Angry Men

“I love you, and I don’t know why, but sometimes I just want to kick your fucking skull in.”

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I have these memories of angry men.

Not all of them were relationships, but they wanted them to be. I could never bring myself to tell them why we weren’t: their anger made me not want to be with them.

The first was in a wheelchair. Permanent, but something I could have grown to overlook. He couldn’t. His pity for himself festered until it became a kind of angry cloak around his shoulders, and he took it everywhere. His anger pointed inward, but it was never a private wound — you could feel the heat of it from across a room.

I remember going to the club with him and our friends.

We talked. I can’t remember what was said, only that he provoked me, as usual, into saying something snappy back. I felt bad and watched him trying to dance to the music, rolling his wheelchair back and forth. Then he noticed me noticing him. Maybe he thought I felt pity. Maybe I did. But mostly I was thinking that we could have been together, if he just wasn’t so angry all the time.

I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t tell any of them.

Years later, my first serious boyfriend would pull my hair if I looked at him a certain way. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I was stuck in the cycle — devalued forever, valued just enough to stay. His anger didn’t point inward. It pointed at me.

So we fought. A lot. He belittled me for being ambitious, even though my being smart was one of the things he claimed to value. We made up a lot, so there was plenty of heated make-up sex. But if he was in a bad mood I was a slut, or not slutty enough, depending on what I was wearing.

And then the day came.

We were at the park, swinging. He was in one of his moods again. We sat there talking without talking — me trying to reach him, him keeping himself just out of reach. And then he said it.

“I love you, and I don’t know why, but sometimes I just want to kick your fucking skull in.”

I blinked. Because what do you say to something like that?

I can’t remember how the conversation ended, or the day. We probably went home that evening and had sex like two strangers, the way we always did. But the sentence stayed. It stayed long enough to free me from him — twice, because of course he couldn’t let me go that easily. For two years he resurfaced every six months.

He misses me. Can I help him with something. What did he do wrong. By the time I’d freed myself for good, I was working at the bank.

I still remember meeting him on my first day — he turned bright red the moment we were introduced. I felt for him; I blush easily too. He was cute, short, covered in tattoos under his work shirt.

Over the next few months I grew into the role and we grew close.

He stopped blushing when I spoke to him. He was lonely in a way that I was too. But — awful as it sounds — I could never imagine us together, because I saw us the way the world would have seen us: me a head taller than him. That was the reason I gave myself, anyway.

The real one arrived on a late afternoon, in one of those conversations two people fall into when they enjoy each other’s company.

He told me about friends of his, a husband and wife, who owed him money. A lot of money. His anger didn’t point inward, and it wasn’t pointed at me. It was looking for somewhere to land. As he wrapped up the story he said, “I don’t care if it’s him or her — if I ever see either of them again, I’ll beat the shit out of them.”

He said it like he meant it with every bit of ink covering his body.

I chalked it up as confirmation that I’d made the right decision. But I was wary after that, and the height stopped being the reason.

Sometimes I go back to the club. Him rolling his chair back and forth in time to the music, catching me watching. Maybe he read pity in my face, and maybe pity was there.

But so was the sentence I could never say — not to him, not on the swings, not at the bank. Three men, one sentence.

Your anger made me not want to be with you.

There. I’ve finally said it.