“That'll be a total of $84.23 for the room.”
The girl at the motel front desk chirped at me with fluorescent perkiness. Her gaze was steady and her perfectly pleasant, customer service smile held, un-wilting, as though it had been lacquered into place.
I flicked my credit card down on the counter-top with clipped, business-like precision. The sound was like that of a face being slapped, which one might call a coincidence... had one been aware of why I was there... at a relatively decent motel at 20 minutes to 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. I had swept in the sliding glass doors of the lobby a few minutes earlier with all the window-rattling rage of a tornado. I had dumped my suitcase on the floor with a satisfying crash and announced to the girl that I needed a room for the night.
I can't imagine how... compromised... I must have looked in that moment: hair falling out of a loose pony-tail, jacket ripped, bags hanging off my shoulders like prisoners' chains. To top it all off, I'm sure I wore an expression of undiluted fury, napalm burning in my eyes, daring her to ask me what was wrong. But the clerk at the desk didn't ask. Instead she swiped my card and then stared at the credit-card machine, furtively watching me from the corner of her down-turned eye.
The machine whirred and beeped and chugged out a receipt without missing a beat. But had the machine been a sentient little fellow, perhaps HE would have asked me what I was doing there, at a motel, when my credit-card account clearly indicated that my home address was less than a mile away. I probably would have answered that I was at this, particular, motel because I needed a relatively decent place to sleep and the only dead body I had ever pulled out of this establishment was that of an old woman who had died of natural causes. On the other hand, all the other motels in the area were haunted with memories of suicides, homicides and overdoses I had investigated over the course of the last few years and I didn't want to wake up confused in the middle of the night, thinking that I was at work in my pajamas.
Of course that explanation wouldn't have even begun to cover why I was at that motel. But it didn't matter since the machine wasn't sentient and didn't give a toss what I was doing there. And while the clerk may have been curious, she, doubtless, knew better than to delve into the personal lives of her customers. She, doubtless, wasn't stupid and had developed a very keen sense of self preservation, something a girl can't help but acquire while working the night shift at a “relatively decent” motel. Which, coincidentally, was exactly why I was there: self preservation.
But, like I said, she didn't ask. I didn't tell. Charles Darwin would have loved us: two terribly clever girls without a damn thing to say to each other... busy surviving Tuesday.
I don't know how every other woman in the world was raised. But personally, I don't really feel as though I was provided with an overabundance of solid life skills. Oh sure, I was taught to respect authority and clean up after myself. But when it came to actual decision making, I didn't have much to go on. The overwhelming theme of my childhood was this: Be nice. Be nice to talk to, be nice to look at, just be nice and attempt to make everything around you nice as well.... because “nice” makes everything easy and acceptable for everyone. It was an optimistic and fallacious axiom, based on the premise that “nice” would somehow act as a shield against all things difficult and distasteful.
I don't know how this plan worker out for anyone else, but it got me through to the age of 12 pretty well. I behaved and was rewarded with wide-spread approval from all of the adults in my life. I was a “nice” girl, so amiable and charming.
“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” my mother used to tell me, a little old-world colloquialism, reinforcing the idea that “flies” i.e. “people”.... more accurately “men” would like me more if I was temperate and sweet-natured. But right around adolescence, conflicts began to arise that “nice” just couldn't handle, and I began to question... who the hell wants fucking flies anyway?
My first fly was Mr. Baxter. He was the father of Tara, my best friend in junior-high-school. Tara and I had formed an alliance when we came to realize that we were, perhaps, the most loathed girls in our entire 7th grade class. I'm not sure how this ostracism came about and I doubt there was an actual reason or event that kicked it off. But such is the nature of adolescent hierarchies. Someone decided we were terribly, terribly lame and everyone else joined in... probably out of sheer relief that they had not been similarly singled out. The up-side was that Tara and I were inseparable, thick-as thieves, peas in a pod. We did everything together. The disdain of our class-mates and peers didn't matter to us, because we had each other and we stood, back to back, together against the abuses of every 7th and 8th grader in our school. I'm convinced it would have been a friendship for the ages, the kind of stalwart love featured in movies like “Beaches” or “Showgirls”. There was just one problem: Mr. Baxter.
