Spoiled Children of Divorce

My Mother called my Step Mother “Betty Boobs” and this is the name that I also called her in all conversations during my High School years. A few years ago I ran into one of my Mother’s old friends and she started barking and laughing remember how your Mother called her “Betty Boobs” because she had those big … (hands held out in cupped fashion)? Har Har.

My Step Mother sipped white wine all day, kept up her tan, and had a helmet head of hair which she had blown out once a week. Her shirts were unbuttoned to advertise her cleavage and when she was really drunk she bragged in a horrid Southern drawl about her high IQ and her long long legs

My Step Mother had been my best friends’ mother and our parents met through us and then broke up both of their marriages. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before and don’t want to go over it again in a previous blog. I just need to say that the wives of a Country Club had kicked her out for going after their husbands and so she was hanging around with my Mother a lot. My Mother had told me beforehand that she didn’t like my friend’s Mother and was uncomfortable having her spend so much time at our house when she came to pick up my friend after school. Looking back, of course, it would have been great if I could have just dumped the friend but where I grew up, honest to God, it was really difficult to find a girlfriend whose Mother would bother to be so generous in giving her rides. Most Mothers were heavily sedated and complained endlessly about doing anything for their kids. My Whino StepMother, ever on the look out for a husband, would drive to Hell and back for her daughter if she figured it would lead to more money.

After my Father died, I renamed my Stepmother “Sweaty Betty.” My name for came years after the divorce but was based on one night when I was staying with my Father and Sweaty at their first condominium together for an over night stay. At some point under the moonlight, Sweaty crawled into the room where I was sleeping. Sweaty was crawling naked on all fours and glistening in the dark. She was delusional from alcohol and she slowly crawled up to the closet door, whimpered and begged to be let in. No one inside the closet would open the door for her so eventually she crawled away and passed out in bed next to my Father. I stayed silent. It was bizarre but I was used to bizarre. I told my Mother of course who drilled the crap out of me whenever I came home. My Mother told my Father who answered my Mother that Betty sometimes does that.

I tried to feel compassion for Sweaty, God knows she expected it, but it was sort of like feeling compassion for Hitler or Mussolini. Whatever the behavior was about she wasn’t forthcoming with any explanations (if there were any explanations). She simply liked to refer to herself as a Victim. In short, she didn’t care what she did to others. It’s one of those things where you have to decide if it’s about a person’s character or about a person’s past traumas and I pretty much decided that Sweaty had a bad character.

My Father died when I was in my early 30s and I’ve haven’t seen Sweaty since. It’s really been a lovely improvement in my life. She was like a huge human version of a slimy slug who wanted everything you had no matter what it was. She was the only one of my parents to go through detox so she eventually sobered up, the slime maybe dried up a bit, but her character never improved. That’s the problem with alcohol. You’re still stuck with yourself after you sober up. Sweaty just became vigilant about blaming everyone else for everything she had done to them. She got all my Father’s money, had the will written 6 months before he died, and Sweaty has no doubt moved on to bigger Projects kind of like a guy who gets away with rape.

Which brings us to her insatiability. She was Scylla, Charybdis, & Circe all wrapped in one.

Until she sobered up, Sweaty slept with as many of my Father’s friends as she could. I heard this directly from one of my Father’s friends. Sweaty also slept with one of her son’s high school buddies on the floor of the living room. Every time I see one of these School teachers getting caught for this now don’t think it doesn’t cross my mind that I could have had her reported. Everyone knew about this but nobody said anything about it. My stepbrother went through a violent phase where he wrecked cars and drank a lot. Everyone said that he was acting out because of his age and was spoiled. In college he married a girl he said just to get even with his Mother. They divorced immediately. He eventually married another woman who he found God with. Last time I talked to him, at my Father’s funeral, he said he didn’t understand why people at his church were so mean. I wanted to ask him if the Jesus in his Church liked Big Tits.

There was something wrong with the way Betty spoke and this was probably the single worst thing about her. You simply couldn’t understand what she was saying. It was exhausting. And it just didn’t seem interesting. Usually her jokes were disgustingly sexual. Her whiney voice would wince down to nothing but Southern drawl. She couldn’t open her jaw due to some problem either because her first husband had broken it or there was a problem with the glands in her neck.

When Sweaty ate she would push a huge chunk of Steak into her mouth and swallow it whole. As a teenager this was basically my introduction to unenthusiastic sex. After that Sweaty would have to excuse herself and she would go throw up in the bathroom. The White Wine triggered her gag reflex really bad. Eventually she realized that she hadn’t been able to keep down a whole meal in 3 years and the Doctor told her she had a year to live so she went to Detox.

