"Not only them, but everybody else, as well!" "Everybody else, who? I don't know "the everybody else" crowd you're referring to. The only people we both know are the ones who attend your church! Apparently, I must be a damn good subject to for 'those people' talk about to you, huh?"
"You just don't like people. You should just get out of the military." "I have real friends-people who don't step on me-people in the military that don't even know who you are, so don't even try it." I warned him. "I'm talking about people Karen in the unit! She can't stand you!"
"Oh Karen, that girl-your unit buddy! That Kamikaze 'tough bitch' Amazon girl in our shop who thinks nothing of bringing illegal skin flick videos on hand-held players to our weekend deployments to entertain herself with? The one who shacked up with Jim while he was still married, though separated-STILL MARRIED, I SAY-whom they then built a fancy house together, and then decided to get married to each other.? In that order exactly! I get on her nerves because someone in the shop told me in front of her, "Well at least you are more of a lady, and who doesn't talk the sort of garbage we hear from someone else in here? I can control it that she can't stand me for no fault of my own! Big deal!"
He made one more cutting remark just to "even the score".
My patience, already thin and threadbare, finally ripped apart. The sound of plates and glasses I had been washing started hitting the walls; cooking utensils rattled viciously in slamming drawers before the pieces of china hit the floor. The sound of chaos balancing with my blood boiling somehow gave me a demented pleasure. When he heard the commotion, he shut his mouth real fast, and stayed out of my way for the rest of the night.
By midday next day, we were friends again. We did that a lot: become embroiled in heated rabid quarrels, followed by avoidance phases before warming up to each other's company again. Whereas Paul could blow off steam he would build up and return to his old self afterward, I couldn't deflate so quickly. I felt rotten, guilty about it; and so I became progressively worse between the two of us whereas hammering him with gripe sessions. He was more into getting physical about it: slapping at and even hitting me, when I would hit back he would give increase the treatment until I backed off.
But each time only made me want to be more assertive. The more embroiled I became with my friend, the more blistering and unproductive the arguments. Again, he accused me of being the problem, and at some weaken stressed point from there on, I actually began to believe I was the bigger problem between the two of us. I began to trade out "self confidence" for "self-consciousness." I no longer knew how to deal with this constant up and down stuff-and started going along just to get along. Until my ability to maintain that tempo deteriorated, that is.
One day, we were at the Superstition Springs Mall. We were walking and talkin g with the flow of people traffic on foot. Just before I felt the sudden stop, he suddenly warned me, 'Look out!" Apparently, he had not seen it coming either until too late. I ran smack into a mirror under the escalator, because I expected to pass right under the stairs. He avoided the crash. Peculiar, though it was: at the same time I was concentrating very hard on someone coming right at me that looked all too familiar, I didn't realize who it was until I ran right into my own reflection. That was the state of my mental coordination by then.
I excused myself, and ducked into the ladies room. I looked up into one of the large mirrors slanted downwards above the sink. I didn't recognize me there for a moment, because I thought again I was looking at someone else. When I realized that, again it really was me, it was a bit of a shock to realize how 'hollow' and ragged I looked. I had never noticed until now the difference of the way I looked when I first got here-happy, excited, glowing; now a hideous looking old hag. Fatigue was the working normal for me by then-I was so used to it that I didn't notice it anymore. Now I understood clearly what Paul meant when he told me that I looked to him like I had daggers coming out of my eyes. Body-smacking the mirror was my wake-up call that day: "Start paying attention to where you are going with yourself!"
Sometimes Paul and I had the most fun out riding together in East Mesa near Superstition Springs where the new mall was. But that fun was, at times without fair warning, abruptly ended. Like in this scenario: one day he asked me to ride with him one afternoon to the same mall and it was one of those days again wherein I was just worn to a frazzle. He pestered me to go anyway, so I gave in to it.
We ended up in yet another grueling "battle of the wits", and without warning at one point, he suddenly hit the breaks on the way back to our apartment, pulled over to the side of the road got out of his side of the truck, went around to where my door was, opened it, and literally dragged me out of my seat in a rough neighborhood on that side of the city, and drove off, leaving me where he pitched me out. Without a word of warning. He told me to find my own way back to the apartment.
It was almost sunset by then. In the desert, even though the day can be very warm, when the sun gets below the horizon, the area begins to get uncomfortably cool without proper attire.
I was in unfamiliar territory again. I really thought that I was in trouble this time for certain and frantically made my way through a scruffy looking, bare neighborhood. Again, I had no idea as to what I was going to do-the only thing to do at that time I reasoned was to keep walking as forward as possible and not stop. I encountered a couple of mean looking snarling canines that approached me as if they would like to sink their teeth into me. I prayed that they would not.
Almost clear of that depressing looking territory and it having gotten darker, I found a derelict looking store that, fortunately for me, was still open at that hour. It looked like the usual 'prison appearance' storefronts typical of the area, which again was a bad sign to me that I was on the wrong side of the road. I had to convince the man running the run-down looking facility that I was not looking for trouble, but help. I explained to him, calmly as I could without breaking and feeling like I wanted to explode at the same time, why I was there in the first place, before he would even let me in to use his telephone.
