The afterscience

Even though Kelz and I were still sleeping together, things got worse and worse every day I didn't have a working vehicle. Kelz would just get up and go without really letting me know where she was going, except to say she was going to be with Brod.

And then I was starting to get phone calls in which, once I answered, whoever it was would hang up. It reminded me of that Dr. Hook song "When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman," particularly the lyric, "You know that it's crazy, you know you should trust her, then somebody hangs up when you answer the phone." That happened once when Kelz was there. In California, the *69 feature had recently been introduced, but you had to sign up for the service. I didn't do that. But in early 1996, Pacific Bell decided to make it free to everyone for a trial period. She hit *69 and talked to the person who tried to call. This conversation went on for an hour and bordered on being flirtatious.

One night, she came home and told me, "I just did some heroin." I asked, "Okay, what now?" "I don't know. I have to start my 12 steps all over again. I don't know if it's worth it." I told her I would support her efforts to stop, but she didn't seem to want to do that. I felt powerless to do anything.

One night after she left, I went to the closet where I kept my cash and noticed a $50 bill was missing. I changed the hiding spot for my money. Later, I was in bed. I heard her come in the bedroom and open the closet. I could tell she was looking for the money, but couldn't find it. At that point, she knew that I was aware that something was up and that I wasn't being as trustful as I was before. She went back out for a few more hours.

When I was at work on a Friday morning, 02/09/96, she called me. She said that Brod had to crash at our apartment, but he would be out before I got home. I told her I didn't have a problem with that. I came home later and no one was there. I went into the bedroom and it smelled like something sexual had happened in there. And Kelz and I did not sleep together the night before.

I went over to the condom box in the medicine cabinet. I knew how many times Kelz and I had made love and the number of condoms left in the box was one less. I pulled out the bed and found the wrapper. My heart sunk. I spent the rest of the day contemplating what I would do. I knew I needed to get her out of my life. I just didn't know how because I felt so responsible.

Later in the evening, I called up Knod. I told her what happened. I told her I needed to kick Kelz out, but didn't think I had the strength of character to do it. Knod gave me a few encouraging words. While we were talking, Kelz came home. I continued having a conversation with Knod on another topic. Kelz went into the bedroom and came back out. She quietly kissed me on the back of the head and then went out again. I told Knod I would have to have the confrontation when she came back.

When Kelz came back around midnight, I asked Kelz if she was going to stay. She said she was going back out. Brod was waiting for her. I said, "Well, you can stay out because I don't want you coming back." "Why?" "Because you slept with Broad!" "No, I didn't!" "I came home and I could smell it in the bedroom, AND there was a condom missing." "That's because Brod had sex with someone else in there!" "You didn't mention anybody else crashing here." "Well, they did!" "Well, it doesn't matter because I WANT YOU OUT! GIVE ME YOUR KEY!" She took her apartment key off her ring and threw it on the ground. "AND THE MAILBOX KEY!" She took that off and threw it on the ground. "NOW, GO! I'll have all your stuff ready tomorrow." "You're going to be sorry!" And she left.

For the next two hours, I thought about what just happened. I wondered if she was telling me the truth. If I hadn't had that talk with Knod, I probably would have acted like I believed her and let her stay. But then I started wondering about what would happen next. I had things she might try to steal. She could easily break in and rummage through the apartment trying to find my money when I wasn't there, or even worse, while I was sleeping. I had to do something.

Around 2am, I called Thoz
. I told her that Kelz had cheated on me and I kicked her out of the apartment. I asked her if she could come over and help me move some of my stuff over to my workplace for safekeeping until this all blew over. She agreed without hesitation and was at my apartment about 30 minutes later. (I think this was after she'd gotten a wolf tattoo on her back. She showed it to me while she was there. She did seem proud of it.) I loaded up my TV, VCR, stereo and keyboard in her car. We drove over and I put them in the basement. Thoz didn't really have a lot to say about Kelz. She did sympathize with my situation and said it would probably get better. She thought I had done a smart thing by moving that stuff out.

It was hard to sleep that night. I woke up the next morning and started packing Kelz' stuff so they would be ready when she came over. When I was going through her stuff, I found a lot of things she had written on notebook paper. One of them was a list of pros and cons of doing drugs. I guess this was something that she presented at an NA meeting. Among the pros was a greater sense of intimacy during sex and having friends to hang out with. But the list of cons was much longer and included the prospect of having to have multiple abortions and giving up children for adoption. It made me wonder if she felt this way, why she decided to start using again.

I also found a letter from her grandmother telling her she had run up $200 in long distance calls while she was there and wanted to know when she was going to send her money to cover that. In addition, I came across a note that looked like she had written in when she was in Iowa. If you recall, I called the house and supposedly talked to someone who wasn't Kelz. This appeared to be a note from that someone else telling Kelz that I had called. But the handwriting was slightly different from the pros and cons list. I wondered why Kelz would keep this note and bring it with her. Nothing made sense!

I tried to mentally prepare for her eventual arrival. I didn't know what would happen when I saw her again. I didn't know if she was going to beg me to let her come back, or have Brod kill me or pour gasoline on the carpet and light a match.

About 3pm, she came into the apartment. (I had the door open and the screen was unlocked.) She was by herself. She saw her bags in the living room. She grabbed some of them and went outside, but left the rest there. I tried to ask her how she was doing, but she was in no mood to talk to me. I was rather relieved that was all that happened.

Was that the last I saw of her? Heck, no!