Her

Discretion is Advised

*Triggers *Incest *Abuse

This is the one thing I never wanted to write about.

It’s a horrible thing.

I’ve written about nightmares before. They are something everyone suffers, yet certain conditions and even medications can make them worse. Certainly a history of abuse, physical, mental and sexual will cause PTSD, a condition known for the symptom of nightmares.

There are times, often strung together in days-long ordeals, when my dreams, already twisted to a distressing degree, are different. As in, worse than usual. The other day I had to endure everything about my son’s death again, only under different conditions and far worse since his overdose scene was built up by the interference of a woman. She taunted me, “you can’t save him, you gave him to me” and got to him, weakening every attempt both he and I made to stop what I, of course, knew was coming.

And so he died, but she would not let me go. She never just lets me go. Until my sleep is interrupted or on the rare day I actually seem to awaken by myself and feel like I’ve gotten enough sleep. The day before, I had seen my maternal step-grandmother.

She passed away under suspicious circumstances so long ago that I can’t even pin down a decade. There was some kind of family conflict when my mother went to her wake. My mother was not comfortable around her family. She rarely spoke to them and until I joined Ancestry I had no idea what that came from. I had an uncle I never knew was an uncle, but as a kid, I remember seeing him on the farm (a former plantation) near Burlington, North Carolina.

That place, she inherited after my grandfather passed away. It was dedicated to tobacco growing but I assume some kind of crop rotation must have been employed. Once off the freeway, probably a federal highway, there were rural roads to negotiate and and then a huge old mailbox signaled the time to turn left onto the driveway.

It was actually a dirt road. A long one which apparently no longer exists. The antebellum mansion stood white with dark trim, three stories of a horror movie set just waiting for a script and film crew. No haunted house in any film I’ve ever seen could touch it; while the parlor and kitchen were charming, everything else was a perversion of architecture and interior decoration. These rooms were perpetually dark, with old paintings on the wall of landscapes and English fox hunts that all had in common the garish and terrifying element of being too big, too dark and out of time. They would seem ordinary in 1850, but I looked at them and swear that no museum should ever display such cursed works.

I found out on Ancestry that it was my grandfather’s either by marriage or some other arrangement, and he had spent a lot of time in Kentucky, especially with my birth grandmother, his first or second wife. This is the connection my mother had with Daniel Boone, who was my sixth great uncle. But it must be told, that as a child, my mother lived a hard life. It is clear that her father was a hardcore alcoholic and, by interpretation of the few stories she told and the continuous drinking, her father had been quite abusive. While he married three times and two wives died mysterious premature deaths, I have found no documentation that he was ever questioned or in any way detained, it’s very easy to assume the worst. He represents to me the classic model of a cruel man, one familiar with the fact that drink, hard labor and married life never mixed well.

Having survived him, his third wife remained alone in that house for the rest of her life. All of the ingredients for a twisted novel were there; all anyone needed were the secrets that family held. Secrets so dark that I had never liked visiting her or that house.

By appearing to me in a dream, or by being conjured for the dream by my mind or by an external power, she looked young, thinner, restored and smiling. She said nothing. Her hair was dyed straw and red, and that wasn’t her or my mother’s natural color.  It couldn’t have been either one of them.

I awoke with the impression that she was in Heaven, had come to signal my life’s end was near, and when the time came, she’d be there to welcome me.

Holy shit. I spend too much time with Death. I need to stop. Join Death’s Anonymous or something.

It’s a lie, a trick. A false comfort. Because I don’t believe she’s in Heaven. She never said anything religious, never went to church. And she was cruel. A hoarder. A prisoner in a mansion that should have been destroyed by artillery fire during the Civil War. Alone in an obscenity, she only ventured forth to shop the five-and-dime store in town or to purchase groceries. She could never have bought clothes; I never once saw her in anything but her black dress, and I believe she made it herself. Her size couldn’t be found in the backwater towns of the 1960s.

Not understanding obesity because my parents never taught us the value of kindness or seeing people’s physical appearances as a mere shell to hold, often, the most beautiful of souls, I remarked one day to a friend while she was visiting us, “My other grandmother isn’t as fat as this one.”

