A Tangled Web

by Leslie Rule

  The next year he fractured his leg the night before the first game of the season. “I broke my leg in three places during practice. It was the last time I ever played.” It was around that time that Dave started to rebel. “I grew my hair out long, I hung out with the wrong people, and I smoked. I even sported a Mohawk for a while.” It was the typical teenage rebellion, but Dave never got into real trouble.

  After high school he moved to Denver and joined the National Guard, but after two years, “They stopped paying me. So, I asked them about it. Nothing happened. So, I asked them about it again. Nothing happened. So, I just didn’t go to drill. A lieutenant called me up one day and said, ‘You have to come to drill. We own you. If you don’t come, we’ll send MPs after you.’ I told him, ‘It’s a job. I get paid. I’ll come when I get paid.’ I never heard from them again. I got my discharge papers, and that was it. It was around the time they were scaling back, and they were pushing people out left and right.”

  While living in Denver, he went to college and earned his associate’s degree in automotive engineering. “I came back to Sioux Falls for a girl,” he confesses. He enrolled in a college there and pursued his bachelor’s degree. “It must have been three or four months into the year when we all showed up at school one day, but the doors were padlocked shut. We found out that the owner of the school had gambled away everyone’s tuition in Vegas. The feds were there, confiscating everything, and she was going away in cuffs.”

  The students were told that the government would forgive their student loans, or they could transfer their credits to a new school. “I just said, ‘I’m done. I’m out.’” He was barely twenty years old and wasn’t sure what to do with his life. Twice burned by administrations mishandling funds, he decided to stick with what he knew best, fixing cars. “That’s why I’m still doing this for a living. I never did figure out what I wanted to do.”

  A couple of years after the school closed its doors, Dave was working at a truck stop’s gas station in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when a cute young woman caught his eye. Amy Flora, petite and sweet natured, also worked at the truck stop. She said yes when Dave asked her out. They ended up staying together for over a decade, and they had two children, Calista, born in 2001, and Trey, in 2003. The little family moved to Wisconsin when Dave was promoted. They started out in Madison, later relocating to Oshkosh.

  Almost all relationships have conflicts, and Dave and Amy’s was no exception. Perhaps their biggest issue was their stance on marriage. “I wanted to get married, and he didn’t want to,” Amy explains. She needed the security of a forever commitment, but Dave saw marriage as a trap. For all practical purposes, they were married. They were monogamous and lived together, raising their two kids, but Amy wondered why the father of her children was reluctant to make it legal. The conflict over the marriage question created an undercurrent of resentment, and their smaller disagreements escalated because of that.

  In addition, finances were tight, and it was a stressful time. “We didn’t get to do fun things together,” Amy emphasizes. “We were working hard to make ends meet, and we worked opposite shifts.” They arranged their schedules so that one of them would always be with the children, but it left little time for the couple to spend time with each other.

  Wisconsin had never felt like home to Amy. Born and raised in Council Bluffs, she missed her family and friends there. “I lived in Wisconsin for twelve years, and I didn’t have too many friends there. I was just lonely. I said, ‘If we aren’t going to go forward, and we’re just going to sit still, I want to go home.’” In the fall of 2011, the family moved into an apartment in Council Bluffs. Amy was glad to be near her friends again, but she and Dave weren’t getting along. They made an effort to be civil to each other for the sake of the children, but tensions were high. As painful as it was, they decided they could not stay together.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SUMMER OF 2012 did not start out well for Dave. “I moved into my apartment with a pile of clothes and a computer.” He had left the furniture for Amy and his kids. “I had nothing else. Not even a bowl.” The new apartment was in Omaha, about twenty minutes from Amy’s place across the Missouri River.

  When locals claim Omaha “invented hospitality,” and encourage tourists to “talk to strangers,” they might be joking but visitors agree it’s a downright friendly place. Neighbor helps neighbor, and when folks pass on the street, they smile and nod. It’s an attitude bred out of necessity because people here need each other to survive.