My own father didn't take much notice of me during this stretch of time and, as an adult, I understand why. It's not that he didn't love me or didn't care, it was simply that he had no idea how to relate to a young girl. He had no clue what to say to me. Mr. Baxter, on the other hand, had all kinds of things to say to me and his interest in me was... disconcerting.
“Hey George,” He would sneer tauntingly at me when he came home from work to find Tara and I in her room, grooming one another like shunned monkeys, clinging to each other for comfort. “How many boyfriends do you have today,” he would tease. “Do you KISS them? On the LIPS?”
Inevitably, I would regard him with confusion and embarrassment. I would squirm, then stutter. I'd never had any boy, let alone a grown man, speak to me in such a way. His “attention” made me wildly uncomfortable, which seemed to amuse him to no end. Every time he saw me, he would start in again, calling me by a man's name and then grilling me on all my conquests and paramours. I utterly hated it, but always smiled (grimaced), blushed and looked away. After all, my “nice” shield was supposed to deflect this problem, right? But something was wrong, “nice” wasn't helping. In fact, Mr. Baxter seemed downright delighted by how stymied I was, how cornered. He loved that I didn't have any choice but to sit there and take his harassment. And it wasn't that Mr. Baxter wasn't being “nice”, he was being... a really weird form of... of nice... I guess.... that made my skin crawl.
“Don't worry about it,” Tara told me one day when I despaired of his attention and wished that he would just leave me alone. “At least he doesn't call you 'Bumps'.”
“Bumps?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Tara sighed. “One day in the bathroom, my little sister noticed that my boobs were growing. She went running to my parents and said I had 'bumps' on my chest. Dad thought that was really funny and now he calls me 'Bumps' all the time.”
“Jeez” I said, “That sucks.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled glumly.
The whole melodrama finally came to a head one afternoon when I was over at Tara's house and, as before, her father returned home from work. He noted the two of us in the backyard, engaged in some tween-girl sacrament, and decided to help himself to a little appetizer before dinner. He wandered outside and dug right in with the calling me “Steve” and asking me about all of my romantic exploits. His voice had this snide, impish lilt and he was clearly enjoying the whole scene, as he always had before. But something shifted in my 13-year-old head that day. I didn't smile. I didn't giggle. I didn't turn my face away and blush. I'd had enough.
“Tara,” I said in a low voice as I turned to her. “I HATE this.”
There was no “nice” in my tone or expression. I was completely level, honest and decidedly not fucking around anymore..
“What was that you said,” Mr Baxter snarled mockingly. “You HATE me?”
Then he turned away and went into the house without another word.
I didn't have a chance to correct him and protest that I hadn't said I hated HIM (even though I did). More than anything I just hated the situation, I hated the way he talked to me. I hated writhing in defenseless shame at his jabs. I hated how... weird he made me feel. But even if I had managed to follow up my single-sentence-rebellion with any clarification, it wouldn't have mattered. The damage was done. I was no longer a nice girl.
A few days later, when I called Tara to invite her over, she informed me that she had been forbidden to ever see me again.
“My dad says you're the most disrespectful kid he's ever met. You're a bad influence and he said he'd tan my hide if I ever mouthed off to him the way you did the other day.”
I burst into tears.
I blubbered something to Tara about having to get off the phone and hung up. She didn't sound too happy either, and I think she might have said she was sorry or something to that effect but I'm not sure. All I could think about was the fact that I was alone in a hostile world. I was rejected. I was desolate.
It was a Tuesday
To this day I don't know how Tara felt about this whole turn of events. I don't know if she agreed with her Dad's opinion of me. I don't know if she fought him to save our friendship or if she just hung her head in mute acquiescence to his ruling. Either way, things were never the same between us again. How could they be?
