Walter Janowicz

I love women. It's a fact of my life, and I couldn't deny it even if I wanted to, which I don't. My ex-fiancée, Robin Kelley, knew this going in. No secrets. She knew about the affairs I carried on behind her back, she knew about my bi-weekly rave parties, but you know what? She was happy with me anyway.

Until that motherfucker Girth McDürchstein reentered her life, and ruined both mine and Robin's lives. This was in late November of last year (2005), just one short week before Robin and I were to be married at Our Lady of Dymphna in Cedar Rapids. Girth had come to town specifically to stop the wedding, which quite simply wasn't going to happen. For all our faults, Robin and I were in love. We were gonna get married, and even an asshole like Girth couldn't stop it.

Well, we got some hitches in the plan, of course. Being a woman and naturally weaker in intellect and emotional strength as all women are, Robin still had some unresolved feelings for this clown. I thought she was going to get over it all when she found out Girth himself had a fiance, who he had left at the altar—just like he'd done to Robin 12 years earlier—and yeah, Robin sure as hell was mad about that. Mad and upset, I guess.

Soon as Margo Atwater came to town and met Robin and found out just why Girth had come back to Cedar Rapids (she didn't even know; she just tracked him 'cause she figured, where else would he go?), she confronted Girth about the whole situation. Girth laid it out on the line: sure, Margo was great, but his real love was Robin. He didn't want to give her up. Margo, who loved Girth as much as Girth loved Robin, decided she'd help him along. She came to my office one day, dressed real provocative. She told me who she was and then told me she caught Girth and Robin doing the nasty at Girth's mom's house. Well, I didn't really believe her at first, but then Margo just flipped out, like, getting ready to throw herself out the window and shit. And I work on the fourth floor with a big concrete parking lot right outside. I stopped her, she made some advances, and next thing I knew we had done the nasty ourselves.

After that, I figured Robin and I were even. Of course, this was long before I even found out that stuff about Girth and Robin sleeping together was horseshit. But she found out and was pretty pissed, first at Girth (because she thought he set the whole thing up), but then finally at me. She realized something: me "cheating" (her word) on her was not something she liked. She accepted it, she told me, because she was settling, forcing herself to believe she was happy when she wasn't. She practically begged me to turn over a new leaf, and I insisted I would. I meant it, too, but you know what? The bitch left me anyway.

Now she's miserable. I'm miserable, too. And what of Girth and Margo? This experience drew them even closer together, and they ran off to get married. Fuck them. Why do they deserve to be happy, when me and the woman I was always meant to be with, get shit on? It's fucking bullshit, is what it is. I hate them both and wish they'd die.

You know what I do most of the day now? Drink. More than I used to, even. I'm sure Robin's the same way. I can't even find comfort in the touch, the caress, the hot wet pressing of my flesh into a woman's. I still seek out and fuck women on a pretty regular basis, but ever since Robin left me it's been one empty experience after another. There's no value in having other women when you don't have somebody you love to go back to.