“She called herself the white sheep of the family...then I later found out that she had black roots.”
Donovan, a rather average-looking young man in his mid-thirties, sat before me in his usual place, slight smile on his lips, but with eyes that were focused at a far distant place and time. He was telling me about his first girlfriend whom he had first met about ten years
earlier.
“Her mother had been in and out of psychiatric care, her father had been
in and out of prison. Her sister had five kids by at least two different
fathers and the current man she was married to was an on again off again
crack addict who occasionally beat her and the kids he hadn’t fathered himself. She had a grandmother who had hired someone to murder one of her cousins. One of her grandfathers had allegedly murdered a man and been pardoned. I didn’t know all this at first, of course,” he told me.
“She seemed very sweet at first, but I understood that a lot of relationships worked that way, later souring to some degree. She had her own vehicles--a car and a motorcycle. She lived with one of her grandmothers, though, in a trailer in a very small town.” He grinned a bit as he recalled, “She had a waterbed with a black light hooked up over it and a really boss sound system. She had three dogs and a cat, she said she didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, she wasn’t religious in any way... Actually, after she started showing her true colors, she started telling people during religious conversations that she’d heard the Bible was written by three guys in a nuthouse.
“She seemed bright enough at first and introduced me to a lot of her friends. Shortly after we started going out, she told me I could hang out at her place, so I’d pack a few things in a duffel bag and stay a week or so at a time, away from the bitch who used to abuse me. She told me I was cute...said I had a nice voice and nice eyes. I was amazed
anyone could possibly see such things in me. I was shy with her at first, but at the same time, I felt pretty comfortable around her. On our first date we went walking in the moonlight at the beach and stopped by a late-night pizza place. She jumped up on my back and made me carry her across the sand for a ways. We went there every night the first week before she had to show up for the late shift at work. We seemed to have a lot in common...but now I know people will lie about liking the same things you do just to get into your pants.
“When I admitted I was a virgin, she thought that was interesting. She
looked a few years older than me, but was actually a year younger, and told me she had never been with a virgin before. She was divorced, had an ex fiancé, and had slept with a guy in his late forties when she was in her late teens. I was amazed... I mean, she really seemed to have gotten around quite a bit already by age twenty-three. No kids. Said she didn’t want any.
“We kissed for the first time after two weeks of dating. Yeah...she kissed me. I didn’t know how to kiss her. A little smooch like you might give your aunt, or the whole tongue down the throat thing I wanted to try with her? She kissed my cheek, and I kissed hers back in return. The next night she climbed into my lap while I sat on a folding chair at my place and started really kissing me in earnest. I loved the feel of it. I was still in shock that anyone might ever want to kiss me or seem
attracted to me in any way. She led me into my bedroom and shut the door. We laid down on my bed and just snuggled there side by side kissing until she had to go.”
I said, “At your mom’s house?”
“Yeah. I’d introduced her as my girlfriend, and Mom had finally spoken
enough words to seem slightly cordial, and that was it. I’d warned her about her...but she’d heard most of the story while outside my room in the psyche ward the night we met. I encouraged her to give the bitch the benefit of the doubt, form her own opinion...and she quickly grew to see her pretty much the same way I did.
“The next day--the day after the kissing--she mentioned marriage to me.
I think I must’ve turned white, but I tried not to show any kind of negative reaction to her. I thought she must’ve lost her mind. We’d only known each other two weeks! I didn’t say anything. She kept mentioning it off and on afterward, casually, but in a sneaky sort of way. On the one hand, I thought I’d better snatch up this girl before she got away and I’d never find another one who liked me that much again. On the
other hand, she’d married her first husband after three months of dating, divorced him after two years, and had that other former fiance whom she’d hoped to marry before, during, and after her marriage to her ex. Was she some kind of serial wife or something? Did she need men for some reason or other? I figured she would have learned her lesson after marrying the first guy too quickly...
“We had sex after a month of dating. She decided I was ready and we did it in her waterbed. She used her hands to arouse me, then stripped me, and guided me. I was pretty confident because I figured she knew what she was doing and would correct me if I did something wrong. It was slow and explorative...she’d use her hands to position my hips or let me know where to put my legs if she wanted to alter positions. I’d always been terrified of having sex for the first time...because I always wondered if it would bring up bad things...”
