2003-06-03 @ 4:20 p.m. | Repeat, perhaps?

Song in my head: there goes that damn Malcolm in the Middle song again!

Mood: ebullient!

Current book: take a guess!


Okay, I'm so officially in a good mood now - I'm channelling the giddiness of a fifteen-year-old cheerleader (the horrors!) - I just met the nicest, cutest guy in the park and we totally hit it off and we're going on a date on Sunday! Whoo hoo! I was just sitting on a bench in Riverside Park and he stopped me to ask if Butler Library was still open, and I didn't know and I told him that I wouldn't want to give him erroneous information, and that must have tickled him because he laughed and kept talking to me and we chatted for over my allotted hour and he asked if I'd meet him this weekend and I will!!! God, I'm such a sap, but I'm loving this!

His name is Richard, he's 36, and a writer - he has an actual published book and nice teeth (very straight, all together) and all three of his siblings went to Brandeis and his dad grew up in Inwood and we had tons to talk about. What fun!

So I'll fill you all in on how it goes on Monday.. :-)

This talk about writing got me thinking about the assignments I did in writing class and I don't think I ever posted my Louis story I did in November - forgive me if I did and this is a repeat - but I like reading it now and feeling such a change in my perception.

_______________________________________________________

It�s been almost four months since I left � an astonishing one-third of a year � and on some days I can almost convince myself that my life is normal. I can sometimes go for hours at a stretch, maybe even a whole day, without it creeping up into my consciousness, this amalgam of grief and fury welded together that is always with me, in me, impossible to shake off; it lingers like the stray perfume samples that stick to you after strolling through Macy�s. Too bad I can�t shower this off.

We met in February of 2000, a Friday night, the 4th. It was about two or three in the morning, technically the 5th, but to me it would always be the 4th. (For the next two years, we would playfully bicker about what date it actually was, and he would sign his anniversary cards with Happy fourth/fifth!) I was on the A/C/E platform at 42nd Street, waiting to go home after a night of celebrating with friends. It was my last day at a hated job, my birthday was in two days, and I started my new job in three; I was coming down from a high of camaraderie, mixed drinks, and flirtation, and my life at that moment seemed utterly charmed.

Today, unless I look at a picture (and I don�t), his face is a blur to me, but I force myself to remember that night on the platform. He was sitting next to a woman who held a bouquet of flowers, speaking to her too low for me to make out the words; his smile was framed by glossy thick hair that fell past his shoulders, and a physical sword of envy sliced through me as I thought I wish he would smile at me like that � and then he did, zeroing in at me, through me. I felt flushed, as if he�d read my mind, as if my wish had been granted, an act of fate out of my control. As the A train pulled into the station, it was as if our movements were choreographed. We entered the train together and sat near, not next to each other, and we started talking to each other excitedly as if we were long-ago friends becoming reacquainted, somehow already familiar. I gave him my phone number by the time the train pulled into the 110th Street station, and by the next week we were inseparable, he was indispensable, and I was in love, under his spell.

Now, years later, now that his words have become weapons, the words he spoke to harm me are impossible to recall in any detail; I strain for them as if I were trying to hear faint notes of music on a radio station that just won�t tune in. He could confess to sleeping with other women and by the end of the night I would be the one sobbing, apologizing, begging for forgiveness, and I never knew how he did it, never knew just what alchemy he used, what words he wielded to make his transgressions all my fault.

But I remember, as clearly as I can tell you the name of every pet I�ve ever had, and the first poem I ever read by myself, the words he used to entice me. I was the stereotypical lonely single girl in the city; a ton of great friends, yet no one other than cats to share my bed. I was plump, ripe fruit, heavy on a tree, just waiting to be plucked, and his words were his tools to do so. You are so perfect, just the way you are, he would whisper over the phone, in that melodious deep voice I thought best suited for radio talk shows or narrating books-on-tape. On the 7 train on the way to Queens: when everything else reminds me of facing a brick wall, turning to look at you is like gazing upon a sunrise. We slow danced in St. Nicholas Park across from my apartment on a February night, with the ice covering the asphalt crunching under my feet and me holding onto him tight so I wouldn�t fall as he whisper-sang Depeche Mode songs in my ear. Each time he left my apartment he would ring my buzzer � ciao, bella! he would cry into the intercom, as if he couldn�t bear to leave me without lingering. Our first night in bed, thirteen days since 42nd Street, our first coupling, he came to me as I lay dazed and panting, stunned, the taste of me thick on his tongue as he kissed me, murmuring into my mouth I am so honored to drink you in. Is there any way for me to tell how much this fed me, nourished me, sustained me? My body told me in shivers and bucking and warmth that that mouth, those hands, would never do anything other than cherish me.

