Available in Facebook Notes & possibly another Wisconsin newspaper

#MeToo full length version
JANE HOFFMAN·SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 2019

I met him in a bar in Superior where I went after my school job.  I don't drink, I just like their patty melts there.  The first time, we met, we fist bumped.  The second time I saw him, we exchanged phone numbers.  He wrote like a girl, sensationally curvy and I giggled as I tucked his handwritten phone number into my pocket.   I don't know what happened from that moment on, but I suddenly got sucked into a Kim Basinger/Mickey Rourke 9 1/2 Weeks movie. After 3 years of furlough, I was suddenly caught up in an unmitigated love affair. It was magical and transcendent. The synapses of my brain were open to a new range of emotions I had not experienced in a long time. It was nothing I really weighed, I was caught up in the moment over a period of weeks.  He had me.Over the course of several weeks, there were certain darts of realities that I could not unequivocally ignore. He discussed his marriage of 19 years to a woman named Tamia who was apparently the apple of his eye. She left him for another man and lied about her whereabouts one night. He told me they lost their house in Duluth in 2011 to a UHC layoff. He also blatantly blamed Barack Obama for the layoff she received from United Health Care. I am a political scientist and talk show radio host so I examined the information he presented to me. United Health Care routinely has large layoffs. They also had several federal contracts cut off for multiple billing and were penalized that year for mismanagement. A prominent Medical organization, UCare, terminated their contract with UHC as well. Barack Obama is a personal hero of mine. He is 1/2 African like my 6'3" West African son and I don't like when people say blanket statements about presidents I have liked. One night a week later, he called Obama a nigger. His grandfather was knifed by a Black man in Chicago in a form of necklace and my new love interest told me his father hated Blacks. "He can't stand the Black race." This posed a problem for me, being that when I was 20 years old, I left UW-LaCrosse on an exchange program to go to North Carolina Central to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. My goal was to be a Civil Rights activist. I was the only white living on campus in 1980 as a Midwest transplant. I received no disrespect as the sole minority.I don't know if he was actually racist.  I think his mind and his environment has been trained to think that way.  His grandfather grew up on the rough side of Chicago where ethnic clashes were common.  He told me he once dated a Mexican when I asked him if it bothered him I had an African son.  What he was though was an alcoholic who drank at home and on the weekends to escaped the failure of his 19 year marriage.  Every woman to follow was the nursemaid to appease his sorrow and loss.  He could never rise to the level of conscious decision making, firmly knowing what he was asking or wanting.  What finally drove us apart, is his complete inconsistency and failure to discuss very important matters.  One day he was too aggressive in bed and I confronted him two days later.  He said he couldn't talk after asking me....do you mind if we take two weeks off?  He always used his father and his father's medical condition as an excuse.  I was patient but the terms of our relationship were ill defined and this could not wait.  After a turbulent argument, I asked for my pajamas.  He hung my pajamas on a tree like an old Jim Crow lynching.  The symbolic gesture and his unwillingness to cave into discussion led to this exchange.  We did eventually solve the problem through police intervention.  I felt like he did not take me seriously in this matter.  The emotional strangulation I began to feel in this relationship was one of being on the servant's end of his needs and demands.  Weeks later, he was telling me different times to show up at his house.  I had gone to a post December work Christmas party.  I drove to Superior and stopped at my favorite bar.  On a whim, I drove to his house and parked sideways in the alley.  There was a burgundy car parked in his car port with a pink backpack inside.  He told me his brother had been there and his brother had no kids and no need for a pink backpack.  I went through his back door three hours earlier than planned.  A woman was standing there.  He stated without hesitation, "Jane, this is my girlfriend, Amy."  After 9 weeks of dating, I was all of a sudden the other woman.  She was plain with a semi nice figure, no beauty but could maybe serve the purpose of a man.  We had a calm discussion which led to her reviewing the texts in my phone and the texts in his phone.  She found a third woman who had sent him a boob shot.  This was the hidden answer I was looking for.  The answer to why he changed plans, could not fully commit, said that we were rushing and all the informal ways of communicating to me that he had other responsibilities.  She showed me the heart she drew on his marker board.  She asked me, "Weren't you curious who drew this?"  I said, "No, he told me his son's girlfriend did."In the end, through the police report and all the drama, I still love him.  I still have an overwhelming empathy and concern for his well being.  Yes, I am co dependent.  After that one fateful night in January, we never reunited but the love remains.  I refuse to be a hater even though I was burned.