I waited a moment before encouraging him. “Like what? What kind of bad things?”
His focus went inward, and he slouched with his head bent like a child that’s been scolded. “When I was five or six...there was this kid that lived across the street. He was older than me, and I didn’t really like him. He was the friend of the daughter of this woman who used to baby-sit me sometimes. He liked to do stupid things and cause trouble. I think he was...thirteen or fourteen. Anyway, I was playing outside one day when he came over to me and said he wanted to show me something. He brought me into the yard next to the one where I lived since the rowhouse there was vacant just then. He sat down on this low, crumbling brick wall with a lot of overgrown weeds behind it and told me to sit next to him because he wanted to tell me a story. I didn’t trust him,
but I didn’t see the harm in hearing some dumb old story. So he sat very
close to me with our thighs touching and put his arm around me because he said the bricks beneath him were kind of wobbly and he didn’t want to fall. I didn’t like being so close to him because I could smell his bad breath and I was waiting for him to pinch me or hit me or push me backward into the weeds or something. He looked around, then started talking in a real low, soft voice about this family of pigs. It wasn’t a story I’d heard before. He said there was a momma pig and two daughter pigs who lived in this big house, and every day before the daughters left to go to school, the momma pig would kiss them... And then he grabbed me and he...he kissed me...but not in any way I’d known of before. He was holding my shoulders tight, keeping me close to him and unable to just get up and run. He pushed his tongue around on my lips... It was terrible. And when I pulled away, I told him it was nasty and to stop, I didn’t like it. He told me it was just a story, and I should relax and
let him show me how the momma pig kissed her children goodbye. I told
him nobody kissed like that and he told me he hadn’t done it right and he pulled me against him again and pushed his tongue in my mouth...before I could close it...I tried to break away, but he was crushing me to him...and it felt so horrible...and I was pushing against
him and he finally let me breathe.
“I was spitting and wiping at my mouth and I told him that wasn’t nice, but he told me it was if I’d just relax and let him tell the story. I remember getting up to leave, but he had hold of my arm. I told him I didn’t like the story and I didn’t believe him anyway, and he told me it was how his father kissed him when he left for school everyday. He tried to pull me back down onto the bricks and he had his tongue stuck between his lips and rolled up on itself, which I thought was repulsive, and I finally struck his hand off my arm and ran for the house on the other
side of the fence with him right behind me.
“I was afraid to go inside because I was afraid Mom would see I was upset and ask me what had happened, and I was afraid to tell her about it. I ran into the shed and I held the door closed from inside while he tried the knob and yanked on it and beat on the door yelling at me that he’d kill me if I ever told anyone about it... I waited in the dark for a real long time before I peeked out to see if he was still there. He wasn’t, so I ran into the house and pretended nothing was wrong.
“For weeks after that, whenever I was at the baby-sitter’s, and he’d come over to hang out with her daughter, I’d try to avoid him at all costs. She and her mom would yell at me for being spoiled if I refused to play any games with him around. I started doing bad things and blaming him for them even when he hadn’t even stopped by that day. I needed him to be punished...but I was afraid to tell anyone why. So they
just decided I was some kind of a little liar and started being nasty to
me. When the baby-sitter kept complaining to Mom about my behavior, Mom refused to believe her and she found other baby-sitters afterward. That
nasty kid still lived across the street from me, though. I lived in fear of him, but I also plotted to hurt him someday if I could.”
“Did you ever tell on him or hurt him?”
“No. He eventually just moved.” Donovan inhaled deeply, then prepared to tell me more. “Then in high school...I went on a field trip with a bunch of other kids who were chosen from art class. We were going to an art institute where all these scouts from other colleges were screening potential applicants to their schools. I didn’t want to go to art school. Artists are a dime a dozen, and most of the ones who get jobs doing it seem to be related to someone with the company they eventually work for. It’s rarely a talent-thing. I was chosen to go with this snotty little girl who was my sole rival in my grade. She was nasty as a rabid chihuahua, and couldn’t understand why anyone besides herself had been chosen to go to this thing.