Loosing Tara at the behest of her gleefully misogynistic father did something to me. I was devastated at the loss of my best friend... but I wasn't fooled. I knew to the core of my little 13-year-old being that something just wasn't right about the whole, rancid ordeal. I wasn't being punished for being bad, nearly so much as I was being punished for being honest... and honesty isn't always nice. The system had failed me. Smiling and sheepishly bearing his verbal molestations hadn't lessened Mr. Baxter's abuse, rather it seemed to titillate him. He loved that I was too weak to fend him off. Then, suddenly, I wasn't too weak. Suddenly it wasn't harmless fun anymore and his behavior was called out for being what it was: A grown man capitalizing on young girls' budding sexuality to humiliate them. Suddenly, my desire to be a nice girl was overcome by the fact that I was just sick of his shit and he shouldn't have been talking to me like that. And when I stopped being nice my presence could no longer be tolerated.
I'm not sorry now.
I wasn't even all that sorry then, to be honest. I missed Tara but I didn't miss having to endure her father's perversion. And I'm sure that had I ever been asked back into her home, I would have been forced to listen to some dumb-ass, self-righteous speech about “respecting your elders” right before his merciless torture resumed with twice the fiendish gusto... and I would have been expected to just sit there and take it... like a nice girl.
It was my first real lesson in how the world truly worked. It was the first time I realized that I had been taught to be considerate and polite and fair and NICE to a world that had absolutely no intention of returning the favor. In retrospect, I think this may have also been some kind of early prep-work for the philosophy that women are meant to be decorative fountains of goodwill and generosity, no matter the circumstances. Anyway, I was starting to understand that “nice” was damn close to useless as far as life-strategies went. I had been released into the wilds of adulthood and I didn't even have a knife to bring to the proverbial gun-fight, I had a tea-cosy.
It was only the beginning. The 23 years following this initial lesson were populated with experiences in which it was clear that I was expected to completely ignore any perfectly valid survival instinct in favor of being nice. And I capitulated more than I care to admit. I've heard many different theories on this “Cult of Nice” and why we comply. Some say that women are hard-wired in their very genetic code to be overly concerned with community and public perception. Those who adhere to this theory state that women are, by nature, more likely to cling to their “group” and value their peers' opinions of them. It's a safety in numbers thing, I guess, reminiscent of hunter-gatherer cultures in which alienation from the group meant starvation and death at the hands of predators. (Of course as an adolescent girl, your peers ARE the predators, but I digress.) There may be some validity to this claim, but I would agree more with the idea that as young girls we're told that we are, in the words of the old tune “Nobody until somebody loves us”. Therefore, being well-liked an popular is the most important thing in our fragile little worlds I would also submit that this need to be esteemed, well-liked and popular often goes to such an extreme as to make it downright contrary to our own well-being. Rather than this desire for community being a protective instinct, it becomes a self-destructive and manipulative one. It's not just a peer pressure thing anymore, it's so deeply ingrained that, even when no one is watching, we allow people to do cruel, dangerous things to us... we allow ourselves to be in terrifying, compromising, dangerous situations, because even in our own heads, we're afraid of what will happen if we're not nice. If we're lucky, the worst thing to come of our socially-enforced “nice-ness” is discomfort. Okay, so maybe your boundaries were a little infringed upon... so what, right? You are a good person. You are a giving and generous person and if that means you take a little crap, or you're a little uncomfortable, or not everyone respects you... that's okay, right? You're a pure soul and you want to promote goodwill, peace and happiness, right? So go ahead- let the big, bad wolf into your house. He asked so nicely and you don't want to be a “bitch,” do you?
It was a Tuesday.
Specifically, it was the Tuesday before the Tuesday that found me standing in the lobby of that “relatively decent” motel. I was fiddling around on-line when a chat window popped up. I was being addressed by an old friend, James, with whom I had not spoken in almost a year, and I hadn't really spent any time with him for a good ten years before that.
“Hey! You guys are in Oswald, right,” he queried
“Yeah, we're in a suburb, just outside of the city. What's up” I responded.
James then explained that he was in town on job interviews and he was stranded. He said that he needed an “emergency couch” to sleep on for a night, and I immediately invited him to stay the night with myself and my husband. I had no reason not to. Ten years ago, when James and I were running with the same crowd, he was a good enough guy. He was handsome, friendly, funny. He could be a bit of a dog where the ladies were concerned and he had struck me as kind of sleazy one time when he decided to have sex with a random girl from a bar in the back-seat of his roommate's car. That roommate had to camp out in my living room down the street until the “moment of togetherness” had concluded. But other than that incident, I had always liked James. Moreover, James and Husband had been good friends back in the day and I knew Husband would be delighted to see him.
