The Sun Also Rises

Every flashing red light, klaxon and alarm bell instantly went off in my head. Whatever was about to happen was going to be bad.

Janet looked at me sadly and uttered the five little words that no husband wants to hear, "Jake, We need to talk."

I gawked at her. She looked anxious. Templeton was smirking. And who the fuck was the other guy? Was he her lawyer?

Actually, he WAS Janet's lawyer.

But he was also her lover.

She said, "Jake, this hurts me a lot. But you need to know that I am leaving you. I could have just disappeared. But I value the time we had together and I wanted to give you the courtesy of telling you directly."

Holy Shit!! I sank down into the nearest chair.

I have no idea what was on my face but my soon to be ex-father-in-law looked delighted.

She was leaving me? Where did THAT come from? I probably looked like the proverbial fish out of water. I babbled, "You're leaving me? Why? What did I do? What will happen to me?"

She dialed up the phony concern and said, "You'll be fine. I know it. You're a strong person. It's just that Burton and I have found each other again and we can't be apart."

Templeton said, with disdain dripping off his every word, "Janet and Burton were childhood sweethearts.

"He is the right person for her. Janet understands that they never should have parted. Burton didn't really cheat on her. He was just sowing his wild oats.

"He is ready to settle down now and Janet has consented to be his wife."

I said pitifully, "But she's MY wife."

Damn!! Would you just LISTEN to me?!! I sounded like a sniveling little wussy.

It was just fucking embarrassing.

The raw humiliation and the conceit in daddy's patronizingly self-important voice pushed me over the edge.

I didn't know I had it in me. But Bruce Banner probably didn't think so either. I just "Hulked" out.

Suddenly, all I could think was, "SMASH PUNY HUMANS!!"

I turned to daddy and making no attempt to control the anger in my voice I said, "I am going to rip off your fucking head and shit down your neck if you open your mouth one more time you arrogant cocksucker."

He started to open his mouth. I began to rise from my chair. He could see the genuine homicide in my eyes. He made a zipping gesture across his lip. Point-game-and match to Jake Barnes.

I turned to the faithless-slut-formerly-known-as-my-wife and said, "Are you telling me that this piece of shit is your former childhood sweetie and that you are leaving me for him? How long have you been fucking him?"

The aforementioned piece of shit said in a highly affronted tone of voice, "Now look here old boy."

I turned toward him and said, "Where I come from you and I should be punching each other up right this second. So unless you want to adjourn to the parking lot I suggest that you stay out of it.

This is between me and my soon to be ex-wife."

He just sat there looking disgusted.

I turned to her and said, "Okay you deceitful whore. The floor is yours. How long has this been going on and what do you propose to do next?"

Janet looked taken aback and really angry. She hadn't expected this.

She said, "Daddy has not felt that you were the right person for me since our first trip to New York. He has been urging me to give Burton another chance.

"Burton came all the way down here to escort me to the Washington National Opera last November. It was the one that you were too bored to attend."

I remembered that. She had thrown a black tie party in a suite that I bought for her at the Jefferson. I was expecting a blow-up when I told her that I didn't want to go. She came home the following day and was as sweet and loving as she had ever been.

I said, "So you have been fucking this guy for six months then?"

She looked pained and said condescendingly, "Such degrading language Jake. It doesn't speak well for you.

"But to answer your question, Burton and I have been a couple since that evening. I'm surprised you hadn't heard about it since we have not made a secret about our relationship. But then again, you don't travel in our circles.

"We want to make it permanent now and I need you to release me so I can marry the person I should have been with in the first place. I am sure you understand that it is over between us. I love you but I have not been in-love with you for some time"

I looked at the deceitful bitch and her duplicitous father. Then I turned my attention to Shithead. I said, "So you want to marry her knowing what kind of adulterous slut she is?"

He spluttered, "Now look here. You can't talk about Janet that way."

I said, "How should I talk about her? I gave her all the love and devotion I had in me. I gave her the money to let her make-believe that she was a society doyen. I never as much as looked at another woman. All I expected was to raise kids with her and die in her arms.