He softened up a little bit, opened the door, and I called a cab. Seeing that I only had a few dollars on me, seven to be exact, I rode to the nearest major cross-road within what looked like civilization and familiarity, and had him let me off there. Cabs were expensive and I figured a bus ride the rest of the way was the only way to go broke that evening, however slow going they were.
By the time I made it back to the apartment, I was hot, dehydrated and filthy, trying my best to hold myself together. When I got to the door, I summoned my strength, turned the lock, and went in. When I opened the door, Paul was sitting looking cool, calm and unfettered in the easy chair, in front of the TV, of course and pretended that my arrival was unnoticeable to him. He said not one word to me, nor did he even look directly at me, which was the wisest thing he could have done the whole day. If he had flinched, I would have handed his ass to him right then and there. I believe that, if only by the look on my face, he knew it. The apartment was unusually quiet that night. Aside from the fact that we had already had a falling out that I was working and paying rent and he was paying only through college tuition his part, it was a big difference in how we pulled our load with the ability to afford the plush though modestly conventional place together.
Paul demonstrated again one day not to far behind that incident, another uniquely interesting facet of his talent for being cruel. He had acquired a camcorder, through his credit, and was experimenting with it. On a weekend morning, instead of offering to help me clean up the place, he was talking into the microphone as he scanned the apartment, giving his account of things in it and the history behind his "possessions", and how he had come to own them. One of those things was a toy piano I had bought for him from an antique store just down the street from where we stayed. I got it for him earlier on [before the Beethoven Incident] while he was waiting on his electric Yamaha that was still in West Virginia to be shipped by his father. He had complained that he had nothing to compose on for an assignment in one of his music classes, I figured that little accommodation was better than none.
He had written a piece of music, using this piano, for piano, clarinet and cello, using the little piano for tone relations as he composed. So the little antique piano became a novelty piece after that, something of great sentiment in that it worked for the purpose it was obtained for. After the piano arrived, it sat on the real gizmo, and went silent. Now and then he would sit on the floor like Schroeder, (the piano playing Peanut character that idolized Beethoven, ironically) acting out his own short silly parodies, for our amusement when we would tire of our other sources for entertainment.
I had been cleaning around that morning and had neglected to groom myself, as usual. Why bother, I thought, especially if I had to clean the damned place all by myself? I was scraggly haired, tired, and just couldn't get my energy up, and started complaining about having do housework and work and no time for anything else, really. Bad cup of coffee and no bath that morning could have set the mood, but I felt the sooner I straightened up the living quarters, the less yucky I'd feel anyway. And then I'd pamper myself, I thought-if I had the time and energy left, that is.
As I started towards the towel cabinet with an arm load of folded linens, I heard him saying in a low voice, obviously thinking that I didn't hear, "There goes 'thing'". I took a deep breath and turned halfway around and saw that he had the camera on me. My whole being felt very heavy and ill at ease, as I saw how he was amusing himself at my expense again. His actions struck a deep chord of pure hate in me for him, and all the negativity that had been simmering began to erupt in me as a grueling emotional pain mixed with anger and resentment that really hurt me like a twisting knife might.
He was always playing and amusing himself while I worked my ass off doing something. I did not feel like giving over to yet another another falling out, and held my breath as I fought to hide the tears stinging my eyelids. I turned back around to get him out of my field of vision-it was the only self-protection I had at the moment. Later, I stood at the window in my room with the door closed, the window opened out on the side of the building that showed much of the area of the roofing-it looked like brown pointed mountains in several areas, and nothing else but clear sparkling sunny blue sky could be seen. There was an advantage for me having that room instead of the other one which he occupied-the window was on the public walkway side of the dwelling.
As I stood there, staring out in the beautiful wild blue yonder that seemed limitless, I realized that there was absolutely no personal freedom to be had through daily living in this manner and with this person. After that day, I ceased and desisted wearing my energy down cleaning the place, and just let it "go to pot" except for my own messes I created. The conflicts increased in this area, but I held my ground and refused to do any different. I developed a calloused "to hell with you" attitude towards him. I spent more and more time in my own room, looking out that window and thinking about things, moreso when we both were there at the apartment at the same time. When he wasn't there, I had the run of the rooms. But I preferred the comfort-zone of my own.
Scamp was an adorable little runt. He was one of an 8 kitten litter that the mother had abandoned because the children living at the apartment complex, once they discovered the cats, would not leave her alone with her babies. I had adopted him about 6 months earlier about the time we moved to the apartment. He was black and white and cat all over, and he knew it. He was my pet, and about this time, he was becoming a very valuable companion. Paul played with him alot, and they got along, but it seemed that he could sense a lot of unhappiness in the air and it was me that he gravitated to for the most part. I think to comfort me. He almost never did that with Paul-though they had their lighthearted moments. But he knew he was my cat, instinctively. I was becoming more and more grateful that this little guy had come into my life. At the beginning, I wasn't sure I'd be able to take the responsibility for a pet, but a day-to-day basis proved to me that I could manage, and at that point in time, I decided that he would only be pried from my cold dead hands. He was a major cuddler, and an effectively comfortable diverter from a lot of discomforting moments around my human companion. He was truly my little buddy-steadfast.
