The Dispensation: Secret Lives Revealed

—Anonymous

Preface

How could I not have known? All this time I have been so close to it, there have been so many clues, or signs, right in front of my face. When I look back on it now, I can’t help but think of how ridiculously naive I used to be. Just a short time ago, I was a part of that blissful state of existence that was really, all along, nothing but a warped and twisted illusion that I mistakenly perceived to be reality.

I shudder to think how very easily things could have turned out differently. What would have happened if I had made the wrong choice, taken the other path? Would I even be alive today to tell you this story?

Before I go any further, I feel it is imperative to mention a few things that you, the reader, need to remember throughout our relationship. For you know, don’t you, that whenever you pick up any book and begin to read, a bond is born between the writer and the reader. It is a relationship that is unique unto itself and can never be duplicated or imitated.

The first truth I need for you to remember is that this story does have a happy ending. I can’t tell you there is no sadness, however, as this is an emotion that is inescapable in our daily lives.

Second, please know that every word I am about to write is the absolute truth. I have no need to fabricate details in order to glamorize the truth, or instill any more horror than it already contains.

In fact, I apologize now for any details that may have been unintentionally omitted. I promise to you I will recount to the best of my abilities, events the way I recall them now, as I write.

The third truth to remember is this story is not meant to dissuade anyone from his or her individual beliefs, or to cause unwarranted alarm.

The fourth truth that I learned through all of this is that we all long for someone to understand us. We all long to be understood completely and to be forgiven, in spite of ourselves.

Open your heart and mind, take hold of my outstretched hand, and go on this journey back in time with me. Back to a time of no smartphones, no social media, no tablets, e-readers or DVDs. Back to a short period of time that dramatically changed my life and the lives of those around me. Be engulfed in the memories and feel the unseen forces and emotion in each and every day.

I realize this book is quite spiritual in nature. Even so, its truth contains just as much authenticity. I should know. This is my story…

Characters

Marty, boyfriend of Rue

Rue, Narrator, girlfriend of Marty

Nicholas Nick Frederickson, boyfriend of Jules, father to Gunner

Jules, girlfriend of Nick, mother to Gunner and Faith

Gunner, Jules and Nick’s son

Faith, Jules’s daughter

Frederickson family

Brenda, Nick’s mom

Carl, Nick’s stepdad

Neal, Nick’s brother

Kim, Nick’s sister

Main Supporting Characters

Steve, friend of Marty and Rue

Jack, Nick’s friend

Carrie, Nick’s lover

Randy, friend of Marty and Nick

Nina, Randy’s mom

Kurt, friend of Marty and Nick

Calvin, boyfriend to Fran, old friend of Nick and Jules

Fran, girlfriend to Calvin, old friend of Jules

Minor Characters

Jerry, Marty’s friend

Allison, Entertainer from local clubs

Character

Character Background

The following names have been changed. My name has been changed. I felt it necessary to protect the guilty, and especially the innocent. Please don’t think you know these people. I can almost assure you, you don’t. The year we begin is 1994.

Jules and Nick

About three years ago, Jules and Nick had a son together. Nick did not want Jules to have the baby, but she has only one ovary and had been told she could never have children. For this reason, she felt this baby might be her only chance to ever be a mom. Jules decided, even though she was not yet twenty years old, to have the baby. Their son, Gunner, was born.

It soon became apparent Gunner would grow up to be the spitting image of his father. From his dishwater-blond curls, to his blue-gray eyes, he was his father’s son. As apparent as that was, Gunner’s birth certificate reads father unknown. Jules knew very well that Nick was the biological father, but she never wanted him to be able to have any legal rights to Gunner. Of course, this meant she would also never receive any child support either. This was just fine with her, as long as Nick could never take Gunner away from her. That was all that mattered.

Both Nick and Jules adored their son. Regardless of this, their relationship was in a perpetual state of chaos.

The reasons were typical. Jules wanted to settle down and make a stable environment for her little family. Nick, on the other hand, just wanted to have fun, free from the responsibilities that a family brings. Maintaining a monogamous relationship and being tied down was not his idea of a good time.

Please believe me when I tell you Nick did love Jules. He almost always denied it, but when one person truly loves another, it is impossible to hide it. I realize that later on in my story, you, the reader, will doubt his love for her, but try to believe in that love. It is important!

To Nick’s credit, he did try for a while. He and his little family lived in the basement of his mother’s house. His mom’s name was Brenda.

Brenda

Brenda is a woman that I have actually only laid eyes on a half dozen times. I never once saw her smile or laugh. In fact, I never saw her express any emotion whatsoever. It was like she was emotionally dead. To say she was creepy would be putting it mildly. The first time I met her, I was absolutely flabbergasted! This is the mother of that beautiful, exquisite man? How could a man like Nick ever have come from such a cold, homely woman? It seemed impossible, but it was true.

