I believe Cassie was in her early twenties, and certainly not interested in a fourth grader. My mother and father figured her to be in her late teens, not that that would have helped any. I guess to a child my age she just looked older. But, she might as well have been fifty for all the difference I felt it would make.
She was a frail little thing, about five-foot-one at most, and couldn’t have weighed an ounce over a buck ten.
Oh her beauty.
She was one of those women who was just blessed with a perfect face. Big, hypnotic blue eyes, high cheek bones, soft lips, you get the picture. And all that beauty that was crammed into that small space was framed beautifully by thick, long hair that was usually jet black, though it tended to range all over the color spectrum and even sometimes might have been two or three colors in different places. Often these were not naturally occurring hair colors. Pink and blue made frequent appearances.
Cassie was into what I came to learn later in life was the heavy metal and goth subculture, which I heavily delved into myself in later years, and still do today at thirty-four years of age. I’d credit the enigmatic Cassie as my original inspiration for doing so. Before I was a teenager in the nineties, and I discovered bands like White Zombie and Samhain and Cannibal Corpse just to name a few, I had Cassie. I often referred to her in my mind as The Halloween Girl. My asshole father once said she dressed like every day was Halloween. And that was what I first loved about her.
One thing I can say for certain is that Cassie was without a doubt my inspiration for strictly dating goth girls. I consider Cassie my first love, and perhaps my only true love, as I’ve always been chasing her.
I don’t know that I ever even spoke a word to Cassie, other than saying a neighborly hello or good morning if she happened to be coming out her front door as I left for school. But I felt as if I knew her, as there was some mysterious element to her that I’ve looked for in every girl I’ve ever dated. Sad to say, I still haven’t found her in any of them.
Cassie was just different from all the girls I ever hoped would replace her in my mind and heart.
Typically, when I meet a girl at a goth club, she might be gorgeous and mystifying at first. But good looks on these girls were just decorations on a soul that cared for nothing but itself, and making that self as popular and “cool” as possible. Then the good looks melted away to reveal an interior of a generic, run of the mill douchebag. And that simply was not Cassie.
All self deprecation aside, I’ve just never really been the kind of guy who could give a girl status and popularity. I don’t say this in hopes of pity. It’s not something I ever would have even wanted to give someone.
(As a fairly irrelevant, but meaningful-to-me side note --there may be several throughout this diary as I tend to babble-- I’d like to just note that it’s funny how we can be outcasts all through our childhood and high school years, only to become adults and finally form our own little society of like-minded people, which then breaks off into cliques of its own. Then it’s high school all over again. Except when you look back, you realize that high school was easier. Back then in those halls and cafeterias, the assholes had uniforms to let you know they had no place for you. In the goth clubs, everybody looks like they’re on the same team. Makes choosing your allies feel like Russian roulette.)
Anyways, thanks for reading through my little deep thoughts session. Back to my story.
Though I know I just said I really never spoke to Ms. Cassandra Otis (I only know her last name because I sometimes snooped around and looked in her mailbox to find out more about her) other than in brief formalities, I knew somehow that she was a selfless being. It was in her eyes. I’m not one for seeing auras or any other spiritual tourist trap bullshit, or at least, back then I was not. But, aside from the physical perfection, kindness and compassion were her best features, even to some ignorant ten-year-old boy who didn’t know her. Something beautiful just radiated from the very soul of her. So much so that you noticed that invisible stuff about her before you could appreciate her visible beauty and become intoxicated by it.
It was when I first saw an anomaly in her mystifying beauty that I learned my neighbor and heart’s desire was someone to be pitied; that was when an explosive fire that burns in me to this day first ignited.
And that brings me to where the story of Cassandra Otis turns sour.
She lived alone down there on the first floor. She was a quiet, solitary soul. I never heard her blasting music, or even talking loudly. I imagined that whatever she did in the privacy of her home could only have been an activity as timid and peaceful as she herself appeared to be.
But along came a guy one day. I guessed at the time that he was her boyfriend. Though he didn’t act much like a boyfriend should, from what the ten-year-old me would have imagined. I figured boyfriends did nice things like give their girlfriends candy and kisses and tell them they’re beautiful. Cassie didn’t seem to get any of those things from this guy.
He first showed up on the scene when I was ten. His name was Brent. I’ll never forget that fucking name as long as I live. The fact that he intruded upon the territory of my boyhood dreams was nothing compared to the true misfortune that he would eventually cause.
A big man, he must have been at least six-foot-five, well over a foot taller than Cassie. He also must have been almost three times her weight.
Tough guy. Real fucking tough guy.
Obviously, I hated the prick. Right from the first moment I ever laid eyes on him. I didn’t know what kind of subhuman filth he was yet. In fact, part of my disdain for him at first was that he looked just like I wanted to look. Long hair, leather jacket with chains, Slayer t-shirts, etc. But more so, he had what I wanted. And I knew that Cassie saw something in someone other than me, so as any ten year old boy would do, I hated the living shit out of him.
