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It was in the Electron Maintenance work centre where I was to meet Enrique, one individual who would go on to have such a profound impact on my life. Enrique was 5’8” tall, brown skin, curly black hair and penetrating black eyes. I had never met a Puerto Rican before and I found him to be a totally exotic person to behold.

In Arkansas, one was either black or white, and interracial marriages were still considered taboo. Enrique, however, was neither black nor white, being a mixture of a little bit of both. He had the hair, eyes and a few physical characteristics of a black person, but he also resembled a white person. He was one person who could not be pigeon holed into one specific race. I never considered Enrique to be one race or another. All I knew was that he was someone who I definitely wanted to be a part of my life.

Although Enrique had his fair share of problems, in many ways he was more advantaged than I was. He came from a relatively decent family who ensured he was adequately fed, clothed, loved and well educated. Enrique finished first in his class then went on to college on a scholarship. I find it quite unbelievable that a man who had the advantage of a high IQ and a supportive family could turn out to be such an underachiever, but I suppose anything is possible in this strange world we live in.

Being a battered, neglected, and rejected child, I never had the benefit of a good standard of education. I had to quit school at 16 and was awarded a General Education Diploma, or GED, when I was 17.

Enrique already had an electronics background when he joined the Air Force, having studied it in college, and therefore had an advantage over his contemporaries.

Because I was so young and naïve, I did not pick up on Enrique’s dark side, as a more street wise individual might have done. Although Enrique was intelligent enough to be able to go to college on a scholarship, he failed to complete his academic work. It was a college that Enrique must have undergone a personality change because he stopped doing his assignments and eventually dropped out of college altogether. So profound was this personality change that one of his lecturers actually felt the need to speak to him about his obvious lack of performance.

Enrique’s father had stopped working years before, which certainly did not present a good role model for his family. Enrique’s mother went to work every day in a factory and his father slept in, met up with his other unemployed friends to play dominos, and ran a numbers racket based on the Puerto Rican lottery. Because the Latin American culture dictates that the woman is expected to pander to the man’s every whim, Enrique’s father did not feel the need to left a finger around the house either. As a consequence, he contributed absolutely nothing to the household, which certainly put on a deep strain on the marriage. The troubled marriage no doubt left deep scars on Enrique’s psyche, leaving him with a very dark personality, which few people would be made aware of. Such a difficult home life would go on to form Enrique’s thinking patterns so that he would go on to treat me in exactly the same way that his father treated his mother.

Enrique’s family situation was rather unusual, but it was a definite improvement over mine. His parents moved to America so their children could get a good education, which was a huge sacrifice they made for their children. For the sake of the children, they at least tried to be civil to each other even though they had stopped sharing a bed years earlier.

The big difference between Enrique’s family and mine was that as imperfect as they were, they actually cared about their children and had a strong support network of family and friends. I had none of that. If I had, maybe I would have been inclined to developing healthier, more fulfilling interpersonal relationships. If I had the benefit of a decent family then I might not have been attracted to someone like Enrique in the first place.

Enrique’s family was not happy at all about the fact he joined the Air Force. I suspect he did it in an attempt to exert his independence away from the influence of his family because Enrique related to me the fact that he hated it that his father tried to control him. It is funny, really, how history tends to repeat itself time and time again, because Enrique would attempt to control others in the same fashion that his father attempted to control him.

From what I understand, Enrique dropped out of college and was just drifting aimlessly through life. He had well and truly become a major underachiever by the time he was only 21. At least the Air Force gave him a sense of purpose, which is something that he would never garner in his home town of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

I was totally enamoured with the fact that Enrique had a college education. I had quit school at 16 and was awarded a GED at 17. Never in a million years did I imagine that I would ever be able to attend college. I thought that because Enrique had a college education, he had the potential to make something of his life. I thought he was really special. Oh how wrong I was.

Enrique had been nicknamed the Luv Machine by a group of friends he hung out with. I thought he had been given the nickname because he was a real heart throb with the ladies, but I would later discover that I had been the only woman who he had ever been intimate with. I have no idea, therefore, while his male friends he socialised with would give him such a nickname. Perhaps these individuals were privy to information that I had not been made aware of.

