It was a Ford Mustang Mach One, a ’70, white with black GT stripes, ramscoop, Cragar SS mags and a spoiler on the rear deck. She was fast, and could make those headers sing an opera.
My girlfriend was attending Carlow College in Pittsburgh and I was going to visit her one weekend in October, 1980. The route was easy enough; from the Baltimore Beltway I’d take Interstate 70 West to Interstate 76, then I-376. I was to take the Boulevard of the Allies to Fifth Avenue and that’s where the college was.
I had a CB radio, because back then, you needed one. The trip wasn’t as crowded as it is now; a bunch of development has been done in 40 years. For avoiding speed traps and in case of breakdowns, the radio was essential. I fell in behind a trucker with the handle “Hockey Puckin’ Cowboy” hauling a loaded flatbed who was making good time and had a radar detector. At one point in the trip up 76, there was a tunnel; I went through it at a suicidal 120 mph. I made Pittsburgh from Baltimore in 3 hours flat, that Cleveland motor singing all the way.
I don’t remember the exact route from 376 to the Boulevard exit. I found Fifth Avenue well enough, but I didn’t see the college entrance and drove past it. I had to take a long detour, as Google Drive didn’t exist and I had no map of the city. Somehow I made it back to the Boulevard of the Allies and found a gas station on the corner of three streets. It was closed, as it was getting late, but it had a pay phone I could use to call my girlfriend for directions.
As I was talking, from an uphill street lined with rowhouses there came a terrifying sound.
Someone was up there screaming, a man, probably young, definitely amped to the gills on something. He was screaming words that echoed down the concrete and asphalt canyon, but I couldn’t make out the words. On an early October night, this scared me silly, and I was trying to estimate how far away he was and if he was getting closer while listening to directions at the same time. It wasn’t working. The screaming man was definitely getting closer, and fast.
When he came into view, he wasn’t alone. They both looked like animals: one tall, with long blonde hair and the other darker, with black hair long and wild. They saw me and broke into a sprint. I made it into my car and locked the door just as blondie touched the door handle, and I tore out of there.
I found the hidden left entrance to the college, its sign partially obscured by leaves turning autumn colors. I picked up my girlfriend and we headed for the Howard Johnson’s motor lodge just outside of town, where we’d spend the weekend together. But again, I made a wrong turn. I had no idea where we were.
Going uphill on a residential street, I was in third gear, when suddenly, from the right side and running out from between two parked cars, the same two druggies came at us.
This time was different. I yelled at Donna to make sure her door was locked. I hadn’t told her yet about the gas station, and there wasn’t time for it now. They were on her side and a picture of them stopping me and pulling her out flooded my brain, kicking in terror and a flood of adrenaline. I couldn’t think. It was fight or flight time and I automatically did both. As the two druggies got in my way and tried to stop me, I jammed the shifter and the smooth Hurst linkage into second, downshifting for power, and put the accelerator to the floor. The engine went into kick down, the 3rd and 4th barrels of the carburetor sucked air, and it was funny as fuck. They had to dive, one left and one right, to keep from being killed, because I was intent on running them over and never looking back. When I’m protecting someone else, and it’s not just me anymore, being a coward is an advantage. Once scared, if I had no other way out, I was capable of things that later had me more shaken at the killer I could be than I was at any threat.
Donna yelled at me, but I think she later pictured what I had, realized she had been in serious danger, and never mentioned it again, although I’m sure she remembers and has told all sorts of stories about me.
That’s okay; I really was an asshole back then, wounded, traumatized, incapable of fighting what I could not see. We didn’t last long after that. She genuinely loved me, but my insecurities and weirdness wasn’t something she’d have been able to live with.
I wrecked that car. The picture above is similar except that the GT stripes continued along the roof, the back deck and down to the rear bumper.
The following autumn I met my future wife and never saw Donna again. As with all my ex lovers, I miss her. They all had charm except for one; they were intelligent and very affectionate and they got me through times that, I’m sure, I could not have survived alone. I’ll go to meet my maker with my heart thankful that they were in my life. True, I’ve lived a hard life, a fucked up life, but I’ve been so blessed and enriched, and learned so much from everyone who has crossed my path, including the street animals that night in Pittsburgh.
