Journal SharpNose's Journal: Elvira, Mistress of the Frigid Bitch (Part 5) 2
If you've been reading this series - the crown jewel of the Twisted Wrecks - now you know what the "Elvira, Mistress of the Frigid Bitch" sobriquet is about. Of course, the "Elvira, Mistress of the..." part arose from the piled-up dark hair and the heavy makeup, like that of the one-time horror movie hostess. As for the "bitch" part, you have to understand that when I would tell my friends the latest news about what happened with so-and-so, they wouldn't remember the name and therefore nor the context, so when I'd say a name, the person I was talking to would say, "Who's that?" and I'd answer with some descriptive word or phrase and, eventually, "[descriptive word or phrase] Bitch" would become a label. And so, we had "Backrub Bitch" and "Warmonger Bitch" and any manner of other Bitches. "Elvira, Mistress of the Frigid Bitch" became her label.
After my graduation in September 1985 and my stepfather's suicide in December, the new year didn't hold a lot of promise as I returned to my apartment after Christmas. There was, as I recall, a significant snow/ice storm, and I learned that a Camaro is not something you want to be driving in snow and ice. I was going over to Elvira's place and I nearly wrecked trying to get out of my apartment complex. The short chute between my row of buildings' parking lot and the exit was totally iced over, and as soon as the Camaro got onto it, the rear wheels let go just from the torque at idle and the whole car began to slide forward...right toward a car parked at the curb. Brakes on or off didn't make any difference and I was running out of time to think, so I reasoned lightning fast: brake pedal down, car thinks it is stopped...YYYYES! I threw it into reverse and punched it. WHEEEEEEEIIIIIZZZZ went the rear tires as they shot twin blasts of shredded ice to the front. The car came to a halt about five feet shy of its low-speed-impact target. The things I'd do.
Before I started college in the Summer of 1981, the orientation counselors would say to me, "Oh, you're going to be EE (electrical engineering). Awesome. People will be banging on your door to hire you by the time you graduate." T'was not to be. There had been a recession in 1982 and 1983 and fair-to-middlin' students like me didn't get sought out. I didn't have a whole lot to show for my time at school, save a particularly strong run in the area of Automated Test Equipment and other coursework related to signal processing and computers. I was too passive and introverted to get my "real world" life started.
Eventually, though, my mother began to chafe at continuing to send me money, and when the offer from the Air Force base came through, she basically shut the door.
This is where I made a critical life-decision blunder. I should have done anything I needed to do in order to stay in Atlanta, where I had friends, I knew my way around fairly well, and I at least had potential for getting a job in keeping with my four-year degree. Barring that, I could have taken the job at Robins and gotten an apartment near the base or in Macon, with a return to Atlanta my first priority. Instead, I caved in and planned to move into my mother's house, where I had a bedroom and a finished basement room that housed all of my music equipment.
That one failure - the failure to find my own way at a critical life juncture - wound up costing me dramatically and has had repercussions that hound me to this day. At least I can take some solace in the fact that the good things that have come in my life wouldn't be the way they are if I had done things differently. I met my future wife at the Air Force base; we had a wonderful daughter together.
I have since learned that you really can't play this "coulda/shoulda" game without considering that for every tweak you'd like to make to your past, there's an innumerable number of tweaks, deliberate or otherwise, that would have naturally arisen from the one you wanted to make. Like, say, sliding under a tanker truck the day after your big "fix." No, you did what you did, and hopefully you learn and you either resolve to do things differently or show people what happens when they don't. Remember, there is in fact no shame if you can serve as an example to others.
Where the fuck was I? Oh, yes. The kindest thing that Elvira ever did was to come visit the morning I moved away from the apartment a few weeks before starting my Air Force job. I had packed up all alone and was expecting my mother to show up in the "fuck truck" customized van she'd bought before I started college. The Salvation Army had hauled away the living room set and the bed, so I had slept on the floor in the living room. Elvira came over real early in the morning and woke me up. I remember answering the door and being so happy to see her, but I was so exhausted and dejected over leaving that I don't remember anything else. I expect there was no touching, because I am sure that if I had held her, I would have cried, and I would have remembered that.
So, away I went, and I set up shop at my mother's. I did stay in touch with Elvira and I actually made the 100-mile trip back specifically to catch her graduation. I managed to get a picture, but it wasn't a very good one, as her pale face with two dark upper eyelids is all overexposed what with the black gown.
She took a road trip to Los Angeles to spend some time with friends, and after that, something that should have been great turned into the last insult.
My mother was out of town for a few days when either I called Elvira or she called me. She was having trouble with her Nissan and none of the dealers in town could touch it for a few days. Seeing an opportunity, I suggested that she come down and hang with me, and we could stick her car at a local dealers' and everything would be fine. So, she came down and I'm pretty sure she spent the night (again, no touching). I had to go to work the next morning, so Elvira was going to hang out at the house until I got home.
