the pastel grit or a pasted grimace (my lasting death)

the second (third; he cried twice the night he strangled and slapped me around during sex, the night he punched the wall) time he cried
 

broke my heart
 

“you’re breaking up with me because you think i’m ugly”
 

broke my heart, i always knew he thought so, i always knew he was scared i thought so
 

all i gave, every last penny, every last paintbrush, every pot of acrylic ground
 

all he stole, my t-shirt from david that got me through so much, my deftones tee, because “you love him more than you love me”
 

nothing could make him feel beautiful or loved. every fight he picked while he was still inside me scars
 

and the worst is when someone says, “wow! he was cute! you gotta give yourself that”
 

because
 

love is funny and love doesn’t stop--he would rave, “i didn’t rape you! you can't love me if i raped you! you can’t love somebody who rapes you!” but “yes, i can…and i do. i love you, and you raped me. the two aren't mutually exclusive”--just because somebody hurts you.

me.

 

but he fucked me up. and fucked me up. i hate it when
 

“he’s cute! why’d you break up with him?”

“joe…you keep raping me. i’m not happy. you keep dragging me around the apartment, hurting me, and raping me. just about every day. you did it twice yesterday…i keep telling you, you gotta change what you do or you gotta move out.”

i’m not telling them

and i miss him. he really knew how to make me laugh and consistently surprise me with his ability

to make me laugh

his paintings, his drawings

 

breathless

but watching him hate himself as he painted in front of me, worrying that i was judging, muddying
his work, the beautiful layers of paint turning monochromatic and the scene going flat

hurt me as much as what he did physically

 

worried me sick

but did i set him free? to create and paint and love? no. he’s just not going to grow if he doesn’t find a way to love himself. all he did was!

he was fourteen, not fifteen? and he was a chubby kid with big blue eyes and trying to fit in. he was just a kid, and a mistake just got away from him

my mistake

he smoked his first cigarette in the school bathroom to be cool with his glossy near-black hair and didn’t put it out so the school, the whole school…ashen, gone, and he (i suspect) never.

the same. always running, tunnel-vision, from the shame. and he gets hit and it all comes back to. burns back down to:

i was twelve. it was my dad’s bathroom. (when i was seven it was my mom’s station wagon and the door. i’ll never forget her smack on my knee, the wild realization that the door had almost whipped away from me with the wind, that i was barely able to grip the handle and nail it back shut instead of sending it flying from the median. but i’ll never forget the desperate need to open it. had to know, had to know, oh, days, weeks, months of dying to know culminating.) he always had candles burning everywhere, scented candles, to try to drown out the cigarette stench. this one was, oh, plumeria-ish. a mauve-rose color in a horrible votive, blue checkered borders and ducks. i just had to know, i just had to know.

i guess it was a puff? is that the brand? the lotion-heavy ones. i grabbed a square, i just had to know, and smothered the candle with it. only it burst instead, burst, and i tried to put it out but it was burning too quickly, so i dropped it. into the trash can? not the sink? how silly, not even into the toilet, how silly of me.

 

dad broke down the door, basically, but i think i let him in after the danger overpowered the pounding. the wastebasket in the tub, the showerhead on, the trash taken outside. then the lie:

"the kleenex was stuck to my elbow cuz of the toothpaste, and i tried to wave it off, but it landed on the candle.” dad was crazy abusive, crazy, and he would’ve screamed, grounded me for the first and only time, but he knew how terrified i was, that the lie didn’t mean i’d do it again, be stupid again.

so he softened.

