Chapter 18 Karma #3
I got up and followed him out the door like the lost puppy I was.
That night back at his house, he loved me down—again.
It was almost like a reward for letting him take his frustrations out on me.
I was allowing him to treat me this way.
I had never been so mindfucked before, and I couldn’t stop myself from allowing him to treat me like I was nothing.
I know now that abuse changes your brain and your nervous system.
That I’d started to see myself as making some kind of fair trade—the intensity of his love and attraction in exchange for broken bones and broken dignity.
Being wanted and needed like that created some kind of chemical high in me that I’d keep on chasing, no matter what the crash felt like.
And what’s more: It gave me some kind of purpose to try to save him. For years, improving the men I loved had given me some kind of direction. Karma wasn’t any different, just more extreme.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and all I wanted to do was help him.
* * *
AFTER THAT NIGHT WITH THE gun, Karma wanted to be able to keep an eye on me, so he told me he wanted to live together. With Cindy. It still sounded fucking weird to me, but he told me it was now nonnegotiable.
“We’ll just give her her own room in the new place,” he said. Why not? It wasn’t too different from our current arrangement, and I was willing to try—and I could keep even more of an eye on the two of them.
So we moved into a big house together: Karma and me in the master bedroom, Cindy down the hall, and now Karma’s daughter, too, when she came to visit.
I’m still close with his daughter and her mom to this day—they’re the sweetest angels and the biggest blessing to come out of that relationship—besides all the lessons I needed to learn.
We were like Three’s Company except he was no Jack Tripper—and this arrangement went on for three years.
Let me tell you, the minute we moved in together is when the sitcom ended.
I was still working as a call girl for a service off and on, and by then, Karma didn’t like me going to the casino bars to fish unless he was there gambling and could keep an eye on me.
When working girls are fishing, you have to have complete focus to suss out undercover cops.
And with Karma staring my way, I couldn’t keep my head in the game.
I’d go up to the hotel room, cash out, and come back down, exhausted and wanting a shower more than anything in the world. But that’s when the real work would start, because I then had to withstand Karma’s guilt trips.
“I can’t believe you just fucking did that,” he’d yell from the driver’s seat.
“You fucking liked it, didn’t you?” I was so mentally drained from the fight or flight I felt in the hotel room, never knowing if the john was an undercover cop or a hooker killer—these were just the kinds of things any of us working girls juggled all the time.
The fear was so commonplace, it was basically invisible.
Then I’d have to come down and talk him off a ledge.
But I told him the same thing I told all the men I was with: I will never give up my independence for you.
It was our biggest conflict, but I held my ground.
Sure, we had other money coming in. It turned out that my gangster boss was more small-time than he claimed.
Cindy would give Karma her dad’s money to buy drugs and flip them—weed, molly, and cocaine.
But any money he did make as a half-assed drug dealer went fast—he was out spending hand over fist on strippers, bottles, and club life.
No fucking way I was about to stop working.
But I wasn’t about to leave him either. Something kept me with Karma. As with all abusive relationships, most of the time things weren’t bad. We fought all the time, but back then, fighting was still my love language. I’d grown up watching my parents argue all the time. It was love.
And I wanted to see his darkness. I wanted to experience his demons, because I thought they played well with mine. But they say that if you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. And I charged straight into the flames anytime I talked back and stood up to him, just to feel the pain.
One night, I was ready to fight. I was coming off a bender and was in a mood, so I started sending pissed-off texts to him while he was at the gym. Before he could reply, I turned my cell off. I figured when he got home, we’d probably fuck and call it a day.
I accidentally fell asleep with the bedroom door locked—but Karma came home and walked through the door like the Kool-Aid man.
He yanked me off the bed and got behind me in UFC fighter pose, locking his arms around my neck.
I was screaming and kicking and fighting as hard as I could. I knew what was about to come next.
He choked me until my body went numb and everything went black. I came to with him slapping my face and yelling at me to wake up. I started screaming, which only set him off again. He climbed behind me and choked me unconscious again.
The third time I woke up, I couldn’t scream. I could feel my throat crack. Instead of running from him, I froze.
I hadn’t resented him until that moment.
You fucking choked me out like I’m a grown-ass man and fucked my voice up?
I’d finally seen the depths of his darkness—the darkness I’d drawn out in some hope I could control it.
Maybe I was a glutton for punishment. Or maybe part of me was hoping what I knew about him wasn’t true.
But I finally accepted that I couldn’t keep lying to myself: This man could kill me.
He would kill me. If I stayed, I would die.
I had to start plotting an escape. The next day I woke up with my throat on fire.
He made sure to stay by my side for a couple of weeks so I wouldn’t go to the hospital—and when he couldn’t watch me himself, he made sure Cindy was there keeping tabs and reporting back at all times.
I didn’t care. I knew I was leaving, I just didn’t know how.
And all the anger and rage I felt inside—I just let it keep festering.
I had gotten myself into this shit. I was going to get myself out.
I knew something was wrong with my throat and vocal cords, but he would laugh and tell me I was crazy.
