With the help of some therapy, Manny’s behavioral issues slowly changed. His vocabulary was getting better, and the tantrums were lessening in frequency and duration. Who knew it could work?
As the primary caretaker for a three year old, I was also the one who coordinated visits with his brothers. The three kids were living in three different homes. I would take Manny to pick up Ariel. We would all then drive to pick up Peter. I saw no harm in facilitating this interaction. We did this a few times, including the time I took them Christmas shopping. Peter was adamant that he buy a particular thing so we searched the entire mall for it. Truthfully I think he just wanted to hang out and be out of the house because Peter's “foster brothers” would regularly beat him up. Eventually he was moved out of that house for his safety.
Jessica was terribly excited to be a mother, and she wanted everyone to know. She organized her own baby shower for her new three year old son. It would be organized and thrown at her work. Some people scratched their heads at this act, but they understood that it was important to Jessica. Her co-workers showed up, as did my mother, who flew in from Southern California for the event. My mother didn’t quite understand the need for the event either, but she wanted to be a supportive grandmother and mother-in-law. None of our other friends were invited, however, and none of Jessica’s family felt this event warranted their presence.
Jessica’s family’s lack of interest in a self-thrown party made Jessica extremely upset. “It’s like my family doesn’t care about me. Fuck them.”
“My mom showed up, Jessica.”
“I know Matt. She’s the only one who cares about us getting a kid. I think I might be ready to call your mother ‘mom.’”
My mother had become Jessica’s new favorite relative.
That year for Christmas we drove down to Southern California to visit my mother. Jessica’s greatest accomplishment on that trip was teaching Manny how to flip people off, which he would do whenever Jessica requested it. She showed off this trick to a number of people and a number of cars driving by on the freeway. She was a proud mother.
During this trip Manny was in my mother’s care for a few hours during which he tripped and hurt himself. “How can your mom be so irresponsible Matt? She can’t let him run around like that! I don’t know if I can trust her with Manny again!” My mother suddenly lost the “favorite relative” role and instantly became someone who could not be trusted with a three year old although she had raised two children herself.
The responsibilities of being thrust into parenthood forced Jessica and me to see each other in a new light. The time for the carefree life was over. We couldn’t take a bike ride whenever we wanted, go out to clubs, sleep in late on the weekends, and our weekly ex-Mormon roller-blading events were over. We rapidly had to adjust from being parents of three children to two and eventually to one.
I was no longer Matt the cute husband, but Matt the overstressed father. She was no longer Jessica the sexy fun wife, but Jessica the mother who didn’t help much with Manny’s emotional development. The role she took was to take care of his physical well-being (clothes, food, and bathing, mostly). I viewed the emotional development as so much more important considering his background. Her focus was on him not being the “weird kid” and ensuring that he always wore designer clothing. Our end goals might have been the same, but the path to achieve them was clearly night and day.
The sudden change in lifestyle started to take a toll on our relationship, and we both needed something to fix that. After receiving her coded letter from the CIA a few months back she had been thinking a lot about getting back into the intelligence community. It was going to be her “escape” and give her a bigger sense of importance. In order for her to bring her best to the relationship she needed to make herself the best she possibly could.
I reluctantly agreed, knowing that this choice would take her away from the house more and possibly put her in harm’s way. It wasn’t my choice to make, though, even if I felt it was irresponsible for a parent to risk her life with a child at home. With this discussion she reached out to her contact in the CIA and an interview was set up. She was going to be a spy again, and it looked like I was in for the long haul as a stay-at-home dad, or at least the primary caregiver, of Manny.
| FIFTEEN |
Variety
March 2007
“Are you a princess? Are you a princess?" I sat on the couch watching Jessica videotape Manny. Manny’s obsession with princesses was very age appropriate. Sometimes Jessica pushed it a little far though. She told me she secretly hoped Manny would be gay when he was older. I think she just wanted the wear the badge of honor of not only fostering and adopting a kid, but fostering and adopting a gay kid. People would line up to receive her sage advice. She would be idolized.
“I’m a princess." He danced and twirled. He was wearing his green skin tight pajamas from Old Navy and a paper crown given to him by his preschool. Manny twirled and twirled. He stopped and almost lost his footing.
“What day is it today Manny?" Jessica asked with an enthusiastic voice.
“My birfday!” He said it in a way only a child could, with the F sound instead of the TH sound.
“How old are you?”
“Four!” It was our first birthday with Manny. Instead of inviting over family or friends with kids of their own we celebrated the special day as a small, new family. Manny ate cake, ice cream, and opened gifts. Jessica's dad sent him a baseball glove. My mother sent him a Spongebob basketball hoop.
Suddenly the camera was turned on me. “I’m being filmed,” I said sheepishly.
“Yes you are Matt because you’re cute!” She always knew the right thing to say, at least when she wanted to.
“I want to see!” Manny’s excitement couldn’t be contained. He ran behind his mom and viewed me through the tiny LCD screen on the camcorder. “I’m a princess!” We went back to twirling, and the camera was off of me.
