Clicking around CNN this morning, I landed on this story about cheating bastards and the sweetness of revenge. I am not interesting enough to have a lot of experience with revenge ( I’ve got tons of experience with vengeful thoughts, mind you, but I lack the follow through required for any sort of satisfaction). And reading about Terri Garr smashing windows with a hammer filled me with a pretty even mix of awe and horror. You know, like “Holy shit, I wish I could do that! But boy am I glad I didn’t.”
My one and only attempt at revenge solidly reaffirmed everything I’d always known about myself: I would make a terrible criminal. I’m just not cut out for it.
It wasn’t exactly B&E because I still had a key*. And one weekend when I knew he’d be away, I went to his apartment with a friend (whose name will be omitted because anything truly deviant about the night was totally her idea). For me, it was a mostly innocent diversion/fact-finding mission. I thought I’d drop in, do a quick toothbrush count (what better way to confirm my suspicions?), take advantage of his superior real estate, drink some champagne and call it a night. My friend, being more mischievous and in possession of a set of brass balls, had some other ideas. Involving porn.
It’s important to note that the fella in question takes himself very seriously. I wish I had the time and patience to elaborate on this for you, because so. much. eye rolling. But I don’t, so I’ll just say that there are few things that would embarrass him more than to have a guest at one of his Celebrate My Greatness parties notice dirty adult films among his very carefully selected reading material. Image being so intensely important to this guy, that as much as he liked having sex, he couldn’t ever actually talk about it without the cushion of a flowery euphemism (“making love”). Clearly, this is not a man who would admit to watching/owning porn.
Thus motivated, while I ordered sushi, my friend went to work collating. Pretentious literature, porn, literature, porn. Catcher in the Rye, Brown Eye for the Straight Guy. It was a beautiful thing to behold.
We giggled (like you do when you’re up to something really ill-advised), drank too much and went home. And a few hours later, when the champagne buzz cleared, so did the feeling that what we’d done was funny. Or even justified.
So, for what was probably the best part about my adventure in deviant behavior, I felt so icky that not only did I spend my lunch hour the next day busting my ass over to his apartment to remove all evidence of our mischief, I emailed him and came clean. He was understandably annoyed. There were exclamation points. I apologized again, dropped his keys into a Fed Ex envelope, and did a mental brow swipe. Thank god I’d left out that bit about Brown Eye for the Straight Guy. He’d probably have pressed charges.
* Seriously, if you can’t keep it zipped, don’t give the girl a key. I’m just sayin’.
I hooked up with one of his good friends. I felt a little bad, but it was kind of his friend’s idea, and the friend was uber-cute. I would never do that now, but it was okay for 22-23, I think.
How funny, I just started reading “I take this man” by Valerie Frankel. A fun little piece of chick lit that deals with a mom’s revenge on the man who stood her daughter up at the alter. MOOOHAHA!
I dated this surgeon who had a history of being a player. He promised me that he had straightened up and wanted to seriously date, but wasn’t ready for marriage. We dated for several years. One day while rounding at the hospital with him after lunch a fellow Dr. congratulated him on his engagement. I was pissed and he confessed. He had cheated on me (so I thought) a year prior with another nurse(Amy); so I pretended to be her (Amy) and called the fiance(he told me her name and I googled her) and told her of “our” affair. She was hurt; we talked for about an hour and she thanked me for my honesty and said she had felt his heart was with someone else. Needless to say I felt like ****; not better.
Great Post! When I 21 my boyfriend of 2 years was caught off guard by a surprise visit to his home from his college “girlfriend”. Once I was sufficiently caught up to date with his misdeeds I left him to fight it out with her, she was pretty buff and a smidge on the hysterical side. On my way back to my car I keyed the words sl*t, wh*re and cheater on ALL sides of his white Audi. I thought I was going to vomit from the guilt of vandalism, but turns out getting over a broken heart kinda cancelled out the guilt pretty quickly.
Ha, I just read the article about Terri Garr, too. Why does it always make one feel better to smash things? Even it is a bit naughty… it’s better than smashing his head (or his nuts).
