In the days before I became obsessed with Joni Lamb, I was seriously involved with this woman, the late Victoria Aldridge. The relationship was not long in duration, but it will forever be exalted in my memory as one that fulfilled my every desire. She was all that I ever wanted in a woman, and with her passing I knew that my needs would forever be altered, and that's when I realized that Joni was the only one who could pick up the slack to provide for me emotionallyI met Victioria at a laundromat in the small town of Seminole, Oklahoma. She was washing a load of clothes with her boyfriend, a heavilly tattooed biker sort who wore a durag emblazoned with the Harley-Davidson logo. She stood in his presence as if she feared for her life (which, as I found out later, she had good reason to). They had a boombox with them as she did their laundry. They were listening to a Mudvayne CD and had it turned up loud, since there were very few people there that evening. The ridiculously aggresive metal music seemed to provide the perfect atmosphere for what was to follow.
To make a long story short, I was rankled significantly when I happened to glance their way and saw the big lug shove Victoria against one of the dryers, raising his fist to her face and threatening to "give her a dose". She glared right back at him without the slightest trace of fear on her beautiful face.
There was the distinct likelihood that this particular scene had played itself out on several occasions in many different venues. For some reason I got the idea that, on most of those occasions, despite her tough countenace and fearless expression, Victoria had probably been knocked around a bit by this goon, who was obviously stronger than her physically but just as obviously a mental weakling. My gut instinct told me that she'd endured the brunt force of his fist on more occassions than she would admit to even the closest of friends.
I think that was the moment I fell in love with her...I wanted to be that friend to whom she could tell all of her secrets. I felt certain that mine was the shoulder she was destined to cry on. Up until then I had never believed in all that bullshhit about "soulmates". Now I wasn't so sure. The attraction for her that I became consumed in was like a ring of fire and I decided there and then that if she WERE my soulmate (and I hoped she was), well, I'd better do something and not let the opportunity pass, rare as it was.
My first duty was to restrain the boyfriend, to put an end to this violence he was inflicting upon a woman who was soon, I felt sure, to walk by my side for the rest of our lives together. It wasn't too hard to do. They guy was of a sort all too prevalent in this day and age: he was eager to "smack his bitch up", but when a real man came along for a round, the smacking turned against him. He ran away like a pussycat flees from a pit bull, which was the smartest thing he'd ever done in his pathetic, wasted life.
I feel the need, however, to point out that his hasty exit was delayed ever so slightly as I yanked the silly durag off of his head and stuffed the greasy thing in his mouth. I busted his chops a couple of times just hard enough to cause bloodshed (basically I'd walked up to his face and cold-cocked him while he was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted with him). I kicked my knee into his groin with enough force to knock the wind out of him. He reeled and stumbled under the force of my blows, then bowed before the ultimate humiliation, the thick, gooey, warm gob of spittle that I launched into his eyes.
It was quite amazing that the fellow could even stand up after the ferocity of my revenge, but, much to the delight of my prospective soulmate, not only did he regain his composure, he ran out of that laundromat as if it were on fire.
As you might well imagine, Victoria was very happy to be relieved of the jerk. She giggled throughout the exhibition of rage that began with a pushy boyfriend and ended with a righteously pissed off motherfucker pulverzing the worthless piece of shit.
She was still smiling when she walked towards me and put her arm around my waist. My anger sated, I turned and looked into her eyes. She squeezed me tightly and, without a word, took my jaw into her free hand, turned my head towards hers and kissed me with a passion I had not experienced since the passing of my first wife (who loved me dearly, I am convinced, even though she left me 4 years into our marriage for a career as a customer service representative at JC Penney).
I returned the kiss, and that's when I knew that we were destined to be together. She packed all her things and left the run down, cockroach infested aparment that her ex-boyfriend had never bothered to keep up. I asked her to move in with me, and she gladly accepted the offer. It looked like things were going to work out all right, and they did for several months.
The sex was awesome. Victoria had a bit of a kinky streak in her and she liked nothing more than to tell me her fantasies while we made love. At first, I admit, I was taken aback at her vivid descriptions of the two of us getting it on with another couple in a van parked in the back lot of the local Assembly of God church. Soon enough, however, I found myself becoming quite aroused by her vivid descriptions of eccentric carnality. Before long I, too, was telling her my own fantasies as she swayed beneath me, moaning particularly loudly when I'd get to a part that she found particularly erotic (like the "scene" where I give her permission to sleep with my best friend, Gary).
