Rough times dating the four horsewomen of the apocalypse
Alright just a little summary on my history of college. There were some embellishments made and some details left out but I assure you that no matter how bad it might seem, living through it was infinitely worse. I would like to thank Amanda for her stenography skills, she typed while I paced around, played with a pen and threw a football up in the air, at the same time drudging up horrible things that happened to me from my past.
So I have had some interesting people in my life. First there was Svetlana. Her name meant light but she was anything but a light person. It seemed to me that she worked for the KGB before meeting me, since she was deadly with words and could also torture a man for hours. She also was a master at changing her personality at the drop of a hat. While on missions she would have had to have played many roles, but with me it was just up and down, crazy, sane, happy, crying, and that was a good day. She was constantly bringing people down with her ravings, getting them to admit to things that they never did, or thought.
She began to cunningly use her wiles on me to press for an engagement and quick wedding which flabbergasted me at first but I later found out that she wanted to get marry an American so that she could become a citizen (roughly nine months after I said goodbye to her she got married to another poor American sap). I could see a small red flag being waved far away in the city that I called home, held by my two closest friends. When they heard that she had promised our engagement would settle her emotional roller coaster ride and that everything would be better, I received a bruising blow to the shoulder and dire warnings of how final marriage to this woman would be.
Far from the romantic images of my childhood, the reality of our engagement and coming wedding brought about changes that I had never considered. In high school I had given two roses to two different women, for the most part getting the exact reaction that I was hoping for: a surprised “oh” barely escaping her lips when she figured out that to me, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Using these small experiences from the past as my guide, I decided to give Svetlana roses, thinking that the gesture would give me a small reprieve from her insanity and put me in her good graces again.
However, when I gave her roses that I had spent hours preparing to mirror a scene from favorite book of mine, she informed me that she was allergic to roses and told me that I should have done better recon before I made a move. You never consider how I feel. In my wildest dreams, this would never have been the girl’s response to receiving roses. Actually getting mad at me for giving her flowers was somewhat of a surprise, which I found strange later when she would tell me that I never gave her flowers anymore.
So now I was engaged. I rationalized it because that was where the relationship was eventually going so it was alright to speed things along. Plus, if it balanced out her emotions at all it would ease my suffering. Periodically she would leave me in a fit of angry psychosis, then later call me up to talk and eventually lead me to beg for forgiveness. Later I guessed that this was a tactic that she learned in the Kremlin. All I had seen of love was that of my parents who rarely had any problems, and what I saw in the romantic comedies I had watched growing up.
The romance in movies did not prepare me for the problems that occur in an actual relationship. Svetlana’s being the only woman’s love in the world that I had known, I did not know any better. I thought that if I just did what she told me that eventually our love would turn into that which I had imagined.
After getting engaged, I noticed that things were not quite as rosy as she had insisted they would be. Later, when fighting one day, I brought up that very point and she told me that everything would be better when we were married. This sent up a flag bigger and redder than the country that she was trying to leave.
Eventually she asked me to do something that I promised myself as a child that I would never do, but both my body and she insisted upon it. With a mighty thrust, I ended my boyhood. After the act there was always remorse. Gradually she began to tell me that I didn’t love her, I was only using her, and it was all I wanted her for. Being told that what you are feeling is not actually what you are feeling starts to wear on a person. She would usually reserve these speeches for the times when I was just about to get comfortable, in the middle of a movie that I wanted to watch, or right before I fell asleep. She had an uncanny knack for knowing when I had to be up early the next day, which only made me want to give in to her demands just to get her to stop talking to me for the night. Eventually after four hours (I didn’t know why that number was so important until later) of her being upset and me apologizing to her, everything would be fine -- strangely, nothing ever was solved. I would think “okay she is not crying any more so it must be that we actually solved the problem,” when in reality she had just put that problem back in the vault for reuse and got the next one ready.
I later found out that back in the KGB her average time for breaking down a mark was four hours. She was trained to be upset with and to berate a victim for that amount of time.
Finally, I knew that she might not be the one for me when I noticed a scar in my private area that she told me claimed me as hers forever. So I did what I do best: I stalled until her visa her visa expired and she had to go back home. With four words I ended it, taking small pleasure in using this special number against her.