Then one day I saw something that put that hate into manic overdrive: the aforementioned anomaly in Cassie’s beauty. While leaving for school on a Monday morning, I saw Cassie come out of her apartment with a black eye. I know I was only ten years old, and this Brent was probably in his twenties and was the size of a moose, but the anger that came over me makes me firmly believe to this day I could have killed him with my bare hands.
And that day was the start of where things in the quiet, gentle life of Cassandra Otis turned bad.
I’ll get more into her story in the pages to come. But it’s late and I’ve got to sleep; something I still haven’t gotten used to doing without the drunks and dope dealers serenading me with the lullabies of their tumultuous lives.
Tomorrow, I’ll get more into Cassandra Otis. The Halloween Girl.
II.
All my life I’ve been completely obsessed with the unknown. Not so much in the realms of the mysteries of creation and whether or not intelligent life exists on any far off planets. Let the scientists and theologians figure that stuff out.
I have always kept, and continue to keep, myself busy with the more local mysteries instead of confusing the unknown with the unknowable. The unknown was always only right outside my door.
(Yours too.)
I think that’s what irks me most about the silence that drops upon Portsmouth with nightfall. The darkness makes me look deeper into my surroundings and raises my curiosity to a level that borders on fixation. I used to think it was just too many scary movies as a child -and adult- but I could never accept the fact that there wasn’t something always lurking in the dark corners of every town while everyone was asleep.
Today, if I look out the windows in the front of my apartment in the day time, I see a fairly busy street and a Dunkin Donuts directly across from me. The Dunkin Donuts is bustling with activity: people’s cars crammed into the Drive-Thru with a line backed up out onto the street, people honking angrily to get out of their parking spaces while other people fight to get the soon to be empty parking spot, the annoyed customer who just wanted a simple cup of coffee but got stuck behind the douche bag who o
rders twenty breakfast sandwiches for their office at the drive-thru.
Right across the street I could see two major elements of suburban Massachusetts that seemed to follow me up north: Angry, volatile consumers and Dunkin Donuts.
These very reminders of my hometown that sat right outside my living room window were nothing out of the ordinary by day. Unassuming customers and employees came and went, and nothing ever really changed other than faces.
But, by ten o’clock every night, Portsmouth would be dark and silent. The donut shop would turn off the lit up signs and all would go home, or somewhere else. Maybe some of them disappeared into those dark, unseen corners and cracks and took on a whole new life by night. Who could know?
I just knew that at night, outside my window, there was a veil of blackness and a wall of silence.
Often times at night I pull a chair up to the window, smoke my pipe or a cigarette or two against my landlord’s lease agreement, and just stare off into the darkness beyond Dunkin Donuts. Only with the help of moonlight can I see the small tributary extending from the Piscataqua River and the old train tracks that I have never once seen a train trudging upon. I wished that Dunkin Donuts would just disappear and no longer ruin the sights that lay behind it. But, by morning, I was always glad it was there.
I’m really a Starbucks guy, but when you’ve got lower grade coffee within thirty feet of your apartment, you adapt. It’s human nature.
More digression. Sorry.
The way the moon reflects off the water never fails to captivate me. The old train tracks are fascinating too. Signs that must have been standing since the early 1900’s still stand, chipped and rusted. It was like a little part of a different time that had survived through the generations, more stubborn about change than my traditional Irish grandparents had been about Sunday mass being said in English instead of Latin.
So many times I’ve dared myself to walk out into the night and go appreciate these things up close. A few times I even got to my front stairs, only to turn back and retreat to my recliner. There were hurdles.
One of my many phobic idiosyncrasies is a severe affliction of nyctophobia. In layman’s terms, that’s a fear of the dark.
Darkness petrifies me. I’m not someone who sleeps with the lights on or anything like that, though I did as a child.
Safe in my home, in bed, I’m okay. But sedatephobia is a problem for me as well, more commonly known as fear of silence. So couple the darkness and the silence, throw on top of that that I’m a suburban Boston kid who hardly ever knew quiet before I moved here, you’ve got one petrified grown man.
I’d liken myself walking through a dark and silent night to a fish venturing out onto land. I’d throw a spastic fit and hyperventilate if not immediately thrown back to my natural habitat. Luckily, evolution was kinder to humans than to fish, and running back home was never difficult.
After some failed attempts to set out on these adventures, I’d retreat to the safety of my arm chair and my pipe. Immediately after lighting the tobacco and taking a good long pull, I’d turn to thoughts of the one thing that would never fail to bring me a little much needed peace. Cassandra Otis. Yup, The Halloween Girl. Twenty-four years late I still obsess over the girl next door.
The last I spoke of Cassie in this diary, I left off at the point where Brent entered into the story, and gave a brief introduction to the way he so gallantly treated his much smaller girlfriend.
That first black eye I saw on her was the first of many. And often they were accompanied by a lip that had been fattened or split, and assorted other bruises on her face or arms. There were likely bruises in other places that I couldn’t see, too.
After witnessing my beautiful Cassie with her first black eye, Brent walked out her front door behind her, smiling like a smug, evil prick.