“Anyway, on the way back, sitting in this van, I was stuck beside this black guy. I knew of him, but didn’t really know him. He was from a different class. I hadn’t even known he was an artist. He was about my size, but kinda big-boned and almost muscular. I think he played football, but I’m not sure. Most of the kids in the back were sleeping, and the two adults were up front, talking quietly. This guy reached
toward my right thigh and started feeling around it like I was sitting
on his hat or scarf or something, so I moved a little in hope he could grab it, and he reached suddenly into my crotch, grabbing hold of me directly. I went stiff with shock and just sat there tensely, not breathing for a moment or two while he held onto me through my pants long enough that I realized he knew what he was doing. I think I was shaking because I didn’t know what to do. I knew I’d just get laughed at if I spoke up and he’d probably seek me out later and break every bone in my body for telling on him. If I caused a disturbance, I was afraid he’d try and turn the tables on me, either making me look like some kind
of a weird gay liar, or saying I’d been the one doing it to him. So I sat there with a million bad scenarios running through my mind while he began rubbing me kind of slowly and hard...” Donovan exhaled a brief, loud blast of air and crossed his legs tightly. “I tried to wriggle away from him, to at least let him know I didn’t like what he was doing, but he kept his hand in place and kept rubbing like it was himself he was trying to pleasure. Finally, panicking, I cleared my throat and called out to the teacher sitting in the passenger’s seat up front. The hand
was withdrawn. I asked her if she’d wait for me if my Mom wasn’t at the
school to pick me up when we got back. She said she would, and I’d hoped he’d think I meant to tell on him once I was alone with her. Then I stood in a crouch and took my jacket off and bunched it up and set it on the seat before sitting down again...but he eventually worked his hand under the jacket and...and kind of massaged my ass cheeks for like half an hour or so before quitting.”
I let him pause briefly. “Well, those are both rather unpleasant stories, but-”
“But not that bad, right?” He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of his chair. “I know I wasn’t raped or anything...but I was pretty scared and confused both times. I had no one to talk to about it. This shit’s just stayed with me for years. It bothers me. Other boys have their first kiss or first breast in their hand while
some girl’s baby-sitting them. Neighborhood girls let them look up their skirts or let them feel in their panties when they’re still pretty young. Gloria told me she was sucking on little boys’ cocks when she was
five. She was such a liar, though...”
“The instances were traumatic, I agree.”
He said, “Oh, but they could have been much worse, right? Like I needed more bullshit goin’ on in my already fucked up life. Boys hittin’ on boys and girls avoiding me like plague-”
I asked him, “No girls ever hit on you before Gloria?”
“Sure. Now and then. When I was overweight, for some odd reason, a lot
of black girls would hit on me in public places, but I think they were
all at least half kidding. There was a girl at one of Mom’s company picnics who wouldn’t leave me alone one year until a queen wasp landed on my right hip and she ran off in fear. This bug was like four inches long at least...she inspected the fabric of my shorts with her mandibles, cleaned her antennae, then flew off again. If you don’t act like a nincompoop around stinging insects, they almost never hurt you. There was a really huge fat girl in high school who sat at one of the losers’ tables who used to call me Babycakes and would sit by me and rest her hand on my knee under the table...but I think she’s a lesbian
now. I wasn’t interested, but she was relatively harmless. And then there was that stupid girl...Evelyn and her fiancé.”
“Tell me about Evelyn.”
He said, “She was a very attractive brunette. Tall, fit, with really beautiful blue eyes and a nice face and body...but she was a bit on the weird side. Weirder than me, even. She told a girl I worked with that she was interested in me, and I was interested in her, too, but I knew she lived with her fiancé.
“She worked at one of the places I did briefly. I later learned she would get jobs, get herself fired, then go back on unemployment for as long as she could get away from it. Her boyfriend was a total idiot. He looked like a Boston Terrier with these big, bulging eyes. Anywhere she got a job, she’d help him get a job there, too, and when she got fired, she’d tell him he’d been fired, too, for association with her, and he was stupid enough to believe it. That, or he’d quit out of spite after
she’d told him some lie about why she was fired...that she’d caught the boss having sex in his office, or that someone had hit on her and she’d spurned him.