When I first laid eyes on Enrique I was quite intrigued and made it my business to get to know him. I spent a great deal of time talking to him at his workstation and took every opportunity to speak to him during the day. I even quit smoking because I thought he would like me if I was a non-smoker.

Enrique seemed quite fond of me but at the same time appeared ambivalent about dating me. This became resoundingly clear to me when I went to his workstation to say “hello”, and he chastised me, telling me that I should not be speaking to him at work. My feelings were quite hurt that Enrique should say such a thing to me, but that was nothing compared to some of the things he would go on to say and do. I would soon find out that Enrique was capable of saying and doing some really nasty things with the sole purpose of inflicting harm. I nevertheless buried the hurt feelings inside of me and carried on with my duties, deciding that I would not bother with him anymore. I honestly and truly wish that I had carried on with my resolve to forget about all Enrique because I would have been spared decades of heartache if I had. Enrique, it seemed, preferred the company of men. He had two men who he worked with who he did practically everything with. If Enrique wanted to be with them more than me, then I would just leave him to it.

But it wasn’t as simple as that. Enrique was sending me very mixed messages. He would not ask me out on a proper date, but at the same time he would make eye contact with me. At one time he even stared at me intently while he brushed my finger against his when we were amongst a group of people at work.

One evening Enrique rang me and asked me if I would like to go out with him but I could not go because I had already made plans. I was very disappointed that I could not go out with him that evening and was worried that I had missed my big chance. I missed my big chance.

Finally, Enrique asked me go to a Halloween party with him at the Non Commissioned Officers, or NCO, Club, and I accepted. As far as I could see, the sexual chemistry between us was so intense that I could not keep my hands off him. At one point during the evening someone we worked with told us that we would have to tone down our behaviour, but I didn’t care. I was so attracted to Enrique that I did not even notice what was going on around me.

When we left the party, Enrique drove me to a secluded place and we “parked”. We made out in the back seat of the car and years later I learned that I was the first woman who Enrique had ever been with. I was quite surprised about this because in Arkansas everyone was experiencing carnal knowledge at a very young age, perhaps for no other reason than because they were bored and had nothing better to do.

As fate would have it, while we were being intimate with one another, a security policeman tapped on the window and told us that we should not be parking there, thus putting an end to our evening of passion.

Shortly after our date, Enrique decided to take a week’s leave and visit his family in Lawrence. He had not made any other plans to see me, so I just assumed that I like him more than he liked me and should therefore not get my hopes up high. I was surprised, however, when Enrique phoned me while he was on leave.

While Enrique was on leave, I carried on with work as normal. One evening Carlos, one of my colleagues, gave me a lift home. While I sat in his car, he told me that he did not get along with Enrique. Carlos told me that in the summer they were playing softball for the 2045th Communication Group’s softball team. Enrique and Carlos got into a dispute whilst playing the game. Carlos told Enrique that if we wanted to settle the dispute, they could take their disagreement elsewhere and indicated that he would quite happily get into a fist fight if that is what it took. When Enrique saw that Carlos meant business and was not afraid to fight, he backed down for the dispute. From that point forward, Carlos had little, if any, respect for Enrique.

At that time I really didn’t understand the full implication of what Carlos had told me. What I would realise later was that while Enrique would back down from a fight if he thought he might get hurt, he did not mind picking on people smaller or weaker than himself. Therefore, while Enrique would never dream of picking on someone his own size or someone who he thought might fight back, he considered women, and possibly even children, fair game. I did not know it at the time, but Enrique was a bully. Like virtually all bullies, Enrique would only pick on those people who he thought would not or could not fight back.

It was also when Enrique was on leave that he was given an assignment to Turkey. One of the major disadvantages of being a Radio Relay Equipment Repairman was that our career field had to go on a lot of remote tours. Enrique was devastated when he was given the assignment, which was a 12 month remote tour. He tried everything he could think of to get out of the assignment, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, Enrique decided

that he was going to speak to the base Chaplin. I had no idea in the world whatever could be so bad that he would feel the need to speak to the Chaplin, but I kept my concerns to myself, not even knowing how to ask Enrique what he would be saying to the man. Whatever Enrique did say to the Chaplin did not have the desired effect, however, because he was still going to Turkey whether he liked it or not.

It was also when Enrique was given his assignment to Turkey that his attitude towards me changed. While he had previously been ambivalent towards me and was not particularly bothered about how much time he spent with me, he had a complete change of heart and saw me literally every day after he received the news.

