Hello, my name is Naomi and I have P.A.L.S. This is where I wait for the voices in my head to respond, “Hello, Naomi” in a half-bored routine drone. For those of you who have never heard of this debilitating social disease of the heart, it stands for “Pick A Loser Syndrome.”

    I have never had much luck on the dating scene, which is why I am forty eight, single, and pouring my love out to my dog and two cats. This is partly my fault. I don’t really make the effort anymore. Now and again, I’ll try, but for the most part I just go about my life as if I don’t care that I’m a solo, and many of my friends are duos, or duos with children.

    I suppose the first symptoms of P.A.L.S. revealed themselves to me when I was twenty two years old. I was living with my parents, working in a computer retail store, and only had one cat. I would spend evenings on the computer chatting on forums on AOL, playing computer games, and reading. It was a time when I’d begun to really close myself off from the world socially. Not that I was ever a social butterfly beforehand. I’ve always been better alone.

    The relationship I’d had before that (and a little after, as it went on for many years in spurts…sometimes on, sometimes off) was currently over. I don’t consider that one a case of P.A.L.S. as that relationship ended with us being dear friends. While I love him, we weren’t in love, and so it was for the better that it ended. He was my last truly good relationship, though.

    I had begun chatting with a boy who told me his name was Pat. He lived across the country from me, but we kept in communication for a while. Our discussions grew more affectionate, and he finally suggested he might take a vacation and come to Worcester, Massachusetts to meet me. I talked it over with my parents and they agreed. Reluctantly, mind you, but I was twenty two.

    We set up the basement with the sofa opened up to a bed, and allowed him to spend the weekend there.  It was two floors from my bedroom, so I felt safe. He was aware that I had a shift one of the days he’d be around, but he said he’d be fine, and he’d entertain himself while I was at work.

    The big day came and we went to the airport to pick him up. I’d had a vague idea of what he looked like. He had told me he had red hair, and let me know what he’d be wearing. I’d also told him what I looked like. This was before we could send pictures easily, before Facebook.

    When he came through the gates, he saw me and waved, I waved back. I was a little shocked at his appearance, but it didn’t bother me too much. His hair was poofy, uncombed. His beard and mustache were full, but not so full as to cover the fact that he had huge buck teeth, much like the caricature of a rabbit.

    I could have even been fine with that. Buck teeth do not a loser make, after all. What made this the first sign of P.A.L.S. came after we got back to my house. We sat down to dinner. My mother had made a nice meal, and we passed the plate to him. Pat barely touched anything, going for the mashed potato and one piece of meat. He ate slowly, and when we asked him questions or tried to engage him in conversation, he was fairly silent.

    My mother and I decided he must be shy, embarrassed to be suddenly sitting down to dinner with not just the girl he came to meet, but her parents and two brothers. This wasn’t the case, but we were trying to come up with a charitable way to explain his silence. He seemed to have no interest in most of the conversations we’d strike up. Sports, theater, movies, books… none of these held his attention. My father asked him what he planned to do when I was at work the next morning.

    That was the start of the end. His response, “I’ll take a walk.”

    “My shift is five hours. What else do you plan to do?” I was expecting him to tell me he’d read, watch television, or something similar.

    “Just walk. Maybe I can walk to where you work and meet you there at the end of your shift?” His response stunned me, but I tried to salvage the situation.

    “Then we can go out to lunch or a movie?”

    “I don’t like movies,” he said. “Maybe we can walk back after?” I think he suspected I’d get a ride to work…or walk to it.

    “No, I’ll drive us. Do you need me to give you directions? It’s kind of a long walk.”

    “That’s ok. Do you have any maps? I like maps.” That was when my parents and I glanced at each other, confused by what we were hearing. My father recovered first.

    “I have to go out and pick up some milk tonight. I guess I can grab a map while I’m out.” He stood and left the room. I’m not sure, but I think I heard him snickering as he walked out.

    When I went to bed that night, I couldn’t sleep much. I tossed and turned, trying to figure out where this bland map-addicted walking rabbit of a man was in the charming person I’d been talking to online for so long. I couldn’t figure it out. Finally, somewhere around two in the morning, I drifted off.

