Bad Girl House

Returning to school in January of 1996, for my second semester of college, I was hoping to find my friend Connie sometime during the day. We eventually did find each other, and it made me feel good to have someone to sit with during my breaks between classes. Soon after the semester began, a few people from her public speaking class came with her to the student union. One was a short, round fellow, who I think was close to our own age. The other was a short, fit, balding guy of twenty-six who I will call John. Keep in mind that I was still several months away from turning nineteen at this time. At first meeting, John seemed confident and charismatic, but at the same time no-nonsense. Like I normally did, when we hung out in the student union I just sat and listened to the people around me talk to each other. John complained about being penalized for missing classes when he had other responsibilities. He called them adult responsibilities. He talked about having commitments for his job and with his young son. From early on, these things illustrated his disrespect for any type of authority. He felt that he shouldn’t have to answer to his professors, and that he should be able to attend class when it was most convenient for him. It didn’t matter to him that he was required to attend his classes, and that not being there would impact his grades. I would imagine that he had extremely rude interactions with his teachers because of this. John also had plenty of nasty things to say about his ex-wife whenever he discussed his son. From the very first thing I ever heard him say about her, everything in their past was her fault. She was the reason that they were divorced. She was the reason that he didn’t see his son as often as he thought he should. She was the reason he had to pay child support that she wasn’t using the way he thought that she should.

Once while John was talking, he said something that I must have thought was funny. I was sitting beside him, so I lightly hit him on the arm, as I was laughing at what he had said. His reaction to my doing that was not at all what I was expecting. His face quickly changed from one of entertaining a table of people with a story, to a serious glare towards me. A glare that I would come to know very well.

“Don’t ever hit me! My ex-wife used to hit me!” When I heard this, I really had no choice but to believe what he told me. I wasn’t sure how to react, so I quickly apologized and shrunk back into my seat. Yes, she may have hit him, but knowing what I know now, it would have been in self-defense. This was an early display of John’s irrational reaction to something completely harmless. Something that was totally non-violent on my part was turned into him telling me how he expected to be treated - - telling me how he wanted me to behave around him. This created an immediate question in my mind: What would happen if I did anything like that again? So many huge red flags, banners even, were flying around this man. Unfortunately, I was still a naive, neglected young woman, craving any type of attention.

As the semester went on, John continued to eat lunch with my group of friends. I supposed he saw his talking to me as a form of flirting. Many times he would ask me why I always hid behind my hair. I didn’t think that I actually was. My hair was long and it would fall in my face, but he mentioned it so many times that I started to wonder if I was doing what he said I was doing. He seemed to want to know about my music classes. In an attempt to relate, he told me that he had just gone to see a Bob Seeger concert. I tried to act impressed. I’m not sure if I actually considered him someone I wanted to date, but he was paying quite a bit of attention to me everyday, and I liked that.

The Boot Scoot’n Saloon was a popular country line dancing bar back when I was in high school and college. My friends asked me if I wanted to go to dinner and then the bar that weekend. Since I wasn’t usually invited to go do things like that, I was excited to say yes. It just so happened that when we all arrived at the restaurant, I saw John getting out of his car. I guessed he thought he would tag along with a group of women who were considerably younger than him. There was plenty of talking and laughing at dinner, mostly about our classes and professors. He actually seemed charming and fun to be around. I was forgetting about the red flags I had seen only weeks earlier. I rode with my friends to the bar, and he followed us in his car. The bar was already full of people having a good time and singing along to the blaring music. We were all a bit tentative about going out on the dance floor right away, but we made our way out there anyway. I knew just a few steps, and felt so self-conscious that my feet seemed to be dancing on their own. After making big enough fools out of ourselves, surrounded by people who did know what they were doing, we found a table so we could just be spectators instead. John began focusing on me much more than the other girls, especially when everyone else headed back out to dance again. We did decide to give dancing one more shot, but only for one song. After running into each other through the entire song, we laughed our way back to the table. We continued to talk as well as we could over the blasting country music. When we were all ready to leave, we had to walk in a single file line to snake our way through the crowd. As I walked, someone was playfully but persistently poking at my shoulder. Seeing John as I turned my head, I laughed and shoed his hand away. He was apparently trying to get or keep my attention focused on him. When we finally got out of the building, he asked if he could drive me home. I shyly giggled and politely declined as I walked to my friend’s car to go home. She was surprised that I was leaving with them, and asked me why John wasn’t the one taking me home. That’s when I realized that this whole evening had been planned so he could get to know me. Maybe he had simply overheard what we were doing over the weekend and asked to go. Maybe he told them flat out that he was coming and why. Maybe he had asked them to plan something for him. However it had happened, my friends already knew that he was interested in me. I felt flattered but also felt nervous and unsure.

