Victor is in jail. He is waiting for an arraignment, at
which time he may be released with a restraining order. Perhaps that would be the best
thing.
thing.
I meet with my therapist
for the first time today, and she asks me to go back to a significant time
early in my relationship with Victor.
In order to
facilitate the process she puts my under a light hypnosis. Lilly Berman is not
your typical therapist. She draws upon dreams and spirituality in her sessions,
working not just with inner feelings and past experiences, but the meaning for
experiencing them in the first place. She had been recommended by a friend some
months prior, but I didn't find her number until the day after Victor's arrest,
after I spent the entire day searching for it.
March 11, 2008
Cherie lies on the sand in Montauk. The sky is a vast icy gray and the
light, what there is of it, melts
into an unfathomably serene ocean.
Victor’s face pops into her vision, worn snowboarding cap pulled down
over his ears, wicked cherub grin belying his vulnerability. His dark eyes are
warm and available, but at the same time inexplicably remote.
Slowly, his eyes converge on Cherie's. “Wanna fuck?” he
asks.
The
"F" word startles her. She doesn't use the term as a verb; till now, a bare three weeks into their
courtship, she's only used it as an expletive. Nonetheless, she realizes the
promise in Vincent's question and smiles back in startlingly arousing
feeling. Lust. That’s what they called it, she knew.
Victor released
the fish that day, relinquishing it to the ocean as he at last surrendered the
hold of his father. His dad had been abusive, an illiterate but intelligent
peasant with no outlet for his rage The anger stemmed, Victor surmised, from
his father being subjected to, at an early age, genocidal atrocities which
beset his home country. His father had passed this bloodrage down to his sons,
a trait, Victor hoped, that he had defeated.
After releasing
the fish we sat for a time afterwards, and meditated on our dreams for the
future. That night, I came
vaginally for the first time in my life.
At the same
moment Victor reeled back and grimaced for all he was worth. It was as if his
life force simultaneously soared and was sucked out of him.
“Is...this...usual?”
I cried out breathlessly, inner and outward emotions in complete
disarray. I had never orgasmed when a man was inside, with no direct
stimulation. In fact I had never orgasmed much or with any strength at all
before.
"For those who love like us, it is," Victor
responded, enthralled.
"You mean people in...love...do it like this, together?
All the time?" My euphoria was giving way to the feeling of having been
cut out, excised from something spectacular, excluded from a bliss that loving
couples enjoyed as a matter of course. I suddenly understood every inexplicable
sex scene in movies where the woman cried out in the throes of sensational
emotion, scenes I had watched like a bystander before and had tossed off as
being impossibly fanciful.
"There is no on else like us," Victor explained.
As I looked at him a question formed on my lips.
He shook his head in response. “I never have before you,” he
avowed. "Not like that, together. It's never been like this with anyone
but you."
And he had slept
with over five hundred women.
I guess this
somewhat explains what happened to me afterward.
From Cherie's
Journal
Cherie is head
over heels and utterly in love.
She is naked in
his arms on his mattress on the floor of his lower East Side apt.
She is in his
arms on 11th street as Victor goes apartment shopping with her.
They sip coffee,
and share a bagel at Zabars where he accidentally plunges his cup into hers
splattering coffee everywhere
They talk endlessly on
the phone for hours, until four am one night, when they had already spoken for
three hours earlier.
It’s as if they need to
know everything about each other, which encompassed not just technical details,
but their thoughts, loves, passions, hurts.
Not long
afterward, she feels safe enough to ask him the question.
"True
Love," Victor elaborates in response, "is when you feel ecstasy by
being with that person.
It's like when you die
and you’re with God. True Love is like when you go home.
"True Love,
is this," Cherie writes his words in her notebook later, "it's when you meet someone and
really love them and give them everything. You’re a loving being and you love
them and when they love you back you experience ecstasy. That’s what it means.
That’s true love."
Though she
pretended to understand it, she didn't, not fully. She had given up on it so
long ago, possibly during the course of her marriage, but probably earlier, as
a young girl maybe, when she had first suspected that there were no glass-shoe
wielding princes nor even dukes, only pretenders to the throne. Then of course
there were the insecurities of having just come out of that nearly two-decade
long stretch (for she had met her future husband when she was still a teen), of
never being told that she was beautiful, of not being led to believe that the
sun set or rose on her, or not being the subject of someone's infinite desire.