I arranged to pick up James later on that night when I was going to be in the city. At first I was so happy to see him that it didn't occur to me to ask him about the circumstances surrounding his situation. It wasn't until we were on our way back to the apartment that the truth began floating to the surface of his bull-shit lake of a story.
“So,” I had asked cheerily as we drove down the road toward home. “You're stranded? What happened? Did your flight get canceled or something?”
James guffawed and launched into his tale. He wasn't exactly “stranded”. Apparently James had spent the last year in Phoenix, couch-surfing and living off the generosity of his old friends, like me. He hadn't really been working or doing much of anything, but he had recently met a girl with whom he was completely smitten. She was going to be moving to Oswald for graduate school and James had decided that this was a perfect opportunity to get out of his free-loading funk. He had started applying for jobs all over town with the intention of moving out to Oswald with his lady love so they might live happily ever after. He had, indeed, come out to Oswald for an interview the day before... but his plans kind of faded into obscurity from there.
“I've been staying at the hostel, but I ran out of money. The interview people were supposed to get back to me today but they didn't. If I get the job I can call my family back in Phoenix and beg for money. They're more likely to lend me money if I have a job. So, I guess now I'm just kind of in a holding pattern until I hear back from those guys.”
“Um... okay.” I said cautiously, doing my best to surmise the essence of what I was hearing; that James was essentially, homeless. He had been homeless and unemployed for a year, during which time he crashed in other people's homes. He hadn't really tried to find work until he took up with this girl and decided he wanted to give off the appearance of being a stand-up, legitimate contender for her affections.
His plan had not been very well-thought out, to say the least. He had, apparently, believed these employers would simply hire him on the spot and immediately hand over a large sheaf of cash money. When they failed to do so, James realized that he was completely broke with nowhere to sleep... at least not until he pinged me on Facebook.
“So, You don't have a car. How did you get here?” I asked him, still trying to sound care-free and chipper.
“Oh, my sister-in-law is a flight attendant, she got me a buddy pass. I flew stand-by.”
“Okay... um. Do you have a flight back?”
James shrugged. “Yeah, sort of. It's an open ticket, all I have to do is go to the airport, pay $35 and I can fly stand-by again.”
“Oh.” was all I said in return, but inside my mind was racing. I already sensed that James would not be crashing on our couch “for a night” as he had initially claimed. He had no immediate plans other than to wait for a call from this perspective job opportunity, and if he didn't get the job- he had no plans at all. Our couch WAS his plan.
I resisted the urge to pull over the car and tell James to get the fuck out. In retrospect it was a compulsion that I should have acted upon, since it was based entirely upon my raw instincts that were, at that very moment, circling up in my brain to organize an official protest against James' presence in my home. But I felt trapped at that point. The guy had already secured a night on our couch, we were already in the car and the unwritten laws of hospitality dictated that I now treat James like an honored guest whose arrival we had been giddily anticipating.
I strongly suspected that James had intentionally withheld the truth of his situation until AFTER he was on his way to our house, and I don't mind saying that I was more than a bit resentful at being manipulated like that. But on the other hand, I couldn't be certain, and it felt extremely not nice of me to immediately begin casting James as an underhanded villain who was out to take me and Husband for everything he could. Maybe this will go okay... I reasoned with myself as we drove, Maybe James will actually only need a day... or two... and then he'll be gone. Maybe I'm completely jumping the gun on him becoming a problem house-guest who doesn't know when to leave.
And maybe I was completely dismissing a whole slew of perfectly valid misgivings because I didn't want to seem like a miserly, inhospitable bitch.
I did my best to hide my inner turmoil and asked James if it would be okay with him if we stopped so I could pick up some groceries like I had been initially planning before his “emergency” was added to the evening's roster.
"Oh, good! Food," James sighed happily. "I haven't eaten all day..."
