Andre Part I

For the past few weeks I have been seeing a shrink, the kind that you talk to about your feelings as opposed to the kind that writes in illegible print on a teeny tiny pad of paper that you clasp to your heart and then RUN LIKE FUCKING HELL to the pharmacy before it melts in your hands. Because at the end of the day, pharmaceuticals pretty much make my life almost worth living. Add in a kid and a husband and BLOODY HELL I must go on with this worthless farce of a fucking life.

Please note that I am blogging while, let's face it, heavily medicated right now, with the kinds of medication that allow me to both sleep and blog and then forget about the blogging until the morning when I read my latest entry and think to my self "Self, what the FUCK were you thinking last night? Some of those sentences end in prepositions and I believe three of those words aren't even English at all. And did you really tell the Innernets all that? Really? Wow. You must have been storing that shit up. Best make a new category for that one." Like "Your shit is irrevocably FUCKED UP" or, as the shrink said today "Your mother has: no empathy, no mothering skills, is an empty hole and THANK BABY JESUS and his father that she had her uterus removed six months after giving birth to you." Maybe I"ll just label it "My Childhood" no, that's too bland. Too vanilla. How about "Some Fucked Up Shit"? Yes, that sounds grand. I will it to be done.

Are you ready for the post? Wait-first you must know that my shrink is an older lady. One that has lived through stage five gillion lung cancer and is still listening to people complain about shitty childhoods. She takes notes while listening to me whine about stupid shit on big yellow legal pads. It's fun. You should try it! Oh, the story...FINE. I'll tell the fucking story. I've been holding out on you. I'm a bitch that way. Note: If you are not in the mood to read something that is sad/tragic/holy fuck, I would move on to Cute Overload! :). Seriously. This is some bad shit, even for Sam's Stories Standards.

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I began dating Andre on the eighth day of August in 1988. I was 14, he was 17. He was fairly messed up boy, his father enjoyed drinking and then whipping Andre with a belt and he had scars across half of his back. His mother just cowered in a corner and drank quietly. I tried to help Andre, to fix his hurts and get him on a better track in his life. I tried to take care of him, to love him and make everything okay. In return he loved me and abused me, helped me and tormented me. It was the only way he knew to love. As a child I had seen much worse in the relationships between my mother and her various men, although it was a miserable way to live I didn't know any better.

Six months into our relationship my mother shipped me off to live with my father, a man a barely knew that lived 1 1/2 hours away. My relationship with Andre stumbled and continued, he got a motorcycle and came to visit often. Our relationship was off and on, and during one of the "off" times he raped me. Afterward, in the shower I wanted to scrap out my insides. I felt so disgusting and vile. I hated my body. Andre explained to me, "But you were so beautiful I couldn't help myself." I laughed bitterly. It wasn't the first time it had happened to me, but it was the first time Andre had done it.

Another time we were staying the night at his friend's house in a sketchy park of Oceanside. I don't remember if we were on or off at the time, but I did remember not wanting to have sex with him. He bought some liquor and proceeded to push me to get really drunk. I still didn't want to have sex with him. He picked me up and put me in a corner and every time I dozed off he held my head up by grabbing me under the chin. If he couldn't get laid, then I wasn't going to get to sleep. At one point he picked me up and put me outside the house (in the middle of the night in a bad neighborhood in my nightgown) and locked the door. Eventually he let me back into the house. I laid down and tried to go to sleep, but every time I feel asleep he started touching me sexually. I ended up being awake all night. It was (at the time) the longest night of my life. He terrorized me. A lot of the summer of 1989 is a blur to me.

Andre's life began to spin out of control during that summer. He stole a truck, attempted to use the credit cards he found in it and was arrested. They released him on his own recognizance until his next court date. At that time he was likely going to jail. He decided to come visit me for a week before his court date, his last "hurrah" before serving his sentence. He stayed with a male friend of mine as my father wouldn't let him crash at my house, but the three of us partied and hung out for a week. Teri was in his mid twenties, Andre was 18 now and I was 15. We drank and drank and drank some more, cruised about town and partied with the locals. It was fun. My one year anniversary with Andre was during this time, and although we were not dating we were somewhat together, just not sexually.

On the day after our "anniversary" (8-9-89), Andre urged Teri and I to play quarters with him. I had never played, therefore I sucked ass. Therefore I got WASTED. Teri was a pro, so he was sober. I only know this because Teri stated at the beginning of the game that he would not be drinking anything due to his rock star skills with quarters. I have no idea how sober/trashed Andre was at the end of our quarters game. All I know is that I walked out of the kitchen, laid down on my dad's couch and planned to PTFO (pass the fuck out). Teri sat beside me on the couch, and the room spun a bit.

The next thing I remember was hearing Teri say something like "Oh shit he's got a gun" and then a REALLY loud noise that sounded suspiciously like a gunshot in close quarters. I had spent enough time out shooting with my father that when the acrid smell of gunpowder hit my nose I knew someone had fired one of my father's guns. He kept many in the house, and several loaded as we lived in a very rural area. I jumped up and found Andre lying on my kitchen floor. Terri scrambled to call 9-1-1. I heard this terrible screaming and then I realized it was me. Andre had shot himself in the right temple with a .357 Magnum revolver loaded with hollow points. (If you know what hollow points are designed to do, I don't need to tell you much more. If you don't know, I'll not describe it here.) The blood coming out of his head reminded me of a garden house turned on full blast, while a trickle of blood was coming out of the other side of his head. I looked into his eyes, the beautiful brown eyes that I had loved and hated and I knew he was gone. His eyes were empty, he was dead.

To Be Continued...