Trashley: Part Four
The Devil lives in Bakersfield.
Trigger warning; domestic abuse, physical violence.
After learning Ashley kept a huge secret from me — that she has children and an ex-wife — I did what anyone would do: I got drunk with my neighbor.
My phone rang later that night. It was Ashley. Sober Lauren would have ignored it, but drunk Lauren answered. Ashley begged me to hear her out; she said her ex was hiding their daughter from Ashley, and that Ashley had no idea where they were. Their marriage had ended years ago because her ex was controlling and abusive. Cecelia was why Ashley wasn’t allowed to have social media or see her family.
I’d been in an abusive relationship in my mid-twenties. He controlled everything I did, went to, or said. He told me no less than one hundred times a day to shut the fuck up. I learned not to talk. He threatened to kill me and hide my body in the woods in Upstate New York, where no one would ever find me. So, I told my little sisters that if I ever went missing, it was because of him. I spent months planning my escape. We lived together in Brooklyn and flew to Alaska one Christmas to see my family. I brought my golden retriever, Madison, with me and asked my parents to keep him for a few months. My first priority was getting Madison to safety, and once he was safe, I could worry about myself.
I left TJ on March 23, 2010, which was the day he ripped the door off the bathroom hinges and strangled me in the shower. Which was a different day than when he punched a hole through the refrigerator, which was a different day than when he smashed the glass coffee table, which shattered into a million pieces, which was a different day than when he slapped me across the face at a bar because a guy stood next to me. If I had stayed with him, he would’ve killed me.
To say I have a soft spot for women in abusive relationships is an understatement.
Ashley’s explanation hit me deep in my feelings, and I forgave her.
After a week in Missouri, Ashley flew back to LA, and I picked her up from the airport.
Our relationship wasn’t the same as it had been before. I wasn’t as excited about her as I was before learning she had lied to me about having a family. I felt a little bit betrayed, but I understood where she was coming from. Ashley wanted me to make a copy of my key for her, and I did. When I referred to my place as “My apartment,” she corrected me, “Our apartment.” After that, whenever I referred to it as my apartment, she demanded I pay her a sixty-dollar fee. I thought she was kidding until I referred to it as mine again, and she flipped out, and the only way to get her to calm down was to pull out sixty dollars at a nearby ATM.
“Don’t you think it’s cruel to demand money from someone who hasn’t worked in a year?” I asked as I handed over the cash. “This is the only time I’m doing this,” I said.
She stuffed my money in her wallet, “I hope you learned your lesson.” And I did: that I hated this game and that she was kind of a bully.
The following weekend, Ashley invited me to meet her family in Bakersfield. Meeting her family should have been a huge step for us, but I wasn’t ecstatic about going to Bakersfield. Before I met Ashley, I had hoped to date someone whose parents lived in Napa or Santa Barbara or Paris. Better luck next time.
From my — excuse me — our — apartment in Los Angeles, Bakersfield was a straight shot. We loaded up my car and drove north. The freeway was crawling with traffic, Friday in LA is the worst day to drive. It took us two hours to get through the grapevine, and right after that, the road opened up. We passed a large, dead dog on the side of the road, signaling our exit. We passed field after field, cow after cow. Dilapidated houses and trailers lined the roads and Trump signs stuck out through the dirt lawns. We passed a roadside Blue Lives Matter stand selling merch, where I assume you can also purchase racism. We passed the town’s statue: the P.F. Chang’s horse. This was a different world than the one we’d just left.
I’d describe it as a culture shock, except there’s no culture.
Ashley’s parents lived in the suburbs, on a quiet street lined with cookie-cutter houses. As we pulled into their driveway, I noticed that the house across the street had a monster truck parked in the driveway with MAGA flags waving proudly from the truck bed. The neighbor to their right had Trump 2024 signs in the yard.
I pulled back on my gayness, leaving my iced coffee in my car because lesbians always carry iced coffee; it’s one of the easiest ways to spot us, and I didn’t want to be gay-bashed.
Her parent’s house was grayish-beige, just like all the others. White decorative pillars lined the front entryway, like a dollar store Parthenon. The temperature was fucking hot, one hundred and three degrees. Bakersfield was serving Vegas-in-August-energy.
We walked up to the front door, and before Ashley opened it, she turned to me and said, “Don’t talk about my Grandparents; it’s a really touchy subject. My Mom’s not close to her real parents; the ones that died were the ones who actually raised her.”
Of course. I’m not going to follow walking into her parents’ house and introducing myself with, “I’m sorry about your dead parents.”
“I won’t,” I assured her.
We went inside and were greeted by two small barking dogs, Tater and Gravy. I had brought Perci, and they all smelled each other’s butts while Ashley walked me through the house. Two dark brown, fake-leather couches faced a large flat-screen TV. A sign on the living room wall read, “Happiness is not a destination. It is a way of Life.” Someone shopped at Home Goods.
I love it when people have signs like this around the house; it tells me so much about them. The last time I went home for Christmas, my Mom had a sign in the kitchen that said, “Bless this mess,” and I wore it around my neck the entire time I was home.
The curtains were drawn, and the A/C was blasting. We went into the backyard, which had a pool, which seemed mandatory in the Bakersfield heat.
Ashley’s stepdad, Brad, was cleaning off his Traeger grill. We’d briefly met at Frasier Park, and we hugged to say hello again. He started talking about hockey. Apparently, a big game was coming on soon, and he wanted to fire up the grill. I hate hockey. I grew up in Alaska and can unequivocally say that hockey players are the worst-smelling people on the planet. But instead of telling him that, I told him that one of my best friends was married to an NHL ref, and if he ever wanted tickets, I could hook a brother up.
