An Unwitting Beard

I'm in a quandary. An ex-flame returned to Lincoln in June 2007, back from playing pro B-ball overseas. I saw her three times last year—including once at The Alley where I had to end a spat between her and her lover—but I don't want to see her anymore. I've ignored her texts ("Are you dead?" "Houdini, hello?") and calls for months.

Here she is at my twenty-first birthday extravaganza at the West A Pub.


Oops, wrong photo. This is it. (Check out the townie in the background. She wanted my junk, hard!)


I'm hesitant to go into details. (This one-time Miss Nebraska Basketball played for the Huskers before transferring after three years.) Her father and uncle were once made men in the Chicago mob. I'm not embellishing for effect. I spent an Easter at her uncle's compound somewhere in the wooded outskirts of Omaha, where they forced me to mash potatoes and watch The Crew and Goodfellas. The house had eight security cameras. C'mon, I know former wise guys when I see 'em. Ink. Humorlessness. Rooms brimming with what appeared to be ill-gotten merchandise. It was like having Easter brunch with Al Capone and Frank Nitti.

She's now a lesbian—I'd even characterize her as a lipstick lesbian—and I was the last guy she dated a handful of years ago. I was oblivious to her lesbian proclivities. A friend threw a non sequitur in an email that said he saw her and her girlfriend, now "wife," making out in the back of a van during a road trip. My mouth dropped. I didn't even know she was bi. Maybe she wasn't.

Maybe I was her beard! Did I actually play such a godforsaken role? It always seemed as if it'd be so much hotter to be a beard. Hmmm. It was colder than cold cuts.