"As a reward, she has been fucking YOU for the past half year and probably her dad on the side."

Both of them exploded. I looked at them with murder in my eye. They both shut up.

They didn't deny it either.

I looked at the asshole and he was turning beet red.

I said gently to the room, no anger in my voice, "This is what you all really want?"

Shithead was looking thoughtful. Daddy was looking outraged and Janet was looking grim.

Janet said with anger in her voice, "It's what we ALL want Jake. You need to let me go. I have already moved all of my things to Burton's place and when I leave here I am never coming back.

"I don't want anything from you. Just a quick divorce. Burton is much richer than you are. So I don't need anything except your blessing."

I looked at her truly incredulous. The stupid bitch really expected me to smile and say, "Right then!! Well have a great life."

Seriously??!! I had no idea how somebody could BE that naïve.

I looked them sincerely in the eye and said, "I hope that you ALL rot in hell."

There was a collective gasp.

At that, I got up and stalked out of the place. I had to go somewhere, or I would have killed each and every one of them.

I am normally NOT an impulsive kind of person. I work things out in my head. So I walked along the C&O towpath to Key Park trying to cool down.

I plopped myself on a bench and watched the planes drone low over Roslyn toward DCA. It was a beautiful day and my mind was churning furiously.

I don't know how other people react to personal betrayal. But I was numb. I recognized treachery when I saw it. I just didn't know how to feel about it. There was not a lot of pain. Maybe I didn't love her as much as I thought.

Nevertheless, there was an empty place in my soul now. It was like all of the certainty had drained out of me.

I was not going to shed a tear for the traitorous slut. Maybe it's because I don't consider hand-wringing over a lost love to be very manly.

She had obviously not been who I thought she was and she had made her choice. So be it.

Her leaving didn't affect the rest of my life. In fact in some ways there would be no substantive change at all.

Except the cancer of a cheating wife would be cut out of it.

I was still young and I was richer than I ever imagined.

It was fortunate that Janet and her father had so much contempt for me that they never thought to look into my financial affairs.

Bad assumption in the information age. Take Bill Gates for instance.

I knew two things for sure. First and most important, I would never trust another human being.

Against my better judgement I had unqualifiedly handed my heart to Janet and look what that had gotten me.

So cross women off the list of mistakes I will not make in the future.

Second, I had to get away from this place.

Thanks to my little algorithm I could do anything I wanted in life. And the last thing I needed was a reminder of how shitty my existence had just become.

My life was pointless anyhow. So I might as well have a little fun in the meantime.

________________________________

Sunrise

I was trudging back to the RER-B stop at the Gare de La Plaine. St Denis, has been described as Detroit with couscous. Looking around at the dilapidated buildings I could see why.

Twenty minutes earlier I had been standing at the opening of one of the third tier access tunnels at the Stade de France. From that vantage point I could view 80,000 or so of my fellow human beings.

What the French call football bores me. But then again I wasn't there to watch it.

I had taken the RER all the way out to St Denis to try to gauge where I was in my recovery. It was an attitude check so to speak.

Some people go to church. Some people sit cross legged on a mountain-top and drone "Ommmmm". I go to sports venues to try to understand my place in the great scheme of things.

I like big-picture perspective when I am thinking about where I fit in. And there is nothing better than a stadium full of people to get useful insight about your situation vis-à-vis life.

I had been tinkering with my prospects since the divorce, trying to find the right path. I know it sounds silly for a person as rich as I was to be confused about directions. But I was totally alienated from humanity in general.

In effect I had gone feral.

Betrayal will do that to you. You just don't trust anybody. It was like I was standing out in the cold watching a party going on. Without the slightest idea of how to join the happy folks inside.

I had no clue what steps I needed to take to begin acting like a normal person again. Drifting was not an option. So I knew I had to decide sooner than later. Or time would force a decision on me.

The entire spectrum of humanity was on display down below. I looked along the tiers of excited fans. Every one of those people had hopes and aspirations. And more touchingly every one of them doubtless thought that they mattered.

