Good (?!) Times

Last night I was sitting on one couch, curled up. There was a bruise on my forehead that I had not yet seen. My lips were puffy and tender to the touch and the lower one had the metallic taste and rough texture that recalled its being jammed against my teeth by a hand. He's lying on the other couch, stretched out. We are watching an old episode of Good Times on TVLand. In this extremely strange episode, a kid is glaring at John Amos in the bedroom of the Good Times apartment, rubbing his backside. He's upset that John Amos just hit him.

They walk out of the bedroom and the two Good Times sons are trying to figure out how bad the beating was, comparing it to ones they've had. "He didn't give him the Big Mac," says JJ. "I know, 'cause he's still walking." The kid goes to sit on the couch, but can't, because his butt hurts. "I guess he got the Big Mac after all," the oldest daughter says to Flo.

They gather around the kid, who is upset, John Amos included. One of regulars says that their dad must really love him, to throw him a beating like that. The kid says, "Nah, y'all don't love me," and the dad says, "I wouldn't have beat you if I didn't care." This is clearly supposed to be a Warm Moment. The kid says, "Well, I guess I didn't know some could love you and beat on you." They all laugh; it's obvious that the two are expected to go together.

"See?" he says, from the other couch.

My tongue pokes against the tender spot inside my lip.

"I don't think that's funny," I say.

On the TV, the other kids give the beaten kid a pillow to sit on, and they all go back to their regular lives.

Good times.

The Places I Stay

I have become a super duper expert on places to crash. I don't mean squats, I mean gray-market, on-the-fringe places where shadows can flit in and out of the shade without being noticed. There is a place on Union Square, run by the Lutherans, that has no internet access and I have to walk down the hall to get to the bathroom, but it's $80 a night. If I get there late, there's always parking on the street. I never see anyone else who stays there, but it's always the same Eastern European man at the desk. He seems handsome and lost. The last time I went there, I arrived at about 1:30 am and three people were sitting in the lobby having an argument about the Gulf War. Lutherans argue really loud. They're really well educated and opinionated. One guy was so loud and so opinionated, I wanted to thump him over the head with my laptop after about 30 seconds. I looked at the guy behind the desk and he didn't even seem to hear it. He is there every night. I suppose he hears a lot of things.

On Queens Boulevard, there are hotels that run about $100 a night.For the extra twenty bucks I get a parking space, HBO, and high-speed internet, plus a little breakfast. They are run by Indians (the ones from India) who are extremely friendly and solicitous, and the other people who stay there are tourists. Sometimes they murmur in French to each other as they eyeball the cornflakes. One father was taking his daughter to visit colleges, and he chit-chatted enthusiastically with anyone who'd meet his eyes as he waited for the shuttle to the subway. Once I saw a rock-and-roll couple with rolly-bags; she was organizing things while he stood lost like a kid.

There are directions I don't go in. A Super 8 in Long Island City? Bad idea. You get free internet, but you hear hookers having sex all night and trucks go by at all hours. Stick with a Best Western or a Howard Johnson's. There are extremely cheap places on the Upper West Side that I have not investigated, because I know I won't be able to park up there.

I don't like to stay with friends, because my mate tends to call early in the morning to shout at me, and I shout back. I am also in chaos and I know that's horrible to be around. I do not want to upset people. I do not want people to know how bad it is and then see me go back. I do not want people to hear the way my voice rises to a whinnying whine, then blasts forth with a roar as I curse out my mate for demanding to know where I am. I do not want anyone to witness what happens. Maybe what I don't want is for people to stop me.

