Love Me, Make Me Cry

    Total domination was the name of his game; power and aggression were his master skills.  I still remember those full lips snarling as we made love; his eyes closed as he allowed his lust to take over.  Lights from the street lights outside our windows would stream in at night, catching in his cinnamon lashes and running it's magic fingers through his strawberry blond hair.  These were the only times that I ever witnessed him relinquishing any measure of control.  These were the moments that I just couldn't seem to remember that I hated him. 
    The days were hot and steamy; the one hundred degree temperatures fraying nerves and sparking his temper.  The nights were sweat and passion, a touch of rage in our every stroke and need mingling with my tears..  Sex..  Sex.. Sex.  That pale Irish body made me shiver, pale freckles on pale skin..  Longing and life.  I would die for him; I loved to cry for him.
    I used to love the attention that I would get when we went places together, even if the looks were sometimes looks of pity rather then envy.  Everybody knew that he was cruel; everyone knew that he would eventually kill me.  He was that scary when he was high, or if he just had a bad day.  I didn't care- look who I'm with!  Hit me, love me, fuck me every day.  Rather sordid pathetic raw powerful nasty tasty...  I wouldn't do it again, but would never give up the memories.
    The drugs were just a bonus; I know that everyone thought this was the reason that I tolerated him hurting me.  But it wasn't the drugs, not in the beginning at least.  I was as addicted to him as I was the needle.  Say the word "needle" to anyone, even people that use dope, and most will cringe.  The curiosity and revulsion is a natural response to the image of slamming something so mystical and poisonous into your vein.  Watching your own blood burst into a full syringe as you do a "check" to be sure that you're in the vein makes your skin itch for that fix; the spit in your mouth where your mouth is watering makes you want to vomit for your weakness.  Needle, spike, rig- they're all different words for the same thing.  Drugs= power= lust= addiction.
    We spent our single Christmas in a squat that everyone had forgotten with a tiny Christmas tree that someone had thrown away and I had found to bring "home".  I use the word "home" loosely; it was a home if you consider a worn-out mattress on the floor and the stolen U-Haul packing blankets covering the windows a home.  He was there, though, and that was what counted.  That was the night that I left him, the night that he pulled a gun on me.  He had done this before but that night I remember the feeling that I had in the pit of my stomach as I gazed up at him over the top of the barrel, the ways that his eyes looked.  I was so high that I couldn't even talk, much less beg, but I saw the emptiness inside of him.  Somebody had used all of him up long before I had met him; all he'd given to me were the leftovers.  I had let a man nearly kill me in the name of love, and what that he had been giving me all this time were the scraps and threads of humanity that he hadn't seen fit to bestow upon anyone else. 
    In that moment, a moment frozen, I nearly laughed, for the spell was broken.  When he passed out that night I filled my backpack with all that it would hold and baptized his sleeping form and the stained mattress with lighter fluid.  I dropped his lit zippo, and without a glance behind me I walked out of the house and into a new life.