So in late 1992, I was 19. Knew it all, so much so that I walked straight into the tornado. No storm cellars for me, thank you, I'd much rather just ride like Mickey Knox, straight into the eye of the storm.
I hadn't dated anyone seriously because I still had an ex-boyfriend trying to cry me back and who I wasn't paying the least of amount of attention to. At 19, how could I? Just under a year and half away from legal drinking, friends, dates, many dates. I wasn't thinking anything about him. So, the tornado looked like a lot of fun to me, I was having a lot of fun and I had a good girlfriend to ride the storm out with, at least until she moved in with her boyfriend. But that's when the winds picked up too.
I met the Cowardly Lion first, at her housewarming and he wasn't even meant for me, he was meant for another skittish friend of ours. And he was pathetic to be sure. My best memory of him this day is that as we all got to hanging out and eating, talking and bullshitting, this guy just sat in a corner to himself. I thought that was really weird, I don't know why but it was. Well, when I got ready to eat, the only seat was next to him so I went over and asked was anyone sitting there. He said no, then jumped up and ran (yes, in an apartment, ran!) across the room to stand and wait for another seat to open up. When asked later about this weirdness, he told me that he's shy and he wanted me to be comfortable. Here he is the oldest person in the room (we were all young, with maybe 2-3 people that could legally buy alcohol, but if you got one, that's all you really need) and he's acting like we're at a middle school social. I didn't really think enough about him to like him or not, just that something wasn't sitting the good left of center.
The next day, I'd been invited with my girlfriend and her dude over to a Bronco party. It's like any great Sunday football party, with die-hard fans that aren't watching the game, just eating and playing cards/bones (dominoes) while the TV showed the game. We get there and guess who shows up but the weird man from the day before. Complete setup, and coaching too. He was different, more engaging, willing to talk and open up and I did believe him to be just a shy boy. But here's the warning signs that I missed: 26, single, living in his sister's basement because he got tired of living with his mom, shy to the point of skittish and now not so much. And he had the smoothest hands, with long nails and everything. Now let me make a side note here, I am suspicious of smooth hands on a man. First it implies no hard work, but that's not always true. It does suggest softness to me. Now, I'm not saying that a man can't have really great hands, mine does but he also doesn't grow out his nails also. It's feminine to me and it always will be...but moving on...His hands gave me pause, I don't think anything good can come from a man having pretty hands and I've been right both times.
His first act of control was very subtle. I'd just gotten of work and was hungry. He picked me and I asked him to take me through McDonald's. It never ocurred to ask him if he wanted anything because I figured if he was hungry he would speak up. He didn't, I got my food and grubbed. Now I can see the rudeness in it, but I can see the rudeness immediately and not a few days later. Yeah, missed that sign too. He stewed on it for days before mentioning it to me, and got angry when I asked him why he didn't say anything at the time, why be hungry and you don't have to...to begin to control.
It's been so many years now, that I don't really remember when the physical violence began, no that's not true I do. We'd been arguing, living in his mother's house while she lived in the Bahamas, paying the bills and keeping it up. I truly don't remember what we were arguing over, by that time in the relationship, it could have been anything. He had a chair and a stool to match that he loved. Standing on opposite ends of the room from each other and yelling, I was closest to the stool and I kicked it at him. I played soccer, so my aim was pretty good, and it just missed him. He charged me and WWF bodyslammed me to the floor, yelling about how I could have killed him with it. I'm thinking the whole time that I kicked it from across the room, he had a chance to move, but I didn't expect to be slammed. After he's done spitting and crying in my face he leaves and I was just stunned. He hadn't hit me, and it did seem like restraint, though I hadn't done anything to him but kick the stool.
That was just the end result of months of build up, moving into the house was a huge mistake. At the housewarming, my dad and my grandmother almost kicked his ass. A few months earlier at the Sweethearts Dance, my uncle and my grandfather got ready to kick is ass, matter of fact, when I think about it now, my mom might be the only one who didn't try. She did give me the best advice "He's got a hole in his ass, no matter how you try to fill him up, it's going to keep draining out of his ass." To which he'd stayed on the line and listenend to. So you know he came out of that bedroom ready to rumble.
But I never took this as I was being abused, even though I was drinking two full bottles of wine a night on worknights, and double on the weekends. I was so consumed with keeping our friendships together, my girlfriend and I were still close and we were each other's constant companions. We had the house, so all parties took place where we were. After work, weekends, we were all usually together. We had another two couples that we hung with too. But they had it bad, I mean their dudes were punching and beating on them. Mine was just throwing me around like a ragdoll trying to get his way, when he wasn't verbally assaulting me for another stupid thing I'd done. And you know, he only did it because he'd never graduated from high school and was scared about getting his GED, because his mom was religious and overbearing, and oh yeah, because his stepfather used to beat the hell out of his mother and never treated him like one of his own.
I identified with some of it. My stepfather was no peach, and he beat my mother and I for being different. He'd also gotten help, stopped drinking so much and apologized for his actions. To the best of my knowledge he's never beaten a woman again. I didn't walk with my class, and I have a soft spot for the hurt things. Obviously. None of this was anything that I could have fixed, but I stayed for almost 18 months and tried. I didn't leave until after I'd turned 21 and spent the night with my girlfriend's man not sleeping very much. It was an out, but it's also part two of this series....
What I hadn't stopped to deal with in the aftermath of breaking up is that I was being abused. Everyone but me saw it.
I label him the Cowardly Lion because he didn't have any nuts and there are a lot of men out there like this. He'd completely given them to his mother and I didn't know anything about telling him to go and get them back, he would've failed anyway. She wasn't about to let them go. Even knowing that he'd come to me as damaged goods, I thought that with love and care, I could change him. This will be a reocurring theme throughout this. Why could I change him? Because I'm strong, that's why, that's what I thought. I didn't know, no, I didn't believe at that time that sometimes people just get broken. I didn't have the wisdom of knowing the first step to changing a problem is admitting that there is one, the second being doing something about it. I thought that love can heal it all.
Also in the aftermath, he became a stalker. Here's the twist: he wasn't stalking me, he was stalking the Scarecrow, who is who he loved in the first place. It wasn't about losing me, it was about losing the friendship with him.
As a matter of fact, nothing got done in our home until the Scarecrow gave his seal of approval. It was just a sick situation to be in and I walked into that of my own free will. I'd stopped grooming myself, as I am quite vain. I'd stopped dressing in great clothes and sexy lingerie undereath. The sexy draws was never for a man, funny the things you remember, not like now. I didn't wear lingerie for men, I mean if I got lucky then benefit for him. But I didn't wear them in the hope of getting lucky, in my mind it was a given. I'm a girl, he's a boy. Simple biology. I wore the lingerie for me, I loved how it felt against my skin and the good stuff too. Victoria's Secret. Ohhh, I loved it. Through all of the mental manipulations to control me, I'd let myself go. The night we broke up, earlier that day I'd been with my girlfriend (I knooowww!), sweating on how I was going to tell her that I'd fucked her man but I didn't. After she took me home, I called another girlfriend and came clean. The Lion, was hiding in the house waiting for that to happen.
But all of this is for another post.
Until next time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment