Going to New York

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  So when the lawyer was trying to replace me at the newspaper, I really didn't give a shit. I didn't need that job anymore at this point, because I was making more money than the lawyer and all the other people in that office put together. But the cautious German in me didn't just want to quit a steady job and rely on free online money. I figured it was a fluke and it couldn't be like that forever, so it was probably a good idea to hold on to my day job.

  But I was miserable, and when that lawyer schemed behind my back to replace me, I knew it was time to go and take my chances with the Internet. I planned a grand exit. On the Monday when Kenny, my buddy in the graphic department, was going to start his new job somewhere else, I was going to go right up the lawyer and tell him that I quit and that he can go shove his stupid newspaper up his ass.

  Monday finally came, but as luck would have it, the lawyer didn't come in that day. I sat at my desk, waiting two hours for him to show up, while I was playing games online. Around 11 am his wife came into the office to check the mail. I was getting sick of sitting there for no reason, so I decided to make my grand exit with her instead.

  I took a copy of the classified ads. I had circled the ad for my job. Then I walked up to her, held the page in front of her face and asked: "What is that? Huh? What is that?? Are you trying to replace me?" I sounded like I was disciplining a dog who had just piddled on the carpet.

  She was startled and didn't know what to say. Then I told her that I knew she and her husband had put that ad in the paper to find someone to do my job for less money, and they didn't even have the courtesy to give me any notice. And now I was going to quit without notice.

  By now she had composed herself, and she was quick-witted enough to demand that I give her the keys to the office. I had already cleared out my desk earlier and prepared everything so I could storm right out the door after telling them off. But I had completely forgotten about the keys. Fuck! So instead of making a grand exit, now I stood there like a moron, fumbling around with my key chain, trying to get the damn keys off. Not cool. Not cool at all.

  I went home and felt like an idiot, because that did not go as planned. But, oh well, finally I was freeeee!

  When I didn't go to college in Germany and moved to New York instead, I had nightmares about it for weeks. I felt like I was being totally irresponsible and that I was ruining my life. Leaving everything you know behind and moving to another continent, and facing the great unknown, is scary. It takes a lot of courage. Don't ever look down at an immigrant who came to America to make a better life for himself and his family. You have no idea how much courage that took, until you have walked a mile in his shoes.

  Now, after I quit my newspaper job, I had the same type of nightmares again. Staying home all day and doing whatever the hell I wanted seemed so wrong, so irresponsible. A good German just doesn't do that.

  I did learn one thing from all that though: I never look down on poor people now. I've been there. I've probably been poorer than most people will ever be. I don't think a lot of people have stooped so low that they had to eat dog food.

  Capitalism has a dirty little secret: the system only works, as long as most people are poor, and only a few people at the top of the pyramid are rich. Think about it: if everyone was a millionaire, nobody would want to scrub toilets or flip burgers for minimum wage at McDonald's anymore. Having a lot of money is like having a big dick. It's only big as long as everyone else's dick is smaller than yours. If everyone else has a big dick too, then your dick is just average. The same goes for money. Rich people are only rich as long as everyone else is poor. Money is only valuable, if it's rare. If everyone has lots of money, it becomes worthless. But as long as most people don't have any money, there are always plenty of people who are willing to degrade themselves for a few bucks.

  Self-righteous Republicans like to pretend that if someone is poor, it's their own fault, because they are lazy. But the truth is, the system can only survive as long as most people are poor. And I know from experience that poor people are not poor because they're lazy. I worked really really hard when I drove a cab, and made almost no money. And I worked even harder at the newspaper, but they didn't pay me all that much either. Now I was a lazy bum, doing nothing at all, and I was making more money than I had ever made in my life. That just didn't seem right. I felt like I didn't deserve it.

  It took me a few weeks to get used to my new life of luxurious leisure. I started to enjoy the fact that I could sleep as long as I want, and do whatever I want all day long. I enjoyed the little perks, like being able to go to the mall during the week, when the stores were less crowded than during the weekend. And I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to impress anyone.

  I didn't have to dress for success. I could literally run around the mall in my pajamas if I wanted to, and not worry that I may lose my job if a co-worker or my boss saw me like that. I didn't have to put on a suit and tie to look like a trained monkey. Suddenly I was no longer worried about what anyone thought of me. The fact that I had all the money in the world and I didn't need anybody for anything made me a lot more self-confident. I used to walk into a room of people and wonder if they liked me. Now I looked around and wondered if I liked them.

  I bought my first brand new car, a Dodge Durango, all cash. It was my dream car, because when you fold down the backseat, the back of the car was big enough for me to lie flat, like in a bed. I figured I'd go car camping at some point and sleep in the back of the car. I only did that one time though. I went on a road trip to California. When I got to San Francisco, I parked the car at the Golden Gate Bridge and watched the sunset, and the sunrise the next morning. It was beautiful. Other than that I always stayed in hotels when I traveled. I never did go car camping.