I looked at the backs of the heads in the countless number of rows in front of me, all I could see was a mass of hair. There was variation in color and length. But, none of the owners stood out. They were little indistinguishable pelts in a roiling sea of fur. Sort of like a pack of lemmings.

I shook my head and trudged back down the steps. Still no answers there.

Behind me the whole place erupted in cheers as somebody did something epically heroic, which would be replaced by ANOTHER epically heroic feat the following week.

I sighed. At least I had confirmed what I had come to learn. Inconsequentiality is the human condition.

I took the Métro de Paris back to the FDR stop, at the Arc de Triomphe. Then I walked back to the hotel.

I was living at the Hotel California over in the 8th Arronddisement.

Look that place up. It's real. I wondered if the French even GOT the irony of the lyrics to the old Eagles song, "You can check out anytime, but you can never leave."

My place of residence couldn't BE more fitting.

I had been living in Paris for the past four months. Ever since the divorce had become final.

I had to be anywhere but DC. So I asked for a leave of absence to get my shit together. Not surprisingly, the folks at Georgetown were more than happy to grant it to me. My teaching had really sucked for the past semester.

Meanwhile, the deceitful bitch had become prominent in the DC social scene. I guess her separation from me marked a "coming out" of sorts. The handsome couple looked nauseatingly happy and very much in love.

But the smiling pictures of Janet and Shithead, in the society pages of the Post, were really fucking up my morning bowl of Cheerios.

She looked as arrogant as he was. Janet was clearly a chameleon. She could absorb and mimic the personality of whoever she was standing next to.

Her betrayal was difficult to accept. But she was also clearly a total psychopath. I believe the shrinks call it a "dissociative disorder."

I had first seen it when she had morphed into an entirely different person during our visit to her father in New York. I had just not "gotten" it then.

Whoever was occupying her head at the time probably didn't know that the others existed. That was why she was able to utterly fool me for so long.

But, she was clearly two, or perhaps three totally separate and distinct personalities.

The Janet personality, which I suspect was her core self, was just as unpretentious and warm as the other ones were cold, calculating, cruel and arrogant.

The root cause of the various people living in her attic doubtless traced back to some shattering event in her formative years.

Daddy definitely triggered the switch. So he was no doubt the pervert in her life.

In fact I was really hoping that she was still porking dear old dad. That would certainly mess up hubby's petit dejeuner some fine morning.

Or maybe Shithead was the kind who liked to watch. He seemed like THAT kind of simpering little bitch. Maybe that was why Daddy approved of him so much.

Whatever the case, the situation with Janet had unquestionably put me off women for the rest of my life.

As I was sitting there I mumbled to myself, "I should turn in my man card". I not only couldn't get it up now. I didn't even lust after them in the abstract.

I hear you asking, "What was a totally disillusioned and cynical nerd doing in a place like Paris?"

I mean I'm not exactly sophisticated, or worldly.

The answer was "unfamiliarity."

The thing with Janet had destroyed all of my inevitabilities and I needed a reset. At least, if I ever wanted to get back in the game of life.

Up to the point where my whore of an ex-wife dropped the nuclear device over my future plans I had been on a path that was probably set in the third grade. I would do well in school. I would find a good job. I would marry a nurturing and faithful woman. And we would raise 1.86 kids and die in each other's arms

That didn't work out so well - now did it?

So, I was back to the drawing board for a do-over. And I didn't want to reconstitute myself in any setting that was even remotely related to my old life.

Hence, I consciously chose to NOT live with the Brits. It would be too familiar there. And I wanted no carry-over assumptions.

I wanted it to get as far away as possible from the life that I knew. And Paris is pretty alien place for a guy whose idea of "foreign" is a trip to Comic-Con.

But in the words of Hemingway, Paris is also a movable feast and frankly my relocation was getting the job done. In every passing day my old life was sliding further and further out of my memory. And my confidence was starting to come back.

I would have normally met Bob Cohn down the Rue de Berri at Le Fouquet's on the Champs Elysees.

We could watch the world go by over our Pastis and Le goûter. But it was raining hard. The City might be a romantic's dream some times of the year. But it was chilly, grey and miserable that particular April day.

