For David B.

By request.

I am supposed to be writing essays for a very important fellowship application that is due tomorrow at 5 p.m. Instead, I am finding every way in the book to procrastinate. Earlier today, I left a mysterious comment on David B’s log regarding many miserable hours spent in English casinos. He asked me to elaborate, so that’s what I will do now. Here is a tale of young foolishness at its best.

When I was 20 years old, I spent a semester studying abroad in South America. I learned to struggle valiantly in Spanish and saw some wonderful things. I was supposed to have stayed for a year, but because of an awful situation with my host family, I became unhappy there and wanted to leave. I wasn’t ready to go back to the boring old USA, so I started thinking about spending the Spring semester in the UK instead. One night, my friend Katie, her local boyfriend, and I were out drinking at the bars, something we did far too much of that year. Because I was thinking of transferring to somewhere in England, we decided to stop by the British Pub, where we commenced to down a few pints of beer. The bar was fairly empty that night, but two men came over and joined us at our table. One was American and the other was British. They were also quite drunk. They bought us all drinks and we talked and laughed in English for a change and the British fellow encouraged me to study in England. He even jokingly offered to let me stay at his house.

We left that pub in a group and moved on to a Salsa bar, where we drank even more, copious amounts of alcohol. I don’t know at what point in the evening the British fellow (let’s call him Mark) and I began to kiss, but from there it was only a few short blocks to his hotel, and that was where we ended up not long after. He told me that he was 30 years old. Much later in the evening, in his bed, he confessed that he was actually 40. I was a bit surprised, because he seemed younger than that, but I took it in stride. I went back to my host family’s house at 7 the next morning, and faced the ire of my evil host-mother. A few days later, Mark called me and I met him for coffee. He then confessed that he had a girlfriend back in the UK who would be visiting him in a few weeks’ time. I was upset, and the rational thing to do would have been to leave then and never speak with him again. Of course, that’s not what I did.

We continued to see each other regularly. I learned that he was a millionaire. I stopped hanging out with friends my own age because I was too embarrassed to introduce my old boyfriend to them. He broke up with his girlfriend when she got off the plane in Quito. We traveled together all around the country and to the Galapagos Islands. On a night that we went drinking separately, we each cheated on the other, and he was furious with me. I completed my application for studying abroad in England and registered for Spring semester courses at the University of Brighton.

We went to our respective countries for Christmas, but after the holidays I packed my bags again and flew to England. He picked me up at Heathrow Airport and drove me to his house in Portsmouth, where I lived with him for the next 6 months. I had class only a few days a week, and those days I took the train to Brighton. Every night we went out drinking with his buddies. I’ve never been much of a night owl, and I have difficulty staying out past midnight. Mark and his friends didn’t have this problem, and he would not allow me to leave. At midnight, the regular bars in Portsmouth closed, so we would move to the clubs. At two o’clock, the clubs closed, and we moved to the casinos, which were open until four. I ate cheese sandwiches and drank tea in quiet misery while he and his friends gambled. Some nights I refused to go out at all, and those nights he would come home belligerent at six or seven in the morning, furious when I asked where he’d been.

On one occasion, he left for a week on a “boys’ trip” to Portugal. I went out one evening with my one other friend, his neighbor, also twice my age. We got drunk, men flirted with us, we went home, end of story. So I thought, anyhow. But when Mark returned home he quizzed Christina about my behavior and determined that I had flirted back with the men in the bar and, thus, been unfaithful. He kicked me out of the house. I had no money and nowhere to go, so I had to beg and plead for him to let me stay. He caved in, eventually, and “took me back,” but I was never allowed to go anywhere besides school alone again.

In short, he was an abusive, controlling, manipulative, and all-around horrible man. And at the time, I thought I was in love with him. It wasn’t until I began dating C that I realized I had never been in love with Mark; he had just beaten down my self-esteem so much that I had become completely dependent upon him for everything.

Thankfully, the term ended eventually. We returned to South America for two months, where we traveled around and fought tooth and nail each night. At the end of that “vacation,” I returned to the US, and he returned to the UK. I cried my heart out for weeks, and we talked on the phone once in a while. Slowly, though, I got angrier and angrier, and more and more disgusted with myself.

I’m still living with the fall-out of that relationship. I may delete this post soon. It’s embarrassing to me.

Now, should I drink beer or tea as I stay up all night writing these essays?

~ by teaspoon on November 7, 2007.