Salon.com > Nicholas Garnett

I sold my soul to Ricki Lake

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 01:00:00 +0000

My fiancée and I sat next to each other on the set of "The New Ricki Lake Show," about to come back from break. My heart slammed in my chest as hard as George Forman at the Rumble in the Jungle. I’d finally gotten myself on national television. Now I couldn’t wait to get myself off.

It all began nearly a year earlier when an essay of mine, adapted from my unpublished memoir, appeared on Salon. The essay starts off with me, my ex-wife and several gay men standing next to a Jacuzzi on Fire Island watching a straight couple we’d been having public sex with have public sex with each other. The story progresses, or degenerates, as my ex and I smoke crystal meth from a glass pipe in the company of two gay porn stars. It’s a story of the high life — fast living with a partner whose motto was “more is more.” Things end with me pulling myself out of an emotional death spiral by leaving everything about that life behind — including my wife.

I was bad Santa

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Back in the late '90s, my then-wife, I’ll call her Rachael, and I quit our corporate jobs to open a doggy daycare center. The first Christmas we were open, Rachael decided it would be cute to hold an open house and invite people to bring their dogs in for a picture with Santa.

“Great idea,” I said. “Where we going to find a Santa?”

Rachael looked at me and smiled.

I knew that smile.

We had dumped good-paying gigs to open the kind of business no one had ever heard of. But starting a business and working with animals combined Rachael’s lifelong dreams. She was convinced that doggy daycare was the next big thing. I did what I usually did. I went along. Besides, once Rachael set her mind to something, there wasn’t much point in resisting her. Especially when she hit you with that smile.

Rachael’s ambition and drive is what had first attracted me to her; those same attributes often made me feel steamrolled, demeaned and resentful. Relationships can be ironic — especially the doomed ones.

Starting a business on a shoestring budget is something everyone should do — once. We worked 12-, 14-hour days getting the place ready to open.

Our polyamory disaster

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:01:00 +0000

My wife, Rachael, and I stood by a Jacuzzi in Fire Island with a dozen gay men. We were all watching Jason have at Mandy. Again. It was sex, but it wasn’t particularly sexy — more Animal Planet than Spice Channel. Mandy had braced herself against the edge of the blue fiberglass tub, her ropy black hair spilling down in front of her. And with each of Jason's thrusts, a swell of water cascaded over the lip of the tub to the deck below. The sound of water slapping wood blended with the couple’s moans in an oddly syncopated rhythm. It was a pretty slick groove, actually — somewhere between bossa nova and Barry White.

The men gathered around were rapt. Who could blame them? This was at least as good as any porn movie. And it involved a real man with huge muscles and tattoos. But Rachael sighed and walked by me in a huff, slid open the screen door leading to the living room and shut it loudly behind her. A sinking feeling pierced the haze of my high. Jason and Mandy showed no signs of letting up, so I headed inside to find Rachael.