It's captivating.  I first felt that captivity when I wandered into the electronics store to replace my VCR, which had swallowed my Cindy Crawford workout tape. Mundane.  I loved the trip-hop soundtrack to that tape, and had lost over 30 pounds to its hypnotic sway.  (susceptible much?)  He was the "sales"man...a closer.

 It starts with the eyes.  Sky blue.  Not my thing, but piercing nonetheless.  He closed the deal when he drifted naturally into fluent Puerto Rican inflected Spanish...amusing since we're from the Southwest, and it doesn't quite sound like the archaic New Mexico dialect I am used to,  all "Caribbean" with its sort of Portuguese drawl and incredible speed.  That "ao" sound that leaks into it, from where?  It was sort of "silly" coming from his bog Irish leonine face.  I bought a new VCR, and he called me that night.

 Eros is grandson to Chaos.  He had it in his DNA.  His dad was an angry man, scarred by an oil rig fire.  A drinking hard man in the 'ould Oirish tradition.  In Wyoming he roped 1/2 of a lovely set of twins into marriage, and she had 7 kids, while he disappeared and reappeared...oil rig to marriage bed to abandonment to death.  She prayed.  A fervent Catholic.  A feisty girl.  She "made it work".  The salesman was her youngest.  Her "rock" in the empty house, a late life baby to take away the chill.  She said, "If tears could have cried away a baby, he'd never be here."  But she was grateful in the end.

 They were a pair. Tethered not in the "Mama's boy" sort of way, but with a fierce, exclusive love.  She liked me.  She even cared for me, but when it came to his fists, she was blind.  She was the only woman I think he could keep from raging at, and she was the cause.  He struggled to be out of the womb, still, as a man of 30

You're the night porter. You become all women and you want to more and more and more erase the general anguish but you can't.  His crippled heart was drilled by Dad to be an empty cave.  "Don't be a slave to what they got between their legs, boy".  If he feels weak you bear the weight.  Exhausting work, attempting to prove empirically that the burden is an illusion and women are not the enemy.  Daddy lied.  That suitcase of blues never empties, and soon you find yourself living in it too.

Accomplices feel guilty too.  I enjoyed it, the ganja.  Floaty, faerie, gypsy chicks do.  I never thought it COULD be harmful.  But he couldn't rise without a blunt.  It took the edge off the rage.  Cooled and stoked the smoking lazy sex.  But it was the real draw.  Not a gateway but a maw.  Steals your dreams as well as nightmares.   Fifteen jobs in 7 years.  Thousands spent.  Better that than drink, he was a berserker on booze.

They're thieves. That's what it really is.  Theft.  Jealous of their influence, he exiled my family.  I threw money at our ills. Since he was a charmer in isolation, I isolated us.  We wandered the backroads, camping, hiking and fly fishing.  He was a poet in the water.  I'd never seen, and still haven't seen, anything to match that grace.  "We'll never go hungry", he said.  The brook trout from a Colorado beaver pond are manna from heaven.  Prometheus stole fire and paid.

They don't come with resumes and references.  When it started, it shocked me.  A night out with friends.  Male friends.  A "misperception", an interrogation.  Why was I talking to "that guy"...?  "What guy"? 

It dawned.  I had said "excuse me", as I squeezed past the crowd on my way to the bathroom.  It didn't even register.  His friend backed him up.  I was appalled.  Closest I came to ending it.  He seduced my decision away.   ¡Peligro, mujer... !  

I once called his ex-girlfriend.  She too was appalled.  Sent me literature from the local battered woman's shelter.  Wish I'd met her first, no?

The devil is a charming man.  Kate Bush, remember?  Talking about dancing with Hitler.   Even when it's obvious, it's not obvious.  Your escape hatches are blocked.  He's doing you a favor loving you.  And he does love you, he says with his body.   His friends love him.  He'd charm the wings off Pegasus.  He does.  

You can't imagine how bad it will get.  It culminated on the night of a "reunion" date.  After a break up of a month, he took me out to a baseball game on my birthday.  He drank at the ballpark, and invited strangers to continue to drink with us at a nearby pub.  That was a part of his M.O....charm the bystanders.  It was my birthday.  Our new "friends" bought me a cigar and shots.  I drank.  I puffed.  He went off to the bog.  Our new friends chose that time to depart.  One leaned in to give me a birthday kiss...a peck on the lips.  I laughed and laughed...till he came back, having witnessed the kiss. 

He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the bar.  No one stopped him.  No one tried.  Our new "friends" disappeared.  On the street he hit me and threw my house key across the street.  He screamed on and on about how he couldn't trust me.  My car was at his house...the pre-cellphone era...I wasn't thinking straight.  He threw me into the car and screamed, speeeding onto the freeway.  He  drove like a bat out of hell...90-plus. I sobbed and wailed and apologized.  How pathetic. 

 He swerved as one arm came off the wheel to smack me, to push me, pull me, my face, my hair.  His eyes off the road, the front end of the car bumped another car at high speed.  We spun around in a 360...facing the other way...the other car pulled over....and he drove away...hit and run.  

I was hyperventilating and sobbing...he was quiet all the way home...10 miles.  I went in, thinking I would have to sleep off some alcohol...home was 50 miles away.  It was 3 am.  I wanted to sleep on the couch.  He wasn't done screaming.  He blamed me for the accident.  He shoved me hard into the hearth.  I hit my head, but luckily, not hard enough to hurt.  I had his fingerprints as bruises on my chest the next day. 

I lay on the couch waiting to hear his sleeping breaths.  I exited and drove away in the dawn.  I shook all the way home.  

There are several  of OS posters who have written about such experiences.  The recent incident with Rihanna and Chris Brown has opened it up again, with Dr. Amy weighing in on a recent post.  I agree with her.  I helped it happen.   But what doesn't come out in any of the accounts is the sleight of hand.  Even those of us who've been there have trouble remembering the road to perdition.  The various sights and sounds along the way.  If we're fortunate, we wake up somewhere strange and come back to ourselves.  If we're fortunate, it doesn't involve children.  If we're fortunate, we never go back, but we share the road with many others, and try to be a beacon.