It hasn’t been a good week. You might remember that my car was towed two weeks ago after I parked it in the wrong place outside RG‘s apartment complex (that’s what drunk, obsessive horniness does to a girl). This cost me $190. Another result of my obsession with RG was that I neglected to transfer money into my “bills” bank account that same week, so two direct debit bills overdrew my account – another $80 in overdraft fees. I therefore didn’t have enough money to pay my rent this month.
Of course, those of you who have been reading my two blogs faithfully since (when?) 2007 will know that, um, I am rather “handy” when it comes to scraping together some cash in a short space of time. For those of you who don’t know me this means that I moonlight as an erotic masseuse whenever necessary (in other words, I give handjobs to random dudes or, in some cases, regulars). Now that MM and I have broken up, “whenever necessary” pretty much means “all the fucking time” because I obviously have double the amount of bills to pay. Some women have made a career out of writing about their “sexploits” in the erotic massage/escort industry but this is not really my thing anymore although my last blog started off being about that. It’s just a job really.
Today I finally managed to get together all my rent money, which was actually pretty hard. It is not easy for me to make money as an erotic masseuse because I refuse (absolutely refuse) to email potential clients pictures of myself, even if it’s just a shot of my naked torso. This is a curious thing given that I have shitty boundaries in all other areas of my life, but when it comes to erotic massage I’m boundaried up all the way to the hilt. I can’t stand the idea of emailing pictures of myself to some random dude who can then do with them what he will. Sometimes I think that I must have been a member of the Maasai tribe in a past life (they believe photographs steal the soul) because I am obsessed with having control of my image. In this digital age, there are very few men out there willing to come see an erotic masseuse sight-unseen. Although this makes it hard for me to make a living, it is also a good thing because those who do come (or, ahem, cum) are either regulars or those adventurous few souls who can tell from my ads/emails that I’m well-educated, funny, sane and über-discreet, and they appreciate these qualities in me. Very rarely do I meet an asshole. My clients are almost always well-educated, respectful, middle-class men.
However, I digress. I finally scraped together the rent money, a feat made all the harder by the fact that one of my tyres blew out on the way to work yesterday morning. I was doing 65 (or, well, probably at least 70 since I’m nearly always late for work and end up speeding) and I had always been terrified of a tyre blowing out on the highway. It actually wasn’t all that bad. There was just a huge rumbling sound, which I attributed to a passing truck at first, but then my car lurched to one side, so I knew the tyre had blown out. Since I’m an idiot, it didn’t occur to me to put on my hazard lights, but I just got off at the next exit and turned into the first place I could where there just happened to be (hallefuckinglujah! Praise be to God!) an auto repair shop. Just as fucking well because I ain’t ever changed a tyre in my life and I sure as hell don’t intend to. One hour later, and $90 poorer, I drove off with the tyre replaced and my ego slightly inflated from the hardcore pick-up efforts of LeRon, the playa mechanic.
As if all my financial/blown tyre worries weren’t enough, last night I received an email from MM saying, among other things, that I have Borderline Personality Disorder (I agree – distinct possibility there) and – this was a new one from him – Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This really cut to the bone because I have read the diagnostic criteria for NPD and I definitely recognize myself in some of them. I truly am very self-absorbed. I know it, and it is shameful. I am acutely aware that all I write about in this blog is myself/my problems/my pain. However, I do not agree that I lack empathy for other people at all…..or do I? I am genuinely terrified that I have NPD because I don’t want to be such a bad person! Please tell me I’m not such a bad person!
I guess I really should tell you now how my relationship with MM ended. I’ve been putting it off for such a long time because it was just too painful to write about. It is a long, messy, nightmarish story but, in a nutshell, I ended up calling police on him one night. Early on that night we had had yet another huge argument and, amazingly for me, I actually managed to disengage from it by locking myself in the bathroom. MM was drunk, and I knew there was no point in actually having a discussion because it would get nowhere. He then kicked the door open, and continued to rant at me which led to me mocking him mercilessly (I probably said stuff like “you’re a pathetic loser” or “this is why I don’t want to fuck you”). MM had been physical with me before (usually when I was smashing stuff or when he was trying to restrain me) but I never thought he would ever intentionally hurt me. Things were getting out of control in our relationship, and I was scared that I was going to break a bone if he pushed me into or over something, but I never thought for a second that he would ever hit my face. And he didn’t. However, as I was mocking him, his fist came flying towards my face, and he only just stopped himself in the nick of time.