The potential employers didn't contact James the following day, or the day after that... but he hardly seemed concerned. He set himself up in our living room and seemed content to simply sit there, watching me and husband come and go. To say that I didn't like the arrangement would be putting it mildly. The weirdness had begun to kick in after only one night and I became increasingly more anxious with every evening that passed and every weird little personality glitch that James displayed, For example:
1) We found out that James didn't actually HAVE a phone where these job-interviewers could call him. They could only call a number and then page James through his email with the phone number that he was supposed to call back. This meant that in order to make contact with anyone at all, James had to use either Husband's phone, or my phone. He did his best to hide this inconvenient fact from us. He would ask if he could use my phone on the premise that his own had stopped working, or the battery was dead. Finally, I just flat-out ASKED him if he had a phone and he saw fit to finally admit that he didn't. "I don't keep a phone," he said with lordly disdain. "I get frustrated with them and then I just end up destroying them."
2) James also didn't have a computer and so in order to check his "phone messages" or "email messages" or whatever, he had to use either Husband's computer, or my computer. If Husband or I were not around, he would simply attempt to hack our passwords. One time, he succeeded and seemed astonished to find that I was more than just a little miffed at this invasion of privacy. "I didn't think you'd mind..." he said in a reproachful tone, implying that his actions were justified and my anger was, obviously, unreasonable and selfish.
3) Thursday I came home to find James had gone out somewhere, but left no indication of where he was going or when he'd be back. I had to leave again before his return, and not seeing any other option, I locked the door behind me. I figured Husband would be home soon and James had both of our phone numbers if he came back to find the door locked and wanted to know when we'd be around again. (If nothing else there was a gas station on the corner from which he could call.) When James did return and neither Husband nor I were at home, he simply broke into the apartment and was relaxing on the couch in a post-shower wet towel when Husband walked in.
4) More than anything, James' behavior was just... weird. He would pace the living room like a caged animal, muttering to himself. He would go out onto our balcony and punch the railing repeatedly in a fury. Or he would burst into sudden tirades about what a pain in the ass women are. By this time, we had come to discover that things were not going well between James and the young lady with whom he hoped to live out his days. She had apparently given him no indication that she wanted him to move to Oswald with her in the first place. And now she was being extremely stand-offish in response to what could only be construed as his stalker-like behavior. James saw this as being a complete betrayal of his noble intentions and blamed all of his current difficulties on that, "duplicitous cunt".
It was Friday before I started to get more than just a little anxious about the situation at hand. James had given no indication that he had any ambition beyond sleeping on our couch for all eternity. This job-opportunity still hadn't contacted him and with the advent of the weekend, it would be at least two more days before he could expect to hear from these hiring managers... if the job and the people interviewing for it even existed in the first place. I was losing sleep, I was irritable and sarcastic (more so than usual) and even Husband, who had initially been delighted to have James with us, was starting to get antsy... probably because I was unequivocally NOT in the mood for sex with that giant slug camped out on the other side of our bedroom door at all times.
The good news was that I was going home to Phoenix to visit my family for the weekend and wouldn't be back until Tuesday. I told Husband that he was welcome to let James stay at our place during my absence if he liked, but I was absolutely NOT okay with James being in our home upon my return.
"I'm serious, babe," I told Husband. "I know that you guys were really close back in the day, but I want my home back. I just can't RELAX with him here."
Husband squirmed. He was, quite obviously, agonizing over the classic conundrum of "bros before hoes". He didn't want to turn James out, but I really couldn't stand to have him around any longer. Husband gave me a disappointed look, indicating that he thought I was being "that girl", i.e. the one who forces a man to choose between his wife and his buddies. I felt guilty and mean, but I couldn't help it. James' constant presence was tweaking my lug-nuts so hard I was walking sideways from the moment I got up to the moment I laid down to toss and turn all night. And I'll admit it, I felt like a wretchedly “uncool” person. I blamed myself. What was wrong with me that I was so opposed to helping out our old friend? Why was I being so... unkind... so... not nice?
Then I went home to Phoenix.
I had left early Saturday morning, but before I departed, I had an earnest heart-to-heart with James.
