It's Kind of a Long Story... about MY SISTER EXES (Part VI)
Post-Its don't lie. And Drama Goblin merch.
In the past couple of months, I’ve been practically EXPLODING with creativity.
Making resin charms (my new hobby/obsession)
Crafting and decorating for the holidays
Baking and cooking
And hardly watching any TV or even reading. I’m in creator mode rather than consumer mode in a way I never have in my life. My days are flying and I’m energized and focused.
I was talking about it with a friend, and I think after so long being displaced and feeling unskilled, unmotivated, and unsure, this bubble I’m in is allowing me to load up my emotional reserves with things I do well and am proud of.
Including this Substack. I am damn proud of myself for starting it and maintaining the schedule. The responses and feedback have been so soul-filling and encouraging. I will never be able to fully express how grateful I am for every kind word and comment.
And if you read to the end, I have a little thank-you gift for you.
I’m so glad you’re here,
Lara
Sleepless in Seattle
Short story:
Monika and Cris dated for a couple of years in their late teens/early twenties, until he abruptly dumped her for a mysterious “fiance” in Seattle. Twenty-seven years later, he showed back up for one more act of fuckery.
Long story:
One of my favorite opening scenes of a book is from Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good. The lead character says,
“I’m not the kind of woman who sits in a car park on the phone telling her husband she wants a divorce. Yet here I am in a car park on the phone telling my husband I want a divorce. It’s like saying Lee Harvey Oswald isn’t the kind of person who kills presidents. Sometimes you’re judged on your one-offs.”
I am not the kind of person who sends weird Facebook messages to strangers in the middle of the night, and yet, in late July at 1:00 am, I sent this:
Hello Monika,
I know it's the middle of the night and this is out of the blue, I think we each have a history with Cris, and I'm trying to piece some things together.
He and I are absolutely no longer together. I haven't seen him in over a year. He's blocked on my phone and social. But I have recently connected with another former girlfriend of his (very randomly at a Goth festival of all things) and have learned about lies he told me that have me trying to puzzle the pieces together of what he told me in the five years we dated on and off.
If you're open to answering a few questions, I'd be grateful. If you would prefer not to dredge it up, I absolutely understand and respect your need for peace.
I hope this message isn't too upsetting, and that you are well and happy.
She responded a few days later, and we talked a few days after that.
I’ve spent the last two years telling the complicated story of the tree falling and have become an expert at editing for time and the level of interest/empathy of my audience. So when I called, I asked her how much time she had.
“About 20-30 minutes.”
We were on the phone for three hours.
Cris and Monika met in the late 80s/early 90s and dated for about two years. They met while dancing at a nightclub. He’d told me he’d been a club kid as a teen and young adult. He said he’d once auditioned for American Bandstand (or maybe the local LA dance show MV3?) but decided not to do it. When we first started dating I was super excited about that. A dancer! I love to dance and would love to date a man who can and will dance with me!
It turned out, he was too self-conscious to dance unless he was drunk. He only danced with me in public twice, and once at home on a night that started as a right-out-of-a-rom-com living room dance party with us each choosing videos back and forth, and ended with him drinking himself into obnoxiousness.
He and Monika had a lot of fun together, but her friends didn’t like him. They called him Swivel Hips.
“I heard that nickname!” I said
“I’ll bet he thought it was a compliment,” she said
“I think he did!”
“It wasn’t.”
Monika was a student at Long Beach State, and Cris was working in restaurants. Further corroborating the Cal story was untrue. She said they had a lot of fun together, but he never had any money and she paid for a lot.
During the last year of their relationship, he went to Seattle every month or so. She thought it was strange, but they weren’t living together, they were young, and she had other people and priorities in her life.
Then one day he tells her he’s moving to Seattle, “But we can visit.”
She thought it was weird and out of the blue, but thought, “Ok, this is what it is.”
She did visit him a short time after he moved. She thought there was something off about his apartment, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
After she got back home, he called her in tears and said, “I love you, but I moved to Seattle to live with my fiance.”
What. The. Hell?
She hung up and didn’t hear from him again for 27 years.