Through the open window, she heard me. She was, according to my mother, wounded.

I guess so!

Well, she didn’t pass up a chance to get back at me. She’d come up before the holidays while she was still able. She would show me catalogs with the most wonderful toys, and have me pick something out. I never got anything but a crisp, new, two dollar bill. Fucking cruel and done for the sake of being cruel.

***

Talking to my friend Margaret one night, it came to me why I had chosen the story of the 9 tail fox as the antagonist in my Halloween story, “The Last Soldier of Bravo Four”. The real point of the story was to point out that our veterans of war are humiliated. Then forgotten.

But at its core lay the timeless fear that men have toward women. A fear ageless, destructive and driving many men throughout history to control and dominate women. We all know this fear in one form or another; to cover it up, we do things that are deceitful, cruel, condescending and deadly.

If I continue with the story of my mother’s father, I must say, he was an abuser of women, a powerful influence on my mother during formative years, and whatever good she had in her heart when I was small, it was gone by the time I was in junior high school.

She never balked at being told by my father that they were going to “teach” us kids about sex. After 1970 when her body could no longer tolerate pregnancy, a tubal ligation signaled that my course in the studies of sex would graduate to the final stage; intercourse. She did not do this with any sign of emotion or desire: she was as if a mannequin had mounted me every time. She never seemed to have an orgasm or even breathe rapidly. It was pure, cold, evil. I had to fantasize about movie stars, nude models I’d seen in Playboy issues that my friends and I passed around, because I couldn’t stand the sight of her. But if I didn’t get an erection, my father would beat me, and I’ve certainly described what his floggings did to me.

***

Men already have an archaic, even primal fear of women. I have seen that this fear causes hatred. I dislike the word “misogyny” as a weasel word. Fuck, it’s time to be honest: the fear engenders a deep hatred. The hatred should be called out for what it causes: terrorism with women as the targets.

Watch a horror movie. Binge on them between doses of Valium. Pick them from any era. Hell. Choose from them all. You know what you’ll see? A graduation through the years of women characters becoming the antagonists as opposed to victims. The hag witch. Cannibals. Zombies. Evil queens. Demons, carnivorous aliens, serial killers. Man-haters.

Art, in paintings, literature and every other genre have actually always shown women in a way they should never have been depicted. Even the famous portraits of English Queens are far from complimentary, the various artists seeming to have used light and dark in every wrong way there is. Trouble is, art is influential to perception and even a biographer can’t be immune to it. See too much darkness, and your writing takes that on. Life imitates art, but the reverse is also true. Novels, paintings, photography, motion pictures.

Perhaps no novel ever explored the fear of women quite like Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. At the center of the the narrative is a woman. Of course, she is not a woman, and we’re never shown what the creature looks like in its natural form, and that’s brilliant. One victim, dying, kept repeating the words “Bee orchid”, a terrifying thought because no one can make sense of it (there is a real plant called a bee orchid but the dying man in the story was in shock and we know he wasn’t referring to any plant). We know only that it emits glowing green light visible under her hotel room door. But she keeps appearing, always as a woman or a little girl. Always with names used to intentionally frighten the story’s heroes, who, it turns out, aren’t heroic at all.

Her initials are always the same, first name beginning with the letter A, last name with an M. Alma Mobley, Anna Mostyn, Ann-Veronica Moore, Amy Monkton. But once, she appeared in the 1920s as actress Eva Galli.

Ghost Story remains the scariest book I have ever read, and my first time, it fucked with my head. I saw Fenny Bate. I had a friend who just started seeing a girl with the initials A.M.

Weird things happened. I thought I saw a former schoolmate whom I was later told was deceased. And things have never been the same.

Using Straub’s characters in my Halloween story, I found, made part of it scary. Because there really is a widespread myth in Asian folklore of the 9 tail fox, which can appear as a beautiful woman which will seduce and kill men. And in looking around the world for mythical creatures that could fit in a Vietnam War setting, I found that every culture extant has more than its share of dangerous monsters in the form of women.