Almost more difficult to believe was how Nick felt about her. He adored her. Jules said it was because she let him do whatever he wanted. I don’t know if that was the reason or not, but he told me several times that he loved his mom. He had an acoustic guitar that she had given him and it was one of his most treasured possessions. He made sure we all knew it was from his mom.

Brenda had arthritis in her hip or leg (I never knew which) and was unable to work. Therefore, she received disability checks in the mail and rarely left the house. She had a man sharing her house and her bed by the name of Carl. (He was not Nick’s father and is not terribly important to the telling of this story, but he needs to be mentioned. Carl did work, but it was a dead-end job with very little pay.)

The simple fact that she was always home made her a perfect babysitter for Gunner. Besides, she was his grandmother. Jules was at work a lot of the time and Nick refused any responsibilities in his life, so it was only natural for Brenda to become his primary caregiver the first year of his life. Almost too late did Jules realize what a disastrous decision she had made.

Gunner (toddler)

At first, the clues were so slight you would think you had imagined them. After all, each child grows and learns at his own pace. It wasn’t Jules’s fault, she was young and this was her first attempt at motherhood. Besides, who can you trust with your child, if you can’t trust the grandmother?

Brenda had already decided as soon as Gunner was born that she wanted to raise him herself. In order to push Gunner along, she made sure it was her, instead of Jules, to comfort and feed him, dress and change him. After a while, Gunner rejected his own mother. Jules almost seemed to annoy him, and this hurt her deeply.

Gunner did, however, adore his father. He would laugh out loud at the sight of Nick, stretching his little arms wide, longing for his touch. But what I believe really hurt Jules more than any of these things were Gunner’s very first words. As difficult as those words were for her to constantly hear, she never dreamed what would happen next.

Gunner was an extremely late talker, and Jules had to take him to a specialist to see if anything might be wrong. Gunner just simply did not want to talk. He preferred instead to express his emotions with violence. And believe me, one could tell when he was upset. He was an extremely angry and frustrated child at times. I was very sad for him.

Eventually, in his own time, he did begin to talk. Those first words that pricked Jules heart were Dada. Now, normally this wouldn’t seem amiss at all. However, Nick was only around his son a few hours a week, instead of Jules’s forty. She had spent so much time trying to encourage him to talk, to say Mama.

Gunner did add a few more words to his vocabulary before he quit talking. Probably about ten words in all. But he never once uttered Mama.

The saddest part of all, just after he had begun to talk, he quit. He just stopped altogether. Not one more word. Soon after that, he almost completely stopped eating also. He was constantly angry and depressed. He would cry if his own mother tried to hold him and eventually came to allow only his dad and his grandmother to hold him.

It began to appear as though Brenda was winning.

Rue and Marty

I am Rue, as you know, and Marty is my husband, although he wasn’t when all these events transpired. None of us were married back then, and we took full advantage of our freedom, each and every one of us. The background information in this section borders on the edge of sanity, but it really happened. Nick once told me he thought I should write a book and call it Rock Opera since several of the guys, including Marty, were in rock and roll bands at the time. However, I’m not filling this book with lurid tales of sex and betrayal, just the next few pages. It will be difficult, but try to follow along as I go.

If I remember correctly, Marty and I had known each other about six months when he first met Jules. She was seeing Jerry (a friend of Marty’s) at the time and had not had Gunner yet.

Almost immediately after Marty met Jules, she met Nick. So, it seemed only natural that Marty soon met Nick. I believe Marty had only seen Nick a couple of times before he introduced me to both Jules and Nick. When I look back on it now, I know this all had a grand purpose to be fulfilled years down the road.

Marty occasionally saw Nick and Jules over the next year or so, because they had mutual friends.

Now, to help you understand the complexity of the relationships involved here, I need to tell you the sordid details that forced us all to learn what it means to love one another.

Later on, I will describe Nick more fully and my relationship with him, but for now, I need to tell you that I did sleep with him. Nick and Jules were broken up at the time and so were Marty and I. My mistake was in not realizing how close Nick and Marty had become. Actually, to call it a mistake would be a gross understatement. Marty spent hours driving around with a shotgun looking for Nick when he first found out. Eventually he got over the anger and just carried around a lot of hurt. When Jules found out, she sought out Marty to ask if it was true. When he told her it was, they went home together that very night. It was two weeks to the day after Nick and I had been together. The year was 1992.

The next two years were a learning experience for us all. We learned how not to be jealous and not to be angry with each other. Jules is the only one of Marty’s ex-girlfriends that I could be friends with. In fact, I loved her almost instantly.

