The truth comes out

There's a certain amount of triumph in receiving the drunken phone call rather than being the one to make the drunken phone call. He called last night at midnight, drunk and feeling sorry for himself. The self-involved bastard. I sat on J&K's stoop and listened to him talk about how screwed up he is, how he doesn't know himself anymore, how he doesn't know what he wants or why he did what he did. He admitted for the first time that he'd had sex with G--he'd denied it to my face over and over again since June, denied it to the couples counselor, lied to all his friends about how far things had gone. But even though he said they had just messed around, I knew at some level that more had happened. In the two weeks before we called off the wedding, I started closing the bathroom door when I took a shower, and wearing my towel into the bedroom afterward because I didn't want him to see me naked. I couldn't fall asleep in bed with him so every night I'd fall asleep on the couch and go into the bedroom at like 3am. The intimacy was gone. I felt like I was living with a stranger.

Then I asked him whether he'd worn a condom with her. And he said NO. No apology, no nothing. Just, "What can I say? I wasn't thinking straight." If I hadn't asked, he never would have told me. The coward.

It's one thing to break my heart and dismantle my life. It's another thing entirely to mess with my health.

I don't know what to say. The only thing I can do is get my ass to the OB/GYN as soon as I get back to Boston and tell them to test me for every STD known to man. I know where Glenn's been but god knows how many other guys the trollop has fucked without protection.

What kills me is that Glenn and I had sex--really great sex--TWICE after he slept with G. And he never said a word. Tonight on the phone, he tried to make me feel better by telling me how much better in bed I was than G. "I was so attracted to her and then you just blew her away," he said. "When I was with her, I kept thinking that it was no better than anything I'd had before. But you're on a completely different plane."

Thanks, Glenn. That makes everything ALL BETTER.

He wants to see me when I go to San Diego for L's wedding. As if.

Stepping up

NPR had one of its reporters profile the Santa Monica Stairs. Poor guy, it sounded like he almost had a coronary. He's right on the money about the meditative aspects of the stairs, though. Once you get past the searing pain and the urge to hurl, the zone is a very calm place to be. Just don't get in anyone's way. Check out the photo essay that goes along with his report.

A random collection of stairs links follows. If I were still living in LA, I'd start a stairs blog and save whoever reads this one from having to read any more of my obsessive ravings on the topic.

A picture of the stairs looking down.

An article on the stairs and the Manhattan Beach sand dune.

The Travel Channel takes a short look.

FunkyFresh jumps on the bandwagon.