Hell. Even the Patterson-Gimlin film of a Sasquatch crossing a dry gulch shows a female creature with human-like breasts which seem to sway as it walks (a nice touch, attempting realism, but I’ve never believed it was real, not 100 percent)..

And going back to Genesis, it was Eve who first listened to and then caved to temptation. While the story is suspect on its own, it, too, portrayed the woman as the cause of man being expelled from paradise. Nobody stops to think that Adam didn’t refuse her coaxing; it would seem that a story without a woman as the villain is not to be taken seriously.

I’ve watched things change. A mother in the 60s wore pleated skirts and was a housewife. But by the middle of the decade, younger women and girls in high school were wearing blue jeans and miniskirts. They were villainized in public, in editorials and churches, as men came to the conclusion that the end was nigh.

By the late 60s, women fought the male establishment with protests and bra burning. This absolutely terrified the average white Christian man. Authors like Hal Lindsey stepped up their writing about the certain imminent arrival of the antichrist.

It would have been ridiculous except for the fact that writers and evangelists gave unintended lease for hate crimes against women. And any time religion crosses a line of influence, extending too far into mixed cultures, bad things happen. Zealousness forms its ugly tentacles around everyday life. You know, mass hysteria, for lack of a better term, often begins with a paranoid or zealot, whether religious or not.

Women became more liberal with clothing, and drew fire for it. By 1976 I’d go to lunch while working through summer break and the shitheads I worked with would see a woman with revealing summer clothes and say, invariably, “No wonder there’s rape in this world.”

They were so stupid that sometimes I’d tell them to “shut the fuck up”, and I was serious. I didn’t want to hear that ever again. Halter tops, short blue jeans cut off and frayed and faded, belly exposed. Hell, I liked it. I never assumed a nip slip was a show put on for me, I never wanted to rape or even ask any one of them for a date; I simply saw beauty and poise, and a confidence like that was extremely helpful to me. I needed to see women in a way that was alien to me considering what I was put through by four sisters, an abusive mother and a cruel step grandmother. I had to be open to the real world, because somewhere in my mind I was aware that what I was going through was absolutely wrong, and I was aware of how I was being influenced.

My family was, it turns out, so dysfunctional that I’m in awe that we survived, that some have had extended relationships and loving, understanding partners, raised families and gone through hard times to emerge determined to make the best of the lives they had to lead first.

However. My older sister? She got mean, and I mean cold as ice mean. She’d do anything my father said while giving every sign that she was the one sibling not sexually abused. She was often funny, but mocked anyone and everyone, showing an inner disrespect for others’ feelings. She targeted everyone whenever her mood shifted to ultra mean. And so, a humiliation rivaling that which I received at my parents’ hands was constantly challenging my temper and the progressive views I had on the human condition.

Raised by ultra conservatives who fucked their children, I should not even be here now; the double standards alone should have driven me quite mad. And, for a time, I kind of was. I became an anarchist and a rebel. I’d already shat all over the purity of the Boy Scouts of America. Never earned a single merit badge and detested the thought of getting one. I pulled capers at summer camp, didn’t bathe, hated sleeping in tents, and in general did everything I could to show how much I hated being a scout.

The rebellion of course was one against authority. Anyone of leadership responsibility was a substitute for my father; a surrogate for my hatred, anger and sometimes, tremendous fear. It was safer to lash out at others. I guess, without kowing it, I found it cathartic.

In 1979, I fled home and stayed in Tampa for a while. My half brother was there. He helped temporarily set up an apartment, a studio, at the Bayshore Royal Apartments. I had a sofa and a used TV. It was difficult to do laundry, and I immediately began to degenerate. I drank as heavily as I could afford to, earning a bad reputation in what was then a prestigious building.

And then my father got my sister and a friend from college to come “visit” me. The friend’s father was cool and I liked him. But my sister didn’t meet me downstairs in the lobby. She knocked on my door. She took one look and curled her lip in her trademark display of disgust. The friend’s dad took us to dinner and Sea World. For the first time in many years my sister was nice to me. For the first time in months, I was at peace. The night was over way too soon.

Before they left, I begged her not to tell our parents what a sorry state she had found me in. I begged her. To know that I couldn’t make it on my own would be to give them power they didn’t deserve.

