The Drunken Stork (Phil’s Controlling Nature Manifests)–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–February 1994, Part 3
Phil was good friends with Dirk, the obnoxious one. It was maybe the next week after we got together when Phil asked me to go to Muehlmeier, where Dirk lived. There in the lounge I found him and Dirk sitting at a table near a window facing the lagoon, and playing Magik. I played a few games with them, losing them all, and it still bored me.
***
As always, I waited for the guy to say “I love you” first. But Phil said it even sooner than Peter did: on one of our first dates, as I’ve already mentioned.
This time I didn’t say “ditto” as I did with Peter; often I didn’t say anything. It was too soon; I didn’t want to confuse infatuation with love, because love meant marriage.
Phil may have complained about this. Then when I did feel like I loved him, I would answer his “I love you” with “I love you.”
He complained that it didn’t sound right when I didn’t say “I love you too.” It may have been something about not acknowledging that he loved me; I don’t remember now.
***
Sometime in February, we went to a party in the Phi-Delt suite for Ralph Z.’s birthday. Cindy and Catherine had both dated a guy named Jason. He showed up; Phil kept telling him his name was Bruce. A year or two later, Jason still remembered him as Bruce at the party.
Phil kept putting his arm around me and talking like the drunken stork from Looney Toons, telling everyone, “We’re going out.” People thought he really was drunk, but I tried to tell them he was just drinking Mountain Dew. People got annoyed (even me), and I tried to get him to stop, but it didn’t work.
Phil got up once; Mike sat down and cuddled up next to me. Mike pretended to try to steal me away, to which Phil said I cost a buck fifty (running gag between us). Mike said, “That’s all it takes? A buck fifty?”
All evening, people kept saying, “Shut up, Phil,” especially Pearl. I was mortified at his behavior, and how he disregarded everyone else’s feelings.
Finally, he left the suite, and someone closed the door behind him, pretending to have thrown him out. It was a game, though partly they meant it, being so very annoyed by him. They thought he’d come back in a few minutes.
Instead, we got a phone call. Mike answered and tried to talk to Phil, but Phil just kept plaintively wailing, “Nyssa. Nyssa!” So I had to come to the phone.
I said hello, but for a moment he said nothing. I tried to get something out of him, but it was harder than pulling a tooth. Finally he said, “I’m at the phone outside Krueger. Are you going to come here, or stay there?”
I didn’t want to leave my friends, but didn’t feel I had much of a choice. He wasn’t coming back to the party, either. Cindy had long since left the party with Ralph Z. and some others, and then returned to Roanoke after bowling; she found him there at Krueger. He said to her,
“She’ll come here, if she knows what’s good for her.”
If I’d known Phil said such a thing, I might never have gone back to Krueger for him. But I didn’t, so I went, and spent long hours comforting him. I don’t believe I told him that what he did at the party was okay, because I still thought he’d been obnoxious and annoying. Mike thought he shouldn’t have made me leave the party like that.
Cindy told me his words a few years later (we were co-workers), and that they left not because of Phil being obnoxious, but because they planned to go bowling at a certain time. It was Ralph’s birthday party, but he left it early, so we all thought Phil was the reason. Well, okay, maybe he was partly the reason.
Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)
Table of Contents
Freshman Year
- Meet the Suite
- Orientation
- Meeting Shawn–and a Ninja
- Campus Stories, Wisconsin, Campus Radio Station
- Campus, People, First College Boyfriend
- Dating a Ninja
December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:
March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?
April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign
Sophomore Year
October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:
Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams
- Classmate a stand-in for “Rudy”; Jigging at College Dance
- Library Tales
- Happiness Returns
- Living with Friends in Krueger
- Funny Library Stories
- Shawn Calls
- Psycho Roommates and Bug Wars
- Return of Rick
- Adjusting to New Dorm
- Spitball-Throwing Teacher
- Rat-Obsessed Teacher and Doctor Zhivago
- A Teacher Dated a Student; InterVarsity Fun
- Charlie Peacock Concert
- Random Stories
- Letter to Shawn
- Erotic Vampire Dream (Inspiration for Alexander Boa)
- I Ask Out James
- Peter Calls!