 

i tried, i really tried, with joe. but three murder attempts are three too many. he stopped himself each time, but going crazy over sexual matters like that is troubling in and of itself. it really is, and i loved him, i still love him, but jeff was like…look, i’ve lost a friend to an abusive boyfriend, he killed her; my father was horribly abusive while i was growing up and my mother, she's lucky, it took forty years but he’s fine now; i’ve had to rescue bloodied friends from their boyfriends; too many go back to their abusers and say “i don’t know why, but i did,” and you’re not going to.
 

i finally told him. i was all, oh, my god…i was going to make a clean break, but then his truck broke down at 10:30 the night before my 6:30a flight to hawaii and i had to pay for the fucking tow truck again, always paying joe’s tow-truck bills, for clothes, for food, even threatened into paying for gas--and that day he’d threatened to kill me if i didn't hand over my iPhone 3…so i just let things happen differently, let him store my stuff at his mom’s…and i got back, and he physically assaulted his way into moving back in with me…at his mom’s advice…and he’s been strangling me, he’s tried to kill me one more time, he’s been grabbing me by the neck, the throat, raping me every day…because i’m in too much pain from him tearing up my vagina to be able to have consensual sex, since he rapes me before i’m healed enough to be okay again…fucking getting old, fucking not dripping natural lubricant just knowing i’m gonna get fucked, fucking a…and if he would just wait long enough, if he would just let me give him loving blowjobs instead of the ones he screams at me for after listening to me scream and cry because i’m just not able to handle that lovely, gorgeous, huge, favorite, wonderful, painful cock…all the while screaming “you don’t love me! no, blowjobs aren’t about love! sex is love! if you loved me you’d let me fuck you! if you loved me we could have sex! giving me a blowjob doesn’t prove that you love me!” but…somehow…this week, last week…i’m starting to forget i’m supposed to be kicking him out. i’m starting to forget…that this is bad. i’m starting to forget…that i had a different kind of life planned.
 

and jeff was like, you are going home and getting that restraining order against him. you’re going home and breaking up with this asshole. today.
 

i got home and joe was shuddering in his sleep. his cheeks rattle and he snores like an ox. tiny little thing, skinny, gorgeous, funny little thing. i always suspected that he sleeps hard to escape. he sleeps through--i have a video of myself laughing so hard i’m screaming, the phone is shaking, you can see when i double over, playing with his bellybutton, sticking things in it, keys, paper clips, what have you. two keys, simultaneously, and then jiggling them around. he sleeps, i think, to run away. he’s miserable, he hates himself, and he just drops into nothingness. with ease. his father beats, kicks him awake. but he must sleep so hard to run away
 

from beatings
 

from kicking
 

words that gut

from the collapse he feels. i sat beside him and i thought, “no. i’m staying. i can’t leave; i can’t stop trying. i can’t leave him to them, i can’t stand the pain, i can’t stand him having no one who just loves, loves, loves him.” his friends use him for drug money. his friends are shit. all of them are shit. not one of them tells him when he’s gone too far, when his red screaming face scares them beyond the pale.

and i thought, “i know…this is the only time i’m happy: when he’s asleep. but…i don’t want to leave.” and i woke him up. and he started screaming and hitting me: “someone i went to jail with has been spying on you! tailing you! …the person i went to jail with, haha, you're so stupid, i know who you’ve been meeting! don’t you know he’s a plant? i made him agree to meet you so he could tell me if you’re a cheater! and you’ve been fucking him! you’re cheating with--haha, you’re so stupid! you’ve been cheating with my friend! and my other friend, he's been spying on you! what’s his name? tell me his name so i can tell you who he is! i can tell you where he lives! who is he? i went to jail with him and we’ve been in on this together all this time! you’re so fucking stupid. you slut! you whore!”

 

jail? that’s how i find out? and i know he never cheated, and that he probably wouldn’t, and the sex was worth autographs when it wasn’t me screaming or even just plainly groaning, “this is rape, you know that…what, do you think doing that is going to make me enjoy it? okay, this tactic feels nice, but the sex still really hurts, and i’m not having any fun”
 

what will it take for him to stop?
 

killing his next girlfriend? his mom won’t even give him that talk. she should. nancy is just setting up his next girlfriend. she’s setting him up to go too far. she knows it, and nothing could make her happier than being in cahoots with someone she’s willing to betray, someone she’s goading into a dangerous future. someone she’s willing to help be a murderer.
 

