For the simple, BiteMe is my nickname for our new President, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. I can sort of understand a woman returning to her pimp. The first five years of leaving the life suck. Your whole support system and network of relationships that enabled the life are gone. You have nothing. No job, no home, no friends, no family, and no face. Ours is a material culture. We evaluate face based on who your family is, what you own and who you know. Lose all that and you are nothing.

We didn’t even do that. We left our summer romance with a John for the Pimp Daddy’s bag man–BiteMe. It’s worse than the above paragraph. We went from a John who thought he loved us and we loved him because he had all the things we thought would make us happy to a senile old man who owed everything to our pimp and turns out, also has nothing. Talk about stupid moves. . .

Bag Man

BiteMe is Obama’s bag man. Everything he has came from our Pimp Daddy Obama. So BiteMe doesn’t have any of what he promises. It gets better. BiteMe is a whore whose ass is tattooed with 習近平’s name. Xi Jinping owns BiteMe and a good number of the elites in Washington D.C. Most of our government debt is loans we borrowed from 中國. The big three oligarchy’s, Apple, Google, and Facebook/Twitter are huge clients of 中國. Their culture is a westernized Chinese Communism. It shouldn’t be surprising that BiteMe slips sometimes and we get a glimpse of how deeply Maoist he is.

BiteMe is who we left because the John was being mean to us. The John wanted us to come to Jesus. Our PimpDaddy abused us and we were tired of the work so we fantasized that Donald J. Trump was Richard Gere and we were Julia Roberts. That went well.

Again again

It is a sadly too oft-repeated story. An abused woman plots and executes her escape. She does all the right things and spends a half-year recovering from an abusive relationship. Then the abuser contacts her, apologizes, and promises to turn over a new leaf. He says he loves her and that nobody can love her like he does. She melts and goes back to him only to find that the abuse is escalated after a honeymoon period in which he keeps most of his promises to participate in couples therapy and anger management training.

Everyone in the woman’s circle of influence is amazed that she can’t see what a complete ass-hat the man is. He’s got a record, did time, most of it for violent crimes including domestic battery. Yet she loves him and stays in the relationship through repeated cycles of escalating abuse. Even though some victims have kids with their abusers. Actually, having children with this fucker just gives him more victims.

Why go back to BiteMe? I mean, he’s not even our Pimp Daddy. He’s a bitch himself so like, how can he really do anything? Here is the mistake the John made and that we made—we thought we wanted Hope and Change but once we left our PimpDaddy we found out that Change isn’t so Hopeful. John wanted us to behave like a Long Island wife and we were trailer trash. He liked Russian caviar and we liked collard greens. His Spotify featured Nirvana and ours was full of Luke Bryan, Garth Brooks, and Toby Keith. At parties, the women talked about their favorite white wine while we asked around for a “Sex in the Woods”. Seriously.

Oh. OH! Church! The John wanted us to go to church. And not even a church with good music. No, he wanted us to go to Old South Haven Presbyterian Church. Twice annoying because Old South Haven is a PCUSA temple to Woke Faith and old AF.

Country Girl in Long Island

It’s one thing to be getting paid to wear Daisy Dukes, cowboy boots and pigtails while sounding like single wide trash from the Delta. Or arrive in a long gown and ballet flats with a Brooklyn accent. But as much as the John wanted to teach us the Queen’s English and have us shop on Fifth Avenue we were still trailer trash and liked our whiskey sours. He took us out of the trailer but the trailer never really left us.

We got into this huge argument with the John because he caught us sitting on his Italian leather couch with a bucket of chicken from Chicken Au GoGo including a side of cole-slaw. He didn’t care about the greasy fingerprints we left. He was mad because we didn’t order take-out from Caviar Russe. Chicken Au GoGo was too lowbrow for him. Yeah . . . uhm . . . there is bougie we can tolerate and then there is bourgeois that is fighting words JOHN.