- The Fateful First Meeting of Phil
- The Birth of Dolphin Philosophy
- Our Group of Friends Splits Apart
- Spring Classes
- Big Red Flag: Phil’s Dysfunctional Family Life
- The Drunken Stork (Phil’s Controlling Nature Manifests)
- Idealizing Phase and Early Sign of Control
- Phil Tries to Control my Friendships, Unfair Accusations from his Dad and Brother
- Phil Gaslights Me with Fake Dreams, Ridicule and Psychological Abuse
- Another Pre-Engagement
June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:
- The Abuse Worsens in the Summer of Hell
- Phil rapes me anally
- Phil tries to control me through refusing everything I want–even proper hygiene
- Phil’s cruel hoax on me: his “subconscious” coming out to be with me
- Phil’s “subconscious” explains why he’s coming out to talk to me
- The lies unravel as Phil admits to conning me; also, fright as my periods turn wacky
- How Phil’s behavior fit the signs of abuse
- Phil Mindscrews Me: changes history, blames me for things that were not my fault, treats me like an idiot during games
- Phil says if he abuses me, it takes two people to sign the divorce papers
- Pearl reveals that Phil is costing me social invitations
- Hints that Phil is checking out of the marriage
September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:
- Phil picks fights and avoids responsibilities to make me feel like a shrew
- My husband Phil, Dave and Pearl call me a party pooper for getting a Grade II concussion
- I’m ecstatic to be back with my friends (the ones Phil hates); I meet Charles
- Phil vanishes without a word of why
- Phil wants a divorce
- My friends tells me that Phil is controlling and possessive
- My first Pentecostal church service: They speak in tongues
- Phil refuses to accept responsibility for the divorce
- Phil cuts off contact
- Attack of Phil’s Flying Monkey and Sycophant: Dirk
- Phil the narcissist admits to manipulating people and using them as pawns in his game with me
- Phil comes crawling back to me–and we put our marriage on paper
- Phil demands my complete submission and forces me into oral sex–and my will is broken, for fear he’ll divorce me again
- Phil walks away from me again–because I dare to have my own mind, opinions and needs–and because he’s a sociopath
- Fierce anger against Phil and PTSD from the abuse
- My friends tell me Phil is psychotic
- “Soul Ties”
- I return Phil’s things and he skewers me; consolation from friends
- My letter to Phil
- Phil shows my letter to his friends; I’m triggered by reminder of forced oral sex
- I start dating Charles
- Friends tell me Phil is controlling
- I feel stalked by Phil
- Poem about being stalked by Phil
- Fury at Phil stalking me and rubbing my face in his new relationship
- A Date with the Vampire
- Celtic Class: Knotwork, Tin Whistles, SCA–and Drinking from a Skull
- The Teddy-O Incident; Birth of These Memoirs
- We Hook Up to the Internet–and Shawn Fixates on My Sex Life
- New Guy Begging at My Feet
- Life on TCB
- Meeting Cugan (Hubby)
- Learning my ex Peter was a love-fraud; New Men
- Before Tracy, There Was the Avenger (Sociopathic Female Bullies Pt 1)
- Torn between three men as Catherine pushes me toward Cugan
- The Love Rectangle
- Torn between FIVE men! Me?
- Persephone’s Own Outrageous Stories of Phil’s Abuse
- College-style living
- Online Shenanigans
- Phil Finds TCB; Meeting a Hit Man
- Gypsy’s Party: Healed friendship with Peter
- The Avenger Starts a Flame War (Sociopathic Female Bullies Pt 2)
- Meeting the elusive Speaker
- First Date with Future Hubby Cugan
- On Breaking Up with Kindness
- Loony Roommies and Flying Gargoyles
- The Goddess of Pleasure and Salt
- A Conversation with Oscar Wilde
- My First SCA Event
- Cugan: a vast improvement over Phil