My time in Florida was always going to be temporary, but she would only agree not to tell them what I had turned into if I agreed to move back home. Once more, I was humiliated and defeated. Of course, she told them everything. She may as well have taken pictures.

It reminded me of a lyric in an old song. “Please don’t tell them how (my situation) you found me, don’t tell them how you found me, give me a break, give me a break.”

She told them. She had always told them everything. Brainwashed, bitter bitch, I thought. You’re gonna end up badly.

Given all of this, and more, I should have grown to be a woman-hating bastard. Indeed, my anger made me mouthy, sarcastic and mean. But I tried never to aim it at women. The times I had, I was marked by scars. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t what I wanted. Guilt and shame are the signs of good souls compromised by a hard life.

***

On the surface, it seems as if I should be a woman-hater. I’m not. I may look at nude models, but I’m not motivated by objectification of them. It goes deeper than that. Perhaps it’s a latent attraction my Christian upbringing suppressed while living a double life. It could be too that I am just plain traumatized but don’t want to be promiscuous. I never liked it when I was. I really don’t know. I wish I did.

With that all written out, to my utter embarrassment, I cannot escape the dreadful subject of Her. She who haunts my dreams.

She is a problem. A big one, and I’ve no defense with which to stave off the merciless torment she brings to my sleep. Forcing me to run, wander through shopping malls or streets from Hell, threatening and taunting me, sometimes posing as an attractive lover, she makes me invent new places or visit places I’ve lived or worked in. Always, when I awaken, I know that she was there. No other person in any dream has had the quality of being real. I temper this insight with the knowledge that I’m equally held prisoner by mental illness, compromising mood and analytical processes. Fear becomes unreasonably prominent, and it interferes with rationality; hysterical fear makes a person sick enough to suffer additional trauma, even when psychosis is not an element of one’s illness.

Doctors do not believe, as a rule, in the supernatural. They send you to a therapist who is no more able than you are to interpret your condition or its symptoms. In time, they can help you, but they’re mere guides; you have to make the journey to the truth. I’ve only told one person that I seem to have made the dream woman worse.

I’m writing a novel, and with many great characters I honestly think are excellent and plot twists worthy of Christian fantasy, sci-fi and horror, I believe it will sell. I’m going to break it into a trilogy, meaning it will be easier to read and that a publisher should be quick to make an offer. It’s the kind of story I’d buy after reading a brief back cover teaser. And I want HBO or Netflix; it’s meant to be a miniseries and the lead was intended for Johnny Depp. He wouldn’t even have to act. It’s perfect for him. Test readers liked it. All I need is inside help publishing it.

At the center of the first and second acts is a character of female gender but not a supernatural one. She comes from my interpretation of a legend, but engaged my own fear of women and failed relationships. Writing this character was meant to be a science fiction and myth combination and I hoped it would help me with my submerged, remaining fears. It did not.

But I have to tell you one last thing. It’s important.

While men are primordially afraid of and intimidated by women, it is women who are far more afraid of men.

Will they be passed over for promotion? Pawed at on the subway? Raped on a first date or by an estranged husband? Or die at the hands of an abusive boyfriend or husband? There are too many who live in fear. Too many suffering bigotry, threats, sexual advances they do not want, comments that follow them, echoing endlessly, random street violence and more.

The night. How peaceful it can be. Depending on where you are, of course. I feel great sympathy for anyone whose night is spent in fear of crime or any other danger.

Having awakened a little past midnight, I ate a sandwich and had a can of Coke. It wasn’t long though, before I became so drowsy that I was nodding while trying to negotiate the ocean in a video game. Next thing, I was in the supermarket we used when I was a kid. But the people who work now at my local store were there. And they were giving me shit at every turn. I was doing everything wrong and finally had words with a woman who works there, except it wasn’t really that woman. It was Her. And she called the police, who sent a cruiser which, as dreams have it, was there instantly. I was questioned, then let go. But I couldn’t find my blue Mazda anywhere. Late at night, not many cars were parked in the first place. Instead I found my older car, a clunker. Why was this here? An old, big family size sedan in tan or beige. A 60s model, an eyesore. I got in, thinking my (ex) wife had come to get the Mazda and left this piece of crap for me.