That was a good day. Overall, we were doing the best we could with what we had. We were new parents and trying to figure out how to balance everything. Despite everything being so difficult at the time I was completely certain that we were going to discover a way to find our Zen in the whole situation. We had two big issues going on: marriage and parenting. They were both so new to us still, and we needed to discuss the issues before they got worse. So we talked about it.
“I feel like things are really strained between us,” I declared, pointing out the obvious.
“Yes, they are Matt." She answered in the same way a teenager would talk to you before saying, “Well duh!”
“How do we fix them?" Her attitude led me to believe she had the answer.
“We just need to keep working on it. We need to be parents and also give each other the space we need to be healthy." She said this with the tone of “I’ve already said this before, you clearly were not listening.”
I have never believed in the “Wait and See” philosophy of dating or marriage. Any relationship is an ongoing, growing, changing, organic situation that needs to be constantly observed and acknowledged or else it can turn into something completely different. Her philosophy was to just wait and see. Give each other space. Allow us to be individuals again.
Anything was worth a shot.
During our nightly ritual after Manny was asleep, we sat watching television. At the time we were obsessed with Kat Von D’s television show. Jessica had multiple tattoos, and I had one that I acquired on Valentine’s Day. I had every intention of getting more, as did she. We then concocted a plan to apply to be on this reality television show.
“If you got on the show Matt I wouldn’t go with you,” Jessica expressed.
“Why not?" I was genuinely interested although applying for the show was mainly her idea.
“I would want you to be able to be alone and flirt with her." She knew how attractive I found Kat Von D to be. “I would trust you that nothing would happen, but I think flirting with her would be fun.”<
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Looking back I can say that this conversation was the catalyst for some major events that happened over the next few months. It started with discussing flirting, and then suddenly we were playing a “what if” game on swapping sexual partners. That night, filled with the possibility of something so..... naughty... we had probably the most passionate sex we had ever had. We were motivated and inspired by the idea. I really enjoyed the fantasy and the fact that we were talking about it. Deep down it was something she actually wanted.
“I want to also try out a girl,” she said. Thinking that a possible hidden bi-sexual desire might be partly to blame for the marital friction we have been experiencing, I entertained the idea, if it was something we would do together. She declined the proposition. According to her, seeing me with someone else would be too difficult for her to bear. She continued the conversation by telling me that one of her friends at work kept inviting her and I over to enjoy an evening in their hot tub with them.
“They want to do us both,” she said.
“Why haven’t you told me about this before?”
“I wasn’t okay with it so I never brought it up. I am bringing it up now.”
I wasn’t okay with it either. I wasn’t okay with the idea of my wife having sex with another person. I made it clear I was not okay with it. She persisted, in line with former Mormons disregarding all social mores, especially rules imposed by their former church. I had seen a number of marriages completely crumble in our ex-Mormon community due to the idea we should be allowed to have sex with whomever we wanted. To them, marriage had nothing to do with monogamy like we were taught in Sunday School. To them marriage was a commitment that could include an open sexual relationship.
In our little community of former Mormons I saw three marriages end due to couples engaging in “swinging." Eventually one of the partners in the open sexual marriage found someone they liked better than his or her spouse. I witnessed one couple who was polyamorous, meaning that the husband and wife shared a girlfriend. The girlfriend lived in the house and everyone would take turns sleeping in the master bedroom. Eventually the girlfriend would find someone else and leave, and the married couple would acquire a new live-in girlfriend. Every time a new girlfriend was introduced into the marriage, the wife was always jealous. Her husband always preferred the girlfriend to his wife.
In my entire experience with people who engaged in swinging and open marriages, I only saw one couple make an it work, and they had been “swingers” for more than twenty years. Perhaps they were enlightened and evolved, but I didn’t consider myself capable of ever being like them.
“I can’t do that Jessica. It’s too much. I cannot be okay with the idea of you with other people.”
“Fine,” she replied, in the same way a young child would react when they found out the family trip to Disneyland was not going to happen immediately. My reasons for not wanting to participate in a real life wife swap didn’t matter to her. She had her heart set on it and this would be one more thing I was doing wrong in the marriage.
“Why is this so important to you? I don’t get it." I was trying to understand why her heart was so set on this.
“I just want some, I don’t know, variety!” I felt like I was no longer adequate. What I offered her, at least sexually, wasn’t enough. Regardless of her reasoning, her desire for variety was off limits. If she wanted to spice up our sex life then we would have to find a way together to do it. What she wanted could not happen apart from each other. It could not happen in a hotel room with someone new. I was not going to budge. She seemed oddly accepting of my rules, and we never argued about it again.