Jules

Jules is a beautiful woman, with a full-figured body and dark hair and eyes. She has a unique quality in the sound of her voice, a seductiveness I find impossible to put into words. I cherish that voice; I could never grow weary of hearing her speak. What amazes me is the full, pouty lips that move with that voice, lips that a model would envy.

I love her. I have never met anyone in my life that I have loved so easily, so quickly. It tears at my heart whenever she’s hurting, which is most of the time.

Because of this, she was constantly in need of a shoulder to cry on. I didn’t mind being that shoulder; I just felt as though she didn’t consider us to really be that close. She only seemed to want to be around me if she was sad or depressed about Nick. She considered Fran her best friend, and I knew and accepted that. There were qualities about me that she admired, like my ability to write. She once copied down a poem of mine to give to Nick because she felt it accurately portrayed her feelings for him, even though it was written about my feelings for Marty. She told me that my writing was so beautiful, she sometimes wept when she read it.

Nick

Nick is amazingly unique. He may have had a more profound and diverse impact on my life than any other individual I have known. He’s been my lover, as well as my adversary and tormentor. He was, at first, just a friend. He was there and not much else. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was a charmer all right. Flattery and seduction went hand in hand with him. I would just laugh it off and try not to make too much of it, or of him. I assumed men like him were a dime a dozen. I was wrong.

I’m not sure how long I’d actually known him before I succumbed to his intoxicating taste and smell. I will venture to guess it was between one and two years, and I would not say I knew him well.

At any rate, we had a brief affair, if that’s what you’d call it. We both knew it was meaningless sex and had agreed that was fine with us. During that time I became aware of how a woman could love him, and how very dangerous to that same woman’s life that love would be. This was a man who made you feel as though you were blessed to be in his bed and by his side. He had such zest for life and for fun that it caught you off guard. Nothing was sacred to him, or so he wanted you to believe.

He told me once that he had no interest in achieving an orgasm. He said he could masturbate anytime to please himself. He said his real interest was to bring the woman to heights of ecstasy never before achieved in all her life.

It sounds like a line. And it was. But it was a good one.

He was nasty and rough in bed. To my knowledge, out of the four separate occasions we had intercourse, he never came. He did not seem interested in doing so.

I put a lot of effort into keeping my heart away from him during this period of time and am happy to say I succeeded.

Over the next few years, my feelings for him fluctuated greatly. For a time I hated him and went out of my way to cause him trouble and pain. I’m not proud of this, and yet, I did do it. That was a bad period of time for us, but eventually we talked and decided we did not want to be enemies. We both apologized, and from then on our relationship began to become one of the most treasured friendships of my lifetime.

Some people told me I was falling in love with him; others told me I already had. In the end, it became difficult to distinguish, even for me, what kind of love I did feel for him. I only know that I did love him, deeply. I was not afraid of that love, as I considered it to be pure, and full of innocence. You see, over time, Nick became my friend, someone who knew how to talk with me, to encourage me during difficult times. Just the sound of his voice had a calming affect over my state of mind. When I asked him a question, he would answer me with simplicity and honesty that was wonderfully refreshing. The fact that he was often there for me when I needed him had become an invaluable part of my life.

It seemed as though, with time, he became more serious with me, teasing me less than he had in the past. I believe that Nick actually took our friendship very seriously. He made a point of lifting me up with his advice and his wisdom. I don’t mean to say that he was wise, only that with me, he always managed to say the right thing. I believe that Nick did not want to lose what we had any more than I did; he didn’t want to jeopardize that honor that I had bestowed on him. I believe he felt an obligation to always be a rock of strength for me, as he became more and more aware of how I relied on him. My dependency honored him in a way that, I think, nothing else ever had. He felt that I trusted him to be honest with me, and he did not want to violate that trust. I think, perhaps, I was forcing him to grow up, to be responsible, even though he was not aware of it.

I don’t understand what took place between us, how we ended up being so close. I have not allowed myself to believe that he was in love with me; I can only hope that he had love for me, which I believe he did.

I tell myself that I was not in love with him either. I was never for a moment jealous of Jules and always knew his heart was with her. This is why I say my love for Nick was pure. I knew he was meant for another, and I praised it. We never meant to cause anyone pain as a result of our friendship. It was a struggle for us both. People didn’t think our feelings for each other were normal, and they didn’t understand them. I have no way to explain why Nick treated me the way that he did. I don’t understand it myself. I can only say that I was, and always will be, very honored.

Marty

I first met Marty on a blind date in December of 1988. I was nineteen years old and he was thirty-five. Our mutual friend Jerry introduced us. He was married at the time but left his wife soon after meeting me. I am not proud of that, but that is what happened. We lived together on and off between 1989 and 1995, the year we got married. It is difficult for me to objectively tell