I could feel it and hear it, and to this day, I still can’t scream, and I can’t hit certain notes when I sing.
Years out of the relationship, I finally saw a doctor who told me my larynx was cracked and my vocal cords were damaged because of that night of abuse.
But if you ask him, he’ll say he never did a thing.
* * *
I’D GOTTEN VERY GOOD AT pretending I wasn’t living in hell by a few years in.
By then, the abuse was constant and everyone around us knew.
The passion we once had was gone. I hated Karma.
I was becoming a shell of the person I once was.
I was quiet. I was in fight-or-flight mode at all times.
I wanted to get away, anywhere where he wasn’t.
He could feel how distant I was becoming.
If I looked at a bartender the wrong way, Karma would take me to the car to scream at me and then slam my face down into the gear shift to leave me with a black eye. When I would show him the next day, he would simply say, “I didn’t do that.” It wasn’t even worth arguing.
But one night changed everything—and scared me into the spiritual awakening I now live by.
We were in a taxi together after another night out drinking when we pulled up at Spearmint Rhino.
“Why the fuck are we here?” Karma had fucked every single girl in that strip club. He was a big old fucking trick—not the boss he pretended to be, and the resentment grew more and more as time went on. Add it to the list, actually.
“I want to be here,” he said.
“I don’t want to be at a club on Christmas Eve with a bunch of girls you’ve fu—”
Before I could get the words out, he coldcocked me right in my eye.
It instantly swelled up, but he kept hitting.
He told the cabdriver to take us home and went on beating the shit out of me.
He sat on top of me and beat me like I was a man.
I went in and out of consciousness, blacking out and coming to and blacking out when he punched again.
To this day if you ask him about this incident, he will tell you he “never hit me with a closed fist.” Does that even matter?
One thing I’ll never forget is the two people in the taxi with us: some massive dude in the front seat—he was so big his head reached the roof of the car—and the driver. I just kept looking up at them as I was being hit and choked and thinking, Why aren’t they helping me?
But they just looked straight ahead. I could see the pain on the passenger’s face, but he didn’t make a move to help. We pulled up in front of my house and Karma got out.
“Please take off,” I begged the driver. “He’s going to kill me.
Go, go, go.” I was crying and scared for my life, but the driver forced me out of the car, and the passenger had disappeared.
I guess the driver was afraid of what Karma would do to them.
But still, I couldn’t believe he hadn’t locked his doors and sped off with me.
Karma grabbed me by my hair and dragged me into the house like a caveman. He threw me on the pool table and started strangling me. I’d black out, and then he’d slap me awake.
“Wake up, you stupid fucking bitch,” he’d yell, and then he’d strangle me some more, over and over again. Finally, after what felt like hours, I heard, “Leave her alone!”
It was Cindy, running down the stairs and screaming.
I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening, but she saw he was going to kill me.
So he dropped me and went to chase after her.
This is how it usually went. If she interrupted him beating me up, he’d beat the shit out of her, and vice versa.
That night, I lay there on the pool table in shock, waiting for everything to end.
Eventually, we ended up going to sleep together. All I knew was he wasn’t hitting me or strangling me, and I just needed to rest so I could wake up and make a plan.
About a half hour later, there was a pounding on the door. The cabdriver who had abandoned me for dead had called the police—thanks, you fucking asshole—and Cindy let them in. Any down-ass bitch would know you don’t answer the fucking door when cops come knocking.
They took one look at me and immediately arrested Karma.
When they asked what had happened, I told them I got jumped at the strip club.
I didn’t want Karma to go to jail. It was my job to protect him—and if I didn’t protect him, he’d beat my ass when he got out of jail anyway.
I was so deep in rationalization. This was all a nightmare.
They hauled Karma off to jail, and I lay in bed for two days while he was gone, trying to pull myself together.
I couldn’t even go make money if I wanted to.
My face was mangled. Every blood vessel in my eyes had burst from being strangled.
One eye was completely swollen shut, and the black rings around them were the deepest and darkest I’d ever had.
It looked like my nose was broken. I didn’t have a dollar to my name.
Looking in the mirror was devastating. Karma had stolen the one thing I had relied on my entire life, which was my looks.
When I stared back at myself, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
I didn’t know if my face would ever return to the face I loved.
All I knew was that Karma was not going to hurt me again. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t survive.
Later, when the dust had settled, I asked Karma about the huge dude in the passenger seat of the taxi.
“It was just three of us, Bunnie,” he said. “You, me, and the driver.”
I racked my brain. To this day I can see him clearly, and one day it just came to me.
He had to be my guardian angel. He showed up in that car to let me know I was going to be okay.
He didn’t step between me and Karma, but when I’d felt so alone and afraid, he was there to comfort me.
He didn’t do anything to help me not because God was abandoning me, but because he knew I could help myself, and it was his way of telling me that I was worthy of protecting—and that I could protect myself.
He was going to give me the strength I needed.
Then I knew for sure: The spiritual world is only separated from ours by a thin veil. You just gotta believe.