INTERNET DATES FROM HELL (12 page)

While driving to Newark International Airport, I wondered if this could be the one. I wondered if he’d be attracted to me. Everything looked great! What could go wrong?

The weekend went very well. I asked what his preferences were, and before I could finish the question, he blurted, “The Bronx Zoo…and also the Botanical Gardens, of course!” I thought to myself, “That’s funny. I haven’t been to the Bronx Zoo since I was a child, and I can’t remember ever visiting the Botanical Gardens.”

The weekend proceeded as planned: a Broadway show (I wanted to see Phantom, but he urged Cats, and Cats it was), dinner at the renowned Smith & Wollensky Steak House, and a walk through Central Park. His attention was drawn to the horse-pulled carriages.

“Is this just on the weekends or…?”

“No, Joe,” I interrupted. “This is 24/7, twelve months a year—weather permitting, of course.”

After his fascination with this phenomenon, our conversation steered itself toward more important things. He offered that his father had been a well-known horse veterinarian, licensed in the states of California and New Mexico. After ten minutes of his father’s veterinarian accomplishments, I finally asked him about the other members of his family. Joe was no less passionate. He proceeded to praise his mother for her daily devotion to St. Francis of Assisi, the great protector of animals. When it came to his oldest sister, Marion, he couldn’t stop. After fifteen minutes of Marion adulation, I asked him about his other five siblings. Although warm and genial, his descriptions were nothing like those of his mother and Marion. It was clear to me that the maternal instinct in this family was its guiding light. The only problem I sensed was that when he spoke of his father, he looked down at his shoes. Yet when he spoke of his mother and sister, we were eye-to-eye. When I asked him if both parents were still alive, his demeanor changed, and to this day, I can’t determine whether it was from sadness or aloofness. However, it certainly wasn’t sadness when he spoke of his father’s departure. Regardless, I knew not to press on in that area and questioned him instead about his home life. Once again, his eyes danced with elation. For more than twenty minutes he described his family’s ranch from one end to the other. Everything from the farm hands to the little triangle his mother insisted on ringing every night at seven o’clock for dinner. He literally could have talked for hours about the years he spent on that ranch, but before we knew it we were standing in front of the Museum of Natural History, clear across Central Park. He must have sensed my agitation because he squeezed my hand and asked what was wrong. I told him that we had walked the equivalent of thirty blocks (the diagonal distance of Central Park), and it was two o’clock in the morning!

At that point he asked, “Is that bad?”

I said, “No, time flies when you’re having fun.”

He immediately responded with, “What’s next?”

“A cab ride back to my apartment and then to your hotel,” I replied.

I readied myself for his deflation, for he was soaring like a parade balloon. But it never came. He was as positive about the cab ride to his hotel room as he was about the ranch, family outings, and even the periodic religious retreats they held in their own home. My mother’s prayers were being answered, I thought.

Sunday’s brunch was as good as Saturday’s dinner. He ate the way a true farmhand would—everything in sight. I honestly thought he would eat the tablecloth as well, until I reminded him that his flight was at two thirty that afternoon out of Macarthur Airport on Long Island, not Newark, where he had arrived. Although Long Island at the time was in a middle of a building boom, there were enough horse farms along the way at which Joe could marvel. He was like a kid in a candy store. He couldn’t have been happier. There was something about those horses that intrigued him.

As promised, I was aboard a California-bound plane six days later. It was truly time for a California vacation. It had been quite a while since my last getaway. I met his family. They were all wonderful and hospitable. Although Joe and I had met in New York City only days before, I debated whether this was love or just extreme infatuation. It didn’t matter which, as I looked around at the most beautiful scenery of Southern California (all owned by Joe’s family). I enjoyed myself to the max. One problem, though, was that all the mother and sisters could speak about were religious matters. Raised a strict Catholic myself, I endured their conversation as best I could. However, when I sensed they were testing my faith with the most inane, dogmatic, questions about principles, I tolerated it no further. I politely excused myself and began my long arduous search for Joe. Entering one of the four chicken coops on the ranch, (the only lighted one), I must have startled him because he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“How many chickens do you have to feed on this ranch?” I said, trying to calm him.