I worked with a guy named Mike, who had actually lived on C dorm's first floor short hall across from Robe and me. He was the roommate of a guy we nicknamed "El Freako," a stoner in the Jeff Spicoli mold who played bad guitar and bad keyboards with a bad furor. Mike was a self-destructive headcase in his own right (lost his driver's license at least once while I worked with him) but he was great to be around, and he knew Elvira because they were both in the same major. When I told Mike that Elvira was staying with me, his reaction was, like, "duuuuuuuuuuude!"
"Oh, maaaaaan!," he said, shaking his head with a grin on his face. "You're going to go home and she's going to be there in the hot tub with a couple of champagne glasses, waiting for you." Mike was playing me like an old cello.
Never before or since did I make the trip home from work as quickly I did that afternoon. Of course, as you may have already surmised, there was no Elvira in the hot tub, no champagne glasses. However, we did go out to eat, and it was on the way back from dinner that Elvira dropped the bomb.
I guess what stupefies me about this to this day is, why in the holy halls of fuck did she feel compelled to TELL me that she lost her virginity to a guy she had just met when she was out in California? If anyone has a possible explanation, who could give me some insight as to why a woman would say such a thing to a man who had been waiting at the fuzzy door for over four years, please leave a comment because for the life of me, I can't put it together.
I saw her off and once again, I threw up my hands. I felt betrayed but at the same time I knew that there really wasn't anything to betray. My offer to help get her car fixed accomplished nothing more than exactly that in her eyes. She was no more interested in me than anything. A place to crash and get her car fixed, maybe a dinner. Just a "friend." Just a chump.
She did stop by once more and coincidentally once again, my mother was out of town. This isn't pleasant to admit, but admitting it will at least serve to show the depths of my desperation, depravity, naivete, or all of the above: I set up a hidden camcorder in my bedroom, aimed at the bed. If I ask myself why I did that, I would have to say that I wanted proof for myself. It would have been too big an event to be able to retain it all in my mind if something had actually happened. If you climbed Everest, wouldn't you want to take a picture?? Of course, nothing happened, and the camcorder captured two hours of an empty bed.
She called one night to tell me that she was moving to California (oh, great - California, home of those who can bang Elvira with no effort and no waiting) and she asked if I could come up to see her before she left. I stupidly agreed instead of telling her how I really felt, which was that I had finally said "goodbye" in my own mind and really didn't want to ramp anything up again. I came up the next weekend, I think, and I picked her up at her mother's apartment. We had lunch, and after that, I was ready to end the day - take her back to her Mom's and let that be that. Inexplicably, once I indicated that I was taking her back, she became enraged at me. This put me in the typical "what the hell did I do wrong?" state and once I got to her Mom's apartment complex she hauled ass out of my car and stormed back to her Mom's building. I could almost see the lightning bolts shooting out of her thunderhead of hair.
My throat was in a knot and my heart was pounding. What the hell should I do? I can't just drive away! (Idiot, of COURSE you can just drive away!). I can't let it end like this (YES YOU CAN, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS!!). I sat in the car for a few minutes, knowing that she would probably look out the window to see if I was gone yet. Finally, I switched off the car, went in, and knocked on the apartment door. After a few seconds, during which I began seeing spots, Elvira's mother, a regal-looking middle-aged woman whose makeup tendencies apparently had been passed down, opened the door and I looked at her with sheepishly upcast eyes.
"Hi - I'm sorry - I'd like to talk with Elvira..." "I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO HIM," came the shriek from the back. Her mother excused herself and went to the back, and in a minute or so, the nostril-flaring Venezuelan Tornado came stomping out into the common hallway.
"Look - let's go talk," I said, and we wordlessly walked to the car. I remember that we drove to a nearby liberal-arts college campus and we sat on a concrete bench and talked. It was probably the least guarded I had even been with her since the start of our relationship but even at that, I swallowed my pent-up anger, she conveyed nothing of any significance, and then I took her back home. Now, I thought, it was through, and finally, in a very real sense, it was.
The four-year pattern alluded to earlier began here. We may have talked or written intermittently, I'm sure, but eventually that dried up, and I did get on with my life. After hopping jobs at the Air Force base a couple of times, in 1989 I would meet the woman I would eventually marry, but I also met a 35-year-old divorced violinist while playing bass at a community theater musical (another story) and I started seeing her. It was a rather satisfying relationship for a while, but it ended abruptly and, skipping over a great many details, I started seeing my wife-to-be. Skipping over yet many more details, she moved to another town to the northeast and yet another (bear with me as far as filling in the other LDR story) Long Distance Relationship (LDR) began.
