Chapter 1

There wasn't any excuse, none at all. We had been there, done that, and cried the blues over it. Must have been crocodile tears on her part, because we're right back at the same place. Only this time, the show of heartfelt remorse, and the excessively abundant promises it would never happen again, won't fly. What would we do about it?

Ah, Lydia. I love you, and I'm angry, and I hurt. The love doesn't matter any more, I can't let it. The anger will pass, as well as the urge to violence that rocks me now. I'm a big boy now and can hold back the mayhem threatening to burst out of me. But the hurt, I can't get past that. This hurt is so black and so deep, I feel like I'll never crawl back up from its abyss. I will never let you push me down here again, ever. My whole being feels like a never ending wolf howl of pain. I kick myself hard because I let you do this, walked right into it, but that's it. I'll never believe a word you say to me ever again. I'm done.

Lydia is my wife, and I am Larry Newsome. We've been married for a lousy year and a half. That's all. I should have run like hell when she cheated on me two years ago, but she convinced me at the time to forgive her. It took a long time, and a lot of tears, but I slowly came to trust her a second time. Did she believe her own words? I don't know about then, but now ... whether she gets therapy and heals her wounds or not, if she was ever really as wounded as her aunt claims, I simply do not care.

I met Lydia at a time when I was both parched and hopeful. I was 33 years old, and had been married twice. I couldn't blame my first two spouses, really, for all that happened, although neither woman was much more than a child. I wasn't very functional then, either. I used those relationships to learn how to be an adult. I had an awful lot of learning to do.

My childhood was nasty and turbulent. I was born six months after my teenage parents got married because of my impending birth. In the 1950's, that was what you did if you were pregnant and unwed. Moreover, women didn't work after they got hitched. My mother had graduated high school, not a mean accomplishment in those days for female members of the lower working class, and she had an amazing talent for drawing. I've seen her work, it's startlingly good, although she keeps it locked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser under her clothes. She has not lifted a pencil to draw in 50 years. She was 18 and working in California back then (originally from Missouri), and had been noticed and offered a job by Walt Disney Studio. She threw that away shortly after she met my dad, the Marine, in San Diego. In a fairly short period of time, I was born. In the interim, an event happened that probably saved my life.

My dad was from Alton, Illinois. His kin were pretty much white trash. My grandparents' house didn't get an indoor toilet until 1995. When he was growing up, the children, two boys and two girls, took one bath a week, one after another with the oldest first, in the same galvanized tub of water on the living room floor. All of my paternal relatives had bastard children, and been married and divorced several times beside. Incest, drinking and violence filled their lives. My paternal grandmother was the matriarch who controlled it all, and she had never wanted my father to become a Marine and leave. She expected her boys to stay home and take care of her. She begrudgingly allowed my father to enlist upon his promise that he wouldn't marry an evil "Califerni" girl. When he arrived on the doorstoop with his pregnant bride, my grandmother hit the roof. She let the newlyweds sleep in the unheated shed in the back yard overnight, and then kicked them out for good. Thank heavens! I thank God every day for that stupendous bit of luck. I shudder to think what I would have become if I had been brought up in that cesspool those people had created for themselves. As it was, my father moved himself and my mother to Syracuse, New York, where he became a factory worker, and I was born. Mom and dad never had any friends and remained isolated, so I did not have to deal with a social milieu of others like my father and his family. I learned fear at my father's alcoholic sexually and physically abusive hands, but at least I didn't have to try to survive in a world without hope on any side. My mother never protected me from him, but she highly valued education, and she gave me the blessing of knowing how to read at a very early age. I learned how to dream.

My parents moved again and again, finally ending up in Vermont right before I began first grade. Here I was, wearing raggedy, tatty clothes, speaking with a polyglot dialect I learned from my parents, and shaking with fear. The other kids, lifetime Vermonters, quickly discovered I couldn't stand up for myself, and brutally bullied me from day one. In those days, the teachers didn't interfere, as we were supposed to figure out how to have a backbone on our own. Given that my days were hell in school, and my evenings and weekends were a nightmare at home, there weren't any lessons in spine building available to me. I did know how to dream. And so, that's what I did. My parents never allowed me to socialize with other kids, nor to watch television, only to do homework, read and fantasize. My grades were tip top, and my dissociative skills finely honed. I lived in a world that was totally apart from the physical plane.