Besides, he has forbidden me to stay with friends. He kicks me out, but he tells me where I can stay. He says I am bringing unwanted attention to him. He says people will think badly of him for kicking me out when in fact it is my fault. He has no choice but to kick me out because I "give him so much lip." I have never heard people actually use terms like this. It's as if he watched entire seasons of The Honeymooners and took them as his guide. I understand the ridiculousness of my adhering to this rule. At the same time I adhere to it because what if I don't? What if? What if? I worry that he can see everything I do. I worry as I type this that he has installed spyware on my computer. I worry as I put it online that he'll come across it and guess it's me. I know this is irrational. But he's in my head. He is a small chip in my medulla oblongata. He is a dye in my bloodstream. He is radiation injected into tattoos in my midriff. I see everything through his eyes. I suppose this is what it is like to be brainwashed. I'm like a Scientologist. Well, that's exciting.

I have not managed to find a place to park my car and sleep in it. I am afraid to be anywhere too deserted, because then someone could attack me. I'm afraid to be anywhere too populated, because then someone could see me. Also, if I slept in my car, I would have crossed a line into the marginal world I'm so afraid of. I'll be someone who has to sleep in her car, like crack-smoking people before they sell their cars for more crack. I'd be like Whitney Houston. Well, that'd be exciting.

There are lines I won't cross. Then again, there are lines I thougth I wouldn't cross before. I never thought I'd stay with someone who threw my wedding ring in the garbage. I never thought I'd … You know what? I'm not finishing this paragraph. You get the picture.

I found out that people rent their extra bedrooms and even their couches out on Craigslist. There's a theater that, when there's no production going on, puts out neat rows of air mattresses separated by curtains. You can sleep there for $40 a night. I have not done that. I have rented a girl's bedroom while she was on vacation for 3 weeks. Her roommate was excited to be having a new romance with a rich guy. She watched movies in French. I had a place to my own for a little while. When I told her that my mate did not allow me to have my books in his house, she wrinkled her beautiful forehead. "Why would you stay with him?" she asks. "I love his kids," I say. She blinks. "I'd rather have a bookshelf," she says.

Girlfriends Are Relationships Too

Back To Boyfriends

History, Part 1

What do I blame this on? My parents are nice. Seeing me in this situation breaks their hearts, but they have stopped trying to talk me out of it. My dad sends me sad, confused emails saying how much he loves me, and hopes I am getting something out of this. He does not know how bad it is. My mom used to scream at me, pressure me to leave. Now she just listens quietly when I tell her everything is fine. She has glaucoma. Her bones are brittle. She had back surgery and was not sure she would be able to walk for a couple of days. She can't yell anymore. She rides with me in my car and perches in the passenger seat, peering carefully at me, missing exits because she's hoping to say the right helpful word. I have never liked her helping me. I could really use her help.

Personally, I think this is somehow connected to the shitty time I had in elementary school. I was the pariah of six entire grades. I don't know why. I look at pictures of myself and I was cute. I responded to teasing, that was the thing. I cried easily so people made me cry. By the end of first grade I was known throughout the school, even to sixth graders, by my nickname. Kids are mean. Kids are not human. I used to sit in the bus with my head down as they screamed abuse at me. Screamed. Abuse. In my ear. I pretended I could not hear them and/or it did not bother me. I tried to make wisecracks like in the movies. Word to the wise: don't make wisecracks to school bullies.

Once I stood at the bus stop and waited for the bus. I could always hear it coming because the kids on it would scream, "Go, go, go, go, GO! GO! GO!" as the driver neared my stop. The driver knew to stop and they would all scream "AWWW!" and curse him out. Then one day there was a substitute driver. He followed orders. He hit the gas and went right past me. I heard them scream, "Go, go, go, do, GO! GO! GO! YEAAAAAHHHH!" I stood there for a moment, then went back up to my house. I told my mom the bus went past me. I did not tell her about the kids. She was annoyed but if I told her she'd have raised a fuss and I'd have felt more embarrassed. I didn't elaborate. I didn't want her to know how bad it was.

I always pictured myself in dramatic situations. I was not naturally reticent. I was outgoing, too much so. I annoyed my parents. But at school I just – I've managed to forget most of it. I'm going to leave it where it is for now.

