Boulevard Cinema 1
Entered into evidence,
Doyle had threatened Sharon if she didn’t dye her hair, he’d turn her in for a new model.
When Doyle got home, Sharon was dressed in tight jeans and a red and white
checked blouse that fit her well. Sharon had a nice figure and what she wore pleased him.
“Honey, you look great!” he exclaimed. “I got an idea…let’s go down the
mountain and into Chattanooga and have some fun! Maybe get a room and stay the
night, even paint the town! There’s a place I’ve been wanting to go, and this is the
perfect night for it! You know, you don’t even look like yourself? You look better than
that blonde, you know, the one that died in the car wreck in Louisiana, what’s her
name? Oh well, let me shower and we’ll hit the road. Fix me a stiff gin and tonic and
I’ll be right there.
The Boulevard Cinema 1 on Rossville Boulevard is a sleazy adult movie theater located on the west side of Chattanooga. It was this “perfect place” Doyle chose to take his new blonde wife to this night. It was a night Sharon would never forget, though she tried for years to do so. When she related these events to me, she never shed a tear. Her worlds were almost mechanical, devoid of emotion.
Doyle opened the red leatherette doors leading into the darkened theater. Sharon
followed obediently as Doyle found them seats toward the rear, and they sat in the
middle. After the movie started, Doyle spent more time checking out the movie
patrons than he did the two women engaged in sex with a rather well-endowed black man who wore nothing but a football helmet on the screen. About fifteen minutes into the movie, Doyle took Sharon by the hand, and led her to another aisle, where they sat directly behind a tall, stocky black man. Doyle made quiet, yet clearly audible comments about the size of the “tool” the black man on the screen had, and wondered out loud if it were true that all black men were hung like horses. The man seated in front turned to look, and, seeing Sharon first, smiled, looked at Doyle, and said: “it’s true, my brother, take my word…it’s true…” Doyle laughed, leaned forward and said: “well, my brother, as you put it, how’d you like to show my wife that tool of yours…” The three of them left the theater, and the stranger followed in his car. Sharon argued with Doyle all the way, but he fawned all over her, telling her he would do anything, give her anything, if she would do this for him. She was insistent: no! She would not screw a stranger and a black man at that!
No way! “I’ll screw any of your friends… I’ll screw any other white man or boy in that theater, but not him, please!!!” she pleaded in vain.
Tears welled in Sharon’s eyes as she stared out the passenger window of the Cadillac Doyle had bought for her as a gift. Now she felt like a whore in a pimp’s yellow Caddy. She hated this car and, at this moment, she hated Doyle and what he had become. This was no passing phase, this was the real Doyle, the sadistic and demeaning man she had grown to despise. The first man she had ever been with, the first man she ever loved. But, if this was his way of loving her in return, she no longer wanted to love him.
The gaudy glare of the neon signs and yellow glow of the street lights all passed by
in a blur viewed from the car as Sharon stared vacantly through teary eyes at anything yet seeing nothing, while feeling everything, yet feeling nothing at the same time. Events like this steeled Sharon’s heart and she knew that she no longer loved Doyle. Sharon begged him to keep driving, but Doyle was adamant, and told Sharon he would throw her out of the car and onto the street and she could walk the near 75 miles home if she did not do this for him. She gave in, and, as Doyle watched, masturbating, the black stranger from the adult movie theater, screwed his wife for several hours. Only at the end did Doyle join in, then he fell asleep naked on the bed, in a drunken stupor.
Sharon pulled the sheet up to her neck and looked at that black man, who sat in a chair, drinking from Doyle’s bottle of gin. “You sure a good lookin’ lady. But, lady, your husband is a crazy muthafucker. He don’t know nothin’ ’bout me, and he aks me to fuck you? He gotta be crazy, and you too, but, I can see’s how you would do that for him, ’cause he’s likely to hurt you if you don’t, right?”
Sharon began to weep. He paused for a moment, sat the empty bottle of gin on the table and rose from the chair. ” I’m sorry I did it now. I’m leavin’. I’m sorry.” “That’s okay, it’s not your fault. He put you up to it, I know.” Sharon told him. “This is nothing….You haven’t seen anything….this is…” she paused… “nothing…”
Sharon stared at the stained motel wall vacantly, she was empty inside, crushed that Doyle would do this to her. It was not the first time he had subjected her to threats and taunts and humiliation and she vowed to herself it would be the last. She glanced at Doyle, big man now, drunk on his ass, snoring loudly. She was disgusted. Disgusted with him, with herself and with the situation she found herself in.
Doyle had brought women to the house and flaunted his cheating ways to her face.
Much to Doyle’s surprise, when he brought women to their house the last two times,
Sharon jumped in the car and refused to get out. Doyle would get angry and the women would leave in a huff, and he would laugh at Sharon, calling her names and threatening to “trade her in on a new model” if she didn’t change her frigid ways. And she tried to please him, oh how she tried. But this was too much. Not that his raping Christi wasn’t the worst of the worst, but he was beginning to scare her and after all those years together, he was getting worse and she feared his sexual appetite would one day gravitate to her precious 3 granddaughters.
She trembled at that thought, then looked at Doyle, passed out on the bed. He had
crossed the line with Christi and now he had crossed the line with her. This had to stop, somehow, some way, this had to stop.