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I once found out that someone who had been chasing me had also been playing footsies with someone else – i.e., using me to make her jealous.
Fortunately for me, he left a packet of souvenirs from one of their little trysts out of state, including a receipt (with HER credit card number on it), in a desk drawer tucked under some other stuff. Where I later found it.
One quick phone call to “Flamingos by the Yard” later, and an order was placed for a yard full of pink plastic flamingos for his front yard with a sign that read, “We’ll Always Have Paris” to go with it, courtesy of HER American Express Card. [BTW, I was stone-cold-sober at the time.....
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I never did see the end result, but that’s the thing about truly great revenge: you have to let go of the need to actually see your finished handiwork to get away with it. Never regretted it for a second.
When you are in need of some procrastination: http://thehotvirgin.blogspot.com/2008/03/in-case-you-still-had-doubts-about-my.html
Let’s just say I drew inspiration from the escapades of my favorite blogger
And yes, I linked to you!
That was then though. Same thing happens today, don’t you clean his latrine with those toof-brushes and then just roll out? It’s more smighting of evil than revenge if you look at it correctly.
ha ha – you would make a terrible criminal! I can’t believe you came clean. That’s so cute
I have that guilt gene too, and the results have not been pretty. Even though I’ve never stuck porn in an ex-BF’s library (CLASSIC, tho!), I once cheated on a chemistry test in high school – like, one question – but the result was such tremendous, overwhelming guilt that I spilled the beans to my mother, crying and begging her to take me to jail. I am not kidding (maybe I was younger than high school b/c I couldn’t really have believed jail was the answer…) She said no, that I was punishing myself enough, and I spent a few more sleepless night crying over my moral descent. Then the girl I cheated with came down with Bell’s Palsey and I was convinced God was punishing us. Oy vey, I was a MESS!
The only “revenge” I have indulged in was subscribing my ex-bf’s email to every single ED drug mailing list I could think of (Viagra, Cialis, etc.) haha
It felt pretty good, actually, but didn’t leave any damaging results! Besides, he was cheating on his gf of 2 years with me (I had no idea until I accidentally heard about her from his best friend).
When my live-in boyfriend and I broke up (and he invited me to move out, since it was his apartment to begin with) I took our new puppy into every room in the apartment and instructed her (in the firm, deep voice dog trainers tell you is so important) to pee.
Fish, your idea of revenge is so cute. It’s endearing, in fact. If you had done this to me, I would have laughed and laughed and then invited you over to watch while eating junk food and giggling through a bottle of champagne. Too funny. I can’t believe this guy was actually not amused. Definitely you deserve better. Someone a tad more unclenched anyway!
i heard…and saw him entertaining other young ladies in his car. so i took the tags off the car’s license plate. he was pulled over and fined a couple hundred dollars.
i’ll admit, i clicked through my feed reader for the revenge fantasy but i stayed for the porn.
ha! i was just thinking that if free porn was the revenge of choice for betrayed spouses in my neighborhood, we could probably stick a fork in the local foreclosure market.
You’ve always been good at detective work, Heather. So in my opinion, this was one of those ‘stating the obvious’ occassions. It also makes for good copy (Lisa Lutz – ‘Curse of the Spellmans’). Not that I care for this imbecile, but I’ve wondered is it a right of passage for women of great gut and instinct to keep testing a moronic guy with character flaws if you already know the outcome. Patricia Arquette’s character on the show ‘Medium’ at least makes money at it and helps put the baddies away. Who’s the April fools joke on anyway?
Oh my goodness! You shouldda left the porn there! That wouldda been the most hilarious thing in the world. *sigh* Oh well. It makes for one great story at least.
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I read that article yesterday too. The worst I’ve ever done is cyberstalking to gather evidence. I can’t even stalk in real life. I think what saves me from insane behaviour – completely separate from insane thoughts, because nothing NOTHING can ever save me from that – is fear of showing too much emotion. In that respect, I think being emotionally repressed works to my advantage.