Eventually, I quit crying about anything and became increasingly apathetic towards Paul, and avoided having any in-depth discussions that might mean anything significant-as I didn't want to open up and expose myself to him anymore than I felt that it was necessary. Not long after this final episode with the camera, we had discussed going separate ways for good. This time, unlike the first, I truly looked forward to a clean start. I was over and done with the drama that was costing so much personal energy.
The first paper I picked up that week, had an advertisement that looked really promising. I picked up the phone and contacted a woman looking to rent an upstairs room in her townhouse apartment.
As I spoke with her on the phone, my worries melted away and I could not wait to get across town to meet her. Her name was Wanda Werner. She seemed easy going and casual-down to earth. She was a real-estate agent. Because of her attitude and disposition towards life, I found her a fresh and welcome change from the stagnant atmosphere I had grown accustomed to and could not wait to get into this new environment. My brain was screaming for a change. I hopped on the bus next morning, without telling Paul my intentions, to investigate more about this lady, and introduce myself to her so that we could see what the other person was like firsthand.
Later on in the week, after I told Paul what I had done, and only after I was sure of what I wanted to do, he drove me over there to meet her, because he wanted to meet her as well. I took immediately to her place. I LOVED her condo-it had a neat, clean light airy, vibrational atmosphere to it. It had stairs leading up to where the bedrooms were. She showed me mine--it was an antique furnished-which I really liked! Most of all it was peaceful and welcoming!
Out back of it, there was a neatly engineered small flowing river between the Condo buildings (2)with flowers, trees and rocks; real live feathered friends: ducks, to compliment the scene. I began to relax all over. She was so friendly.
The afternoon that I officially moved in there, after Paul once again helped me move my personal belongings to another location and then left
A week had passed since I’d talked with my prospective new roommate. When I went back to see her again, just to visit, she told me that there was a Moody Blues concert nearby, and that I was most welcome to attend it with her and Jim (her next door neighbor brown eyed, brown curly hair and kinda cute-almost tempting) if I wanted to come along.
The Moody Blues? Who were they all over again? I'd forgotten all about them. This was the 90's-I had no idea that they were still grooving on a Rock and Roll theme anyway. They were..how old now? The lovely act of her invitation itself was tempting; I would have liked nothing better than to go somewhere with my new acquaintence. But at the same time, the very notion of being exposed to loud energetic sounds hurt me all over to visualize and imagine, so my imagination prevailed over my willpower on that note.
I had listened to the music of the Moody Blues as a budding teenager, but since growing older and out of the sweet little rock and roller mode I was in back then, they had become the farthest thing from my mind and interests. Otherwise I would have taken her up on her offer-she would have even paid my way. Maybe, come many years later, if I had a crystal ball that actually worked, I would have certainly done so. But as it was, I had been emotionally strung out for nearly a year and a half now with no reprieve constantly on the "Ride My See-Saw" emotional ups and downs. So it seemed and having the house to myself at least overnight was answered prayer. No rock and roll for me, although somehow in my gut I felt I was missing out on something nice, but I was too tired to consider my gut feeling, so I thanked her and declined the offer.
The day of my move-in at my new location had finally arrived, and I knocked on Wanda's front door. There was no answer but her Explorer was at her residence. I knocked again, and we (Paul and I) waited again for her response. She must have heard and finally answered. She explained that there had been a body discovered in that complex, and the police had their yellow ribbons cutting off the no-entry zone for spectators.
The Condo building across the stream that I mentioned was where the corpse had been discovered, by someone who got concerned about a young male medical intern who failed to report to work for a length of time. The concerned individual notified law enforcement when she noticed that there was a foul odor at the door entrance and she got suspicious. The smell that was being spoken of was the smell that permeated the atmosphere around the entire area between the two condo buildings. It was and indescribably disgusting, and it was so dense that it burned my nose.
The dead Intern's remains had sat on the couch for two weeks and had begun to deteriorate. The head, one of the neighbors reported, had begun to sink into the chest cavity. The medical intern had been reported missing for two weeks. No one ever learned if it was suicide or homicide. Paul made a comment that he wanted to go over and look but was dissuaded by the neighbors. Paul ventured to the window of the townhouse where the body was sitting on the couch, anyway. He regretted it afterward, because he said later that he had nightmares for a week.
“I’ll burn a candle for him”, Wanda said, referring to the unfortunate dead intern found at the complex, as she sat on her back porch witnessing the scene with the police and investigators. So she went inside, got a yellow bug candle, put it out on the back patio where we were gathered, and lit it. Afterward, Paul left. “See ya around”. When he drove off from me this time, I sensed from the way things went before when we first parted, that I would be all right from here on out. Scamp sure did like it-he was excited!
