...And I touched his hand

So, it has been a long time.  Alot has happened, and more to come I am sure...but I will pick up where I left off.

January 2001 held another birthday.  Bob's eldest son.  This was also yet another attempt to really spend time with him.  Don't get me wrong, I am still not going in for the relationship, just some happy time!  So there I was again at one of the Beers' huge "tribe" parties...This time I came without the support of my good friend Dawn and at near the end of the party.  Everything was settling down and Kendra and the immediate kids in the family wanted to watch a movie.  It is sad that I don't remember the movie..the movie I was watching when I fell in love with my husband.  Yes, I said it.  Fell in love with my husband.  We sat together on the couch for almost an hour before our hands found each other.  We turned and locked glances, and turned again to finish the movie.  Yes, I am in love with this man.  How can that be?  Bob offered to run out and get Gyros for everyone.  Okay, so I never had a Gyro, but mmm, mmm.  It sounded good.  Kendra never HEARD of a Gyro, but she was so elated at the fact I was actually having a good time, she was game as well.  I ate what I could of mine and Kendra gently passed me hers as I know she totally hated it, but never really said.  It was soon time for us to go home.  It was a bad part of town so Bob walked us to our car.  I started it and stood outside and talked while Kendra sat listening to her music inside.  He asked me on a date...a real date....I agreed and we made a plan for the following weekend.  He told me I should call him so we could talk....and I did....and we did and it was wonderful.  But yet I left there that night with a question.  Why was the familiar stench of alcohol surrounding this man.  He did not seem drunk nor did I see him drinking....it stuck in my mind for a minute and then simply disappeared.  The weekend came and I arrived for my date.  Kendra was with me and intended to stay with the kids at Kimmy's house...It seems that I have already gotten over that weird, twisted relationship and it was almost common place to me now.  How strange?...anyway, Bob greeted me with a hug and a coy motion of wisping a flyaway hair off of my check.  It was the most erotic thing I have felt in over a decade.

You NEVER eat low fat dressing..are you okay?

There was such a ruckus.  Four kids and 3 adults reeking havoc on the buffet table.  I did catch Bob's eye once or twice, but he never held the stare more than a second or so.  It reminded me of being in Junior high and "liking" someone.  I watched though.  How he played with his kids. How he disciplined them for mistreating their food or their siblings!  How he laughed and how he finally spoke to me as natural and causal as could be.  He asked how I knew Kim and how long I was friends with Dawn and how great it was that Kendra was in between the ages of his boys.  He seemed unscathed concerning the tragic break up of his common law marriage. A loss caused by what would be the worst thing that could happen in any relationship...having your significant other cheat on you with someone NOT of the opposite sex, accompanied by a confession that you were merely nothing but a sperm donor.  However, he seemed quite content with the remaining love of his children, but yet seemed trapped by it as well.  My heart pounded as my attraction to this man grew.  The chaos grew too, the kids became too much to handle in this public venue.  By the way, I was pre-warned that Kim and Bob's kids where not angels from heaven nor did they posses even the rudimentary scruples.  In other words, they where a bunch of brats. .  Civilized, leisurely adult conversation was not an option at this time.  So, we went our separate ways.  He politely said "Nice to really meet you" and laughed.  He ran after his boys out the door.  They had stolen grapes from the salad bar and they all seemed to be playing some kinda army game with them.  I almost wished I was playing too, but I would have taken the Strawberries and had the advantage over the enemy.
I would soon find out the secret that allowed Bob to appear so easy going and the vises that kept him sane. 

....the swaggering stranger

She said “BoB”   I said "WHAT?"   I have no idea. Dawn, I said I wanted to get laid after 9 years, not fall into some freaky az family zoo mess….So that was the end of that, here and then anyway.   All I knew was that he drove a green minivan, was very tall and very blond. That was all I cared to know, or so I thought...A month or so went by….I still didn’t get my sex!!!!   I didn’t want to do the bar thing…..there was a few prospects at work and Kendra's dad may have shown some interest again (We were only together for 2 weeks originally)…..But nothing really excited me. Dawn and her ex girlfriends granddaughter were the exact same age of 8 so on the weekends, we would go out for breakfast, shopping or just hang out, sometimes with Kim and her kids. Well, one weekend Dawn said we were going to one of Kim's boys birthday parties. I knew these two were still dangling this Bob guy as the piece of meat I've been waiting for.   Well, Kendra liked hanging with the boys and the older girl Rebeca, so I said WHY NOT. We went to that party in November 2000. There was a whole TRIBE at that house, I swear. At least 40 people. Dawn told me they were all Kimmy's relatives in some way. At that point I was happy to be an only child!!!!! Well as we girls sat on the sofa, talking , eating our cake, gossiping , and watching this….this small carnival, I notice a hint of musk with a fruity after-tone drift into the room. It was an exquisite smell. I heard a mans voice, a deep, smooth sensual voice-- first speaking and then laughing and playing. The voice then ended abruptly. But the smell got closer. It was accompanied by the long strides of muscular legs attached to a 6 foot blond man seen from only across the room.  He negotiated the crowded room gracefully, and walked toward the kitchen doorway. That walk was soo steady... flowing.... manly...confident.... and so damn sexy. I leaned over to Dawn and asked “WHO, was THAT?” she said that was HIM….Bob. Well he never emerged from the kitchen again until it was time for us to leave.  Later, I had learned that he was wrestling with his boys and the birthday boy head-butted him and knocked 2 of his front teeth out. Well, the winter moves on, the holidays are moving closer…So we all decided to go out to Ponderosa Steak House Buffet. Of course this was another attempt by Kimmy and Dawn to get me and Bob hooked up. To this point, I really didn't even know what this man truly looked like, yet I knew I was attracted to him---a very strange and curious feeling. He has a swaggering confident walk, a head of golden locks that brush his shoulders, and he smells like he’s been harvesting cranberries from the swamp all day long.   What the HELL am I getting myself into?

