When People We Admire Are Sleazy

Do we judge our heroes by their public deeds or private misconduct?

“Lee, he’s cheating.”

“Wait, what’s going on?”

The phone was quiet.

“Lindy?”

I heard her making that sticky-breathed, choking noise that strong people make when they’re trying not to get emotional. When they’re trying not to cry.

“He’s cheating.”

“He” must be my friend Tyler. I had introduced Lindy to Tyler two years ago. She and I had gone to New York City to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with him and some other colleagues, and the two of them instantly fell in love. After a year of long-distance dating, she got her job to transfer her to NYC where he worked. She had been living with him for less than a year when I got this call.

“Lindy, what do you need? Tell me what you need, chica.”

In her silence, I wondered:

Are matchmakers held responsible when the couple blows up?

I already felt guilty.

“Lindy, do you want to tell me what happened?” I so badly wanted to go to her, but she was a 10-hour drive away, and I had to work.

Eventually, I pulled the story out of her. She’d gone through his phone. He’d been cheating with multiple women, and it had been going on a long time, the whole time he’d been with Lindy.

Geezus. I didn’t know Tyler was sleazy. Was there some way I could have detected that he was? Had there been clues? Was there something I could have seen so I could have warned Lindy not to date him?

I wasn’t close friends with Tyler. I’d gone through some law enforcement training with him and other colleagues for months. It was just the kind of friendship that grows amongst co-workers from eating many meals together and spending many hours together in high-pressure conditions.

The only truly personal interactions I’d had with Tyler were a couple of quasi-philosophical conversations, the kind you have at 3 a.m. after the bars close down, when our other buddies were sprawled asleep on his mom’s living room floor in Brooklyn. Once, when I drove a jeep full of them back to our rooms after a night of bar-hopping, he was the only one that stayed awake to keep me company. Our group stayed in touch when we were assigned to different cities, but he…