I found sex with Enrique to be quite difficult because he was very well endowed and his sexual organs were just plain and simply too large for my comparatively small frame. He also had a problem where he could not have a climax, which made sex with me even that much more painful. On one occasion I had been so badly damaged that I could barely walk for a week. I was in excruciating pain because all of my sexual organs had been rubbed raw!

I made the dire mistake of telling Enrique about my sexual history, which was really quite tame by today’s standards. Enrique, however, seemed to think that I was a slut because I was not a virgin when we met, and he treated me accordingly. I had such a low opinion of myself that it never once occurred to me to expect to be treated with a little respect and courtesy from my boyfriend.

On another occasion Enrique was visiting me in my room. We were both lying on my bed, relaxing, talking about nothing in particular. Out of the blue, Enrique said that I would sleep with just about anybody. I was totally taken aback that Enrique could say such a thing to me. I was supposed to be his girlfriend and I felt that I was deserving of a little bit more respect than that. Aside from that, what Enrique said was clearly not true. I have had literally hundreds of invitations for sex and have declined the vast majority of them.

I was so hurt by what Enrique had said that I needed to be on my own and asked him to leave. Enrique was totally surprised that I asked him to go. He did not expect me, or any woman for that matter, to exert her independence. Sadly, that was one of the few times in my life when I ever did anything to prove my own worth to myself.

That evening I went to work on a mid shift, which was from 12:00 midnight until 8:00 in the morning. I did not give my relationship with Enrique much thought that evening. I did not consider our relationship to be serious at that time, so it would have been very easy for me to walk away from a man who I would later discover is a very violent, abusive individual.

Enrique came to work to see me on the mid-shift and asked me if I would speak with him privately. We walked into a break area and spoke. It was then that he told me he cared a lot about me and did not want to hurt me. It was then that there was no turning back. I was in love with a man who would hurt me and abuse me just like my mother had done.

On one occasion Enrique was berating me about my sexual history and he said that I should have been able to divorce myself from my past, as if I had really seedy lifestyle or something. The message was clear: since I was not a virgin when we met I was obviously a slut and not worthy of any love or respect. The one thing that Enrique would never know was that he could never loathe me nearly as much as I loathed myself. Perhaps that was all part of the attraction. I hated myself so much that I projected my self loathing out into the world, and therefore chose a man who would go on to abuse me in the matter that I subliminally wanted to be abused. Maltreatment was the only kind of attention that I had ever known, so I subconsciously chose a man who would treat me badly.

One Saturday Enrique and his two friends from work took me to the local mall. We went into a music shop and I thumbed through the LP’s, saying to myself, “I would like this, and I would like this…”

Suddenly, Enrique became very alarmed. “Who is going to pay for that?!?” , he asked me. He had assumed that I expected him to buy LP’s for me, although I had never once indicated to him and I wished him to buy me presents.

I was so unnerved by Enrique’s reaction to my innocent comments that I stopped looking at the records. As far as I was concerned, the trip had been ruined.

My work in the Electron Maintenance section was not going well either. I was assigned to a really huge section with lots of equipment, and it was too much equipment for me to take in and try to learn all at once. I was able to work on the Voice Frequency Carrier Terminals, or VFCTs, but almost everything else was a complete mystery to me.

My boss was having marital difficulties and had a serious problem with women in the military. He was always putting me down and insulting me in front of other people, so I just stayed away from him as much as possible. As a result, my training suffered dearly.

Before Enrique could go to Turkey, he was first required to attend training at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi to study the tropospheric scatter radio system he would be maintaining. Therefore, we only had two months together before he would be going to Turkey for a year. For an 18 year old, a year was a really long time.

Enrique decided to spend Christmas in Maryland and go to Lawrence for the New Year. I was still in denial about my family situation, and therefore decided to make plans to see my family for the New Year. I don’t know whatever made me think that I could go back to Little Rock and play happy families. No sooner had I touched down in Little Rock had my mother lined up a major confrontation, with a little help from her girlfriends, of course.

