During my
weekly session, I spoke with Layla, the Brazilian sex therapist I met on the
salsa dance floor. I told her about my
recent encounter with a gorgeous Mexican, Melody Sonora,
whom I first laid eyes on at the U.T. salsa conference earlier that year. Mel, tall and slender, had dancer’s legs,
lustrous black hair, and obsidian Aztecan eyes.
She combined a beautiful creature with a shining presence and a body
built for two. While sitting in the
lobby of the ornate, chandeliered University
of Texas Ballroom, looking at the
floor as I waited for the doors to open, I heard footsteps. Looking up, I saw black suede boots with four
inch heels, then skin-tight black designer jeans, then a black western silk
blouse with red roses embroidered across the chest, and then a beautiful face
ringed by curled black hair. The coiled
snake tattoo on her left shoulder, partially hidden by her blouse, should have
warned me, but her looks had me too smitten to decode the hint needled into her
body. I later regretted my inattention,
as her beauty masked her reality. I gave
her my card. She called me the next day,
and we began a long-distance relationship, as she lived in San
Antonio, and I in Austin.
Over the
next several weeks, Mel revealed that she was 50 years old, divorced, with five
marriages hanging from her custom Gucci leather belt, four grown children, and
ten grand kids. Dancing released her
from the worries and strains of life.
What she didn’t tell me, at least not right away, was that she was
recently released from a San Antonio
mental hospital, which she entered following a mental breakdown precipitated by
her fifth in an unbroken string of violently abusive husbands. As I came to understand, she was half crazy,
and the other half was on medication.
Mel, under the care of a psychiatrist, had her equilibrium maintained by
the anti-psychotic drug Topamax, a.k.a. Dopamax.
The
Manufacturer of Topamax recommends that you call your physician if you begin to
kill small animals while consuming this drug.
Mel endured large mood swings, from fear to rage, to shame, as she
battled her memories of physical, mental, and emotional abuse at the hands of
her “loved ones”. With her story slowly
unfolding before me, I became more and more engaged, as her situation was crack
for my co-dependency issues.
I felt an
overwhelming urge to play Savior to the rotting lepers in her mind. As our relationship endured, her mood swings
became more and more problematic. She
would go from happy and carefree to angry and repellent in a flash. Her moods were brittle, like a glass rod,
bending under pressure only slightly before breaking with a loud snap. She would change from sunshine and butterflies
to rain and roaches in the space of a comment.
But, when she was nice, she was very, very nice. I loved her when she was nice. I still remember the taste of her smile. I especially loved her when we were alone
together on the dance floor.
Layla listened to my rant with a
non-committal gaze on her face.
When I
finished, I asked her: “Well, what do
you think?”
She
replied:
“Most people
have certain requirements for a good relationship. Generally, things like sex, comfort, and companionship
head the list. What you want is someone
who loves you like you love you. But, at
the end of the day, you have to take a hard look at yourself, and then come to
Jesus. Some people are the exact
opposite of “good for you”. You need to
be able to recognize when you are in a dead-end, destructive relationship, and
get out, even if your self-indulgent, lizard-brained pleasure center is happy
rolling in the puke generated by the misery inherent in such a relationship. Mel has been broken by her experiences, and
she can only drag you down with her. Get
out NOW”.
I sat sadly
looking at her, shaking my head no, all the while knowing she was right. Now, everyone has baggage, and what you have
to do is weigh the baggage and see if you want to pay the shipping costs. Well, I checked, and Mel had a thirty mule
team pulling her baggage train. She was
as crazy as ten rats in a burlap sack.
Still, I knew in my heart that underneath all that craziness and
suffering and pain there was an eight year old child dying for love. As I left the session, I resolved to ignore
Layla’s advice, and continue on in my relationship with Mel. I thought perhaps Layla was overreacting, and
everything would be fine.
That next
week, one of her exes contacted her, and she suffered a psychotic relapse that
broke through the Dopamax. She drove me
in the ditch, pulled her plates, and split.
I still miss her, the way the memory of a painful, infected tooth
lingers on after an expensive trip to the dentist.
I have
learned something, though. From now on,
when I meet a beautiful woman, as soon as possible I’m going to check her purse
for drugs. Not only coke or crack or
meth or barbs, but finding an anti-psychotic like Dopamax will make me run like
hell.
