Black Thursday

    I had not set my alarm, but still woke up at 4:30. My body didn’t understand that I’d taken a personal day for my birthday, at Marissa’s suggestion. I was now thirty and would just as soon have gone to work. This was not a day to celebrate. This was the death of my twenties, the decade where you’re supposed to experiment, experience, fuck up. I’d done all three and enjoyed it a great deal. Now I had no more excuses. Now I had to have accomplished something. I’d finally graduated college, sure, but this only eliminated the shame I’d felt in my early twenties when I’d been unable to make the leap. When I’d relay details of my life to family and friends back in Illinois, I presented the shiny details without the extra bit of reality: My pharmaceutical sales job with an office overlooking Petco Park was little more than a well-paying telemarketing gig with happy hours on Friday; My $1750 a month downtown apartment had only 700 square feet and was bleeding the bank account dry; my fiancée for whom I’d made the move spent most her nights out, many of them with other men. Thirty was supposed to be an age where I had life figured out. Instead, I was lost.

Marissa told me she had a special day planned. She’d been different since she came back last week after having been gone for four days with no explanation of where she’d gone, and she didn’t know how much I knew. Sometimes it was easier when she didn’t come home. I wouldn’t have to worry that she would stumble through the doors, drunk and out of control. The violence had never scared me directly, but ever since one of her outbursts led to three nights in jail for me, the possibilities of what would happen terrified me. In California, if they’re called to a home where they suspect violence has occurred, one of the two people must be arrested. When our neighbors had heard yelling and bottles and coffee mugs crashing against the wall, they didn’t know that it was her throwing them at me, and when neither of us explained that part of the argument to the police, the police went with the odds and arrested me. I’d only ever hurt Marissa with words; to become physically violent with her was a line I’d vowed to never cross.

I had prevented this from happening again by removing myself from the situation. It was easier in Pacific Beach, where we shared a small apartment just a few blocks from the Ocean. There, I could just go and sleep in the sand with the homeless who flocked there each night. Downtown complicated these escapes. I didn’t want to sleep on the street, and my car stayed parked in the underground garage of our complex, which offered me no cover from neighbors. One time, I experimented with letting her get it all out, but my unresponsiveness only made her angrier, and I figured that her yelling could not continue for much longer before a neighbor would call the police, so again, I left. Living downtown in the Gaslamp District, there was no beach on which I could lay my head, so I’d go to the Seven Eleven and get a pack of cigarettes that sometimes wouldn’t last through sunrise. 

This was not supposed to be my life at thirty, but I didn’t know how to change it. My arrest—later deemed not an arrest, but a detention when Marissa offered to let the district attorney’s office take pictures of every inch of her body to prove I hadn’t touched her—loomed large. The truth didn’t matter, the fact that I’d been once, for three days, charged with domestic battery rendered me unlovable, except by Marissa, who knew the truth. With age comes fewer possibilities, you just accept what is left, and for me, it was Marissa. 

I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes in the courtyard until Marissa woke up. “Happy birthday, old man,” she said as she emerged from our patio door, squinting from the sunlight that bounced off of the stone tile that lined the courtyard, to which she was especially sensitive most mornings.

“Thanks, I guess,” I said.

“Oh stop being a Debbie Downer. We’re gonna have fun. I’ve got the whole day planned. First breakfast.”

“Ok.”

We got dressed and drove to a trendy brunch spot in Old Town, and I felt better. She was making an effort, I told myself. We ordered bloody Marys. Drinking had been the only thing that made me feel anything close to what I’d felt just five months ago, when I’d moved there permanently. I remember feeling the excitement of starting my new life with her engaged, in love, ready to make San Diego home, my trips no longer limited to summer and winter break. Now that we were together for good, our relationship would be normal. Two days later, she drunkenly confessed to being in love with someone else. The next day, she pretended it never happened. I had little choice but to believe the second version. 

The drinks tasted good. I felt like myself, but still, we had little to talk about. I could tell Marissa had something on her mind that she’d been withholding, but figured I would let it come organically, or maybe I just was not all that interested in whatever she had to say. 

“So,” she finally began, “I want to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” I responded.

“Yeah. Look, I know I haven’t been good to you. I had a long talk with Monica and she kinda put me into my place. I mean, that’s where I was all that time. You know that, right?”

