Dog Day Afternoon

Ain’t About The Heat

Caution, adult language and graphic content ahead!

I really am having a very shitty day. And you can’t always know when you wake up if it’s going to be a shitty day. There’s rarely any warning before the first incident happens that indicates well, shit. This is not gonna be one of those daisies and cream days.

Or was it strawberries and cream, because I can’t remember anything on shitty days.

Fell asleep around 05:00, slept fitfully and awoke around 13:00. This summer I sleep at night as often as I can because invasive insects are getting on my nerves. Plus, this year being morbidly angry with weather, it’s much safer. Or much more safe; pick one that suits you best. I’ve no wish to offend grammar Nazis.

But that reminds me: I’ve gotten a hold of a rumor that Murder Hornets are being called something else because people are offended by the name. Yet once they’ve killed enough honey bee colonies (as if the little guys weren’t already suffering CCD) we will be murdered by mere loss of pollination of food crops.

So what, now we gotta be politically correct about bugs? You gotta be shitting me! Stop this liberal bullshit and put your energy and indignation into saving the human race.

And then there’s yesterday.

Because yesterday wasn’t really a good day or a bad day. It was just a regular day. Until I saw a Reddit news alert that had me burning with rage.

Because a woman who taught middle school had, for three years, sexually abused a male student of thirteen years of age (his age when it began. Had she waited one year, it would have been a lesser charge. After all, we’re talking about Texas).

Sorry to use such language, but that is fucking sick. And against the law. So finally the kid himself called the police in secret and begged for help.

The sicko bitch was arrested. Prosecuted. Found guilty.

The amount of prison time she will serve? None.

The amount of jail time she will serve: six weeks minus time for good behavior. She gets a short time for probation, and will be a registered rapist and pedophile for the rest of her life.

But get this:

this pedophile does not have to report to prison until the summer of 2023.

Presumably because she just had a baby. News reports I refuse to link to claim that the boy is not the father. As if that’s never happened before. One woman eventually married the boy she was obsessed with and who did father a child with her, but even that’s not a new thing.

But the boy who desperately called police? He got screwed out of justice. She started by texting and playing Fortnite with him online. Then came the nude selfies she bombarded him with. Then classroom sexual abuse after classes. Then she was bold as brass and even visited his house!

Where were his parents? It might have been different had the teacher been a man and the student a girl, because only the most grossly negligent parents would not be outraged. But boys, like men, get raped all the time in familiar places right under everyone’s nose. Even cops don’t take men seriously.

But this boy?

The cops answered his desperate call.

We men, when boys as students with hormones assaulting us, may well fantasize about a beautiful teacher. Of course we do. But no sexual or romantic fantasy should ever actually happen. The results are traumatic and a complete interruption of normal growing emotionally. That is something that can never be restored; everything changes.

Perhaps, with such horrors on my mind, it was inevitable that I was never to sleep last night and that today would be a shitty day. I don’t know.

But at 13:00, I staggered out of my bedroom. I made coffee, a big mistake. I did not yet know how dreadfully big my mistake was until I stepped outside to smoke. I had a shorty, a Marlboro Red 72. I wanted another as I listened to distant thunder and lit the second one. Then I got a pang of warning, deep down in my gut. I squeezed my ass cheeks together, hobbled down the steps, trying to make the latrine in time.

I failed. Almost at the door, it started. This time, I couldn’t stop it. It was humiliating and disgusting. I’d already filled my shorts and the overflow ran into my jeans and getting them down took too long and I’m still going when I finally hit the commode, and sitting there in shame I look, and none of it is solid, because that is controllable, and shit, I just figure I’ll use my stiletto, cut the shorts free, and get rid of it in the sink so I can rinse them enough to get them in a trash bag.

Except it’s too heavy, and it doesn’t quite work out that way. Because now it’s everywhere. My boots, jeans, web belt, socks, the floor, wall, side of the tub, everywhere.

I sit, trapped, unable to do anything until it’s all over. Air freshener doesn’t help. It’s about the equivalent of a gastrointestinal exorcism. Demons flying everywhere!

Still clothed, I returned to Mother Earth and cursed her: this shit ain’t fair, you bitch!

And, still clothed, I just stepped into the shower to begin the process of getting the heavy stuff off of everything. It took so long that by the time I’m stripped and washing up, the water’s getting cold because even with a variable spray shower extension couldn’t get it all. Now I’m really mad. I can’t put this stuff in the washer. Everything goes in the trash bag, which by all rights should have been red with the word Biohazard on it.

It all goes: boots, jeans, socks. The boots were cheap, years past being comfortable anyway. I dried off, dressed in fresh clothes, walked the bag to the dumpster and went back inside for some immodium. Four of them. No shit (hopefully).

Then, as if that shit weren’t enough, I finally settle a bit from a Klonopin and decide it’s safe to go have a cigarette to finish calming my nerves. But on shitty days like today, nothing is safe.

A neighbor walking her dog comes by on the sidewalk. Right in front of me, the cute little beast takes a shit.

On the sidewalk.

Then, this dog, whose mama had walked her past me a hundred times, looked straight into my eyes.

It knew.

That fucking evil beast knew, and it was making fun of me!

Because her shit was turds.

Solid nuggets of what used to be kibble. Her eyes bored into mine. My shame and humiliation came surging back, from brain to toes.

While not all victims of abuse and the traumatic stress disorder that will never leave them have the same symptoms, this is a common one seldom listed by doctors. IBSD or irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea has been a part of my life for more than half a century. Other symptoms you may be more familiar with and medicine to treat them are not effective with IBSD. What do you think the boy so relentlessly abused by his teacher will have to endure for the rest of his life while his rapist freely raises a family? Do you honestly believe that fact alone cannot torment and damage him even more? Because if you do, then you don’t know jack shit.

Jack Shit? You ask.

I know him better than I know my shadow.

Even that snobby dog knows. That dog, she…she knows everything.