I read that article yesterday…and it reminded me of my days as an accomplice to some low brow crime against an asshole ex husband. My best friend was left for another woman. Bad enough, right? But the woman in question was older and gross and wore the big Lee jeans (crime against fashion, for sure…) anyway…my friend still had a spare key for his car. We would go to his job on our lunch hour and move his car…or if we saw it at the bar where we all hung out, we moved it. Sometimes we waited around to watch his reaction. He had to know it was us, but really couldn’t do much about it…a new ignition was too much of a hassle…Sometimes, we would laugh so hard we almost wet ourselves…it is a good prank…I recommend!
My beau of 7 years broke up with me because my “physical activity level” was not up to his standards. He never stops moving — probably because all the crap he has going on in his head (which he needs therapy for) would catch him. Guess the 24 year old (he’s 40) illegal Romanian immigrant who he met over the summer is very active when she’s not driving a cab in Chicago. I have her information and really want to deport her a** cause I know it would really hurt him (and her … bonus!) but I have to believe that karma is a b*tch and they will get theirs in the end! And let’s face it I don’t need that kind of karma coming back to get me.
I caught an ex red-handed a few years back (I had keys and suspected it…he left his laptop on and logged into a secret email account on his kitchen table, so I was able to read every cheating email he exchanged with a SPREADSHEET full of women).
While I waited for him to come home from his date, I packed up everything of mine, broke every picture frame and tore up every picture of us, then waited in his bed. I confronted him alright, but I’ve always regretted that I didn’t just leave without a word. I regret that I actually listened to his empty declarations and tried to forgive and stay together.
Since then, I’ve learned that the most difficult and most rewarding revenge is to thrive in your life without him.
Ugh. It’s so much better to move on. As a friend of mine likes to say “Next!”
I enjoy reading about the revenge – whether fantasy or real, but after college and early 20′s, I just couldn’t be bothered with that stuff. And it’s not from some moral viewpoint or a belief in karma, I’m just too lazy. But keep on writing, ’cause I’m laughing my head off at some of the escapades.
Katie
who was the ex?
If I didn’t tell you my friend’s name, you think I’m going to tell you HIS? Silly rabbit.
I love that your version of revenge is so thought out, creative and hilarious. Forget smashing windows, because this story just blew my mind.
And, although I cringe to admit it, I like you even more for not being able to go through with it (although I think you unnecessarily punished yourself with the confession. What he didn’t know…)
I remember how destroyed I felt when I found out the man I wanted to marry had cheated on me while he was away for 5 months. I was SO in love that it didn’t even occur to me that it could happen. Even though it was over and I believed he was truly sorry I broke up with him because I couldn’t imagine ever trusting him again.
Fast forward 7 years later, I ran into him recently looking FINE (been working out). The look on his face was priceless, he took me to lunch and proceeded to tell me how he has not stopped thinking about me in all that time. Literally I said “That’s nice. Can you pass the pepper?”
The fighting between my ex and I had reached a colossal level towards the end. He was convinced I was thinking (if not actually) cheating on him and remained extremely jealous over every guy I knew. He had to go away for a business trip for two weeks and I thought the space would give us time to breathe and re-examine our relationship. Instead, the bastard called me up and told me “it isn’t working” and that he wanted me out of our apartment by the time he got back so his new “understanding”, faithful girlfriend could move in.
I spent the time packing my things, destroying our pictures, dividing up our things and on the day he got back, I (under th influence of a lot of wine) plastered the walls with all of his wank mags and created a gigantic mobile with all his porn dvds so that it blocked most of the living room. I should mention I was an art major and sculpture was my forte. I also left some of our shared toys out with instructions on how to use them, including a delicious little tidbit on how he liked the strap-on “just so” and that he really liked it rough. I would have liked to have done more, but my buzz was wearing off and a soberer friend who was picking me up thought it was a good idea to get while the getting’s good.
Brown Eye for the Straight Guy was the piece d’resistance.
Hehe.