Real women devour any available man, leaving behind piles of masculine rubble in their stiletto-heeled wake. Sort of like Godzilla trashing Tokyo, only cuter in a G-string.
At least, that’s what I thought at the beginning of my career as self-styled Real Woman. Fresh out of long-dying relationship that had just gasped its last, I was ready to be reckless, wanton and wild.
I figured the call of the wild included the call of my best friend’s soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. Right?
Wrong. Real wrong.
Julie and Michael (name change alert!) were grinding down to the end of their 2 years of live-in lethargy when they both started to confide in me about their problems.
“Michael’s so prickly,” Julie would tell me. “He criticizes everything about me and always says he’s too tired to go out with me. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from staying out all night with his friends.”
Then Michael would spill his guts: “Julie’s always talking about getting married, and she knows I’m not headed that way. Even grocery shopping with her has a wedding bell clang to it.”
When Julie’s inevitable “I’ve been dumped” phone call came, I was already one step ahead of the sob-a-thon. Namely because Michael had called five minutes earlier asking me out for a drink.
Even though I was 100% on Julie’s side, I was also 100% titillated by the idea of fooling around with Michael. The math was bad, but the flesh was badder.
Before long, drinks with Michael turned into sex with Michael. And friendship with Julie turned into round-the-clock grief-counselling as she poured out the pain of her lost love. She was in agony, and only I, her best friend, could help her.
Some best friend. One minute I was offering her solace about her no-goodnick ex. The next I was trying out naughty kitty moves on the no-goodnick. I had dry heaves from the guilt of betraying my innocent friend.
Suffering from post-dumped obsession, Julie continued to keep tabs on Michael’s life, wondering who he was seeing while she embarked on what she saw as a life of spinsterhood.
I knew who he was seeing: me. As Julia’s confidence crumbled and her self-worth became increasingly fragile, my guilt soared.
To make matters worse, I discovered that all of Julie’s complaints about Michael were horrifyingly valid. He was critical and impossible to please. What the hell was I doing?
I was cheating on my girlfriend, that’s what. When I realized her love and trust was much more valuable than my fling, I quit the seductress schtick.
But that didn’t fix everything. I had done the wrong thing to my friend, and that kind of wrong doesn’t diminish with time.
All these years later, Julie still doesn’t know what I did, and I don’t ever want her to know. The fact remains I traded a month of hanky-panky for a lifetime of guilt. It’s called karma, baby, and someday it’s gonna bite me in the ass.