It was all great, and I planned on asking her to marry me. We'd been a couple, a HAPPY couple, I might add, for a few years by then. I'd bought a ring, which I kept a secret from her by hiding it in a box of Cheerios where I usually kept large Zip-lock bags full of marijuana and meth. She knew better than to pry around in that box. Not that I would have treated her, if she did, with the same hateful violence as her ex, but we just had an agreement. I wouldn't look at the photo album she kept under the bed and she would stay out of my Cheerios box. The pact we made concerning these wishes was a sacred one, upon which our whole love affair hung in the balance.
But I never got to give her the ring.
One night, after a particularly hot and heavy session of story telling, she left to buy some rolling papers for us. If there was one thing she loved more than sex itself, it was getting high after having sex. I'd left my pipe at Gary's house after a party in which the conversation had become deep and philosophical,the downside being a significant memory loss. It was this assault on my brain cells that caused me to forget my pipe. Furthermore, Victoria's bong had a crack in it and she had given it to a stoner friend who said he could fix it. I had my doubts that he could really fix it, but I was relatively sure that if he DID fix it, Victoria would never know and the ownership of the bong would silently transfer to this burned-out hippie with his empty promises of restoration.
And so, with nothing in the house to smoke our weed in, Victoria offered to go to the convenience store. I had wanted to go with her, but she wouldn't let me. She said, "Oh, no, darling. It's just around the corner. Stay where you are, you look so handsome laying there in that pool of sweat!"
She left.
She never came back.
The cops found her body in a basement closet...her hands were bound and there was a nasty Harley Davidson durag in her mouth.
I was tore up for a long time after that. Even though I had tracked down the bastard that I knew had killed her. The cops tagged it a cold case when their efforts failed. They never would have figured it out, anyway, because I knew who the killer was and I wasn't going to let him go to trial, having condemned him the moment I saw that durag. It didn't take me too long to find him. I made him pay dearly for the heinous crime he had commited. I buried his broken body in a shallow grave near a construction site,and I covered it with cement.
Even after slaking my thirst for vengeance I was wrecked. My heart was broken. My spirit felt ripped in two and violated. Victoria, my precious Victoria. Oh, my God, would that it were me instead of you!
The only closure came when I retrieved the photo album from beneath our bed. She would have wanted me to see it under these circumstances. We'd agreed to as much when we made the pact. It was, indeed, closure of a sort, and yet even now I miss her and paiently await the day we are re-united in the afterlife. Joni is my dreamboat, but Victoria, having made a believer out of me, will forever be my soulmate.
There were 72 photographs in the book she had hidden for all those years. 72 images that revealed a side of her that I never would have believed existed, though she'd told me all about it practically every night since we first met. All this time she knew what was in my Cheerio box (besides the drugs, she always knew about them), and all this time, in her mysterious way, she had been trying to let me know what was in her secret photo album.
72 prints that showed my baby engaged in a myriad of sex acts, each one with a different man (or group of men). Each one as explicit as the raunchiest porn I'd ever seen. 72 angles that showed me the truth of how the fantasies she'd shared during our love-making were no fantasies at all. They were memories, each one she cherished and wanted me to know about in her own way, to give them to me. She accepted my tales of lust with loving amusement, but mine were all lies...hers were the truth.
O, what a life she had led before she met me. I assume it all happened before her thug ex-boyfriend had met her. His disgusting, ugly mug was not to be found in the line-up of gentlemen who, seen through the camera's eye, shared nights of fulfilled desire with the woman who was, all this time, my soulmate waiting to find me.
When I'd looked at all the pictures my mind drifted back to that first evening, when she put her arm around me and gave me the kiss that sealed our fates. Here's the truth...had I known about her wild past, the years chronicled in her secret album that she rarely took from under the bed in all our time together, it would not have changed a thing. I knew, from that kiss, that she was mine, and I hers. Nothing could have changed that, not even the 72. Her escapades were a surprise to me at first, but as time went by, and as I keep the pictures with me even to this day, I realized that they didn't bother me at all.
Because there was a part of me that had always wished that the tales she told in bed would come true someday.
In a strange, unexpected way, my wish was granted.
I've recovered now. The hole in my heart has scabbed over, it only bothers me once in a while.
Now that my soulmate is gone, I pine for a woman I know I can never have. Truth be told, I don't really want her...I just need the FEELING of wanting someone. Why not Joni? There can never be another for me but Victoria. I hope Joni knows that. I hope my feigned desire for her doesn't offend. I hope she finds out, and doesn't say anything about it to Marcus or anyone else...
...it can be our little secret.
