Lessons from Billy - not a sex story

Sometimes to make sense of the present, one has to revisit the past. And right now I need to visit the past - look at a time when violence and love were entangled in my mind.

The deepest most intense love of my life happened years ago and I wish I could describe as being the best time of my life. It wasn’t.

It was:
Raw
Sensual
Chemical
Intense
Dark
Destructive
Violent

The relationship lasted for a year and took me a decade to recover from. In some ways I never recovered from it. In some ways I still love Billy. Or I did until someone else knocked him out of my head. But that is another story. One that will not be told here.

Billy & I end up fucking each other within an hour of meeting each other. It is lightning striking when we meet. I can feel the heat baking off his skin from across the room. I am being pulled to him and I can’t stop moving to him and him to me. We are in my car and tearing into each other and then my house and in my bed. I call in sick to work and we spend days in bed, barely stopping to eat or drink. Finally we both go back to work but head back to bed as soon as possible. Sometimes he picks me up from work and we can’t wait to make the 20 minute drive home and we pull over and fuck in some mall parking lot. We are sick with lust for each other.

Real life intrudes and we both try to engage with friends, but we are crazy about each other. I go back to college and study but my heart is with him I love him so much. It has been two months of heaven. He hasn’t said he loves me, but I feel it. I know he does, I know he does.

Then one night everything changes. It is a cold, snowy November night and we have just come back from going to the movies and having a few drinks. He is sitting on a chair in the kitchen and I straddle him and start kissing him. He kisses me back for a few moments then leans back and says, “Get off me”. I sit back and say, “What?”
“Get the fuck off me!” and he pushes me away. I stumble off his lap.
“What the hell? What’s wrong?” I step toward him. He turns away and grabs his jacket and puts it on. Then he puts his shoes on. I put my hand on his arm, “Billy! What happened??? What’s wrong?”

Billy turns around and I don’t know what’s happening, all I know is sudden pain in my face and I am hitting the wall across the kitchen and then hitting the floor. I look up and the door is slamming shut and Billy is gone.

I get up and run out the door. Billy is already a third of the way down the block. I run after him, calling his name, begging him to tell me what is wrong, what happened and I catch him and again he hits me and I am lying in the middle of the slushy street and he is gone. I am wet and cold and there is blood running down my face and there will be a long scrape down my spine tomorrow where I hit the wall. There will be no bruises. A couple of months later, Billy will tell me that one his favourite things about me is that I don’t bruise easily.

Billy is gone for 6 days. In those years I smoked and so I smoke all night long. I have a rocking chair by the window in my bedroom that overlooks the street and I drink endless cups of tea and fill ashtray after ashtray with stinking cigarette butts waiting for Billy to come home. By the time he does, my mouth has healed and the scrape on my spine is gone.

He never tells me where he went.

Then are days and nights when he just doesn’t come home. One time he gets up after sex to make a Slurpee run. The 7-11 is a block away. He is gone for two days.

So the pattern is set. Things never are as good as they were in the beginning. He never wants me to sit too close to him. He never wants to me to cuddle too closely. But then there will be a couple weeks where we will be so close and I can feel him again. He is Billy again. He is beautiful, he is mine and I love him. I love his smell - the texture of his skin can take my breath away. When he holds me close and leans down to kiss me I feel dizzy and his breath in my ear as he whispers my name makes me go weak.

But then I do something stupid. I fold a crease into his jeans - another fat lip and the hot coppery taste of blood. He’s gone for three days. Making his lunch for work, I make the egg salad too fine (once it’s cut too fine, you can’t make it chunky again, you know) and I hit the floor and skid into the table. He’s gone for 2 days over that one. Oh, there is that time when I found a letter on the kitchen table from a girl detailing an encounter they had had, and when I confronted him about it I ended getting thrown down a flight of stairs. He is gone for a week on that one. Eventually I apologize for being such a nosy bitch. Sure it’s my table and my house…..but I apologize.

All those days and nights he’s gone. I sit and smoke; rocking and drinking tea. I look out the window out onto the street. I watch the street lights come on and the lights in the houses slowly go out. I cry until my eyes are swollen. I don’t know if Billy is dead. I don’t know if Billy has left me. I don’t know where he is or what he is doing. He drinks too much. He has bad friends. He gets into fights. What if he got beaten up and is in the hospital? What if he needs me? What if he doesn’t need me? What if he’s cheating on me? What if he’s dead? Did he leave me? I don’t know where he is what he’s doing. He drinks too much. He has bad friends. An endless loop of unanswered questions until it is time to go to work or to school. Then if Billy isn’t home I resume my vigil again.

There came a time when Billy didn’t come home. Not a story for here and now. But as I said earlier it took me at least a decade to recover.

Lessons Billy taught me:

1. No man will ever hit me again. Even rough sex is a bit sketchy for me. No choking, no slapping, no holding my nose during blowjobs etc, and even spankings are iffy. And if a man grabs me suddenly, there better be a speeding truck nearby, or he’s going to pull back a stump!
2. Never will I rock by a window wondering again. I promised myself long ago that I will sleep the contented sleep of a woman who knows where her loved ones are.
3. I am worth love. He never told me he loved me. That may seem strange, but any woman who has done her time in hell has earned some time in heaven. I’m worth it J

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