“I hung out with her at work because of my attraction, but I had no intention of acting on it while she was dating someone else. I thought she had at least that much common sense, but she didn’t. She pegged me for as unscrupulous as she was. After the three of us’d had a few dinners out together, they knew of my situation at home and asked me if I’d like to move in with them to help me and to help them with the rent. I agreed. I remember Mom coming home from work and catching us moving boxes of my clothing out. When I told her I was leaving, she just shook her head and said, ‘What did I ever do to you?’ That astounded me. I
started grabbing more stuff and she told me, ‘You can’t take any furniture out of your room--you didn’t pay for it.’ I said, ‘I never paid for any of my clothes, either. Can I take them?’ She just nodded.
“Shortly after I moved in, Evelyn started making advances toward me when
her boyfriend wasn’t at home. She claimed I masturbated in my sleep and
told me she knew this ‘cause she liked to stand in my doorway at night and watch me as I slept on a pile of T-shirts on the floor. I started locking the door after that. She told me she’d been horribly burned in a fire as a child and had to have skin grafts on her face from other parts of her body. She said her lips were extra-soft because the doctors had fashioned them from her pussy lips. If I kissed her, she told me, I’d be kissing her pussy. She claimed she was sterile because she had once wandered around the military base where her father had been stationed
and stuck her head down in a large canister labeled, ‘Agent Orange’.”
“Oh, come on!” I blurted a bit harshly.
He laughed. “Turns out she was...the third pathological liar I’d met in my lifetime. She’d been in and out of psychiatric care and prison for years. Her fiancé told me about how she’d nearly had him convinced there were three ninjas hiding in the attic of the last place they’d lived...shows you how intelligent he was. They were a really filthy couple. They had a puppy they actually named after me ‘cause they liked me so much, and they’d sit on the couch eating ham and cheese sandwiches
and potato chips, throwing chips on the floor and bread crusts even if the dog had wandered off already. I was constantly vacuuming food off the floor and furniture, picking up their clothes and doing their laundry...except for her panties.” He grimaced and shuddered. “When she got her period, she’d leave her bloodstained panties around the house, decorating the doorknobs. I have no idea why. If you asked her about it, she’d just smile. They were both absolutely repugnant. He wanted kids immediately after their marriage. His parents came to the apartment one day and told me that if he couldn’t get her pregnant and give them grandchildren, then maybe I could-”
“Waitaminute, Donovan-”
He said, “I think they knew she liked me. She must have said something. They told me how much they hated her boyfriend, but how much better they
liked me.”
I had to ask, “Where they crazy?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe it ran in the family. They were all weird as hell and Evelyn had the most teeth out of all of them. Her mother was always talking about committing suicide and her father was always talking about running off with a woman he’d had an affair with long ago in another state. He even tried to make me think he was my father...it was creepy. Too strange. Family of sickos.
“Evelyn started getting bolder with me. She asked me if I’d look at her naked. She asked if I’d look at her tits. I kept turning her down because she was still engaged, for chrissakes! Her fiancé was our fuckin’ roommate!
“Then I came home from work one day and found out we’d all been evicted. The Sheriff was there and all our stuff was being hauled through the living room window out into the front lawn. We bagged what we could in trash bags and I called a co-worker who had once offered to let me stay with him temporarily if I ever needed to in an emergency. Our stuff got mixed in the trashbags. Stuff of mine they didn’t want was returned to me, but they claimed some of my stuff must’ve been stolen. It was all the better things I’d owned that were missing, so I didn’t believe them. I ended up in the basement of an old mansion turned into a duplex. As I sorted through my collection of trashbags, I found all the eviction notices Evelyn said she’d never gotten. I found out she’d never turned in my share of the rent like she’d said she had. I found credit card
statements in her boyfriend’s name for things I knew she had bought...on
cards he said he had destroyed. She must’ve rescued them from the trashcan, taken the numbers off of them, then made the purchases by phone...record stores, clothing stores, comic book shops...I knew Rick had destroyed them because he’d said he needed to pay them down before Evelyn tried to steal them and max them out again. Too late. What a
disaster. Glad I never gave in to temptation...’course it faded pretty
quickly after I moved in with them anyway.”