Then there was Imre, the Hungarian. Her name meant innocent which I took to be truth because the face that she presented to me was truly that. Her father named her a boy’s name because he had wanted a boy. But this did not deter me in the least. I was done with high maintenance women and what I wanted now was a girl that would just love me. And she did. From the first moment that we met, Imre and I got along better than beets and sour cream. Trust me on this one, they go good.
There were no problems, there was nothing but us. And then the whispers in the dark started. They came from nowhere and they came from everywhere. They all said that she was not the innocent girl that she seemed to be and that in her past she was a heart breaker. I did not want to put stock in such rumors since they were only gossip and things with us were solid. If she had something to say about her past that she thought I needed to know, then she would tell me; we could tell each other anything. The whispers continued to say that she was not innocent.
In the life that she had before me, she was an active and friendly person, having known many people. I apparently was rehab, and a fresh start for her. I too wanted to start over with love, so I forgave her of any transgressions that she may have committed. I was very careful to not broach the subject of her past lest something that I could not deal with came up. I was also careful not to attempt to satisfy my natural (some have said overactive) male urges, and instead took things slowly.
Everything was going fine except that the whispers did not stop. They only got louder. So I took steps to try and stop the whispers, at one point going on a hunger strike for five days. It worked to an extent.
Imre went away for the summer to help her parents with the family business. I wrote to her periodically using the cursive that I had so painstakingly learned long ago. I called her daily to try to make her laugh, but it usually only served to frustrate her. She would hang up the phone angry and this only gave the whispers in the dark a larger microphone. With her so far away and constantly depressed, she could not continue to reassure me that the whispers were merely air. I flew three thousand miles to visit her for a few days, even interrupting my family’s sacred annual vacation. The visit was nice but it only served to be an intermission in her depression. The things I did for her I don’t know that I could do again for anyone. She just had this power over me. I was enthralled by her, but I was not as strong or as patient as I thought that I was.
She came back at the end of the summer and did not like that I had a daily routine that I had been following in her absence. Everyday I would come home, expecting her to be happy to see me, but instead be greeted with little more than indifference.
I realized that when things grow cold in and out of the bedroom I start looking for a way to escape. I found the way out. The bathroom window’s name was Bogdana.
Rather quickly after that I found myself entertaining a well traveled young woman who at first seemed completely reasonable. I have found that this is true with all women, not only the ones that have shared my bed. She told me her name was Bogdana, which means grace of God. This is where her ties to Christendom end. I found out later that she had had congress with the Beast. She was a witch. I should have realized it when she did a spot on reading of my Tarot. Then she read my palm which led her right into my inner most desires. Using her craft she blinded me to what was going on.
Conversationally, she told me that the last man who had acquired her interest apparently did have the dimensions to satisfy her (this only served to pique my dimension’s interest), however he was able to service her in other means -- something that she would later frequently tell me I needed to try harder to live up to even though she was already more than satisfied with the main service that I provided.
One night roughly a month after meeting her I decided to share a secret with her after which she told me that she could never see me again. Initially I was saddened by her departure, but gradually I started to enjoy my freedom from her craft. I thought I had escaped her spells, but one that she had placed upon me told her that I was enjoying my freedom too much. She put a curse on me. The very next day I was innocently riding my bike to my apartment when I was hit by a car. Out of this car stepped an angelic looking woman who appeared to be everything that Bogdana was not. Amazingly her name turned to be Angelica. She then proceeded to apologize profusely and said that she would fix my bike and gave me her number.
After carrying my bike home, I examined the damage done to my leg and discovered a baseball sized lump growing on my inner thigh, not three inches away from my man parts. I know more about the craft than I ever wanted to, but whether the spell was meant to turn me into a eunuch or merely kill me, I would rather not have the answer.
Later that day, I was about to call Angelica to see what else besides my bike I could get fixed when there was knock at my door. By ‘about to call,’ I mean that I had already dialed the number and was about to press send. Apparently Bogdana knew what I was thinking and decided she was not through with me yet. She could not find a person that would comfort her for the night and came to call on me. Since I could barely walk, I could not toss her out. She informed me that we were going to continue our relationship -- minus the relationship. So I suffered in silence for another month while she began to cut herself for potions and spells. I had never dealt with a freak of her caliber and I did not know how to handle the situation, so I let my dimension handle it for me.