    Day dawned, and I got ready for work. As I came down for breakfast, he was sitting at the table, the map opened wide. He’d marked my place of employment on it, and had begun to plan his five hour walk.

    While exercise is good, this struck me as odd, and more than a little boring. That’s when I began counting the hours in my head until he went home.

    Sure enough, when I stepped out of work that afternoon, he was there. I asked him if he wanted to stop somewhere to eat. He told me that he’d stopped on his walk and picked up a loaf of bread and some ham, and had eaten. He held up the bag to show me, and I blinked. It struck me as amazing that he couldn’t even figure out that I was coming out of work and might be hungry.

    The next day and a half were torture, a barrage of strained smiles, polite attempts at conversation and whispers behind closed doors after he went to sleep…by eight thirty each night. We would spend our time apart. I’d be watching TV, reading, playing games, talking on AOL. To me, it was like I had no guest. He would take walks. From the beginning of the day until evening, he was either gone on a walk or studying his maps. It’s a miracle I’m willing to look at maps to this day.

    To be honest, I don’t remember much more about Pat than how I’ve described him. He was quite forgettable in his peculiarity. I do remember leaving him at the airport and stopping to take myself out for dinner afterwards. I nearly laughed from the relief of his absence.

    I was faced with my first P.A.L.S. related dilemma a few days later. The “Losers” who I pick fall into one of three categories: The Oblivious, The Obsolete, and The Obnoxious. Of those three types, I prefer “The Obsolete.” Those just vanish into thin air, smart enough to know that they do not stand a chance. Unfortunately, Pat was my first of “The Oblivious.” He actually contacted me on AOL, thanked me for a wonderful time, and asked if I wanted to come visit him.

    There are many ways a woman can handle this situation. She could ignore the message and hope he goes away. I find it hard to do that. Somewhere in my upbringing, I was trained that not responding is rude. I felt I had to respond. If I didn’t, I was afraid I’d keep hearing from him. I’ve learned better since then, but that’s how I was at the time.

    I could send a polite response, saying that I’d think about it. Give him hope and then just…decide not to. Mostly, I’d have done it if I thought I needed to spare his feelings. In this case, I didn’t think it would be necessary. He didn’t seem to let anything affect him. He seemed to have no emotions at all.

    I could tell him to “shove off.” I was, as I mentioned before, overly polite and that would have gone against everything I believed at the time. I couldn’t bring myself to give some snarky response, or just tell him to vanish in some rude way.

    I kept tossing over the possibilities, and falling short. My mother said I should just tell him to leave me alone. My father suggested I try the polite method. Nothing seemed right. And in the meantime, I’d received two more emails…so I’d inadvertently been doing the first response, which I strongly objected to.

    My final answer came to me as I tried to sleep two days after the most recent message. He’d asked me if I was avoiding him. I responded, “No, I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say. I’m glad you had a good time here. It was interesting meeting you. Your walks must have been fun, but I’m not much into walking distances. When with others, I prefer activities that involve everyone. You’re a nice person, but I don’t think this is going anywhere. I’m sorry.”

    That was the best I could do. When you start showing signs of P.A.L.S. you don’t have experience telling people that they’re not right. You have to go through two or three more losers to develop that talent well.

    Of course, my family has never let me live this experience down. My father said to me after I finally got Pat to stop sending me messages, “Even left in the room with him naked, your mother and I would never had to worry about him.”

    Hello, my name is Michael and I have P.A.L.S. I’ll pause here for the typical “Hello, Michael” that always comes at these meetings. The first sign of my affliction came at the early age of seventeen.

    I was living with my father and younger brother in a three bedroom apartment in Tavares, Florida. Mom had died from cancer three years earlier, and we were scraping by and trying to help each other through the difficult times. I hadn’t really been dating, as I didn’t have much time. To tell the truth, I wasn’t much of a looker either. Birth control glasses helped me see the tiny text of the typewriter we had: a relic from my grandmother’s time in the typing pools. I worked hard at school, tried every home-grown acne solution we could put together, and did exercises at the little gym at the apartment complex to try to beef up my string-cheese body frame.

