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in touch with them.
    There
was a culture shock in the black and white relationship with Rick that my
parents did not comprehend.  They were traditional middle class folks who
basically expected people to tell the truth and do the right thing. I was never
raised to dislike any ethnic group of people, although my mother told us
stories about her sisters being disowned by her Croatian immigrant parents
because they had married Italians. I also had a girlfriend in high school whose
Italian parents said they would disown her if she married a Jew. She did marry
a Jew. This was all so silly and stupid to me, always.
    I
allowed Rick to visit my son at my apartment sometimes.  It all depended on
whether we were arguing and fighting at the time. I did not want him interfering
with my life, as I had no plans on going back with him.  He was a possessive,
chronic liar who had swept me off my feet and then destroyed my mind, degraded
my self-worth, and smashed any hope I ever had of living a normal sane life—he
was an empty narcissist.
    Rick
never had any good intentions towards the promised relationship that he
preached when I first met him. He sat on my parent’s living room sofa and told
them we were going to get married, while he himself was still married to
someone else. And yes, he had lied to me about that, too.  He lied about
everything in his life. He seemed to roll along and invent his daily life as it
played out, a self-created myth without substance or character.
    I
did continue to depend on Rick in certain capacities though, due to the fact
that I was a single mother with a bi-racial child in Pittsburgh, a racist city.
Since he was spending time here with Wango Capizzi and the Hukelau nightclub, I
did find myself calling him up if I needed something.  He was always willing to
help me out in small ways, but never willing to take the responsibility of
being a father to our son. It didn’t matter; my family was all I needed.
     

     
    Chris
had stopped in my apartment to meet Rick for the first time and challenge him to
spar with her, which made me laugh because I knew Rick’s capabilities as a
fighter; I had seen him in action. His knuckles looked like crooked mountains
sticking up from his thin hands. This sparring session lasted five minutes.
Rick got her in a chokehold right away and it was over. Her spindly arms looked
like they would break in his grasp, as he spun her around the apartment and she
kept coming back for more. Once she realized he had knowledge on the subject of
fighting, she craved his attention for instructions and training any time he
stopped over. It was a source of entertainment and laughter for me, watching
them play in the living room for hours, and each time he would overpower her
and she would sit and figure out other moves to beat him. Then I would tease
her and say things like, “Hey Chris, you’re touching a black man, what would
Martin think of you tainting yourself like that?”
    “Shut
up, bitch,” she would say to me while flipping me her Italian arm gesture for
ba fungul, or sometimes she’d just tell me “ba fungul,” which means to fuck off
in Italian.
    Chris
thrived on this self-defense stuff, along with physical conditioning, running,
muscle toning and everything that I personally looked upon as a waste of time. 
    Rick
commented after several sparring matches that, “Chris knows enough about self-
defense to get her hurt. She doesn’t understand that women are not built the
same as men, they lack muscle and weight, and for a woman to think she can take
on a man in a fight is just plain stupid.”
    I respected
Rick’s knowledge on self-defense. Not only was he a black belt in Goju Karate,
but he was also a New York City cop for many years in between singing gigs with
the Drifters. When he was not working as an entertainer, he was a seasoned,
highly decorated New York cop who didn’t drink or smoke.
    I
managed to save up around three hundred dollars to hire an attorney to