Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette

Rihanna and Chris Brown are in the news.  It’s the tiresome story of a man beating up on a woman.  The more tiresome story is of the woman staying with the man.  She has money.  She has some place to go.  She can make it on her own.  There are no children involved.  But she still wants to be with him.  If a man beat me up I wouldn’t want to be his friend even if we were friends before.  My pride and sense of self worth wouldn’t allow me to be his friend any longer.  I just don’t get it.  Does sex (physical intimacy) over ride everything?  Is that why Rihanna is staying with Chris because her sense of self is so depended on having a man.  Honey, there are other guys just as rich, good looking and probably better in bed then that bone head plus they don’t beat up their women.  That’s because they’re men not boys.  They’re mature.  Life is too short to be getting your ass kicked by someone who is suppose to care about you, who is suppose to maybe love you.

It was because my father was a wife beater that as soon as I turned eighteen in 1964 I joined the army and left Pittsburgh and ended up fighting in Vietnam.  In those days domestic abuse and violence were not publicly talked about.  My mother had six kids to raise.  She had no job.  There were no agencies to help her.  She had no where to go.  As a young man I had such a low opinion of marriage, having lived through my parents’ marriage, that I vowed never to get married, a decision I now regret.

Writing about this even now still brings back feelings of guilt because I wasn’t able to protect my mother.

True Love (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/True-Love.638929