They taught me that cowards, when scared and cornered, are the most dangerous people you can ever encounter. And while I’m no longer a coward, I have the one thing I need to be a safe person: respect for what I can still do and a greater respect for life, because all life is sacred.
But I still wonder, betimes, what will happen the next time I am cornered. I pray I don’t find that out.
I just found out that Maryland governor Larry Hogan will not allow mail-in voting as he did in the primary election. That, coupled with Trump’s interference with the United States Postal Service, which could endanger the efficiency of absentee voting, makes me livid. Up until now, I thought Hogan was doing a fair job handling this epic disaster, but it turns out that I was wrong. He’s been on some weird political agenda, is rumored to have his eye on a presidential campaign in 2024, and therefore will turn off his humanity and stop the sham of “caring” about people’s lives. He’ll go full-turboRepublican.
Well, this is a good place to start. But Governor Hogan, you’re not turning me away from voting. Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to go, it will not impede my effort or determination to see this president voted out of office. You know very well what you’re doing. You know that you are intimidating people during a time when your efforts to contain the coronavirus are failing. If you really think this good strategy for being elected for higher office, you need to burn your playbook. We will remember. Ask Martin O’Malley how his bid for president went. Sure, you could do a little better; his performance in the campaign was so forgettable I doubt anyone outside of Maryland remembers it at all. But when it was down to Sanders and Clinton, Marty never had a chance. And he’s generally well thought of in this state. You stay on this path, and you won’t be.
Hogan is merely one of several governors whose will power is crumbling to the incredibly moronic ideas Donald Trump has fixated on: mail-in voting is corrupt, will result in delays that could last well into 2021, that it is too easy for cheaters to exploit.
A thousand people a day are dying. Schools are already sending students home to quarantine after outbreaks. A million people a week lose their jobs. CDC officials and Dr. Faici have repeatedly told us that children aren’t immune, but Trump says they are. A man who cannot pronounce the name “Yosemite” when reading it. A man who made it sound distinctly racist by saying, “Yo Semite”.
Oh, come on. You know he’s racist. Why does everyone do their best to ignore it? Why are there Latin American children still in captivity when they never should have been imprisoned at all?
Given Trump’s associations with Epstein and Weinstein and players all over the world who deal in sex slaves of the younger type, it’s not possible to forget the civil suit against Trump for multiple rape against two teens. It is impossible to forget him walking into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen contestants.
How many Latinos are there in the sex slave trade right now because of ICE and Donald Trump?
And how do Republicans keep supporting a man so empty of everything that makes a human being? He’s a laughingstock abroad, hated and derided at one and the same time. He has caused too much damage to earn any votes at all. So he’s fighting with lies worse than any he told during his last campaign, and 160,000 Americans and an unknown number of detainees from the border are dead because of him. And we still don’t know how many soldiers died because of the Russian bounty placed on them, which Trump is by all appearances complicit in.
I still have stories to tell. About survival, about being a survivor, and I’d like to think my experiences could help anyone, male or female, victimized by sexual abuse.
Survivors endure, they fight.
I still have weird tales that would chill anyone to the bone, and change their perspective on what’s really possible in this world.
But I can’t do it right now when our democracy, which includes free speech, is on the line. If we don’t end this foul siege on our country, none of us will be able to whisper to each other. There will be no justice, no government help, no rest for the weary, no shelter for the homeless.
The extra money for unemployment has expired, along with the moratorium on evictions. Mitch McConnell was asked about these things and he was smiling. We are in trouble, America, and I know that personally, with immediate problems, it’s hard for you to see, and I’m sorry that you are going through such troubles. But no matter what it takes, we have to get rid of Trump and nothing can stand in our way.
I’ve been wrong, so very wrong. With a feeling of righteous outrage, I’ve written hateful things using words and names which I believe have shown my lack of respect for the impact those words and names have had on my credibility and character.
