Bloody Sheets

As I mentioned in my Foot Note, sex was not a big topic in my family. I was “Catholic” and sex was for marriage. The idea of waiting until marriage was absolutely ridiculous. My greatest fear was loosing my virginity on my wedding night and it sucked. Then what? A life of bad sex? No thank you. Besides, unless I married young, it made no sense. I had plans. I wanted a career. I was not going to end up a thirty year old virgin because I wasn’t married.

About a year after the Awful Kiss, I decided I wanted to loose my virginity. Chris, a guy that lived just a few blocks away, was 2 years older, and was not virgin. He was very cute, funny, and slightly unsure of himself. I didn’t know him very well, and he was a little shocked when I asked him to be my first. “Don’t you want it to be special?” he asked.

I explained to him that I wanted the experience. I did not want to loose my virginity to a boyfriend, who would destroy my heart when we broke up. No man will have that hold on me. 

He obviously agreed. He’s a guy. Free (safe) sex. No brainer.

The first time was… painful. But it was an enjoyable pain. There was tearing. There was blood. But there were also endorphins, pheromones, and adrenaline. Afterwards, there was no awkwardness. I did not feel any different. I felt like I had gotten something out of the way.

We met up once or twice a week after that. I needed practice, and he’s a guy, free sex. I bled the first several times. The tearing healed up and ripped open every time he reentered my body. I was sore, and my inner thighs hurt like a bitch. Eventually though, my body adjusted. I felt a little bad about all the bloody sheets. When the bleeding finally stopped, we hi-fived.

I know everyone is told to wait until they’re in love, but that’s bullshit. No teenager can understand love. I mean no adult can understand love, or even being in love, unless you’ve had your heart stomped on. It’s the only way you understand your mistakes, and how to be a better person. Or at least, how to be a better person in a relationship.

I understood that even then. 

I was always so wise. 

Very Bad Dreams

I can’t wake up.

The doll with the burnt out eye is playing the piano and turns towards me, “You are going to die here.”  

I panic. I scream. My eyelids are heavy.  

I can’t wake up.

I know I am asleep. I know this is a dream. But this does not change the terror I feel when the doll looks at me.  

I open my eyes.

I feel the dead weight of my body. I am lying in bed. I can not move. I can still hear the piano. There is a dark figure standing over me, watching me. 

I can’t wake up.

I am in a waking dream; terrified, unable to move, unable to scream. I use every ounce of strength I have to move but I can only wiggle my pinky. It was enough. The spell is broken. I sit up. There is no dark figure. There is no music. It is 3 a.m. And once again, I can’t sleep.

Sleep paralysis. In the transition state from asleep to awake, my mind, in it’s terror, is partially woken. My body is paralyzed, playing catch-up with my mind. It’s fairly common. The effects are paralysis of the body and simultaneously being awake and dreaming causing hallucinations. Trippy and terrifying.

This all started because I have fucking insomnia. Between cramming all night, and work. I had too much on my mind. countless nights I'd lay in bed and stare at the crack in the ceiling.  I tried to exhaust myself at the gym, count backwards from a thousand, nothing worked. It wasn’t healthy. I needed sleep. 

On a random visit to the pharmacy I picked up some over-the-counter sleeping pills. Main active ingredient: diphenhydramine. They knocked me out. I was a rock. They also made me very groggy in the mornings. 

Everything seemed manageable until I had a very bad dream. I’ve always had bad dreams, ever since I was a child. In fact, the first dream I remember was a reoccurring nightmare. It involved furniture moving on it’s own, a barking rottweiler and the devil. I was seven and it terrified me. 

Over the years, my nightmares became worse. I dreamt of demons, dreamt of serial killers, dreamt of death. I became desensitized. No matter how bad the dream, I’d wake up and just go back to sleep. That was, until the sleeping pills. 

Sleep paralysis. I had two or three episodes a week; terrified, frozen, helpless (although, I enjoyed the one with the cartoons dancing around my room). At first, I didn't know that the sleeping pills contributed to my condition, when I did, I stopped taking them. I don't know why but the episodes continued. 

Knowing what was happening to me did not make me any less terrified. Every time it happened I focused on my pinky. My greatest fear was waiting for the day that moving a pinky no longer worked. I was afraid to sleep. So once again, I had insomnia. 

I continue to have insomnia. I've tried everything. I rarely take sleeping pills any more. If I do they are defiantly not diphenhydramine. I haven’t had an episode in a while (knock on wood).  But I still have very bad dreams. 