Though she eventually promised me she would give up the razor and the dark arts, she just could not say no to the devil’s urges. I told her I was sorry but I could not deal with her anymore. I was a good Christian boy who was under her spell no longer, so she did what many women do when they are not getting their way: she started to cry. She asked me, “How can you leave me like this?” And in a moment that will burn in my hall of fame forever, a moment that makes me more proud to be a man than any moment before, I said “Like this.” And I walked out the door.
Lastly there was the retired Russian army Col. Serafima, whose name actually matches her temperament. Her name means fiery one, and she certainly was. A short, fiery redhead that could explode for no reason and without warning After the army she became one of the many women in Russia without a job and turned to the oldest profession known to woman: finding a man.
She didn’t work hard to get men to buy her things. She would typically just lay there until she felt it was enough to get what she wanted from him, but not always what he wanted from her. The nights that she would utter “are you done yet?” usually were an indicator that he would not get what he wanted. She would tell him that she was tired and needed to get up to work with the children that she hated in the morning.
You see, after the army, she decided that teaching would be her passion. Unfortunately she did not have the mental capacity to work with six year olds, confusing simple grammatical rules and syntax. This inferiority complex that she had with her first graders lead her to be furious with me. They might say that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ well, this one didn’t need to be scorned. She was so little, and yet so angry.
She was the type of partner that would tell you exactly what it was that you were doing wrong while you were doing it, which doesn’t make for a good partnership. She brought her army training with her into her love life. Giving orders left and right; slower, faster, no not like that, I am not in the mood for that just do this, are you done yet?. If looked like you were enjoying yourself then it was the dishes for you.
She also could not trouble herself to be seen at my place since she had to take the world with her (I had always that that it was Atlas’ job to carry the world with him). So, every night we would retire to her place. It was her safe haven; the place where she knew that “they” could not get her. I think that she wanted to stay at her base of operations because this way she would be in control of the recording devices.
She was never a trusting person. Even when proclaiming her love to someone, she did it as though she were saluting the flag; something to be done by rote every day. In addition, she would get quite upset if the ritual did not happen daily. She constantly needed this verbal proclamation of his love in order to be assured that he was telling the truth, feeling that if his story changed at any point during interrogation, then he had been lying to her the whole time. This general mistrust extended to any food that was given to her. As she had been career army, there were many who would have liked to see her fall, and she was used to having her food tasted for her. No longer having this excuse, she hid behind supposed allergies and did not accept anything that was just given to her without a proper inspection of all of the materials used in the making, before and after. I had witnessed her eating some things that she was supposedly allergic to and when I brought it up, she said that eating that amount made her itchy. That night, I witnessed no scratching. When I made her the same meal that she had eaten days earlier, she informed me that she could not eat the meal because of her allergies and told me to throw it away. Apparently I had used more of the venomous ingredient than she had (using the same recipe) and my food was deemed unfit not only for her but for human consumption. At one point she told me that I was doing it wrong in my own kitchen and pushed me out of the way to demonstrate the correct way to do it. What I witnessed was the correct way to burn food.
There was a time when she was happy with me. She went back to train some new recruits for the army for three months, and when she came back she was her bright and bubbly self; a personality that I hadn’t seen in months. This was the girl that I had met: fresh out of the army looking to lead a different life than the one that she had just left. Unfortunately for me, she had left the army, but the army had not left her. The newness of being out of the army made a difference in the beginning, but as time went on, old habits reemerged. Apparently after being such a hard ass all the time she allowed herself some down time from that to relax. When that wore off and the pressures of being nice to people were once again on her, she became bitter and biting, lashing out at even her roommate. With every topic, you had to walk on eggshells around this girl. Any simple disagreement was met with a pronouncement that I wanted to argue with her. She would tell me that I always thought I was right.
There were several things that really set me off (but I did not show it). One of these was when she told me that I was a bad math teacher when I tried to help her with her homework. She only wanted the answers and yelled at me for attempting to teach her. She took my instruction and turned it into her interrogation, asking me a question and immediately expecting an answer. She apparently in the education classes she had been taking, she had not learned this simple and very basic rule: it is more useful to be lead to the answer than to be told the answer.
