we did. She was awesome, doing anything and everything you could imagine, and then some. My friends loved it, their own little strip club. She made killer money, even better money when she gave lap dances. I bought a plasma t.v., a new sofa, and a new car. It was an American dream, even if she still didn't speak any damn English. We kept it up for almost two years, keeping food on the table, beer in the side by side and gas in the Acura. Until yesterday afternoon.
I came home yesterday from the bar, my home away from home, to find a note on the table, held down by an empty beer bottle. It said, "You jerk. I found a bigger idiot than you who loves me more and he hates beer. It's over, you ass, and I hope you rot in hell. Oh, I'm fluent in 3 languages, including English. I also stabbed your television, took all the money and pissed in your beer."
I think she'll be back.