  Having so much money opened up a whole new world of opportunities. Americans think that drinking beer or soccer are Germans' favorite past time. But the one thing Germans love to do more than anything else, is to travel. It's no coincidence that "Wanderlust" is a German word. That word describes a strong desire to travel and explore the world. It's something almost all Germans have in common. It doesn't matter where you go, whether you visit the Great Wall of China or the Statue of Liberty or The Eiffel Tower or Fort Myers Beach, you will find German tourists there.

  At first the fact that Donna was an agoraphobic shut in didn't bother me all that much. During the first few years we didn't have any money, so we couldn't really go anywhere anyway. But now that we had all this money, I wanted to travel with her. I wanted to show her Europe, take her to the places where I grew up, and go explore new places with her where I had never been before. But none of that was ever going to happen, as long as she didn't want to leave the house.

  Every time I tried to talk her into going somewhere, even just to the movies or out to dinner, she got very defensive and hostile. Just like a drug addict, if you criticize their drug. She would instantly go to her nuclear option: Divorce. That was her kill-all argument: "If you have a problem with me not going to the movies with you, why don't you get a divorce and find someone better than me?"

  She had always been very insecure about herself. She constantly accused me of cheating on her, even though I never did. Years later, whenever I met someone new after my divorce from Donna, and I told them I never cheated on her, they often acted like that was adorable. Quaint. As if cheating is the new normal and the fact that I didn't cheat on her was weird. Well, it's not to me. Loyalty is very important to me.

  When I had worked at one of my two newspaper jobs, Donna often asked me, if I talked to any of the girls in the office. Well, yeah, of course I did. They were my co-workers. I had to talk to them as part of my job. But if I said that, she accused me of having an affair with one of them: "Oh yeah, you talk to your little girlfriend at work? Why don't you go fuck your little whore girlfriend?"

  And if I said that I didn't talk to any of the girls in the office, she would continue her probing interrogation, because she knew I was lying: "Oh yeah, so you're gonna
tell me you are in the office with these girls all day and you don't say one word to them? Not even good morning? Not even when you pass them in the hallway, or you have to hand them a paper? You're lying! You're cheating on me! Why don't you go fuck your little whore girlfriend?"

  There was just no right answer to her accusatory questions, just like those trick questions they asked conscientious objectors who refused to join the army in Germany.

  When I drove a cab, and I got home a few minutes late, she accused me of having picked up and fucked some streetwalker. She would go on and on and on about it. When I got home at 2 am in the morning, I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with Donna all night. So I went to bed. She'd sit in the living room and wait until I'm asleep. Then she would storm into the bedroom, slam the door wide open so that it crashed into the wall, turn on the lights and start screaming at me.

  My heart pounded like crazy when she did that. It causes so much anxiety when you are ripped out of your sleep with so much hostility. When she knew I was awake, she would turn off the light, leave the room and close the door. Then she would wait a few minutes, and then storm into the bedroom all over again. It was psychological torture and sleep deprivation.

  She knew that I wanted to be nothing like my abusive alcoholic father, and that I would never hit her, no matter what. She perceived that as a weakness and exploited it to the fullest.

  Finally, after she had stormed into the bedroom three or four times in a row to terrorize me awake, I told her if she did that one more time, I would call the cops. Of course she did it again, and I really did call the cops. They filed a domestic dispute report and told her she had to stop doing that or they were going to take her in.

  A few years later, when I didn't have to work anymore, and I was able to go on little road trips to Boston or Washington, or longer ones to Canada, California or Texas, Donna never wanted to come with me, because of her agoraphobia. So I went on road trips alone, again, but she and I were connected on the phone 24/7. By now we were using cell phones and we had unlimited plans. But other than that the 24/7 phone connection was just like it used to be when I still lived in Germany. It started to drive me crazy. It was like she was trying to keep me on a leash through the phone at all times.

  One day I drove through a dead spot where my phone had no signal, in the mountainous forests of the Poconos. She redialed my phone over and over and over, and left a bunch of messages.

  The first one was friendly: "Hey, sweetie, we lost connection. Call me back!"

  But each subsequent voicemail got more impatient and belligerent: "Why aren't you answering the phone? What's going on?"

  "Are you ignoring my calls on purpose? Are you with some girl?"

  "Who are you with? Are you fucking her? What's her name? I hope you DIE!"

  Her voicemails escalated from a loving "Hello sweetie!" to a hostile "I hope you die!" within about 15 to 20 minutes.

  And then, when I finally had a signal again and I called her back, she acted like the biggest bitch for the rest of the day, for absolutely no reason.

