Scott Wicklund was a changed man. After his wife put him on house arrest, after she had forced him onto those pills that made drinking a vomit-inducing hellscape, after she tightened her Jesus-loving grip around his throat, he was a shadow of the man I had known. No more business trips. No more last-minute runs to Portland for nights of drinking and poor decision-making. No more sneaking into Amalia’s and pretending he owned the place. He was leashed, muzzled, declawed, a domesticated version of the degenerate I had once known. The phone calls stopped. The random texts stopped. He went dark. At first, I assumed he had finally broken. Maybe the wife had sucked out what little life he had left and he had resigned himself to the beige purgatory of a suburban husband’s existence. Maybe he had finally given up. But men like Scott don’t quit, they just adapt.
Since he could no longer chase strippers, since he could no longer flirt shamelessly with bartenders, since he couldn’t risk another run-in with an escort and a ball-peen hammer, Scott did what every caged animal does—he found a new way out. It started with an old high school sweetheart from Massachusetts. He didn’t even try to hide it. He’d be grinning at his phone in that stupid, lovesick way, typing away with a desperation that screamed of a man who had found something he needed. He thought no one noticed, but it was obvious. He was somewhere else, in another world, in another life, deep in conversations that filled whatever void his wife and her endless Bible study sessions had created.
I saw the signs immediately. He was texting constantly, every time we were out, every time he was supposed to be engaged in actual human interaction. He was detached, checked out, consumed. It wasn’t hard to figure out that this wasn’t some casual reconnection with an old friend. I called him out on it once at Amalia’s, when he was supposed to be drinking with the boys, but instead sat glued to his screen like a fourteen-year-old girl waiting for a text back. “Dude, what the fuck are you always texting?” He barely looked up, just waved a hand at me like I was a fly buzzing near his ear. “Just catching up with an old friend.” Bullshit. Old friends don’t make you look like that. Old friends don’t make you disappear into your phone while the real world keeps moving around you.
But Scott, being the pathetic excuse for a liar that he was, stuck to his story. And then came the excuses. His mother was sick, he said. She wasn’t doing well. It was bad. He needed to fly out to Massachusetts to take care of things. His voice had the right amount of sadness, the kind of carefully measured grief that someone rehearses before delivering bad news. But it was complete and total bullshit. I knew it, but I didn’t call him out on it. Instead, I watched as he packed his bags, disappeared for a week, and returned looking satisfied, like a man who had gotten away with murder. He sat across from me at the bar, looking smug, like he had just committed the perfect crime. Then he told me everything.
It was amazing, he said. Every position imaginable. Things he had never done before. I let him talk, let him revel in his own filth. He was so goddamn proud of himself. I didn’t remind him about the wife waiting at home, about the two kids who, in all honesty, probably weren’t even his. I just let him be the king of his own little world for the moment. And then, just like that, the next excuse came. His mother had taken a turn for the worse. He had to go back. Another trip to Massachusetts, another week of indulging in a fantasy life that he thought he had control over. When he came back, he was even worse. The phone never left his hand. He was consumed, obsessed, swallowed whole by something he couldn’t stop.
I invited him to a cigar and poker night at Amalia’s after hours, a simple gathering of men who just wanted to drink, smoke, and bullshit. But Scott wasn’t there. Physically, yes. Mentally, no. He was somewhere else. He sat at the poker table, phone in hand, grinning at whatever message had just come through. The rest of us were playing cards, drinking whiskey, talking about nothing and everything. Scott was giggling like a goddamn schoolgirl. I watched him ignore hand after hand, his drink barely touched, his mind completely consumed by whatever she was saying to him.
I tolerated it for a while, let it play out, but after watching him fumble through another round without even looking at his cards, I lost my patience. “Scott, you wanna fucking play, or are you gonna spend the whole night texting your girlfriend?” He barely acknowledged me. “One sec, bro,” he muttered, fingers still flying across the screen. “I love you too, baby.” That was it. I reached across the table, grabbed his phone, and slammed it against the bar. The screen shattered instantly. Scott went from lovesick puppy to raging pitbull in a second. He lunged at me, tiny fists of fury, his little Down Syndrome arms trying to shove me backwards. I didn’t move. It was like being attacked by a chihuahua. I just stood there, watching him flail, barely suppressing my laughter. My bartender had to walk away, he was laughing so hard. Scott finally gave up, stormed out, muttering to himself.
He thought he was getting away with it. He thought he was in control. But affairs have side effects. Scott’s home life had started to change, and he was too stupid to realize why. His wife was suspicious, but not in the way he expected. Their sex life had been a scheduled event, once every two months, a reluctant act of obligation. His wife, ever the devoted Christian, always laid there like a corpse, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to be over. But this time, Scott got cocky. He had picked up a new move, something he thought would impress her. Right before entering, he went down on her.
She sat up immediately, alarmed. “What the fuck was that?” Scott froze. “Uh… I saw it in a movie.” She stared at him, eyes narrowing. “A movie?” He nodded. “Yeah, I just thought you’d like it.” Silence stretched between them, a suffocating pause before the explosion. She accused him of watching porn, of being a pervert, of humiliating her, of disgracing her body. He spent the rest of the night apologizing, swearing it was nothing, swearing it was a mistake. He thought he had survived it. He thought he was in the clear.
Things seemed to settle. His wife loosened her grip. He stopped taking the alcohol pills. She trusted him again. But Scott was too stupid to stop. He was in too deep. He kept texting, kept sneaking off, kept lying. And then one night, he slipped completely. I was out on a date when I got a text: “Scott’s at Amalia’s.” He had fallen off the wagon. I walked in and found him drinking like he had never left, surrounded by bartenders who had once cut him off. I handed him a real drink. He downed it in seconds. By the end of the night, he could barely stand.
The next morning, I got a call. Scott was on the ski lift at Mount Bachelor, hungover and miserable. “I fucking hate you,” he groaned into the phone. “My head is killing me. You ruined my fucking birthday.” I laughed. An hour later, another call. His voice was panicked. He had hit a dry patch, caught a rock, and went down hard. Ski patrol had to pick him up, strap him to a rescue sled, and drag him down the mountain like a wounded animal. He called me from the sled, cussing me out between groans of pain.
When he got home, his wife and kids took him to Olive Garden to celebrate his birthday. He sat there, his back aching, his head throbbing, watching his family chat like everything was fine. When they got home, he told his wife he needed to sleep. He thanked her for a beautiful birthday, smiled through the pain, and crawled into bed. He left his phone on the kitchen counter.
At midnight, he woke up to screaming. His wife had found everything. She was in the bathroom, yelling at his mistress over the phone, demanding answers. Scott’s affair was no longer a secret. His life had imploded. And somehow, in his drunken, hungover, wounded mind, he decided that it was all my fault.