Maybe it had been somewhat like that in the beginning with Alan, but somewhere
along the way it dissipated, until it finally disappeared.
So why would she
believe it now, when Victor told her he loved her like no other and that she
was the one for whom he had been waiting all his life? How could she accept
that he knew her fully, knew her soul, and loved her so completely that he
would never again be with anyone else? How could she accept that he was giving
up his lifestyle of sleeping with any woman that sauntered through his field of
vision, because he had met her,
and that she, in turn, was giving up her plan of vicarious unattachment in the
face of leaving an old life and finding a new one, with him, her true love?
Anyone would
have done what she had done, she reasoned. Maybe not in the same fashion, but
they would have sabotaged the relationship, tested it for all it was worth in
order to obtain some sort of equilibrium. Wouldn't they have?
She hadn't
consciously known what she was doing, nor what she was doing to him--or more
to the point--to them. It was a
hugely intimate mistake, something she regretted afterward, and about which she
could tell no living soul. Until now.
But there are no
mistakes in the universe, only opportunities for change, growth, and perhaps,
an opportunity for a new beginning. Right?
Lily nodded. She
thought so.
Soon after this
mistake, the countless digs, the snide comments, and the arguments, began.
This argument
started like every other. Something she said or did ticked him off, reminding
him of what she had done, and it burned at him, like a thorn in his paw, until
it made him surly-- and like the agitated dragon she was coming to know him
as-- it struck back with the full force of eons behind it, eons of being
misunderstood, of being improperly loved, and of being endlessly
underestimated. But this was
different, because the hurt had come from her. It colored everything that
transpired between them, and determined everything that happened later.
This fight
was no different than any of their others, really. He hadn’t wanted to go out on Valentine's Day, Victor told
Cherie during one of their "dialogue sessions," as she came to call
them, interviews which centered on what she considered key points in their
relationship from his point of view. She had wanted to tabulate it all, to keep
a journal as she told him, but really, it was to make sense of it. This was
something she had trouble doing while they were in the real-time throes of what
seemed to her like perpetual discord.
He didn't
have a valentine, he had explained. He didn't want to see it, you know, all the
romance stuff. He was lonely, very
lonely. Lonely by choice maybe,
because he had a lot of girls who wanted to go out, who wanted to date him, who
wanted to be with
him, as he related, but he was still alone.
“How did this
revelation make you feel? Threatened? Jealous?” asked Lily.
“Yes,
but--" Cherie paused. "I felt like I needed to reach for the sky.
Because that's what he had done in stating his intentions for us so bluntly.”
Then she added, "even though sky threatened to come crashing down on me, I
still wanted it."
"It's
very, very challenging," Lily opined in agreement. "While it has the
potential for, well, failure, it also," here she cocked her head as if
receiving enlightenment from the universe, "yet, this relationship also has the potential for immense
reward."
"Precisely,"
Cherie replied.
Apr. 19, 2008
“Yeah, there
were a lot of girls who wanted to date me,” Victor related with that wry wisp
of a smile Cherie was growing to both love and be wary of.
“Yeah, they
were lining up on Broadway,” she shot back. The living room of the one bedroom
East Village apartment they now shared was lit by a welcoming fire. Near them,
the light on her tiny digital recorder glowed red, in this, one of their early
recording sessions.
His glance
was agonized, and she made an internal note to be less flippant in her
responses.
“Some people
think I suck at art, some people think I'm, you know, a lot of things that are,
not so good." He meant this latter sentiment in the utmost way. He had an
ex-wife who undermined and loathed him, and others who by virtue of their
jealousy, antipathy, or sheer ignorance--because he was noble, and a very good
person, albeit a tad lacking in the diplomacy department (she added this last
part herself)--were wont to put him down.
"But I
am definitely good at one thing," Victor went on. "Meeting women. I'm
very good at. Always have been.” He stated it not with pride or malice, just as
fact, the way he stated everything.
