Please note that I covered the situation that caused Riz to be considered a Bedmate in yesterday's post.
Sometimes, Riz and I would hang out and do stuff together. Other times, she would do her own thing. One night, she went out by herself to go to a club in National City that was featuring a reggae night with live bands. I had gone to bed because I had to get up early the next morning. Around 10pm, the phone rang. It was Riz. "Fayd, you have to come over here right now to see this!" "Wh... What is it?" "I can't tell you! You just have to come over here to see this for yourself!"
I drove over to the club in National City and found Riz. She pointed at the stage. "Look who's here!" I looked at the band and saw that the keyboard player was Fud, her ex-boyfriend, whom she had a restraining order on. I didn't know the legalities of the restraining order and figured that if he was somewhere first and he was serving a purpose there, that she had to leave. "So what, you want me to drive you home?" "No, I'm not going home! At least, not right now. But since you're here, can you drive me home after they're done playing?" I agreed and found someplace to sit down.
Through the course of the evening, I found out the scope of the situation: It had been a dream of Riz' to become the girlfriend of the lead singer of a reggae band. She met this guy and he expressed interest in having Riz as his girlfriend. She did not know at the time that Fud played in the same band. The singer invited Riz to come see his band play that night. Riz was hoping this would be the beginning of an exciting new romance.
However, when she arrived at the club, she found out the singer was married. AND the wife was there at the club. He also had 20 children from about as many different women and his wife mostly took care of them all (but I don't know what the arrangements were that night). This was surprising because she was about 28 years old and was rather quiet. She may have come here from outside the US. She also didn't appear to have a problem with her husband having girlfriends and getting them pregnant. Riz was not about to start things up with this man, no matter how okay his wife was with it.
The band finished playing. Fud never came near Riz. I don't think she ever thought she was in danger there. I thought we were going to leave. But Riz wanted to stay and hear the next band. She wanted to stay 30 minutes more to hear them. Even though I was only going to get four hours of sleep at this point, I relented.
Between bands, there was a DJ playing reggae music. Riz started up a conversation with him. When the next band started playing, he stood with her in the audience and started putting his arm around her. After the 30 minutes was up, I asked Riz if we were going. The DJ told me that he would go ahead and drive her home.
I went out to my car and started driving. I WAS SO ANGRY! I was so upset that I didn't want to go home and sleep, so I just went to work. I was so mad about so much. I was mad that she called me out there when she knew I needed to get up early. I was mad because she made me stay when it was really clear that I wanted to go. And I was particularly mad because I didn't know how I felt about all this. Did I want something to happen between me and Riz? Was I jealous that she went there to start something up with one guy, but wound up with someone else, almost like a bait and switch? I had no way of sorting out my feelings on this because I didn't know what I was feeling. And a lot of it had to do with the fatigue. And even almost 20 years later, I still have not come to terms with this.
And if I hadn't been called over there to witness it, everything would have been fine. She would have just come home and said, "Oh, I met this guy. He's really great." I would have been happy for her AND well-rested.
She arrived for work around 8am. She didn't talk about anything that happened between her and the DJ. However, she didn't mention anything about me not being at home, so I have a feeling she didn't go back to my apartment. Around 10am I told her I had finished all my work and was going home. That's when I let her know that I hadn't gone home, but tried really hard to not make it look like I was irritated.
Riz eventually found her own apartment and moved out. She continued to see the DJ, but she didn't talk about him at work. Toward the end of 1998, she suddenly stopped working. I saw her again at work in March of 1999, the day after I bought a new car. The DJ was with her and they both came out to look at the car. She told me they were going to get married. I told them congratulations. Riz was excited about my car.
A few months later, she called me and said she'd gotten married to the DJ. I offered congratulations. She asked about some of the people she used to work with.
Around February of 1999, she called me and told me she needed to crash somewhere that night. This was after Abed and I had moved into a two bedroom apartment on Adams Avenue. We had plenty of space. She slept on my foam mattress in the living room. She didn't go into detail about what was going on. I remember seeing her the next morning and she commented that the foam mattress was surprisingly comfortable to sleep on.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the last time I would see her or speak to her. I can't find any social media accounts for her. She's lived in a few different locations across the United States. But she seems to have gone back to her original name. I mean, her original, original name from when I first met her. I guess she's not married anymore, at least not to that DJ.
In the end, it wasn't worth losing sleep over.
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