  Crippling blizzards can bear down with little warning, while warmer months beckon the deadly gusts that roar through the Midwest’s “Tornado Alley,” with Omaha smack in the middle. Nebraska averages fifty-seven tornadoes yearly, the most deadly to hit Omaha on Easter Sunday of 1913. With a lethal, quarter-mile girth, it cut a diagonal path through the city, flattening entire neighborhoods, injuring over 350 people and killing 103. The twister ripped open gas lines, igniting the rubble, but citizens toiled through the night to rescue neighbors trapped beneath their collapsed homes.

  Despite their own injuries, Omaha’s switchboard operators worked in blood-drenched dresses to keep the city’s communication lines open so others could survive. The altruistic grit displayed a century ago shaped an attitude of helpfulness that still prevails.

  While its natural disasters are remarkable, Omahaians would rather talk about the city’s notable contributions. Omaha is the birthplace of thirty-eighth president Gerald Ford, civil rights activist Ma-colm X, and the TV dinner—the frozen single-serving suppers in aluminum trays created by Swanson in 1954. It’s also movie star dancer Fred Astaire’s hometown, and the place where Johnny Carson launched his broadcasting career in 1950.

  The city’s number one tourist attraction, the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, covers 130 acres, is home to 962 species, and was crowned “the best zoo in the world,” by reviewers of a leading travel website.

  Omaha may stand alone as a city, but as a region, its “metropolitan statistical area” includes Council Bluffs. While the Missouri River separates Nebraska from Iowa, Omaha and Council Bluffs are linked by bridges. The two cities have little in common other than capricious weather and incredible sunsets, burning brilliant shades of crimson in the endless sky. Council Bluffs, founded in 1804, a half century before Omaha, is much smaller and home to 62,316 people versus Omaha’s 466,893.

  A Council Bluffs–born resident who now makes her home in Omaha, notes that while both cities have “hardworking people willing to help their neighbor,” an unspoken feud exists between them, running deeper than their obvious choices for football teams. (Omaha roots for the Huskers, of course, while Council Bluffs cheers for the Hawkeyes.) Cross the river and political views shift—as do speed limits, slightly higher in Nebraska. Median income is higher in Omaha, but so are taxes and the cost of housing! The median value of homes in Council Bluffs is about 25 percent lower than its counterpart.

  Apartments in Council Bluffs might have been cheaper, but Dave chose to live in Omaha to avoid long commutes to work. He rented a place in a huge complex with over a dozen brick buildings, each holding three floors of apartments. The grounds had a park-like feel with lots of grassy spaces and big shade trees. It was affordable, close to his work, and he knew his kids would like the clubhouse and swimming pool. It was fun when they visited, but most of the time it was too quiet.

  As Dave settled into his new place, it was summertime, uncomfortably warm with temperatures creeping into the nineties, and his apartment was a stifling and lonely place. “I’d work all day, then see my kids, and then there was nothing else to do. I was lonely at first because I didn’t know anybody. The people I did know around here were all Amy’s friends.” He decided to check out some online dating sites and discovered Plenty of Fish. It was free to create a profile and sign up for a basic membership. He figured there was nothing to lose, so he typed in the requested information and was soon scrolling through photos of dozens of attractive females who liv
ed in the area.

  Before long, Dave was chatting online with Liz, a lady about his age, and they made a date to meet in person. She was the first woman he met online. Attractive with dark hair almost to her shoulders, Liz had a nice figure. She was slender but large breasted, and he was a little bit intimidated by her when they met at the agreed-upon place, Perkins, a twenty-four-hour restaurant, in Omaha.

  “I was nervous,” he admits. “I was fresh out of the thing with Amy, and I didn’t even know how to date at that point. I was out of the groove.” Dave had been only 22 the last time he was single. Just a kid. Nearly everyone else in his age group had also been unattached, and there were lots of casual get-togethers. Hooking up had been easy, and no one stood on ceremony. Now, a dozen years later, he was not only rusty, he was uncertain how to interact with a mature woman on an official date.