  Deep down of course she knew that I really didn't cheat on her, and I really just lost the signal for a few minutes. I was in the Poconos a lot, because I didn't think the Internet fountain of money was going to last forever. It was just too good to be true. I was sure that sooner or later the money would dry up. So I wanted to have a back up source of income. I decided to invest in real estate and started buying lakefront lots in the Poconos.

  The Poconos are a mountain range in Pennsylvania, about 90 car minutes from Manhattan. It's beautiful. Donna and I decided to build a house there. At first I was looking for a modest log cabin. But every builder I talked to tried to sell me a bigger and better house. The house we actually ended up building was a 5000 square foot mansion on a five acre property next to a beautiful lake.

  During the construction of that house, everything went wrong. It almost felt like the property was an old Indian burial ground and there was a curse on the house. The builder went bankrupt. So I hired a second builder, and he went bankrupt, too. I ended up suing the first one in court, and threatened to do the same to the second one, if he didn't finish the house. Altogether that whole ordeal took about four years, and I had to drive to the Poconos many times to monitor the progress, or lack thereof.

  So Donna already knew that the phone signal in the Poconos was very bad. But that didn't matter. It seemed like she was making my life miserable on purpose, simply because she was bored, and conflict was her only source of entertainment while she sat home alone.

  I was under constant stress while living with her, because she went from being nice to being a totally psycho hostile bitch from one minute to the next. I never knew what would set off her next tantrum. Looking back at it later, I realized how abusive her behavior was. But at the time, while I was going through it, it just seemed like normal life to me.

  Early on in our relationship, when I just moved to New York, I was writing a letter to my parents. I was answering one of their letters. They had written that the girl who cleaned their house, an architecture student from Bulgaria, asked them to tell me she said hello. Donna didn't like that, so she told me to ask my parents not to ever mention that Bulgarian whore in their letters to me ever again.

  So in my reply to them, I asked them not to mention the Bulgarian girl anymore, because Donna was kinda sensitive about things like that. Donna decided to proof-read my German letter, even though she couldn't read German. She asked me to translate word for word what exactly I wrote about the Bulgarian whore, while she stared at my letter.

  When I got to the part where I had written that Donna was a little sensitive when it came to other girls, she asked me if that word she saw in my letter meant sensible. I said, no, it means sensitive.

  She completely lost it and went on a rampage. She started screaming at me that I was making a fool out of her and she smashed plates in the kitchen. She grabbed my six page hand-written letter and ripped it up. I tried to stop her, and she screamed for help, as if I was raping her. Her younger brother still lived with his parents upstairs at that time. He heard Donna's screams, ran down the stairs, broke down the front door, and threatened me with a baseball bat, while I calmy tried to explain to him that I hadn't even touched her, and she was the one attacking me, not the other way around.

  All that drama, because she felt that I should have used the word sensible in my letter, and that calling her a little sensitive when it comes to other girls was making a fool out of her. So it rrreally didn't take much to set off one of her over-the-top tantrums.

  I read an article on domestic violence and abusive relationships that said that people who grow up in an abusive home, tend to end up in abusive relationships, because that hostile dynamic seems normal to them. Without even realizing it, they are attracted to people who will abuse them in some form or another.

  Back then I didn't even realize that the tension I always felt around Donna was very similar to the anxiety I had when my biological father was still alive and he would always start arguments with my mother for no reason, just so that he would have an excuse to storm out of the house and go on his next drinking binge.

  The constant anticipation of Donna's next tantrum was not unlike the feeling my mother and I had while sitting on the living room couch, watching a movie, but always alert, and with our hearts pounding if we heard the front gate creak in the wind, always anticipating that my father was about to come and kill us.

  One time Donna and I were arguing about some trivial bullshit. The next day, neither one of us could remember what we had even been arguing about the night before. It really was a non-issue that nobody in their right mind would ever argue about.

  During the argument, she became completely unhinged again, as usual. She always figured that if she got crazy enough, I would give in at some point and do what she says. I had learned to just walk away from her when she got totally mental like that.

  So I was trying to w
alk out of the house and go see a movie. She blocked my way by standing in the bedroom doorway. I shoved her aside and walked out. She started smashing the bedroom door with her fist, and punched a large hole in it. Almost like the hole my dad had put in the bedroom door when he tried to kill my mother and me.

  THE DIVORCE

  "When people divorce, it's always such a tragedy. At the same time, if people stay together it can be even worse."

  Monica Bellucci

  "A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you."

  Margaret Atwood

  "Divorce is just the most awful thing in the world."

  John Denver

  "Divorce is probably as painful as death."

  William Shatner

  "I was so devastated by my second divorce that I had a nervous breakdown."

  Jane Fonda

  "People that go through what I went through and people going through divorce, it's really a difficult process; it's heartbreaking and it hurts really bad. It can really mess with your head."

  David Arquette