“Sure.” I knew otherwise.

“And that’s not it. Something happened. I was out with everybody from work, and well, Ryne and I sort of got into it. We were outside the bar smoking. And I don’t remember what we were fighting about, but that’s just kinda how we are, right? Anyway, so he took my sunglasses and threw them on the ground. Like, what the fuck? And I just… I don’t know, I was mad. And he came at me like he was going to… hit me or choke me or something. Super aggro, and it freaked me out. So I grabbed a piece of the broken glasses and swiped at him. It wasn’t like I was trying to do anything. But he was too close, and the sharp end cut his neck and he had to go to the hospital. And it just sort of woke me up. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you, Marissa? So what I’m trying to say is that I realized something. We’ve been careless about us. I’ve been careless. And you don’t deserve that. And I promise that from now on, things will be different. I want this to work, and from now on, it’s you and me.”

It didn’t matter that we’d been through this before. It didn’t matter that I knew Ryne wasn’t gay. I’d found sexually explicit pictures of him on her computer earlier in the summer. Ryne, the gay friend. Marissa said they were collateral, that when she sent me those risqué photos for Valentine’s Day, he was the photographer, and she demanded he send her his own pics to prevent him from showing hers to anybody at work. It’s a lie that’s only become funnier with time—a party story, even—one that I chose to believe at the time. I was surprised that she still actively kept that lie alive, but none of it mattered. I think people are dishonest about what they truly believe versus what they choose to believe. I chose to believe her.

And so breakfast was good. Marissa paid, like she always had since she got me to agree that we would use my checking account just for bills and groceries, and her money would be our fun money, money that I’d only see if we were out together. One thing I’d always struggled with was how aware Marissa was in her manipulation. Throughout her life, her academic struggles were so profound that those around her—and Marissa, herself—dismissed her as unintelligent. Yet where her struggles with even basic spelling kept that lie alive for some, her wit and keen understanding of what motivated people made the lie impossible to accept for those who knew her. I sometimes wanted to believe the lie of the simple-minded Marissa, which would allow me to dismiss the true depth of her manipulation as unintentional, but as the day progressed, the lie would only become harder to believe.

For our next stop, she took me to Best Buy to pick up my gift, a $300 dollar pair of headphones, the same headphones she’d convinced me to sell when money was tight. I’d sold them for $100 dollars to a person who responded to my Craigslist ad which advertised them for 200 dollars. Marissa later let it slip that not only was the buyer a classmate of hers at SDSU, but that she’d told him to offer 100 dollars. At the time, she told me that I should accept it, that nobody was going to offer more than that. I will never understand what she had to gain from this scheme, but as she led me into the store in what she presented as a grand birthday gesture, I knew it was only an act of contrition for a sin I would never fully understand. The vigor that came with her breakfast confession had worn off. 

As we walked through Seaport Village, I wondered if we could survive my own confession, one I hadn’t yet made, which was that I knew far more than she realized. She didn’t know how much I knew because it had always just been easier for me to ignore it. Confronting her was exhausting. Even when faced with nearly conclusive truth of her other life, she’d work her way out of it, and then she’d flip it on me. After confessing her love for somebody else, we fought and with no other way to express my anger, I called her a slut. I remember the look on her face. I could see in her eyes that my words somehow conjured up memories of whatever it was her mother’s ex-boyfriends did to her, the details of which she’d only hinted. None of what she had done to us mattered when I saw that. In any other relationship, I might have felt justified. But with her, I’d done something that had exposed pain which she’d never confronted but instead covered up. And I knew this pain was connected to all of our problems. My therapist would later tell me her behavior and history were consistent with Borderline Personality Disorder, something that can be caused by the type of abuse she suffered, something about which I was unaware at the time. 