  They chose a booth and sat across from each other, making small talk and drinking coffee. Dave added lots of sugar to his. Not only did he like his coffee sweet, it gave him something to do during the awkward pauses. He ripped open packet after packet, poured the sugar in and then stirred vigorously, his spoon clinking loudly against the cup, as he tried to think of what to say next.

  He looked across the table into Liz’s brown eyes as she stared intently back at him. With a nose slightly too large for her face, she was not classically pretty, but there was something appealing about her. Her heavy-lidded eyes were sexy, and her teeth appeared perfect. Straight and almost too white, they were most likely veneers.

  Their kids were about the same ages, and they each had two, a boy and a girl. That was good. They had something in common they could talk about. Dave explained his last relationship had recently ended and that he was not looking for anything serious. Liz nodded. She understood. Frankly, she was very busy with her kids and pets and her own cleaning business, “Liz’s Housekeeping,” she explained. She had way too much going on to add more commitments.

  “We had four or five similar coffee dates,” Dave remembers. Liz stayed on her side of the table, and he stayed on his. He couldn’t tell if she was attracted to him or if they were destined to be nothing more than platonic friends. “She might have been giving me signals, but I wasn’t catching any of them.” Finally, on the fifth date, as they left the restaurant, he got up his nerve to kiss her for the first time.

  “Why did it take you so long?” she asked him.

  “’Cause I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” he confessed. Whatever he had forgotten came back to him very quickly. They had sex that night, and on nearly every date after that. “I would have to credit Liz with helping me get my confidence back. I was feeling pretty low, pretty worthless, after my breakup with Amy.”

  Liz obviously liked him. She was an enthusiastic lover, and they saw each other regularly over the next two weeks, but it didn’t take him long to get restless. He found her attractive, and she was easy to be with, but there was no deep connection. She was always up for sex, and that was fine with Dave, but he needed more than that. “One of the reasons I would never be with Liz is that she was not well read. I couldn’t have a conversation with her about the news.”

  Though self-deprecating and the last to acknowledge his strengths, Dave is highly intelligent. If he ever were to commit again, he would need a woman who challenged him intellectually. Liz was definitely not that woman. He continued to scroll through the profiles of women on the Plenty of Fish website. “I really kind of started hitting the books, as it were, and seeing what was out there.”

  Liz wanted more from Dave than he was willing to give her, and that became apparent just weeks after he had met her. “She got really clingy. She wanted all of my time.” He didn’t want to be a jerk about it, but he wished she would back off and give him room to breathe.

  “What did you do last night?” she often asked with more than a casual interest when he had not spent the evening before with her. “That’s my business,” Dave replied. “I do what I want to do. I told you that when we met.”

  He went on a few dates, usually meeting the women in a coffeehouse. Most of the time it was obvious within the first minute that there was absolutely no attraction. Sometimes there was a spark, and a second and third date followed. Sometimes the connections resulted in sex. Always he made it clear that he was not looking to commit. His reason for avoiding commitment changed over time. “Initially, my reason for not wanting anything serious was because I had just got out of a long relationship. And then once I got my confidence back, and I was meeting women, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not doing this whole monogamous thing!’”

  He told Liz, “You can be here or not. Your call, but I’m going to do what I’m going to do.” He had no objection to sex with Liz, but she had to understand that that’s all it was. He was going to see other women. He was not Liz’s boyfriend and never would be. He looked her in the eye and said, “We’re not going to ever be together.”

  Though Dave didn’t volunteer details about the other women he saw, he didn’t hesitate to tell Liz the reason he was unavailable if she tried to arrange to get together on a night he had other plans. “I can’t tonight,” he’d tell her. “I’ve got a date.”

  The first time Liz popped into Dave’s place just before he was about to leave to meet someone, he didn’t think much of it. She wanted sex, and he obliged. It took a while for him to notice a pattern. “She’d call and ask me, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ and I’d say, ‘I’m going on a date. This is my night. Good-bye.’ And then I’d come home from work, and she’d be waiting for me, just to get it on with me before I went on a date. It took me about three times to catch on, and then I thought, ‘Wait a minute! She’s trying to wear me out!’ Afterward she’d say, ‘Okay, bye,’ like now she thought I wasn’t motivated to go out and chase anybody else. It didn’t slow me down. She was trying, but I’m not that old,” he says, explaining that by the time he wined and dined his date that enough time had passed to revive him.