"James... I'm just going to need my normal life back when I get home,” I was sweating and wringing my hands as I spoke, it almost felt like I was begging him for absolution. “Please understand, I'm not angry with you, We just... need our space back."
James generously assured me that he totally "got it" and he would be out of our hair by the time I returned on Tuesday night. I was happy and satisfied with this agreement and went back to Phoenix with a sense of relief... that only lasted until I went out for drinks with my old friends... the very same friends who had been putting up with James' antics for the past year.
"Oh my GOD, He's at YOUR place," one such friend gasped when I mentioned that James had been staying with us.
"Dude, Grace... you've GOT to get him out of your house as SOON as POSSIBLE," another friend insisted.
They then went on to describe the trail of trashed apartments and ruined friendships James had left in his wake during the previous months. He had dented appliances in crazed outbursts. he had verbally intimidated the girlfriends of his buddies and, once or twice, threatened these women with physical harm. He had disemboweled a borrowed futon bed by stabbing it repeatedly with a knife during one of his tantrums.... then took that same knife to the kitchen counters and shredded the linoleum. There had been pots of spaghetti flung against walls for no apparent reason, routinely destroyed cell-phones and at one friend's home, James had gone around the bedroom in which he had been staying and repeatedly spit all over the walls. He'd had a brief and incidental flirtation with this girl whom he was planning on following out to Oswald and she had been so unnerved by his arduous devotion and crazy-ass behavior that she had told him weeks earlier to stop contacting her or she would file a restraining order.
At various points during this year of pandemonium, a few people had given James what's commonly referred to as the “Come-to-Jesus” talk, during which everyone had told him that his behavior was unacceptable and he either needed to get his act together or get some kind of psychiatric assistance. Our entire circle of friends had been flabbergasted at his actions and attitudes since, in the past, he had been a level-headed guy with a job, a car, a phone and a firm grip on reality. People had appealed to those memories, hoping some fragment of that rational human being still existed. But James ignored all of these pow-wows and would simply abandon one tapped resource for another. Going from one person's home to another, to another, he had decimated all of his Phoenix friendships before hitting upon this idea of moving to Oswald to start over with a woman he barely knew and who was on the verge of going judicial-system on his delusional ass.
My phone call home that night was as short and pointed as a pygmy's toothpick. James had to go.
Husband responded by promising me that James would be out by the time I returned and I decided to leave it be. I wasn't going to treat Husband like a child, or beat the subject bloody by calling every night to reiterate that James was a complete nut-job who needed to be extracted from our couch like a rotting tooth. But when I landed at the airport and Husband met me with a big bunch of roses, I couldn't help but be a little suspect. Some women love getting roses. At one time I was one of them, but not anymore. I know roses too well to trust them. From what I've come to learn about roses, countries who are at war with each other should drop big, fat bouquets of roses right before they nuke the shit out of their enemy. Guards should pass out roses to prison-inmates as they're being escorted to the gas chamber. I'm pretty sure I've received enough of THOSE kind of roses to know that they're harbingers of doom... you might as well be holding a big sign that reads- "Boy, are you gonna HATE what's coming next!" And if I had taken a long, deep whiff of this bouquet that Husband handed me, I'm pretty sure it would have smelled like convenience store and shame.
To my own credit, I managed to keep my mouth shut until we got to our car. But when he made a big show of opening the passenger-side door foe me, I'd had enough.
“So,” I began carefully, unsure of how much I wanted an answer. “What's going on?”
Husband stuttered for a moment and then informed me that he had also had the “Out-by-Tuesday” conversation with James. He had seemed to accept this ultimatum with grace and had even packed up his bag and placed it by the door. However, when Husband had come home from work on Tuesday afternoon, he had found a note from James stating that James was out “dealing with some stuff” and he would be staying another night as he still didn't have any other arrangements.
“Hopefully. This will be the last night.” James had written. He then followed with the statement that he would be back at our place around midnight and he expected someone to be awake to let him in.
He wasn't asking if he could stay another night... he was telling.
I saw red.
But not the world-erasing, vision-smearing, blind madness of rage. I saw a crisp, clear-edged, copper-scented crimson. I saw blood.