During another periodic fight that I was trying to avoid by informing her that I would be spending the night at my place, she angrily ejaculated “why don’t you be a man?” and crossed her arms and stood in my way as I tried to leave. So shaken I was by her words that I could not take a step. There I stood, frozen in anger. This was something that I had never been told before. Normally I have extreme control over the so-called undesirable emotions (rage, jealousy, hate, anger, etc), but this time, to quote a favorite song of mine: “I’m ragin’.” I told her that she never got to say that to me ever again. We talked and she convinced me to stay by using her wiles.
Lastly, she told me one day that I was getting fat. The only people that can say this to me are fellow wrestlers, because it is only they who know the real difference between fat and skinny.
Before I met her I was at the peak of my training for wrestling and I was cutting weight and working out very hard everyday. After we met, she let me know that I would be spending less time in the gym and more time with her. I could see through this Russian training of hers because I had dated Svetlana, so I knew what was coming. When she found out that I was skipping meals for wrestling and working out until I was exhausted, she casually informed me that it was unhealthy, and that I wouldn’t be doing it anymore. I was a tall semi muscular man and felt like I knew what was and was not healthy. I had been doing these things for longer than I knew her and had somehow managed to make it that far.
She started making dinner and it was a compulsory engagement and I was expected me to be there exactly when dinner was served. This happened to always be exactly the time I wanted to go to the gym. So I essentially took a year off of all athletic activities (with the exception of hockey), giving up everything that had kept me sane through out my life, for the simple reason that she thought I had an excise addiction. I could not exercise after dinner because that would be “us” time which was not a request. If I wanted to do anything it was taking away from “us” time. She did not like that I was playing hockey during the time that I was dating her. This took away from ‘us’ time. She informed me that the money I spent on hockey was money I should be saving for our summer wedding (news to me!). Additionally, the occasional weekend away games were times when I should be working to make more money.
Hockey practice was usually a late night event, so in the beginning I would just return to my place -- according to her I just did not want to make the effort to see her. Later, feeling like I had learned the lesson she was trying to teach me, I started going to her place. When I went there, she would always be asleep (military thing, lights out at ten) and said “if you wake me up, then I swear by your god that I will shoot you.” Okay maybe she did not say that but if I did wake her up in the middle of the night she was not happy (apparently I did not respect her enough to allow her to sleep). I was completely oblivious to the fact that sleeping with her every night did not count as ‘us’ time. However if I did not go over there it counted against our “us” time.
As is the case with many men, I could not earn points in her book, but I could very easily go into the negative. Any positive points that I might have earned fell under the category of assumed tasks. I was expected to come up with things to do that did not interfere with her life. If I could not, then we would sit on the couch of numbness and let our minds waste away in front of the idiot box watching nonsensical television. If I decided that I did not want to watch what it was that she was watching, then as I had some free time I could do the dishes and take out the trash, the bathroom could use cleaning as well, thanks hon. In her mind, I had replaced the sergeant that she had before I came along, having her busy work pushed on to my desk so that she could focus on the important matters.
That relationship ended when she attacked me with her testicular clamps (there were many things building up to this event this was just the last straw slamming into my junk). I said no over and over but apparently ‘no’ didn’t mean ‘no’ unless she was saying it – and when she said it, she meant it! So after this attack, I went to change my clothes because I was leaving. There she stood in front of her door, arms crossed, back straight, tiny and angry. She would not get out of my way, so I had to do the unthinkable. I picked her up by her shoulders and moved her, showing her that I was actually stronger than she was (something that she did not like and had, up until then adamantly denied). In response to her order to stay, I simply replied with “this is me leaving you” (another moment that will live in my man hall of fame), and I walked out the door.
Now, I thought that my intentions here were pretty clear. I was fairly sure that I had broken up with her just then, but I get back to my place and while I was using the restroom she walks in and says that we needed to talk. This confused me somewhat. So I finished what I was doing and came out preparing to listen to her cry. Instead she had left and left me a note where she told me that she could not deal with me pushing her away anymore and that she was ending our relationship. I started laughing, not really believing that my final words to her had been so misunderstood. After that I just could not go back to her place. She of course wanted to talk later and I told her that if she wanted to talk then she knew where I would be. It was somewhat gratifying to have her come over to my place wanting to get back together. I told her that what we had was nice and all, but the only shower I wanted to clean from then on was my own.
posted by Brandon at 12:02 AM
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