“Less than half of what we had in our heyday,” he demurely answered.

“Where are the horses?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s another thing. When my father died, they were no longer an issue. There’s only Leo, the burro to keep these chickens in line.”

As he said this, he pointed to the most ancient long-eared animal I have ever seen. This donkey must have been seventy years old, if he was a day. I didn’t have the heart to ask him about the burro, when I sensed his somber mood over the horse issue. This time I was the one to ask the question “what’s next?”

“Let me finish this row. I’ll clean up, and then I’ll show you my humble abode.”

On the way to his apartment complex, I asked him what was planned for the following day. Again, before I could finish the question, his answer was, “The zoo, of course.”

“What zoo are you referring to?” I inquired.

“The Los Angeles Zoo,” he snapped.

Realizing that it was only a twenty-five-mile ride from Anaheim, I felt comfortable. Like a true gentleman, he dropped me off at my motel first. He told me that he would give me the cook’s tour of his apartment the following afternoon. After a nice day at the zoo and a quaint lunch at a local restaurant, I found myself back at Joe’s apartment with more questions than answers. His mood changed dramatically the moment the key turned in the door of his apartment.

What met me first was a bulletin board to the left of the kitchen doorway. Pinned to that board were at least a dozen snapshots of perpetrators of various crimes sought by the local police. Adjacent to the bulletin board was a chalkboard, which was a virtual timetable or schedule for the comings and goings of these perps. On the dining room wall was an enormous area map of Southern California and western Arizona. Protruding from the map was a myriad of colored flagged pins apparently indicating where these perpetrators lived and worked. On the dining room table were several computers, printers, and fax machines, all seemingly in operation. On both the coffee table and end tables were mountains of manila folders, which were obviously files that Joe was either working on or had finished. Adorning each wall of the three rooms I could see, were photographs and paintings of racehorses past and present. Even the curtains of the living room had images of cowboys chasing Indians on fast-moving horses. Before I could pummel Joe with questions about the odd indoor scene, I asked him where the bathroom was. It was as if I woke him from a slumber. He looked at me as if he didn’t know who I was.

“Oh, I am sorry, Trish. I just picked up an important fax from the Anaheim Police Department.”

“That’s OK, Joe. You look like a busy man.”

“It’s down the hall, two doors to your right,” he concluded.

What I experienced next was the second most frightening element of the trip. Instinctively I looked into the first room on the right, which was the guest bedroom. In the room were a daybed, dresser, and night table. However, on every square foot of the room, including the walls, appeared statues, paintings, and pictures of the Sacred Heart, Mary, saints, and angels. I slowed my pace and glanced nonchalantly into the room on the left. In that room, it seemed as if I was looking at a religious article supermarket; life-sized statues of holy entities filled the room. Even the headboard was carved with an image of the Last Supper. This morbidly reminded me of the estate in England. Regardless, obsession is obsession, and I was always taught that obsession is wrong.

My bladder couldn’t hold out another second. As I opened the bathroom door, I saw what appeared to be a shrine on top of the toilet and sink. Smaller statues, rosary beads, and votive candles crowded the lavatory. On the walls were more photographs of various horses. Even the shower curtain had images of the Kentucky Derby. Uncomfortably relieving my bladder’s tension, and trying to put these images out of my mind, I instinctively looked to the sink. What pushed me over the top were the little hand soaps shaped like horses in one dish and soaps shaped like angels in the other. Now I was genuinely concerned.