I didn’t need a diagnosis. I knew it was all connected to the past. During one of her extended absences, I looked through her Facebook messages left open on her computer, something I had avoided doing this for so long. It was something that she always did to me, and I hated it so much that I avoided returning the favor almost to prove a point, that I trusted her. And I had. Ironically, her perpetual suspicions of my female friendships made me confident that she would never cheat on me. If even benign emails with female classmates discussing group projects upset her to the point of screaming, then surely there was no way she would ever think of being unfaithful herself. I told myself this before I understood how projection worked. When I finally saw the messages that were not meant for my eyes—overt sexual messages to guys, some of whom I knew; even cavalier mentions of her hookups to other friends—it stung. Like many faced with this kind of revelation, one of my first thoughts was that I was not enough for her; the simple, deep sting was easy to process. The anger that followed was more complicated. I wanted to hate her, but even before I knew there would ever be anybody but me, I knew that her past had shaped her sexuality. There was an urgency, even harshness about how she expressed her love physically, something that I can admit excited me in the beginning, but later appeared mechanical. So even when faced with the intimate details of her late nights, the tragic genesis of her relentless desire prevented me from holding her solely accountable.

Marissa had her own ideas for making things square. Though she’d never admit everything she’d done, she, in her own way, tried to even the score. One time, she suggested that we bring another woman into the relationship as a shared girlfriend. Not knowing where it came from, I laughed at the suggestion. She’d also made not-so-subtle suggestions that we bring her coworker into the bedroom. When I declined, she attacked my masculinity, and I eventually spent that night smoking Camel Lights outside my Seven Eleven. 

I wouldn’t bring any of it to the forefront as we headed into the Gaslamp for lunch. My naïve hope would remain, that we could just be us. Lunch felt better again. We laughed, had a few drinks: beer for me, double vodka Red Bull for her; She always said beer was a waste of calories. After lunch, we went to Patrick’s.

I’d discovered Patrick’s a couple of years prior, during my first summer stay with Marissa. She worked downtown at the Plaza Bar inside the Westgate Hotel, where I would work as a chef during the following summer. Despite her attempts to convince me otherwise, I refused to sit in her bar for her full eight-hour shift, so for the first several hours, I’d explore downtown. I never quite fit in with San Diego, an ever-sunny city blanketed by a constant sea-breeze. The perfect weather rendered its inhabitants perpetually content, which initially drew me to the city. But eventually, it became impossible to find anybody who cared about anything other than surfing and partying. There was no music scene to speak of, no real culture at all. Everything was always, “no worries, let’s watch the sunset.” The Pacific sunset—and the mythical Green Flash that could sometimes be seen as the sun descended into the horizon, something I would never see—was an event not just for the tourists, but to the locals who could see it each day.

I’d once walked into our neighborhood bar hoping to catch my beloved Buffalo Bills on TV. I asked Willie, the owner if he had the game on, then added, “but I don’t know why I put myself through it. They’re terrible.” His brow furrowed and he had a genuine look of sadness.

“Hey man,” he’d said, “you shouldn’t say that. That’s your team.” People there avoided all negativity, even if expressed in jest. 

Even worse, they lacked passion. When Marissa and I had moved into our downtown apartment, I met a neighbor my age. We got along and shared an occasional six pack. During one of our initial conversations, we found that we’d both earned our bachelor’s degrees in English. I’d not yet found somebody with whom I could discuss books, and in my excitement offered him any book in my collection if he needed anything to read. “Aw, thanks man. But yeah, I don’t really like to read.” 

This was San Diego. The people were beautiful and happy, but there was always a pervasive undercurrent of vapidity to which I could never acclimate. I wanted to care about something. I wanted to talk about music that sucked or bitch about my sports teams. Patrick’s became my refuge. Like all the other bars in San Diego, Patrick’s was an open-air storefront, but unlike The Tipsy Crow or Lion’s Den, there were no young beautiful people inside. Instead, the bar stools were sparsely full of old men drinking cheap beer, a random assortment of beach town Bukowskis who weren’t afraid to say what was on their mind. It was also the only bar in the Gaslamp to regularly host live music, haphazard blues bands that reminded me of home. I soon became a regular because it was the only place where I ever felt comfortable. 

When Marissa and I walked in, we were greeted by Old Mike, a gravel-voiced regular in his sixties who held court over the place. On the rare occasion that he wasn’t there, nobody dared even sit in his stool. I’d always been received warmly, but never so much as when Marissa came along. The men were drawn to her, as most were. There wasn’t a trace of darkness in her toothy smile; they could never have known what she would become, and as we sat on the patio with our drinks, my fellow drinking buddies took turns coming over to say hi, just to be in the presence of young beauty. 

