The latest gossip at the Wellsprings Cafe found its way over to me not five minutes after my arrival. It was about a guy going through a divorce who was contesting his wife's first divorce, trying to prove that the second marriage was invalid. I already knew this story, but I was surprised that everybody else did. Ticked, actually, because I was the first husband.
The Wellsprings Cafe is a business in its third incarnation. Previously a bar, it was revamped and remodeled by meditator owners who were inspired by the success of the upscale yuppie pool parlors called "Jillians," a successful franchise operation that was founded in Fairfield and has locations in Boston, Miami, Seattle, and other major urban centers.
Plus there was a big need for a place where the local TM meditator types could get together socially in a non-smoking atmosphere. There have been several owners in the past few years, but the current one seems to have found a successful formula, and the place is thriving.
It attracts non-meditators, too, but its mainstay is the "roo" (short for guru) population. The guru thing is because Fairfield is the home of Maharishi International University. But even though the meditators are all categorized as "roos," they have extremely busy and varied lives that have nothing to do with their MIU affiliation. They windsurf at Lake Rathbun, they back pack, they travel, raise kids, dance, go to movies and get married and even divorced with the best of them.
But it's the off-campus crowd who go to Wellsprings, those who either live off campus or have to get off campus now and then to live it up. There's near beer, even real beer. Plus pool tables, live bands, poetry readings, food, and cool, exotic drinks, mostly non-alcoholic. Italian sodas and the like.
So, I end up there sometimes. After the movie or after the play. Or to go dancing, since I'm one of the fairly legendary local partner dancers. Yes, I'm one of the roos, too. But as a native Iowan, I fit in all over town. But still it's nice to go see friends or catch up on the latest at Wellsprings.
But this time I didn't like hearing the gossip. I really don't like being the rumor of the week, but I have often been in a controversial relationship of some kind which everybody knew about.
But this one took the granola.
In order to truly map out the complexities of the situation, you really need to see it all in chart form, or displayed on a blackboard. But I can try and lay it all out for you with the use of wife A, B, and C.
When wife A left I was devastated to a magnificent degree. In fact, the experience of getting divorced was the first big kick in the pants that I had ever received, and it shook my complacent view that all was well, that I would easily and effortlessly waltz into a happy career and a happy family life.
When B came along I was so defensive that I was unable to accept anything from a woman except complete devotion. The slightest criticism would send me away permanently. Still wounded from A. But B was all over me, since I was just what she wanted. Which meant that I could be with her, due to her total devotion, but, though she really was attracted to me, I wasn't in love with her. But I stayed with her because of all of the approval, and eventually we were married.
Finally I realized that I was living out her fantasy rather than my own, and that my life was disappearing into hers. So, we left California, got divorced, and I set off again into the single world. She remarried quickly and that was that. I thought it was, anyway.
About four years and three relationships later, I met future wife C. I was totally ga-ga about her and followed her around like a slave. We broke up, made up, and broke up again. Finally we got married, almost on a dare, about three years later.
But, for whatever reasons, engulfment, commitment-phobia, codependence, or any one of the other words still buzzing around from the eighties, we separated after four months and were officially divorced within a year.
Fine, so it's about five months later and I get a summons to appear in court in some kind of marriage case. Wife C's ex-husband was always battling for custody, so I assumed it was something about her court case, but no, it was a summons to appear in court in relation to the divorce of wife B from her husband of ten years.
Surprised, I called up good old wife B to find out what was happening. She explained.
When wife B and I got divorced, I let her do the thing. I had made it to Iowa six months before, and after hiding out from her for a long time, since an angry woman is a tough thing for me to face, I finally started getting the papers together for a "pro se" divorce. Pro Se divorces are literally divorces done "by the self," by the individuals themselves. They are inexpensive, and though there can be a lot of typing and run-around, you can save a lot of money.
They are generally good when there are no children of the marriage and both parties have agreed on the financial arrangements. It also helps if there aren't many financial entanglements. The simple, "here, you take the toaster and I'll take the blender" split-up works best. Lawyers don't like 'em though, but not just because they don't make any money on them. They caution you that some things may not be resolved properly by such divorces.
