Ruth
The soccer mom from Brooklyn who traveled half-way around the world to cheat on her husband.
It was 3 in the morning, as she stumbled inside from the Seville heat, hammered drunk, and begging me to tell her where the bathroom was. I pointed her in the right direction from my seat behind the hostel reception.
About 20 minutes later, she remerged with a loud sigh of relief.
I had seen this 50-something-year-old, American soccer mom in the days prior, and wondered what her story was. After all, she stuck out like a sore thumb. Completely alone, seemingly well-off financially, nails freshly polished. Her face and body gave me the sense she was once a ridiculously beautiful young woman, the type that could instantly light up a room, but those glory days had passed her by.
One doesn’t expect to come across a lady like this in a budget-friendly, European backpackers hostel. She would’ve fit in more naturally at the four-star hotel down the road.
“All good?” I asked with a smile.
Immediately, she was drawn to me, as if I was that someone finally giving her the attention she so desperately craved.
Working the night shift until 6 a.m., there was nothing else to do. So when she sat down across from my desk and started asking different questions about life, as though this was some sort of a scheduled interview between the two of us, I went along with it — and mainly out of desire to hear how the fuck she ended up right where she was.
You can tell so much about a person in having an open, one-on-one conversation for a few hours, the way Ruth and I did that night — even more-so when the person you’re chatting with is drunk, fully uninhibited by any feelings of self-consciousness, and talking with a complete stranger as I was to her.
We got through the boring stuff — who I was, why I was there, what my plans were, etc. etc. But I answered in an open-enough way to make her feel comfortable sharing her story.
Ruth was 51-years-old and originally from a small town in Arizona. It was the classic story of ‘beautiful, smart, small-town girl feeling like she was destined for something bigger.’ Accepted into Northwestern University to study journalism, she left her home state at 18-years-old and never went back.
Ruth talked like someone who went to Northwestern University to study journalism, and it intrigued me further. It was obvious she had an interesting and capable head on her shoulders.
“My husband and kids are back home in Brooklyn,” she mentioned dryly, “and I’m out here, just starting my journey, chasing after a lost love from over 20-years ago.”
It didn’t make much sense to me, so I replied with a laugh, “What does that even mean?”
And that’s when she started to go into the details of the weirdest marriage story I’ve heard in my relatively short life.
TO BE CONTINUED…
