Reaping

So I talked to Brooke earlier. She's moving out of the country with her new husband within the next few months, since he got a well-paying job overseas. She was giving me the update on everyone in Cincinnati, including Nikolai.

So Nikolai was going to do right by Pat and marry her for the sake of the unborn baby. He enlists the help of his dissertation chair to get him a teaching job at a college near where her parents live, in rural Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. He moves there away from his friends and most everyone else he knows here in the States, and gets an apartment set up for the new family. As the birth neared, he stated his intention to marry her, and he was searching for an engagement ring to make it official.

In the eighth month of her pregnancy, Pat reveals to Nikolai that the baby may not be his. She confesses that while they were seeing each other, she was also carrying on a sexual relationship with her ex-boyfriend. While Nikolai was shocked, he decided to stay on for the birth. When the baby was born the next month, he was there, cut the cord and everything.

Not long after the birth, Pat gets a paternity test to see if the baby is indeed Nikolai's. Come to find out, Nikolai is not the father of the child. She asks him if he wants to adopt the child and raise it as if it is his. After thinking about it for a couple of days, Nikolai declines. Pat and the baby move out of the apartment and in with her parents.

So basically, Nikolai is stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny town, at a tiny Christian college for at least a year. And all of this over a woman.

It makes me think of a joke Chris Rock told where he says that "men lie the most; women tell the biggest lies." And then he goes on to say that men might lie about something like if he's over his friend's house when he's really not, whereas women will tell a lie like "it's your baby!"

I don't revel in Nikolai's pain, at least I try not to. However, I don't feel bad for him, and this is why. I remember when I first discovered he was dating Pat (discovered b/c he didn't come out and say it, I had to stumble upon it). He said that he thought she was average-looking, but he just wanted the companionship. Later on, a few nights before I moved, he makes the comment to me that he got off on the fact that she was much younger than him. He figured he could kind of mentor her, etc., in lots of ways. I summarized it to him like this, "It's like having a kid you can fuck."

Nikolai thought he had one over on Pat, that he could be "Daddy" in life and in the bedroom. But she played the heck out of him, and now, at least for the time being, his life is screwed.

I also feel, to a degree, vindicated. He led me on from December of 2005, and when our relationship didn't turn out the way he planned, his attitude did a 180. He lied about having a fiance somewhere else, and then later, he figured I wasn't good enough for him to date. In his opinion, I didn't make good dating material because I was his equal intellectually and because of my looks. He berated me for passing out at the wrong time, which I couldn't see coming because of an unforeseen health issue. Dealing with his betrayal almost cost me a passing grade on my qualifier and a year-long academic fellowship. On top of that, I spent the fellowship year dealing with my father's death, and then on top of that deal with having to see someone who betrayed my trust. He figured that I should just "get over" what he did and act like everything was cool, just as he was flaunting his new girlfriend in my face.

But here's the irony of it. If Nikolai had dated me, I would have never done that to him. Even if I had slept with him, I would not have done so without insisting on protection, and I don't believe in two-timing anyone. He didn't want to be with me, in part, because being with me would have been like "fucking the Virgin Mary." He wanted to go for the easy thing, not for someone who would challenge him and make him a better man. Nikolai made his bed, and now he must lie in it.