But, so what, I didn't end up getting a pro se divorce, why should I worry? I got a good old-fashioned divorce, filed by a lawyer in California before we left the place. I just didn't know about it until later. Wife B had filed the divorce secretly before we left, hoping that our relationship would turn around, but doubting that it would.
When things didn't work out with us and she met a fairly wealthy husband prospect six months later, the guy she eventually did marry, she dusted off that old divorce from California and handed it over to me. I was just putting the finishing touches on my pro se divorce, that is, my girlfriend was, since she was tired of hanging out with a technically married guy. But when I called wife B to give it to her, she said, forget it, pal, I got one ready to go and you're out of here.
Which was great. I liked the fact that she felt that she was leaving me. That she had finally decided to find someone who truly loved her rather than someone that she had, in essence, captured.
But the papers I got from her were all in Spanish. She explained that although she had filed the thing through a legal service in California, it was what is called a "by proxy" divorce, and that such divorces are done in Mexico. So, it turns out that I got divorced, but it was due to the good services of some people I never knew, who stood up and proxied us out of marriage, somewhere in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. I didn't know that Mexico had a state of Tabasco. But I was grateful to be done with it all, in any place, language, or flavor.
At least I thought I was done with it.
But the new husband of wife B ten years later went to a lawyer who thought that the legality of our little Mexican divorce was worth a challenge. So, I was called in to court to testify about the whole thing.
I ended up sitting on the wife's side of the courtroom. I knew her much better than the husband, and besides, he had me summoned to court without any warning. In addition, there was a peculiar maliciousness in the situation at hand, I felt. Just look at it from my point of view. Here's a guy who has spent ten years with a woman and decides that she is impossible to live with. But I had decided the same thing ten years before. Since that time, of course, I had realized that I had been the impossible one.
Still, here was a guy who didn't get along with somebody that I didn't get along with before, and now he wanted to give her back! Also, it looked like he was simply trying to invalidate his whole marriage to her, all ten years and two children of it, just to save on paying alimony. At least that's how it looked to wife B and to me.
He explained later that he had other motivations, but I had no clue of those at the time.
So, I was in her camp. As such, she had tried to coach me on what to do. We were both deeply motivated that his legal ploy would not work. She didn't want her financial support eliminated, and I didn't want to be married, just then.
When I got on the stand, I was nervous for two reasons. One, I didn't want to give anything away that I didn't have to, because wife B might be ticked if my testimony blew the whole thing. Plus they put me under oath.
So, when they asked me when the divorce had happened, I answered generally, "Oh, six or seven years ago... a while back." I didn't want to be pinned down, because I was concerned about saying the wrong thing not due to dishonesty, but due to lack of clear memory of details. Somehow this answer set the whole courtroom up in a humorous mood. And after that, everything I said seemed to be funny. I guess I gave the impression of a guy who really could hardly remember what had happened. Not on purpose, though.
Plus my elusiveness seemed to peeve the interviewing lawyer. I don't know if it was just acting or not, but he got more and more accusatory. But my simple answers deflated all of his barbs, since humor, even inadvertent, is a powerful force. And later, thinking it over, I felt that he had missed several key questions. If he had been more observant, he would have found the glaring holes in my testimony.
Not lies. Never. Just that I didn't have to tell him anything he didn't ask. That's exactly what wife B had told me to do: never volunteer anything from your side. Let them try to bring it out.
But what he didn't get was pretty vivid stuff. Because the legal challenge to the divorce was based on the fact that proxy divorces are legal in California and not in Iowa. And for the California/Mexico divorce to be final there was a six months in-residence waiting period. But before the six months were up we had already separated and moved to Iowa. She, of course, understood the six months requirement thing, but she was claiming that she had not really moved here, that she was only visiting, and that she eventually decided to stay.
She had, in addition, maintained a California mailing address and had kept her California driver's license. But I can't speak for her. I thought we were all moving to Iowa. If he had asked me that, I would have had to tell him. I drove a twenty foot rental truck filled with her stuff all the way from Laguna Beach to Fairfield. Then I unhooked my chevette from the truck and drove off into the sunset. For about a block, that is, and then north into town.
