The Surprising End of My Innocence

Some­times “the end is in sight” at the outset.

So it was when he struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with me at work. Six years older than me, he was dif­fer­ent from any man I had known up to that point in my life. He was hand­some, intrigu­ing, charis­matic … and, as my cowork­ers had to point out, flirt­ing with me. He was some­one I could never “take home to mother”. Besides, I was still pin­ing for some­one else.

We inter­acted casu­ally for a few weeks, our con­ver­sa­tions grad­u­ally becom­ing per­sonal and reveal­ing. I under­stood that he was recently divorced and had a three-year-old son.

I was naive, inex­pe­ri­enced and obliv­i­ous so a friend explained that he was pur­su­ing me. I had never before been “chased”.

Even­tu­ally, my defenses worn down, I agreed to a date and the rela­tion­ship pro­gressed. I knew that it would, of neces­sity, end, but I didn’t know when so I told myself that, in the mean­time, I could just relax and enjoy spend­ing some time with him. We never talked about long-term commitment.

Once, we both had a day off work, so we decided to spend it at Dis­ney­land. At that point, I believed he was stay­ing with his sis­ter while look­ing for a new apart­ment. We stopped by her place so he could change his clothes and, since it was a week­day, his sis­ter was at work and we were alone there.

We had such fun at the park that day. Although I had been to Dis­ney­land count­less times, I had never spent time there with a boyfriend so it was an enchant­ing expe­ri­ence. We snug­gled even closer on the Mat­ter­horn than is required by the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the bob­sleds. He reached out and splashed water on me every chance he could until I was soak­ing wet which was fine because it was a really hot day — lit­er­ally and metaphorically.

Sum­mer waned and fall brought changes to our lives. I resumed my stud­ies, he moved in with another sis­ter who had a room since it was cheaper than rent­ing his own place. We saw each other less fre­quently and there still was no talk of long-term com­mit­ment which was nei­ther sur­pris­ing nor objectionable.

One evening, I agreed to give him a ride to work. I no longer remem­ber his expla­na­tion for not hav­ing his car that night.

What I do remem­ber vividly is this: I went into the build­ing with him for a few min­utes to chat with our cowork­ers and was walk­ing back to my car when I saw a strange woman approach­ing me. As she drew closer, I smiled and kept walk­ing. I had never seen her in my life and had no idea that she had fol­lowed us there — and waited for me to exit the build­ing so that she could con­front me.

I was almost to my car when she stepped toward me. “Are you the woman who has been mess­ing around with my husband?”

Since I would never have an affair with a mar­ried man, I laughed.

“Sorry, but I think you’ve got me con­fused with some­one else,” I said casu­ally, as I got into my car.

“I don’t think so,” was her reply. “Aren’t you Janie?”

Now she had my undi­vided attention.

“How on earth do you know my name?” I asked her, my brain rac­ing to deflect the inescapable – and ugly – con­clu­sions I was draw­ing from this newly-acquired evidence.

I knew, as I looked into that strange woman’s eyes, that the end of my rela­tion­ship — the end that I always knew was inevitable — had come. But via a cir­cuitous route I never, because of my naivete, could have imagined.

As we talked, I learned that the man I had been see­ing was not, in fact, divorced at all. He had lied to me — which came as no sur­prise to her. I was hor­ri­fied to real­ize that I was talk­ing with the woman who was still very much, unfor­tu­nately for her, the wife of the man I had been see­ing for a few months.

I had unwit­tingly been “the other woman.”

We began com­par­ing notes — dates, times, loca­tions. She emphat­i­cally insisted that I had been with him to their apart­ment on a week­day while she was at work and their son was in day­care. She swore that a neigh­bor saw us and described me to her.

When she told me the address, the extent of his decep­tion rein­forced that the end had arrived: The apart­ment he had described as his sister’s was actu­ally the apart­ment where he lived with his wife and child. That’s why his cloth­ing was there.

That charm­ing, affec­tion­ate man, fully revealed as utterly lack­ing honor or integrity, had spent the day at Dis­ney­land with me — while his wife was work­ing and his son was in day­care – after tak­ing me into their home.

Shock and dis­ap­point­ment quickly gave way to revul­sion — and rage. I had been duped in a most skill­ful and rep­re­hen­si­ble man­ner. It was small com­fort to learn that I was not the first. Unfor­tu­nately for her, I would not be the last.

We decided to con­front him, so we walked into the build­ing together. When he saw us stand­ing side by side, arms crossed, eyes blaz­ing with anger, he stopped dead in his tracks.

He didn’t say a word. He just stared at us for a moment before putting his hands up the way a sus­pect does when cor­nered by the arrest­ing offi­cer. He shook his head repeat­edly as he slowly backed up a few steps and then, still shak­ing his head, turned and walked out of the room.

After apol­o­giz­ing to his wife one last time, I got into my car and drove out of that park­ing lot — and into my future, for­ever changed. Wiser, more cau­tious, less will­ing to trust any­one.

That night marked the end of that brief relationship.

It also, in many tan­gi­ble ways, marked the end of my innocence.

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