Robert Cohn was one of a group of English speaking ex-pats who had settled into the Paris scene. It was his way of getting out of doing anything adult and responsible in the States.

We were ALL there because we were seeking something. And we moved in the same circles because of our common language.

He was another fellow who had inherited it, not made it. But he was one very tough son of a bitch nonetheless.

He was taller than me by a couple of inches, handsomer than Shithead and maybe 220 pounds. He had played linebacker at Harvard. And he was every inch the alpha-dog, smart, arrogant and slightly more entitled than Louis Quinze.

For some reason he was almost stalking me. In fact, a day wouldn't go by when he wasn't either calling, or offering to get together. I was pretty certain it was not my good-looks and charm.

He might have been attracted by the "world weariness", which I just radiated. Or he might have some inkling of who I really was.

By that stage I was filthy rich. I know I didn't act or dress the part of a multi-millionaire. I still settled for nerd chic, not a life-style out of La Dolce Vita. But all of us nerds are like that.

Money means absolutely nothing to us. So we don't keep track of it.

My stay at the California cost serious money. But it was a drop in the bucket compared to how fast it was accruing.

The most expensive thing I owned was the condo, which had almost doubled in paper value. But I had paid cash for it. So my only actual connection was through the present renter. And he was only making me richer.

As he walked in the street door of the little bar off the lobby at the California, Cohn was channeling Ralph Lauren's preppie collection. He moves like a big cat. Graceful is a word that comes to mind.

He is actually a really hard and dangerous fellow. But because he has always had money he can put on insouciant like he was born to illustrate the word.

He was sporting a very expensive black t-shirt leather jacket combo. And his thick curly brown hair was covered by a fedora, which looked like he had liberated it from Indiana Jones.

The devil in his sparkling blue eyes gets him laid pretty-much on demand. And it was glinting at every one of the women in the bar.

He came bustling up shaking the rain off him. He said, "Where were you today. I was trying to change the venue but you weren't picking up?"

I didn't want to tell him that I had been in St. Denis feeling sorry for myself. I would have sounded like the pussy that I probably am.

So instead I told him that I had spent the afternoon writing and I didn't want to be disturbed. I had been doing some pieces for various Journals as an excuse for why I was in Paris. That seemed to satisfy him.

He said, "I wanted to spend the night down at Bugsy's. Bill and Mike are meeting us there."

Those two were both former military types. They had been soldiers with the 173rd RCT based in Italy. And they had stayed in Europe after their separation. They lived together in a dilapidated little apartment in the 18th near Montmartre.

Bill Gorton was a really steady guy. Mike Campbell had PTSD issues. The "Sky Soldiers", as they call themselves, ran into some very serious shit during their time in Iraq and in Logar province in Afghanistan. Mike was dealing with the fall-out from that.

The rain had stopped as we emerged onto the Rue de Berri. Bugsy's was less than a mile down the Rue du Faubourg. And it seemed pointless to take a taxi, even if you could get one of the stuck-up Parisian cabbies to stop for us.

So we just walked the fifteen minutes that it took to get down there.

Bugsy's is a cross between an American sports bar and some French concept of 1920s Chicago. It is always packed, mainly because it has the best cheeseburgers in the universe. And it is a watering hole for Americans like Cohn and me.

The American tourists are all over at the legendary Harrys on the Rue Daunou. Given the price of a drink there and the Middle-American clientele I can't imagine the likes of Sinclair Lewis, or Hemingway, or even the Duke of Windsor would be caught drink there now.

Tables are normally in short supply but Bill and Mike had gotten there a lot earlier and were holding one for us. I knew that they had been there for a while because Mike was already hammered.

Nonetheless, as we shouldered our way through the crowd my attention was not focused on my two friends. Cohn and I were both checking out the person sitting next to Mike.

Words like breathtaking don't truly describe a woman like her. Every gorgeous female requires a little male ogling. But this one was in a separate category and it wasn't her looks that set her apart.

She radiated the exceptional, smoldering sexuality that makes you think of blazing bonfires, frantically beating jungle drums, savage dancing and fertility goddesses.