...still in the begining

Well, I had like one good friend in the whole world and she was a manager a mini market. This is where my story starts getting a little messed up. Well....A LOT messed up.  Dawn did not have a good childhood and she just wrote men off completely. She didn’t even know if she was straight or gay and didn’t really even care one way or another.  I would call her asexual at this point in her life! Anyway...One of her friends worked at the gas station with her. Her name was Kimberly….and SHE was definitely a lesbian--I met her very manly girlfriend. Sometimes I would pop in and visit Dawn at the gas station. While I was there  one day, a MAN dropped Kimmy off at work. I DID take slight notice to the tall blonde stranger when he came into the station and bought a soda and a bag of chips and asked Dawn who he was.. She told me it was Kimmys ex paramour and also proceeded to tell me their life story.  I couldn't imagine WHY this would be a topic of interest until she began....  Bob and Kimmy had 3 children together and had lived in a committed relationship for about 10 years.  That was until one day when Kimberly confessed to her soon to-be-husband that she was gay and was leaving him to be with another womea....and by the way, Bob, Thanks for the Kids, I wanted them really badly  Wow, what a blow to the manhood, eh?  Turning your "wife" gay.  Dawn continued her story, trying to make the whole conclomerated testimony make sense. She went on to tell me that Bob and Kimmy STILL lived together with the kids AND Kimberly's girlfriend Charmaine. At this point I am totally flabergasted. Sooo, Kimmy, Bob, Charmaine, and the 3 kids live together???   YES.    Are the 3 lovers?   NO, Kim is committed to Charmaine. Well, why is Bob still there? Because he wants to be with his children and he also helps take care of Kimmys parents. Now WAIT…..what do her parents have to do with it? Well, they also live with them. OH MY GOD, what kinda mess is this?   Kim and Bob have know each other a total of 12 years, so everything between them is very familiar. Kimberly also has 9 syblings, most with children of their own. The entire family is very close knit with focus surrounding the elderly, disabled parents.   OKAY SO AFTER A HOUR OF THIS still unfinished, CONVOLUTED STORY…..Dawn comes out with “”Well, what did you think of him?” At this point I am totally emotinally exhausted from hearing this and say  THINK OF HIM?-HIM, WHO?

In the begining....

I had a decent life. A good childhood, no abuse, little drama, a lot of average middle class. Lived in the same house for 19 years-my parents together and my pets dying of old age. I experimented with drugs and alcohol and thought that the first man I ever had sex with I was the one I was gonna marry. Big surprise, that didn’t work out, so I psycho manipulated myself into believing I was getting back at all the men folk in the world by having a very looong decade of promiscuity during my twenties. Always had a job, always worked real hard, and always drank all that hard work off every night at any bar. For every long term relationship I had, I had five no-term ones. But one day, my life changed. My days of he hawing and sluting around were done. I had a baby girl in 1992 at age 28. I was alone and ended up on Welfare. Since they offered, I went to school for 4 years on the tax payers money. I won’t mention the huge balance school loan for all the EXTRA amenities a student should have while living off the government--vacation in the Bahamas, brand new Toyota Celica and designer jeans for the toddler.. I earned a degree in Environmental Biology and found out that all the fun jobs are in Biology, but the money is not. I KNEW I should have been a chemistry major, but I just couldn’t stomach all the math. Even graduating sum cum laude could not land me a job making enough to support my daughter and I.--------- So I was able to get a good wage job a a large insurance company to support us. I STILL WORK THERE TODAY. Anyway, after these 4 years, I had eaten myself into over 400 lbs of fat thru depression and single parent stress. I had gastric bypass in 2000 and lost 235 pounds. Well, ya know not a lot of men want a relationship with a women who can barely put their own socks on so the year and a half after the surgery, I had the excess skin removed off my gut, and I am looking pretty good and feeling awefully frisky. It has been 8 or 9 years since I had sex…OMG.

...a book I shall be one day

and one day shall I be a book! I shall write on these pages my past, my present my future...but for now, this is my story  The wife of a convicted Sex Offender.  A man convicted of crimes that some only think punishable by death. A man who would take his own life before ever thinking about emotionally destroying another human being again. Hard to believe this is a selfless, careing, kind, human being. Capable of so much compassion and love. What could be missing that would cause a man like this to sexually abuse a child?  Perhaps finding a reflection of himself in his victims...tortured and abused as a child. Finding comfort in inappropriate places. There was no violence in his crimes. No mayhem or cruelty...Just a lacking of ...something. The emotion most of us have naturally that says "No", this is wrong---I cant make this person feel this way. EMPATHY. My husband has found empathy. It gave him back many things. The ability to remember and face his crimes To see the damage he caused his victims.To take full responsibility for his actions. The collateral damage to their family and friends---to HIS family and friends The courage to face his past and to realize that adults shouldn't touch children the way he was touched and later, the way he touched them. Understanding EMPATHY gave him back the ability to see others and not just himself. To free himself of the narcissistic prison he used to protect himself from being hurt by anymore. He was able to find true love in our marriage. With my unconditional love and having had his secrets forcefully released, he started down the path of learning EMPATHY, and mastered it. There are no sureties in this world. Neither of us will say NEVER AGAIN. But through a 12 year remision from substance abuse and this learning of self, my husband is no longer a sex offender. He is a former sex offender. Some say a marriage has to have unconditional trust to be blissful; I say that conditional trust is perfection. We are soulmates and lovers, but never fools. Loving him through this life and into the next...I am NOW, THEN, FOREVER his.