SPLAT

A year after my stalker saga, I finally opened up to dating. It wasn’t that my faith in the male of the species was restored, but my sister convinced me that I should avoid my path towards social freakhood and ostracism. I agreed to go out with a friend of hers. She had nothing but nice things to say about him.

I honestly don’t remember his name. All I remember is that he was really tall, knew martial arts, and was not blond. While driving to dinner, he confessed that he only befriended my sister to get closer to me. I think he was trying to flatter me. I found this appalling. Especially after all the nice things she said about him. It was an immediate validation of my dating sabbatical.

The rest of the night was so-so. I let him kiss me after dinner (Probably the wine). He asked if I felt the electricity between us. So cheesy. He really thought I was going to sleep with him. I knew this because after I asked him to drive me home, he called and cancelled a hotel room.

Dickhead.

Two weeks later my sister told me, SPLAT, he got hit by a truck. I Laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing. She got all upset. It never even occurred to me to ask if he was still alive. At least, not until she said he got away with only a few broken bones. I did wonder what kind of truck it was, if only for the visual. 

I can't even tell that story without a giggle. I guess I would call that schadenfreude (pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others). But in my defense, he really was a dickhead. 

Pretty through the Window

I never liked dating. But my general strangeness had already labeled me a freak and a bitch, so dating seemed like a normalizing step. Unfortunately, I was too preoccupied with school and personal projects to differentiate between passionate and obsessive. This was a problem. I wonder if I had payed more attention that I could have weeded out the stalkers. My Bad. 

Psycho Bob

My first stalker was Psycho Bob. I met Psycho Bob at a seance orchestrated to relieve the boredom of a high school dance. He was just Bob then. Bob was 6’1” with hazel blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and a damaged personality.

We dated for a year before Bob’s “psychoness” began to seep through. His love notes entailed passages such as keeping my dead body encased in wax. I am sure he thought it was romantic, turning me into a Bodies exhibit. I slowly became aware of his possessiveness, spying, stalking, and accusations of cheating. 

I decided it was time to say good-bye to Bob, but Bob, now Psycho Bob, did not agree. The attempt ended with his hands around my throat threatening to, “squeeze out my last breath.”  There was a sense of, Oh, fuck! Probably not as scary as waking up chained in his basement, but still. I somehow convinced him to let go. Then he said, “It’s not over until I say it’s over.” Typical.

I was starting university and decided I was going to be a Bitch to him until he broke up with me. Bitchiness triumphed! A week later I was Psycho Bob free. It was genius!  Or so I thought. 

He called me constantly asking for forgiveness. He threatened to let his fish starve because he was too depressed to feed them. Yes, his pet fish did die and it was all my fault. When that ploy didn’t work, he claimed to have cancer.  Miraculously, he was in remission a week later. Apparently, Jesus loves him. 

Once he finally realized it was over, he left hate mail at my house (which I kept), roadkill on my doorstep (which I did not keep), and stalked me around campus. He even ranted about me on university radio. Great for my social life (thumbs up). I should have sued.

It finally ended with a restraining order through the University.  

The Foreigner

After Psycho Bob (PB), I was understandably jaded. I decided to focus on my studies. The Foreigner overlapped with the tail end of my break-up with PB, my freshman year at university. Like PB, he had dirty blond hair and blue eyes (a sign), unlike PB though, he had a Ukrainian accent. The Foreigner was part of my small group of friends that met up after class, went out to eat, and mostly just hung out. 

After a few months, I started to get strange phone calls at night, mostly hang-ups. I assumed it was PB until I received a call with nothing but music playing. It was No Doubt, “Don’t Speak.” I had my suspicions who it was after The Foreigner started showing signs of jealousy towards my other male friends. 

I confronted him about the phone calls. I expected him to deny it, but he didn’t. I told him that if he wanted to talk, he could. The Foreigner then admitted that he had also sat in his car across the street from my house, watching until my light went out. 

Defiantly not okay. I made him promise to stop. He reluctantly agreed. Two nights later, I saw his car across the street (I must look pretty through the window). I walked up to his car and told him, very firmly, to leave. 

That was the end of that. 

Since then I’ve steered clear of the blond haired, blue eyed types. No offense.

Evil Bitch

I was writing a blog entry just a moment ago. It is about the boyfriends I have disposed of. I don’t mean dissolved with lye in the bathtub disposed of, obviously (although, I have been tempted a few times). I started going off on a tangent about getting hate mail, hate messages, and notes of general unhappiness.