The weekend approached, and I finally had time to sit down and relax for a while with my new roommate and get to know her. As Wanda and I were exchanging conversation, I noticed a big black unusual looking book on her coffee table in front of me. Well, I could not help but notice it. It had large intricate ornate rough cut old world style designs on the top cover which made it fascinating to look at. I asked what it was and she said with a devious grin, “Take a closer look at it”.
I did, and exclaimed, “Oh! It’s a bible! It’s beautiful! Where did you get it?” Wanda was petite, energetic and jovial-good humored. “It was passed down through the family to me from my ancestors of the 16th century. Go ahead; open it and look at it if you want.” I looked at her, surprised, “Okay!” I smiled. I handled it cautiously as I opened it, and it was not written in English. I frowned, “What language is this supposed to be in?”
She giggled at my ignorance, “It’s in German”.
“You must be proud of it, with the condition it’s in.”
“Yes, very,” she stated, nodding.
The year was taking on an autumnish feel by now. Of course, it nearing the end of September! The Public Affairs Officer I had previously worked for, called me up and advised me that she had procured a temporary slot for me if I wanted to come back to work for her. I jumped on this offer. Working for her again would be a pleasure; she had been such a wonderful and caring boss during those two weeks I’d worked for her during active duty. So I put in a 24 hour notice with the temp agency that kept me afloat during the previous summer. Things were getting better again!
Apparently there were angels looking out for me, since Capt Bienz believed in them and spoke of them often to me in a way that made them believable. I had a good job again, knew good people were looking out for me. I made some new friends within the military environment by virtue of this new position and exposure to a different agency within the DEMA. And now I had a new acquaintance that seemed just as delighted to have me for a roommate, as I was to be around her. Everything felt like it was good again.
Nearly a month had passed. I had gone for a walk since it had cooled down to a pleasant and agreeable degrees for doing so, and when I had gotten back I recognized my friend’s wine colored Toyota truck in the parking space. I was surprise to see him back so soon but not overjoyed, just curious. I had found rest and repose in Wanda’s abode and was just beginning to unwind. I was having fun for a change and was starting to feel like my old comfy self all over again. When I opened the door, three people sat in the living room looking at me.
One of them I had met at work-a girl from Alabama who was in the Air Guard like myself-her name was Kim-whom I had introduced to Wanda and asked if she could stay with us for a couple of weeks until she could get back on her feet. She had worse problems than I’d experienced, I learned. Then again, I didn’t go screwing around with men in general and particularly having extra-marital affairs that might be a major cause of stress for her. With two young children already, why did she think that she had extra time to make a dunce out herself? Besides “messing around” in specific ways I understood went against the military code of ethics. Maybe it’s none of my business, but observing her made me more grateful for the values system I was brought up with that sometimes made me feel was too stifling at times. Now I could appreciate them better in that they saved me from a great deal of heart-ache I could certainly live without!
“Well, where have you been?” he inquired. I looked around the room as I answered, “Out walking”. “What are you doing here?” I asked, half-interested. I thought it would be nice to see him but not this soon. “Well I came to see how you were doing.” “Well, I’m doing much better, thank you. How long have you been here?” I feared I was about to go into "Bitch Attitude" mode.
“Oh about 30 minutes. We were about to send the police looking for you if you had not shown up soon.” He said. I thought that was a stupid thing for especially him to say. “I can take care of myself,” I said. “You should know that better than anyone else sitting in here.” He knew exactly what I was referring to. Now I was slipping into "Bitch Mode". I wasn't liking him again already.
Then Wanda started, “We were concerned because you had been gone for at least a couple of hours. People turn up missing sometimes out here, Lisa. Just the other day, the authorities found a girl floating in the levy.” Then Kim started in, “Yeah, Lisa. He was just looking out for you. What’s wrong with tha-uut?” she said in a southern drawl. I really felt like backhanding the hell out of her, because she was there at Wanda’s on my good graces, not hers. She had no idea what I had been through with that boy. And I didn't feel like explaining it to her either. Wanda knew, though, because I had time to sit down and have some "over coffee" chats with her about a few things.
Prior to Kim's arrival, she had been a lame duck looking for a roof to get under because her extra-marital lover who was still attached had dumped her and left her out in the cold. Only in the spirit that Traditional Guardsmen took care of each other did I volunteer to hook her up with Wanda and pay a portion of her rent for the month. Had it not been for the fact that she had a small girl and an infant boy, I would have said, “Tough shit, girlfriend!” I have a heart for children and animals, but I have absolutely no respect for people who willfully and knowingly screw around with people who are married.
I figured Paul had Wanda and Kim in his corner within that short timeframe, something he was apparently good at doing, if nothing else. I resented him for it. So I wanted him gone before he affected my relationship with my new roommate and spoiled the effect, so I wasn’t especially warm to him that afternoon. Paul stayed on for a little while longer and then left out on rather amicable terms with me, nonetheless, because I figured he would be gone again for a while. Eventually, he and I had become civil to one another again.