I hoped that my dedication to her would help her realize how much I wanted to be with her. Maybe she would see how much I loved her. While a number of married men would jump at the chance to have permission to have multiple sexual partners, I wasn’t going to have it. Keeping our family together was extremely important to me.
| SIXTEEN |
Recycling
Spring 2007
Gas prices in the United States were approaching $4 per gallon. This sudden surge in the cost of fuel suddenly started making people want to save money on gas. It never occurred to them when they purchased their giant sports utility vehicles that gas would be a factor in their monthly bills.
I contacted a local television station and told them my story and about my website promoting fuel economy. The amount of visitors I was receiving to my website was increasing and new members were joining every day. KUTV News, in Salt Lake City, sent a camera crew and a reporter out to my house to interview me. I was going to be on TV!
The interview went well, although I did need a drink before we started just to calm my nerves. Jessica suggested before the camera crew started filming that we tell them we had an adopted kid. She really wanted everyone to know that we were the kind of people who not only cared about the earth by recycling paper and cardboard, but also by recycling unwanted children. Not that I’m Christian, but this is probably exactly what Jesus warned against when he said not to do your good deeds in front of others. Was Manny just a way for Jessica to get people to think how great she was?
Of course the interviewer showed off my newly purchased 1971 Honda n600, Honda’s first car sold in the United States. I had purchased this a few weeks prior when I wanted to fulfill my long time goal of restoring a car. I wanted it to be a Honda, and there were only a few hundred of these little cars still around in the United States. The closest one I found was in Colorado Springs. On a whim my friend Archie and I got in his truck and drove for 20 hours (10 hours each way) to buy this car. It was a two cylinder miniature car that could fit two comfortably. It was so small and light that two people could lift up the back of it off of the ground easily.
It was unique, rare, and I loved it. Since my Honda Civic project had been done for a long time, this would be my new project. Perhaps this car, when finished, would be able to provide me with a sense of accomplishment.
It was April of 2007, and one of our friends was having a dress up party. I didn’t know adult costume parties happened in real life. They had always been something I saw on television, and always around Halloween. They never happened in April. The theme for the party was the 1980s. I remember that I dressed up as Henry Rollins. I dyed my hair black and wore a Suicide Girls t-shirt. I was looking thin, largely due to the stress of parenting and our weekly bicycle rides as a family. We tried to ride our bikes everywhere. For the life of me I have no idea what Jessica dressed as that night.
We dropped Manny off at another foster parent’s house for the night. Manny cried and pleaded for us to not go. He was becoming very attached to us, and we left the house to the sound of a wailing child. It broke our hearts, but we needed some time for us. We needed to remind each other why we were together and what it all meant. We needed to be allowed to be fun adults and parents. This party was the first time we had such an opportunity.
The house where the party was held was massive, as if Orange County had relocated to a suburb of Utah. When I see houses like that all I can think of is how much work it must be to clean it. I can barely keep my car clean, let alone a giant house. We walked in, grabbed drinks, and began socializing.
At one point Jessica started bragging about how well my muscles had developed. She encouraged a number of gay men to feel my ass and my legs. She sat there giggling and egging them on because the guys liked what they felt. I felt proud, not because I enjoyed random men feeling me up, but because my wife seemed to be happy that someone else found me desirable. Looking back I would have taken any sign of approval from her, trying to figure out if I was what she really wanted, as a sign that we were going to be okay. Somehow her encouraging men to feel me up and her enjoying the experience made me feel special.
After the male on male groping, some of us played poker while others danced in the living room. Between hands of poker I retired to the front porch to smoke with the fellow nicotine addicts. I realized that my wife wa
s nowhere to be found. Afraid this was another case of her drinking a bottle of vodka and passing out, I began the hunt.
“Have you seen Jessica?”
“She’s out back on the phone,” Evelyn, the host of the party, told me.
I snuck out back and sure enough, there was Jessica, in the gazebo, on her cell phone. She acknowledged me and held up one finger indicating “just one minute." I walked away not wanting to violate her privacy.
“Who was that?”
“It’s work related,” she replied.
“Work related, or work related?" She knew what I was asking. Was this her normal military job, or her “other job?"
“It’s my other job. We will talk about it later." I was silenced, but it was understandable considering we were surrounded by twenty or thirty people who didn’t know that my wife was a spy.
On the drive home she informed me that the CIA had her first assignment. It was to be in disguise of a normal military deployment. Her assignment would be in South Carolina.
“What will you be doing?” I asked. I still wanted information on her secret, elusive world.
“I don’t know. I could be given something to do, but most likely I’m just going to be observed and I will never know who is watching me.”
It was really happening. She was getting back into the CIA. All of this meant more time apart, but it also meant she would be making more money. The extra money would benefit both of us. She was also finally doing something she really loved, a part of her family legacy. It was going to help her feel complete and whole again. I had no choice but to be supportive.
We arrived home to the odd silence of our house, with our child away for the night. We both showered, had some wine, and went to sleep early. It was such a boring, uneventful evening at home. It reminded me that yes, we were still strong. We were taking the night off from being parents and enjoying being a couple.
Leaving Salt Lake City Page 8