You see, I keep my hate mail. I like to read them from time to time. You know, to gain perspective on how I’ve grown as a person. I noticed they have a reoccurring theme.

Here are some highlights:

“You are an evil bitch.” (Maybe True)

“You are so selfish.” (Sometimes True)

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself.” (Not True. I Love Animals!)

“If I died, you wouldn’t care.” (Probably True)

Could it be, that I am so awesome, that the absence of me makes them go crazy? Maybe, or maybe I’m just a crazy magnet. Probably a little bit of both.

Bruja

“Don’t tell anyone, or they will call her a Bruja,” said my mother.  The Bruja, to which my mother referred, was my Aunt. She has The Gift. If you didn’t know, bruja is the Spanish word for witch.

I can only describe my family’s practice as a combination of Native American/folk religion and Catholicism with a dash of Santeria. More of a spiritualism. But if anyone asks, we’re Catholic, definitely NOT witches. 

It was common, where I grew up in Brooklyn, to have mixed practices. You go to Mass every Sunday, but then there is that other thing. That thing you just don’t talk about.

For example; the house across the street had the front yard blocked off for their… chickens. The delusion of them being pet chickens quickly dissolved after finding my first headless chicken in a trash can. Apparently, they were brujas too. 

Unlike our neighbors, we did not sacrifice chickens, nor did we have elaborately decorated alters. While they had statues of the “saints” with offerings of alcohol, flowers, chicken bones, and coins, we only hung a few crosses in our home. But that didn’t matter. It was our Faith that mattered.

I was taught that you have guardian angels, guides, and spirits around you, your “people”. Faith gives them strength to help guide you through your life. The only way I can describe it is like having really sharp instincts. They are the inclination that makes you turn left instead of right. They are the warning you feel in your guts when something really bad is about to happen. They are the omens.

You build a relationship with your guides through prayer. Prayer is energy. Blood rituals were forbidden. Blood binds you in life as well as in spirit. Blood is a powerful source of energy. It is life, but it is more difficult to use. Anyway, blood magic was for witches, and we’re Catholic, definitely NOT witches. 

As I got older, and learned more of the family craft, the line began between bruja and being spiritual began to waiver. I learned about faith as energy. That energy can be a propeller for protection and luck. I learned that everything requires sacrifice, and that sacrifice means a lot of things. Nothing is free.

I learned that spells and prayers are the same thing. I learned to be careful what I ask for and to balance myself. I also learned to never wish harm upon others because everything comes back to you, eventually.

I learned that every family craft was different. I learned that a bruja can be both good and terrible. I learned about a type of faith that you can only grow up with, and never really understand as an outsider. But, just in case anyone asks, we’re Catholic, definitely NOT witches.

Hok

I am told that, when I was a child, I could see spirits. Yes, I know how that sounds. Just to make things clear, I do not claim to see any spirits. In fact, I can say with 100% certainty, that to my memory I have never seen any spirits, ghosts, poltergeist, or anything of the sort.  But, this is what I was told.

For those who are spiritual, it is a common belief that children are more open to experiencing something of a supernatural nature. Hell, I actually do believe it.  Both children and animals. But to hear it about you is just very different than actually believing in it.

My mother tells this story from my childhood with hesitation. The kind of hesitation that tell me she remembers the fear she felt when it happened. She said it started when she noticed me reaching my arms up in the air, the way children do when they want to be picked up. I reached at nothing. She also noticed that sometimes I’d hide behind a chair, or even behind her legs, peeking my head out. I was afraid of something.

I am told that I stared at it, whatever “it” was, and followed it with my finger as it passed through the room. Most people would assume I was following a bug or some dust in the air but my mother, somewhat versed in the spiritual, asked me what I was looking at.

I said, “Hok.”

On night, my mother came to check on me in my bedroom. She says it was one of the most terrifying moments in her life. She said, “It was like someone grabbed you, and was slamming you around the room.” She said she ran to my side but was pushed against the wall, and had to use all her strength to get to me. She says that when she finally had me in her arms, she prayed over me all night. For all I know, I might have had a seizure. It was dark. Maybe I pushed her with seizure strength reflex. 

The next day she called a priest. I don’t know if it was a real priest or a witch doctor type. She had the house cleaned and blessed. To explain, when I say cleaned, I don’t mean with maid service, I mean like horror movie, “This house is clean,” kinda cleaned. A spiritual cleaning to remove negativity.

After the house blessing, I don't know how long after, my mother said I pointed to the window, and whisper in her ear…

“Hok is outside.”