Revenge Is Better Served Cold

The best revenge is served cold: 11 years ago, I was working almost 24/7 and trying to deal with multiple deaths in the family over the period of a few weeks – no time for anything and going nuts trying to hold it all together. My (now) ex decided that she wasn’t getting enough attention and started fucking around on “business trips”. Eventually I busted her flat out – taped (remember tape?) a phone conversation of her talking with her friend about having great sex in Florida with a bunch of guys and that was it. She knew I had the tape, so denial wasn’t an option. I decided to run with the truth, instead.

I left. Just left. Found a new place to live and at that point (11 years ago) simply spread a few (documented) facts around. Not rumors, not pooping on someone’s property, just handing out documented facts.

Mishandling money at work (corporate/state/federal funds – bad news), mis-reporting consulting income on her taxes (IRS hotline: 800-829-0433 if anyone’s interested). Wrote a couple of editors to publications showing where she’d plagiarized materials (we’re both academics). End of career.

When she was held up to paying me the equity on the house we owned at that time, she pled poverty, and then showed up for work in a new corvette. A few months later she moved to California and refused any payout on the house, which was on the market. I called the mortgage company directly (something they’re not used to) and begged her new address out of them (they have the information and aren’t supposed to give it out but when I explained the situation the woman at the mortgage company gave it to me). My lawyer carpet bombed my ex who simply assumed she could hide from the shit and I had a check in my hand within the week. So then she was broke, discredited, in the shit with the IRS and her funding agencies. Good enough.

End result: Not quite jail, but the end of her long-sought academic career and certainly the end of her credibility. Ten years on, she’s managing a research institute out west but nobody respects her as anything but a office stooge and money-fluffer at this point. Should I have pooped on the `vette? Probably, but simply the telling the truth rocks sometimes.