My mother was upset that I had told one of her girlfriends, Lela, how unhappy I was with her because of some of the awful things she said and did to me as a child. Lela wasted no time in phoning my mother and telling her all about the conversation I had with her. Instead of my mother hanging her head in shame for having abused and neglected her children, she adopted a stance of self righteous indignation. As soon as I arrived at my mother’s home, she and Janet, her girlfriend at the time, confronted me with what I had said to Lela in a moment of weakness. My mother’s confidence was bolstered by her new lover, so she felt no need to apologise for her actions or try to speak reasonably about all of the problems in our mother-daughter relationship.

As a result, my trip to Little Rock was ruined because Mama, Janet and Bill just ignored me.

In desperation, I asked Anita, someone who I thought was a friend, if I could stay with her, and she refused my request even though she could see very clearly that I did not want to go home and had nowhere else to go. I was so upset with Anita for turning her back on me in my hour of need that I never spoke to her again.

Because I was obviously not welcome in my mother’s house and I had nowhere to go, I flew back to Maryland after only three days. I honestly don’t know what on Earth motivated my mother to allow me to spend a significant amount of time and money to go and see her, and for her to reject me once again when I arrived. It would have been better for all concerned if my mother had simply told me not to come because she did not want to see me. That was not my mother’s style, however. She rather enjoyed making a scene and ruining my holiday because that was just one faucet of what was a rather sadistic personality.

One evening Ling rang me and said he needed to speak to me. He came to my room and gave me a long list of things he did not like about me. His main problem was that I was not very ladylike. I was quite upset by the things Enrique said to me. If there were so many things he did not like about me then why was he going out with me in the first place? I had such a low self esteem that the thought of breaking off with a man who had so many complaints about me never entered my mind. I did not have enough regard for myself not to tolerate a man speaking to me in such a derisive fashion.

One evening when I was speaking to Enrique, I jokingly called him a “spic”. I did not mean it as anything derogatory at all. When I was in junior high school I took Spanish, which joined together with the French class for form a club called the “Frogs and Spics”. My Spanish teacher was half Mexican and half American, and she was in charge of the club. She called the club “Frogs and Spics” so matter of factly that I had no idea that Latin Americans considered it to be a racial slur.

When Enrique heard me jokingly call him something that I did not even know was an insult, he slapped me in the face. I was astonished that Enrique would use physical violence to get his point across, but was not unused to it. Being a battered child, I was used to being beaten with switches, belts, planks of wood, and having all manner of objects thrown at me. Because I endured a life of horror throughout my childhood, I didn’t bat an eyelash when Enrique slapped me in the face. I did not know that when a person uses violence, his actions will escalate with greater intensity. In fact, studies have shown that when a person expresses anger, he will actually become even angrier through the act of venting his rage. When he expresses happiness, however, he will become happier. Although that was the first time Enrique would hit me, sadly, it would not be the last.

When Enrique went to Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, that was the first time of many that I would be required to say goodbye to someone I loved. When Enrique was at Keesler we spoke to each other almost everyday on the telephone. I missed him terribly and hoped that he missed me. Apparently he did not do well in the course, which was somewhat of a disappointment, considering the fact that he had done so well in previous courses.

One day when Enrique phoned me, he asked me if I would marry him. I was very pleased that we would be getting married because I loved him very much and only wanted to spend my life with him.

The following day Enrique phoned me and told me that he could not marry me. He had phoned his family and told them he was getting married, and they did not approve. Enrique’s family wanted him to marry a local Puerto Rican girl who they knew.

Although that was not the first time I had been rejected by one of my boyfriend’s family, this was the first time I had the experience of having my boyfriend’s family tell him who he could and could not marry. Sadly, it would not be the last time I would have such an experience. I would learn the hard way that the world is full of men who are dominated by their mothers, and people wonder why we have so many wife beaters, rapists, murderers and paedophiles walking the streets today.

Any self respecting woman would have broken up with a man who asked her to marry him and then withdrew the proposal because his mother would not let him get married. Sadly, I was not a self respecting woman. The thought of breaking up after such a massive letdown never once crossed my mind. I just kept hoping and praying that Enrique would one day have a change of heart.

Enrique took two weeks leave before going to Turkey. My supervisor would not let me take leave even though I had the days saved up and I was entitled to take it. I can only assume that all of the men in my section knew something about Enrique that I had not been made privy to because they were not happy at all about me having a relationship with him. I therefore had to go to work during the day and see Enrique after work. Enrique stayed at the Base Airman’s Quarters and we did things when I was not working.