I'll need to tell the story another time, but after seeing my wife-to-be V. for about a year and a half, things were coming to a head at home. I had tolerated living with my mother for five years, dealing with the cigarette smoke and the occasional beer-or-stronger-fueled rants every so often in trade for having enough room and time to indulge my interests in music, photography, and other things. In August 1991, V. was no longer welcome to stay at the house by my mother's decree. At V.'s urging, I had begun seeing a psychologist near the Air Force base and after a few sessions, I was starting to see my situation in a different light, even if subconsciously. So, I'd work during the week, and about every two or three weekends, I'd drive up to see V. One Monday morning on the way to work, I had a horrible one-car accident that I miraculously survived with no more than wrenched muscles in my back and a small cut on one hand. I'll elaborate some other time, but there was an incident at home that wasn't unusual in and of itself but the exact circumstances and my involvement with V. and the psychologist were such that the idea to move out popped into my head and I set the plan in motion within hours. I was gone in less that two weeks and my best friend David helped me move (David was a childhood friend of Robe's and we met before Robe started college; my relationship with David is a story in itself).
Getting that apartment on my own and moving out of my mother's house was my boldest and most decisive life decision yet. V. was very encouraging and helpful and, in fact, I was following her example: go where you need to go; do what you need to do.
It was here that I got a letter out of the blue from Elvira. She said she was working for NASA in Florida, and the letter contained tales of incredible things like building hydrophones to make recordings of dolphins and all kinds of other stuff like that. So, we talked on the phone, and one of the little nuggets of info I got was that she'd contracted herpes from some guy she'd dated. When she told me this, I remember that I just closed my eyes. I wasn't mad, but I was sorry for her and for myself, too. That I was in love with another woman was a good thing too, and made it easier to be a bit dispassionate or at least disentangled about her situation.
We did stay in touch just the same, and after I moved to V.'s town, V. and I planned out a Bahamas cruise leaving from Cape Canaveral and we stayed at Elvira's place. There were two things that were significant about being there, one of which was that Elvira had a boyfriend - a seemingly very nice guy named Michael. The other was that the house she was in (she had a roomie - a woman whose name and face I've forgotten) was one of these very hip places that was built in the heyday of the Space Age, the early 1960s (who knows what astronaut, controller, or whatever lived in it) but now it was falling apart. The applicances were all original and looked it, and in addition to being so overgrown in the front that finding and getting to the front door was an issue, the place was in the process of being chewed up from the inside by her hugeass pet bird, There were hunks of wall trim taken out of her bedroom, which otherwise looked just trashed (I seem to remember that the bird had learned to scream "GODDAMMIT!!" - gee, wherever would it have picked THAT up?).
Also, there was a point where all four of us walked down to the beach at Cocoa and as we were leaving, V. and I were walking and holding hands and I looked up and saw Elvira and Michael together, also holding hands and I thought, yes, I can let go of Elvira now.
There was another call or letter out of the blue a few years later; by that time, V. and I had gotten married and had a baby. She was in Arizona, and she e-mailed me a picture of her and her birds. I was surprised that the still-huge pile of hair now framed a significantly puffier face. I recalled at the time with no small amount of ironic humor that Elvira had actually called me "fat" once. Turned out - whether this was related or not, I don't know; maybe she was hitting the Ding Dongs - that she told me she had some sort of six-pound abdominal tumor or cyst or something and she was going to have to have it removed as soon as she moved to Houston, which supossedly was a done deal on account of a new job or some such. And, I never found out what happened. Didn't know if she made it to Houston, didn't know if she died on the table, nothing. Thanks loads, "friend."
And that was the last I heard until I got the e-mail I described in Part 1.
In my response I said
It took me a while to decide *to* write back, and then once I'd decided to, busy-ness and stress took off and I was just in no shape to actually gather my thoughts and, oh, well, I don't know if they'll ever actually *be* gathered, so, what the hell.
:)
I caught her up on about four years of exhausting history and then:
You're probably wondering what I meant when I said that I might not have written back. It's not so much because of *you* as it is because of *me*. I was a bit confused and frustrated because the last I heard from you, you were in some deep doo-doo; you were about to move to Houston and you learned that you had some giant abdominal tumor or cyst or something and you needed to have surgery as soon as possible - and that was the last I heard. I think that that, plus all the other history there, was just more than I could take and I just sort of detached and decided that it was best to leave well enough alone.
