Not Everyone Knows Your History

A felt some relief for a brief moment.  Killer was seeing someone and for the most part was not trying to monitor my every breath.  Michael on the other hand, was not.

He was quick to apologize for his behavior on my birthday, but I "drove" him to act that way.  I don't remember driving the car that night, but I had been delusional lately, so maybe I was driving. A reasonable person would have thought I would have crashed the car and ran after the first twenty minutes of a script I had heard time and time again.

I had won a weekend trip to Chicago through a sweepstakes I had entered through Spiegal Catalog.  I bought a lot of my clothes from their catalog because I liked things that were different and I didn't want to wear the same thing someone else might buy locally.  Any woman can tell you the horror of wearing the same outfit as another.

I had never been to Chicago and was excited about going.  Michael was going to go with me.  Our accommodations were at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago. Everything was paid for except entertainment.  I was so excited!  I love FREE!

We spent the day exploring downtown, shopping, visiting Navy Pier and taking the boats on the river through the canals downtown.  It was again, non stop fun. 

On Saturday night we went to a play. Tony and Tina's Wedding was based on a traditional American-Italian wedding and reception.  It was an interactive play with warm and intrusive stereotypes exaggerated for comic relief. The audience were guests of the wedding and reception.  It was just so much fun.

Michael was Italian and so he fit right into playing a role of the Italian relative no one could remember and I was his little Sicilian pastry, Cannoli. You could participate as much as you liked or were comfortable with or sat silently and watched the festivities of the traditional wedding ceremony and reception.  You had your usual wedding reception food served banquet style as part of the experience.  I loved it so much I went back five times over the years until it was no longer playing in Chicago.

We were free to have fun and as long as Killer was not in the picture, there were no lectures, no begging, no stalking, we just lived life. We spent weekends on the boat, water skiing, tubing, playing volleyball, swimming, dancing, board games, card games or camp fires.  We'd lay on the back of the boat and sun, listening to music and doing a crossword puzzle together.

We went to northern Michigan and spent a day climbing and exploring the areas of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park. Spent a weekend on Mackinaw Island.  We took canoe trips down the Ausable river, packing a cooler with lunch and stopping along the way for a romantic picnic.

We spent time at my parents home helping them do projects and enjoying Houghton Lake and exploring the local hot spots, which didn't amount to much back then, but we'd shoot pool or throw darts, find a bar to dance and just cut loose.

I went to my first Halloween Party at his friends annual "Halloween Bash on Bash Street." The house was packed with people they knew, who brought people they knew and so on and so forth. I wasn't much to party, I didn't drink and things were passed around that reminded me of when I was in high school.  These mid to late forty year olds were smoking pot with their kids around. I was so surprised. I guess I thought that was some thing you experimented with as a child and grew out of it, but I guess not.  I had never tried it and Michael had suggested I take a hit to "loosen me up." Needless to say, I refused and he felt that I didn't like his friends.

I didn't like to be out of control.  That is why I didn't drink or try drugs.  I wanted to be in control of my self at all times.  I had seen my Mother at twelve years old sick as a dog from a family member spiking her drink as we celebrated the return of my cousin home from Vietnam.  If this is what drinking did to you, I was passing on it.  I have never been drunk or hung-over.

But that night, while we were all having fun a friend of a friend who Michael knew made a pass at me. He was drunk.  And I did not respond to his pass, I was more embarrassed, but I told Michael what happened upstairs when I went to use the bathroom. I wanted to leave.  I was not comfortable here any longer.

He turned it around.  I must have been flirting with the guy. Where did this come from?  He was nice looking, but a bit odd. He had spinabifida and the way he could look at you made your skin crawl.  He had been watching me all night and Michael had noticed. I didn't realize he had been gazing at me.  I didn't know he had come upstairs when I was in the bathroom and was waiting for me when I came out.  I didn't know that he had been the reason a former girlfriend of Michael's had left him, to marry this guy many years ago.  Michael's jealousy came at me at full speed.  Things were going to change once more.