Well, nothing lasts forever they say. One night about a week or so later we had yet another one of those “I never want to see you again” yelling matches and he left, tires screeching. And we weren't even living under the same roof this time!
The very next evening, I had my upstairs window open playing with Scamp. I was thinking how nice it was to have some time to play and entertain and relax with my faithful furry companion since we didn't get to do much of that lately. Suddenly, I heard a familiar engine. I went down stairs cautiously, wondering, “What now?” When I opened the door Paul was still sitting in the truck and I slowly walked out to the truck. He asked what was wrong with me, and all I could do was look at him puzzled.
I didn’t know how to approach him anymore. “Oh yeah, we had another fight last night, didn’t we?” He said. “Is he crazy? Or am I?” I wondered. Gee, I wasn’t sure anymore.
One night, nearly a month after I had been with Wanda, and had calmed down emotionally considerably and was starting to feel mentally well, I had a most disturbing dream. I dreamed that I was in the bed that I was actually sleeping in at the time-a very comfortable bed, wearing my favorite Victoria’s Secret Victorian style sleep-shirt, and my favorite white shoulder’s perfume! The window was open and a soft night breeze filled the room. It almost felt as magical as when I was a child and had nothing to worry about. What could possibly go wrong? “Sweet dreams,” I thought to myself.
I was resting comfortably for a change. In my dream, I was aware of myself being half asleep, half awake. Suddenly the door to my room that was closed was opened by someone and I sensed this uninvited person trying to get through. Before retiring to bed in my waking state, I had dead bolted the door then secured the chain bolt. I did this every night.
A young man, though hard to tell his age, with a brush of a mane of dark thick healthy looking hair down to his shoulders, wearing a white shirt, and what appeared to be jeans, had somehow got the deadbolt opened to the bedroom door and was trying to get in. He was using his body as leverage struggling to get through the door that was held back by the chain. I cannot remember his face, except that it seemed to be full-and that he was definitely Caucasian. He was looking at me in a very animated sort of manner, as if he was very anxious to get in.
I could see that he had something in his hand-a wicked looking large bladed knife. I was afraid of him just because he was there at all, and seeing the knife increased my adrenaline. Seeing that he had already successfully opened the deadbolt, I feared that he might get in. Not knowing who he was or why he was there, I was not going to give him the opportunity to get in.
Shaking with fear, I got out of the bed anyway, ran to the door and tried pushing it closed and it locked onto him like a vise. I felt myself losing strength as I fought to keep the door from opening while he was pushing to get in. He seemed very determined to succeed in getting through that door. Because he had that knife I was not about to let him in. This person never uttered a word, nor did his activities make a sound; but I could feel his strength against the other side of the door equal to my own. Because I was getting exhausted mentally, I was trying to tell myself to wake up.
As I realized I was losing the struggle, it was then that the chain on the door gave into the force of him pushing on it, and as the door swung open, he reached around unexpectedly and made a swift grab for me. I yelled out “No!” to him. I jerked back out of his reach and sat up, wide awake, my heart beating fast, rattled by the force of my own voice, adrenaline flowing. I looked at my room door in the half lit white room that reflected the streetlight. It looked odd and unsettling, it being closed and quiet, like it didn’t seem seconds before. The curtain lifted gently from the breeze coming in from the still open window and I sat there, holding my breath, trying to figure out why I had dreamed such.
I suddenly no longer felt comfortable with the window cracked and so I got up, closed and locked it. Then just to ensure myself that I was dreaming, I went to the door, felt of the chain to know that it really was locked. I eased myself back down on the bed, eyes wide with a sort of disbelief of the real feeling of fear and at myself for having to double-check things like that. I lay there wondering what caused me to dream this. I didn’t remember feeling that sort of fear from a dream. I had not had the opportunity to get involved with too many people and I knew my associations pretty well by now. I thought to myself, “I had always heard that if you are dreaming that you are falling and that if you do not wake up before you hit the ground, it means you’re dead. Maybe that’s why I wanted to wake myself up-afraid that he was going to take my life, and I am not ready to the, even in my dreams”.
Saturday morning, Wanda told me over coffee before leaving for work at the Real Estate Company, that she had heard me yell out and asked if I had had a nightmare. I told her what I dreamed about. “Are you okay now? You look worried.” “I guess so. It’s just that it felt so real. I’m really sorry if I disturbed you”. “No, that’s okay”, she said. Man, she was easy to get along with! The next time I saw Paul, I told him about the dream, since he had always had this thing about explaining what dreams meant. “I don’t know, Lisa”.
