All My Instincts Screamed...

I've been trying to come up with another story where there was a happy ending after a great deal of shit- and I think this next little story should illustrate this point perfectly...

I first met my Bastard Ex when we were both working at the local racing stables. What I haven't told you is that he was the same areshole who had asked Greenie to put the horse she was leading into the nearest stable so that he could fuck her without the horse being in their way.

I hated him on sight. The slob. He was wearing the same dirty black t-shirt and tracksuit pants that he always wore. He didn't work in our barn- he worked for another trainer further down the food-chain than the one who me and Greenie worked for. But there were lots of trainers who utilised this race-track and their facilities, so we had to put up with seeing him almost every morning.

I had nothing to do with him back then. He was covered in tattoos and aways had a cigarette dangling from his lips, even as he mucked the horse-shit out of the straw. Black Beauty would have been horrified. Itwasn't until about two years after I had stopped working at the race-track that I ran into him at one of the seediest pubs in Town. This was the Cess-Pit; where only the biggest of all Losers went.

I fit right in; I'm desperate for Something. I was also more drunk than usual, and had already spent most of the Government allowance that I received each fortnight to provide for my Son, who had only just turned one when all of this happened. Not that I had to provide much for him- my Parent's pay for all of the household bills and groceries, except for the Milkman, who I pay, because my Son drinks a lot of cow's milk now that I've stopped using Formula. And I pay for the disposable nappies because I got fed up with washing the real ones that my Mother also paid for...

I'm almost twenty and I've got nothing, except a baby, to show for it. I don't run a car or pay board or buy clothes for Myself or the baby. I've only ever bought him one pair of shoes. My Parent's think I've been saving my spare cash in a trust fund for the baby- maybe so we can afford to move out one day- but I spend everything that's leftover on alcohol and going out.

My friend's all went home hours ago- it's almost five in the morning- and I'm sitting at the bar near the large Samoan bouncer. For safety. He calls me his little wife, and I smile weakly at him through the bourbon haze. I've probably spent around three hundred dollars on booze tonight; I have about one hundred left in the bank to pay for the milk bill and nappies and to keep me stocked with cigarettes until I get paid again next fortnight. And I am just about to go home- I really was- when he spies me sitting there. All alone and lonely and pissed out of my head.

I wish I had just walked away like all my instincts screamed at me then. I don't know why I even spoke to him that night. I can't explain why I was with him at the time at all- other than to say that I had finally gotten it through my thick skull that my Hubby didn't want to be with Me or our Son because I was a weak and lonely person. And majorly depressed. I felt like not many men would be interested in a nineteen-year-old-single-mother-of-one who had stretch marks on her sad and saggy-looking tits; a lot of guys around that age would have run a mile at the thought of children- and you can't really blame them either, when sometimes the biological Father's do exactly the same thing...

My Ex was interested in single mothers like Me; more for the meagre pension I collected each fortnight than anything else. I was never fooled into thinking that he ever really liked me; He was too much of a Bastard- too much of the time. I suppose I didn't think I had a lot of options out there. Man; I wish I had done anything else. Right there and then.

I forget about the milkman's bill and withdraw what's remaining in my dwindling bank account so that we can continue drinking throughout the morning. Some six hours later I stagger home with this new hanger-on of mine. My Father is less than impressed with my drunken appearance, and thinks for some reason that this Neanderthal is my Hubby, the boy who had helped get his daughter pregnant and given him a beautiful grandson, and so is yelling at him to fuck off as he tries to shuffle me outside the gate and over to the pool. It's his intention to throw me in it- to sober me up I suppose- but I wriggle out of his grasp somehow, and pass out on my bed for the next eighteen hours. I only got up because my bladder was about to rupture...

I don't remember giving my Ex my phone number, though I suppose I must have, for he came around every day after that- much to my Father's disgust. He never liked the arsehole. Neither did I all that much, either, come to think of it. Hindsight; it's a wonderful thing.

In the ten months that we went out I lost fifteen kilos off my already skinny frame. I blame the constant stress he put me under. I got called a Cunt by a man for the first of many times in my Life- he'd say it like it was such an insult to posess one- not that he deserved using Any words that define the mighty vagina; even if it was a derogative term.