    Not much worked, but I didn’t think of myself as ugly. I thought of myself as average. I was, after all, still a teenager. I didn’t allow myself to notice that all the other guys were losing their pimples two years before me, and that the muscles didn’t seem to be growing. I just kept working at it.

    I was a “joiner.” I joined band, chess club, and the school newspaper. I didn’t do sports because I had asthma. It’s cleared up, along with my acne, as I finally peaked into manhood. That didn’t happen until my junior year in college, but when it did, I was beyond overjoyed. I’d learned from my first P.A.L.S. experience that I wasn’t exactly a “winner.”

    Her name was Ronnie. For Veronica. Like in the Archie comics, Ronnie was wealthy, where my family obviously was not. Ronnie had both parents, a nice home, and a shiny new Mustang convertible. She would drive to school in it, park it across two spots, sit on the hood, and chat with the popular kids. I never really had a chance with her, and never really thought about having a chance with her. I didn’t dream of her at night. I didn’t drool over her. Maybe my hormones were as slow to develop as my acne was to disappear, but I didn’t really notice her blonde curls and serpentine green eyes until the day I was passing by her car in the parking lot.

    My face was in a book, as usual, as I trudged towards the school doors, so I almost didn’t hear her call my name. At first, I thought she was calling to some other Michael. I mean, my name isn’t exactly unique. The surprise was when she called out again.

    “Hey, Michael! Why don’tcha drop the book and c’mere?”

    “Uh, ok.” I walked over to her, a look of confusion on my brow. “What’s up?”

    “Well, I was kind of wondering if you were busy Saturday night. Mark and I split up, and I wanna take you to this party I’m going to.”

    I blinked. Then I blinked again. “You want to take me? Why?” I wasn’t good at social situations, but I knew I wasn’t in her group. I’d expected she’d ask one of her other followers. She had several. Suddenly, it came to me. She probably needed help with one of her classes. “Come on, Ronnie. If you need help stu…”

    “That’s not it!” She laughed lightly. She did have a great laugh. I think that’s when my brain began to take a coffee break. While it was out, I found myself agreeing to go to the party. I had five days to anticipate and wonder, figuring I wouldn’t see her until the date as I was only a “stand in” for the boyfriend she’d dumped, but I was wrong.

    Every day for the rest of the week, she was waiting at my locker. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes she was with a few other girls. They all acted very nice to me, and Ronnie made a point of standing next to me, touching my shoulder, and flirting with me.

    Over that week, I found out what to wear (casual), when to pick her up (6pm), and that I should bring some cash, in case we wanted to go out for munchies after. I began getting excited and told my friends in chess club about it. They all were as surprised as I was at first, but then they began ribbing me, calling me “Stud.”

    I liked that.

    On Thursday, I asked her if she wanted to go out for pizza after school. She agreed. I began to think of Ronnie as my girlfriend, and felt my ego swelling. I was dating a rich, beautiful girl! She chose me, even though I still had acne. I wondered if she would like me even better if I didn’t have glasses. I considered contact lenses for the first time. I even spoke to my father about it. He was thrilled, and made an appointment for me.

    Maybe if the appointment was before the party, things would have gone differently.

    Our pizza date went very well. She liked it the same way I did: Double pepperoni, extra cheese, thin crust well done. We talked about school, hopes, dreams and what we planned to do on spring break next month. I was going to go to Disney one of the days, but other than that I had no plans. She was going on a cruise that week with her family. I told her I’d miss her. She smiled and gave me another of her wonderful laughs.

    I didn’t know yet that she was laughing at me, not with me. It wasn’t until the party that everything that happened that week became clear, that I realized I was a victim of P.A.L.S.

    The party night arrived at last, and I got into my father’s battered up pick up, and went to pick Ronnie up. She looked amazing, as usual. She filled out the tight jeans better than any girl I’ve ever seen, and that short sleeved sweater left little to my imagination. I felt a little embarrassed in my t-shirt and old jeans, but I didn’t care. I was with Ronnie. Me, not Mark, not some other jock she knew.

