Puke Skywalker

So last week I had a work trip to Seattle and I included a concert, as I like to do. I went to the Showbox to see Joshua Slone and while I was at the show, I struck up a conversation with the older man next to me, because we were both there solo. He was easily in his seventies, and we bonded over music and the venue and whatever. He lives around the corner from the venue and everyone there knows and loves him, he goes to nearly every show comped, and he was just a nice old guy to chat with during show breaks and while we were waiting.

After the show ended, I was wondering aloud if it would be possible to order a DoorDash pizza to arrive at my hotel at the same time as my Uber, and Bob was like ohhh I know where to get a good pizza, right around the corner! So I was like let’s go! And we walked down into Pike Place Market, past the gum wall, to The Alibi. We sat at the bar and ordered a pizza and two drinks, which I paid for with my corporate card. Some of the bartenders from the Showbox showed up, said hi to us, and stood near us while we finished up eating. Afterwards, I said goodbye and Ubered back to my hotel. I posted some photos of the show on instagram, along with a selfie I took with Bob because I used to date one of the bartenders there (who has since been fired but we still chat occasionally) and I was like let’s take a photo and send it to Nathan. Pete sees my post and likes it.

Anyway. I go home, the next day is Friday, I don’t see Pete until our regularly scheduled Saturday night sleepover. He asks me how the show was and I tell him all about the show and Bob and the side quest for grape/bleu cheese/prosciutto pizza (which was so good!) and how we ran into the venue workers and everything. We go to bed as usual, he wakes early with the dog, makes breakfast.

But as I am sitting across the table from him at breakfast, he looks at me and says “here’s a scenario for you“… And he proceeds to ask me, kind of aggressively, how would you feel if I went golfing and I started talking to some random woman at the golf course and we end up deciding to go get a drink or dinner together, and I don’t tell you for four days.

Well, I knew where he was going with this obviously but I didn’t know that we weren’t just having a friendly conversation. So I asked him, how old is she and I was kind of laughing and he said well that’s not relevant. And things shifted immediately and I said yes it absolutely is relevant.

Anyway, the conversation devolved quickly from there, I tried to de-escalate and understand where exactly his boundary was, but he couldn’t tell me, or wouldn’t tell me. He said that if it were coworkers, it would’ve been totally fine which I think is crazy because people have affairs with coworkers all the time, but regardless, something about this interaction rubbed him the wrong way. And I apologized, I told him that was never my intention but I understand that intention isn’t the most important thing. I was also trying to understand why he had a problem with this interaction when a couple of months ago I also went to Seattle and struck up a conversation with two men next to me who ended up being trombone players for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and they smuggled me into their performance that night. And he literally said it was because that time I went to dinner first, and then to the show and this time I went to the show first, and then went to dinner. Which I still do not understand, that makes no fucking sense to me. 

We were supposed to go paddle boarding that day but obviously the vibe was dead so I told him that I would give him space and just go home. I hugged him goodbye and told him that I loved him and he has always done this thing where when I say, I love you to him, he mumbles it back to me but it’s completely incoherent, it’s like this bit that he does and I guess he did it then, but I didn’t hear him. So I was kind of like, why can’t you just tell me that you love me? And he goes oh, fuck off and shuts the door. He said it in a joking way, but that was the last thing that he said, and it pissed me off.

Several hours go by and I sent him a text that says basically I wasn’t able to articulate this in the moment, but I think the reason why this whole thing bothers me so much is because you are essentially saying that you don’t trust me and you don’t trust my judgment, and you think that I would put myself in an inappropriate situation. And he tells me yes you’re right, I did turn this nothing into something big and I do trust your judgment and I’m sorry. I was like I’m sorry too. And I swear to God, I thought that was the end of it.

But then a couple of hours later, he texts me and says did you hear what I said when you were leaving? And I said I heard you tell me to fuck off, and he was like, yeah you couldn’t hear me over the sound of your own voice, and I’m like why are you being passive aggressive with me and basically he just gives me the silent treatment for nearly 24 hours after that. I texted him in the morning and said whenever you want to chat about this go ahead and reach out and we can talk about it. And the next time he texted me was at 4 o’clock in the afternoon to say that the World Cup game was gonna start at 5 o’clock. That’s it, he doesn’t say anything about anything else he pretends like everything is cool and I was like all right, whatever I will take my cues from you and just pretend like everything is fine. He asks me if I wanna come over for dinner on Tuesday night and I say that sounds great, maybe we can try paddle boarding before dinner because we didn’t get to go on Sunday.

So I’m basically thinking that he’s avoiding the subject and I’m not keen on starting this fight all over again, mostly because I still maintain that I didn’t do anything wrong. I pick him up, we go paddle boarding, he’s acting completely normal. We go back to his house, I take a shower, then he takes a shower while I am finishing the noodles and the mushrooms, and then when he comes out, we sit down to eat.

I start telling him about something that happened with my mom and I’m talking while he’s eating and I’m like picking at the food a little bit and after I finish telling him what happened, I say you’ve been kind of quiet, what do you think about that? And he says are you done talking about yourself now? And I was like are you serious right now and he said you’ve been unloading on me for like 20 minutes and I can’t get a word in edgewise because all you wanna do is talk about yourself. And he gets up from the table, throws his dish in the sink, and says I’m done here. We’re done here. So I grabbed my bag and walked out his front door, barefoot.

And I haven’t spoken to him since. This is the first time we’ve ever had any kind of conflict in our relationship, any kind of argument about anything and honestly, if this is the way he communicates, the way he handles conflict in a relationship? No thank you, and no wonder his wife left him. I still can’t figure out what exactly triggered all of this or if he’s projecting, or what.

I’m not upset, I’m still in the mad stage.