When I was 19, my spent-every-moment-of-our lives-together boyfriend of 2 years moved to another continent. He called me every few days (NOT cheap in those pre-Skype days!) and we were making plans for me to transfer over there. Then I got tonsillitis for the first time in my life, misdiagnosed by student health, spent three weeks in bed feeling terrible… Just at the end of this one of my good friends sneaks into my res at 2am and tells me there’s someone I have to meet. I get bundled into the car, driven to a local club, and there I meet my boyfriend’s OTHER girlfriend, the one he’d been having sex with for the last 9 months in the hours he’d told me he was at his part-time job. Who didn’t know about me and was a very lovely person — we became pretty good friends until I moved and we lost touch.

So I was a little upset, invited her over to my res the next night, and waited for him to call as promised. Then got her to answer the phone.

I still remember the exact tone of his voice as he said “oh. shit.”

I’d love to see a film version that dwells on Valentine’s and Haydee’s pieces of the narrative: lesbian crossdressers, drug addiction and trafficking, Europeans committing war crimes in the Middle East, etc. And a lot of deeply feminist themes.

So bored of swashbuckling b.s. when the novel is so rich and textured.

I was driving my mother back from a visit to my sister – a four-hour drive. We were about halfway home and doing about 70 mph, which was just a wee bit over the speed limit of 65. A red Mustang blew past us – the guy had to be doing at least 80 and probably more.

My mother got very annoyed. “That just burns me up. I can’t believe it. How come he gets away with that?” I said, trying to calm her down, “don’t worry, he’ll get his, one day. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

Well, not more than 15 minutes later, there was the little red Mustang, parked on the side of the highway, state trooper vehicle parked behind, lights flashing. Well, my mother cackled like you wouldn’t believe. Given that she’d been battling against the cancer that was slowly killing her for several years by then, that was the first time I heard that distinctive sound in a long time. That started ME laughing, and periodically on the ride home, one or the other of us would just start giggling. I even loved hearing her tell other people the story.

@Tooziss: When I worked for the boss from hell, and she made me go out and buy her coffee every morning and never paid me back…I may have done a little spit action myself.

Last year I met and fell madly in love with a local guy who worked with me at my field site in Nicaragua (he who saved my dissertation, in the story which I told in a thread last month). Even though I knew it was way too soon, we got married after 6 months because I was going back to the States and wanted him to come with me. I have enough experience with LDRs to know they don’t work, and as tourist visas are basically impossible to come by for Nicaraguans, it was get married or goodbye.

So you know how the story goes. We get married, and almost overnight he morphs from sweet, kind, loving, non-drinking, funny man to arrogant, lying, heavy-drinking, machista jerk who wanted nothing from me other than my money. He gave every indication of cheating on me (though I could never prove it), then he sold a computer I’d loaned him to get involved in some sketchy gang business – and, of course, lies to me about it. Needless to say, he was kicked straight to the curb. Then he even lied about whether or not we were legally married until, on a hunch, I confronted him 6 weeks later!

It was rough on me, of course, but he had it so much worse. He was too embarrassed to tell anyone, so he spent the next 2-3 months lying to all his friends and family (with whom he lived) about us still being together. And for the next 6 months he couldn’t find any work at all and literally didn’t have a penny to his name, and when he did finally find a job it paid $1/day. Even in Nicaragua that’s nothing. Whereas he could have been living comfortably with me here in the States. He also nearly went to jail (and trust me, Nicaraguan prison is not a place you want to be!). He went from being Mr. Popularity and Riches (our marriage gave him high status in his poor town) to being amongst the poorest in town.

He got himself into this mess, but it serves him right! I do feel bad, though, for his daughter – who is in a bad situation and who we were going to try to adopt. Thanks to his arrogance and stupidity, she’s still stuck there. I still worry about her sometimes.