day four, i think

cheetah just tried to kick the shit out of me while i was stone cold sober

by just i actually mean last night

i went to bed early. real early. like, seven pm early. i haven’t had alcohol in days. literally since the night he stopped making sense and i started this journal and finished the rest of his vodka, i haven’t had a drink

around three in the morning i woke up because cheetah was excited and yelling at the tele. nothing weird about this. usually if it goes on too long i’ll ask him to keep it down and he will

i got up to go pee, and i was coughing while i peed. as i passed him on the way back he asked why i was coughing. it took me a few seconds to answer, but then i answered him. i guess in those few seconds his mind had moved on? because when i answered him he got mad at me for talking about myself

when he got completely unreasonably bent out of shape about that, and wouldn’t believe that he had actually asked me a question, i splashed some water on him. he proceeded to get up, charge across the room, and try to beat the ever living shit out of me

that is not okay

anyway, i left. somewhere in there he took my phone, and i thought i heard him smash it. i found out later it was the window he smashed instead. i took the moment while he was out of the room to get dressed. i grabbed my wallet, keys, and left the house

my mistake is i came back. i should have just slept out in the wilds for the night, and come back in the morning. but instead, i realized i’d left my weed at home, and i came back for it about an hour later. someone had called the cops on us. they snagged me a few blocks from home, and helped me get home. cheetah was still here, also talking to them. we weren’t quite in each other’s hearing range, but i remember hearing him laughing as if he were joking with the cops

then they booked us both into county for the day

it was pure theatre from the moment the metal garage door closed behind me at five this morning to the moment they let me go at just shy of five this evening. most of it was boring, just laying on a cold bench in a seven by fourteen roughly rectangular room and waiting. i spent most of my time meditating or trying to doze

but at intake and outgo both, when the deputies did get to interact with me, they loved to toy with me. like, we are most certainly not the first couple they booked together for domestic assault. we may be the first gay one though, and they were having a ball with it, in all the little ways they could, just shy of anything that actually mattered

there is one weird thing. while they were letting me go, there was someone in some holding cell freaking out about not being allowed to go to the bathroom, and all the deputies were like “she’s on a sixteen hour hold.” i tried to look up what that was after i got home, and got nothing

but anyway, they sent me home with a thick packet of information to help me understand i am the “victim” of, and this part i’m inferring here, but it’s what they were thinking of charging me with, “third degree assault and domestic violence.”

they told me cheetah was released the same moment they were starting to process me out, and that’s legit the first i realized they took him too. i’m naive, i know. in my mind he had been at home and feeling guilty about me being in jail all day. i feel a bit better knowing he was there too, truly

they made us walk home, of course. i saw cheetah going in the door while i was coming down the street. perfect theatre, on the part of the cops. i wonder how many times they’ve looped through our neighborhood since the moment we both got home? i know the jail checked to make sure dispatch was ready before they let me go

i suspect it’ll be a quiet night. in the tiny bit we did interact – via yelling – i think i got through please leave me the fuck alone for a while

my plan is i’ll leave in the morning. it’s valentine’s day weekend, ya know? imma go spend it with the other boyfriend who doesn’t every few months decide he needs to kick the shit out of me

like, there’s been room for debate in the past, because i’d always been drinking too. but no, this time, cheetah was drunk, i was stone cold sober, and he tried to kick the shit out of me

that is not okay

this is, if i’m counting right, probably about the fifth time he’s tried to kick the shit out of me. maybe the fourth, but it feels like the fifth. and if i’ve lost count then i’m thinking it’s one time too many

like, i plan to go away for a few days and think about it, but my initial thoughts are to revive plan A: the only way cheetah is actually allowed to continue to live here in my house is if he totally gives up alcohol

i blew a 0.000 when they booked me. i wonder what he blew?

i was fresh off eight hours of sleep

he was tired from work and avoiding going to bed by drinking and watching shows that amp him up. i think he’d even just run off the end of the last episode of the last season of the one he’s been describing as “intense” lately, and that’s why he was shouting so loud in the first place

they never quite told me what i was charged with during the day. but when they finally sat me down in front of a teleconference judge, there was a fresh motion where “the people” had just filed to dismiss my charges. the judge just said okay and ordered release

what i’m pretty sure happened is someone finally looked up cheetah’s record and decided what the cops, at three in the morning, had not: who was the aggressor

yes, technically, i escalated first because i tossed some water at him. yet there is a very large level between that and deciding to kick the living shit out of me

it sucks that cheetah will write this off as “whiteness.” if i ever discuss it with him, i’m utterly certain he’d say the system let me go because i was white, rather than admit he did anything wrong

i’m guessing there is going to be a hearing in about a month when cheetah needs to appear for his version of the charges that sort of evaporated on my end of things. i’m really sure it would be advantageous to him if i were there to show him support

see, the thing is… i can write ultimatums like the one above. if this or you’re out. but… how do i enforce that?

say chee comes home drunk, or heck, just looks me straight in the eye while taking a swig of whisky? what do i actually do? do we argue? do we have more assault?

because ultimately he knows that i know that he’s basically dead if i ever actually hang up on him

like, on a practical, i could get a lawyer and actually legally evict him. that would fuck his credit for years, and he’d have no place to go. or i could just put his stuff in the shed while he’s out and change the locks on the door and take the cats and run for the hills, but he’d still have no place to go. it’s not like he has anywhere else he can go live, at all

i just don’t want to get the living shit kicked out of me every few months, and i’m at a bit of a quandary on how to get there