Just Off Center

Scott has been a character I have mentioned often in my blog. He has been Nina's best friend here in the valley for the better part of a year, and while I don't hang out with him, he and I are friends as well. Nina and Scott usually go for a bike ride around the neighborhood every morning. They chat like girlfriends and then go on with their day either together or apart. One of the primary, or at least more interesting for me, topics of conversation they share is Scott's confusion over his current relationship. He's been living with a woman who is a good friend of his. She's basically his sugar momma. It's her house, her stuff, her high-paying career, and usually her way. I'll try to remain objective, but that may not be possible since she doesn't like me. More on that in a minute.

So Scott's girlfriend (I won't use her name and I fucking detest pseudonyms) has just left town for a while. The cat's away, time to play. Nina woke up this morning with a sore back, not my fault I'm sorry to say. She was so sore that she had to cancel her daily bike ride with Scott. But when she called, Scott wasn't even home. Five minutes later Scott calls us at home to say that he's just now on his way home from having been out all night partying and hanging out with a friend and some girl he'd met online. He's tired, but he had a great time. He didn't specify how far things went, but you don't go to these dating websites to meet potential football watching buddies. It's an online pussy pool, end of story.

Now Scott is concerned because he says he loves his girlfriend, but yet he's still out chasing tail within an hour of dropping her off at the terminal. He wants advice. Making a good move, he's asking Nina for advice who in turn asks me for mine. My advice: shit or get off the pot. What you have is not real love. It's comfort, not passion. It's settling, not fate. The very idea that Scott believes that what he has for his girlfriend is real love, to me, is an insult to love as I know it. I love Nina. If she goes out of town, I'll drink, watch one of our pornos, and pass out in the living room. What I don't do is meet up with some random chick for coffee and hummers.

And that's another thing. Scott isn't just out tapping new ass, washing his dick in the motel sink and going home. He's dating! Meeting for coffee and talking? Having dinner later? Kissing without advancing sexually? That's fucking dating. And if I were a woman I would consider my man actually dating other women behind my back to be much much worse than getting a blowjob by some random slut. So where's the confusion here, people? You're off dating other women at the first opportunity. You're not marrying the woman you've been living with for this long. You're hiding a great big chunk of the truth about your friendship with my wife. Seems pretty clear to me by your actions that you aren't confused. It seems to me that you know exactly what the fuck you're doing, and what you're doing is trying to find a way out without losing all of the comfort you now enjoy.

I hope he works things out for the best, I really do. It's depressing to me to see people in their forties who are having these problems. I used to think that as we got older we got wiser. But seeing people two decades my senior struggling with these rudimentary dilemmas of the heart makes me wonder about a lot of things. I won't be so arrogant as to say that my love with Nina is greater than all other loves. In fact, I can't stand teens and twenty-somethings who say that age has no meaning. How the fuck would you know, you don't even have any age to speak of?

Now about her not like me. I don't think it's a complete truth. Sure, she might not like (not that I understand why), but there's more to it. I know that most women would have a big fucking problem with their man spending many hours alone with a younger, prettier, funnier woman, married or not. Most women have this terrible competition and jealousy issue going on, and I see no reason to believe that Scott's girlfriend is any different.

Well, when he finally confronted her with some more of the truth than she had previously known things didn't go so well. But in the end, when faced with the possibility of Scott leaving her because she can't accept him as he really is, she told him that she didn't mind if he hung out with Nina. It's just that she doesn't like me. Sure. I'm really believing that one. PSYCHE!!! I'm fully convinced that, while she may not care for me much (for reasons as yet unexplained), I make a really pretty target for her to divert her discomfort to. That way Scott can stay with her and at the same time be forced to limit the time he and Nina spend together if only because if I'm not invited Nina won't go either. On a long enough timeline, I believe that she would try to find a way to get closer to Nina, either through a job offer or by developing a "friendship" of her own with her. Then, she's create the background for proving that Nina is a terrible and manipulative bitch and that she is trying to steal Scott away or something. Honestly, ladies, doesn't that make more sense in a woman's logic?

What a long post. I have no doubts I've lost some readers by this paragraph. Well, this whole topic just baffles me. I hope things work out well. But most of all, I hope things work out period. It's one life only folks. And that's just not enough time to settle for "comfortable enough".