Kate and Me

I thought she didn’t want a relationship so I didn’t bother her much and when I did it was only for sex. It made me feel like shit. The constant rejections that is. She told me about her boyfriends and how she was trying to get serious with them. There was always a new love of her life she pretended to gush over while she lived at another guy’s house and drove his car. Which guy was in or out didn’t concern me anymore and I stopped trying to untangle her lies. Kate had a hard enough time trying to keep the stories straight herself without me giving her shit. Despite myself I noticed things like how she’d be driving some guys truck while she told me about her new boyfriend but I never said anything. Still, she tried to keep her stories congruent if only for herself. They always depended on how the previous boyfriend treated her like shit or ignored her – that was why she didn’t talk about him but he just called and they made up so that’s why he was back in the picture.

The stories were stupid because I knew the stories were always about her being shitty to me but this time she got to be the victim. But I listened to Kate and pretended to believe her. The whole situation frustrated me because when she was fake serious with some guy all we could do was dry hump without the humping.

What she was trying to do was to make me think better of her, like she was able to be with one man now. I knew she hadn’t changed and I didn’t care. The lies still bothered me a little but after so many they stopped affecting me and I just let her go on. Roping the wind, right? Besides, I just got caught up in some big lies myself so I suppose there is some sympathy in this whole mess.

It used to be that I would try to catch her in her lies. I’d let her go on telling me that she worked at Hooter’s or was having a hard time at class when I knew she didn’t work or go to school. It used to be that I’d let Kate go on without telling her so I’d at least know she was lying. Maybe, I didn’t want the confrontation or because the sex was phenomenal but I told myself it was for control so that she wouldn’t sneak one by me.

There were other things that I wasn’t sure about that weren’t quite scrabble, like how she was in the army and lived with her gay roommate. Kate talked the Army talk and had the costume and big headed caricature pictures of herself in fatigues hanging in her apartment. Whether or not that was true didn’t affect me at all. But I kept pretending to date her even though I was 90% positive she lived with her boyfriend who didn’t, I was sure, share a room with a gay lover named Jim. When she slept over he called constantly while she got more nervous and acted more guiltily.

The one time he and I actually were in the same room together was brief hello before I was ushered out the door. Her and I passed out after an afternoon delight and woke to him knocking on the bedroom door. She told me to say I was just giving her a massage and went out to talk to him while I changed. When I came out stinking of sex he didn’t say much besides a quick greeting while giving me a cold, limp, embarrassing handshake. That time I pressed her about Matt on the way home. I told her I didn’t care and laughed as I asked her if he was her boyfriend. She denied it. Not up and down but she denied it while concerning herself with the safety of the road instead of looking at me.

When her ex-husband called me a few weeks later to tell me her whole story I found out that she left him for this other guy four months earlier. Todd lived in another state and still kept tabs on her while waiting for her to sign the divorce papers. It felt like I was busted so I let him tell me that she dropped out of the Army during Basic but that the cancer and evil father were real. During their two year marriage she cheated on him 17 times usually moving his clothes into another room or bathroom to make the roommate story more believable. His story was meant to make her look bad but while I didn’t know 100% of the details, I knew enough to get a general picture. To me Todd was the sad one since he let her cheat on him that many times. And he was still concerned about who was up in her. It wasn’t that he loved her, like he claimed. It was the same thing that kept me coming back, the body numbingly amazing sex.

I knew she had a boyfriend and was a pathological liar even though she assured me that neither was true when I asked those questions point blank on multiple occasions. That didn’t mean I wanted to screw up what I had going for me.

But since she had been spending a lot of time out of state lately and because this pathetic bastard sounded like he desperately needed closure I let the whole thing blow up. It was two months before I heard from her again and six before we got physical. We cheated on her “gay” roommate Matt a few times before I moved away. The sex was great.

When I found out almost a year later that Kate moved to the same city I tried to get something going again but she told me she was dating and was getting serious about this guy. We only dry humped without the humping when we met. It felt like shit to be rejected by her because I knew she was seeing more than one guy as she fumbled with stories.

After a month of this bullshit I changed tactics and sent her an email telling her how beautiful she was and how much I missed her. They weren’t lies but I stopped playing it cool since that was getting me absolutely nowhere. I got a call the next day from her to help her move, so I went to say hi and to stare at her fantastic body. The following day she called me and told me she hadn’t wanted to get physical with me again because I was getting clingy and serious. Kate said she wasn’t interested in dating and didn’t want me to get weird.

I tried not to notice the lie but it was obvious that she was using her boyfriend’s truck to move her stuff into his place – I wasn’t allowed to go with her to unload. Of course I let it slide.

But she told me that the way I was acting the day before wasn’t so clingy and that she was up for a “no-strings” thing if I wouldn’t get weird on her. I told her I was cool with it as long as I didn’t have to hear about the other guys.