Page 92 of Dirty Like Zane
All that shit just went through me like a fuckingsieve.
What I needed was the love of this one woman. And I really didn’t need Seth to tell me I was never gonna get it until I started filling those fucking holesmyself.
The signs were there allalong.
I just didn’t want to seethem.
So I kept fucking things upinstead.
I loved Maggie, and yet the common thread through all our shit was me fucking itup.
According to her, I’d fucked up pretty much everything—right down to our weddingsong.
She’d told me as much a couple of months after our wedding, when things were at their fucking worst between us. I’d stopped by her place one night to talk to her, but instead, we’d ended up in a massive fight. I knew any second she was gonna throw my assout.
But then she paused to take a breath from reaming me out. And she sighed and said to me,I love thissong.
I’d barely even noticed she had music playing. It was some acoustic song with a dude singing; I’d later found out it was Stereophonics, “You’re My Star.” But at the time, I didn’t know what song it was. Only that Maggie apparently loved it, and I’d ruined it forher.
I really hope something can save this song for me one day,she’d told me,because you’ve just ruined it for me. You know, I heard it for the first time a few months ago and I thought, now there’s a song I’d love to have play at my wedding someday. But I guess you ruined that, too. Lucky me… I got married in Vegas in some tacky theme chapel, to my dad’s bullshit “Schoolgirl” song playing onrepeat.
Objectively, I knew that part was her dad’s fault as much as it was mine, but at that moment, I wasn’t gonna argue the finer points withher.
Married to a man who can’t keep it in his pants to save his life,she’d added.Or at least, to save hismarriage.
And she was right. I didn’t keep it in mypants.
As a husband, I was a fuckingfailure.
Out in the world, I was a rock star. Like Seth said; I was asuperstar.
I didn’t set out to be asuperstar.
I set out to be a musician, and the rest was golden icing on the cake. I was never gonna say I didn’t want it. Far from it; I got a taste of the sweet life at twenty-two, when Dirty’s debut album hit, and all I wanted wasmore.
There was a time I’d fucking glutted myself onit.
And in that life, in the eyes of the world, I was a kind ofdemigod.
But in Maggie’s eyes… afailure.
A man who’d pretty much tricked her into marrying him, then failed to be any kind of decenthusband.
Fact was, I didn’t know how to make her happy, and it fucking killed me. When it came to my relationship with Maggie, Ifeltlike a fucking failure. Every time I looked at her and she looked back at me with those all-seeing gray eyes of hers, I felt like a fuckingfraud.
And every time I disappointed her, all the ugly shit it stirred up in me… It was the kind of ugly shit that, when I was drinking, would’ve flipped me right into self-destructmode.
I didn’t drink, but there was always weed and a lot ofit.
And there were alwayswomen.
A lot ofthem.
I hadn’t been with all that many women since I’d married Maggie… but since when was even oneokay?
According to Maggie, it wasn’t, no matter how bad things were betweenus.
According to my conscience, it wasn’t either. Which just made me want todrink.