The truth is, it’s not okay to use hate language on anyone. Not even Donald Trump. You know who it hurt? Not Donald Trump. It hurt me.
For every utterance of anything foul and hateful, I have a price to pay, and it’s too much for me to bear.
A month ago I left Facebook again. I left behind friends I didn’t want to leave. I miss them, but I had already been missing them for months. I rarely heard from most, and one friend who acually sent me inspirational books, who interacted with me a lot, probably wonders why I abandoned my account…and friends.
The reason was simple, as I stated a year ago, the first time I left Facebook. Too much hate, too much misinformation, all bringing me down and making me sick. I deleted my account abruptly, with little warning. I awoke one morning and read something that I can’t recall, but which proved to be the last straw.
Every day I realize that I wasn’t finished with just leaving Facebook. That was the beginning. And I’ve got a few things to tell you.
THE CORNER ROOM
Robert Johnson, often referred to as the father of modern blues, lived from 1911 to 1938. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t feel bad. In his lifetime he was unknown but blues purists and historians know his music well.
He was struggling. It was said that he wasn’t really that good until he disappeared for a couple of weeks, then returned with amazing guitar skills. As the legend goes, he went to a crossroads in Mississippi and there sold his soul to the devil who then tuned his guitar and showed him some things, and Johnson went on to publish an amazing body of work until his death at age 27, one of the first of the well-known “27 Club.”
A friend said he was a decent harmonica player but a lousy player of the acoustic guitar. When he returned from the crossroads, he was clearly a master.
It isn’t known if the story is true, but I’m here to tell you, other names you readily recognize have been said to have done the same. I may be one of them.
From 2006 to 2014 I lived in an upstairs corner room of a group home. The house was haunted, and is the one I lived in during the time when the stray cat came to adopt me (see “The Cat Who Knew Too Much” in my archives). I was challenged to write a novel by a sibling who was critical of my nonfiction blog. His challenge: write a book with vampires, werewolves and zombies. With all the accumulated TV, film and printed literature in abundance, that was a tall order. How would I do such a thing without retreading what’s out there?
I sat down to type in October of 2011. What happened was that the book largely wrote itself. It flowed, came from places I’d never known, was better than anything I could have written. But it’s dark, and I more than rose to the challenge. I outdid my own hopes.
Finishing it proved elusive. I stumbled around with several different ideas but didn’t like them. Then I moved out and couldn’t write anything at all.
I can do it now, but it’s so dark that I wonder whether I should. Only two test readers have reacted favorably, and only one of those was enthusiastic. She’s a voracious reader, loves science fiction and fantasy, which I put a lot of into the story.
I never watched a single episode of the CW series “Supernatural” until this year. Some things in it are very similar including a couple of real characters from the supernatural world. At times dirty and hilarious, my book shares that trait with the show. But they’re not the same. My treatment of the characters and the story diverge greatly.
After 6 years of not having an ending, I figured out why. My lead character was trapped by the storyline. Meaning well, I’d turned him into a seriously evil creature. How could I get out of that without a hokey ending?
I can’t stand “Supernatural” and made it to season 5, beyond which I cannot imagine going. You don’t keep doing something repeatedly and not jump the shark. It grew tedious for me. Besides, if I decide to finish the book, I don’t want that material to influence me.
But how I came to be in such a creative groove with the story and considering that Satan is a main character, I wonder what was influencing me. I want to think I’m that good. That the room I was in was conducive to creativity.
That’s true to a point. I was standing out on the porch one night. Down the hill on a side street, a house sat, a floodlight on. All I could see was a utility pole, a backboard for basketball and the roof. But we’re tuned to see things, like faces in clouds, and that little patch in the darkness produced an image that was priceless. I made a really evil character just from what I saw. It affected a lot of the story. The book seemed to be writing itself. Once, I came across a word in the old MS Windows XT dictionary that caught my eye. I used the word as a chapter name and formed a whole subplot out of it. It’s good, too. Very good.