One day, I found a bottle cap under a candle on the kitchen counter. I knew what “witchcraft” was, so I casually asked her about the coke cap. “This belongs to (she told his name but I can’t remember-but she said she had taken it from his house after spending the night with him), and it’s a relic of his and I want to find out something about him”. I felt rather uncertain towards her, because she seemed otherwise straightforward and sensible. I said nothing to her to keep from offending her, because I really didn’t want to have to move. I mentioned it Paul, and that is when he started referring to her as “Magic Wanda”. I simmered down, despite Paul’s warnings. I figured as long as I minded my own business, I was okay with Wanda, and I preferred being around her when I remembered how unhappy I’d become having my nerves frazzled from having been around him so much.
One afternoon when I got back from work, I found a note from her on the fridge on afternoon. “I need to talk to you.” “Uh-oh-here it comes,” I thought, dreading the meeting. I “knew” this had something to do with Paul, without asking. “Your friend is coming over too much to suit me. I don’t get to see you anymore, or even talk to you. It’s like I don’t know who’s living in my house”. I felt rotten, and I agreed wholeheartedly that she was right for saying and feeling that-he indeed was there too much to suit her. She was an older lady with experience in dealing with people-so she read them pretty well. She told me that he tended to dominate me and that he was taking up too much of my energy. “I hate energy sappers”, she said. She thereafter suggested that I get away from him and offered to “set me up” with her young nice looking neighbor she’d known for a considerable time.” “Well, we need to stay away from each other, true, but I’m not hurting for company, in general.”
She scoffed at me, picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Jim. What are you doing right now?” After a moment she glanced over at me and said teasingly, “Well Lisa and I are sitting here talking and I have some snacks prepared. Why don’t you just come on over and nibble some.” I looked at her in disbelief, trying not to laugh, seeing the mischievous look on her face. I knew what she was up to, trying to get me to “love her neighbor”, that’s what. He came over immediately. I was very amicable towards him, but I didn’t encourage anything. Jim was nice, and I think wasn’t really aware of what she was trying to coordinate. I would side-step this if I could do it without causing any hard feelings. Jim got the message right away and showed much respect for my position on the matter.
Around the first of the year 95, I had to scramble for another place to stay. Wanda had grown cold towards the both of us. She no longer wanted me renting from her because it seemed to her that I was a magnet for someone she didn’t want around her place. After settling in with a middle class family, with the Habeebs, it was the same story. They eventually complained to me about Paul hanging around-disrupting their otherwise normal home life with his frequent presence. They asked, “Doesn’t he have friends to hang out with other than you?” Their complaints were synonymous one with the next: they never had any time to spend with me because of my friend being around so much, and they always found some reason to ask me to leave in a nice way, but I knew the reason why.
After about a month, I moved into an apartment with a nice, but somewhat eccentric black lady nick-named “Mickey” I had met while on a tour bus earlier with Paul to Las Vegas. I had not been settled in Mickey’s apartment two weeks when one afternoon I came home to find a yellow police ribbon placed around the apartment complex’s main entrance. A woman downstairs had shot her live-in paramour. Because of the law enforcement barricade, I could not access the apartment. Paul’s timing seemed strange in that he happened to roll in to see me on that same afternoon. Death just seemed to follow me. He never missed the opportunity to bring it up, either. “I thought when I pulled up to see you that ‘Oh, God, Lisa has finally p--- someone off for good.” I failed to see the humor in the fact that a man was dead because of someone else.
I was so damn tired of picking up and moving like this-it was making me old and worn. I wasn’t on active duty anymore. I worked in a world of stiffer competition for jobs-even unskilled ones, again. I would move at least two more times before Paul and I would wind up in another apartment. It was on Gilbert Road, East Mesa, and by the time my temporary position with Public Affairs was up, I’d worked at Auer Precision where Paul worked, a metal stamping company. WRICO Metal Stamping was next on our list as employment. I had grown accustomed to my emotions operating like a see-saw around him and stretched to the almost-breaking point. Then one day, when the fighting escalated again to the breaking point, he started his yelling and screaming at me. He was so out of control that he didn’t realize that I had opened every window and door in our apartment, and then I stood outside the door, watching as people who lived at the apartments slow to a stop in their tracks to listen to the insane screaming and language. When he realized what I had done, he calmed down rather quickly. He said, “I have to know something. What did you do that for?” I told him, “Because if I have to listen to your noise, so does everyone else!” We laughed about it later, but Paul never did let his guard down around me again during our conflicts, especially whereas other people lived in close proximity to us were concerned. I think he figured he didn’t need that kind of publicity.
I was so damn tired of picking up and moving like this-it was making me old and worn. I wasn’t on active duty anymore. I worked in a world of stiffer competition for jobs-even unskilled ones, again. I would move at least two more times before Paul and I would wind up in another apartment. It was on Gilbert Road, East Mesa, and by the time my temporary position with Public Affairs was up, I’d worked at Auer Precision where Paul worked, a metal stamping company. WRICO Metal Stamping was next on our list as employment. I had grown accustomed to my emotions operating like a see-saw around him and stretched to the almost-breaking point. Then one day, when the fighting escalated again to the breaking point, he started his yelling and screaming at me. He was so out of control that he didn’t realize that I had opened every window and door in our apartment, and then I stood outside the door, watching as people who lived at the apartments slow to a stop in their tracks to listen to the insane screaming and language. When he realized what I had done, he calmed down rather quickly. He said, “I have to know something. What did you do that for?” I told him, “Because if I have to listen to your noise, so does everyone else!” We laughed about it later, but Paul never did let his guard down around me again during our conflicts, especially whereas other people lived in close proximity to us were concerned. I think he figured he didn’t need that kind of publicity.