As a deputy medical examiner, I bear witness to the worst-case-scenario, daily. I am there to testify as to how far things went and how bad they got. It's my job to backtrack from the most horrible outcome imaginable, all the way to the original bad idea that started a sordid trail of events that ultimately killed somebody. It's what I do. And as my vision filled with this seeping, red curtain of catastrophe, a somber parade of faces began to drift across the grisly backdrop.
Faces.
And as each face came into focus, so did the each scene.
I saw her apartment. I saw the scatter of clothes that seemed so innocuous. After all, what girl doesn't have a pile of clothes on her floor from time to time? I saw her jeans on the carpet by the bathroom, one leg turned inside out and a loop of her panties still tangled into the denim. I saw the shower curtain drawn back to reveal her. Then I saw Tammy: 26 years old, hog-tied and laying face-down in a bath-tub full of water with a butcher knife through her neck. Tammy's shady co-worker had stopped by to “tell her something”. It was New Year's Day.
I saw her house, chilled and quiet, dark and still as a tomb. Creeping carefully through the kitchen, conscious not to touch any surface... not to step on any possible evidence, our sterile shoe-covers whispered and hissed against the tile floor. Her collection of ceramic dolls staring numbly down at us as we entered the living-room to find Beth, 45 years old, face down on her floor next to a bloodied base-ball bat, her skull caved in by her husband's best friend who had been living in their basement until he could get his life back together.
I saw the hospital room. The girl so pale that she almost disappeared against the sheets. The whiteness of her skin was so flawless and milky that the bruises looked as though someone had flung a can of brown paint across her body. When I opened Erin's stiffening mouth, I saw her teeth had been knocked out of place with such force that her tongue had been shredded in the process. According to police reports, her boyfriend stated he had been “training” her.
I was silent for the ride home. I don't remember what else Husband said to me. I don't recall if it was warm or cold outside. I have no idea if there was heavy traffic or which route we took home. But I know I sat in the front seat of our car with 3 phantoms sitting in the back, all women who had been murdered by someone they had trusted, someone that they had let into their homes. In each one of those cases, witnesses said afterward how the perpetrator, “just seemed a little off” or, “wasn't all there.” In some cases, “the dude was a little scary, but, you know... not dangerous or anything” And in retrospect, everyone seemed to agree that they had always felt uncomfortable around the guy in question. But no one had wanted to be the one to say something. No one wanted to rock the boat or cause a problem.
Everyone wanted to be nice.
As Husband and I walked into our apartment, he picked up James' note and handed it to me. I skimmed the scribbling and yes, James did intend to come back to our place to stay another night... or two... or however many he damn-well pleased because he was counting on the fact that we would be too polite to tell him no. And in that moment, James suddenly reminded me of Mr. Baxter: another deviant who lived out his selfish perversion assuming that no one would ever stand up to him. And doubtless, James would follow in Mr' Baxter's footsteps by becoming inexplicably indignant and ludicrously self-righteous when someone finally did.
And I thought about all those women. I wondered how many of them didn't want to let that guy in. I wondered if Beth didn't like having her husband's weird friend in their home but was afraid her husband would think she was a bitch. I wondered if Tammy felt skittish about letting her co-worker into her apartment, but invited him in anyway because she didn't want to be rude. I wondered what had to take place in Erin's mind in order for her to qualify, excuse and endure regular beatings at the hands of her boyfriend until, finally, he killed her. And as much as I typically try not to, I wondered about those last moments when all those women knew, with terrifying clarity, that they were about to die... when they looked into the faces of these men whom they had invited into their lives and realized, "Oh my god... he's going to kill me."
And finally, I wondered what else Mr. Baxter would have said. I wonder what more he would have done... if I had just sat there and taken it, like a nice girl.
I looked up at Husband. Not wanting to totally emasculate him or expect the worst, I chose my next words very carefully.
“What do you think we should do?”
Husband writhed with discomfort.
“Well...” he mumbled. “I would be okay with letting him sleep here for a few hours before he leaves in the morning...”
"Okay." I nodded, picked up my still-packed suitcase from the floor where I'd dropped it, and walked to the door.