  While Dave continued to remind Liz that he was not committed to her, she made it clear that she wasn’t seeing anyone else. “I’m not all there is,” he told her. “I’m just a guy. Go on some dates! Go get laid!”

  “I’m not like that,” she insisted, stressing that her morals were too high to do as he suggested. “I’m not going to do what you’re doing!”

  “Don’t expect me to change,” he warned her. “You’re wasting your time if you’re waiting around for me to change. I’m going to date, and you should, too.”

  Liz shook her head, adamant that she didn’t plan to see anyone else. She told him that she had deleted her profile from the Plenty of Fish website.

  “I’ll help you make a new profile,” he suggested, but she demurred, saying she wouldn’t feel comfortable dating more than one man at a time. If Liz wanted to hang around hoping he’d change his mind, that was her choice. Short of telling her to get lost, he didn’t know how to make his position more clear. He never deliberately hurt anyone’s feelings, and he didn’t want to crush Liz. Maybe she would move on once she realized he wasn’t going to change. He continued to see other ladies, but there was no one who knocked his socks off, no one who made him rethink his vow to remain a bachelor.

  Not only did Liz try to fulfill Dave sexually before he left for dates, she made their nights together sizzle. “Liz was very kinky.” She wasn’t shy about trying new things and trying them in new places, including public places. Smack in the middle of a bright, sunny day, the two were visiting a park, and they set out on one of the many well-traveled nature trails. Suddenly, Liz grabbed Dave’s arm and pulled him off the path, making her intentions clear as her hands traveled over his body and tugged at his jeans. They sunk into the grass, just out of view of people walking by. “There I was with the sun shining on my bare butt!” he recalls.

  Though no one could see them, they were well aware of the passersby just a few feet away, and the risk of getting caught made the sex all the more thrilling. Dave had come a long way fro
m the days he sat on the hard pew in the Southern Baptist Church and listened to the preacher’s warnings about sinning and Hell. He’d long since shed the religion and did not believe sex outside of marriage was a sin, but he certainly didn’t want to be arrested for public indecency. No one caught them, and they pulled their clothes back on quickly, giggling as they slipped back onto the trail.

  Dave had to admit that Liz had it going on when she dressed up for nights on the town. “I remember a group of guys hooting when we walked down the street together,” he says, recalling how Liz turned heads in a short skirt. The guys gave Dave the thumbs up as they hollered their approval.

  Liz was a lot of fun, most of the time. But there was a “real issue. She resented the amount of time that I spent with my kids.” She was worried he was hanging out with Amy when he went to Council Bluffs. While Dave and Amy eventually got over their disagreements, they went through a rough period when they split. Their breakup was so contentious that they tolerated each other only for their children in the first months after their relationship had disintegrated.

  “Amy and I got along like two pieces of sandpaper, so I didn’t hang out at her place. I’d just pull up, pick up my kids and leave. I was living in Omaha, a twenty-minute drive, so we’d find a place to sit down and eat and drink coffee.” Glancing around the casual restaurant where he met with this author, he adds, “My kids know this place way too well. We spent a lot of time here early on.”

  Liz, however, regularly dropped by and made snide comments when he returned from visits with his children. “Oh,” she’d say pointedly. “I see you spent a lot of time with Amy.”

  “I wasn’t with Amy. I saw my kids,” Dave would retort. “But it’s none of your damn business what I do with my time.”

  Liz’s approach was passive aggressive, often so subtle her resentment was barely noticeable as she quietly fumed, but before too long, it began to sound like nagging. “As time went on, it would get worse and worse and worse, until I’d say, ‘You know what? That’s it. I don’t need this bullshit. Goodbye.’ And then she’d go away for a week or two. Then she’d call and say, ‘Oh, can you help me out with this or that?’”