Those hands of his. I used to love them, because they were his, and I reveled in the intimacy of examining them with care and great attention. They were the same size as mine � I would hold my hand up to his, palm-to-palm, and my fingertips were only a quarter inch shorter than his; we could wear the same rings on the same fingers � and I would hold each of them in mine, the rich Latin tan of his skin making my hands look even paler, stark in comparison. I would kiss each fingertip � his nails were neatly manicured, filed, painted with clear polish, unlike my nails with month-old polish chipped and eroding, bordered by ripped and ragged cuticles (he would always pull my hands apart when I would pick at them) � and I would press his palms to my face, my chest, so he would feel my breath and my heartbeat, as elemental and pure as my love for him, so he could hold them in his hands, these gifts of mine.

It was those hands that he clamped over my mouth the night that he kicked me off the bed. I had been sitting on the bed � it was late at night and dark in the room; he was a mere silhouette in my vision � and I had been crying over some daily cruelty he�d thrown my way � and this night my grief inspired him with fury. With utterly no warming, he kicked me off of the bed, onto the floor, into a pile of papers and books that dug into my back, and he jumped on top of me and pinned me to the floor as he clamped his hands over my face and my mouth to shut me up, to stop my screaming for him to stop.

I was so stuffed up from my crying, I couldn't breathe out of my nose, and he covered my mouth. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't like when you've got a cold and you can't breathe. It was like I couldn't pull air into my lungs no matter how hard I tried. I was terrified. It felt like what I think drowning might feel like. I was empty, my mouth and lungs were empty, yet somehow I still screamed, and I had to bite his hands to finally get free.

It was those hands that he used to grab me by the jaw, leaving a smattering of bruises like a spray of freckles below my cheek; those hands that turned to fists to punch me, that grabbed my head to slam it into the wall as I ran to get away. He used those hands to throw a table at me, and as shards of shattered glass rained on me, cutting me, as blood trickled down my leg, as I shrieked with a voice I�d never heard before, that I didn�t recognize as my own, he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, pulled me to him, and tore the clothes off of me with his bare hands. I stood before him naked, in tatters, bleeding, unable to stop shrieking for him to stop, just stop, please stop, while he raged in that deep voice of his you cunt, you fucking cunt, stop screaming, shut up, shut up, people will think I�m hurting you as I stood there, unable to move; degraded, destroyed.

Today, I live in the same neighborhood we used to share, where we shared the secret of his violence and my shame, and as I walk these familiar streets memories of him are my constant companions. I have a room to myself, my stark white room that doesn�t feel like mine, impersonally furnished, almost anonymous. I lie in bed and listen to the sounds of the traffic and my roommates and the muffled noises of neighbors, and I make myself remember everything. Every assault, every lie, every cruelty. They feel remote and distant; when I tell these stories to my friends, my family, they�re horrified, yet I tell them dispassionately. They don�t feel real to me, the fact that I could have loved someone so deeply and he could hurt me on purpose, none of it feels true, it feels utterly impossible, against some invisible law of physics and possibility. So I tell myself my stories every night in my lonely bedroom in the hopes that the repetition will one day make it understandable, fathomable.

Often I feel detached from everyone, even those who love me; as much as they tell me I have nothing to be ashamed of, I still sometimes fear that I am forever marked; call me Hester Prynne, only my A stands for abused and somehow I must have brought this upon myself. It must have been something about me, I worry, there must be something so fundamentally wrong with me, and everyone can see it but me. Everyone tells me how brave I am to have left, how lucky I am to be alive and healthy and physically unscathed, to be free, and yes, I can see that. But some days I feel as shattered as the glass in that table, as impossible to repair, re-assemble; I am Humpty Dumpty in pieces and I fear that I will never be able to put myself together again.

These are the gifts that he has given me.


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