    When we arrived at the party, the music surrounded us. I didn’t give too much thought to how annoyed the neighbors must be, I was too busy strutting and grinning at everyone I passed as we walked by several Mustangs, Chevys, and other brand new cars. Kids were all over the lawn and some were inside.

    My first hint that something was wrong came when we entered the house, and Ronnie told me she had to find the “powder room.” She waved towards the dining room, told me she’d find me there when she was done. I grinned and nodded, then walked in…

    To see many of my friends, and others who were of my social standing, gathered around the table and grabbing plates of food. My ego started to deflate: I mean, I thought I was special to have been invited to a popular kid party. None of my friends told me they were coming as well.

    My best friend wasn’t there, and I wondered why not. Almost all of the chess club was there. I positioned myself near my friend Neal and picked up a cup of punch.

    Neal was speaking with a short brown haired guy I’d never met. He introduced me to him, saying his name was Robert.

    “Uh, hi. Having fun?”

    “Yep. I was invited by Beth. You?” I looked towards the door, hoping Ronnie would walk in. Neal answered for me, then told me he was invited by Stacey. Stacey was almost as rich as Ronnie, but not half as pretty. That explained why Neal wasn’t bragging in chess club. I’d caught the golden ring.

    Or so I thought. This was the night when I learned that pretty outside doesn’t always mean pretty inside.

    An hour later, Ronnie hadn’t appeared. At first, I wasn’t nervous, I figured she got waylaid by one of her friends, but then it started to bother me. I decided to go hunting for her. I grabbed another cup of punch to go with mine, figuring to bring it to her, and stepped towards the door. As I did, Ronnie breezed in, with around twenty others from the “popular” group. They surrounded the group of guys around the table, and Mark stepped forward. Ronnie giggled. My heart sank.

    “It’s time for the crowning,” Mark stated.

    I knew, right then and there, that I had been played for a sucker. This was a “Loser” party, and Ronnie had brought me to be her entry. When I realized she and Mark were still together, that it had all been an elaborate ruse, I knew they planned to crown me. I should have pushed my way through the crowd and stormed through the door, but I was too shocked, too humiliated. When the crown was placed on my head, I barely flinched.

    That was the most horrible moment of my social life up to that point, but it taught me a valuable lesson. It also killed my self-image completely. On the positive side, it was the first time I truly stood up for myself.

    I put my cup of punch down, took the crown off my head. I walked right up to Ronnie, and without too much vocal quavering, I stated: “Losers are the people who hurt others for fun. This belongs to you.” And I put it squarely on her head. Then I continued, “And I brought you some punch.” That’s when I poured it down her front. As it dripped through her cleavage, ruining her sweater, I put the cup in her hand, and did what I should have done before. I left.

    The “Losers” I pick fall into three categories: “The Users,” “The Unsavories,” and the “Unbelievables.” Ronnie was my first “User.”

    For many years after Pat, my P.A.L.S. didn’t resurface. I had relationships here and there, mostly with the one who became my friend later on, but none of them stood out as either particularly good or bad. They were the types of relationships almost everyone has. Yes, some had their quirks, but none of them were beyond the normal. I went through many changes in my life, as well, so it was no wonder I hadn’t quite found “the one.”

    At one point, I’d had the silly notion that I should join the military. I wasn’t young anymore, in my late twenties, and I was a fairly emotional person. I was pretty enough, but I wasn’t very self-confident. Emotional people with low self-confidence do not do very well in the military, but that’s where I spent a little over a year. I had one fling when I was in the process of being discharged, but other than that, there was nothing during that time. After all, it isn’t exactly within the rules to date when you’re still in the training phases of the Army.

    When I got out of the service, I went back to college. When I wasn’t still with my distant boyfriend/friend of my youth, I dated another gentleman. He was a bit on the odd side, but then, so was I at the time. The relationship ended with us still being friends, but not so much on the level that my first boyfriend and I are. I’ve lost touch with him, and hope he’s doing well.