Sweaty and my Father fought like cats and dogs. I never stayed in their house with them again so I never witnessed it but I saw the injuries next day. My Father’s generation beat their wives silly so this was considered acceptable. Or at least that’s my understanding of it. In the morning Sweaty and my Father would have scratched arms and legs, sometimes one of them would have a black eye and they would wear their sunglasses and go for lunch somewhere outside so they could keep the sunglasses on. My step-sister said it was all my Father’s fault.

Once I called Sweaty a Slut at the dinner table and she didn’t answer. It wasn’t like her not to deny her own behavior and if you’re going to break up somebody’s family that has a couple of teenage kids you ought to be prepared for this but I knew there would be revenge down the line. In her head Sweaty was from the South and she respected her elders, I suspect that she had let her Father rape her for example. At my Father’s Funeral he grabbed my ass. I have to admit, I absolutely hate White Southerners.

Sweaty once gave me a lecture on why I should be kind which was kind of odd because everyone else at that point except my two Mothers generally remarked on my kind, docile personality. Sweaty wasn’t concerned about her own lack of kindness, only mine. She got the vapors a lot, was allergic to everything, and couldn’t go out for the dwindling amounts of gross dinners that my Father and I had on ocassion.

Sweaty sharing her wisdom about how I ought to be was part of the tension of having these weekly dinners with my Father and her which comes from growing up with Divorce. Of course in the background at those dinners I knew that if my Mother were at home she would either be grinding her teeth from the rejection or out getting drunk. I would come home to a cross examination. What did Sweaty wear? Was it expensive? Who bought it? What did she order? Did she eat it? I never said anything kind because I honestly didn’t observe anything to be kind about. Either way, the dinners would lead to a 2 or 3 day binge of screaming and crying and running into walls. Although Sweaty claimed to be highly psychic and to know what everyone was thinking she never understood what her presence in my life cost me.

Backwarding again, the aforementioned “Slut” information had inputted nicely, and, although steeped in reality, and it all came back to me. Really, it would have come back even if I hadn’t said it. How is it that drunks don’t remember anything that they say but they always remember everything that you say? I actually remember the Slut moment as a highly regrettable but shining star moment of my adolescence. The first time I got to use the word “Slut” it was about a real one. How many girls can say that?

Years later, I almost told my father about how Sweaty slept with her son’s high school friend on the living room floor. I almost did but then didn’t because he was old and it would hurt him. But I threatened to. I had traveled for my Birthday to see them and the whole trip involved driving Sweaty from one store to the next so she could shop. Then she was asking for advice on how to get along with her daughter. Up until that point Sweaty didn’t know I knew about the boy fuck so it really took her by surprise. Coils of smoke poofed out from under her coiffed Barbie head.

But Sweaty excelled at responding to surprise. She was born for it. This was like a really good poker game for her. She knew the next move was all about tactics. She waited for my Father to go to the Bathroom, her head spun around like an out of control exorcism, and she told me that she would make things Hell for me and my Brother. At that point we were probably 18 or 20 years into the game so this was just funny to watch. It was the highlight moment after years of hearing every adult my parents age say “You’re not going to get anything from your Father because…” She did manage to clear her throat so her drawl peeled out in the form of genuine words, succint and absolutely bitchy. She actually enunciated!

What baby wants, baby gets and that’s the truth. Sweaty had to wait until my Father was lying jaundiced in an ICU after his lung surgery went wrong. He still hadn’t rewritten the Will. I walked in and she was yelling at him over the will. I can’t watch Soap Operas to this day because of the reality and truth that they preach. Sweaty saw me, jerked, straighted her face and turned away to play with the curtain. My Father was bright yellow and couldn’t speak or move from the neck down. His eyes were just following her around the room.

The Doctors put him completely under the next day and said that he probably wouldn’t make it out of the coma, his lung just wouldn’t breathe on its own. So Sweaty hired another Doctor from another hospital. “They work better if you pit one against the other,” she said. She and the other Doctor went into the first Doctor’s office at night and snooped around his office. Somehow they found an article saying that steroids would fix my Father’s condition. The Steroids worked. It was a Miracle. She never bragged about saving my Father’s life but she did brag about getting the Doctors to perform. Sweaty had finally found a positive outlet for her ruthlessness.

Once my Father was up and running, Sweaty ran him into the Lawyer’s office and had the Will rewritten. Then they took off to Hawaii for a couple of months. And then she brought my Father back to the Hospital where he languished on a ventilator for 2 more months, unwilling to die. When the insurance ran out we unplugged him. He had only 1/3 of one lung left to breathe with and his feet were curled under from being bed-ridden.

There was the Funeral. Her Father’s hand on my Ass. She absconded with everything, even my Great-Grandmother’s Wedding Rings. It took her 20 years, but she did it.

And that’s the tale, or at least part of the tale, of my Stepmother, Sweaty Betty.