Most kids can’t help but stare at things that they can’t make sense of. Brent caught me in my stare, and growled at me. The kind of growl that is moron-speak for “fuck off, kid.”
In the weeks and months that followed, the bruises and black eyes became a frequent occurrence. Brent seemed to have moved in next door, as his car was always parked out front and his vile presence was always darkening the neighborhood.
My parents and other neighbors frequently muttered of what was going on over there, and the men always seemed to argue about either going over there and teaching that guy a lesson or minding their own business and not getting involved. As I stated before, my anger toward Brent made me feel invincible and my silent vote was always cast on the side of intervening and breaking his jaw.
The more time that went by, the more Cassie seemed to be all clammed up whenever I saw her. If Brent was with her, she looked as if she knew better than to speak out of turn. If Brent was not present, she gave the appearance of the frightened, obedient slave who stayed busy even out of sight of her master.
A few months after the first black eye sighting, I awoke to the sound of hysterical screaming and crying. Desperate pleas of “please don’t kill me” violated my ears and rudely roused me from sleep. Cassie’s calls for help rose above the noises of the floors above her, which had become no different than the sound of running water to me.
Being ten years old, I had no other ideas on what to do, other than calling the police. I ran out of bed and downstairs to the kitchen, which was the only room in the house that had a telephone (sounds funny these days, I know. But, this was common in 1990). Before making it all the way down the stairs I was given a good scare by the screams of my mother, which caused all kinds of confusion in my not yet fully conscious mind.
My mother was on the phone, but screaming back and forth at the 9-1-1 operator and my father.
“Ronnie, come back! Don’t get involved! Ronnie, stay here for Christ’s sake!” she screamed frantically.
I ran outside onto the front porch in a panic, confused and scared out of my mind. But consciousness had fully set in only moments later, and with my wits fully restored it dawned on me that my father was merely attempting a rescue of the poor young lady with the aid of several other men from the neighborhood.
Ronald Sullivan, my father, was seldom a hero to me. Especially when he was drunk and angry, which usually resulted in my receiving a good, old fashioned beating. Sometimes it was his belt. Sometimes it was just his hands.
I didn’t hate him as much then as I do now. I guess as a kid, when you know nothing other than what you have at home, you think maybe everyone goes through this. Maybe all the kids at school got beaten by their dads, too. Maybe it’s just what you call growing up.
I certainly didn’t enjoy the beatings. I just didn’t know quite what to make of them yet. I did know, however, that I thought very little of my dad.
A child beater, a typical hard-ass, a drunk, an unfaithful husband and a lousy father all wrapped into one. He spent more nights out with his construction buddies than he did home with his family. And ten out of ten nights he came stumbling home drunk and smelling of women’s perfume.
That night was one of the few nights that my father was a hero to me. Like I said, I hadn’t made enough sense out of his beatings to despise him yet.
I realized that I suddenly looked up to the man as soon as I saw him marching, or running, - I can’t remember which - over to Cassie’s apartment with a baseball bat in his hand.
Tony Nuzzo and Al Fitzpatrick, both neighbors of ours, were also charging from their houses to break up the melee. The pro wrestler-sized bear from the third floor even took a break from his drinking and domestic spattering to rush to the defense of Cassie. Strangely, the drug dealer on the second floor conveniently didn’t seem to hear anything and brought no attention to himself. Kind of strange, considering he was right on top of the whole scene. Prick.
I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday when my father kicked the front door of Cassie’s apartment down and charged in blindly. The first ever thought of my father’s mortality set in and panic took over my mind.
Sure,
I didn’t like the guy. But he was my father, and more importantly, he owned the roof that was over head. When I heard sirens wailing and saw the blue and red lights flashing as two police cars skidded around the corner onto my street, I couldn’t have been happier.
My mother had finally calmed as well, and stopped screaming over the telephone and joined me on the porch.
Shortly after the police charged into Cassie’s apartment, my father had been dragged out of the house in handcuffs, along with Tony and Al and the big guy from the third floor. I had to smile when a moment later an officer approached my mother and I to inform us that the men were not under arrest, but merely being restrained as they were laying a pretty severe beating on Brent. (Back before the days of iPhones and other video technology captured every waking moment of every person’s life, things like this could happen and just as soon be forgotten) No charges would be brought against them, and my father would be let back in the house as soon as Brent was carted away.
As I saw the police escorting the massive beast named Brent down Cassie’s front stairs and violently tossing him into the back of a squad car, I felt a surge of peace. I was young and naïve, of course, and assumed that the justice system had some actual merit, and this would be the last we’d ever see of Brent the woman beater.
My father and his two friends were freed of their handcuffs and congratulated by the police. The drunken grizzly bear from the third floor just went back up to his cave. I guess he didn’t even get a single punch in. But he was also thanked and congratulated for his effort.
Yes, these were different days than today. They’d probably have been arrested, brought in for interrogation and held on bail were that to have happened in this decade. A team of defense attorneys might have run right in behind them and videotaped the rescue, calling it an unnecessary assault, and Brent would likely get some money out of it.
The Halloween Girl Page 4