Marrying Mike

We made plans that fall to marry during the winter break of 1996.  I had no idea that we would marry on what would later become a sacred day to me, December 21^st, Winter Solstice, one of Holda’s most holy days.  It just happened to be on a Saturday.  My dress was a simple white dress my mother had bought from Catherine’s for me. We got the license and I had called around that week to Justice of the Peace’s in the area to see who had an opening.  We were married in the back yard gazebo of Tom Carlton.  Who was at the time the Chancellor for Bossier Parish Community College. 

It was me, Mike, my parents, his parents, Nicholas and Mr. Carlton.  My mother walks me down the aisle and whispers in my ear, “You can still get out of this if you want to.  It’s harder to get into a marriage then it is to get out of one.”  It just strengthened my determination that I was going to fix Mike and prove her wrong.  The service begins and we are not passed the “Dearly Beloved,” when my mom begins to speak up behind me.  I am terrified of what she has to say.  God she’s going to ruin my wedding!   Is she going to protest our union?  Nope.  She says to Mr. Carlton. “I know you!  I’ve seen you on the cover of the National Inquirer.” 

“Well yes Mam, you have,” he says.  Now I’m thinking oh god what have I gotten myself into and are there aliens involved in all this.  No mom, ever the lover of animals has seen an article on Mr. Carlton who was forced to give up his pet alligator.  See he had raised him since he was a baby, but once his insurance company found out about said alligator they make him give it away.  All this while I am trying to get married.  After all that explanation we take our vows and the ceremony is complete.  No reception we just went back to Mike’s dad’s office.

Mike’s father ran what he called a Media Marketing company.  He made junk mail. We often spent time stuffing envelopes for him.  His office was in an old house in Broadmoor.  The houses along this one street had been originally been residential and then eventually zoned as commercial.  Two rooms were used to make mail, but there was still a shared living room where we stuffed mail, a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom and other room that had junk in it.  So our first night as a married couple was spent in that house.  We had come there right after school ended and we had been living together about two weeks before we got married, I think.  Mike’s father was such a pack rat, and so nasty it took me almost a week to carve out enough space to live in.  We won’t even talk about the horrors of the shower that was black and piled high with boxes.  It took me more than a week of steady cleaning, but I made it as comfy as I could.  I even put up a Christmas tree in the big bay window up front.  We passed our first Christmas in that house as man and wife.

In the Spring of 1997 we returned to school.  We put our name on the list for married student housing, but we were told there was a year wait.  So the first six months of our marriage we spent living in different dorms.  From my dorm room window I could see the lights of Mike’s room, and at night it would give me comfort.  I wasn’t alone and I loved him so much.  Some nights I would just stare at his light.  He no longer had the money to live in an apartment as he had done before he left for USL.  In fact I don’t know how he had paid for that apartment unless his parents had paid for it.  And I don’t remember if the idea of us getting a place together ever came up.  I don’t know that Mike was working at that time or not.

The Summer of 1997 found us living in an upstairs apartment that Mike’s father owned, next to his office building.  Downstairs was my kitchen and dining room; upstairs were our living room, bedroom, bath, and a small room that served as my closet. 

In going back and rereading my stuff I had written from the days of the “Prodigal Daughter.”  I found a painful memory I had forgotten.  It is of one of the first times he had emotionally abused me. We were living in the upstairs apartment.  It was rather late and I had tried to convince Mike to come to bed, to no avail.  I lay in the dark room wondering what my new husband was doing.  One minute I would hear the TV and the next I would not.  After a few minutes, I got up to see what was going on.  There in the blue light of the television sat Mike masturbating to a porno.  His pants unzipped with penis openly exposed and a sock to catch whatever evidence remained.  I was shocked.  I did not understand.  My calculations and analysis could not come up with the right answer.  I had believed once we were married and living together that this behavior would stop.

“Michael, what’s going on here?”  I asked in a timid voice.

      
He turned to me, his eyes filled with rage, “What are you doing up! Go back to bed! Why are you not in bed?!  Go away and leave me alone!”

“Michael if you want sex why don’t you just come to bed?!  I don’t understand?  What are you doing?  Why are you doing this?”

He became enraged, screaming at me, “It is all your fault!  If it wasn’t for your backwoods Victorian morals, you would not have a problem with this!  It is all your fault!  Get back in there and go to bed!” 

I do not remember the rest, only that this was the beginning.  I felt as if he had ripped my heart out, and deep down I knew that it was true. I had caused this.  I was fat. I was ugly, I was naïve and out of work.  I became suicidal the next day.  I hid in a closet until I was found, I ran into the park, close to our apartment, with our BB gun to kill myself.  Whatever insecurities I had about myself were confirmed on a daily basis with him.  The next day I became terrified of him.  I was so afraid.  I did not understand what I had done wrong.  I had had no other lovers but Michael.  I must be doing something wrong.  He was right I knew nothing of sex other then with him, so I began to verse myself in the sexual arts.

There was no internet where we lived.  Most information was still in books.  So every time we went to the book store I would hide myself in the sex section.  I read as much as I possibly could on the subject.  I was determined to please my husband.

 

Despite what I learned, it was not enough.  My nightmare had begun and there was no escape for me.  I was too ashamed to tell my parents what was going on.   That my husband preferred to gratify himself rather than touch me.  My parents did not know until right before I left him that Mike had a sex problem and what he had put me through in that department.  I was so embarrassed.  Only Joe and another friend ever knew what was really going on in my home. 

Ilsa