November 12, 2005

• Dear Misanthrope
  (My Life With Pat: December 1991-May 1995)

   

  The following is Chapter Three of a continuing story on WhenWordsCollide, and I am offering it as the Theme Entry for the latest Topic Post on the Featured Grownups Blogring with the theme: What Were you doing in the 90s."

   

  Read More "90s" entries here on the Featured Grownups site.

   

  

   

  1. Merry Christmas and Hello 

  2. 2 adults, 2 Kids, 2 bedroom apartment: 2 Close for Comfort
  3. Away From the Gangs, Part 1: The First House

   

  In 1993 Pat and I looked for a new place of residence, away from the gangs with which she was afraid her son would be involved. The "house search" was very thorough and interesting. Pat, her children Laura and Charlie, and the homeless girl Laura had brought home and whom Pat had befriended piled into the Prism, even though it was a tight fit, and we visited three or four realtors, and dozens of homes. I wanted to offer Pat a house for a home. She had been cramped in the apartment for too many years. When visiting her real mother, who lived in Norwalk, in a fine large house with designer furniture and a large RV in the driveway, I shuddered at Pat's own seeming poverty. With my savings, and my werewithal, I was going to get her into a life like that of her mother, with nice things, plenty of room to move about, and hopefully this would make our life better. "Better" is not a word I can ever use to describe my "Life With Pat" however.

   

  If I were to characterize my "Life with Pat" in one word, that word would be "scary". Our life was a series of scary episodes beginning with the weekend of the L.A. Riots right through to the bitter end of the relationship almost four years later. When the decade of the 90s is mentioned to me, I immediately think of my time "wasted" in my failed relationship with my malajusted waif. The scariest episode was when Charlie suddenly dropped down to the ground while playing in the yard one summer afternoon, and we couldn't get him diagnosed at Harbor General and had to take him (still passed out in the back seat) to County/USC. He had heat prostration. The next scariest episode was the riots, and the third would have to be when Charlie equally confronted Pat in the living room one evening and both were so dynamically mad I thought one would surely kill the other. Less scary episodes which I can dig deep and summon up involved Laura's disappearing one Christmas when we were all supposed to go visit Pat's dad in Florida, then when we left without her, Laura broke into the house by breaking the back window. And Pat told me to accept Laura's explanation of why there were really eight dwarves in the Snow White Fairy Tale. Pat never remembered where she put her keys, and within weeks of moving in with her, I elected myself her "memory". By the end of the relationship, I had become an automaton, because she would rely upon the fact that I kept track of things, to be able to forget anything she needed to remember, and I would always instantly have to locate where something was in the house.

   

  I spent a scary three years with Pat. In three different places. One each year. The first was her two bedroom apartment in South Long Beach. Or as I used to put it: "On the ass end of the Long Beach Freeway." Our apartment was on the bottom floor of one of those ubiquitous 6 unit "single width" two story apartment buildings. It had a security fence, and we all had keys to the lock. There was a lot of gang activity nearby, and the homeless parked their shopping carts like autos in a parking garage over by the trash bins at the park. Pat's moods could be real scary. In three years, I was able to remember where almost everything was kept, and I cleaned most of the house myself too, including taking out the trash, and mowing the lawn, but the lawn care was small to nill in both the houses we lived in, and the apt. didn't have a lawn of course. The second house was a big four bedroom, two bath monster, so big that it totally encompassed the lot on which it stood. It was an ugly yellow color, and was sort of bland and square, but had lots of room, so I could escape the kids. The third house was in Bellflower, and was a really beautiful place, and Pat and I could have really begun a better life, but it was not to be, and I spent half my time there in the garage, in my own "apartment" waiting for the lease to end so I could leave Pat physically. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

   

  Suffice it to say that in a life filled with difficult years, the three I spent with Pat were probably my most difficult. I felt like I was living in a Twilight Zone episode two thirds of the time. When Pat befriended the "homeless girl whose name I cannot remember" I knew that her efforts to "have her own way" would never stop, and her "way" would doubtless become more skewered as the years would pass. We found the four bedroom two bath house located only a few blocks from where we both worked. It was in walking distance, Pat said. There was lots of room, and the nameless homeless girl was going to pay a certain percentage of the rent, so things would be nice, finance-wise.

   

  Things started to get scary as soon as we moved in. Pat was supposed to pick me up from work one afternoon when she had to "do something" and left work at lunch. She didn't show up back at work. Since she was easliy angered, I waited patiently (not really one of my virtues) in the parking lot at work for her return. After about two hours, I proceeded to walk home, which was about six blocks away. She was involved in a discussion with the homeless girl, her new best friend, and had forgotten all about me. First the keys, now her boyfriend. We next had one of our wall shattering fights, and at one time she physically pushed me over some unopened boxes from the move. Had I learned yet that our relationship was a highly charged negative hellhole? No, not really. I always try to make the best of any situation.