Things got better as I got older. One day, when I was 12 years old, I was in the back yard bending over looking under the leaves of the flowers and vegetable plants in the garden. Suddenly, I was shoved to the ground by my father. I rolled over on my back and he loomed over me, silhouetted by the sun behind him. From some deep place inside me, shocking courage came forth, and I told him no. NO! After a moment, he walked away. He never touched me sexually again. Was it that easy? I had guilt for years after, that I might have stopped it all before had I just said no a long time earlier. I hadn't realized until that episode that I could say no to the man who had total control over me.

When I was 13, there came a time, one among many, when, shouting angrily, he raised his hand to strike me. Before, I always stood and took it. This time, I jumped back, ran around him to my room, slammed the door and set the lock. He bellowed in rage, and began to throw himself against the cheap paneled door. I was shaking in fear, waiting for him to break through and kill me. Weirdly, against all expectations, his attempts grew faint, then stopped. He walked away. HE WALKED AWAY! I was free! Except, I wasn't. He still badgered me and degraded me verbally every chance he got, but he never laid a hand on me again. It didn't matter, because the damage was done to my psyche, and I would have to work long and hard to ever trust touch, and maybe I still don't. He remained a nasty, vituperative person to everyone around him until his death two months ago as I write this story. All I felt when told of his death was relief.

Tentatively I began to explore the larger limits of my world, very haltingly given my nearly depleted self confidence. Half way through high school, I discovered drugs. Wow. I could wipe out the depression and misery with one toke, one hit of acid, one pill, one snort. If I shared the wealth with other kids, I became instantly popular. I began selling all my priceless early comics a relative who had no idea of their value had given me, and everything else I owned, to get drugs to hand out. Girls made themselves available to me. Sex, however bumbling and juvenile, was another drug. Something else happened with sex - I obsessed on each girl, wanting, what? For her to fill me up and make me whole, I guess, to fix me, to give me the world and help me instantly know how to be part of it. I thought I was falling in love over and over, but it sure wasn't love. One after another tumultuous relationship ended with the girl being as hurtful as she could to me so I'd let her go and stop bothering her. I don't blame them, I was pretty scary in my obsession. Through it all, I kept tripping out.

Then there was Karen Mulhaney. She was a pretty dark haired girl I'd run into a few times who showed a little interest, both in the drugs and seemingly in me. What was surprising is that she was president of the student council - what could she possibly want with me? I dunno, but one day there was a bomb scare, and the school bussed anyone with a responsible parent available home. Karen came up to me and asked if she could come to my house since her parents were both working. I was stunned, but I called my mom (dad wasn't home, thank heaven), who gave permission for Karen to ride the bus to our house. I think mom felt sorry that Karen didn't have a stay at home mother, my mother was everything about appearances. Well, all Karen wanted to do when my mother wasn't in sight distance of my open bedroom door, was kiss and make out. My mother hauled her home as soon as Karen's parents got off work, but by then I was "in love" again. This time, it seemed the girl was "in love" with me, too.

The kids at school sure noticed me now. Karen and I clicked because we were equally self destructive. She was class president only due to having an older college aged sister who had been a wildly popular president as a senior at our school, and Karen was elected on her coattails. However, Karen was not her sister. She was a truly messed up druggie pretending to be her older sister. One time she opened her locker in front of me, and pills spilled out all over the floor. It made me nervous, but only because I was afraid of getting caught with drugs. We began to sneak around having frantic sex. Her father was the state Secretary of Education, and had high hopes for his daughter. When he caught wind of her dalliance with me, the poor kid from across the tracks, he forbade her from associating with me. There was only one possible response to this action - we ran away to be married in Las Vegas where there was no waiting period. We just lied about our ages. I was 16 and Karen was 17 years old, which in 1969 was impossibly young.

Well, we didn't have any resources or funds, and no skills, and I had no way to provide for my new wife. Neither of us could find a job. We had run away with very little money. With our last bit of cash, I rented a room in a dive motel where we cried, made love, and admitted we had to call her parents for help. I was a total failure, and Karen didn't feel much better. Her father drove all the way from Vermont to get us. I had to sit in that car enduring his hatred of me the entire trip back home. I hated myself. The trip was too long to drive without stop, so Karen's dad rented motel rooms for us on the way back. He and I shared a room, and he put Karen in another, even though Karen and I were married and the marriage had certainly been consummated. He never did recognize we were married, but neither did he force an annulment. When we got back to Vermont, my parents and her parents conferenced without us, and decided to keep us apart except during school hours. Both of us felt totally powerless to resist their orders, and reconciled ourselves to their demands.