Then, in the dream, I went to sleep and woke up in the backseat of a similar car with two menacing men up front. I hastily apologized and made my exit. I canvassed the lot trying to find my car, and it wasn’t there. But then it was. Someone stopped me on the way out. A woman in some sort of stressed condition asked me for help. She held a white plastic cylinder with two places on top for connections to something. She wanted me to put it into an enclosed receptacle in the store’s heating and air system. I hesitated. I knew it was Her in a different body. She always does that.

She got me to do it so my fingerprints would be on the plastic. She was setting me up. She had no need of fear in leaving her fingerprints, as she’s got none of her own, always showing up in a different body. It was some type of poison, I knew, and anyone in the store would get sick. And investigators would find my prints, track me down and arrest me.

Next I found myself back in my old car, driving toward Mountain Road and Pasadena, where I grew up. I was married but living with my parents? Huh?

But I somehow got off the road and onto Maryland route 100, but immediately crashed through a barrier. I jammed my feet on the brake pedal but the overpass ended in midair, and my car fell down. There was concrete and rebar everywhere. I knew I was about to die.

I wondered if I should pray before I hit the road below. Too late.

Somehow I landed alive, the car on its wheels. “I’m alive!” I screamed, then tried to start the car. Of course it wouldn’t start. But then I realized it was still in gear. I shifted it into Park and it turned over, the engine catching finally, and I resumed driving, totally an emotional wreck. By the time I turned onto North Shore Road, it was very dark and I couldn’t see to drive. I switched my high beams on but an oncoming car made me turn them down. Then I had to stop because a woman (Her again, different body) had somehow lost her groceries, they being scattered across the road. I had to help her, aware in some way by now who she really was and when I had finished, I found myself back on the supermarket parking lot, again looking for my car, again failing to find it. The sequence began again, slightly different this time, with a father and son I’d seen there earlier back again, trying to tell me something in a taunting way. And then, I was back inside the store, trying to leave, but the exit was blocked by rows of empty shopping carts, and I had to move one line of them to get out. When I had done so with great effort, a guy wheeled another long line of carts back into the space. I ended up trapped. I often end up trapped, but this seemingly prolonged torture has me feeling sick. I’m exhausted. I’m depressed to a point I rarely reach. I feel as if I never slept at all, but really went through it all.

So: what to make of it?

The real question is, should I try to get anything out of it at all? Is there some point, a reason for such dreadful nightmares?

Some things to consider:

•I’m on psychotropic and somatic medicines, and they affect brain activity. However, it does not account for Her being in nightmares for decades before drug therapy.

•Diet, rather poor in my case, as I’m on a low, fixed income. Again, this fails to explain the decades of her being in my nightmares.

•The woman, Her, could be demonic. When a demon gets attached to a human, nothing good will happen. They don’t just haunt your dreams, either. They can get inside your head, blunt dreams and aspirations, keep you down, bring misfortune and ill health, impart its own negative thoughts, ruin you. I’ve heard too many stories and known too many people so affected not to believe this.

•Her existence is a product of the betrayal I felt as my mother became not a mommy but a cold and mean tormentor.

•PTSD, a mind injured beyond all hope of any normalcy til the day I die.

•Her continuing presence could be a product of fears, all accumulated through every decade of my life: abandonment, feeling lost, trapped.

Except that the anguish and terror at Her hands is far different from my average bad dreams. She imprisons and tortures me in ways I find worthy of a Stephen King novel.

Like all victim-survivors of severe abuse, I don’t get to know the answers to the questions I need answered.

We are, in the end, alone with our nightmares, trapped while they invade our minds, and even if you are blessed to be able to wake up beside someone you love, and even if you feel like talking about it, you must endure the terrors of sleep by yourself.

It has taken me 4 nights to write this post. Along the way, I’ve suffered terrible nightmares. For me, writing usually helps. This post has not. I didn’t even want to write it. That’s the problem with being an American Asshole. You just do stuff that don’t make no sense.