After a few more weeks of talking over nachos at the student union, John asked me out on an actual date. The date started out the way most dates do: We went out for a nice dinner. I sat there absolutely petrified, saying very little. I remember the atmosphere of the restaurant much more than I do the conversation. My nerves made me overly observant of my surroundings. We were in a booth against a wall, in a rather dark corner of the restaurant. It was a very tall booth, covered in burgundy leather. When I’m nervous I tend to feel cold, and the coolness of the leather was not helping me warm up. The height of the booth seemed to close us off from the people at the tables around us. Since he was much more comfortable talking, I was happy to sit and listen. I was too busy worrying about saying the wrong thing, or spilling my food in my lap. I’m the kind of person who thinks about how difficult a meal could be to eat in front of someone you’re trying to impress. He went on about his job, working as a customer service rep for a bank. He talked about how he enjoyed being able to dress up for the job. Walking around his office space while he talked to people was another big positive for him. He could talk to and help different people all day long. I’m sure that he also talked about his father’s woodworking company that he often helped with as well. He may have opened up about the strained relationship that he had with both of his parents, as he talked about his mother also being at the job sites with them. My shyness must have been starting to bother him. He eventually asked me why I was being so quiet. Either he asked, or I just started talking about the upcoming concert I was going to with my friends. They were able to get Garth Brooks tickets for one of the four concerts he was putting on in Cleveland. It was going to be the biggest concert I had ever been to, and I was extremely excited. Since he wasn’t a fan of county music, he didn’t want my friends to get him a ticket even if they could.

It was still early, so after dinner we went back to his apartment to decide what to do next. I sat on the arm of his red and green plaid couch, still feeling extremely nervous. I was alone with him in his apartment, and wasn’t sure exactly what might happen. We quickly decided that we should go to a movie like we had planned. Right before we were about to leave, he walked over to me and started kissing me. It was not the soft, gentle, romantic first kiss that we all imagine we will have with someone we are just getting to know. This was hard, forceful, and overpowering. Not knowing how to react, and not understanding that it wasn’t quite right, I let it continue. If I stopped him, he might not want to see me anymore. I sat there frozen as he stood over me. My neck was bent back so far that it was starting to hurt. I felt like I had to sit there and kiss him back until he stopped. Once he was done, we left for the movie theater. We were going to see a movie that he had been wanting to see for some time. It was the great first date movie, “Hell Raiser.” I was never one to watch horror movies back then, probably because my parents didn’t watch them either. Needless to say, it was disturbing to me, as it would be to anyone who had never been exposed to anything like that before.

Another date soon after, very possibly our second, brought us to my house with movie we had rented. He had given me a choice between “Pulp Fiction” and “Don Juan de Marco.” Ignorant of what I was actually picking, “Pulp Fiction” was the movie I chose. When we started the movie, my parents were still out. It was a Saturday night, so my parents were out. They were eating at their regular restaurant like they did every week since I could remember. I knew they would be home very shortly. We started the movie, and just like “Hell Raiser,” this was the kind of movie that I’d never been exposed to. Between the language, violence, and everything else that was going on, I was getting nervous about what my parents were going to walk in on. John was also watching the movie, lying on the couch with his head on my thigh. I wanted to tell him to sit up, instead of acting like he was in his own living room. This was a house he had never been in before, and he had no sense that his posture wasn’t demonstrating any amount of respect. Not to mention that he hadn’t met my parents yet, so this was going to be their first impression of him. I didn’t want it to be a negative one. When I heard the garage door go up, my heart skipped a beat. The door to the house was right behind us, so there was no stopping my mom and dad from hearing or seeing the television screen. I was hoping beyond hope that while they were coming in, there would be nothing R-rated going on in the movie.

It was obvious from the start that this was not going to be a first meeting of smiles and handshakes. My dad came through the basement door first. He looked at John and me on the couch, but then went up the short flight of stairs to the kitchen. John hadn’t moved at all, and not a word was said by either man. I was sure that my dad could hear the television from the kitchen. My mom came in soon after. It didn’t take long for my dad to come back downstairs. He was visibly upset and demanded that the movie be turned off. He said that he was finding it very inappropriate, and that it was not something that should be played in his house. There wasn’t much reaction from John, who was beside me, but I started to get up to turn it off. I wasn’t really hearing the movie at this point. I think my nerves were overwhelming my senses. My dad started to repeat himself. Suddenly there was a rush of movement, as John flew off of the couch.

“What are you going to do about it? You’re not going to tell me what I can and cannot watch!”

“I most certainly can! This is my house!” As my dad yelled this, my mom was hurrying down the stairs.

