What I wrote today, continuing from above:
One time, I was hopping around in Chris’s apartment, laughing and teasing him with my words. To me, I was being good natured, but he, didn’t take it that way. He flung a wooden cutting board into my thigh. Charlie and his new girlfriend Catherine came out to Vancouver from Montreal, and Catherine at one point stuck her tongue down my throat. Another time, I saw her pilfering Chris’s change jar. I remember she often said she could die for a hamburger. I was vegetarian at the time, and was disgusted to hear such a pretty girl lust to eat cow corpses.
To be continued…
Catherine was Charlie’s new girlfriend, and they were visiting for a few months from Montreal. Catherine at one point stole a big heavy TV, and carried it to Chris’s place. Charlie was a habitual thief. I used to help him steal in supermarkets, by stuffing his wheelchair compartments or something, but when it came to mom and pop stores, I couldn’t stomach it, and refused to go into those stores with him. At first, I’d get him to promise he wouldn’t steal anything, before going into one with him, but he’d end up doing it anyway, so I started refusing to go into those stores with him.
Now, with Catherine as his new partner in crime, they stole a guitar, TV, etc., and I was afraid for Chris, because at the time, he was living off the interest of his settlement for his spinal cord injury. I sensed danger, in Charlie and Catherine possibly predating on him for his loot. They got an apartment near Chris’s, got kicked out of there, got another apartment nearby, and then left, after a few months, to go back east toward Montreal. Before they left, and before they got an apartment of their own, they would crowd into Chris’s apartment, and they’d all be smoking, in his bachelor sized place. It was stultifying. They would sleep in the van.
One night, I was feeling ill, and for some reason Catherine picked me up and carried me, from one place to another in the apartment, and she was rough about it. I really disliked her from then on. Chris used to call me up and ask me to come over, to drive Charlie and Catherine out, but I also remember he used to then, once that job was done, kick me out, in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night. I’d have to ride my bicycle home. This happened several times.
Once, I saw Charlie’s new dog, a Rottweiler named Omen, rub against Charlie’s wheel, and Charlie punched her in the stomach for it. This was in front of everyone but no one else noticed. Another time, I said something Charlie didn’t like, and he chased me around a coffee table for a few minutes in a rage. Same old same old. He treated me a lot better as Chris’s girlfriend than his own though. I overheard Charlie tell Chris, that he was about to punch Catherine, and he marvelled, that she just walked into the punch. I’d warned her, before I met her, over the phone when she was still in Montreal, that Charlie was violent, but she answered that Charlie would never do anything to hurt her.
After Catherine finally packed up the van to head back east, Chris got a phone call from Charlie, saying that Catherine got pregnant by some guy, and that her taut body was no longer, and that Omen had been left to starve in an apartment while Charlie was incarcerated, and had eaten the springs in a couch. I think he was probably lying, but I don’t know.
Chris used to tell me often, that I was a basket case, a burden that Charlie had dumped on him. So one day I called him up to give him the good news that I had found someone else I wanted to be with. His name was Alwyn. Chris blew a gasket, telling me that I couldn’t just leave him, and that he would track Alwyn down and hurt him if I did. I believed him, and stayed in the relationship with him, so he wouldn’t hurt Alwyn.
I became deliberately boring, and heavily flirted with every man I could, to throw him off Alwyn’s trail. We went to the Cambie pub in those days, and I remember holding hands with one man, Paul, who took me seriously, and was furious at me in the end for leading him on. Eventually, being deliberately dull worked. Chris threw up his hands, and exclaimed “What am I holding onto you for?”, and I was free. Suddenly it was safe to feel again. It was like coming down to earth after spending time weightless. My emotional muscles were weak. I didn’t know how to handle having emotions anymore.
I was going to another women’s employment course at this time, and working as a telemarketer. I started wanting to get laid in earnest. I went after my male coworkers, at parties after work. I wound up in a bathroom stall, with a stranger. I ended up bedding one young man from work who was bleeding from his urethra. I called an ambulance for him I think. He said he probably had cracked ribs. From what, I don’t know, but once he told the other guys that I’d put out, they started calling me in the middle of the night, and I could see I was out of control. I quit the job, and told them I had gotten back together with my boyfriend. It was a lie.
To be continued…