I’m ashamed to admit the effect this had on me. Seeing the way these men looked at her awakened the feelings I’d felt when we first met, before I knew too much. I always felt like that was the real Marissa, and that if she’d only had a good and stable love, that part of her would triumph over the pain. I was starting to love her again through the eyes of barflies, and I think she could see it in how I looked at her. After two rounds, she said, “I want you. Let’s go home.”

Our apartment was right around the corner, which had been a selling point in our search only a few months ago. We didn’t make it to the bedroom. With a great sense of urgency as if we had to prove our love to each other, we took off each other’s clothes. It was our first time since she had returned, and her body felt unfamiliar to me. I was somewhere else, wondering if she’d forgotten how to move with me, whether the choices her body made with each thrust were informed by invisible hands guiding her hips. But worst of all, I felt nothing. We finished, and with the last bit of myself I had to give went any potential of a renewed love.

It was over.

At dinner, I wondered how I would leave. I’d broken up with her before, and she’d never accepted it. After one breakup, she bought a plane ticket back to Illinois and got all the way to the gate before her aunt convinced her that she would scare me away. Her aunt was right. If only she had gotten on that plane. I don’t know if she felt any of what I felt, but she could see the sadness in my eyes. Not knowing where it came from, she suggested we change venues for another few drinks. I knew it wasn’t a good idea. I could see that her drinks were catching up with her. In the past, I’d go with it, but having no interest in numbing myself any further, I ordered a Miller Light. 

I just couldn’t do it, though. After that first beer, I said, “I’m tired. I think I want to go home.” She agreed to go, but when I told her I wanted to go to bed, she became angry.

“Jesus,” she said, “I go through all of this trouble to make your day special, and you act like a little emo faggot.”

“Marissa, not now. I’m tired. I just want to sleep,” I said.

“Ok. That was too much. But come on. I have another surprise for you.”

“No, really. I’m just not in the mood. I want to go to bed.” She walked into the kitchen and returned with a birthday cake. 

“So I got this for nothing? You know, you act like everything is always me. But you don’t know how it is to live with somebody who’s always in some bullshit depression funk. What do you want from me?”

I started to lose my patience. How could she not see the source of my sorrow? “Marissa, I appreciate everything, really, but this isn’t going to be fixed by some birthday band aid. We have some real shit to talk about, and I don’t want to do it right now.”

“Oh, right. It’s always me. Do you ever consider your part in this?”

“I’m sorry, did I somehow cause you to do what you’ve done?”

“Oh my god. Will you ever let it go? I told you, it was a workplace flirtation that was done the moment you got here.”

“You’re really gonna pretend that’s it? How stupid do you think I am?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re insane. Maybe you should go to bed.”

“Right. I’m just imagining things. I used to tell myself that. But then I saw your Facebook messages. I have them right here. Should we read them together?” I held up my phone. She moved as if she wanted to snatch it away, that if she deleted them, then she could claim they never existed. I pulled away and continued, “It’s all here. Messages to Matt, to Ryne. Or my favorite, the one where you told Angela how bummed you were that Heath was too drunk to keep it up. I can go through them all, if you want.” It was too much for her to explain away, and she panicked. This is where she’d become most unpredictable, with her back up against the wall. She set the cake down on the table and went into the kitchen to buy time to come up with something. I followed. “You can’t just walk away, Marissa. I know. I know everything. What am I supposed to do? How do you expect this to work?” She said nothing. “Well? I’m listening.”

She knew she couldn’t make it go away this time. Her only option was to turn it on me, like she’d done so many times before. “Well maybe if you actually fucked me, I wouldn’t need anything else.” 

This stung. And in our arguments, there would always come the point where I’d feel wounded enough to take off the filter. “Well maybe, I would if I weren’t so afraid of what I’d catch.”

“Excuse me?”

“What, you go around and fuck half of San Diego and think that I shouldn’t be concerned?” With that, she walked to the table, picked up the cake and threw it at me. I bent to pick up a larger chunk from the floor and threw it at her. In the time that’s passed, I can’t help but laugh at this moment. And I think that there was a time earlier in our relationship, where we would have stopped and realized how silly it all was, the two of us, adults covered in cake, but not tonight. I walked toward the bathroom to wash the frosting off my face when I felt her fist connect with the back of my head. She wasn’t saying anything, just one punch after the other in rapid succession. When I turned around, I grabbed her wrists and held them. “This is fucking over,” I yelled. She stopped resisting, and I let go of her wrists. “They all told me it was a mistake, that you’re crazy. And they were right. You’re fucking crazy. I’m fucking done. For real this time.” She froze. I knew that the words would hurt her. I knew she’d be tortured by who it was who told me she was crazy. I knew she’d fear that it was my family, even though it wasn’t. I knew all of that and I said it to hurt her. I can tell myself that I was justified, and I think I was, but I cannot convince myself it was right. She just stood there, sinking into herself, crying. In all those other times, this is where I’d stop and comfort her, but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel sorry for her anymore, or maybe I just could no longer pay for what others did to her. Instead, I turned away and continued into the bathroom.