Just before I spoke to Monika, Susan had found Cris and B’s wedding website on The Knot. She sent it to me in a, “Can you believe it?” kind of way, but I’m here to acknowledge it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Seeing him in a photo with a woman who wasn’t me, or one of his exes was… a lot. Of course, I didn’t want to be her. I didn’t want to be the woman walking toward him down the aisle, but at one point I did and that feeling was down in me, however faintly.
There wasn’t much posted on the site. Three photos. One of them in Paris at a table with him clutching her newly be-ringed hand and grinning like the cat who swallowed the canary. One I can’t remember, and one of them on vacation in Scotland.
Yes, the trip to Scotland he claimed he was on with “Swiss.” The one he didn’t want to show me pictures of. The one he went on instead of going to Paris because “How could I go to Paris with anyone but you?” The one he had just come back from when he took me for a drive in his new BMW and said, “Who else would I want to take for a ride for the first time but you?” The one he brought me back a gift from. I wonder who he told her it was for?
The only other information on the site was the date, location (Sonoma), and a “gift registry” with one item: donations for the wedding. Not the honeymoon, the wedding.
The ask read something like, “It’s been a big year. First the engagement. Then the wedding, and caring for my ill father. Any amount you contribute will help us create a memorable day for family and friends.”
A grown-ass 55-year-old man using his sick father for sympathy and a play for wedding money. Nothing about how they met, how much in love they were. Just a few photos and a cash grab.
Just a few months before he had been bragging to me about buying a 2nd car and 2nd house. And now he’s got his hand out to meet a $5,000 wedding fund goal.
Susan and I were mortified for B and wondered if she even knew about it.
Seeing the photos made this all the more real. B was a real person planning a real wedding. This was really happening.
On September 9th.
While of course, I was O-V-E-R Cris, I knew I would need to be surrounded by support on his wedding day to keep myself from obsessing over the injustice of it all. That this lying, cheater was achieving all of his self-stated goals. And not a Vegas or court house wedding, or a ceremony with just the two of them in Thailand like he had with K. But a real wine country white dress-and-tux wedding.
He had told me he had never been to a wedding. Susan told me he was specifically not invited to several of his supposed good friend’s weddings because they didn’t want him anywhere near an open bar.
My solution was to throw my annual Caftans & Casseroles party on that night. If you’ve read The Jon Hamm story (which you should!) you know that I’ve been throwing a C&C party for years inspired by one Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks hosts with her girlfriends every year.
Susan was quick to agree to come. “It’s especially good because he had a *thing* about caftans.”
“Yes! I know! As a joke, I once opened the door in mine, and he wouldn't come inside until I took it off.”
She said his mother had a caftan-like top that he hated.
Make of that what you will.
In May 2017, the same month Cris was terrorizing Crystal in Las Vegas, Monika out of the blue, and after 27 years, got a call from a mutual friend saying Cris was asking about her, and could she give him her number.
Monika thought, “Sure. Why not? It’s been a long time and maybe he’s trying to make amends.”
She’d gone on from Long Beach State to earn a master’s from Pepperdine and had a successful career in entertainment marketing and brand management for companies like Pokemon and Hasbro. But in May 2017, was kind of at a low/transitional point.
Her father had died after a long illness. She was living in Seattle and had been trying to switch gears and start a real estate career.
Cris asked if he could visit her. She said, “Yes, you can’t stay with me, but sure, we can meet up.”
He came to Seattle, and they went for a hike and had lunch.
He told her he worked as a chef at a country club and owned a home in Sonoma, had married a Thai woman “but it didn’t work out” and oddly, made a point of saying he had never been to culinary school. I can’t imagine what his angle was with that.
Over lunch she was telling him about her life and that it wasn’t where she wanted it to be. He asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She said there was a big fundraiser in New York for a charity she was involved in, but she didn’t feel right about spending the $300 to go. He said, “I would like to buy you a ticket.”
She thought, “Sure, I paid for a lot of stuff when we were dating. I’ll let him buy me a ticket.”
