On Cheating

Spitballin' at Quenchers hosted by the bad boys of Sand is my favorite show to do in Chicago. The guys always book eclectic and interesting acts and have created an experimental, sometimes dark, always gracious environment. For the past couple months I've read poetry but tonight I read an essay I wrote about infidelity. An excerpt below.

"I don’t have many skills but for a time I was good at cheating. Let me say first and foremost I am not proud of my past. I don’t condone, advocate, or excuse cheating. My transgressions I chock up to youth and misplaced morality. In an attempt at exorcism I divulge my circumstances and my tactics.

At 15 I read World According To Garp, which in some ways diagrams, explains, and forgives infidelity. It had a huge impact on me and it is still my favorite book.

I first cheated when I was 16 on my high school girlfriend Jessy with my friend Ariel. Jessy was beautiful and kind but unable to express emotion and terrified of sex. Ariel and I were sitting in my mother’s Oldsmobile Achieva outside her house after a play we were in. I had a crush on Ariel throughout our production and was, at the time, impatient with the physical progression of the relationship with my girlfriend. It was summer, a mix tape I had made was playing Cake, the windows were down, it was dark. Now take a moment, cast your mind back to those feelings of nervous panic laden excitement associated with your early romantic encounters. Multiply that feeling by a hundred and that is what I felt on the precipice of my first act of betrayal."