My dilemma comes not from the similarities between the book and other material out there. It is a question of responsibility. I want to publish it, and it would gather at least a “cult” following. The lead character was written for Johnny Depp should a screen adaptation come about, and he could do it, no question. But it can’t be done in a movie; the story cannot be edited and not lose its impact. As I wrote, I became convinced that it was perfect for an HBO limited series. From that point forward, that became my intent. With a three camera setup, and minimal special effects, I could see it being a hit. It’s that good.
However, the dark theme and the inclusion of demons have made me wonder what would happen if I were to publish.
Remember the film “The Truman Show”? You know, where Jim Carrey discovers that he’s a subject of a TV series, that cameras have always been on him, that everyone he has ever known was really an actor paid to interact with him? Well, not long after that movie came out, psychologists encountered “The Truman Syndrome,” a disorder in which people believe that they are the subjects of a TV show and want out. They’ve gone so far as to petition HBO to release them. I guess the fact that I consider HBO the prime choice for a film adaptation of my book struck a note with me when I read about the Truman disorder and how people seemed to think Home Box Office was pulling their strings. Worse, reports tell us that the disorder is difficult to treat because the patient believes that even the psychologist treating them is part of the show. Ultimately, for that reason, the subjects are untreatable because they’ve convinced themselves that they are, in the end, utterly helpless. In a bizarre way, what they’ve done is to teach themselves the learned behavior known as helplessness, and that is positively way out of the scope of known personality disorders. It has the unfortunate ramification that media can cause susceptible individuals to drive themselves mad, with equally unfortunate consequences, ranging from desperation and presenting a danger to others, all the way to suicide.
It’s the first concrete proof I’ve ever seen that anything in the entertainment industry could cause harm.
Oh, I’m aware of close calls. Maybe that is an oversimplification, but copycats did take movies like “Boondock Saints”, “Blair Witch”, and “Amityville Horror” too seriously. The former may not have led to lethal vigilantism, but there was violence. The latter two caused endless traffic to the Amityville house, even to the extreme of people actually intruding on the property and at least a few walking right in when the door was answered. The windows and front facade had to be changed before it slacked off but interest in the house has never gone away. Awful B movies passed off as “sequels” to the original led people to believe that demonic activity in the house was ongoing, and the awfulness of the scripts, production values and budgets, along with atrocious acting could not keep amateur ghost hunters away. Then came the remake of the original starring Ryan Reynolds, and I cant forgive him for that or “Green Lantern”; I’m sorry, but nothing can erase those dreadful choices.
In Maryland, the real town near the events of “Blair Witch” hasn’t known a day since where someone didn’t drive through or go tromping around in the woods. Now, that’s not anyone’s fault but those who get caught up in fiction and go too far. Bad choices aren’t necessary. They cause harm, perhaps not much. Sometimes they merely take away the peace of a small town or a single homeowner. The Amityville house still attracts attention, but there was never any evidence that it was haunted. It was in fact the place of a horrible crime, but the story should have ended there. The Lutz family moved in almost as George’s business was going o hit bottom. They got in over their heads with a mortgage they couldn’t pay, and the haunting provided a way out. At one point one of the two recanted the story but then, offered money for interviews, the went back to the original story. History having been rewritten, the house remains infamous to this day despite its makeover.
Any story involving Ed and Lorraine Warren is suspect, including the Amityville saga; in “The Conjuring 2” they were portrayed as being far more involved and critical to the case than they actually were. Not only that, but the story was significantly altered in other ways. Hollywood has taken “based on true events” too far before, but this is now understood by most to translate as “The following is total bullshit.” Most. Not all. A character may be shown driving a blue 1968 Volkswagen Bug and the real person actually had one. Well, close. The one in the episode may be yellow. But the rest? No resemblance to real events at all.
