My
Gal Patty
Patty called
last night looking for someone to save her. Since I gave her the poem for
Christmas, I've undergone a change in status. I'm no longer Pauly’s driver,
stopping over as his side kick as he picked up his weekly dose of pot.
There was a
time when I could have fallen for her-- more out of need than any tender
feelings, a lonely man sitting in the middle of
As it is, she
called, offering me one last chance to change my mind before she wandered
elsewhere. I still fear her and declined again. Part of its the drug she's
addicted to. Part of it is the situation, her man beating her nightly making
escape essential. I don't know all the details. But apparently it has been
going on for some time and I'm not equipped to handle it either.
I wanted to
tell her about my own dim past, about how I was just like her man. Maybe she
sensed it and it was for that reason she sought me instead of another more
stable human being-- she only able to feel comfortable about men with that
particular weakness. I always excused it with words such as frustration and
desperation. But there was never really an excuse. Nothing really explains the
animal part of me which had allowed such violence to occur. Nothing explained
the clench-toothed fist fights in
Maybe it was
my own craving for manhood. I walked the streets like Joe citizen eating
society's shit with my potatoes. But at home when I sat down in a family
situation, I needed to prove I was king and could control everything within the
four walls I called mine. Maybe it was the drugs I was taking, too, twisting me
out of shape. I don't know. But if Patty is looking for answers in me, she's
wrong. She has to find them in herself-- what makes men like me attractive to
her and how she can avoid us in the future.
And maybe
I've survived my own brutality, but I'm scared to move back into a situation
which might test my mettle.