“The last time I heard a story this twisted, it was ‘Justine’ by the
Marquis de Sade.”
“I read that,” he admitted. “There just hasn’t been that much sex in my life, though.”
“So, you lived in the basement of a mansion?”
“Yeah. For two months. Then Mom found out where I’d gone to, saw how much weight I’d lost eating next to nothing and having to walk to work everyday. Christmas was coming, so she offered to let me move back in. Said she wouldn’t charge me ‘rent’ anymore.”
“You accepted.”
He shrugged again. “I was sleeping on a pile of cardboard boxes. There was one lightbulb on a string down there. I’d order a pizza a week and leave it down there in the dark, eating a slice or two a day ‘cause it’s all I could afford and my roommates let me know I was not to share any of their food. It stayed fresh ‘cause the basement door was broken and remained ajar, and sometimes I’d find small snowdrifts on the floor when I woke up. I’d sleep in five pairs of socks, three pairs of
sweatclothes, three pairs of socks on my hands, and two long coats to stay warm. When I was bored, I’d go walking through the old part of town where all the other crumbling Colonial and Victorian mansions were. Some of the basements still had manacles attached to the walls where slaves used to be kept. Mine didn’t. Sometimes there’d be gunshots out in the streets late at night or early in the morning, but I’d just ignore them and keep walking. You can guess it wasn’t a great part of town. One night, when I was upstairs watching Saturday Night Live with the guy who’d let me move in, some bum off the street walked in the front door and sat down on the couch and started watching TV, too, and talking to us. I thought he was his friend, he thought the guy was my friend...but he was really just some transient who’d discovered the front door unlocked. He stayed about an hour, then left. My roommates were pot-heads. Guess that’s why the front door was left unlocked.”
“Guess that’s why you agreed to move back.”
“I should’ve stayed. This one guy there who looked like Jesus was getting ready to be ousted for not paying his rent and the guys said I could maybe move upstairs to his room. Then he paid his rent on time. The basement was better than returning to getting screamed at every day and night and struck a lot over nothing. This was all before Grandpa came to live with us. I went back and things managed to backslide even further.”
“So you were eager to escape again with Gloria.”
“Well, like I said, she seemed nice at first...but then, so had Evelyn. So I didn’t actually move out, but I wasn’t staying at home much at all while I dated her. Then her grandmother moved and she had nowhere to go, so she secretly moved in with me. Actually, I leaned later that she was welcome to move with her grandma, but she’d have to start paying rent if she did. She put all of her furniture in storage at a friend’s barn. She brought her stereo and clothes over, but that’s all we could fit in my nine foot by nine foot room. I had to put a bunch of my stuff in the attic so she could share my closet, and some of my clothes ended up on a bookshelf beside the bed.”
“You said your bed was too small. That you’d had it since you were five.”
“Yeah. We broke it having sex in it. It had fallen apart several times before and been propped up with stacks of books and stuff, but together, we broke it beyond repair. I bought a $50.00 futon at K-Mart. It wasn’t the least bit comfortable--you could feel every pine slat through the mattress, but that’s what we slept on for a month or so. ‘til we broke it.”
“Having sex on it?”
“Yeah. At first she was really into sex... At first,” he sighed. “She’d
contracted genital warts from her ex, but they’d been in remission, and she assured me I’d be okay.”
I shook my head doubtfully.
“It turned out to be one of the few things she told me that was true . I’m still clean.”
“You didn’t use protection.”
“She said she didn’t like it. I’d heard guys say they didn’t like to wear them, so I kinda didn’t want to.”
“She was on birth control?”
“Not at first,” he admitted. “I know...I should have withheld...but I
was afraid of losing her if I refused to have sex with her. I’d told a friend I was gonna kill myself at age twenty-five if I didn’t have a girlfriend or if I hadn’t sold a painting by then. I was twenty four and a half when I met her...
