Dinner at Jack's

Chapter 1: Cut & Paste

Chapter 1: Cut & Paste

Present Day

I lost my husband because of cut and paste.

Now, that may seem like a strange happenstance to you, but it’s true. Here’s what happened.

Every morning, like many of us, I get up, brew myself a little pot of French press dark roast, and sit down at the computer to check f*******:. One of the things I always do, because I’m a giving kind of guy, is look at whose birthdays are today. Then I proceed to wish the people on my friends list a happy birthday on their special day.

But what about losing your boyfriend due to cut and paste? you ask, tapping your foot impatiently and maybe glancing down at your watch.

I’m getting there! Sheesh. Patience is in such short supply in this age of social media, instant streaming, and the like.

So to make things easier on myself, I copy my first birthday greeting and paste it on the others’ pages, with their name inserted to personalize it. I know it’s a little lazy, but it’s well-meaning…and I have a ton of f*******: friends.

So this one morning, about a week ago, I neglected to first copy my birthday greeting and simply pasted what was in the computer’s memory to my f*******: friend Ana’s page. It’s important to remember here that my husband, Ross, and I shared this computer, just like we shared everything else in our three-bedroom Craftsman house in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle.

Anyway—I’m getting there! I’m getting there!—I pasted the following onto Ana’s page:

Saw your ad and liked what I saw! Handsome, in-shape, masculine guy. Need to be on the down low, and encounters must be discreet! Already have a husband, so this would be strictly a s****l arrangement: FWB. Get back to me and let’s make this happen!

Well, the first thing I was glad about was that I did not post this on Ana’s page in lieu of a birthday greeting. The poor dear, a sixtysomething living in the northern Seattle suburb of Everett and whom I knew through my volunteer work at a local soup kitchen, might have had a coronary on the spot, and her f*******: friends, seeing the greeting, would have had something to talk about for weeks to come.

The reason the first thing I thought about was Ana and this snafu was because I was in shock. I think my brain knew immediately what had happened, but my heart wasn’t ready to accept it.

Ross? Really? I called out to him telepathically. If you weren’t happy, we could have talked. We could have come to some sort of understanding. God knows we’ve been together over six years now, so maybe there’s room to think about other options…

The little voice in my head was going a mile a minute while I sat, dumbfounded, at my desktop computer, staring uncomprehendingly at its screen, even though I had changed my message to read “Happy birthday, dear Ana, happy birthday to you!” I felt cold, numb, and wondered if this was how shock manifested.

Ross? I called out to him again. I never expected this, not after all this time. Not after all we’ve been through—the house-buying, the warm nights by the fire, even the cold nights when we argued and went to bed mad. All those things were a life, a life we shared together. A life I just assumed was going to continue until we were old men, out on the porch in our rocking chairs, nudging each other when a good-looking runner dashed by, shirtless…

I smiled, but now there was a lump in my throat and tears threatening to spill at the corners of my eyes.

It wasn’t so much the infidelity, or threat of it; it was the deceit. Wasn’t that always the way? Sure, the idea of our spouses with other people was nauseating in a way peculiar to that particular situation, no matter how logical or coolheaded our minds tried to make it. It was our hearts that ached. And our tummies…

I got up from the computer, unsure of what I should do. I walked, probably more than a little awkwardly, from the third bedroom Ross and I used as an office and headed for the front door.

Ruth, our five-year-old pug, hopped down from the couch, thinking my direction indicated it was time to go outside for a walk. I looked down at her little smashed-in face and her big and imploring brown eyes, listened to her snorting breath, and said, “Do you want to go outside too?”

Her entire backside wagged. She’d been with Ross and me since early on, coming to us when she was only eight weeks old. I reached for her leash and harness, on a hook by the door, and got her suited up. From the same set of hooks, I grabbed a yellow rain slicker and slid into it, noticing that my hands trembled.

“Jesus!” I cried. A short sob escaped me, and Ruth looked up at me with concern.

We went outside into what passed for Seattle winter. To those not in the know, that means gray skies with low-hanging, ominous-looking clouds and a constant drizzle. The temperature hovered around forty-nine.

