The Last Kick in the Ribs

Finally pissing off Rocky usually ends pretty badly for the other guy

There's a moment in every Rocky movie when Balboa is getting his ass beaten in the ring. Everyone can see it. He knows it. He's practically a dead man walking. And then something shifts. That one punch that turns it around.

"He's getting killed!" barks out Apollo to Paulie.
"No, no, no, no. He's not getting killed. He's getting MAD!"

Rocky gets pissed off and starts to welcome the punches. "C'mon! You ain't so bad!" He takes more abuse but his rage fuels something almost supernatural and then he beats the living shit out of his opponent.

There's a point where the dog you keep kicking has just had enough. A moment of righteous clarity when self respect snaps in place, survival at any cost begins shining, and white hot Hulk rage says "No more." All the action heroes have it. John McClain. Ellen Ripley. John Wick. That slice of the movie where the audience is yelling at the screen "C'mon! Fight back! Kick his ass! Get MAD!"

During the past six months, my friends and family have been at times mystified and at times angry that I wouldn't let myself be truly and justifiably furious at my ex-wife for so brutally and selfishly destroying the life I thought we had. I've spent a lot of time just being sad. I've struggled to understand it all to little success. I've compartmentalized a lot and justified a lot but I have not, through it all, allowed myself the best tool in my carpenter's belt—rage.

For those who've known me for a while, they know I'm at best when I finally get angry. When I'm furious and start spitting nails. In my younger days, that fire was a bit out of control and tended to make me do incredibly destructive things. As I've aged, I've tried hard to quell that impulse so that it doesn't lead me but serves me when I need it. I don't lose my temper any more, I use my temper. Like Rocky.

I'll confess that I'm proud of myself on some level. The stories of men whose wives betrayed them with only one sidepiece (let alone hundreds of men who paid for the catalogue of handjobs, blowjobs, and hotel threesomes) going ballistic are practically a trope. I kept my shit under control. I didn't kick her out of our apartment. I didn't break shit or threaten her physically. I didn't go out and find her fucking loser boyfriend and beat him with a tire iron. I let her find a place and slept on the couch (even when, one night, I woke up with her standing over me and I told her to get the fuck away because WTF?). I helped her move her stuff to the apartment 25 feet from my door and shared a beer with her to get her out without incident.

I'll likewise confide that I'm overwhelmingly humiliated by this behavior. What self respecting human being puts up with this without at least drawing a few lines in the sand? What kind of sad, gleefully manipulated emasculation billboard endures this sort of absurdity? As Balboa finally breaks it down to Adrian, “I’m scared! Is that what you want me to say? There it is. I’m scared. Of losing what I got.”

The broke-dick dog I'd become accepting unconditionally all of her eccentricities and betrayals continued and the kicks kept coming. I walked past her apartment to carry out the trash and was serenaded by the sounds of her having sex. Going to get the mail one day and I walk around the corner to catch her in the complex pool humping a friend from Chicago who crashed on my couch not two months earlier. I asked her for the money she owed me for discarding the marriage to get her itchy twat scratched and she flat out denied me a dime despite her living off of my salaries for years.

I am Jack's understanding ex.
I am Jack's sad cuckold.
I am Jack's emotional doormat.

I decided that she was such a skilled writer that she could continue writing for the Ape. This was loudly contested by everyone. For the past few months, she's written nothing which I was happy about as I ran from Vegas and came to Kansas and spun like a busted wheel. My family has been extraordinary and helpful. My friends have been supportive and thoughtful. I was fine wallowing in a combination of self pity and self loathing. I was on the ropes. I was getting my ass kicked by this. I was losing the fight.

And then, in her first piece for this magazine in months, she writes a love letter to her latest mark. A love letter.

"He's getting killed!" barks out Apollo to Paulie.
"No, no, no, no. He's not getting killed. He's getting MAD!"

It reads like a justification without admission. A lens into her personal love life absent a confession. A shot at me. I think I was sort of hoping she regretted it all. Instead, it’s a missive of pretend regret. As if she asked herself “What would someone with feelings and emotions write?” Hint: A person with feelings and emotions wouldn't write a love letter to her newest mark to be posted on her ex-husband's magazine.

Back in May, when we had decided to go to the courthouse in Las Vegas and file for divorce, I was a complete wreck of a human being. I was on the edge of losing and collapsing in a fetal position and weeping like my life was over second by second. The plan was that she and I would drive to the courthouse and our friend (who consented to be our witness) would meet us there.

I asked if the soon to be ex-wife could ride with the friend because the idea of crashing into an emotional stew in the car on the way back with her inches from me felt like disaster. The suggestion pissed her off. It didn't fit how she wanted things to go. It was unnecessary in her eyes but I held my ground (one of the rare moments in those days of Stürm and Dräng).

At the courthouse she was intolerable. Put out. Annoyed. Impatient. It was exactly what I needed to go from nearly collapsing from shock and grief to getting pissed off. I rode away after it was said and done without a tear shed.

I decided we would not publish the love letter and her instantly snide reaction to my uncharacteristic refusal to go along with her plans has had the same effect. I see past the facade and get to the real person underneath exposed. I get a glimpse of the woman I actually married rather the slightly fictionalized version that she and I both concocted to maintain the fairy tale beginnings. A woman unnecessarily antagonistic and competitive, who hides from those she claims to love, engages with them dishonestly, belittles them, and sabotages any hope of sustainable and remarkable relationships.

I see someone who wants to pummel me into a corner and beat me down for no other reason than whim and self interest. When I see her and she isn't who she promised to be but rather an untrustworthy leach, something pops in my head and I fight back.

I'm finished feeling like a chump. I’ve lost all I thought was important and so I’m no longer scared. Her new lover is in for a ride. She wrote very similar things to me in those halcyon days and they were lies. Hell, I even have a quote from a poem she wrote for me tattooed on my right bicep.

"Our humanity levels a platform for the infinite embrace."

It once was a declaration of love. It is now a dark warning to be aware of con artists professing love without heart behind it. A portent of the woman destined to be a whore without ever needing the money but desperately wanting the thrill.

I wish her no ill but I don't wish her well, either. I hope she's capable of redemption but it isn't my problem anymore. Time to get up off the canvas, have Mick cut my swollen eyes, finish the fight, and stay standing.

To my friends and family, relax. You don't have to yell at the screen anymore for me to "Fight back! Get MAD!" I'm there. I'm up on my feet, weaving and bobbing. The pity party is canceled. I'm wiser now. I'm a bit more scarred (and maybe a little bit brain damaged). This last kick in the ribs was exactly what I needed to find my spirit animal and he's a silverback and he's beyond angry. He's goddamned supernatural.

He’s not getting killed. He’s getting MAD.

Cue Eye of the Tiger.