So, it kind of looked to me like we were moving here. But hey, I'm satisfied, and why would the legal dudes in California care? If she says she was still a resident, had a license, had an address, even if it was only one of those mailbox rental places, who's to say that she isn't divorced? She gave it a good try, don't you think?
But his lawyer didn't think so, and I ended up in court.
I guess the crowning moment was when I mentioned Tabasco. The lawyer had asked me about the divorce, and I rambled on, culminating with some mumbled statement about how I thought it was kind of funny. He jumped on that comment and asked me to clarify my statement, obviously hoping to show that I thought that the divorce was some kind of a joke. But I had merely thought, as I said, that I thought that it was kind of funny to get divorced in the state of Tabasco.
It's just kind of a funny word. And funny to have it associated with a divorce. Kind of like using hot sauce to get out of hot water. Anyway, that was the final blow to courtroom decorum and the entire place was cracking up, including husband number two. Later, I was told that even the judge was laughing. I was afraid to look at him, since I didn't want to seem in contempt of court. I wasn't trying to be funny. I just was. The hubby's lawyer was still upset, but he was the only one.
So, I did my job, gave nothing away, and maybe even diverted the opposition, however unintentionally. So, wife B wasn't mad at me, I had done a good job.
But it didn't help much, because the judge eventually decided that our divorce was invalid and that the new marriage had never happened. But, in a true spirit of justice, he made the guy pay alimony anyway.
So, I was married again, and I had two kids that I had never seen. I did actually see them with her in Wal-Mart the next week, and had the funniest thoughts about having been their legal parent all those years, without their knowledge. And they hadn't a clue who I was.
The best joke I thought of was to tell wife B that next time she wanted to have kids, she should at least get a permission slip from me first.
Yes, I liked making up jokes about it. But I didn't like being one. And I didn't like the fact that I had been married to two women at the same time without knowing it. And I didn't like the fact that the continued existence of my second marriage may have invalidated my third marriage, ex post facto. Even though we didn't make it long term, I was proud of having been married to number three. For me she was like a movie star, somebody that I just idolized. Of course, I didn't feel that I deserved her, so, that enabled me to help destroy things. But I had liked having her on my "record."
And what I don't like now, since I can't really answer it in a normal way, is the question, "How many times have you been married?" What do I say? Three? Two? Two and a half? What about the time that wife number three and I got married once for our friends in Fairfield and went through another complete ceremony in Baton Rouge so that her mother wouldn't think that we had gotten married without her?
That would mean that I got married four times, and got divorced three. Not counting the little eight year old that I married in a short ceremony performed by friends when I was nine. I think her name was Suzy, and I'll bet she has kids now, too. And no permission slip.
In any case, the last divorce came swift and free. Wife B's lawyer got the thing in one day. And eventually I called up the new ex-(non) husband and straightened out my feelings with him. I didn't like it that he was telling the story all over town. After all, wife B had told me to keep it all discrete.
Hence my surprise when I walked into Wellsprings and found myself the talk of the week. He explained that he was actually quite jubilant about the whole thing, that he had felt very alienated in the marriage, that he felt he had a "clean slate" now to start his life anew, and that he hadn't realized how the whole thing would affect me.
Which is just another example of the disconnection of men from men. That he didn't take the time to consult me before he married the girl and he didn't take the time to consult me on the way out. I always feel that you should have to "Interview the Ex" before you date someone new. What makes you think that you are so different from what she left behind? What makes you think that her problems were simply the previous guy, and not continuing challenges?
There's that saying, "wherever you go, there you are." You take your stuff with you everywhere. And if you interviewed the ex, you might get a perspective on the challenges ahead of you, and perhaps head them off. It might be a bitter perspective, but if you can survive that, maybe, just maybe your new love has a fighting chance.
But it's okay, eventually I walked into Wellsprings and there was a new rumor, totally unrelated to wife A, B or C. Like, "you'll never guess who Paul is dating now!"
When will it all end? I don't know. An astrologer told me March of next year, i.e. - that's when I meet my real mate. I just hope she's not from Mexico.
Map of Iowa Index Page
Next Chapter, #12. Cedar Falls