I Did (But I Wouldn't Now)

Chapter One REASON #1 TO DIVORCE A ROCK STAR:He's got thousands of groupies. And they're all skinnier than you are. Here's a word of advice: Never marry a rock star. Sure, date them. Fool around with them. But never fall in love with one. And God forbid, don't, whatever you do, marry one. You'll end up like me, fleeing your homeland in a coach seat on a one-way trip to London, because only an ocean between you and your ex seems like enough space for comfort, and because you swear if you hear his hit single "Don't Call Me" one more time on the radio/TV/grocery store speakers/iPod commercial you will simply lose it. Some of my friends have guessed that being married to a rock star would mean that I'd have a life with an endless supply of designer clothing, a minor acting career if I wanted it, and the possibility of living in a castle, throwing dinner parties with celebrity friends like Sting and Trudy. The reality is more like sitting by the phone and trying to get the band's manager to drag Ted (as in Ted Dayton of the Dayton Five) out of whatever is keeping him from answering his own mobile phone. His distractions have a number of names, like "sound check" or "meeting with the label execs," but all I ever hear is "group sex with nubile adolescent groupies." Rock star, after all, is the only profession where a man can come home to his wife with a number of pairs of strange women's underwear and say it's simply a hazard of the office. I suppose I should have taken it as a sign when Elvis's pants split shortly after he pronounced us man and wife in the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas two years ago. Our Elvis minister did a leg-spread split after the ceremony in a show of jubilation that ended in him destroying his tight-fitting, white, sequined jumpsuit. I think, under any zodiac forecast, that's a bad omen for a marriage. Other omens I should have heeded: Three of his four band mates snickering through the entire processional Ted doing tequila shots before staggering into the church The two-to-one odds laid down by the band's manager that our marriage wouldn't last a year The only nonband witnesses to our union were two groupies named Gwen and Liz, who wore leather miniskirts and fishnet stockings and cried the entire length of the ceremony. Between showing off their cleavage and glaring daggers at me, I'm pretty sure one or both had slept with my husband, even though he did his best to convince me that neither one was his physical type. I would later learn that if you're even remotely attractive, you're Ted's physical type. Now I realize I've brought this on myself. You don't elope with a narcissist and expect everything to work out. I guess I was blinded by love and by Ted's really well-groomed goatee. You know him as the slick lead singer Ted Dayton of the Dayton Five -- MTV's darlings, winners of an MTV Video Music Award and two Grammys. I know him as the guy who promised to love me forever, but couldn't quite manage sixteen months. "I'm sorry, I don't usually do this, but do I know you?" the woman in the seat next to me asks. She's got the latest copy ofUS Weeklymagazine open on her lap. The one that I've been trying so hard to avoid. The one with Ted on the cover, straddling a surfboard and locking lips with Melanie Slate, actor/model andPeople's reigning number three every year in their list of the 50 Most Beautiful People. Under their surfboards the headline reads: " WE'RE IN LOVE !" in big blocky letters. "Lockwood, Cara is the author of 'I Did (But I Wouldn't Now) ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743499439 and ISBN 0743499433.