I was working through the logistics of how I’d move out my belongings without her destroying them. I entertained the idea of driving up to LA to stay with the nearest friends who were mine alone. For now, I would just take my computer, maybe a guitar. I could live with losing the rest. But then, the childhood pictures, gifts from my late grandfather. There was too much. Overwhelmed, I bent into the sink, cupping my hands to catch water, trying to get just enough frosting out to be able to go into public. When I rose, I saw her through the mirror, standing in the doorway.

She was shaking, still crying, panting. I’d seen her like this before, almost possessed, outside of her own body. I’d never seen anyone succumb to their emotions like her. Then I saw the knife, my 8-inch Wustoff Chef’s knife I’d taken to the sharpening stone just days before. My first thought was that she was being dramatic for effect and I’m not sure, but I might have laughed. But when I made the move to turn toward her, she pulled the knife back and swung it in a hacking motion. I turned away and felt the blade strike my side. I could feel the wetness of blood before the sting registered, and now I was scared. I turned back toward her, and initially saw a look of surprise on her face and thought she might be done. Perhaps she’d not gone deep enough, because she pulled the knife back again.  I turned and tried to dodge it, but couldn’t escape the second strike, this one harder, deeper. She was beyond the point of reason, but she stood between me and the door. She raised the knife one more time, and instinct kicked in. My back to her, I swung around and hit her with the back of my hand. I would later spend entire therapy sessions on this single action, a primary component of my eventual nervous breakdown. Yet there in the bathroom, I didn’t think anything other than how to get out. She dropped the knife, and I ran out of the bathroom. I picked up my computer and an extra shirt and soon felt something strike my back, the pain somehow more immediate than the knife wounds. I turned to see her swinging the heavy end of a computer charger at me. I ran to the door. She connected a few more times but stopped when I crossed the threshold. 

I ran down to the parking garage, but she didn’t follow. Once in my car, I tried to assess the wounds, but couldn’t turn my neck far enough to see them. I took a picture with my phone which revealed two gaping wounds, each a couple of inches long. I knew that the knife didn’t go deep enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but I also knew that I needed to at least stop the bleeding and figured I could without stitches. I drove to the Seven Eleven. Fortunately, I’d left a jacket in my car that would obscure the blood that could be seen through my black t-shirt. I bought a hotdog just so that I could explain the wad of napkins I’d need for my wounds.

When I reached the register, I realized I’d made a big mistake: I did not have my debit card, only hers from the “fun money” account. I only had it because I’d used it to settle up our last tab. I couldn’t go back for my card, but I needed money. Knowing that I’d need a couple hundred for gas, and a little more for food, I withdrew the maximum: 500 dollars. Even under these circumstances, it felt wrong, but I had no other choice. I knew she’d cancel the card when she realized I had it, which would leave me with no means of getting home, or even leaving the city, which would present a whole other problem. I was afraid of her, but also afraid of the police. This time, the evidence was clearly in my favor. It was my blood all over the apartment, but even then, I couldn’t be sure that they would believe that the knife wasn’t used in self-defense.

So I left. I made one last stop for gas and I drove. Somehow, I forgot my phone had navigation capabilities, but it didn’t matter. As I took the exit marked, “East,” I didn’t think about what I’d left behind, my twenties, my fiancée, my future, all of which had once seemed infinite. The skyline soon vanished from my rearview, and with it, all signs of civilization. I didn’t know when I’d get home or even if I had enough money to make it. I thought of how I might explain all of it, or whether I even should. I tried to imagine what my life would look like from this point on, but my possibilities were as barren as the California desert I sped through. I knew I was going home, but also knew that nothing awaited me. I drove as fast as I could.