   

  Our lives on 15th street were intersected but in our year there we became an on again off again couple. Our sexual life was almost nonexistent. The homeless girl looked for a job. She was given one of the four bedrooms. Laura had her own room. Charlie had his, and Pat and I shared the Master bedroom. My 32" bigscreen TV went into the living room. I never watched it in the apartment anyway. My love of movies ceased to exist after two years of living with Pat. There was far more drama in real life than I could find at the movies anyway. One day, the homeless girl failed to return home. She undoubtedly had found another best friend. Pat became incensed with her a few days later, and we took all her clothing and belongings to the Goodwill store. Pat announced that she wanted to move into the spare bedroom. From that moment on, we really weren't a 'couple' anymore, if in fact we had ever been one in the first place.

   

  We still spent a lot of Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the horse track. We still rented rooms in motels in San Clemente during the summer. Charlie and Laura were involved in new friends at their schools. Laura switched from Poly High, in western Long Beach, which is so filled with rowdy kids, that there are metal detectors and parked police cars at the entrance, to Wilson High, which is a "nicer" high school in the eastern part of town. She got good grades, but as she grew older she became even more rebellious toward her mother. Since I couldn't "discipline" Pat's children, who had never known discipline, living with her family was like living with a bunch of adolescents, Pat included.

   

  Charlie would sneak my beers from the refrigerator and fill the empty bottles with water. I guess he figured I wouldn't "notice". Laura hardly came home at all. She had hung out with Mexican American kids and was fluent in Spanish. (Fluent enough to converse with other kids, anyway.) Her boyfriend was a Salvadorian refugee, and she spent most of her time with him. Both Pat's kids liked the 32" bigscreen television, and were usually parked in front of it battling for the remote control in the evenings. I spent a lot of free time reading. Charlie liked cartoons, and would watch the same video tape of "Beauty and the Beast" endlessly. I love the movie, but got so sick of seeing it in the background of my life, that it took me years before I could watch it again. Laura liked the "talk shows", especially one hosted by Ricki Lake. My favorite times during the year in the house on 15th Street were late at night. Since Pat and I didn't sleep in the same bed, I would get up in the middle of the night. I would call up a "pay per view" or slip one of my laserdisc movies in the player, turn the sound down real low and act as if I were in my "own space" and not actually embroiled in the daily soap opera that was our lives.

   

  We both made pretty good money at work, and our pooled resources did allow us some fine vacations. It's quite ironic that we "met" each other at a company Christmas Party, because we missed three in row subsequently to travel to Florida to visit with Pat's father and mother in law in a retirement mobile home park. Holidays in Florida are much like the Holidays in California, with nice weather and no snow. I and Charlie "bonded" when we went to Disney World together. Pat didn't want to go. Laura missed one trip because she ran away prior to our departure. Pat's father was an excellent gentleman, and got around very well for a parplegic in a wheelchair. My memories of these trips to Florida are among my favorite during my hectic relationship with Pat. Her complete family would come and room in the moblile home, which was a double wide, for the week prior to Christmas. Since my family disbanded when my parents died, having another "instant family" was very nice for me. Pat could be very sweet and convincing as a loving partner. On our first night in Florida the first year together, we actually made love,  and we made so much noise that the other family members joked about us the rest of the time we were there.

   

  I had to sell my Cadillac when we lived in the house on 15th Street. It was sad to see it go, but Pat was relieved. As the school year ended, and summer rolled around, Charlie got involved with some questionable friends again. One evening after dinner Pat announced that we would need to move again. We had been in the house about a year. She didn't want Charlie near any gang members, so we spent the summer looking for another house. At least this time she hadn't befriended any homeless people.

   

  To be continued.
  This is the thirdpart of this "reminiscence" about my ex girlfriend Pat, subject of the "Pat Poems" written in 1992-1995. Some parts of this story will show up later in "My Sexual History". In this series of essays I am  writing not from a "sexual" standpoint, but from a "relationship standpoint". and this series will simply outline my somewhat eerie, and always harrowing relationship with Pat. Upcoming in this series.

   
  4. Away from the gangs Part 2: The second house
  5. The Garage
  6. The Prison Break

   

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  I am trying an experiment streaming a radio station feed from the 90s station on XM radio. I don't know if this is "legal" but here is the link to the XM radio station on the internet. MFN

   

   

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  Edit: 12:43 am. 12/13/05: Thank You Featured Grownups.......Second time since I've been a member of your blogring.

   

   

  46.

  Dear Misanthrope (My Life With Pat: December 1991-May 1995)... Total eProps: 44 | Total Comments: 26 Posted by baldmike2004 - 11/12/2005 at 3:18 PM

   

   

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