By the end of August 96, we were leaving Arizona, to go back home to the South. We were intending to go to Nashville ultimately, but when we got to Wetumpka, we stayed for a while. For some reason, before leaving Arizona, we decided to postpone going straight to Nashville until we could make some adjustments – then we would continue there. My oldest brother, who had inherited a beautiful home from my Aunt, had offered to let us stay for free as long as we paid the utilities and looked after the place. That would be one major thing my brother wouldn’t have to worry about 90 miles away. It was agreed. “Oh yeah!! Two lanes coming in and four lanes going out!” I shouted out my window of the truck as we departed Arizona that day.
The first evening we stayed in Wetumpka, Paul had gone into one of the back rooms, lay down and after a little while came into the room where I was sleeping, woke me up after I had just drifted off, and ordered me to move to the other side and he crawled in. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, annoyed. He told me that when he lay down on the bed, after a few minutes it started shaking back and forth real fast. He didn’t feel comfortable in the room, he felt as if it were haunted. I just laughed and told him, “Man, you and your booger stories! This makes twice you’ve waked me up from a good sleep because of a ghost! Look, we just got off a 2000 mile 3 day non-stop trip. Maybe your nerves have just not calmed down yet from all that riding and driving.” I could not convince him to go back in the room to sleep.
After a couple of days of resting and relaxing, we paid a visit to the Jasmine Hill Gardens, about a tenth of a mile from the house. The lady who waited on me in the Plaka shop told me that back in May or June of that same year, the Olympic Torch had traveled to the gardens while en route to Greece. I began to think, “What is wrong with my life? I just keep missing the good stuff.”
Around February of 97, our friendship really began to wear thin with each other. The couch that Paul lounged on most of the time in front of the television, and slept on instead of the bed in the room provided him, was becoming mis-shaped and contoured to his habit of laying on it. He played piano, he played the television, and for the most part, he played with my tolerance meter. I was tired of doing the majority of the chores around the house and not being able to sit and relax like that.
Suddenly, from all this thinking one day, I felt a new strength surging from my own being. I felt a major shift in things going on, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Our fighting and scrapping escalated because of my new level in thinking, because I was on my own stomping ground, family wise, I was becoming more assertive and aggressive than I had demonstrated that I could earlier on. I had, in finality, gotten another bellyful of the same old patterns of behavior that we couldn’t seem to break out of while around each other. I’d asked Paul in the firmest sort of way to “get his ass off damn couch and empty the garbage if he couldn’t do anything else with yourself”. That made him mad and he came back at me with a smart comment, that he didn’t do what I told him to do. That did it. I couldn’t hold any more heat inside. My temper exploded and I yelled at him, my teeth grinding, “Why don’t you get out of this house and go home to West “BY GOD!” Virginia where you really belong!”
I don’t remember our exchange after that, but I realized my mistake of rousing him with my voice. Now I was in the position of having to defend myself for certain. We ripped through the house, like two clashing titans determined to defeat the other by screaming cursive obnoxious accusations at each other. I was unloading years of frustration about how I though he had mal treated me and I felt good about it, too. I wanted him out of my life immediately. In my rage, I suddenly remembered too late that he said it made him mad for someone to yell at him-and that just doing such provoked him. But he had raised his voice to me many times over, and I usually backed down-not this time. I had to let him know that there was a limit to my endurance as well.
His face turned stormy as he lurched towards me suddenly and viciously locked me by the neck with his arm, and threw me on the floor face down. He pulled his arm as tightly around my neck as he could with all of his dead weight of 230 + pounds pinning me to the cement floor. I heard him ask me if I wanted him to break my fingers. He had the ring and pinkie finger of my left hand pushed back to the point of pain. His shrill voice was in my ear as I was fighting to breathe. I was trying to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t get any sound to come out of my windpipe, because I wasn’t able to take in any air.
I could not move nor breathe. I remembered then that Paul had told me many times that when he got angry to a certain point, his vision seemed to “go black”, and that sometimes he couldn’t see nor remember what happened. I thought that his attitude was ridiculous, in that I was supposed to accept this in a grown responsible man and thought that he should learning better control of himself. But when I considered in a moment of doubt, that indeed, he might not be aware of what was happening, I panicked. It occurred to me then, after all this time together, if he really couldn’t hear me to let him know how much he was hurting me, he would not know when to stop. I was afraid that he was so out of control with his anger that I actually wondered if I was going to survive beyond this point. So, I mentally sent out a distress signal as if I was shouting across the universe for help to anyone or anything.
