November 15, 2009

• Dear Misanthrope: My Life With Pat. Part 5

  

  (My Life With Pat: December 1991-May 1995)
  Begun 9/13/05

  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
  4. Away From the Gangs, Part 2: Bellflower and the Second House

  This is the latest in a continuing “Serialized Novel and Reminiscences” detailing “My Life With Pat” which occurred from 1991 to 1995. I began writing “Dear Misanthrope: My Life with Pat” in 2005. The complete saga is on one page on my website HERE and can be accessed chapter by chapter on Xanga from the individual chapter links immediately above. What has gone before: Pat and I get together at our company Christmas party in 1991 and immediately start seeing each other. Ignoring the consternation of my friends, who believe I’m making a dreaded mistake, I move in with Pat and her two kids, 12 and 14. We first live in her two bedroom apartment, and then move to first one, then a second rented home when Pat believes her son Charlie is falling in with a gang element at school. Pat and I are on very different wavelengths, but I’m in love with her, and I want to “save her” by giving her a great life unlike what she has previously experienced. She doesn’t really like “domestic life” however, and seems to think I’m “trapping” her at the same time I feel like I’m going through hell.

  5. The Garage

  If one postulates about his life with any degree of introspection, he will find that there are many times when he can remember living in a dichotomy, where his happinesses and his sadnesses mix together in the salad bowl of existence with alarming frequency. Frequently, this can be caused because of someone we love. I can remember such a dichotomy in my relationship with Pat so clearly that I still have the bitter aftertaste of sour salad dressing in my mouth. I was smitten with her, that’s for sure. I wanted to be her knight in shining armor, and I always felt she was the damstel in distress. The only thing wrong with the equation is that even though she needed helping, she never wanted any help. Even though I wanted to save her, she only wanted to drown in her own insecurities, and eventually saw my riding to her rescue as meddlesome behavior from which she wanted to be extricated. I always thought my life with her was hell, complete with a raging inferno of emotions and inconsistencies, but for her, this life was a similar hell, and she was attempting her escape without my knowledge, even as I kept trying to douse the rising flames.

  Living with her, besides being scary, was always full of surprises, which upon introspection, really weren’t surprises at all. We had moved to the house on 15th Street to keep Charlie away from the gangs. Now, two years later, the gang story was pretty much a moot point as we were living in a beautiful three bedroom rented home in Bellflower, miles away. Each seemingly disastrous or invisible turn of events was diverted, only to be replaced by another, and I found it difficult trying to keep up, so I ran on autopilot most of the time, praying that “normalcy” would prevail.

  The mornings of the year 1995 dawned a bit brighter for me after two and a half years of this hell living with my girlfriend Pat and her two kids. I’d gotten pretty used to hell. We’d leased the house in Bellflower for a year, and had moved in right before the summer of ’94. When Pat had “given” me my own space in the two car garage, which fronted the property, I hadn’t realized this would actually be my sole living space for nearly the last half of our existence there at the time. I had caromed back and forth between fright and contentment for so long by that point that I had no idea Pat was essentially living two lives, and I wasn’t even a part of the second one. I’d always been discouraged by not having any space in our relationship. By 1995, she wanted me out of her space as well, and the gift of my own room in the garage was as much a place for Pat to be able to dump me so I wouldn’t see some of the more bizarre turns she was planning, unbeknownst to my naivete.

  The Prizm began to have problems, and even though we were paying more in rent for the Bellflower house than for the one we had exited on 15th Street in Long Beach, Pat began to think we should buy a new car. She had her eye on a Chevy Astro, a small van which would have been perfect for the family. The kids were now both in high school, and Charlie was towering above me in height. As with all our endeavors together, there was to be little planning in our search for a car. We jumped in “feet first”, driving around from car lot to car lot sampling the wares offered. After two weeks of looking, I showed Pat a large 4X4 Blazer on one lot, and surmised that this was the perfect vehicle for her. It was one of those “monster trucks” fashioned from the larger late 70s Blazers. We both had a rare pleasurable moment together, and while we would never really purchase a monster truck, the seed was planted in Pat’s head, so when we spied a smaller late 80s Blazer, fire engine red, highlighted on one of the front rows of vehicles, both of us made the decision that this was the perfect “car” for the family.

  The Blazer was sporty; not too large, but a lot larger than the Prizm. We traded in the Geo for a few hundred dollars at Worthington Ford, where owner Cal Worthington was semi retired, but his office still had lots of photos of the owner and his many “dogs Spot”, zoo animals including elephants which he had used in his television commercials. After haggling with the salesman for a few hours, we drove away in the Blazer. I really believed Pat was happy for once. Of course I had volunteered to pay half the monthly payments, even though my name was not on the purchasing agreement.

  I’d had a hip replacement operation when we had lived in the Long Beach house, and my hip was completely healed while we were in Bellflower. Both Charlie and Laura still bickered over the TV remote, so when I and Pat came home from work, I didn’t even stay in the living room that much. Back on 15th Street, Pat had bought me a Lazy Boy recliner for my birthday, and this chair was still prominently displayed opposite my 32″ televisoin in the living room. I’d spent more time reading than watching movies while in Long Beach, but in Bellflower, I forsook my recliner, and usually retired to my own “space” in the garage, where we’d carpeted the floor, and furnished with Pat’s old daybed and my electronics gear. While Pat was in the kitchen, I’d go out to the garage, fire up my stereo, and dance by myself, happy that my hip didn’t hurt at all.