Brad went off to do more Brad things, and Ashley left me in the backyard while she unloaded the car. Ashley’s Mom, Stacey, was in her office recording a podcast when we arrived. The podcast was new and centered on reality TV. I would’ve made a great guest since I worked as a reality TV Producer. I found Stacey’s podcast on Instagram, and it had eleven thousand followers, or so it appeared to the untrained eye. The followers were fake; she had purchased bots to make it look like the podcast was popular. No shame in trying to boost your socials, but when a post has nine likes and eleven thousand followers, people notice.
The backdoor opened, and Ashley’s Mom came out to greet me. She was short and round and wore dark-pink matte lipstick and blue eye shadow, with long, wavy, dirty blonde hair. A stark contrast from Ashley’s dark complexion. Her face looked like a bobblehead, bouncing up and down as she walked. Her nose was so tiny I wondered if she was able to get enough oxygen.
“It’s so nice to meet you, dollface!” she said as she went in for a hug. “Ashley’s told me so much about you!”
Stacey’s voice was loud and high-pitched. She probably could’ve been a singer but not one that went pro, more like as the host of dive-bar Karaoke. Her laugh was more like a squeal; she hit octaves that made my dog recoil.
Ashley’s mom and I went inside, and she cracked open a nice bottle of wine her employer had made. We got along great and talked about everything. TV shows, the pandemic, and how I had met Ashley. For dinner that night, we ordered tacos. Both of Ashley’s sisters joined us at the dinner table. They were much younger than Ashley; one was seventeen, and the other was twenty. “Alexa, play Beastie Boys,” Stacey screeched. She was on top of the music scene.
Our first night in Bakersfield was fun. I liked her parents and her sisters, and they appeared to like me. When I woke the next morning, the house was empty and I had no idea where everyone, including Ashley, had gone. I texted Ashley and asked where everyone was. She told me she was with her Mom and they’d be back soon.
When Ashley returned, she picked me up, and we drove downtown so I could check out some thrift stores. On the drive, I asked where she and her Mom went. She said, “My parents found out I paid for my sister’s college last semester. She didn’t have enough money, so I paid for it.” Wow, what a thoughtful thing to do. “So, my Mom gave me a check for sixteen thousand dollars to pay me back.”
“So you’re paying for lunch then,” I told her, and we spent the rest of the day wandering around Bakersfield.
That night, Ashley’s youngest sister started getting an attitude with Ashley. I wasn’t sure what it was about, but Ashley whipped out her phone and Venmoed Claudia five hundred dollars. Claudia looked at the notification, smiled, and walked away.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“Nothing, just for fun,” she answered.
On Sunday morning, I got up early and found the house empty once again. I made coffee and journaled in the living room. Thirty minutes passed when I heard whispering, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. A few minutes later, a door opened down the hallway, and everyone walked out of Ashley’s parents’ bedroom at the same time: Brad, Stacey, Ashley, Claudia, and Britney. Everyone went about their business.
“What were you guys doing in there?” I asked Ashley.
“Huh? Oh, we were facetiming my brother’s kids,” she said. I didn’t know much about her brother other than they were fighting, and he sent her a book to read on Fascism.
These secret family meetings continued the following weekend when we returned. One minute, everyone was in the living room. The next, they were locked in her parent’s bedroom, speaking in whispers.
It was May in California, and Ashley transitioned from wearing J. Crew sweaters and khakis to MIT gear ALL of the time.
MIT hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and sweatpants. She wore them in LA, Bakersfield, restaurants, and bed. The only time she didn’t wear something with MIT on it was when she did laundry, but even then, she’d wear her Denver University gear, where she got her degree in Mathematics. I’d never seen anyone with as much school pride as Ashley. It was excessive; I imagined a Starbucks barista who never changed out of their green apron because they wanted everyone to know they worked at Starbucks. I found it strange but endearing.
It was mid-May, and my work was starting up again in June. It would be remote at first, but then I’d be in Spain filming from mid-July to the end of August. Meeting Ashley when I did had worked out perfectly: she would stay at “our” place, water my plants, and watch my dog. I had been low-key stressing over finding a good person to care for Perci. Then, the Universe sent me a free babysitter. A weird, weird babysitter, who I oddly adored for her brain and her nerdiness.
We were driving back to LA after a weekend in Bakersfield when Ashley said her Tesla had been delivered, and she had to pick it up. She loved this car. She told me she bought it for herself as a gift when she graduated from MIT in 2017 because it was finally time to do something nice for herself. After putting down thirty-five thousand dollars as a down payment, it was finally all hers.
I drove Ashley to a parking garage in Marina Del Rey, where her Tesla had been delivered. It was jet black with a white leather interior, and it made my Audi Q3 look like a fucking piece of flaming hot garbage. I sat down in the passenger seat, and it was like being in a spaceship. Her car was immaculate, like it was brand new, or Ashley was the cleanest person in the world. When I asked why it had paper plates, she shrugged and said she had to register it in California. While we were there, she added me as a driver in the Tesla app and said I could drive it whenever I wanted. I couldn’t wait.
As strange as Ashley and her family were, there was never a dull moment. The pandemic was long and boring. I was lonely. And I found a Mad Physicist, even though I had yet to see her do any Physicistry.
Speaking of podcasts, this would make an EXCELLENT one!
This is WILD. I cannot imagine having that much money.