“So you tell
me over and over again,” Cherie answered uneasily. She wasn’t quite as talented
at meeting the opposite sex and it was her propensity to hide anything she
thought insufficient about herself, from herself. More to the point, she
disguised what she considered her insufficiencies with the blithe comment, the
small elaboration, or the outright hyperbole, as was her right in being a good
writer, she reasoned. It was a way of keeping her spirits up. Why allow in
thoughts of lack? Just turn it around and make it good, or funny, she reasoned.
The
discomfort over this particular sentiment of Victor's arose from some vague
need to compete mixed with jealousy--not just of his past conquests, but also
of his 'talent' in this arena. It threatened her in some indefinable way. As
usual, the need to hide her feelings was overwhelming. She didn’t understand
all of this yet, in fact she didn’t comprehend a lot of things pertaining to
them, yet.
“Well, just
so you remember that because—“ Victor responded.
Cherie looked
up in expectation. He cut his threat short and took a good gulp of wine
instead. “Anyway, that's not the
point. The point being was I obviously met a lot of girls since my divorce,
since L.A. But I never dated anybody, maybe two dates max. When I got here, the same thing. And, then I went through a stage where
I started to become, well, I started to do the hermit thing again.” He didn't
like the hermit thing, he explained, it was too much being with nobody but
himself doing the reading he was doing, and having been just forced out of his
home it was a bad place to be.
Cherie knew
about this. Sliding into the hermit thing was as natural to her as breathing,
and was a habit developed in a childhood where she felt mostly left out of
things, and sometimes shunned. Though helpful in the research profession, which
could be very solitary, the tendency to withdraw into the company of one's self
often left her feeling numb and forgetting how to make direct contact with
life.
Victor went
on. “I was scared because I did that on the other coast. As time went by, I
went inward. I was spending far too much time with myself, and with this,"
he indicated his glass. "I didn't want to do that here, 'cause I could see
the danger signs of where I might end up, and I was already doing the drinking
at home by myself kind of thing.”
“It’s very
bad,” she replied, careful not to dwell on the amount of wine that was fast
slipping by his lips. She had been raised in a family of teetotalers, and was
intolerant of alcoholism, though by her own admission she had learned to become
a "drinker," in college. For the fist time experiencing the
attentions of a wider range if men than what she was used to, she had become
someone who could not only drink large quantities of alcohol, but, as she liked
to think, someone who could hold it better than her male compatriots. It was
both a survival tactic and a point of pride, however delusional it may have
been.
“The worst
thing you can do is drink a lot,” Victor offered, reading her mind. He yawned
fully then, with his whole body, like the awake but sleepy dragon that he
was. “I think it was in the
afternoon, February the 14th, and for some reason I just had this feeling I
should put an ad on Craigslist. It
was like someone was telling me, ‘Put an ad on Craigslist, put an ad on
Craigslist.’ So I posted this
ad.”
“Had you put
an ad on Craigslist before?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“I put ads on
Craigslist L.A., where I met lots of psycho chicks.” He took pause at her
ensuing guffaw.
“You know
what I found? That the women in
New York are just as psycho as L.A, except it's a different town, that's all.”
“I was just
imagining the kind of women you must have met off of that, that's all,” she
offered in defense.
“New York is
smaller in terms of, not people, but in terms of, you know, you can meet
somebody and you'd have to drive 25 miles to...”
“To what?”
she demanded, alert now.
“You know,
it's just different. So, I felt
like I had to do this, which was very strange. I wouldn't normally have done
that.”
“Posted an ad
looking for next year’s girlfriend, you mean?”
“It was
looking for my Valentine 2009. I remember writing that. I can't remember if I
put in that I was British. "
“Oh, I think
you did,” she prompted, remembering too well. That comment was probably what
had landed her here in the first place. She certainly hadn't been looking for a
boyfriend or anything pertinent. She wasn't looking for meaning, or permanence.
She was simply trying to fill a gaping hole in her soul.
“You said you
were an artist from across the pond,”
she reminded him.
“Anyway,
Cherie, looking for next year’s girlfriend was how I felt at that time, and the
feeling behind it was genuine. I wasn't feeling well physically, and I just put
it out there, you know? I got two replies.“
“Only
two?” She had to be watchful all
the time and was growing weary of it.