someone she’s trying to find a partner for so she can dispense of the babies.
 

but if that someone ends up dead…where do they go?
 

i love him, and i forgot

 

(that dying is the end, amongst other stars)

rotting on eggshells

from the inside

nothing grows but furry resentment

and i just wear the spite

forgetting me

kicking the bucket.

kinda

going not me, going bad

going down and maybe never back to me.

i read something so horrible i can't stop thinking about dying. breaking down. doing things in public i never thought i could or would do

because

of what i read. i can't.

i'm just not there anymore, not here, not me. i'm not me.

but i just remembered. i think i can find the proof. unless i deleted

but first...

you know...

the ex-fiance was wonderful at first. i miss him more than--

--his mom owns a thrift store, talk of the town...and upstairs she BEATS him.

and the babies, his babies, i reported her to children's services for everything i hated. i can't stomach her cuddling the babies and having them knead her nipples. (she doesn't have breasts, really, so nipples.) i can't stand remembering.

it reminds me too much

and it scares me of more

they're my sweetlings, and they'll always be

and forgotten me

which is darker than the black of all the rape memories, because this--

their father, i couldn't stay. i couldn't stick it out. it was too much

back of my neck, grabbed

my entire self dragged

into the bedroom and raped.

my throat strangled and the rest of me dragged to the bed and raped.

every single day

and i know it's partly my mom's fault. she's the one whose texts he found and couldn't handle. but he shouldn't have started the murder attempts and all. he shouldn't have started reading my e-mails and texts about being afraid of him and used them not to calm down and become more rational, talk to me, apologize...but to start strangling and grabbing me, threatening to kill me, raping me brutally.

but...the worst?

the worst.

he didn't start strangling me as a scare tactic and rape tactic or grabbing me by the back of the neck as a haul-you-off-to-rape tactic...until his mother told him to. he told me the night he started tossing me around like that that she wanted him to...so he would have a place to live, so that i'd be too scared to kick him out.

what kind of woman is that, what kind of mother? what kind of grandmother, what kind of mother-in-law?

i never liked her. as soon as i walked in and saw the babies for the first time, those poor babies in a truly freezing room--left to their own devices for how long, one truly stuck in a cardboard box and crying his heart out, the other stumping around the room--

--i could not love someone who would hurt babies like that, leave them in a room of dangerous things that could topple under curious 18-month-old hands and crush, kill, obliterate an 18-month-old life. shut the door and admit that they'd been in there alone for two hours.

i could never love her. i'll never get over seeing her hit her son. it's just a smack, no fist, but she swings so hard, so hard, the blow must really--sound

sound

and i have no music.

i miss him but they've used each other to unite against me...but the way he--he gets crazy. so red. so screamingly red he's in a different universe and his raging lurid eyes--

--he can't be brought back. he'd snort a bunch of whatever he was crushing after that, after his rages, if he was at dustin and christy's up in middletown, and start freaking out: "you can't stand me! you hate me! you don't love me! you can't stand me because i'm doing drugs!"

but "that's not true. i love you, i don't have a problem with you doing drugs, i have a problem with you spazzing like this, i have a problem with you not being able to handle the drugs, i have a problem with you risking your life, risking leaving two baby boys behind, risking leaving me behind, risking leaving us together without you--or them without anyone to raise them. you've already done the drugs, so just calm down and just have fun."

and then on the couch in the middle of the night he'd be kicking and punching me awake.

accusing me of having sex with dustin and christy while he was asleep on the couch. but i'm all tangled up in him, i can't ease myself away from him on a tiny couch that's not big enough for us unless we scrunch up all togetherness and tenderness.

and dustin is a creep for whom i would throw a grand old party if he died. he abuses joe, too. i can't stand how much abuse joe endures.

but me, the one who never abused him, who never raised her voice except to say it was useless to scream and fight, because...love is the only way.

the only way out.

me, i'm the one they ganged up against and lied about to protect each other.

not only do i fear

the babies, oh, every day i worry

he told me two dozen times, thirty, that he was molested by his father for six years.once i started pressing him to tell children's services, he clammed up:

"i don't want to lose the babies. ...if they don't let my parents take care of them, i could lose the babies forever."

his father isn't actually allowed to have custody, but he comes over and babysits all the time. he seems kind, but--once he giggled, a man in his sixties, giggled at me lecherously: "going to see your boyfriend?" like joe's nothing, like joe should be run over and left as roadkill, like he was imagining me naked, like he was thinking of us having sex, panting, a little licking, a little groin-shaking.

n started crying all the time while i was in hawaii, and i'm too scared to think of what happened to make him that way. n never cried, never, not once, before i left. then i got back--and every time i saw e and n, e wasn't the only one crying. my heart can't stop crying. it just drags itself around stunned during the day and cries every morning and every night.

i wish i could, i just don't see a way yet. i haven't found the right people to talk to, the right lawyer. i just want them safe, always, and i taught n his first big word. not just yes, no, yummy...mommy...he called me mommy once, just mommymommymommymommymommymommymommymommy...the little duck!

...i bought them a book and when i got to "d is for daredevil," n tottered excitedly and burst, his entire being puckered with effort: "dare! debil!" and i know, i know...he really felt like i was his mommy.

joe told me that nancy--talk of the town is up in reading, ohio, and nancy abused him, he says, using him as a child laborer for years, before she finally opened her brick&mortar shop--raped him when he was 18. he told me forty, fifty, sixty, seventy times. he cried twice, but...he also cried a few more times...telling me about this. he wouldn't always cry, but sometimes he couldn't help crumpling.

he told me the same story every time--that he was high, on acid or LSD, i think LSD, and that he came home. sat on the couch.

that she came over to him and undid his pants, that he was so far gone he didn't know it was her, that he was at home, that it wasn't a young woman, a girl. he says she got him hard and sat on his erection, just pounded away, until she came.

then, he says, she told his father that he raped her.

so why is she saying he didn't ever rape me? if he raped her, if he has a domestic-violence arrest from when the mother of his babies called the police on him (you can't google it; bing will bring it up...joseph george marshall...he's so ugly in that mugshot he looks like the clown from stephen king's it!), if she warned me after the third time he raped me, the first time he tried to kill me, because of the hole in his father's wall...that joe's dangerous and that i need to be honest if he hurts me (i wasn't...i couldn't...i didn't know what to do, the poor thing is constantly barraged with abuse and i wanted to protect him even as i wanted to flee)...and call the police, twice she told me this, once a week after he told me she said he had to be physically violent to ensure his place in my apartment...and she saw him start being violent with me, in front of the precious babies, how can you ever be violent or scream at or around babies? i don't get it, i don't get it, i hated having to hold them as they sobbed while joe and nancy screamed their fucking heads off at each other!...

...if he raped her, then why not me? why am i lying?

but joe admitted it to the magistrate at the domestic-violence civil protection order hearing. that's a whole other post...but he admitted it, and she wrote it on the restraining order, wrote that i had been raped and physically abused.

i miss him, i miss him, i really miss him, but not that him. i miss the other him, and i don't understand any of it. or life. i don't understand anything

bottomed out

babies maybe being abused

and i tried so hard for them, i did, i tried so hard so that they would have a good home and a protective mom and so that i could adopt them--and

divorce

as their legal guardian, as their other mom

if i had to...

...but you know why i never told her about the hole in the wall, "i'm severely mentally ill" and the subsequent strangulation and beating during sex that morning? by then, it was 3 in the morning, the hole in the wall happened around 2.

because

his dad

KICKED

us awake.

kicked, kicked, KICKED.

how can anyone ever stand a chance, how can sanity prevail, how can the drugs not keep taking hold?

nothing...he has nothing, he had nothing, and they needed him to have nothing. so they could keep kicking and hitting

and i am just

void

what i read makes me

void

conde nast' can't beat this nasty.