    My finances had bounced between average and not very good. I’d had apartments, some pretty horrible, some not so bad, but I was back with my parents again by the time I was thirty three years old. This wasn’t an easy situation for me, as my mother and I get along very well…when we’re not living in the same house. She and I are very good at stubborn head-butting, but when we’re apart, we’re able to see how much we love each other.

    When I was thirty one, I began playing an online game. I grew addicted to it, far more than was healthy for me. If I wasn’t at work, I was on the game, working on “leveling up.” I also talked online with others who played. One of the characters I’d met was a female elf. We spent a lot of time playing together, and at one point she confessed that she was being played by a he.

    For a year we talked as we played, and learned more about each other. He lived in California. It seems I hadn’t learned from the Pat episode, but at least this one wasn’t interested in maps or walking.

    I’d learned his name was Braydon, but he preferred to be called Don. He had a job in computers, and that he had some vacation time coming up. He decided to fly to Massachusetts to meet me. He booked a room for that one, so I didn’t have to worry my parents.

    The mini-trip went well. He was interesting, took me out to dinner once, and we spent time doing various fun activities. I enjoyed it, and regretted when he went home.

    Not long after, he suggested he was ready for a change from work, and was thinking about moving closer to me. I’d been living at home for a while at that point, so tensions between my mother and me had grown strained. Perhaps I was desperate…for a partner, for a way out of that house, I don’t know.

    I spoke with my brother, who had a house about a half hour away from me, and he offered to rent Don a room. It was kind of my brother to do this for me, and I was grateful. Don agreed and immediately began to prepare to leave.

    The weekend of his arrival was exciting to me. I kept by the phone, waiting on updates. He was driving cross country with his greyhound in his pickup, which at the time I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t insured. I found that out after he was extremely late to arrive, and called to say he’d had an accident.

    He got a rental to finish the trip, though, and arrived a day later than planned. After he unpacked into his room and set up his computer, he had me drive to pick him up from the rental place where he returned the truck.

    I should have begun to suspect this wasn’t going to work in the first week, when he didn’t bother to go looking for a vehicle or a job. Why seek a job if you can’t get to it, after all? Nor did he spend much time on dates with me. When we went out, I’d have to drive to pick him up, and we’d spend the time together…often times going dutch. Then I’d drive him home. If he had to go out to get something, or actually had a job interview, I would be his chauffeur. I began to get frustrated with him for not getting a vehicle. Not only that, but I’d discovered that he was spending all his time playing computer games. My brother told me he barely stepped out of his room.

    Thanksgiving came. My brother, Andrew, had it at his house, and my parents, other brother, and I went to join Don and Andrew for dinner. The food was good, and once the meal was done, we went into the living room to watch “King and I” until the game started. Well, all of us except Don. He returned to his room to play computer games. I tried to get him to join us, but he bowed out. This was the second signal that I ignored in my desperation.

    The third signal came when my brother and I had a fight. We were arguing so badly that my brother refused to let me enter his home. This lasted a few weeks but blew over…but in the meantime, Don made no effort to come out of the shell. He seemed not to care if I spent time with him or not, but I was upset and wanted to spend time with him, even though we had begun to argue. The computer games seemed more important to him than I, but still I blinded myself and pressed on.

    I arranged with my parents for him to move into our basement, which he did. A week later, I told him I wasn’t going to shuttle him around anymore. If he wanted to go somewhere, he had to get a new vehicle. He’d been without a car for at least five months by that point, and that was too many.

    He was on the computer playing games all the time. I kept trying to get him to spend time with me, but it was always the game. And yet, I still kept fooling myself. My interest in computer games started shrinking now, though, which was a good thing. My mother showed me an audition notice for a local theater, and I snatched the opportunity. It was a chance to get out and do something, and I love being on stage. I went and was cast.

    Don continued to play his games, but the strain on my parents was getting worse, and mostly because of the arguments between Don and me. I should have listened to my mother, who kept trying to get me to see the light and kick Don out of my life, but I kept on in my stubborn determination. She once told me something that I will remember as solid truth for the rest of my life:

    “It is better to be lonely alone than lonely with someone else.”