This is not to say that I forgot all about you, but over time I started to look at everything that I've been through - I guess from my father's death on - differently. Maybe it's a natural result of getting older; I don't really know. It might be from having lots of time to think. Up until a point last Fall - October, actually - I had come to regard the time from high school through
college and on, probably up to the time I moved...to be with V., as this really awful stretch. It was like remembering being mugged, and that's how it felt. I think I understand young people a bit better now because I realize that people will do almost anything to avoid the kind of alienation, humiliation, isolation, and rejection that was kind of a routine thing for me. I couldn't seem to avoid it, although I realize now that there were many ways in which I tried to attract the opposite conditions with spotty success; music being the primary one. But for the most part, it was a pretty bleak landscape and the harshess of it all is what sticks with me.
Then, I finally got to the point.
For whatever reason - and, you know, it's been so long, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are anymore; it's merely an exercise to try to figure it all out - my relationship with you is a big huge rock on that bleak landscape. Please don't take umbrage; it was what it was. I have felt really victimized by it over the years and I avoided letting on that that was how I felt for a long time, even back in 1992 when V. and I came down and stayed at your place. I don't feel that way anymore, though - that began to change back in October and when you e-mailed me out of the blue a few weeks ago or whenver that was, I was kind of forced to finish the process.
This is kind of funny; you know what REALLY forced the issue? I realized that if I didn't e-mail back, you'd only call eventually, and *then* where would I be?
:) So, for this, I thank you (honest!).
I was trying to be honest without being mean or vengeful. I wanted to take a high road, but I didn't want the actual history of what occurred to go unacknowledged. My response wasn't perfect, but I thought I did want I wanted to do, knowing that I had little control over how she'd take it. And, I still don't know, because she never responded, now four months later as I write this.
Here is how the rest of my e-mail to her went:
Like I said, I associate you with a lot of hurt. But, I decided after hearing from you that perhaps there is something else I can do than react to that hurt. The hurt, after all, is over, and as I've also said, I could have walked away from almost all of it and I really don't feel proud or noble for not having done so. I was stubborn and I was following a stubborn notion and a stubborn desire. *That* was not your fault.
The fact of the matter is that there were times when *you* sought *me* out when you could have done otherwise. I have not forgotten that you went to the trouble to leave me a note with your phone number on the dorm bulletin board before I came back from a quarter break. I have not forgotten that you offered to stay with me the night that my stepfather shot himself. I have not forgotten that you came by my apartment the morning before I moved away...I
have not forgotten that you practically moved out of your house...to give V. and me a place to stay back in 1992. Those were meaningful, caring things that you did, and it would be wrong for me to forget those things just because there were also things that were very hurtful. It would also be wrong of me to "keep score." I have to remember that by and large, the things you did that were hurtful were hurtful in large part because of what my expectations were of you at the time. If my expectations had been more experience/reality-based and therefore more reasonable, I wouldn't have set myself up for such falls and I probably would have lived a much less clouded life back in the day.
One thing that occurred to me when pondering what to do in response to your sudden reappearance is that if I didn't respond or just "puked" on you (to use one of my therapists' terms), what kind of person would that make me? Someone who would hold and act on a 15-20-year grudge, all over a situation I helped create? That's how my mother is, and her being that way cost me dearly; it punched an irreparable 13-year hole in my brother's and my relationship. It's a matter of making the past more important than the present or the future. Now, that's a principle that must be applied sparingly...Anyway, the kind of person I am *matters*. My wife relies on me and so does my daughter - and my daughter learns how to live from me. I am far from perfect and I do not always live up to my own ideals, but I do not want my daughter to pick up the same kinds of self-defeating behavior that has helped my mother ensure that she will live alone for the rest of her life (I realized that men who live with her do not fare well).
And, it didn't occur to me at first, but what if we wound up living in the same town again? Like I said, I'm up for a job that I believe is at Patrick AFB. If that were to happen, V. and I would need friends. [Our daughter] needs adults around to look up to, and you could do much to reinforce her mother's good example. How we fared down there - our overall quality of life - would be greatly impacted by how I choose to respond to you now.
It's not lost on me that for whatever reason, every so often, you seem to look me up and tell me what all you've been doing. You wouldn't do that if you didn't associate me with some kind of need of yours, and that's not at all a bad thing. I realize that *I* am sometimes compelled to seek validation, appreciation, or reassurance from my old friends and that it feels good to get it, and I have every expectation that that is in large part behind your periodic reappearances even if you don't realize it.
And so, for the first time, I laid my feelings out on the table. It doesn't matter if she responds or not, really. She did copy me on some hyperachievement-type thing she apparently cc'ed to a bunch of people and I sent a brief reply back, but other than that there has been no acknowledgement of what I said.
"We were kids." It isn't always clear what the lessons we learn as kids are until we grow up, but at least I'm closer to figuring these lessons out, and while it may be too late for me to live any differently as a result, it may not be too late for you, your kids, or your friends.
Re:She bangs someone else, tells you about it (Score:1)