“It’s no excuse, I know. We should have been more careful. I didn’t want kids and she swore she didn’t want them, either. I’d pull out, and she’d go wash herself out in the bathroom. Then she finally got back on birth control and we went at it almost every day for awhile...she could go for hours. Literally. I’d get soft and she’d just play with me ‘til I was hard again...and again. Sometimes I’d be exhausted, and she’d be there, doing everything she could to get me going again. I’d get sores from all the damn friction. She preferred spit as a lubricant. Then she’d want to fuck me again the next day and I’d have this little sore, red spot on me still...and I’d do it again and just make things worse. Nobody ever told me you could actually do it too much. She switched to aloe vera gel after a while, and that ended the friction problems...except it left little rolled up blobs of nearly dehydrated green gel all over her black sheets.
“She wasn’t very clean, either, I soon discovered. She never did her own
laundry. Her panties had brown streaks in the ass...when I mentioned it, she said she had problems with diarrhea sometimes. She was kinda on the hairy side and had zits over most of her body. She’d pop them while sitting on the counter of her bathroom, and sometimes she’d leave little white streaks of-”
“God, Donovan!”
He exhaled, grinning, embarrassed. “I know...but she was still the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, anyway... I mean, after Evelyn, Gloria looked pretty damned good! Even with her buck teeth and receded chin...”
“You’re joking?”
He shook his head no. “I lived in freakin’ Hicksville,” he said, rolling
his eyes and grunting. “She had two half-sisters also named Gloria, and she had two cousins named Melanie. Aside from comic books, she never read anything. She’d look at the pictures in PlayGirl, though. Had a subscription. Couldn’t spell, didn’t know basic grammar. Remember she said she was an artist? Showed me some cartoons? That’s the sort of artist she was. Human Xerox machine. She could only copy what someone else had done, only if it was a very simple cartoon-style drawing. I
offered to teach her more artistic maneuvers, but she said she couldn’t do it and that was that.
“She had a best friend named Nola. Nola was huge--bigger than the big fat girl who used to call me Babycakes--but she was very, very nice. Great personality. An artist and musician. Highly intelligent. I shoulda met her first. Not too bad looking...big nose, and tall and overweight, but otherwise exceptionally cool. Fantastic sense of humor, great comic timing. She once told Gloria she could pass me her way when she was through with me. She worked at a convenience store on the way from my house to Gloria’s, so I’d stop there for hot dogs and gasoline quite a bit-”
“Flirting with her?”
“Never. Had I met her instead of Gloria, things would have turned out
quite different, I’m sure...but I couldn’t date her afterward...not with
Gloria still comin’ around and hangin’ out with her and stuff. It would have made things too uncomfortable.”
“Did she flirt with you?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of. I fixed her up with a co-worker once, but there was no chemistry there. When you’re young, you often need time to grow out of your ‘Ew, fat people!’ stage. Gloria didn’t like fat guys. I told her I used to be fat, but she had trouble believing it. You had to realize, I’d gone through a terrible two-year depression where I’d done almost nothing but sleep, then had lived in bad conditions with little food and no way to get around but walk. I still have stretch marks, though,” he said, pulling up his shirttail, then peeling his waistband down a little. I could see jagged, slightly off-color lines near his love-handles. Donovan was extremely pale, I noticed. Though he was in better shape than he’d been as a child, loose skin was visible over his
soft abdomen. “It takes a while for the skin to go back to normal. She used to grab me by the skin when we play- fought. We’d wrestle sometimes as a form of foreplay...it’s actually the only form of foreplay I know. You can grab me nearly anywhere and come up with a whole fistful of loose flesh. She’d tease me by doing that. She also liked to crack her knuckles sharply across my kneecaps for fun...what a cuddly widdle sweetie!” he grumbled in falsetto.
“She started buying me these damn Claddaugh pieces. She knew I was half
Irish, and she was half Irish, too, so she started buying me gold jewelry with Claddaughs on them. They’re used as a wedding band in Ireland. I had a Claddaugh bracelet I didn’t like to wear because it would get caught in the hairs on my wrist, and this damn Claddaugh necklace that would catch my chest and neck hairs...and if I didn’t wear them, she’d get really pissed at me. Jewelry on me is like putting
jewelry on a pig. Both pieces would get caught on my clothing and stuff, or the bracelet would snag on something at the horse farm. We worked there together at first...then I worked there alone while she still got paid for it. She’d keep complaining because the jewelry was always back at the shop getting repaired. After a while, I started to see her insistence that I wear the pieces at all times as her way of marking me as taken. I grew resentful of the chains. I started thinking of them as slave chains.
