I'd been the light-heavy weight fisticuffs champ of New York's Metropolitan Junior Hockey League, which sent Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL, but hitting a woman never occurred to me. On the other hand, I was on the receiving end once.
I'd been dating a young woman while doing graduate school at NYU. Things seemed to be going very well. Before Christmas break we travelled to Washington, DC, and spent a weekend with her sister's family. Afterwards, I went home to New York and spent Christmas with my family.
When she returned from break, I went to see her at her apartment. Shortly after I entered she said she had some bad news (for me). She was moving to California to get married. After I'd left her sister's house, she'd hopped on a jet plane and spent Christmas with another boy friend. Little did I know. I spent a whole weekend with at least two, probably three people, who treated me like the latest family addition without coming close to letting on that I was the latest family sucker. Which hurt more the loss of the woman or the humiliation discovering I'd spent a weekend as the family fool.
Since staying any longer seemed to be pointless, I politely excused myself without saying much at all and headed home. The apartments at NYU had no elevators. I wasn't far down the first flight of stairs when someone runs up behind me and kicks me real hard in the butt. I turned to defend myself, which I'd done ferociously on more than one occasion, and there was my "friend" Dirty Marie. "IF YOU LEAVE NOW, I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN" she screamed. I turned around and just kept going.
* * * * *
I should have immediately bailed out on this when she waited until breakfast to announce that... technically ... she was still married.
