Valentine's Day Revenge

I wrote this column for Valentine's Day 2000. My friend Patty, who is a very bad influence on me, insisted that I put this column up with the newer one behind it. Hope you all laugh as hard as she did.

Valentine's Day 2000

It's interesting how tragedies and misfortunes in our lives sometimes become laughable events in retrospect. I am clearly the stupidest women I know when it comes to men. In the Parade of Fools, my face is on the first three floats.

I hate Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day in 1981, on our second Valentine's Day as a married couple, my ex-mistake gave me a dozen beautiful long stem roses. I love roses and as I recall, this was an exceptionally beautiful bouquet. I set the vase on the table and sat down to look at my roses. As I filled with feelings of love for my spouse, he chose that exact moment to confess a ten month affair with a co-worker.

In the Guide to Being a Lousey Husband Handbook, Chapter 7, is called "If She Don't Ask, Don't Tell". This chapter explains the many benefits of not confessing affairs that your wife has no clue about. I don't think my spouse read that chapter. I stayed with him of course because he swore he'd never do it again and he meant it because he gave me expensive jewelry.

Fast forward four years, Valentine's Day again. I am putting the finishing touches on an 18 month project for my degree in Hospital Administration. I am exhausted to the bone. I must completely focus on this project. My spouse had been hammering at me all day to go to a fertility clinic because he wanted to start a family and he was angry that I wasn't pregnant. I suggested it might be HIM. He chose that exact moment to tell me about another affair with another co-worker oh, and by the way, the woman he told me about four years earlier had gotten pregnant and aborted. I thought I was in a Woody Allen movie. Anyway, he was sorry again and I got more expensive jewelry to prove it.

In the Guide to Being a Lousey Husband Handbook, page 87 clearly states, "When attempting to induce your wife to become pregnant, resist the urge to cite the number of other women you have gotten pregnant since your marriage began."

Since I came back to Shelter Island two years ago, I've been asked out three times, by married men. Well, I'm fat does but not desparate. I can't imagine putting another woman through what I went through.

I thought I'd share some more tips from the Guide to Being a Lousey Husband Handbook.
Don't charge flowers for your girlfriend on your wife's credit card.
Don't charge your girlfriend abortion on your wife's credit card! (How fucking stupid can he be?)
Don't ask women out in the grocery aisles, your wife could could be in the next aisle - dummy.
A strange hairbrush in the bathroom with short blond hair will be noticed by a wife with long auburn hair.
We both know you don't shower before you come home from a poker game.
Don't call out the wrong name in bed.
Since when did you start buying new clothes for yourself? Especially new underwear...
All of a sudden you're eating healthy?
Just when did you realize you should've seen the dentist years ago?
You bought yourself a gold neck chain? Right....
You saw it on Oprah? When did you start watching Oprah?
Why should we get a new unlisted number? Who are we evading?
Why can't she call a plumber? How come you have to go look at her sink?
When caught "en flagrante" don't even bother trying to talk your way out of it. Do not say,
"Hey, who ya gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"


My ex begged me not to file for divorce. He said he believed marriage was forever. I admit to being a bitch. I wanted to go for counsuling and I kept demanding he give up the girlfriend...

On December 25, 1996, he gave me a faux mink coat from Neiman Marcus to die for. Most real looking fake I have ever seen.

On December 26, 1996, I filed for divorce .... and I wore the coat when I filed....

Hey Honey, I gotcha Valentine right heah....