For reasons that I do not understand, Enrique suffered from sexual dysfunction during our holiday. Rather than always being ready for sex, which was the norm, he could barely even maintain an erection. Enrique apologised to me for what could only be described as a temporary impotence, but I felt no apologies were necessary. I wanted to be with Enrique because I loved him, and was not bothered about sex at all.

One day while Enrique and I were together, he took me to Shakey’s Pizza. I ordered a pasta dish and Enrique ordered a pizza. When the food arrived Enrique decided that he liked my entrée better than his own and therefore ate my meal while I had to make due with his. During the meal, Enrique broke down in tears. For reasons I did not understand, he could not stop crying and would not tell me what it was that was bothering him. I was too naïve to have any understanding of what secrets he had that would make him break down in tears in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

I did not ask Enrique any questions but just tried to be there for him while he was in need. In retrospect, I wish that I had been more savvy and had asked more questions because Enrique obviously had some secret that was troubling him deeply. In the end, all of Enrique’s secret demons remain unresolved and would go on to have a huge impact on my life.

One day while Enrique and I were staying in the BAQ, for absolutely no reason whatsoever he became very belligerent with me, saying really hateful things. I do not even remember what it was that Enrique said, but he upset me a lot by his words. After he finished his tirade, he went into the bathroom to take a shower, content with himself that he had hurt me yet again just with his words. I was so upset by what Enrique had said that I decided I was not going to put up with his behaviour anymore. I therefore packed my bags and left a note for Enrique, telling him that I was leaving him. I then walked out the door, never to return.

It just so happened that Enrique heard me slam the door and rushed out to get me. It was so easy for Enrique to get me to stay. Even after he had been really horrible to me I would continue to stay and have good times with him. Only a survivor of child abuse would go back to an abusive partner time and time again and actually have enjoyably times in between.

I would like to point out that Enrique said hateful, nasty things to me virtually every day, and it is not the intent of this book to chronicle all of them. Please rest assured that the incidents I have described in this work are just a small sample of the litany of abuse that I endured on a daily basis from the man I loved. In the beginning of our relationship he regularly brought me to tears just with his words. After a while, however, his tirades no longer had an effect on me. Certainly in the beginning, however, Enrique hurt me greatly just with the things he said.

Although Enrique’s abuse would start out as primarily emotional in nature, after a while name calling and verbal slurs would not be enough to appease his sadistic mind. As with most abusers, Enrique would need to increase the intensity of his bullying in order to get the same level of satisfaction. In many ways, abusers are like addicts. They need to harm others before they can feel okay with themselves in the same way that heroin addicts need increasingly larger doses of the drug just to feel normal.

After our two weeks together, Enrique went to Turkey. I had no idea at all if I would ever see him again.

Even though Enrique was in Turkey, I was still madly in love with him. I phoned him as much as possible because I wanted to keep in contact. I was able to phone him on the Autovon Network, which was a military communication system that enabled me to phone other bases all over the world. I would never have been able to afford to phone Enrique if I had been required to pay for it.

I also wrote Enrique endlessly. I would write him letters and letters and letters. All of the love I poured out was for the most part unrequited. Enrique rarely wrote me letters, which often left me wondering if I was wasting my time. He did ring me one day each week and I was allowed to speak to him for 15 minutes. Because Enrique was on a remote tour, he was allowed to make one morale call each week. At one point I got fed up with pouring out my love to Enrique in the form of endless cards and letters, and just stopped. I decided that if he was not going to write me, I was not going to write him. After three weeks with no card or letter from me, I received a card from Enrique. In it he told me that he missed my letters. That was all I needed t resume my letter writing campaign.

One time Enrique sent me a picture of him in the traditional Turkish garb. On the back of the card he wrote, “I hope you find happiness.” I thought that was an odd thing for him to write on the back of a picture, meant for his girlfriend. I suppose even then I knew that although he was fond of me, he did not really love me.

I was not the only one to suffer while Enrique was in Turkey. He apparently had stopped writing his family as well. As a result of this, his family contacted the Red Cross, who contacted his commander. Enrique was therefore directed to take pen in hand and write his family a letter. Although he was obliged to write his family, he was never obliged to write me. Although Enrique’s parents had rights, I never had any.