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| Faint-Hearted |
| nonfiction by Davibey |
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New York City: January 1997.
“Dump him! He sounds like a big cry baby.” This was my older sister’s pithy estimation of my latest boyfriend.
“He really has some good qualities,” I tried to explain. “He genuinely makes me feel special. Patrick looks into my eyes as if I am his greatest gift. Do you understand the effect of that? And he’s very good looking, hunky and manly yet also like a little boy. He has such sweetness and real concern for my happiness. ”
“Uh huh,” she said, “He sounds like a big cry baby. Dump him! ”
My sister’s advice was still reverberating in my mind the next Sunday afternoon as Patrick and I strolled through the aisles of Bed, Bath and Beyond. We stopped to look at towels.
“Should I get the blue or the red?” I asked.
“I have no hope. I am destined to failure. I will never have the career as an actor I deserve,” Patrick replied.
We had only been dating for about two months, but I had memorized my response: “I believe in you! You can do it!” I wanted to at least appear sympathetic, to stroke his ego when he needed it. Pursuing acting in New York is a hard business and bruising on the ego. Even so, it never felt as if I could give enough consolation. Was I supposed to believe that Patrick would be a big star, that he had the gift that insured stardom? He was an aspiring actor, but really just a practicing cater-waiter. I did my best.
Christmas and New Years provided me with a two week respite from Patrick, as I spent the holidays back in Phoenix with my parents and sister. My sister continued her refrain all through the holiday: “Dump him! He’s a cry baby. Cry baby. He’s a cry, cry baby!”
I returned to New York a couple of days after the New Year’s. Patrick was planning a party at his apartment in Chelsea. I tried to get out of going: “Patrick, honey, I don’t feel well and I want to stay home.”
I had a head cold, but I would have made up another excuse if needed. I did not like Patrick very much. I wanted him to somehow evaporate, so I would not have to figure out how to extricate myself.
“What? You can’t! I’m throwing this party to introduce you to my friends,” he whimpered. “You can’t!”
I could only imagine the scene he would play when I did finally break up with him.
“Okay,” I acquiesced. It was easier to go the party, it seemed, than to continue the argument.
At the party I avoided him, using the over-crowdedness of his little apartment to my advantage. He lived in Chelsea so there were lots of men, only men, in fact, with big biceps and pectorals, in tight t-shirts and tight jeans. They were like trees in a forest for me to maneuver around and hide behind.
A little after midnight Patrick finally cornered me in his bedroom.
“I’m going to go. I really don’t feel well.” I appealed to him, “I’m sorry, but this cold is getting to me.”
“But I want you to stay. I want you to spend the night.” As the pitch of our conversation escalated, the other party guests left the room. It reminded me of scattering roaches, exposed when the toaster is lifted.
“Let’s talk about this outside,” he implored. As I followed him out of the apartment, I became cognizant that the other people at the party were aware that our conversation had to be taken outside, and I wondered how much he was playing to them.
He led me out of the apartment and up onto the landing above his sixth floor walk up apartment, just inside the door leading out to the roof.
“Why won’t you stay? Why won’t you stay?” he asked with a doe-eyed expression. Like a child he repeated his request again-and-again, as if his persistence would wear me down. “Why won’t you stay? Why won’t you stay?
I felt like my sinuses were pushing into my brain and pretty soon all I could hear was: “Why?... Why? blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah Why?” And then the “whys” become like finger tips drumming against my forehead, until I confessed: “I have some serious reservations about this relationship. I think about ending it.”
I was cut-off mid-thought by a lugubrious pratfall. It took some time to really grasp the situation.
Patrick had fainted.
I stared down at him dumbly. While standing in that depressing vestibule with him, I honestly had hoped he would say or do something, anything which would make me believe that our relationship held some credibility.
Unfortunately he fainted. He fainted badly. Patrick was a big cry baby and also a very bad actor.
“What is the matter with you?” He was still lumped over on his side on the landing.
“Shock,” he said.
“I will not speak to you like this. Get up.” Suddenly he leapt up, and pretty quickly for a shock victim. He started to mutter aggressively, “I can’t believe you are doing this to me. That you did this to me. That I let this happen to me again.”
He turned and started kicking at the door leading out to the roof. 1-2-3 and the door swung open violently.
I turned to leave, but before I could place my foot on the next step he threw his arm around my neck and jerked me back up on to the landing.
“Don’t leave! DON’T LEAVE. Talk to me! Just talk to MEEEE!”
He pulled me by my neck out onto the rooftop. I was able to pry his arm away, but he grabbed my wrist, pulling us both to the ground. I tried to stand up but he dragged me back down, this time pulling at my shirt sleeve till I heard it.
“Don’t leave! DON’T LEAVE! Talk to me! Just talk to MEEEE!”
I had no idea what to do, how to get away from him.
“HELP!” I screamed. “HELP! HELP! HELP!” I screamed it over and over. “HELP!” I needed help in order to leave. There was an apartment full of party goers one flight below. They must have heard me screaming, but no one else came out to the roof.
For what seemed like a very long time no one came. Finally a middle-aged man and woman, in terry cloth robes and slippers, peered out from the door to the rooftop. They looked more agitated than concerned. Patrick slowed down, but he would not let go of me.
“Please call the police,” I asked.
Patrick pulled quietly yet firmly at my wrist. The agitated woman said that the police were on their way.
“Good.”
He refused to let go. He muttered, “Please don’t have me arrested at my own party.”
At last, three policemen lumbered grumpily up to the sixth floor. Patrick immediately let go when he saw them, and cowered back. As I walked directly towards the apartment to get my coat, I had to push through a crowd of disgruntled neighbors, policemen, and curious partygoers who finally crept out of the apartment.
One of the officers asked me, “What’s going on?”
“Please help me leave,” I answered.
“Are you having a fight with your boyfriend?” he asked.
His question embarrassed me. “Please stay and help me leave.”
I made it back out of the apartment, and through the crowd that had now gathered in the hallway outside Patrick’s apartment – without looking directly at anyone. I walked quickly down six flights out onto a relatively quiet and tree-lined West 22nd Street. As I made my final step out of the building on to the street, a young man with big arms and a broad chest in a tight t-shirt came up and asked me, “Were you at the party? Did you hear somebody screaming ‘Help’?”
“That was me.”
Back in my own apartment, I closed the door quickly and locked it, even securing the chain too. I can’t remember ever using the chain before. In the bathroom, I took off my clothes. Most of the buttons were gone from the shirt. My jeans were filthy. In the small mirror I took an inventory of bruises and scrapes and scratches: fresh purple marks on my shoulder and upper right arm, scabbed knuckles, and dirt and blood spread across my palms.
I was alone. My roommate was out of town that weekend. It was past two AM. I took a pill to fall asleep.
A week later Patrick sent me a letter. It had one of those “Love” stamps with a winged cherub affixed to the front. He wrote: “I’m sorry for what happened and regret any pain and discomfort I caused. But you wounded me deeply. We climbed out on a limb together, and then you pulled away and left me stranded. I was very disappointed in your behavior...You don’t arrest someone for over-neediness and having severe abandonment issues.”
On the last page he wrote that he truly loved me although he did not know why because, “You are not my type and far from my physical ideal.”
He was the nadir of my adult dating life.
Earlier this year I saw Patrick across the room at a very crowded bar on the far west side of Chelsea. He was about a hundred feet away. He was pouting his lips and drawing his cheeks in slightly; his eyes were open too wide as they stared ahead blankly. He was attempting some sort of sexy vulnerability.
He looked like a fish.
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| December 17, 2004 |
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