    Back then, though, I didn’t want to listen. Don had that greyhound, so there weren’t many apartments which would allow us in, so we began looking for a house. I didn’t have good credit, but I had cash put aside, so we agreed I’d handle the down payment, and then we’d split the furniture costs, and he’d put his name on the mortgage.

    This was a major mistake, of course, but I didn’t know that at the time. We continued to house hunt and finally found a nice three bedroom in Hudson. The sale was made and we moved in together. For the first three months, we shared the main bedroom…but as I finally began to realize he was more interested in playing his computer games than me, I quietly moved myself into the second bedroom.

    He made no effort to stop me, even though this was the end of our romantic relationship. As I’d put down all of the down payment, and most of the furniture money, I couldn’t afford to move out, so we continued on as roommates rather than partners.

    This could have been fine, if he wasn’t emotionally abusing me all along. Before I moved out of the master bedroom, I’d unearthed a cache of porn CDs. While I’m aware that most men indulge in porn, and wouldn’t mind if he’d been indulging a little, fifty porn CDs was too much for me to bear. I asked him to get rid of them, and after another heated argument, he supposedly complied.

    Now, I should pause to tell you about his character. He was a chronic liar, but very good at convincing people who didn’t know him that he was telling the truth. This was mostly because the moment it tumbled out of his lips, he completely believed it was the truth, no matter how ridiculous it was.

    He told me he got rid of the porn. Lies.

    He told me he loved me. Lies.

    He told me he’d moved to be near me. Lies. Lies, lies, lies. Everything that tumbled out of his mouth was a lie, it seemed. If he’d been given a choice to tell the truth and get a million dollars or lie and have to pay a million dollars, he’d choose to lie.

    This was one of the main reasons I fought with him. His lies, and how he treated me like I was nothing. We would fight, and afterwards, he’d come and give me something sweet: A doll, some chocolate, some little trinket, and suddenly everything would be all better. Until the next time.

    A few months after I moved out of his room, I was looking for something in the garage, and I stumbled across the binder of porn CDs. I didn’t mention it then, because we were no longer dating. But it confirmed he’d lied to me yet again.

    Our fights grew in number, even as we adopted more pets. A beautiful but undisciplined brindle dog, three cats. The cats became mine, naturally. He kept the dogs. Even the name of my favorite cat, the one I still have with me, is a reminder of him. Perhaps I should have changed it, but by then I was used to calling the cat Rogue.

    A year and a half after we had moved into the house, we had such a horrific fight that the neighbors called the police on us. At the time, I’d been chewing my nails down to the bone and wasn’t putting on fake nails, so the fingertips were blunt. I was a wreck, fully in pattern of the abused woman thinking that everything was going to be better once things cooled down, because it “always was.” That’s what I told the police when they asked me if I wanted to press charges.

    When they asked him, he stayed true to his nature and lied. He showed them scratches he had from playing with the cats, marks I could not have in any way made on him, and told them that I had done that to him. The police arrested me based upon this lie. He even went so far as to take out a restraining order, which he immediately violated after I’d paid my bail with help of my cousin, and spent money to stay at a hotel while my parents came to tell me how this was my own fault for staying with him.

    They were right, but I was not willing to move back in with my parents. I was still stubborn, despite all the horrors I’d gone through. But wait, this isn’t the worst of the story. During this process he’d claimed the house was his, alone. This was a shock to me, as I’d put so much money down on the house, and I didn’t have any way to recover it. Finally, he dropped charges, rescinded the restraining order, admitted to me that he’d lied, gave yet another hollow apology and a gift, and I moved back in, even less able financially to move out than before.

    During the next year and a half we continued to argue and fight, but the police weren’t called back again. His computer broke, and I foolishly told him that he could use mine until he got a new one, under three conditions: First, if I wanted to use it, he had to immediately sacrifice it. Second, no downloading anything, and third, no porn.

    The very next morning, I woke up and headed to my computer to check some sites. He was showering at the time, getting ready to go to his job. I pulled up my browser to find the history completely cleared. I knew, instantly, that he’d been on porn sites and was trying to cover his tracks. So when he stepped into the room, I said:

    “Were you on porn sites?” More a statement than a question, of course.