“One was from
this Asian woman, and there was no way I was going to reply to her. It just
wasn't going to happen. I've never dated an Asian woman, just not my thing.”
“I'm
surprised.”
He caught the
defense in her tone. “Well, I'm too busy with all the other women after me, so
I have no time for Asian women. They're a bit too quiet, in the corner, you
know. Anyway, you replied, and you
didn't have a picture, you just had a—“
“I sent a
picture." She reminded him, "11:11."
The flash of
recognition lit his eyes. “Oh, you did send a picture. Yeah, yeah. A very dodgy
picture, actually."
“I don't
dislike that picture, I like it.”
“I was
joking. I like that picture. I mean, you look different to that now because
you're constantly frowning, and you weren't frowning in that picture. You're
frowning right now, that's why I said that.” Then, he added, “there was
something about your eyes that got me. And obviously, the 11:11, which was like
wow! With all the stuff I'd seen
with 11:11, that struck me, but then you also seemed very compassionate. Of
course, later on I found that you were completely uncompassionate.”
Her laugh was
derisive.
“Bitch. No, but no, you had a very
compassionate face, and you replied at 11:11, and you sort of described
yourself, but you didn't go into much detail. ‘Curvy in the right places,"
I think you said.
“Otherwise
they think you're fat. Curvy means
fat, you know.”
“Not to me.”
“In online
lingo, curvy means fat.”
“Well,
everybody lies on Craigslist, but, yeah, there's a lot of fat women on
Craigslist, I have to say.”
“And they
would describe themselves as zaftig or Reubenesque, or curvy? I mean, if they
could spell?”
"Well,
most of the fat women, and a lot of them are fat, describe themselves as BBW,
big beautiful women. Most of 'em are pretty honest, I find. Maybe people are realizing you might as
well be frigging honest, because there's somebody for everybody.”
“Oh, really?”
she didn’t believe that there was someone for everyone on Craigslist, and in no
way did she suppose that people were honest. Even Victor had lied, she reminded
him.
“Anyway, I
liked your eyes. I was hoping they weren't blue, because I didn't want a
blue-eyed girl. You said you were 5'8" and curvy in the right places.
Yeah, your message was not very interesting at all.”
“You know
what? I wasn't really sure I wanted to respond to your ad.”
“I'm sure you
didn't, but then why would you say that in like the defensive way that you say things?”
“Because if I
really had gone after the kill, there would've been a different response. Maybe one you would have found more
interesting.” She knew he was right about being defensive, but considering the
subject matter she thought she was doing rather well.
“After the
kill?’ After the kill what?
Are you fucking nuts? Why
are you trying to kill, what, what's that fuckin' mean? ‘If I wanted to go after the kill.’ You
are such a fucking egotist.”
“Me? The
egotist?” So much for geniality.
“Yeah, you
are, you're a fucking—”
“11:11pm on
Valentine's Day is when I responded or 11:11 AM?” she demanded.
“PM, Valentine's Day, because you were
fucking obviously out.”
“I don't
think I responded on Valentine's Day at all.”
“Oh, 'cause
you went out Valentine's Day? Had
to be later?” His slitty dragon eyes were blazing as well as the dissociate
personality. “You went out on a date. You went out on a date on Valentine's
Day! Why didn't you tell me you went out on Valentine's Day?”
“Well I
must've been home by 11:11pm,” she responded as calmly as she could.
“Cause you
went out on a date. Why are you keeping that a secret?”
“You never
asked me.”
“So who did
you go on a date with?”
“Somebody I
didn't like very much.” Her attempt at mollification incited him. In fact,
anything she said would have provoked him then. He had their infant
relationship in his craw, and was going to shake it to it’s death until it
flopped on the floor and screamed for mercy.
“So, did you
sleep with him?” he demanded. “'Cause that's what you normally did on the first
date, right?”
She would
have stopped him, if she could have. Instead she continued the alleged dialogue
with an inane laugh.
“Shut the
fuck up.” Victor’s anger crackled through.
“I did
nothing to warrant that.”
He paced, his
tall spiny vertebrae exposed, with each step his dragon’s tail snapping with
sharp bite. “Yeah, you did, because you never told me that you went on a date
on Valentine’s Day.”
