Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (34 page)

It broke my heart to see her like this. She
was such a sweetheart, with such a great personality, and so much
potential. She used to run a karaoke club a few years ago. She had
a great voice and had auditioned for American Idol. She had even
sung as the opening act for Rick Ross at a NASCAR race. And now
here she was, nothing more than a sad shadow of her former self,
sucking dick on Palm Beach, and spreading her legs for any random
thug at a trap house on Ione Avenue.

Whenever she couldn't take it anymore, and
she needed to get away from her miserable life for a few hours, she
asked me to come pick her up. We'd go to the beach together, or to
the little ice cream shop her dad used to take her to, when she was
little. We watched movies at my place, and went out to eat. She
told me my condo was the only place where she felt truly safe, and
that being around me was the only time she felt like a normal human
being and not just a piece of shit. She said I was her only real
friend. The sad part was, she was my only real friend, too.

Every time we hung out together, she teared
up when she told me how much she hated her life, and how badly she
wanted to get away from it all. But she just couldn't quit
drugs.

Over the years, Haley spent the night at my
place many times, but in the beginning it was hard to get her to
sleep in bed. She reminded me of a skittish animal. She had been
raped, groped in her sleep, and used by so many guys, that a bed
had become a scary place for her. To her, a bed was not a place of
rest, but a place of torment. She preferred the couch. She was used
to sleeping with one eye open, always with her razor-sharp box
cutter within easy reach.

She had to use that box cutter a few times
to defend herself. One time a guy tried to rape her, and she
stabbed him in his throat. Another time, 2 large Mexican girls
tried to mug her on the streets, and she sliced one of the girls'
cheeks.

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a
dream."

Edgar Allan Poe

After Hussy's mother and her sister Ferrara
told me what a lying psycho Hussy really was, I needed to get away
from her and Florida for a while.

I went to New York for a few weeks and
visited my ex-wife Donna and her new boyfriend, Gary. He was in his
50s, a couple of years older than Donna, and he had Parkinson's
disease. He was a retired cop. So you'd think he was a commanding
presence, used to giving orders. But he was the most mellow, timid
push-over I had ever met. He was like a big puppy. He didn't stand
a chance against Donna's domineering personality, and she bossed
him around all day long. There was absolutely no doubt that she was
the one wearing the pants.

Donna didn't have a lot of friends, because
she was a recluse who almost never left the house and didn't like
being around other people, other than me. Our divorce had been
really hard on her as well, because she didn't have a support
network any more than I did. After the divorce she was all alone
and she had no one to talk to, except a few online friends she had
never met in person, and the occasional phone conversation with her
childhood friend Roy. Roy was one of the few people who knew about
Donna's agoraphobia. He was used to her not answering the door and
pretending not to be home when he or anyone else came knocking on
her door.

Roy's older brother Gary was a shut in, too.
After he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's, he lost his job and
his emotionally abusive wife left him. He went into a deep
depression and lost his will to live. He escaped his lonely,
miserable life by playing the online video game World of Warcraft.
Everything he was missing in his real life, he found in the game.
He became so addicted to it, he practically lived inside the game.
The real world didn't matter to him anymore. The only thing he
cared about was completing another raid in the game, or exploring a
new dungeon and winning the admiration of his online friends in
battle. He later told me that a lot of handicapped people become
addicted to World of Warcraft, because in their online fantasy
world, they are healthy, wealthy, and handsome. The game lets them
forget about their broken bodies, and they become legendary heroes,
saving the world, while riding dragons.

Gary really wasn't any different than a
crack addict, when he was in the depths of his video game
addiction. He wouldn't go to sleep for days at a time, and he'd
play the game nonstop, day and night, only taking a quick break if
he absolutely had to use the bathroom. He was totally addicted to
the positive feelings he got from killing evil monsters or finding
a new magical weapon or his game character raised a level and
learned a new combat skill.

Anything that feels good triggers the reward
center in our brains and a little bit of the feel-good chemical
dopamine is released. Whether you get a raise at work, or you eat
candy, or you have sex, or someone gives you flowers, or tells you
they love you, or you watch a pretty sunset, or someone sends you a
sweet text message, or you find a golden sword in a video game, it
all releases a little bit of dopamine. You can get addicted to
anything that makes you feel good, whether it's text messages,
video games, food, sex, exercise, cigarettes, or drugs.

Drugs like crack or heroin flood the brain
with so much dopamine, everything else in life pales by comparison.
That's what makes these drugs so extremely addicting, and why
addicts feel so miserable and empty when they don't have their
drug. Once their brains get used to the endless flood of dopamine,
life without drugs seems unbearably sad and dull. Nothing, no
matter how pleasant, releases enough dopamine to even come close to
crack or heroin. Once an addict gets sober, it takes their brain
years to fully restore its chemical balance. It takes a while,
before an addict can really appreciate life's simple pleasures
again.

Gary's video game addiction was so bad, his
younger brother Roy was getting really worried about him. Gary was
so pale, his skin was almost translucent. He hadn't showered in
weeks, and hadn't cut his hair or his beard in months. Roy figured
that Gary and Donna would be perfect for each other, so he
persuaded Donna to take a ride to meet Gary. He looked like a
caveman when they met, but they hit it off anyway. They started
talking on the phone, and then, after a few weeks, Gary moved in
with Donna.

She told him that he wasn't allowed to play
the game anymore, and he obeyed. But his beloved fantasy world
never really left his mind. A year or so after he moved in with
her, he begged her to let him play his game again. Just a little
bit. Just on the weekends, after he finished all his chores around
the house.

