My husband received orders to relocate to Denver, Colorado when he returned from his deployment in June 1989. I was looking forward to moving away from the same town as my family for the first time. I’d never been out of California or my family’s reach, so in a way it was an adventure for me and that was how I chose to look at it. Unfortunately it didn’t stay that way.
I was unpacking a box in our new townhouse upstairs spare bedroom when he came in and casually told me there were sides of him I would never see. I thought this was a strange comment to make to open a conversation, then I saw what he was looking at. I was unpacking a box of strangely labeled VHS tapes. Instead of words, they had a series of numbers that matched a list he held. There must have been at least 30 tapes in the box. He told me if I ever wanted to find out what he was really all about to let him know and he’d show me. It wasn’t an offer; it was more of a threat. I’d never been treated that way so I stood up to him. I picked up a video out of random and went to the VCR and put it in, turned on the television and sat down with the remote. What I saw I will never forget, nor how it affected him.
I’d seen pornography before; my father watched it from time to time. However this was so very different. It involved women, feces, and wrestling. It was grotesque, but to him it was seductive and exciting. I tried to turn it off because it sickened me, but he forced me to watch the entire video. When I looked at him when the video was over, his eyes were wild, out of focus and crazed. His face was flushed, I could see the pulse beating in his neck. He grabbed my hand and yanked me off of the couch and dragged me into the master bedroom. He threw me on the bed. I’d never been treated this way by him and didn’t know what to do. I froze up and that seemed to please him. I thought he was angry but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. He was excited beyond words. He bound my hands to the headboard with ties I did not know were there.