The proliferation of supernatural “reality shows” has become a plague. The Travel Channel switched formats with Destination America not long ago and ramped up its production of supernatural schlock so much that people have gone two ways: they can’t get enough, or they call out the channel, producers and Facebook accounts of the stars of the shows. The latter is growing at a fast pace. It’s gotten so bad that disclaimers front certain shows such as “The Dead Files”: “This Program is for Entertainment Purposes Only.” One thing that stands out is that Amy, the “psychic,” always arrives after dark and invariably, fog is clinging to the entire lawn. Every time, no matter what time of year, no matter the geographical location. Fog, everywhere. None airborne, always on the ground, indicating gas, dispensed from some vessel like a liquid nitrogen or oxygen tank. I know because I used to watch the rigs at Airgas unloading tankers of liquid gas into the liquid towers at our plant. There was always some pressure release and the liquid would hit the air, causing the cryogenic gas to boil and turn into a heavy gas cloud which clung to the ground.
Any real show wouldn’t need cheap tricks to set a mood for the viewer; therefore everything else about the series is suspect, but it has a fanbase that’s just plain enraptured. How gullible could you get?
But the shows do something far worse than make up things and present them as real. That mix is a heavy influence on viewers. You’ll also find plenty more on YouTube, including ghost hunters and urbex channels where young people and old venture to private property to video ghosts, demons or abandoned places which are extremely dangerous. One team, a father and daughter, push their luck way too far in desert locations where old buildings and manufacturing facilities and even mines exist, and where anyone could be squatting or hiding from the law, and would love to shoot the dad and have some sick things in mind for the daughter. Why would any father put his child into such a dreadfully dangerous situation?
Two teens enter an abandoned theme park on ATVs and that’s a creepy enough thing to do right from the start; splitting up and exploring is even creepier, and stupid to boot. The whole point of urban exploration is the unknown, and they could run into trouble that they can’t get out of. We sit here and condemn Trump for needless deaths due to his bungling with the coronavirus, but some people go to places they know they shouldn’t, and needlessly risk their lives. That makes no sense to me. Nor do the ones who have ouija sessions on camera in a real effort to summon evil entities. This fixation and risk taking is nothing but what is is: foolish. Behaviour during the pandemic is equally peppered with irresponsible actions by people, and “COVID-19 parties” are a real thing. Even incidental contact passes the virus on, because people distance but linger and chat without masks. Or they fail to sanitize their hands and remove their masks as soon as they exit a store. They clearly aren’t concerned, or they wouldn’t do it. That’s despite everything they’ve been told through their local health department or government or any other source.
From the beginning, Trump has said such things that people have died because they believed him. It was first a hoax, then he had to face it and said it would “disappear,” then came the controversy over masks, ending with him blaming Fauci for saying at the beginning that masks may not be effective which isn’t the whole truth. There was a shortage of medical grade masks, and that was cause for alarm. They couldn’t spare them for anyone outside of healthcare workers. Non medical grade masks were not known to be effective, so it wasn’t an immediate issue. The consensus was that masks couldn’t hurt. As soon as it was learned that any face covering could help, Andrew Cuomo was one of the first governors to mandate wearing them. Store chains then began to require them. The partial shutdown and masks led to New York proving that these things are not optional. They save lives.
Meanwhile Deborah Birx has been on Fox or OANN, saying things Trump wanted her to say. I’ve gotten mixed messages from her just during press conferences, but what she was doing on right-wing media I was ignorant of because I don’t watch it. As soon as she changed up, Trump called her “Pathetic”; and Trump was interviewed by Axios on HBO, and the president had no idea he was being taken apart. It’s painful to watch; never before has an American president said so many stupid things nor lied so much in a single interview. He claimed he had done more for “blacks than any other president” including Lyndon Johnson. He was dumb enough to show the true depth of his pettiness and racism by saying that he did not attend services for the late John Lewis because Lewis “didn’t come to my inauguration.” He handed over printouts that “proved” that the United States was the “lowest” of all other countries in COVID-19 mortality, and repeated that the only reason we have more cases is because we test “too much.”
It is unclear how delusional he is, but when people who trust you despite your lies listen to you, then die because of that trust, it’s evil.
ULTIMATE DISHONOR
And evil runs this country. The new postmaster general is slowing down mail delivery. This, at Trump’s direction, for several reasons. At least for the census, but also to prepare for mail-in voting ballots. He is trying to get reelected by once again cheating and having help from Russia. He never confronted Putin about his bounty placed on American soldiers in Afghanistan, which we now know to have caused real casualties. Putin desperately wants Trump to stay.
