Break Ups- Part 2

I am writing this post on the assumption… or hope… that the person I am writing about will never read it.

I know she does not surf the net, certainly not on a Saturday night. She’d be out partying on a weekend and sleeping it off on Sunday.
I know she would not seek a blog such as mine.

I am also certain she just as soon forgot me, as I believed pissed her off for a reason I do not know.

All I do know is I hadn't seen her for seven years and today; her true story is worth the telling.

Everything I write is true and in public record because her incident, or case, involved an arrest complete with handcuffs, a police report, an assault record, a prosecutor, plea bargain, hearings, trials and more. All backed by paper trails and a whole lot of money because she went for an expensive Private Criminal Attorney instead of an over-worked freebie Public Defender.

She was 35 when we met the in sushi bar. I was a decade older.
She was there for dinner, as  was I. She drank beer, I sake.

We both ordered unusual foods, which links sushi eaters. Only the pros go for the unique stuff.
She struck up a conversation, I engaged.

She was single. Though in a relationship with a guy who didn’t like sushi as much as she did.  I was newly married.

She had full custody of two pre-teen sons who saw their father once or twice a year, by the father’s choice. He paid not a cent in child support. Also by his choice.  He had money, a girlfriend. I checked around, he had assets.

When she found out I was a Private Investigator… and the sake sank in... I became loquacious, giving up all my child support tools, tips, techniques free of charge as she took notes.

It felt good to help. And I found her engaging and interesting. She had a great job, a sharp mind. She came from an excellent family, well bred and wealthy (not that the two go together).
Suffice to say she was no trailer trash, more the BMW, Botox and Nordstrom type.

She lived in an upscale new condo. She was a top sales rep for reputable national company. Attractive, vibrant, effervescent and very funny with a contagious laugh, she was full of stories, humor -- one of those people who want both a friend and an audience. I was happy to comply and be both.

Some times people give up their secrets instantly. Other times the process is gradual and takes a while. I don't recall how long it was before she told me the story of her boyfriend.
I know she was reluctant, knowing I was a P.I. and she was afraid I would judge her. Eventually she fessed up.

Ultimately, she had this domestic situation... a  Break Up that followed a series of smaller eruptions that one night turned into a volcano.


The Eruption


She was dating a man 7 years younger than herself. He was unemployed. He was pencil thin, much smaller than her. She was on the heavier side, had struggled with weight all her life. Said she needed to lose “like 50 pounds”.

I met him in the sushi bar with her one night earlier at the very beginning of our friendship. She introduced him as friend.

I found him odd, not engaging and unattractive. He was also unemployed, lived with his mother, didn't have a car. Yet he emotionally sucker-punched my friend, went right to her heart and won it. Within weeks, he moved into her condo and bed.

Her teenage sons didn't like him either. But like most kids from broken families that try to make new ones, the kids don’t have a choice. Which, in my opinion, is a really sad thing.

So one night, she, my friend… and he, said boyfriend… they both got drunk at home. The boys were home that night too. They were witnesses to the whole event as the group prepared for a barbecue.

My friend told me she’d been sparring with her boyfriend all day -- about his not working, his spending, his playing on the video games and not cleaning house while she worked all day.
He was yelling at her boys. Told them they were good for nothing.

And just that very morning, he asked her to co-sign a car loan for him and she agreed. Now she wanted to back out of that agreement.

To an investigator, you learn these are the kinds of conversations couples have that go nuclear.

According to her story, after all this conflict transpired, and the family was getting ready for dinner, my friend’s boyfriend was in the downstairs bathroom.

There was an empty bathroom upstairs.

My friend decided he was spending too long in the downstairs bathroom and she was too tired to walk to the upstairs one.  She banged on the door, said hurry up. He told her to hold on, he'd be out in a minute

Maybe it was the fourth beer and third tequila shooter she had that night; or maybe she was just nuts to begin with and I hadn't seen it yet. But for whatever reason, she grew angrier and angrier, banging at that door harder, screaming louder, demanding he open it.
“It’s my house” she screamed, “Get out now.”

He kept saying "Wait one more second."
The boys said, “Use the upstairs bathroom. Mom”
Neither option appealed to her.

Instead, she proceeded into the kitchen, got a clear mixing bowl, carried it to their back porch, lifted up her sundress, squatted down, pulled her panties out of the way and peed in the glass see through mixing bowl.

Her sons stood immobile, aghast and speechless.

Meantime, the boyfriend exited the bathroom, then kitchen, came out the back door and my friend on the back patio and said:
“Sorry I took so long, it’s all yours now.”

“So is this!” she said as she took the mixing bowl of green pee and threw it her soon to be ex-boyfriend’s face in front of her two sons.

When she told me that story, I put my chopsticks down and stared for her. Too much was running through my head to process.

"You’re judging me," she said defensively.

"No, just trying to understand" I replied.” It was a bit extreme.”

"Well he really pissed me off,” she said.

"Literally." I replied.

Then we both started laughing so hard we couldn't stop until I asked the question every investigator asks countless times.

"Then what happened?"

The rest wasn’t funny.

She said her boyfriend, with her pee all over his face, in his hair eyes and mouth, spit at the ground, then looked at her in abject horror. He said absolutely nothing, tuned on his heels, walked into the kitchen and called 911. He did not wash himself off until the police arrived.

The police, came she was arrested, handcuffed, hauled off in the car cop to a county jail that’s no Hilton.

Since she was totally intoxicated and argumentative (she slapped the police officer which added an additional charge)… and it was a holiday… she'd be spending the next couple of days in jail.

The first night she said she'd been shackled to the wall in her cell. She said recovering from a hangover in jail this way is not fun.

Between the jail, the bail, the legal costs, the emotional costs, the effects on her son, the criminal records (felony, assault) among everything else, that one little fight about the bathroom escalated beyond imaginable proportions.

Break Ups are why the criminal and civil justice system are so busy these days.

It took several months to physically extricate her from this guy, because she felt so guilty she wanted to apologize. Oddly, she also wanted him back.

She started stalking him. He got a restraining order.
I could only stop her when I, on my own, took photos with him with another woman he just moved in with. That seemed to take all the winds of anger out of my friend’s sails.

Some Break Ups need not happen.
Some have to.
It would be great if we could all part ways civilly, with a handshake or hug, with a "Have a good life.” But instead, we humans have a way of flinging the fluids of fury in each others' faces.
And that never turns out well.

If you are going through a Break Up, divorce, separation…. just know, there is always a life after that.
And that life will be a better one, and an easier one for all involved, especially the kids, without a criminal record.

Key is to split apart amiably, instead of shattering to pieces.