By high school I managed to get funny, and also had a cute body, and also the school was bigger, so I could find misfits to fit in with. But before too long I found a boyfriend. He was fine. He had dropped out. He dressed like John Taylor from Duran Duran and had that same fashion-mullet. He was slowly going crazy with schizophrenia, but I did not know that at the time. I just thought he was a little weird like me. He wasn't mean to me. Just a little weird and suffocating.

My college boyfriend was brilliant and distant. He would make fun of me with cutting remarks. He expected me to respond with obnoxious comments right back at him, like I did when we first met. I couldn't. I felt too hurt when he said those things. I had spent my childhood hearing those things. I couldn't explain why I took everything to heart. Nobody else took things as hard as I did. Well, some people did: Danielle did. Danielle would start crying and refuse to go out because someone said something she took amiss. I kept as far away from Danielle as I could. I saw too much that was familiar in her.

A, My Name is Asshole

I'm finishing up my sushi. I'm parked in the corner of this little restaurant where people get together in small groups to chat and eat raw fish. There is also free Internet so I have been camped out here for a while, hoping that if it stays busy, and I tip well, nobody will mind. I slide my white laptop into its bag and go up to the register to pay my bill.

"Thanks," I say, signing the chit. "See you soon."

"See you soon," the cashier says. "Tomorrow."

He's smiling at me. He's kind. He does not mind my parking here for hours at a stretch, at strange times of the evening or on the weekend. But my heart sinks, because I really, really don't want to be noticed.

For, like, the first time in my life.

I have to camp out in sushi bars, coffee shoppes, bookstores, and the occasional library. Sometimes I have to get a hotel for the night. I'm not homeless. I have a home, it's just that the guy in that home kicks me out, oh, once a week, sometimes more. So far the record has been three times in one weekend. I drive around crying and when I stop crying I park in front of my computer and do work. My editors love me. I'll come up with 20 story ideas in a weekend. Or sometimes they hate me, because I never stop crying and I don't do any work at all. That's usually when I've gotten up the gumption to leave him. I do this about once a year. Every time I go back it's harder to get out.

I just don't want people noticing how often I'm hanging out with my computer. I would hate for anyone to guess how bad things are. What I allow to happen to me.

I find myself reading the James Frey rants and feeling like I understand the guy. He had a sickness and had to invent a superhuman version of himself to express how hard it was to kick his addiction. If you just say "it was so hard to kick it," people go, "yeah, musta been," and move on. If you say "it was as hard as having root canal without anaesthesia, it was as wrenching as a beautiful girl who hangs herself, it was as rewarding as making friends with a mobster who looks like Gene Hackman," people go, "Oh! I get it!" Frey just wanted everyone to know how hard it was so they don't think he was weak for being addicted in the first place. I want people to know the same thing. I want people to not say, "She's pathetic for staying with him." I want them not to say "She's so powerless in the face of emotional abuse." I want them to say "She is up against monsters bigger and more powerful than love, than motherhood, than fear, than self-preservation." If I could write a monster story that would get that across, I would. But I can't imbue a monster with the kind of flatfaced terror I feel when I think of leaving the man who kicks me out. In monsther movies, I always identify with the monster. Even Alien. She's just laying eggs. Even Predator. He's just doing what comes naturally. I'm less intimidated by Jaws than I am by my mate. So I am just writing what happens.

I walk out of the sushi restaurant and get into my car. Tucked away in my trunk is a couple days' worth of clothes, a little shopping bag with toiletries, and my favorite boots, which I was afraid to leave in the house because he gets into frenzies and destroys my things when he throws me out. I know I can't come back here for a while. It's hard to find free wifi in this neighborhood, but not as hard as it used to be. Sometimes I drive around with my laptop open, like a little friend, and watch for the signal to kick in. Then I look for anyplace where I can sit. Inside. Outside is too … too close to what I'm dangerously close to. A bag lady with an iBook. Homeless with a Honda. Oh, it's all so cute and so disgusting. I would hate myself if I could muster up enough emotion to give a shit.