But the American people seem to be progressively fed up with him. Republicans are on Facebook saying they’ve had enough, heard enough. Some senators are distancing themselves from him. And that’s encouraging. There’s hope.
But we must be resolute and on guard. We can still see another four-year term with the nightmares only getting worse. It certainly can happen.
Trump has “joked” that he wants to be “president for life” but it is not a joke; he’s serious. He has messed with the Judicial branch and infiltrated it. He has compromised intelligence and the military. He failed to impose sanctions against Russia for murdering American troops and there is no reason to believe that he can or will ever do anything honorable. He will sabotage the election any way he can. He will attempt to and possibly even succeed in delaying the election under pretenses including a sudden turnaround and total confirmation of the seriousness of COVID-19 and the illegitimacy of mail-in voting, and, failing all of that, should he lose, will refuse to leave the White House in January. Never underestimate Donald Trump.
Along the way, chaos will break out in places. COVID-19 will continue to kill. Sometimes because it’s that contagious. Sometimes because people have a great capacity for doing evil things.
CORRUPTED BLOOD
In an MMORPG, short for massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which you will meet the characters of other players as you complete quests and battles, there are often problems. These can be glitches and exploits that require patches, servers going down, and other technical issues. But often, it is the players themselves that cause trouble. From bullying characters with less power who are not as developed because they are beginning a new game to headset taunting and berating, other players can ruin a game for you. I refuse to play against anyone else for this reason. It’s the AI or nothing.
But in 2005, the very popular game “World of Warcraft” had something truly bizarre happen. Sometimes online games add new content, from new levels to spells or weapons and costumes. In this case a new dungeon was added and there was a boss fight at the end. Bosses usually mark level endings, meaning they must be defeated for you to exit that level. Bosses are formidable AI opponents with the ability to take a lot of damage before they fall. They’re programmed in such a way that they appear to be pretty pissed off that you’ve made it so far. I’ve often been spooked by bosses, like Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid. I didn’t know that to beat him you had to plug your controller into the “player two” port, otherwise he’d “read your mind” and counter every attack. So, I learned to hate boss fights. There have been some which I’ve never been able to beat, causing me to quit a game in frustration.
Apparently, the boss added to the new dungeon in WOWC would cast a spell on the player’s character as soon as it was attacked by the player. The spell was “Corrupted Blood” which lasted for a few seconds and weakened the characters who teamed up to fight the boss. Due to code errors, the virus didn’t exactly wear off. It was caught by pets, who couldn’t be healed. Pets are non playable characters, or NPCs. Infected with Corrupted Blood, they left the dungeon and spread it to any player it came near. What happened was a virtual pandemic and it spread fast. Some players accidentally transmitted it to other players, while some uninfected players grouped together in isolation. It was so sensational and weird that epidemiologists actually watched it. They found that players who had leveled up their powers to heal acted like doctors, attending the sick, while others who knew they were infected knowingly passed it on. We have seen this happen. People who either deny that COVID-19 is real or those who have few or mild symptoms deliberately go out, grocery shopping or to a restaurant, and have spread it to unknown numbers of people. Some dine-in restaurants had been open only a short time before having to shut down again because employees got sick or the place was named in contact traces.
I’m sorry, but that recklessness was heinous. Selfish people, or people who don’t care about others, will always be with us. They always have been and they always will be. You’d think that the Black Lives Matter protests would have caused more people and police officers to correct their behaviour, to use more self restraint, but that has not been the case. Held at gunpoint, handcuffed with two crying babies in their car, two women were held 45 minutes and the doors to the car were open, exposing the infants to the heat. That’s positively bestial. Babies die that way.
There’s a backlash happening in response to the massive protests, and the backlash is pure racism, pure revenge and anger. Cops are more likely to deploy in riot gear for the slightest reason. It won’t end soon.
You want these things to stop?
They won’t, but there’s help. Vote Donald Trump out of office. Fire him. He’s manipulating the census for congressional districts, so go online and do the census. It’s for us, not him.
