Psych(ot)ic Influence

So why was Allison obsessing over this O'Leary character? Who knows? My reasoning sounds conceited, but it makes a lot more sense than what follows. You see, when I met her, I was hung up over Juliet, which pissed her off (not bad, eh? meet a woman and piss her off in a week's time). Instead of dropping me like a wet blanket, she decides to be my friend and have her own corresponding long distance relationship. As long as I hung on, she kept doing it... and continued to elaborate the story.

It started to come out that Tom was psychokinetically enabled in that he was able to control his environment with his mind. This was all constructed in a series of building blocks so it all wouldn't come out at once, but little by little to build one item on top of another, from the very simple and even believable to the downright ridiculous.

I'll try my best to get all of this is the order it happened, but it's more to the point that I just get it all out. To begin with, Allison told a story of a former boyfriend she had that was cruel to her in some ways I prefer not to recount because of some of the things she said he did to her (quite against her will). This was just some common boy she knew, and while the tale was on the horrific side, it wasn't unbelievable.

That story was tailor made to anger even the sanest of men since anyone who attacks a woman should be made to suffer. But, of course, this one was long gone. In fact, she pointed out some model in a catalog and said that was him. My belief in the who began to falter, and it was afterward when I started to put all her stories together and realize just how convoluted it all was. It's like trying to make heads or tails out of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and all their sequels.

Let's put a time frame in perspective. She graduated high school in May 1994. I met her in January 1996. That's just shy of two years. During that time, she managed to have two long-ish relationships, live in Oklahoma City (pinpointed this to April 95, as she said the OKC bombing woke her up), and work for Playboy (this is what she told me). When I met her, you may recall, she was working for a hotel as a concierge, and it was a job she'd recently acquired. Is it possible to do all that in two years? Yeah. Is it likely? I don't recall the precise times now, but I knew them well enough then to question that every story was true. Were some true? Sure. Do I really know which ones or parts of ones were true? Nope.

In fact, one of my earlier excursions with her (and Hedy, of course) was to drive past her ex's apartment to see if he was there with his girlfriend. Yeah, she was stalking him for awhile. That stayed with me long enough to warn my groomsmen to make sure she didn't show up at my wedding.

Back to Tom. I would like to mention that Tom O'Leary is the victim of the delusions of a pathological liar, and in no way is any of this a reflection upon him. While the performance I saw actually used an understudy (according to the program), but I saw a clip of his performing, and he seemed quite good.

Walk with me into this fantasy, will you?

The first thing that came out was that Tom had a house in Crown Pointe in Tulsa, which is a big to-do housing addition here in Tulsa. This house had been renovated considerably to resemble the underground of the Paris Opera House to the point that one had to take a boat to cross a small lake inside the house. Why, oh why, would he do this? Well, because he more than just played the Phantom in the show -- no, he was related. You see, the extension to the Phantom story is that Erik, the Phantom -- whose real name was (big surprise) Thomas James O'Leary also -- did have children, but not with the mythical Christine, and Tom's ancestor was one of them.

The Phantom Thomas (who we'll continue to refer to as Erik to keep it straight) acheived his feats by way of psychokinesis, which is the ability to affect your environment with your mind. This isn't just moving stuff around. Here's some info outside of the fantasy. Skilled psychokinetics can do all kinds of stuff such as changing temperatures of items, affecting clouds, slowing their heart rate, and of course, moving items. Back to Tom...

The first thing that actually happened that attempted to prove this was an answering machine message. We got Tom leaving a message, but when Allison tried to play it back, it was gone. Gasp! He erased the message! I commented to her that all she had to do was not rewind the machine, or rewind it to before the message (this was the days of cassette tape answering machines) and play the blank space. She was, of course, deeply offended that I accused her of lying.

So you can see derailing the fantasy wasn't difficult. It was just a matter of whether I would choose to do so, and in retrospect, derailing it would get easier and easier as time went on. Actually, I could have derailed it very early on if I knew anything about cell phones and how they worked. You see, at the time, I didn't know that when you take a cell phone into a different area code that it kept its own number, and not take the area code of where ever it ended up. Allison continually changed up Tom's area code depending on which part of the country his cell phone was in. When I learned the facts behind this, it all started to come together for me.

So we have Tom, the descendant of Erik, the psychokinetic practitioner. What else could the master of mind do with his powers? How about possession? Am I serious? Hell, I really don't know, but it was one of those things that I barely believed, but was intrigued enough to with it. Shoot, it sure felt like I was talking to a different person sometimes. "Tom", while talking through Allison, indicated that he could take over her body from wherever he happened to be at the time to talk to me. After all, he was grateful she had a friend like me around. Sure, whatever.

What else could Tom do? How about some revenge? Remember the guy who did unspeakable things to Allison? Well, one thing to note is that I didn't hear about this character until after Tom came onto the scene, and it wasn't long till I heard she'd told Tom about him as well. This, naturally, made Tom quite upset.

A few days later, Allison got a call from this guy's mother (why she would call, God only knows, but that's what Allison said), and this guy had met with an untimely death while swimming in the ocean. Shortly thereafter, "Tom" popped in and revealed he'd basically astral projected himself to where this guy was and used his psychokinetic abilities to hold him underwater. While I can't say I would have agreed with someone doing what he did to Allison (no matter how warped she was), I don't think that would be the best solution.

What gets me was that all this stuff happened over the course of only about 5 months. She from a nice rebound to someone possessed by the mind of an actor. So what would possess me to hang on this long to someone that warped? There was the hope of one thing; that maybe, just maybe there was a thread of truth in what she was saying. That's all I wanted. Just one iota of truth, since in the beginning of the story, it was at least plausible that she went through some talent agency that was used by the Really Useful Group to fill out some bit parts in a touring production. It was plausible that while there, she charmed some guy who happened to play the lead part; she did have an infectious and outgoing attitude. If she charmed said guy, it was plausible that he would do whatever for her to woo her into his good graces, and he supposed proposed to her after a couple of months while at his home in New York.

So if all this was plausible, since he played the lead in one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most successful shows, it was also just as plausible that at some point, she would meet Lord Lloyd Webber himself. So went the story over the first couple of months, and if she'd done that, then could it not be said that she might mention that she had a friend who'd gone so far as to have not only purchased cast recordings for every show available but also purchase a biography of his? And who's to say that he and Tom might not be agreeable to meeting said friend on a future occasion, if all of this were true?

She played the one card she had to keep me hanging: the hope of meeting someone who could be considered a hero of mine. I admire a great many people, and it is those who meet with success in what they do. I could not hope for any of that success to rub off, but maybe, just maybe, knowing someone would lead to a glimmer of hope that they might read something I would write and give it a chance.

I believe that it was that more than anything else that kept me hanging on through the insanity, and it was entirely possible that she pulled the insane routine to try and get rid of me. She had a dreadful fear of commitment and anyone getting close to her, so after awhile, she likely went from the anger over Juliet routine to not wanting me to get close to her. It's hard to say, but the only reason someone would go so far as to appear completely off their nut (well, if they aren't) would be to get rid of someone who won't leave.

I should have left. After all, it can't get any crazier, could it? Yeah, it could, but fortunately, this charade didn't last long, and it quickly moved into a span of time in which I was able to be myself for awhile, and it was very nice...