Bitch Kitty Racing

There is nothing worse than being in love with someone who takes a full roundhouse swing with a baseball bat right in your teeth. Oddly enough, the first reaction isn’t, “Wow, you are such as asshole!” but rather, “What did I do to deserve that?!”

Let’s correct some thinking, shall we? When someone attacks you without defiance this person is crazy. Sane people do not intentionally hurt others. Intentionally hurting another human being is eight kinds of crazy, it’s what animals do because they want to eat you. If a human being attacks you physically he goes to jail and learns about things called “prison purses” and “shanking.”

The victim is hurt, shaking and has both physical and mental damage. No rational person with even a dried-up dead mouse for a heart would blame the victim for the attack, except the victim.

Don’t ever do that again. Promise me you won’t. It’s nuts. A dirty cat box deserves better treatment than you’re giving yourself. You did nothing wrong. You were attacked by an animal, it doesn’t deserve rational thought spent on it because it’s not a rational being, it’s not human. I don’t care if it is judged by humans as a human, it just isn’t. To be human is to rise above our animal selves and think. We are tricky monkeys and sinners at birth, and it is our lifelong duty to make sure we never enter that state again.

Being cheated on is another kind of attack. I want to make that absolutely crystal/diamond/glass/still mountain pond clear: an attack without defiance, unprovoked, no warning, just BAM with the baseball bat.

And this is supposed to be the victim’s fault? Huh? How? Everyone over the age of six knows that you do not cheat on your lover. That’s the tricky monkey part of us that we’ve kept on which society is founded: we have evolved into monogamous creatures. Our tricky monkey selves protect our nests and our spouses. We do not cheat because the survival of the species depends on fidelity. A tricky monkey female will not choose an obviously unfaithful male because he will not be there to raise the children. A tricky monkey male will not choose a faithless female because he won’t know if those are his offspring. We instinctively don’t like cheaters.

Yet there seems to be a lot of literature that suggests that somehow the victim might have driven his lover to it, or that men are hard-wired to attempt copulation with as many women as possible.

Bullshit.

Try justifying your cheating behavior to your lover. “I’m hard-wired horny, honey!” or, my personal favorite, “You made me cheat on you!” What? I made you hurt me? No, no, no, no. That’s like those kids who windmill their arms and say that anyone who gets in the way is to blame for the punch. Stop flailing, dumbass, you can really hurt someone. And stop cheating, dumbass, because you already did.

And being cheated on is probably the worst pain imaginable. What we are hard-wired to do is go completely atomic when we find out our lover has been unfaithful. And you know what’s the best part? You’re totally justified. Set fire to his truck. Beat her lover senseless with a dead skunk. It’s called a crime of passion, and this is the one case where you can stand in a court of law and, even though you committed a serious crime and are going to jail, it really is the victim’s fault and everybody is on your side. You may even get the electric chair, but everyone still knows you ex-lover is an asshole.

Let’s look a little more closely at out cheaters, shall we? First up, your lover. Your lover who just attacked you without defiance by committing an act that is universally regarded as wrong. Was she drunk and claims she didn’t know what she was doing? That’s actually called rape, honey, and you’d better be filing charges or I’m nailing your cat to the ceiling. Was it just a physical thing for him? Nice work, dude, admitting you don’t use your brain. What, you lack the mental faculty control normal urges? Do you wet yourself, too? Or is there a monster in your pants? “I can’t control my penis! Help! Help! It’s running amok!”

Either way, neither person should be regarded as a human being any longer. They have chosen not to act rationally, so why on earth do they try to rationalize their behavior? Why would you treat them like a rational being?

Now, I know this hurts and is so far beyond impacted-wisdom-tooth-extraction pain that it defies description, but you need a spine, like right now. You DO NOT put up with this crap. Your lover is dead, and what stands before you begging forgiveness is a lying butthead, farting out pleas and justifications. Or even worse (I sincerely pray this never happens to anyone, but I’ve heard that it does), your lover seems nonchalant about it, like it’s no big deal.