Ruth pulled me down the front steps of our Craftsman and immediately turned left. Our street led downhill, toward Lake Union. I could see its still gray waters in the distance, along with the rusted brown spires of the old gas works down there, and thought, not for the first time, how the old works could pass for some kind of steampunk castle.

Ruth and I ambled along, she stopping now and then to read her pee-mail on various bushes and fire hydrants and me…sick with nerves.

What would I say to Ross? What should I say to him? There was a little voice in my head that advised me to kick him to the curb, to be merciless, to tell him that where there was no trust, there could be no relationship.

I felt like I didn’t know my own husband anymore. It made the cheese omelet and coffee I’d had for breakfast swirl sickeningly in my stomach. My world, which had been perfectly upright and, yes, even a little boring this morning, had jackknifed into something topsy-turvy, something surreal.

What are my options? I wondered, trudging doggedly through the rain, which was coming down harder now, the skies darkening even more to match my mood. I counted options off as Ruth and I neared the park and lakefront.

One, you could just leave him. At first blush, that option seemed impossible, if only for practical reasons. Ross and I had been together for more than half a dozen years, living together for more than four, and legally married for the last three. Gone were the days when two gay men could just say good-bye and head off in separate directions. Now I would have to contemplate actually getting a divorce—something I hadn’t thought about when they made same-s*x marriage legal. I was too busy celebrating our equality. I would have to think about where I would go. Ross was the big breadwinner at our house. He was an anesthesiologist on staff at Swedish Medical Center. He made ten times what I did as a personal chef to a vegan gay couple on Mercer Island.

As I thought of practical things, my blood ran cold. Ross owned everything. The house was in his name. His car—a BMW—and mine—a little yellow smart car—were both in his name. All the bills came to Ross Burkett.

It had always just been easier to let him handle the finances. With the imbalance in our incomes, I never thought much about money. It was always there.

Leave him, I thought, and that money will be gone. Oh sure, you’ll get some kind of settlement—at least I hope I would—after the divorce. But then you have to go through the divorce, the cost of attorney fees, and so on.

I plopped down on a concrete wall just above Lake Union’s churning waters and looked down, thinking, only very briefly, that another option would be to just fling myself into them. I laughed at myself for the melodrama.

How would Ruth get home if I ended it all? That dog was the furthest thing from self-reliant. She was cute, but she wasn’t smart.

Maybe like me? I shook my head. I bent down to scratch Ruth behind her ears, and I pondered option two.

Ignore it and it will go away. I could do this. I could simply move along and pretend I had never cut and pasted the incriminating text. I could convince myself he’d written it but never posted it. Or if he posted it, he never acted on it. Or if he acted on it, it didn’t mean a thing. He loved—loves—me.

Why upset the apple cart?

I tugged at Ruth, who was pawing at something in the muddy grass, and I knew the maneuver, from past experience, was a prelude to flipping over onto her back and rolling around in something vile. “C’mon, let’s go home,” I said to her, maybe a little too sternly.

She stopped at once and peered up at me as if to ask “Are you sure?”

As we headed back up the hill, I considered the third and most sensible option, which was simply to talk to Ross about what I’d learned. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I could shame him into contrition and a promise never to do it again. Maybe we’d decide to have an open relationship. I shook my head at this last thought, knowing it would never work.

I was a one-man kind of man. Always had been. Always would be.

As we mounted the front steps, the conflict-hating side of me had already made up my mind for me.

I would just leave things alone, pretend I’d never seen what I’d seen. It was easier that way. And maybe things would go along just as they had been—somewhat boring, easy, routine, but comfortable. My hurt and shock would scab over soon enough, leaving maybe a tiny scar in its wake.

After all, Ross was my husband. My family. No Craigslist (or whatever) dalliance could change that, could rewrite our history, our love for one another, right?

So why rock the boat?

I was to learn, in only a few hours, that my decision was not mine alone to make. And that, like it or not, I was on the precipice of a brand-new life.