He never actually hit me but he had the habit of intimidating me, getting up really close in my face and menacingly threatening me, to the point that I never felt I could stand up to him, even though he was shorter than Me by a full two inches. He's a dirty fat bastrad, if the truth is to be faithfully told- his hair was greasy because he never washed it. And he stank. Even his dick smelt. I don't know how I ever let him put it in me.

And he's a liar and a thief. I don't know how he did this either, but one day he managed to steal my Sister's two saddles- right from underneath our noses. There is no other explanation when they somehow managed to end up in one of his ex-girlfriend's possessions...

She was another horsy type. Her story was that he gave her the saddles because he owed her money for a stock saddle he had sold behind her back when they had been going out.I believed her; she looked sincere enough when the police turned up. But even that wsn't enough to convince me to leave him, especially as he stuck to his original story that she must have come over to my house and stolen the saddles from there. Not that she even knew where I lived.

Another reason I should have left him was the fact that he wasn't particularly nice to my Son, calling him names when he had toileting accidents. He wasn't even two. I still hate the fact that I said nothing.

That's why when he left me I considered it to be the only nice thing that he had ever done for us. And I can have the last laugh, because even though He never knew it, I cheated on him first- before he took off for Queensland...

The weekend before he left I snuck out to the pub with Dano, who had to lend me twenty dollars because I had given him all the money I had, as usual. That night I ran into my Hubby and ended up staying with him all weekend long; I told him how my Ex was treating me and our Son. I told him how my boyfriend scared me with his threats and menacing glances. The next night we went to my friend Fee's twenty-first birthday and made out like teenagers in the backyard; well- that's what we practically still were, after all.

And it was different this time; He was different- for a start I didn't have to desperately throw myself at him like I had to in the past. And unlike my Ex, he made me feel hot and wanted. Desirable. And that was really nice after being treated like a piece of shit for ten months. My Ex was really good, even better than me, at spending my Son's and my money for himself- on drugs and alcohol or more drugs. We, my Son and I, also paid for his car repayments and court fines when he got busted trying to flog off that air compressor he'd stolen. He was good at stuff like that, too, and for siphoning petrol out of pensioner's cars. Once he sold a car that I'd bought- and stupidly put into both our names- for fifty dollars worth of Hash; he just signed it away. ..

But the funniest thing of all was that he was too gutless to break up with me either.

When he left he told me that the bus was taking him to visit his father, who was supposedly ill, and before he left he even had the nerve to ask me to buy him a new pair of tracksuit pants and a blue Flannelette shirt because it gets cold in the nights in the small town where his father lived. Now I know it was just to get all 'dressed up'. This is priceless.

I paid for his ticket at the Terminal and then gave him ten dollars for some McDonalds on the way, and told him I'd see him next week. I still hadn't gotten up the courage to tell him that I was leaving him for my Hubby; I figured it would be easier to break up with him on the phone than in person; I didn't want to see how angry he would get at Me for cheating on him...

Three weeks passed and I realised that he's gotten in first- that he had left me to reunite with his own ex- the one whose name was permanently inked on his baboon's chest. I had hated looking at it- he would always compare me to Tanya- how she had massive tits and I didn't. How she was so hot that she had gone out with some guy when he was in some stripper group like Man Power. Maybe she did- I don't know-but it made me wonder why her standards had slipped so far since.

Anyway, he didn't come back for almost a year; during which time my Hubby had reunited and were still madly in love for the first time. But I still can't believe that he had the audacity to ring me when he got back- even using the Pet Name that he used to call me when I answered the phone...

I straight away ask him where he is- I'm worried sick that he's actually calling from the phone-box on the corner because there's no one at home today, except for me and my Son. I tell him I'm back with my Hubby and he laughs and tells me he didn't want me back anyway but just wants to know if I can lend him some money until Dole Day, probably so he can get some drugs. Not anymore.

After he hangs up on me I ring my Hubby at his parent's house, and he comes over because I'm scared my Ex will show up on the doorstep. He doesn't. Ever again. But I have seen him since, none-the-less. He's getten even fatter and his hair's as grey as a ghost's- and it makes me laugh because he's only just turned thirty.

But like I said, when my Bastard Ex left me, it really was the nicest thing he ever did for me.

Every cloud really Does have a silver lining.