  Sometimes Pat and I would listen to music together. I was collecting CDs, usually country music, which Pat and I both enjoyed. We both slept together, and sometimes we even made love, however I got used to the idea that sex was pretty much a memory, and became used to Pat’s weird sense of closeness, or lack thereof. I wrote poems for her which she never read. I naively thought we were doing better than ever, and I became blind to her constricting sense that things were closing in and stifling her, even as she acted like we were at the best point we had ever been in our relationship.

  One afternoon, while sitting at the kitchen table having a beer or two watiing for dinner, Pat proclaimed that she was getting a second job. As with all her snap decisions, she didn’t want a discussion of any change in her plans. She told me what was going to happen, as if it already had. “W-what…” I stammered, completely sidelined by this latest curve in our shared history together. We both made good money, and although the new Blazer was costing us a few hundred a month, I was sharing in the expense, and we both still had spending money. Using “Pat logic” she explained that she needed something “extra” in her life. The kids were pretty much on their own. Pat had never really had that much of a hand in their growing up, and they’d pretty much raised themselves. She’d never let me have any say at all in their upbringing while I was part of the picture. She had already secured a part time job with a local “Policeman’s Association” asking for donations both on the phone and in person. I had been successful in my efforts to quash earlier ill fated job opportunities she wanted to add to her resume in our early life together, like “stuffing envelopes” which always proved to be a scam. However, I wanted to keep us seemingly happy, this latest endeavor didn’t really seem to be a scam, and I really had no say in the matter anyway. Work was pretty busy, and while living with Pat, I was on her 40 hour schedule, instead of the 50-60 hour schedule I’d kept before we got together, since she was the driver in the household. Her part time job would take place after work, so I told her I was going to work more hours running the Panel Shop, and she could swing by and pick me up at 7pm after she got off. She seemed to agree to this arrangement.

  The arrangement seemed to work for a while. She wasn’t really paid that much at the Policeman’s Association. I really had no idea why she wanted to work additional time in the first place. My staying after at work was simply so I didn’t have to face her kids alone without her there. They were usually battling over their TV privileges after school when we would get home from work anyway, so by staying away from their quarrels, I could have a reasonable amount of peace. The washer and dryer were in the garage, so even though I had my own “space” out there at home, it was Laura’s job to wash the family’s clothes, and she was always coming and going, so my “space” was shared and not really all mine.

  After a few weeks with my girlfriend leaving our shared job to go ring doorbells for the Policeman’s Association, and me staying at work for an additional two or three hours with nobody else around, Pat had another heated exchange with me, making another of my decisions. I couldn’t stay at work anymore after hours. She wanted to stay at her second job longer than usual, and having to drive back to our work to pick me up and then take me home to Bellflower was taking a toll. I didn’t really need to stick around at work anyway. I was getting lots more work done, but it wasn’t essential.

  Love is blind. And although the flames of hell lapping at my feet throughout our three year existence together should have been enough to tell me I was in hot enough water, the blindness caused by my love for my wayward waif allowed me to tune out a lot of the more questionable aspects of the relationship. The year 1995 seemed to dawn bright and beautiful, but in fact, the brightness came from those flames, which were merely simmering, and would be shooting up over both of our heads in a few scant weeks. I was blinded by my love so much that during Pat’s pleas to have a second life with a second job after hours, I had agreed, like a dog who has been kicked so much he starts to look forward to the abuse.

  The hours my sweetie was away from the house after I agreed not to stay after at work began to grow. Sometimes Pat wouldn’t return home till after 10 or 11 at night. I should have figured out something was terribly wrong when she would seemingly not come home at all in the evenings. I’d finally fall asleep, sometimes in the daybed in my room in the garage. She told me not to “wait up” for her. How naive could I have been? Charlie told me one evening that I was “pussy whipped”. I agreed with him. It was true. I’d sold my soul for a relationship, and I had been living in this hell for most of the first part of the decade. Where was Charlie’s mother as he and I would go out to dinner some evenings together? Neither of us knew for sure. Neither of us wanted to guess the truth.

  My unread poems questioned why Pat didn’t seem happy after all I’d given her. I questioned why I couldn’t seem to find a “relationship” in our existence together.

  On those rare nights we would actually sleep in our bed at the same time, I could feel her growing farther and farther away. We might be lying very close to each other physically, but sometimes I would feel as if the space between us was a deep chasm which I would never be able to cross. My bright Knight’s helmet began to tarnish. My lips would move to speak but no words would come. Pat got upset at any little thing I would do for her, and I kept retreating to the garage more and more. On Friday nights Pat wouldn’t even come home from her second “job”. I was “pussywhipped” so completely that I never for a moment even suspected she was sleeping with her supervisor at the Policeman’s Association. After a few weekends of “not waiting” for her to come home at all, I finally confronted her. Those bright days suddenly got darker, and the flames engulfed us completely. I had been burned as much as was humanly possible. Now I was burning up.

  Coming Up: Chapter 6: The Escape

  • 1:22 pm
  • 21 Comments