"Wait! Where are you going?"
I turned back to husband.
"Look," I hissed. I was struggling to sound calm, but the kindling fire of my outrage betrayed my efforts and I only succeeded in affecting that soft, menacing, on-the-verge-of-a-melt-down tone. "I love you, and I'm not angry at you. I'm not going to start a fight and I'm not going to tell you to kick James out tonight... But what I AM going to do is go find myself somewhere else to stay because I have no intention of sleeping in the same apartment with that guy. I think he's psychotic and I don't feel safe with him here. "
"But... hang on!" Husband stuttered as I reached for the door-knob and swung the door open. There, on the other side of the door, most likely listening and waiting for the right moment to break in on the scene, was James.
"Hey!" He barked cheerfully, as though nothing at all was amiss.
Husband and I stood there for a moment, both stunned by his sudden appearance. I felt my eyes narrow as I took in James grinning countenance. I couldn't believe his nerve. He had been told by both me AND Husband that he had to be out of our place by Tuesday. He had ruined other people's homes, completely disrespected their lives, ignored our ultimatum, and essentially conveyed that he was going to stay until he was good and ready to leave regardless of our feelings on the matter. Yet he could still stand at our door and blithely look me in the eye as though he hadn't a care in the world and was utterly assured that no one would ever be anything but thrilled to cater to his eternal adolescence.
I didn't say another word. I swept past James and, throwing my suitcase into the back seat, revved my car to life and headed towards town with my mind floundering in a sea of bitter ire. Fifteen minutes later, there I stood: in the lobby of the closest "relatively decedent" motel, disheveled, pissed off, and face to face with a girl who knew far better than to ask me what was wrong. I collected my room key and bag. The ghosts of those murders knit themselves into a flag, flying fierce behind me as I hauled my exhausted self up to the third floor of that motel, kicked the door of my room open, flipped on the television and flung myself onto the bed, livid, but also strangely and marvelously clear on one glorious fact:
I was done.
That night, the lesson finally penetrated... the one begun by Mr. Baxter 20 years earlier: I didn't care who thought I was a bitch, I didn't give a damn if I was perceived as being impolite or unkind. Maybe I would start halting dinnertime conversations with my deplorable lack of tact. Husband might refuse to be seen with me in public. Perhaps my blunt rebuffs would make mothers cover their children's ears while little old ladies clutched their chests and made the sign of the cross.
Fine.
Good.
Few people know as well as I do that, all too often, women die when they squelch their misgivings, when they ignore the red-flags, when they dismiss their survival instincts and, instead, accept accusations of being "uptight" or "surly". We buy that line of bullshit like it's on sale. Then we white-wash our brains with self deprecating rhetoric and apologize for not being the big, pink, fluffy cushion that everyone wants to sit on first.
Not this time, not anymore.
The door of my life had just emphatically slammed on the molesting little fingers of anyone who had ever insisted that I silence the voice of my own intuition for their own, perverted benefit. I was never again going to sacrifice my mental, emotional or physical safety for the sake of being fucking nice to another narcissistic asshole.
To his credit, Husband actually booted James from our place right after my abrupt departure. and James was predictably “butt-hurt” in response (to use Husband's phrase) I still stayed the night in the motel though. After all, I had already paid for it and I didn't want to waste a good hissy fit.
Last I heard, James was back in Phoenix and telling everyone that Husband and I suddenly kicked him out of our home for no reason. He's calling us materialistic and evil and all kinds of vindictive poppycock. But that's okay. Anyone who believes him is welcome to let him stay at their place. And if no one else understands, I don't really care. I know it's not about money. It's not about social convention or being courteous. Sometimes fighting for your life means saying "no" to a situation in which you might have to fight for your life. Sometimes it means pissing people off and looking like a jerk. Sometimes, it's about locking your grip on YOUR rung of the evolutionary ladder and refusing to budge no matter what names they call you.
The fact is, you can dress it up in whatever flowery etiquette you like, it's still all about survival of the fittest here on planet Earth.
And experience has taught me that another Tuesday is coming...
...any day now...
… and I mean to survive it.
