Read Online ‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol by Jake Brown, Jasmin St. Claire - Free Book Online

was actually Barry who’d seen me there, which meant he was the only one who could have told Dick from that circle. It made sense once I got to know Sickie. Even though I yelled at him pretty hard that first time we spoke, he came up to me at the next toy show and gave me a Casper Bobble-Neck toy as a peace offering and we became fast friends after that. He’d feel very bad for me, because he always used to watch me sitting there like a beat-up dog, so he used to bring me little presents from time to time to cheer me up. What really made us bond though was our fourth or fifth phone chat, when we started making prank calls together. Sickie and I were like a couple of 14-year-olds in terms of our sense of humor, we were both very immature and pranked everyone from his ex-girlfriends to other toy dealers to random strangers, a pastime that we’ve continued through present day. Socially, we mostly saw each other at the toy shows and he was always by himself. I tried to invite him out with Dick and me to lunch, but Dick didn’t think he was cool enough. I think I needed a friend in that business, I felt like such an outcast. I felt like no one wanted to talk to me, and they talked down when they talked to me, because I was Dick’s girlfriend. He was more like a friend to hang out with and bum around with. We’d go to different weird toy stores, flea markets, different close-out sales, and he’d teach me about the business: how to pick what merchandise to buy, where to buy stuff from, how to price things, things like that. He was very low profile at the shows, and mostly bought and sold stuff in bulk. We’d go out to lunch at Mumbles, just terrorize the town; we were basically hang-out buddies. Ironically, I spent more quality time with Sickie than I ever did with my own boyfriend, and Sickie certainly took more of an interest in me than Dick ever did at that time.
    At the heart of it, Dick was just a bastard who beat on me whenever he had a short coming, or did a bad business deal, I was to blame. I was really afraid to speak back up to him then, both because I thought he was the only man who would love me, and because I feared what he would do to me physically if I had. Thinking back on this now, I’m saying to myself the same thing I bet you’re saying, WHAT AN ASSHOLE!! I remember once we went to Tampa to visit friends, and he hit me so hard that he broke my gum, and I had to go to the emergency room.The police came to question me about it, and of course, I covered him like a jackass. I knew we were in this downward spiral, and I knew we’d have to hit rock bottom before I’d be completely free of him. That moment came when he nearly took my life. We were at a convention in Atlantic City, and we were in the hotel room fighting over something. Anyway, I guess I’d gotten to a point where I started to say to myself, ‘I’m not going to take this,’ and it was a rare thought, because it was one of only a couple times that I hit him back. Well, he responded by pulling a knife from his back pocket and pressing it to my throat. I was scared by the look in his eyes, but I managed to knee him in the balls and get out of the room before he could do anything.
Part iii

My Season in Hell
    By the time I was 21 years old and worn down to the bone, the battered-woman syndrome had come full-circle in my relationship with Dick. I was working full-time and paying most of his bills, still getting over my father’s death, receiving regular beatings by this psychopath, who at this point I was staying with out of fear more than any other motivation. As the holidays approached, the camel’s back finally started to crack. First off, when we exchanged gifts on Christmas day, Dick had — in plain view of me — this enormous Victoria’s Secret bag that held a Santa’s Sack full of lingerie, while his present for me was so small, you could have fit it comfortably in a fucking brown lunch bag. On top of that, when he took me to his