“You never
asked. I never thought it would be pertinent.”
“It is
fucking, it's very pertinent.”
“Do you know
why I went out on a date that night?”
“Because
you're fucking lonely."
“Because of
the anniversary of marrying Alan. I did not want to be alone.”
He paused,
his glowering tail falling back into place.
“I would've
accepted a date with an orangutan to not be home alone that night.”
He sat on the
couch beside her. “So you went out with an orangutan?”
She should
have seen his tail snaking back around; instead she focused on the relentless
irises of his unblinking eyes. “Yeah.”
“That's your
fucking problem. You're an idiot.
You're a lonely, middle-aged old woman, and you fucking--
“That's so
nice, thank you, and kind too, and talk about compassion, boy, you are—”
“I said you
were compassionate, I never said I was compassionate.”
“No, you're
not, you're not even remotely compassionate. Now you're gonna just lash out, and try to make me pay for
whatever you're, you know, whatever it is that you decide that you want me to
pay for.” She was under this weird
impression that people in love treated each other with kindness. “I certainly
wasn't about to go to bed with him, just in case you wanna know,” she added,
chafing.
“You did
plenty of that in your life.”
“It doesn't
come close to what you've done, since you brought it up.”
“The point,
the point I'm trying to say to you is that since you came to this town, you've
been out there big time. Desperate
to find a fucking date, desperate to find somebody. Well, you went out on loads of dates.”
“And where's
the desperation?”
“Well,
because you were lonely.”
“Maybe I was
seeking something. And for that matter I 'd much rather be alone than be out—”
“It didn't
sound like you wanted to be alone to me.”
“I mean I'd
rather not be alone, but I'd rather be alone than go out with the wrong
people. And sometimes you end
up--”
“Hold on, you
just fucking contradicted yourself.
You said you would've gone out with an orangutan on February the
14th.”
“February the
14th was my anniversary! The day
Allen and I got married.”
“Only that
day, yeah. Why are we discussing
what you think, anyway? This is
about what I think.”
“Let me just
finish this. You can turn off the
recorder if you want.” He made no move and she continued. “I wanted to make
sure that I was out that night. I would've taken a date with an orangutan, yes,
and I had close to it. That's all.”
He took
pause. “Did he look like an orangutan?”
“Maybe a
little. He wasn't very attractive.”
“Was he a
black guy?”
She pushed
down her anger. “No.”
“So he was a
white guy that looked like an orangutan.”
“What is it
with you, why? I never led you to believe anything. I was never duplicitous,
it's never come up.”
“Anyway,” he
stopped her from finishing, “so you get home from a date."
“Must've been
a really good date, huh?”
“What, so if
he was a good date, you would've been home at like five in the morning?”
So much for
trying to litigate the situation.
“You paint me
as whorish.”
“I think you
are desperate.”
“I won't be
abused anymore.” she really didn’t want to be abused.
“So, censor
me, then. Okay?”
“You may
absolutely say anything in your heart. You have my complete word that I will
not censor you.”
“You're
bringing in shit that doesn’t belong in our relationship, challenging what I 'm
saying, whereas you should be interviewing me.”
“You're
bringing up too much stuff.”
“Okay, so
I'll just keep my mouth shut, which is—“
“I don't want
you to keep your mouth shut. I want you to talk.”
“You want to
censor me.”
"You're
attacking me, calling me desperate." What were they, she wondered,
four-year-olds?
“You can't
have it both ways. Either I can
say whatever I think and what I wanna say or I shut up.”
“Then
continue.”
“So, you get
home, you see my ad, you send the thing, right? You reply to my ad.”
“Yeah,
must've been what happened.” she wasn’t going to correct him now.
“So I replied
back to you.”
“Yeah,” she
replied, wondering how she could ever have thought that was a good thing.
“I sent you
my picture, and the next day I think you replied back.”
“Yeah. That
was some accurate picture.”
“So, that was
it, then we spoke. You can fill in
too.”
“I thought I
wasn't allowed to respond.”
“You're the
worst interviewer in the history of the planet.”
“Only with
you."
“You know
why? You know why you're bad with me?