As I exited the bathroom and had to walk down what seemed to be the longest hallway, I refused to look in either room. I arrived in the living room and called Joe’s name. No answer. I continued into the dining room and kitchen, but there was still no answer. “That’s odd,” I thought. “He was here only a few moments ago. Where could he be?” It was then I saw the piece of computer paper floating in midair in the kitchen. I thought, “This is too spooky.” However, I had to determine what I thought I just saw. The paper wasn’t floating at all; it was attached to the cord that controlled the overhead fan and light. Handwritten on the paper were the following words: “Sorry Trish, had to leave quickly. Hot tip on a perp. Be back within the hour. Love, Joe.” This increased my anxiety, because then I had to sit for at least sixty minutes in an apartment that resembled a bizarre chapel or perhaps a tack room in a jockey’s hangout.

What was I to do for an hour or more? The next discovery was as bizarre as the others. There was no television or even radio in the entire apartment, just the three computers. I went to the door and looked out at a parking lot. Retreating back, I sat at the dining room table. My eyes became fixed on the closed laptop at the far end of the table. Since the battery on my cell phone was running dangerously low, I decided to contact my good friend Greg (via e-mail) and ask him what I should do under these circumstances. I didn’t think Joe would mind. This laptop looked as if it was used for personal business, not like the other two, which looked more official.

When I opened up the lid, I wasn’t surprised to see one of the greatest racehorses on his screensaver. Man O’War was proudly posing for a twenties black-and-white photograph, alongside his jockey and owner. Since Joe never logged off or shut down, the computer was still running. Innocently, I clicked on the browser icon to sign on to my e-mail account. This could fill up some idle time while I waited for Joe. After all, I do watch too much television and listen to too much music.

Before I could compose an e-mail to Greg, I was inundated with many popups depicting what appeared to be animals mating. As I began to close each spam window, I couldn’t believe my eyes! Perhaps I had seen too many pictures of horses in his apartment, and my eyes were deceiving me. Upon closer inspection, I realized that these weren’t animals mating; these were animals and humans mating (is mating the right term here?). My curiosity took over, knowing these spam pop-ups only happen when one visits similar sites. I decided to do some investigating of my own.

To my disgust, as I clicked on the history icon, I encountered hundreds of thumbnails of movie and photo files that had the word animal in them. I randomly clicked on one of them, and it opened a bestiality movie of a woman getting it on with a Great Dane! I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, so I clicked on the next one and found another woman with a horse. Gross! To think that we had been at the San Diego Zoo only a day before. What the hell had he been thinking? And even worse, his deceased father had been a well-known horse veterinarian. Not only would I have to worry about other women, but animals as well. This was more bizarre than I could have thought. Just then the front door handle began to turn, and thinking it was Joe, I rose and hastily made a beeline toward the door. At that moment I realized it was too late to log off and close the laptop. Much to my surprise it wasn’t Joe at all, but Marion, his oldest sister.

“What’s wrong, Trish? You looked like you saw a ghost,” she said. Before I could answer, I saw her eyes move down the table to the open laptop and the chair left askew.

“Oh, I see.” She added, “There’s a perfectly good explanation.”

“My phone battery was running low, and I needed to contact a friend to verify my ride home from the airport “

“No need to explain yourself,” Marion retorted.

As she finished her statement I noticed her somber mood. She sat and invited me to do the same. She began to tell a lurid tale of Joe’s preoccupation with animals, stemming from their father’s profession.

She told me that her mother had befriended a priest when her dad had developed cancer. The priest supposedly had healing powers. He spent time with the family in an effort to comfort them. At this point she revealed that Joe had been molested by the priest when he was younger. I asked her how old he was when this terrible thing happened, expecting to hear that he was a child. But instead, she replied that he was 19—it had happened only ten years prior! I was shocked! Could this be what had caused his imbalance? Then it came to me, as Marion continued to supply many details regarding the facts. I silently pieced the puzzle together. The combination of what Joe saw as a child, perhaps in his father’s office, the ranch life of animal husbandry, and the molestation of an unstable young adult by a Catholic priest, all contributed to his perversion.

Marion continued her explanation while I retrieved my purse and sunglasses. I politely asked her to drop me off at my motel room and implored her not to reveal the nature of my departure. She agreed, and before long we were in the parking lot outside my room.

“I am sorry for all of this, Trish, but Joe is a good kid. Please remember him as such.”