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.
Well, not only did he get totally addicted to the game again, he
got Donna addicted to it, too. When I visited them again a few
months later, they both got on their laptops as soon as they woke
up in the morning and played the game all day long, every day,
until it was time to go to bed.

Anyway, after I talked to Ferrara and
Hussy's mother, I spent a few weeks in New York with Donna and
Gary.

A few days before I got there, they walked
the dogs in nearby Seaview Park in Brooklyn late at night. All the
parks in New York City close at dusk, because they're not safe at
night. But Donna couldn't stand being around other people, so she
only walked the dogs very late at night, when nobody else was in
the park.

This one night there was someone else. A
black guy on a bicycle. The dogs saw him from afar and started
chasing after him. He was afraid for his life and tried to escape
from what must have looked like vicious beasts to him. But the dogs
were really just being friendly, when they barked at him.

He returned a little while later, holding a
big stick. He wanted to beat the dogs with it. Donna freaked out
and started screaming at the black guy. Gary slowly shuffled behind
her. There was a big commotion, and Donna told Gary to call the
cops. The black guy dropped the stick and ran off.

From that point on Donna didn't feel safe in
the park at night anymore and decided that she needed a taser for
self defense. But of course she didn't just order one. She ordered
five.

She was a shopaholic. One of anything was
never enough. She ordered so much stuff on the Internet every day,
the whole house was full of crap. There were unopened boxes of
kitchen appliances, dozens of unused purses, hundreds of plastic
jars that were on sale, clown dolls that she bought wholesale in
China and wanted to sell on Ebay but never did, and so on and so
forth.

And when she ordered something on a Monday,
she wouldn't be interested in it anymore by the time it arrived on
Thursday, because she already bought different stuff on Tuesday and
Wednesday. So the house was full of unused, unopened stuff, that
she eventually threw away to make room for more stuff.

She had done that for years, ever since I
started earning a lot of money on the Internet. There were times
when she spent over $3000 a month on things we didn't need and that
just cluttered up the house. She was still doing the same thing
now, on a smaller scale, using Gary's credit card, instead of mine.
I think shopping for things online filled an emotional void in her
life.

Anyway, after the five tasers arrived, she
put a few of them in her purse. One day, she was rummaging through
her purse, touched one of the tasers, and accidentally shocked
herself. I was in Manhattan at the time, but she told me all about
it when I got back at night: "Oh my God! I accidentally tasered
myself today! It hurt like crazy! I felt like I hit a brick wall!
Want me to taser you?"

"What? No, hell no," I replied and
laughed.

"Gary, get over here, I'm gonna taser you,"
she yelled.

Gary said ok and obediently shuffled into
the living room and sat down on a chair, to prepare himself for
electrocution.

Donna had bought several different tasers.
One shot 2 metal tips. And another was the kind that looks like an
electric razor. But she decided to use the one that looked like a
cattle prod to taser Gary.

"Ready?" she asked him.

"Hold on," I said. "Are you seriously gonna
taser him? I gotta get my camera. I'm gonna tape this!" We all
laughed.

I had given up on trying to stop Donna from
abusing Gary. In the beginning I felt really bad, when I saw the
way she treated him. One time she had ordered a cheap couch from
Walmart online, and told him to put it together in the front room.
His trembling hands accidentally dropped it while he was in the
middle of assembling it, and one of the legs snapped off.

"You broke it! You are so useless," she
screamed at him in front of me. "You're not even a real man!"

Emasculating a disabled man like that was
bad enough. But to do it right in front of me, her ex-husband, was
just cruel. I felt so bad for him.

Later that night we were all sitting in the
living room, and when she talked to him like he was a piece of shit
again, I told her she can't keep abusing him like that. She got all
defensive and with a vicious, threatening tone in her voice she
yelled at Gary: "Am I abusing you?!? Is that what you're telling
people, you wimp?"

"No, no, you're not," he said quietly, with
a shaky voice.

"Gary you need to stand up for yourself," I
told him. I figured it was now or never. He had me as his backup
right now, so this was his one chance to tell her to stop abusing
him.

But he didn't. He couldn't stand up to her.
He was afraid of her. She could make his life a living hell, and he
knew I would leave eventually, and then he'd be alone with her
again.

She had forgotten that I wasn't as easily
pushed around as Gary was. So a few times, when I stayed in New
York with them, she tried to start shit with me. For old times'
sake, I guess.

But I just yelled right back at her. I
didn't need to put up with her shit anymore. Unlike Gary, I could
leave any time I want, so I had no reason to back down and let her
boss me around.

I learned that she only enjoyed throwing
tantrums and bossing people around with her hateful tirades, if she
felt like she was in total control of the fight. If it started when
she wanted it to, and it ended when she wanted it to.

Once I figured that out, I took that sense
of power away from her, by keeping the fight going for 5 more
minutes, after she decided she had enough. Suddenly the end of the
fight was not hers to control anymore, because even when she was
bored of it, I continued to berate her. Now she no longer felt like
the bully, but like the one who was being bullied. Once I figured
that out, we got along pretty well most of the time, because I
don't start fights, and she was scared to pick fights with me. Gary
was a much easier target.

Another time he was cooking. He did all the
chores around the house, while she sat on the couch, playing
Facebook games on her laptop, and issuing out orders. I guess he
was taking too long or something, but suddenly the fact that he was
cooking wasn't good enough. Nothing he did was ever good
enough.

He was standing in front of the stove. The
kitchen was small, and she shoved him with her shoulder while
passing him. "Get out of my way," she said.