It's because I 'm challenging you and you don't like it. When you interview other people—“
“You're not
challenging me, you're calling me names. You called me desperate and— "
“That's not a
name. If you were desperate, it
doesn't mean that's calling you a name. Yeah, I do get the impression you're
desperate. I think you had a very desperate life.”
“I think
you're very inaccurate.”
“Well, then
you're great, everything's okay.”
“No, it's not
okay, it's really not okay. But
anyway, keep going. So what was the conversation—“
“No, I 'm
gonna stop here, because you know why?
Because this was an interview that was supposed to be nothing to do with
our relationship.”
“We said
earlier that this would help get to a lot of stuff, and it's absolutely about
our relationship and getting to the heart of things between us. Absolutely. And so I 'm gonna pretend that I haven't heard these things,
is that it? It's nothing you
haven't said before, it's just reiterating them, which makes it okay? I mean
obviously that's what you think.”
“Well,
there's a lot of other things, but we can’t go into that.”
“How much do
you think I can take?” she asked later, as he pulled her to his lap and melted her
defenses with a sensuous hug.
“You don’t
have to take anything. You don’t have to be here if you don't want to be
here. But I'm certainly not gonna
sit here with you and, and have you tell me to shut the fuck up, which is
basically what you do constantly.”
“I haven't
said it once.”
“You imply it
all the time.”
“What else do
I do that you think that's so, so awful?"
“It's not so
awful."
“Well, so
awful that I can't hear it or handle it. I have not intimated for one second
that you should shut up."
“That's
because you're getting what you need."
“Meaning?"
“Meaning if
that thing wasn't recording, you would have gone, ‘I 'm not listening to this,’
or shouted me down. But because
you're recording—"
“Then turn it
off."
“No, because
you should record yourself how you really are, 'cause I'm saying what I wanna
say, but you're not recording
yourself how you really are, and that's the truth. What you say to me, you
ain't recording now or ever."
“Look, I’ll
turn it back on now. The little light flashed back on.
He laughed,
his mood dissipating.
“Okay. Actually, you sent me the floor plan of
an apartment you were interested in and I was—“ he caught the look in her eyes.
“Wow, you are really angry now.
You are upset. Do you
really want me to finish?”
“Oh please
do.”
“So where
were we?”
“Desperate,
whorish and getting off on strange men, I believe.”
He laughed
again, his disquiet having now transferred to her.
“Well, not
quite like that exactly. Anyway,
after your date with the orangutan, you emailed me back, then I emailed you,
and then you emailed me, and then I emailed you, and then we exchanged numbers,
and then I think you called me, something like that. And then we spoke on the phone. Oh, and I looked up your, uh, email, that's what I did.
through your email I did a search for you, your name, so your website came
up. Uh, I wasn't sure because I
think your email was different to your real name, and it came up, uh, Cherie Martinson.
“Whatever."
“So I found
out stuff about you, what you'd done, what you'd worked on, and the Romanian
connection. It was pretty
unbelievable, that you had written a book about my parent's people. Then of
course there was 11:11...”
11:11
He would see
it everywhere, once he became conscious of it, Victor explained. "On
clocks, license plates, billboards...once you start wondering about it you
realize that it's not by coincidence that you see it so consistently. Then,
when you look into it you realize its about spiritual awakening.
2012 at 11:11
am is basically the end of the Mayan calendar and we are now less then four
years away from it.
Every time is
see something like that I say, 'Well obviously, I need to look into it. It
triggers me. But then, I've been seeing it at least 5 or 6 years, maybe longer.
So when I saw your email I said that this is someone that I need to give an
opportunity to. Before a picture or anything I thought I had to pursue it,
investigate your body. It was a sign to me, a clarification that sometimes
things happen, and basically I'm one of these people that it happens to.
Also, it
confirms to me that I have something important to do. I cant give up and do
something different, I have to do this—I have to pursue my message through art.
Anyway, 11:11
is about people waking up and realizing what this planet really is"
"Where
are you from, anyway?" Cherie marveled. The only ones she knew who spoke
like this were herself, and the
occasional spiritual whack-job.
"The
Plough," Victor answers, pointing up.
So, before
they had even met the synchronicities had begun. In due course they became as
endless as the fights.