After this, MM went off to the local bar (yup, the same one where RG hangs out all the time) and got absolutely fucking plastered. When he came back lots of shit went down, and I can’t say I was entirely innocent. At one point, I ripped his iPhone out of his hand because I thought he was calling another woman (turned out he was just leaving a really drunk, incoherent voicemail for his best friend) but he was hardly an angel either. He grabbed me and shoved me around, trying to get the cell phone back; aimed a kick at me; followed me around ranting at me when we were back in the house; threw my dinner in my face when I finally sat down, trying to ignore him; grabbed my cell phone out of my hand when a friend called; smashed it on the floor several times…and God knows what else. I wanted him out of house and asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t. Eventually I just ended up calling the police, which ended up with my cell phone being smashed on the floor several more times until I could finally get through to the police. Well, the police came and tried to talk to MM, but he shut himself in a room and refused to come out. He talked to them through an open window, clearly totally wasted, and eventually the police got tired of that, and asked me to let them into the house. I did, and they knocked on the door of the room MM was in, but he still wouldn’t come out. The police eventually kicked the door down and, when MM still refused to cooperate, he got tasered twice. Yes, twice.
The result of all of this is that MM now has three criminal charges against him: interfering with someone making a 911 call; assault of a family member and resisting arrest.
I don’t feel guilty that MM was tasered (this was his own doing – he could have cooperated with the police) and the fact that he was actually was a solace to me in some weird way. I don’t mean that I wanted him to get tasered (of course I didn’t!) but the fact that he got himself in a situation where he was tasered showed me that I wasn’t the only crazy one in this relationship. MM made a point of telling me that I was the crazy one all the time.
However, I do feel guilty that MM is now facing a domestic violence charge. By all rights, both of us should have assault charges. There is a many a time that MM could easily have called the police on me for assaulting him. Maybe he should have. Maybe that would have been my rock bottom, and I would have been a better person for it. I feel immense guilt that MM’s life could be ruined because of me. I feel like no man should date me – that I’m mad, bad and dangerous to know. No wonder RG decided he didn’t want to see me anymore. I have crazy seeping out of every pore.
But, guilty as I feel, I believe that MM does not accept full responsibility for his actions. Any time he was physical with me, he justified it by saying I “provoked” him. I accepted this response because I thought “Well, it’s true. I am pretty crazy. The guy was probably driven to act that way”. But he’s a grown man! Nobody can make a full-grown adult do anything! Instead of blaming me for the mistakes he made in his life, I think it would suit him better to ask himself why he continued to stay in a relationship with me because I was (no doubt about it) totally abusive.
And, boy, do I feel guilty about that. I know for a fact that I ruined MM’s self-esteem. I don’t know why I was so verbally abusive but I was, and I sucked all the life out of him. The terrible thing is that he still loves me. Even today, he told me how much he loves me, and that he will always love me. Perhaps I feel the same way. I have no idea. I’m not sure my poor, fucked-up brain can actually process what feelings of love are.
I feel terrible that MM has to spend $10,000 on lawyer fees, attend court dates, stupid state-mandated therapy sessions and whatnot while there I was fucking RG without a care in the world. For one whole month, I barely gave MM a second thought because I was so wrapped up in RG. What kind of person am I? Could it be true that I have no empathy whatsoever?
MM loved me/still loves me, and I gave him nothing. And when I say “nothing”, I mean truly nothing. I had the time and energy to put into running after RG (a loser, alcoholic drug dealer) but I couldn’t even give a scrap of affection to MM who was my fucking husband. I know how much he must be hurting because I have been there myself. I have been that person – the person who was mistreated by an emotionally unavailable partner who then spends months, if not years, wondering “what’s wrong with me?!”. I can’t believe I then turned the tables and did that to another person.
I can’t believe that, after everything I’ve done/ all the pain I’ve caused him, he still loves me. He is the first man in my entire life who has ever loved me. And I treated him like a piece of shit. Threw it all away.
My Petrichor Past 