our troubles really began
on a night thick with fear and grit
and insatiable demands like pompeii.
he left me in a shady parking lot
but i knew we'd hooked a shortcut
and mapped the entire route--

then the flying accusations
the screaming red face back up.
not a hint of the vengeful calm delineated
to a seedy bar sloppy in the back
with drunk locals burping beer
on sloshing ankles.

then

the one time he's really cried (albeit twice:
after he gripped my throat and dragged
me around with a random rough twist
and shout with a fist that became a slap
he gagged.
his second deluge
came welling up)

"forgive me; i'm honestly very mentally ill."
time as a standby stood still after "i already knew."

came anyway the punch in the wall. smashed through
because i was fucking someone, he just knew--someone he knew...
and he wanted to land wailing on me, but went beyond my ear
subsidized my fear for the best economical future
and then

despite not fknowing another soul
here

"if you want to win me back you have to let me fuck you
as cruelly as i can, as your punishment."

i was suicidal at that. but again, understand
the babies were my delight, his twins
and i sought to absorb this stain, wipe our chins
and live.

sagging buttresses and flagging down waitresses

save it all for the pennies at the bottom of the egg cream.

dad used to tell that story, the halcyon days of innocently creeping on women.

this dude ain't taking away my two cents. why, he poured enough spare change into my purse to replenish my supply of tuppence! he can crazymake all he likes, i'm out, finally.

but i will miss the babies more than i think i can bear.

a window to nashville is all the sad songs i need.

i meant to end with

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave!

Wha sae base as be a slave?

         Let him turn and flee!

but i ended with the admission of two for the price of one heartbreak; one of the babies really feels like i'm his mommy. daddy just isn't good to me.

doting and controlling are vastly different. did he think i wouldn't notice that medium brown bag was not from bloomie's?...

the only fitting poem: a corset laced itchy with twine

Us and Them

Nomi Stone

“I would make love to one of our

whores before I

would fuck one of their

bourgeoisie.” There was a proverb,

like this: Don’t trust a         if

he becomes a         even though

he remains a       for

forty years. And the sister opposite

proverb: Don’t trust a       even

though he has been in the grave

for forty years. It was a difficult day,

a bomb had spun open

a bus, and children

had been crushed down by

a machine. Each wondered if he was born

too soon, if later would have been better, if 40

+ 40 + 40 + 40

biblical senses, swollen tense--

--will he hate me when he stumbles across this? will he wilt and renounce camelot?

hump, hump! (and a draft from april 17th that insists on being stamped today, the tramp! because his eyes are the zenith of wizardry, his kisses are pretty fun and something broke what was broken inside me so i'm responsive against my will, my brain dealing the blows my mouth just won't, and it is just so much nicer to paraglide right into a guy's balls with a swift kick back into the primordial oohs--and he checks women out like crazy, does not stop, and it leaves me wondering why he's here, and what makes me think he's not going to skip away as soon as he figures i've run out of positions....)

it kills me not to point out that it's errands, not errons. and things make me smile because i can see right through that veil. but life and love are so much more than spelling, aren't they, tori? the delicacy, the taste, the option of latex!...and the delicate handling of the fragile male ego, the slightest slight possibly derailing it all--the bile must stay in my stomach, not corrode what i have standing in front of me--

--and being with david, it's all such a surprise, as if that was prep for this...because now i'm so chill--

--but right now the biblical reference, the tumescence, it isn't that, it's his his, and i can't quit worrying, because anaphylactic shock is fucking fatal, in something so small it's really just not something i could imagine risking, and one can seem just fine with just a rash or hives until suddenly it's not breathing--and i'm not sure: am i just being fatalistic?

but the thing is, it terrifies me: it's all too real, and he would never be the same, and it's all too new for me to cope with that, or for him to want me to, and the precarious fragility of one small thing, the fragility of another left missing a half...i don't belong, i'm just an interloper on the outer banks, but this makes me need to want to.

so in a nutshell, i've invested a small library, and sometimes i love him back...but the mess and the scribe adorable i'm invested in too, and that's bigger than i bargained for.