Stealing Girlfriends

I met Katha at one of those farmer parties at the edge of my hometown. She was tall, beautiful, long black hair blowing in wind that smelled like cheap beer and puke in corners. Obviously she had a boyfriend. Three years with Ferdinand. He was in the military somewhere, in a barracks or deployed or whatever—the point is he wasn’t here with her. His loss.

My too-small conscience checked out around three in the morning when we left our drunk friends behind and went to her older sister’s apartment and did what we came to do in the moonlight, swearing eternal love between rounds. I remember it felt like something that mattered.

Next morning my phone exploded. You stole Ferdi’s girlfriend? Dude… One friend was calling me a hero. Another called me an asshole. Her best friend said Good luck—which I’m pretty sure wasn’t about wishing us happiness, but more about my physical survival, because Ferdinand had a reputation. Even concrete walls couldn’t stop him, people said.

I could tell you about a few days later when I barely escaped whatever he was planning (probably not actually a machine gun, more like a stick he was waving around), running to the bus stop in my underwear, begging some flower lady for change. How Ferdinand called Katha crying, swearing his eternal love, talking about marriage and kids, then tried to kill himself when she laughed and hung up. How she sent me nude pictures of her with her favorite teddy bear afterward. But that’s not really worth dwelling on. We lasted four weeks anyway.

The thing that’s stuck with me since (not really stuck, if I’m honest—I traded my conscience for internet points a long time ago and I’m going to hell regardless): how bad is it actually to steal someone’s girlfriend? If she’s unhappy in the relationship anyway? If you genuinely think you love her more? If you’re just really, desperately into her body and the feeling of her skin and the way she looks at you?

Or should you just wait for nature to take its course—or in this case, human inconstancy—so you can swoop in after the breakup and be the shoulder to cry on? Except wouldn’t you speed things up by actively destroying their relationship? Wouldn’t that just be doing everyone a favor?

I ran into Katha twice after we broke up. The first time she told me about a spontaneous anal sex party with her boss and his girlfriend in the back of a Jeep. The second time she was announcing from the top of a bar table that she and Ferdinand were getting married in the spring in some little forest chapel. I was genuinely happy for them. I really was.