THREEPEAT Part 3

The conclusion to our tale and the possibility of avoiding Threepeat!
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I once had a freelance job in this little office downtown. I arrived on the first day. The only one there that day was the secretary: dark-haired, tall, lithe with near perfect skin, and she had the most amazing body. The immediate and excruciatingly palpable pheremonic attraction between us was unlike anything I had ever experienced, before or since. Working alongside each other on some meaningless word processing problem was nearly orgasmic.

It flooded over us in waves, and at lunchtime I had to decide what to do. I staggered outside for a long walk. I was a married man. I knew where such lust could take you.

Even though I needed the work, I simply went home and never came back.

How do I know it was not just me? Over a year later I was working in a dive print shop and she walked in the door. She took a step back and said "It's you."

"Yeah, It's me. Hi". She never came back in, though she worked three blocks away.

So I owned it and guarded against it. I stopped any attempts to blame Judith for my own actions. It did not matter what she had done. But Judith did not own her own contributions. So now she sleeps alone and blames her husband for all her unhappiness, just as she did me all those years ago.

Which brings me to Denise.

She has such a tightly-knit alibi, expert rationale, and formidable internal reverb, that she is doomed to repeat.

She'll marry a boyfriend, who will finally get a healthy does of sex with her, for a few weeks. Then one morning he will wake up and touch her and she will turn on him quickly and spit acid into his eyes and as the camera pans back we will only hear the screams coming as intolerable and sustained emotional and psychic violence takes place.

She won't kill him outright...just play with him like a cat does a doomed mouse. It will not end until she has eaten his heart out with a dull spoon over several years time. After all the heart is gone, will come the rationale and plan for getting rid of the empty shell he has become.

I know. I was such a shell.

Denise is as doomed to repeat as Judith was.

But I am too, if I am not very, very careful and am not rescued from myself.

That is key number two: hope in grace and rescue from our own self-made traps.

It is not enough to know that I AM the essential problem. That helps, but it is not enough to repeal threepeat. Not for me at least.

Only hope in the irrational love and mercy of God can save me from myself. As Bono says "Grace travels outside of Karma". That Grace came come from some pretty unusual places, so keep your eyes open.


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Well I drove off to meet Robert. I love Robert. He is honest and always has something to share. That and he buys.

We got coffee and sat down.

At the same time Denise was driving toward school with Cameron. She had just dropped off Matisse and she was still fuming quietly about my living two doors down and my audacity in questioning her the night before. It offends her that I might show up at any time of the morning in the neighborhood and hug our children.

"He's a Loser," she was thinking as she pulled into the grocery store parking lot.

"Hey look Mom!! Dad's here!"

"No he isn't" she said.

"Look a green truck with a shark on the back! That's Dad!"

"Shit" thought Denise.

Whither can she go to escape my presence? When she arises to take the kids to school, I am there. When she goes for coffee, lo I am there. If she wishes to have her boyfriend over, yea, I am there just 100 feet away on the rare occasion that they are quietly humping.

Cameron came through the door with a huge smile and gave me a big hug. Denise passed by with that fake smile that says "I have to smile but I hate that you exist." She did not come over to be introduced to Robert.

"Bye Den" I said as she exited.

Robert looked at me. I looked at Robert.

He grinned. "Seemed kinda uptight," he said.

"Yeah, you could say that. I think she has some "anger issues". Remember that scene in Jurassic Park with the fat guy...Newman?"

"Oh yeah, sure, kinda."

"It's kinda like that."

"What do you mean?"

"Aw nothin."

"What about the new guy?"

"He has no idea. He won't until it's too late," I said. "Doomed to repeat."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, if you blame the other person and make them the sole issue, you are doomed to repeat your own huge mistakes."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm a major two-time offender on the verge of a threepeat. Three strikes you're out in this state," I said.

We talked about it for a while. I explained that if I blame Denise and her anger solely, that I will not see my own huge culpability in the demise of our marriage. If I don't see it all, and work on it all, I will first choose a person with the same issues (because it is what I know), then repeat all my same mistakes until it ends badly.

"Then I'll do it again," I said. "And again, and again, and end up alone with seven sets of children instead of only two."

"Hey, that's pretty good stuff Maugham," Robert says. "You should write a book."

"Yeah. No one I know knows more about failure with women than I do. Maybe they will make it into a movie, like High Fidelity."

"That'd be good, especially the scene with "the Dinosaur" and the new boyfriend. How big was it?" he asks.

"Um, it was like five feet tall, five feet deep and maybe 25 feet long."

He leaned back and laughed aloud. "That's a big fucking dinosaur."

"It was damned hot too," I say shaking my head. "But then, nobody gets away with anything."

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