Jimmy Choos people. Yes, the Pimp Daddy beat us into the hospital and never paid us. Sure, PimpDaddy had babies all over DC and owed child-support to a gaggle of baby-mamas. But PimpDaddy let us shop on his card and never questioned what we bought. Just bring him money and hide the bruises. We loved him. We wanted to go back to him. Why not? He left four years ago to go play golf in Palm Springs and reconnect with his wife. He went legit on us. Asshole.

Just Listen

Then BiteMe hits us up and is all ears and sympathetic. He apologizes for the times he beat us because we didn’t have Pimp Daddy’s money. He confesses that Pimp Daddy beat him too and so he is also a victim. He’s sweet to us, buying us a silver plate pendant from Solid Gold Jewelers. He took us to Golden Corral for breakfast. Tho . . . his debit card didn’t go through at Golden Corral so we paid 😒. So we get with him.

We are in the post-coital bliss, America. We took a beating and heard sweet words of apology, promises of money and promises that we don’t need to be afraid anymore. So we broke up with the John and hooked up with Pimp Daddy’s bag man BiteMe. BiteMe says he always loved us and hated that we had to work for Pimp Daddy. He promises he’ll treat us better than that evil man John. And for now, we are good with that.

Some things to keep in mind. Abuse is a frog-in-the-pot thing. Most of the abuse cycle isn’t bad. We can keep telling ourselves that the abuse won’t happen again through most of it. Then it happens again and it’s rinse/repeat. Also, abusers like to isolate us–gaslight us. It’s a long game where a little bit at a time s/he tells us that the only safe place is in the house with him or her. We are accused of cheating, of contacting the outside world. We get a beating anytime we hint at viewpoints that drift from the opinion of our abuser. And it just grinds at us because each repeat is a little worse.

Memories

Another thing–victims remember the abuse. They also remember the increasing peace they experienced when they fled the abuser. Third, and importantly for this essay, some abusers escalate far enough that even though we escaped with a plan and have started a new life, the abuser hunts us down, saying, “if I can’t have you then nobody can. Come home or I will kill you.”

Fourth. Addiction is often mixed up in this. Addiction has a half-life. Early on it’s great but soon enough the entropy ensues. Once we turn that entropic corner things only get worse. Ahead of us are familiar paths of jail, hospital, rehab, and the morgue. Abuse is like that. It only escalates into worsening abuse, hospital, attempts to escape, and for some, the morgue.

BiteMe just got us back. He says the abuse is John’s fault. With him, things will be better. And we want to believe him but we remember the beatings.

This is Not the End

This is who we elected. A bag man whose greatest ambition is to collect money for a Pimp Daddy who has retired. His old extortion accounts are refusing to pay. Quite the contrary, they are calling in his debts and he has to pay. He took us to !Fantastic Thrift! to buy clothes and again, his card didn’t go through.

Ahead of us is more blame, that it’s our fault Bag Man BiteMe is in the trouble he’s in. And more beatings. And more isolation because we are accused of stepping out (we didn’t but it doesn’t matter).

We are broke (kind of), homeless, destitute. Now, those familiar with Step Work know that rock bottom is the worst and the best. It’s the worst because our lives are as near death as can be without actual flat-lining. It’s also the best because this is the turning point where we start working toward a clean and sober, healthy life.

I’d like to say that we are at rock bottom. We are not. One of the really ugly things about abuse is that it teaches us to pick abusive partners. Pimp Daddy left us and BiteMe claims he’s not that asshole. We thought we loved John but he’s all Long Island snooty. So what we want most of all is our Snuggie®, chamomile tea and to binge-watch “Sleeping With Other People” on Netflix. We moved in with BiteMe because he has a really nice couch and a big TV.

It’s too early to tell if we made the right move. What’s worrying is that BiteMe’s friends don’t like us and keep posting to his Twitter that we are trouble. Maybe. Mostly we are tired and hungry and don’t want to be Julia Roberts anymore.