After lunch, he invited her to his hotel room. She said she’d go up to check it out, but she wasn’t staying. She popped in, looked at the view, and left.
A few weeks after the fundraiser, he called her in a drunken stupor, “Why didn’t you sleep with me when you came up to my room in Seattle?”
She said to him, “Because it’s not like that between us.”
And to me, she added, “and because he had gained a lot of weight since I’d last seen him and I wasn’t attracted to him.”
He bellowed, “I want my money back. With interest! I want $500!”
She thought, “Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on that.”
Click.
I told Monika about the upcoming Caftans & Casseroles party. (Although at first she thought I said “Tapdance and Casseroles”) and she said she wanted to come.
I said, “You can stay with me, but only if you pose with me and Susan like Charlie’s Angels for a photo we’ll send to Cris.”
Without skipping a beat she said, “I’m in!”
After I hung up with Monika, I thought about the Post-Its Cris had made me. He talked about so many exes and so many places he had lived, that I couldn’t keep them straight. One Post-It listed the places and years, and the other had the women he had lived with.
I’d stashed them in a drawer and figured they’d be lost when all of my furniture and belongings were packed out, stored, and packed back by the movers after the tree fell.
But no lie the day I moved back in I opened my dresser drawer and the Post-Its were right on top.
I looked at them again and noticed:
The dates he said he was married to K didn’t line up with the court records Susan had found.
The “fiance” he moved to Seattle with was Tracy.
I didn’t know anything about Tracy except her first name and the nickname Cris had for her. Susan however, knew her full name.
She wasn’t hard to find.
Tracy was the last Sister Ex I would meet. And her story was the most upsetting.
To be continued…
Know someone who would get something out of that story? Please share.
Lara sez…
Listen!
80s deep cut of the week! I don’t have much to say about this song other than it’s a not-infrequent earworm, and my friend Leslie and I always sing the misheard lyrics, “Eat a bug! Eat a bug! Eat a bug! Woooo!!!!”
Read!
I read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down for book club many years ago and it really stuck with me. I recently found out my son read it in college and it did with him too. The title refers to a non-uncommon medical phenomenon among the Hmong people, the clash of culture and values between Americans and immigrants, and what happens when everyone is well-intentioned, but the impacts of their actions are disastrous.
Follow!
Mychal Threets is a hero. He’s Mr. Rogers meets Lavar Burton. He’s a sweet, lovely librarian who posts heart-bursting and life-affirming Reels about the Library Kids and Library Grownups and oh my is he wonderful.
Buy!
I got this microwave corn-popping gizmo in a white elephant exchange and was less than thrilled. But darned if it doesn’t make a perfect single serving of light, crisp, fluffy, and crunchy popcorn.
Watch!
I can’t remember how I came across this quirky show, but I’m so glad I did. A young man takes on raising his teenage stepsisters after their father dies. They’re all kinda weird and so sweetly committed to making this strange, little family work.
Eat!
I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to recommending my favorite Trader Joe’s treat! If you see these in the freezer case, buy at least two boxes. Or three.
Before I let you go…
My dear friend and celebrated illustrator, Micah Player jumped at the chance to draw my newly-coined Urban-dictionary-official phrase, Drama Goblin!
Which I have put on notebooks that YOU CAN WIN!
To Enter: Please SHARE It’s Kind of a Long Story About… with someone you think would like to read it.
Someone…
You think would get a kick out of it
In a Sister Ex sitch
Dating someone you have a funny feeling about
Super into Jon Hamm
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If you forward the email, please “cc” or “bcc” me at: lara@larastarr.com
Thank you so much and I hope you win!
I'm loving seeing you flourish with your bursts of creativity! Yes, it's feeding your soul with so many goodies. I'm so proud of you.
And I shared to my Facebook Universe!
Hi you -- Daphne here. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't even realize you could comment or respond to Substacks (put me in the stubborn "I miss blogs" column). Anyway -- LOVE hearing about your bursts of creativity and healing! I'm glad all of your tools (friends, activities, writing, sharing) are helping you come out the other side! Can't wait to see your next act: you're doing so great! Love you!!