Ouch!

Did you feel the wood impact your teeth, there? Did that hurt? Is it your fault you got hit just because you happened to be standing there?

Are you kidding me?

Stop crying and fight back! Yell, scream, throw a huge fit, do some serious psychological maiming! As long as you don’t threaten, it’s legal! Point out all the other person’s shortcomings real or imagined! Make it hurt! You’re being attacked by a rabid monkey! Get it away from you! Do not try to reason with it! Inflict enough pain that it goes away!

What’s the point of all this? Number one: not only have you been attacked, your attacker now wants an emotional band-aid. It’s like she punched you and cut her knuckle on your teeth, and now she wants you to make it all better. Don’t do it. Just let her bleed out. Let her writhe, the relationship’s completely fucked anyway, and at least you have your pride. Let her feel guilty until she dies of it. This ties into point number two: your lover needs to know he did something wrong. Seriously, if you cave he will be absolved and not learn a valuable lesson. It’s like a child who goes around punching people all the time. It is only when someone finally pounds the snot out of that little turd that he thinks twice about punching someone else. Pain is such an amazingly effective teacher. You want to make sure this little retarded monkey thinks twice before ever cheating on anyone again.

Now let’s look at the cheatee, or (sorry, this is going to hurt) the person who had sex with your lover (sorry again. Ouch! I know, I know, but read on, it gets better). The cheatee is, without a doubt, the most reviled figure on the planet. Whom would you kill first? Pol Pot or that guy who just fucked your wife? See what I mean? You might execute Pol Pot, but you would beat that other bastard to death with an axe handle and yet pray that he never dies so you might go on inflicting pain upon him.

Whoa! That was really rather frighteningly violent, wasn’t it? But I have been cheated on before, and that’s what it made me feel. And I am certainly not alone, not by a long shot.

The cheatee cares about nothing but herself. She does not care the slightest damn for the person she’s fucking; if she did she’d realize she’s going to cause him endless pain, guilt, anger, and unhappiness. She gives even less thought to the person that’s being cheated on. The cheatee is nothing but a dumb beast, utterly inhuman. In most societies (I’m pretty sure this is true) the cheated has a right to a gallon of the cheatee’s blood. Something like that. If it’s not already law we should put it up to popular vote, I bet it’d pass on the first try.

Yet, I want you to do this if you can: put the cheatee out of your mind, at lest for now. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and identity theft is so anonymous these days . . .

I’m so sorry this has happened to you at all, but I always want you to remember that most people are not insane, most people do not cheat. There are statistics, there are graphs, there are charts, but mostly there’s no one with a rational mind who cannot imagine the consequences, no one who cannot imagine how much it would hurt if it happened to them.

I’m actually fairly certain that my grandmother just hit me on the back of the head from 350 miles away to remind me that we should always forgive, and quite honestly she’s right. It’s easier to give up your anger than to hold it, and it’s also the only way you’ll ever get over it. Anger hurts, let it go as soon as you can so you don’t find yourself coddling a pain kitten. But do not give up your right to be insanely pissed-off and hurt after you find out. What your lover did to you is not okay, is completely unjustifiable, and was just flat-out wrong. She just opened up your skull with a blunt object, or more precisely, she just broke your heart.

Coda

I initially started writing an article on cheating to answer a question for very dear friend of mine in Africa whom I love and respect very much. She found herself in the role of The Other Woman. At first I was trying to come up with a more realistic look at it, like “it just happens” or “only after dark, never with the same person twice.” I had forgotten that just last year I was unfaithful to my lover and broke her heart. I had forgotten what that felt like. She tortured me for months and then broke up with me. Then, like a giant cliche, I had a lover cheat on me. (Please don’t say karma, say I went looking for some sort of absolution.)

What I am trying to say, apparently by publicly announcing my assholery, is that I’ve gotten some perspective on this topic in the last year, more than I could ever possibly want, actually. And to my darling in Africa I say: stop it. I will never stop loving you, but what you are doing is wrong. There is no other answer I can give you from my front row seat.