I don’t know who or what it was. All I know was that in that fleeting moment I sensed a presence that let me know, without a sound and what seemed more of a “picture” impression, to “relax completely-let go. Have no cares. Get still. Do nothing”. The idea didn’t make sense in my mind since I seemed to be between the devil and the deep blue sea, here, fighting for air. I turned my attention back on my predicament, trying to figure out what I could do to help myself. The thought intruded again. So, I listened this time, got still, relaxed and stopped doing anything at all and let him continue choking me-he had the advantage anyway, I finally conceded. His mouth was right on my ear and he kept screaming till it hurt my eardrum. Then he hit me on the left side of my head that was turned towards him with his knuckles. He had me twisted in different directions, and flattened firmly on the cement constructed floor. I wondered just how more comfortable could I possibly get? I remember seeing a flash of lightning in my right eye from the blow, and hearing a cracking noise, hoping it was his knuckles cracking and not something in my head.
Although I could not see what was happening to my head, I was afraid that I might suffer irreversible face damage by his hand. It could be that he thought that due to the fact that I had stopped moving that something had happened, and a signal went off in his brain. He hit me in my upper back with his fist one more time, almost knocking the breath out of me. He got up, kicked at me and screamed at me, then backed off. I lay on the floor, remembering how he used to tell me how he was abused by his mother, she made him scrub the tub until his fingers bled. She used to make him walk home in the snow on the train tracks from the mall until he couldn’t feel his toes anymore. She used to slam the piano lid down on his fingers because he wouldn’t play for her when she wanted him to. And on and on. He had me in his corner so many times on the account of his mother. “When I become famous I am going to tell people the truth about how my mother did me”, he said once. I cautioned him, “Don’t do what you’re liable to regret. Is it really worth being remembered for?”
I had been his listening ear for several years, now I was his punching bag. I wanted nothing more than Paul to leave-get lost. At the least, I was grateful he got off of me and quit hitting me. I could take the yelling-I was “used to it” after six years. He got in his truck and drove off. I sat up, stunned by the attack. I told myself to stand up but at the same time I did not have the will to move. It seemed like the motor controls in my brain didn’t want to cooperate with my mind. So I remained sitting, thinking about the incident, and it was then that I truly began to pray for a real change. After a few moments I began to feel a “wash” of feeling back in my body, as if someone had actuated the switch back to “on” with my nerve system. I felt bruised all over, especially where I had been hit with a fist. On the inside, I felt 100% worthless after the things that he’d just said to me, although I couldn’t remember half of it. I felt like a living “shell”.
I stood up, walked to the guest bathroom. The left side of my forehead was red where the blow occurred. My hair was a total fright and the overall image of myself was disgusting to see. The feeling started coming back into my body and I realized what a beating I had taken. I listened for the familiar sound of the Toyota and when I didn’t hear it, I walked back to the room that had all of his personal effects in it but where he hardly slept. I looked at the piano, and then noticed the midi box-the synthesizer that he valued so much. “Yeah, goes with the territory I guess,” I said to myself. I curled up in a chair in the living room, somehow feeling self conscious, like one feels when they are aware they are being watched. But there was no one there. No one who cared, and no one who didn’t. I don’t know how long I stayed there until I dozed off.
Around dusk, “Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde” pulled back up into the drive. He was acting as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t stand my emotions having to rearrange themselves constantly to this person’s mood swings in order to continue getting along with him: “I quit. I come back. I quit. I come back”. I realized that I was at the end of the tether and I couldn’t do this anymore, even if I wanted to.
We went through the usual quiet routine of feeling each other out with our psychic antennas. After evening meal, he initiated another talk session with me to try and reason his way through to me. I was still too tired to object, so I just listened to what sounded like the same worn out tune. Nothing had changed. I had been through this enough times that it didn’t matter any more to me. My attention faded in and out for the most part.
We continued trying to get along, because it was necessary, nothing more. But I felt something happening this time. Around the last of March, his, his mother, who called periodically anyway to communicate, called him on an entirely different note and INSISTED against his argument that she wanted him to come home. He bucked, but she insisted, saying, “I really feel strongly that you really should come home”. She used her mothering reason to convince him, and I never knew what that all entailed. I didn’t care why; what I did care about was that this looked like a direct answer to my prayer, and I was going to give it my fullest support. The day he left with his family, mid April, I remember what he said. “It’s going to be sad around here when I leave.” “What do you mean?” I asked calmly, disinterested but not wanting to argue. “Well, it’ll be lonely around here.” I didn’t comment. He said, “I’ll be in touch”. “No, I don’t think so,” I considered calmly. I felt ‘something’ heavy leaving me as I watched the little convoy pull away. I went back into the now quiet house, sat down and closed my eyes. “What now?” I was fighting to control myself with this stark aloneness I’d constantly longed for, but had not had in years. Suddenly I wondered how I was going to adjust to it. It took several days, but as I welcomed the change. It wasn’t as difficult as first imagined, when I realized I could just allow room for it instead of willing it.
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