Marlboro smoke

I smoked cigarettes that night. Lots of them, sitting on the couch. His couch, our couch. 

He wasn’t there. Had to finish stuff up at the apartment -- probably was doing lots of coke up at the apartment. I missed him like crazy. The new apartment was big, but weird. It was bigger than I should’ve been able to afford, and even though my mom helped me get the place, I felt like I’d made it. 

There was a TV too -- the couch was a pullout, or maybe the bed was available too, but  I was too scared to sleep in the bed alone, either way I slept with the TV on and Mad Men blaring in the background. 

Mad Men is a smoking show. All the characters smoke all the time, it’s ridiculously bad for nicotine cravings. God, they all look so hot doing it. 

I didn’t intend to smoke cigarettes in the new apartment, but after episode 2, I gave in — cleaning our apartment in Marlboro smoke, liiiggghhttt.  

That first night I missed him so bad that I ran up to him like a little girl in the morning. He was annoyed. He was older, 11 years older to be exact. Sometimes my youth aroused him, sometimes he was annoyed. That morning I didn’t care, I jumped up and hugged him like my life depended on it. I think I wanted my life to depend on it. A night of watching Mad Men and a life lived internalizing the patriarchy had convinced me that I wanted to need my husband. That I wanted to exist in a household where I cleaned, and shopped, and cooked, and made the money, and paid the rent. All things expected of me. 

He wasn’t like that before, but as soon as he stepped through those apartment doors, he stopped paying rent. 

But that night on the couch, which I had opened up into a daybed I lay flat on my back with all the windows open. It was November, and the air was cold in the apartment, but the windows had to stay open. I liked the way the cool breeze licked my toes, how it took the nasty smoke out with it once it had finished caressing my face and running its fingers through my hair. 

The smoke tasted like coffee and mint gum after a swift fuck in the morning. I felt lucky to have decided who I would get to fuck each morning. I really loved him and wanted to be wanted. I was, I thought. I was lucky, and laughed at Betty Draper as she was continually unwanted. I sent him a text

“How’s it going? I miss you”

But I didn’t hear back. Hours passed, but still I didn’t hear back. 

I made it all the way to season 3 before I went to sleep on the couch. Cigarette butts exploding out of the ashtray. I think there was a light smile on my mouth. 

That apartment was not good, together we got bad within it. Things got stressful, and we faltered within it. 

My husband was not allowed to be here. He had been invited (via education visa), but he had overstayed. Now he coudn’t leave, or he woud have to wait forever to come back. That’s hard.Limitations are hard, and I didn’t want him to have any.

There was a lawyer, a nice one. They both had Hungarian in them. She was extremely nice, but she knew her stuff, and she was older than him, and she was a woman. The problems started as soon as the meeting did. 

Everything was going well, but once the yelling started, it stopped. She looked at me quick, not for long, quick. She was a lawyer, and when she looked there was concern on her face. And she looked at me quick, but her thoughts were direct, instantaneous. What is he doing to you when no one is around?

I couldn’t understand why he was behaving mean like this — a huge asshole — when he is so close, only a few steps away, from being able to apply for a green card.  He was so fucking close, and then he was so fucking far, because he had taken it out from behind closed doors. 

As I looked at him in that sun speckled parking lot at 11:30am on a Wednesday. I realized, for the first time, that I was in danger.

I wasn’t happy — I was in doubt. I looked at him, heard the words he was saying enough to respond, but I couldn’t see him. I could only see him 

throwing me up against the wall 

screaming threats

Holding me down in bed in the morning, making me late 

encouraging me to do just one more line of cocaine 

and then ignoring me when my heart wouldn't stop beating. 

His anger grew in that apartment -- we were always fighting even though the apartment stayed the same. The same beauty, it had been on my first night on that couch. 

Except that I was alone. I was alone in the house, on that first night. I was alone on the couch. And even though I was longing, and would have been awful sad if I wasn’t anyone's wife, it was significantly better than being his wife. 

I know what I did wrong - I ended things before he could get a Green Card. I damned him for more life on the edge, on the brink. I left him scared. 

I didn’t want that either, I felt guilty, I blamed myself for protecting myself. 

It felt Iike a crime to condemn someone to a life in Serbia.

I loved him, I swear, I wanted things for him, I did. But the fighting was so bad, and al we ever did together was drugs. It was always about Cocaine with him. It was starting to be all about panic attacks with me. 

There was one night — a few months into living there — when my friend came over. My husband was a bartender, and was away at night. My friend was over, my husband was gone, and we got to digging. It didn’t take long before we found what we wanted, so much drugs. I mean many, and wads of cash too, out in the open, no wallet. 

We took schrooms and Cocaine too — there was enough that it was clear he was selling — and I was scared. Because that meant there was a gun in my house that I didn’t know about. 

We ate some schrooms — I got more scared, and left. Spent the night at my boyfriends’. A man who I had met when things had gotten bad. A man who I ran away to. A man who wasn’t any better than the one I ran away from. A man who dumped me a few weeks after I got divorced. 

My husband also dumped me when we got divorced, after laughing in my face, outside the courthouse, as I threw up beecause I had been slipped the date rape drug the night before. 

When we said goodbye, I wanted to go with him. The emotion was mixed, confused. It invalidated me. 

But that was the good part. That was before the escalation; before the weeks he spent begging for me back.

That was before my ex husband decided he wanted to kill me, or maybe he already had. 

Two months later my ex-husband took my life. He tried it; I survived it, but that was only after. 

After I had run through the alleyways. After I had met him at the subway. 

After I had made it back into my apartment

After I had shared two hits of a blunt with him. 

After I had sat on my bed.

After he had turned to me with rage.

After I had cried, softly. 

After he had pushed me up against a wall.

After the pain in my neck took hold and I wailed into the night.

After he had wrapped his fingers around my throat. 

After I had worked for years to rehab my body and my mind back into the place it used to be. 

After he had squeezed, and pushed, hoping my head would pop off its spot.

I am not happy anymore. My safety is conditional when it’s not obsolete. 

I have a new couch now, and it’s not the same type. 

As the one I had the privilege of smoking on, while I listened to the low tones of the 1960s, watched smoke curl up and away into the crisp November air while I waited for my love to return home.