In an instant, my dad was bent over and in a head lock. My dad was not a young man at this time. He was at least sixty-five years old. This is not to say that he was not a physically strong man, who also had a good six inches in height on the twenty-six-year-old who was attacking him. Unfortunately, neither of those things seemed to be helping him. Both my mom and I were screaming for mercy. I was beating on John’s back yelling at him to let go, but he wasn’t listening to me at all. My mom was pulling his arms to try to loosen his grip of my dad’s throat. It seemed like a hopeless battle, as we weren’t strong enough to prevent this from escalating. My dad must have tried to push up with his legs because he and John lunged towards a metal bookshelf that covered an entire wall of the room. When they collided with the bookshelf, the two top shelves collapsed on top of them with a loud, metallic crunch. Books, knickknacks, and picture frames hit them and the floor. During this time, John never lost his grip on my dad’s neck. My dad was beginning to lose strength and he dropped to his knees. I kept pounding on Johns back while my mom screamed,

“Stop! You’re killing him!” He finally let go, and quickly headed toward the door to the garage. I was in total shock, and could hardly process what had just happened in my parents’ house. My mom was now on the floor next to my dad, trying to see if he was alright. John looked at me, and told me to go leave with him. He wasn’t giving me the option of staying home with my family - my family that he had just attacked. I was so confused and overwhelmed, that I wasn’t understanding the weight of this ultimatum. He was trying to rush me to leave with him, possibly before it crossed my parents’ mind to call the police about the assault. With no shoes on my feet, and with no purse on my shoulder, I left my own house with the man who almost killed my dad. When we got in the car, he immediately made it out to be my dad’s fault. If he wouldn’t have told John to turn the movie off, nothing would have happened. He felt that my dad didn’t have the right to tell him anything anyway. In his mind, it was my dad that had provoked his attack, and the attack was warranted. John asked me if I wanted to call his mom to talk about what had just happened. I hadn’t met his family yet either, so I declined the offer. What would she have thought if I actually had called her? Who would she have thought was really at fault? I sat in the passenger seat, looking at my socks. What in the hell did I just do? I was in a car with a loose cannon, that just rolled around wreaking havoc on my living room. For some reason, I thought that I was going to be in trouble for leaving the house. Somehow I thought I was also at fault for what happened. In my own naivety and ignorance, all I could think about was possibly not being allowed to go to the Garth Brooks concert. To make matters worse, John didn’t say much to make me feel better about the situation. He continued to present my dad as the problem. I had told him that my dad and I normally didn’t get along very well, and he used that against all of us. He even said that he couldn’t be with someone who didn’t get along with her family. That may be the most ironic thing he ever said to me.

It was rather late when we got to his apartment, and I had definitely never spent the night at a man’s apartment much less under these circumstances. For awhile I sat on the side of the bed, with my hands folded in my lap, and cried. John just sat beside me. I was too upset to talk about it, so we both laid down on his bed. I was exhausted after the night’s ordeal, but I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning as I laid there in the dark. I was worried about my parents. I was worried about their reaction to John. I was worried about their reaction to what I had done. I thought it was strange that John didn’t kiss me goodnight, didn’t lie against me, or even put his arm around me. He laid there, far enough away to almost forget he was there, though that was impossible. I had definitely never spent the night at a man’s apartments, and certain not under these circumstances. I didn’t sleep at all, but I also didn’t move a muscle. If John hadn’t fallen asleep either, I wanted him to think that I had. I would end up spend many nights like this, trying to pretend I was invisible.

John had set an alarm to drive me home early the next morning. On the way there, he told me that I needed to talk to my parents about my relationship with them. I was to tell them that he could only be with me if I had a healthy relationship with them. He made no attempt to apologize to me for what he had just put us all through. He didn’t accompany me to my door to apologize to my parents either. I don’t think he ever said he was sorry for that. He probably also made the excuse that it was too early for him to go in with me. With only socks on my feet, I slowly made my way up the walk. His car was already gone by the time I reached the front door.

Since I didn’t have my purse with me, I had to ring the doorbell. I still assumed that I was going to walk right into a grounding. The door opened almost immediately. My mom apparently hadn’t slept either. I had never seen her so emotional. She took me in her arms right away, and her eyes were red from crying.

“I thought you were gone forever. You’re all that I have. I didn’t know whether to call the police. I had no way of getting ahold of you. Why didn’t you call me?” She had been concerned only about my safety from the moment I had left. All I could say was how confused I was about everything.

Later in the day, I talked to John on the phone. He reminded me to talk to my parents about what he had said. I had purposefully been putting it off. I eventually brought it up to my mom, telling her that I didn’t want to lose John because Dad and I didn’t get along. I was standing up for the man who was totally in the wrong, for no other reason than he was the first person to really show an interest in me. She didn’t say much more than agreeing that Dad and I should work on our problems. My mom has told me since then that she was afraid to say anything that would push me even more towards John. She knew that I was old enough to do what I wanted and so she was afraid that if she told me know to see him anymore, and even if she demanded that I not see him, that I would defy her. She didn’t want to risk losing me by telling me what to do. I so often wonder what would have happened if she would have just talked to me about how she felt about him - - if she had opened my eyes to all of the red flags that I wasn’t seeing. I know she saw them. It only took a few months for John to make me think that he was right, to make me think that he cared for me, and to make me do what he wanted me to do. And it only took that long for me to feel extremely intimidated by him.

My dad always said that his voice was never the same after John attacked him. He thought that his vocal chords were damaged because of a new and consistent raspiness that he had after that. I don’t think that the rest of my family, including my step siblings, their spouses, and my grandparents were ever told about his incident. If they had been told, I’m sure they also would have given me there opinions on the situation. That would have greatly changed the eggshell-covered path that I was about to tread.