A long time ago, we used to be friends

There's a married couple at work that we are all watching as they slowly implode. They met here last year when they were both seeing other people. I was friends with both of them, but particularly "Roger". He helped me figure out I didn't want to get married and we used to talk for hours about whatever. I read his horror screenplays and gave him page-by-page notes. I was not remotely attracted to him.

"Catherine" was a Mormon. She was Mormon because her boyfriend was Mormon.

Then she broke up with her boyfriend and started trolling for new blood. She went after at least three teachers at the school who weren't interested. Then Roger broke up with his girlfriend and two needy people came together. She was a Mormon no longer because now her boyfriend is a heavy drinker. So she became a heavy drinker.

Six months after they met I drove with them to Vegas and watched them get married. They were both hammered. I helped Catherine change into her wedding dress in the dirty bathroom while Roger flirted with the girl who drew up his marriage license.

They got married at some random cheap-ass chapel, giggling the whole time. Then we went to a club where the newlyweds had a fight and she rode back to the hotel while he whined about how it was all over and he was going to break up with her. I reminded him that he had just gotten married, handed a cab driver $20 and shoved Roger into the cab so he could go back to the hotel and screw his new wife.

I never got my $20 back. I did get to chauffer them both the entire way back to LA in the middle of the night after waiting the extra day and a whole afternoon they decided to stay in town so they could swim in a pool and get drunk more.

Flash forward a few months and they're the official married couple of the school. They teach in ajoining classrooms, they eat lunch together, they sit next to each other at meetings and Catherine's classroom wall is a shrine to her husband. Her screensaver is nothing but pictures of them together.

And they don't talk to anyone else unless it's to complain.

They don't return phone calls. They don't respond to memos. They don't even say hi back if you wish them a good morning. They are angry at everybody and everything and have completely isolated themselves from anyone who's not them. I joined Bally's originally so we could all be workout partners, but they quit the gym so they could work out in their apartment building together where they wouldn't be tempted by hot boys and girls around them. Roger's not even allowed to look at girls anymore, even me. I confronted him about it once and all I got was a blank stare and a lot of stuttering, and we haven't spoken since. Every time Catherine looks at me I feel rays of contemptuous rage burning my face because I'm pretty sure he told her about my confrontation.

All the faculty agrees it's a cautionary tale for the ages. No matter how much you think you love somebody, it's a bad idea to try to crawl into their skin and actually become one person. And don't get drunk and married in Vegas.