“Land of Confusion”
"The Last Domino"
"In Too Deep"  
"Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"  
"Throwing It All Away"
"Anything She Does"  
"In the Glow of the Night"
“Take a Look At Me Now”

Land of Confusion

It’s been three years.

Three long years since the death of my marriage. I mean it wasn’t a full-out brawl or a lawyer’s lucky day in court but it lasted long enough to make me draw into a corner of my apartment and never go out or talk to anyone outside of work.

Okay, it was hell, but one of my own doing I suppose. The property was settled evenly. Child support, well, that was a bit crazy as she was the one who had the higher paying job at the time. Our kids were sixteen and seventeen at the time so it wasn’t like they needed childcare. My budget went to cheerleader and football gear. I maybe got to see one game, because I was banned from being with five hundred feet of my ex-wife and there was one home game that she was out-of-town for and I could attend.

I did say it was not a full-out brawl because my lawyer told me to give in as the state would not be on my side and I would lose more than just money if I fought against every allegation she had.

The allegations were caricatures of the aguements we had but, you know, when the judge sees a crying woman talking about how her husband was never home at night (I was in the army at the time); how he had a temper (she usually sprung things on me with a screeching tone of voice, never a ‘hey, we should talk about such and such’) and the crown jewel: he threw things at me. (That would be a pillow, a feather pillow, from the second floor because she demanded a pillow as she wasn’t going to sleep in the same bed as me).

So, maybe it wasn’t drawn-out, it was kind of like the Tyson vs Spinks fight and maybe the Buster Douglas one too. I didn’t get my ear chewed-off but I did get my butt handed to me before the gavel went down.

I found myself living in an apartment on the lower side of town. This was at a place where you dared not to bring even a mid-range priced item inside in fear that it was be stolen. I had a mini-fridge, a hot plate, access to a laundromat across the street, my kindle and my iPhone—both which I took everywhere, in case my neighbors decided to throw an impromptu open house party while I wasn’t home.

The first month living there was Hell’s hemorrhoids. Not because of the onslaught of starving roaches or the next door neighbors who had enough needle marks in arms to...well, I can’t think of a great analogy for them. Let’s just say that I was forty-two at the time but felt liked a scared eight year-old. However, the emotion I felt the most was sadness that my kids couldn’t come see me for the first year, not that I would have them stay there but our visits were heavily monitored by a social worker who, while her face beamed with happy rays of sunshine her pen and clipboard said something otherwise as she would make little notes here and there,

My kids hated it as much as I did and I tried to assure them that one day it would get better. They would be old enough to make their own decisions and we could all break away from the court-ordered madness.

“Have you been dating, dad?”
“No, Ayle, I haven’t,” I replied as I continued to peruse over the menu at the local “Texas Roadhouse”.
“Why not?” Ryan asked.
“Not enough time.”
“You should try Tinder,” Ryan said and then took a bite of a honey-butter covered roll.
“No, thank you,” I replied as I avoided eye contact with them.

This was the second week in a row that both of my children had brought up my lackluster dating life. I mean, I could have told them that I had a whirlwind, online romance with a woman half my age from Jackson, Tennessee who had a lot of to offer, but I would have to concede that I was out of her league, as I was almost twice her age and my apartment, which was an entomologist’s dream come true, was not something to bring home a potential romantic match. Unless she was blind or shared a similar past, which would either create a stronger bond between us or show that we both came from miserable pasts and, perhaps beyond some great moments—minutes—of sex would nothing could change that.,