My Life, Deleted by Scott Bolzan Read Free Book Online

size of a small bedroom, packed with shelves and rungs of hangers spanning sixteen feet to the ceiling with shoes and garments, some hung in cellophane bags according to season. It was no mystery that Joan loved fashion, because 90 percent of the belongings in that closet were hers, with mine tucked away in one microcorner. My mind was boggled by the discovery that she owned at least one hundred pairs of shoes, each packed in its own plastic labeled container, and that the price tags were still attached to probably 20 percent of her clothing.
    Why would she continue to buy shirts, sweaters, coats, pants, and skirts when she already owns more than she can wear?
    This gave me a clear indication of one foundational difference between my wife and me before my accident and perhaps now even more so. But before I could jump to conclusions, I soon realized that I’d had my favorite things as well. On my side of the bathroom counter was a stack of boxes, each of which contained a shiny fancy men’s watch, while Joan had only one watch box on her side. I noticed that many of mine had different-colored faces, with different types of straps, and some had lots of little knobs and buttons.
    Why would anybody need all these watches when you only have one wrist to wear them on? I am wearing only one ring now, and so did Joan, but I saw men on TV wearing lots of rings, so I maybe wore more than one watch at a time?
    But, as I stood there, I couldn’t understand why I would need a single watch, let alone thirteen of them, when my cell phone showed me the time.
    These boxes, I eventually learned, were winders for my Rolex, Baume & Mercier, Breitling, IWC, Omega, and Chase-Durer timepieces, all of which I loved and was proud to have been able to afford. But at that point I had no idea that most of them were worth thousands of dollars each or that I decided which one to wear on a given day based on what else I was wearing or where I was going.
    Going through the drawers and lower cabinets, I started noticing a pattern of excess: packages with thirty rolls of toilet paper, packs of ten toothbrushes, and half a dozen containers of the same brand of men’s deodorant. I would later find out that this was called “buying in bulk,” which was cheaper and more convenient for people like me who hated shopping, but at the time I thought it was way too much stuff for the two of us.
    Searching further, I was surprised to find about twenty bottles of cologne in the mirrored cabinet next to my sink.
    Are these all for me? Why would I ever need twenty when I could wear the same one every day?
    I’d seen plenty of cologne and perfume ads on TV and in Joan’s magazines in the hospital, so I opened one of the bottles and smelled it, pumped the spray onto my hand, and smelled it again. It smelled good, so I grabbed another and another, spraying each of them in the same place and smelling it again. I went over to Joan’s side and saw that she had about half as many bottles of perfume, but that still seemed like too many for one person. I didn’t test any of hers, though, because I didn’t know if I was allowed to.
    Based on what I’d observed in those few minutes, I already felt I’d been a complicated man whom I now didn’t understand, and it was going to take a lot of investigation and thought to figure him—or me—out. Joan seemed complicated too but in a different way, so the concept of us living together was going to be that much harder for me to figure out.
    Leaving the master suite, I went to find Joan and Taylor in the family room and asked if they would show me the rest of the house. I wanted to hear more about my life.
    They led me past the front door to a guest bathroom on the other side of the house and into a second family room, where, I was told, Grant and Taylor usually hung out with their friends to watch the large television. It was a smaller version of the TV we had in the living room,