Stephen Dixon: All Gone

It’s not that.

Then good reading.

And you, sweet dreams.

My wife beats me up. Occasionally. I’m a relatively small man so she can beat me up without being afraid I’m going to beat her up back. Oh, I hit her back. Hard as I can sometimes. I got to protect myself. I’m a peaceful man and peace-loving, all that, but sometimes she gets so mad, and often over what seems the smallest thing, that she’s got to take it out on something, and after she takes it out on something — a glass against the floor, tearing a piece of cloth apart — she takes it out on me. That’s when I got to defend myself. I try all ways. First verbally. That sometimes works, but not usually. Then when she starts challenging me more, I walk away but she usually follows me wherever I go. When she starts swinging I try holding up my arms and deflecting her blows, but can’t deflect all of them and even the ones I do deflect hurt my hands and arms.

That’s when I got to stop being so peaceful and start defending myself. I hit back. I try for the blow that will incapacitate her without harming her, like in the arm where it’ll hurt so much she can’t swing it, but that one rarely works as my aim is never that good. When she really gets violent and uncontrollable I have to hit back hard and even aim for her belly or head. But she’s much bigger than me and the harder I hit back the harder she hits me and because she hits harder than me and I’m smaller and can never get as ferocious as her, her hitting hurts me much more than mine does her.

I’ve gone to court about her beating me up. First time they wouldn’t even hear me. Second time I made sure to come with X-rays and my doctor’s report and the judge said “You’re pressing assault charges against your wife? Where is the woman?” My wife stood up.

“Do you beat this man as he says?” Several people in the courtroom laughed and he banged his gavel for them to shut up. “No,” she said. “That’s a filthy lie,” I said.

“Steady there, sir,” the judge said, “or I’ll get you for contempt.”

“All I’m saying, Your Honor, is that she overpowers me and at times has nearly knocked me out. I never start the fights. I do everything I can to avoid and then stop them. This wound here — the one above my eye? She gave me that one two days ago.”

“What about the one over my eye?” my wife shouted. “That was in self-defense.”

“Hell it was. You started it. You hit me. You tried to kill me so I swung back.”

“If you don’t like the treatment you get from your husband,” the judge said, “why don’t you move out?”

“Because I love him and all the other times he treats me very well.”

“And if you don’t like the treatment you say you get from her, why don’t you move out?”

“I have,” I said. “But for one reason or another I always go back. Probably this time I can’t, or as long as she’s still there or at least till something can be done about her. Because why should I move out for good and give away everything we own to her? And I like my apartment. It’s cheap and cozy and where I live. If anyone’s to move out, it should be her. She’s the one beating me up, not the reverse.”

“What are you asking of this court?”

“This is the Family Court, right? So if it wants us to stay a family then I want you to issue what I heard’s called an order of protection prohibiting her from hitting me. That way I can move back with her. But if I come in here again from a beating then I want another order of protection issued forcing her to leave our apartment and never to try and see me again. If she still does after that and strikes me, then I want the court to next time get me victim’s compensation for her or stick her in jail, since maybe those are the only things that will stop her from attacking me if the orders of protection don’t.”

“I’m sorry but your petition’s denied. For one reason, you’ve no witness to the alleged beating and it seems that she could have just as easily pressed assault charges or asked for an order of protection against you. Secondly, this court doesn’t like to interfere in domestic disputes except of the most serious kind and then mostly when it’s the child or wife who gets battered by a parent or spouse. Even if your assault charge is true, I wouldn’t think you’d come to this court to resolve the problem but would deal with it as a man in the privacy of your home, or just move out if you’re unable to remedy things.”

I tried to explain. “She’s bigger than me,” etcetera. “I’ll end up getting killed by her if I hit her any harder than I already do to protect myself,” but the judge started to laugh a little along with most of the courtroom.

I always take a hotel room after a bad beating and have always moved back. She sends me flowers and love letters and poems. I’ve heard of men batterers doing some of those things to get their wives back and there have been TV programs on it also — fictional and documentary and in the news — so maybe that’s where she got the idea of those love gifts and romantic apologetic phone calls, though I’m almost sure she was sincere about them each of those last times.

But after a few weeks of this she always convinces me she’ll never hit me again and, if anything, just a little love tap but nothing much harder than that. And when I go back, out of loneliness also, we usually have a normal life together for a few months. Kindness and sympathy and affection and even deep feelings and passion for one another, before something would happen. She’d ask me, as she did the last time, if I saw the thing she was searching for in the apartment, and if I said something just a little bit contentious like “Why should I?” or “You’re always losing things around the house,” as I might be very tired or just not feeling too good that day myself, she’d come right back with something like “Listen, I don’t want to get into an argument about it. All I asked was if you saw it and if you didn’t, don’t give me any of that cynical crap back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re always sorry. Just don’t do it again.”

“I’m not always sorry and it’s possible I might do it again. I’m just sorry this time for having said it and maybe making you even angrier. Because I can see you’re in a foul mood.”

“I’ll really be in a foul mood if you keep that cynical chattering up.”

“I’m not cynically chattering. Maybe the first thing I said was snappy, which I apologize for, but I’m now speaking reasonably to you. Anyway, when you’re in a bad mood like this almost nothing will get you out of it, so mind if we drop the subject?”

“Yes I mind — a lot. I want to get this thing out into the open once and for all.”

“Get what? You’re just baiting me, can’t you see? I haven’t got enough scars on my face to let you know why I don’t want to start up with you again?”

“You have to bring that up? My hitting you when you always started those fights, that’s what argument you’re going to use?”

“Forget it, this is ridiculous,” and I go into the bedroom. She follows me.

“You’re not going to stop I see,” I say.

“No I’m not. I want to know why you had to bring up the fights when that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“I know it’s not in your mind. But it’s what always happens when you get excited like this. You get into some wild emotional or mental state or both that winds up with you physically lashing out at me uncontrollably.”

“Oh and you’re in such perfect control. You’re so perfectly normal. So damn sensitive and controlled.”

“Those used to be qualities you liked in me. Just a few weeks ago you said it too.”