Between the Bylines by Doug Krikorian

Author:Doug Krikorian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. My feelings for Gillian kept getting stronger after each trip I took to England in 1996 instead of subsiding. I wasn’t even fooling around on her when I was at home! This was in such a contrast to what had been my lifestyle, my persona, my laissez-faire attitude toward women since my divorce, if not before it. I never thought I would have a strong emotional attachment to a lady again, since I figured the many romantic indulgences I had been involved in over the years would have built up an impregnable barrier in me against such an occurrence.

Love? Please! An ephemeral phenomenon inspired by beauty, need, money, status, sex, power, ad nauseam. For me, at least, love had become nothing more than a brief interlude, and I had become a stern cynic on the subject going back to the breakup of my marriage and then having such sentiments strongly reinforced by the breakup I had with Karin R., which happened right before I met Gillian, and the breakup I had a few years earlier with Karen D., for whom I also had great fondness.

Karin R. and I had actually come close to getting married in late 1991. But those plans went awry because I still retained the grave fear of being trapped in another suffocating alliance. In fact, it was less than a week before I was set to marry Karin R.—she already had picked out a gown—when I abruptly called it off, a decision that resulted in Karin R. straying out on her own even though we continued to see each other on occasion until I became seriously aligned with Gillian.

I now look back on those long-ago days when my testosterone count was at dizzying heights and when I celebrated birthdays instead of mourned them and when the limitless tomorrows conspired against conventional reasoning and inspired in me a false sense of immortality.

One of the few virtues—and, believe me, there aren’t many when you consider the physical deterioration and total loss of even the barest vestige of innocence—of growing old is to have a clearer perspective of the past and be able to analyze in depth who the person was that inhabited your body, mind and soul in younger times.

I have no idea who that guy impersonating me was who was once such a maniacal weightlifter that he spent more time at Fresno State studying the measurements of his arms, chest and neck than he did studying textbooks. I have no idea who that guy impersonating me was who suddenly went from going into a depression losing $50 at the blackjack table to routinely making large wagers on sporting events, including $13,000 on the 1985 three-round brawl between Thomas Hearns and Marvelous Marvin Hagler—which he lost, to go with the $13,000 he lost the previous day on an NBA game. I have no idea who that guy impersonating me was who, during an eight-hour train trip between Paris and

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