    “No.”

    “Don. You were on porn sites. I know you were.”

    He got indignant. “How come you never trust me? You’re always accusing me of lying! I wasn’t on porn sites!” Then he stormed off and left for work. In the meantime, I pulled up the temporary internet sites, and saw line after line of porn sites he’d been to. I made a screenshot, attached it to an email, and sent it to him at work, labeled “This is why Naomi does not trust Don.”

    After cleaning out the temporary internet files completely, clearing my browser cache on all browsers I used, I continued on my day. He’d also downloaded realplayer, so he could view the porn videos. I uninstalled that, as well.

    The next morning, I opened the browser, and there was his porn site, not even hidden. When I confronted him about it he had the gall to say that I must have pulled it up. And realplayer was back on my machine. I cleared it all out, password protected my machine both at the system level and the windows level, and watched for the next day when he suddenly decided it was time to buy himself a new computer.

    We had been living and fighting together for three years when the final straw, and the most horrific part of that relationship happened. I was working for a direct mail newspaper during the day and had just begun rehearsals for a show I was in. It was winter, and a bit snowy. Not pleasant weather to drive through, but I was doing fine with it.

    During this time I’d renewed contact with two angels of women, older than me, who contracted to the newspaper. We’d talked often over the year and I’d let them know of my situation. They finally told me that they had an attic apartment, and if I wanted to move into it, I could. I snatched the offer as fast as I could, grateful then as I am today. Those women are truly some of the best specimens of humankind I’ve ever known.

    I got the first load of things from the house while Don was at home: My computer, bed, a tiny bit of furniture, and some of my clothes. My RAV4 could only hold so much, and I didn’t have the money for a moving company.

    When I arrived for the second load, he was there at his computer with my electric blanket on his lap. I demanded the electric blanket, as I was going to need it, but he refused. I’d only gotten a few things into the car, but the fight began…the nastiest yet. During the argument, he threatened to kill me, so I grabbed the phone and hastily dialed 911.

    I learned several things that evening. First is that I am no good in a physical fight. Despite having had training in the Army, I freeze up, and don’t do anything until it’s too late.

    The second thing I learned is that the police are not allowed to pay attention when you say “Never mind.” So when I hung up the phone, and the fight renewed, things were looking bad for me. When the police burst in, they trained their guns on the brindle dog and on Don, whose arm was locked tightly around my throat. I was close to passing out when that happened, but he loosened his grip enough when they threatened to shoot the dog if he didn’t stop it from barking that I was able to break free and get the dog closed in the bedroom.

    Don was arrested, and they photographed the horrible red marks around my throat. The next day at the play rehearsal I was very hoarse, told them I wasn’t going to be able to speak loudly.

    Meanwhile, in the whole horror of it, even though I refused to go back to the house for any more of my possessions, about 90 percent of what I owned, in fact, I was still acting like the abused woman. I actually begged my parents to bail him out, because he had nobody to call. I know, I know. Stupid, but I never claimed to be smart about my P.A.L.S.

    He never had to spend a day out of his house. He never had to pay a cent for it. And he never really apologized. The last I heard from him is when I told him that if he wanted to speak to me, he could do it through his lawyer.

    I know people might wonder why I didn’t press charges. It’s because of the third thing I learned. Even if he was convicted, he’d only get two years behind bars. That wouldn’t do anything except make him angry. Besides being a chronic liar, Don was lazy. So lazy that if he didn’t get any provocation, he would never come after me. But get him angry, and he’d probably have hunted me down.

    It took me many years to recover from that, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I know I cannot forgive him, and I’m not really sure I believe in Karma. I mean, I happened to stumble over his profile on Facebook one time. The bastard is married, has a great job, and still has his house.

    Me? I didn’t start looking for another date until somewhere in 2004, after I’d moved down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At first, it was recovery. Then it was a case of picking the strangest losers I could have. What else can one expect from someone with as severe a case of P.A.L.S. as I have?