This was the guy I nearly married.
I met Mario/Morey when I was 17, and I went to Karaoke one night with my best friend Dawn and her friend Tanya. Tanya was his ex-girlfriend, and little did I know she wanted him back. Her plans were thwarted when he took a shine to
me, making that blatantly clear by singing "It Had To Be You" while staring at me the whole time. Um, yeah. (She later had one of her friends track me down at Wonderland in Abbotsford and attempt to kick my ass, but luckily I was with Mario and a bunch of his friends and they got me the hell out of there. I wouldn't have stood a chance against that chick!)
He lived with his "parents" who were in their 60s, which I always thought was odd, because he was 19 and his "brothers and sisters" were in their 30s. Hmm. His name was Morey, but his family had Italian background somewhere, and went by his "Italian name," Mario. I couldn't quite figure that one out, but he was "Mario" to me.
The best part was that he was the singer in a band, called Precious Blood. That's right. It was the height of the "grunge era" and he thought he was in the thick of it. I used to make fun of the name of the band all the time, and every time I said it, I would use a whispery voice and drag out the word "Precious" like it was a revered name of deity. It was a metal/alternative rock type band, and like a good lead singer's girlfriend, I even had their demo tape which I wish I still had, although I do have a copy somewhere of the "album cover" which he had drawn by hand.
His "parents" liked me, but they were probably clinically insane. His "mom" was very overweight and couldn't get around on her own, and had a lot of health problems. She was nice to me, but always yelling at her husband and at Mario, but they always just laughed at her. Sometimes when she got mad at Mario she would scream, "You're not really my son!" That was always interesting. Her husband, Mario's "dad," was a redneck type of guy who was drunk a lot. Mario had a "brother" and "sister-in-law" who had two daughters, and seemed pretty normal. He had another brother and sister who lived somewhere else (I don't remember where) and another sister who I don't think I ever saw sober. In fact the first time I met her she screamed at me for something, so I just avoided her after that.
If that's not weird enough, I decided at one point I was going to marry into this family. We even had the wedding planned out - I planned to wear a skin tight silver top with silver hotpants and silver boots. He was going to wear something "grunge-y". I would walk down the aisle to "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins. I dreamed of being the wife of a rock star. (I am writhing in humiliation right now. Gawd, why am I revealing all this? I will never live it down!)
His parents moved to Calgary, and although Mario tried to keep afloat on his own to try to stay near me, he decided he had some better opportunities in Cowtown and packed up and moved. I was devastated and we agreed to make the relationship long-distance. We were quickly running up long distance phone bills and I even flew out there for a week. The deal was that I would buy my ticket there, and he would buy my ticket back. But when I arrived, he had no money. So what did I do? Contemplated staying for good and marrying him, of course!
Things really came to a head one night as I sat in the pizza shop where he worked, and pondered my future. I was registered to start a program in office administration at the college at home, and I suddenly thought, "If I want any kind of future, I'd better at least go to school. I better get my ass back there." So with the kind generosity of Mario's boss at the pizza shop, I got my ticket home. I bawled almost the whole flight back, but when I arrived home I knew I'd made the right decision.
We wrote letters, but over the months those were growing few and far between. Then he went missing for a week or so, no letters or calls from his friends houses, and I knew something was up. When I finally reached him he claimed he was in the hospital with pneumonia, trying to assuage my anger and elicit some sympathy. I was past all that with him now, and my friend Sheri and I called every hospital in Calgary, claiming to be his sister and asked if he had been, or was admitted there. No one had heard of him. When I talked to him again, I said, "So how is your pneumonia? Hey, what hospital were you in again?" and he said, "Foothills" and I answered, "Well, that's funny, because Sheri and I called every hospital in town, and no one has heard of you!" The line went quiet. And I was done. Shortly afterward I mailed off a letter telling him what a loser he was, and not even the sobbing, blubbering phone call I got a week later could convince me to change my mind.
And I met Hubby a few months later. About two years later, after Pre-Hubby and I had moved in together, I got a phone call from Mario, he was moving to Vancouver and wanted to come by to see me. Pre-Hubby was at work, but I let him come by, and we went out for coffee. He told me about how things were going for him, (not much had changed,) and told he he'd finally found out his "parents" were actually his grandparents, and his drunken "sister" was actually his mom. I said, "Are you telling me you never suspected that once? Even I knew that," and he said he had had no idea. As he was getting ready to leave, he looked at me with disdain and said, "Look at you. You have your nice downtown apartment, your conservative job and your conservative boyfriend (whom he'd never met). You've totally sold out!"
Well, if selling out means I don't live in a dirty old hovel of an apartment, begging money off my friends, working in a pizza shop and playing guitar in coffee shops, then I think I'm pretty okay with "selling out," thanks.