“She was always terrified I was cheating on her. If I showed up anywhere
just a few minutes late, she’d start questioning me. I had to show her
receipts to prove I’d stopped for gas or a candy bar. She had to know the name of every female I spoke to and how I knew them. Her husband had cheated on her, so I figured she was just still gun shy. It became annoying, though. She played video games when she wasn’t reading comic books, and a few times when I’d gone to see her at her grandmother’s, she’d be so into a game that she never knew I had stopped by. I’d get a nasty call from her at work asking what my problem was. Then I’d tell her I’d been watching her play freakin’ Sonic The Hedgehog for three
hours straight, and she’d realize I’d been there after all. If I was sick and didn’t feel like going to see her, she’d be at my door as soon as she could. We could never be apart after our first date. I liked her and I liked lots of sex...but I started realizing I appreciated a little time to myself now and then, too.
“She had a younger cousin named Jennifer who had a crush on me. Sometimes, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d get out of the waterbed and go watch TV quietly in her grandmother’s living room. Sometimes Jennifer would be spending the night to escape her own abusive mother...and I think the fact that we could discuss our similar problems endeared me to her. She was very sweet-tempered and sensitive. A very pretty dark-haired girl, slender with blue eyes, athletic, genius IQ, with acne. She had no trouble getting boys’ attention, but was seldom ever able to keep a boy for long. I think she was just too sensitive. She almost tried too hard...with the furry handcuffs and candlelit bubble baths, stripteases after she’d cooked a sumptuous dinner...but she was really too immature for my tastes.
“Anyway, Gloria and I were together for two years before I finally broke down and bought her an antique gold Claddaugh wedding band. She wouldn’t
tell anyone we were engaged at first...I thought that was kinda strange. I was still just her ‘boyfriend’ when we met friends of hers, even though she actually did wear the ring. Then her ex-fiancé moved back
into town, and she kept riding off to his house to visit him.
“His name was Darren. Her family members said I looked almost enough
like him to be his brother. She even had a tattoo of him on her left breast she’d always said was supposed to be a vampire she’d chosen off a wall at a tattoo parlor when she was drunk one night.”
I interrupted him, “I thought you said she didn’t drink.”
“She said she didn’t drink. She used to drink when she was married. She told me she’d have one beer on her sister’s birthday, and one at Christmas, and that was it. Another set of lies.
“Darren was younger than her and had a kid already with some other woman who’d fled the picture and left him with her. He was also dying of hepatitis. His skin was jaundiced and he was very weak...at least that’s what she told me. I never met him. I’d get up some mornings and she’d have left me a note saying she’d gone to visit him. She’d sneak out to see him when she thought I was asleep at night. She was offended when I suggested she still wanted to be with him. She admitted she still loved
him, but claimed she still loved all her former boyfriends, and how dare I get upset over this guy when he was dying. He went into the hospital shortly thereafter. He needed a liver transplant. She’d get all dolled up with makeup and perfume to go see him. I asked her why she didn’t just go casual, and she said she was casual--I was just being too sensitive. He received his liver transplant, then died the next day from a secondary infection. She wouldn’t let me accompany her to the funeral. Afterward, she admitted that had he lived, she’d planned to dump me for him.
“She’d met Darren before she’d met her ex-husband. A few months after dating him, he’d asked her to marry him and she’d said yes. She joined the Army and was stationed in Florida. When she returned on leave, he’d already married someone else. She returned to Florida and met her future husband in a bar. He was married to another woman, but divorced her after meeting Gloria. They married within three months of meeting. She brought him back north to meet her family and learned Darren was divorced. Gloria divorced her husband within two years of their marriage because she claimed he was cheating on her and that’s how she’d gotten genital warts. She returned up north to be with Darren, and he was available. They got engaged again, she left for Florida promising to marry him as soon as she got back, then returned to find he’d married another girl and had a kid on the way.”
“Where do you find these people, Donovan?”
He told me, “Haven’t you been listening? I don’t find these people...they always find me.”
Pray for the light. Pray that you last that long. The Long Hour Before Light is a classic collection of Horror tales, re-mastered by Champagne Book Group