Don’t pay attention to polls; that was part of the problem in 2016. Clinton led the polls and too many people said, “Oh, she’s got this,” and they stayed home. Don’t believe for a second that Trump can’t win. With all his interference, he’s not going to lose unless we all turn out in numbers. If you have to vote in person, do it. Use masks, and add a filtering layer using a square of pantyhose or a paper filter, whatever you want. There’s no such thing as too much. You’ll be directed to use social distancing and it’s essential that you take hand sanitizer with you to use when you’re finished. Minutes, and you’ll be out of there. If you have to, vote by absentee ballot right now. The delays in the USPS closer to the election could cause your vote to be mishandled or not counted. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who I have great respect for, confirms that the mail service is likely to cause problems with mail-in voting.
She’s concerned as well about people who get critical medications by mail. Make no mistake: Donald Trump doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your medications or health. He doesn’t, and shame on you if you think otherwise because with COVID-19, he’s proven that death means nothing to him (“It is what it is”).
The deaths of soldiers means nothing to him. Empathy means nothing to him. He once told a soldier’s widow, “He knew what he signed up for.” I seriously doubt any president ever showed such a coldness toward the family of a fallen warrior for our country. Which, by the way, he’s proven he has no love for. He can’t feel patriotic or empathetic. He does not feel love, or know what it is. He sits and watches Americans die, and lies and deflects blame. He’s got to go.
We will only defeat him with reason, solidarity and Marquis of Queensberry rules. We have to be better than him. No stooping to his level, fighting his way by his rules. I promise, Joe Biden will not engage Trump on Trump’s turf. He’s too smart for that and he’s too honorable. Keep from giving any weapons to trolls, die-hard republicans and possible Russians on social media. We’ll lose. Joe is the better man. He’s always been good and kind and decent. He’s lost a lot. He will feel for others who have lost. We need him. Be responsible, and we can win this.
As for me, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my book. I have to decide. I’m afraid people will read it and come away with ideas like parts of it are real. I couldn’t live with that. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’ve turned a page. No more name calling for me. I want to be the better man. A responsible man. A decent man. After all, that’s all I ever wanted to be.
THE TRUTH ABOUT IRRESPONSIBLILITY
Irresponsibility is obviously the opposite of a place or state in which an individual or group assume accountability for their’s or another’s actions, and it could be parents of children or a plant manager to employees and everything from production to safety. It is what Donald Trump and the sycophants who imitate pilot fish do. Irresponsibility is Donald Trump calling an accidental explosion of stored ammonium nitrate in Beirut an “attack.”
Irresponsibility is Donald Trump pushing for school reopening during a pandemic claiming a thousand lives a day.
At what point do we need to reflect on our words and actions and attempt to find the possible consequences? Because time after time, people have proven that they can be influenced by just about anything. And that influence can lead to disaster.
Trump originally said that the coronavirus would simply go away. Later when we had a hundred thousand dead, he repeated it. He said, “and it will go away.”
That’s a heavy lie, a twisting of facts, a gaslighting for all America: “No, you don’t see any bodies, do you? Therefore no one has died.” It is absolutely Orwellian and one more reason he has to go. Irresponsibility is changing that to “It is what it is.”
Irresponsibility is us, screaming and writing, scribbling horrible things about Trump, wasting energy and becoming exactly like the enemy, fighting by his rules, on his turf. We have other choices. We can talk. Debate with civility. Disengage from those who will not hear reason. Engage those who are willing, using reason, kindness and facts.
Perhaps Longfellow had such a choice in mind when he wrote his famous poem:
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
We can shoot arrows that land without changing a thing, or breathe a song into the air and find later that it left a significant impact. I’ll take the song any day.
I’ve recounted some pretty weird shit on these pages. Nobody has to believe any of it. Especially the supernatural stuff. That’s up to you.
I’ve had, as you can see in my archives, experiences I cannot explain without the supernatural. That’s just how it is. And demons are real, as real as Lucifer, God and angels. When it comes to demons, we know very little, but here’s a story from the Daily Beast about a woman who knows all there is to know, and she’s not really a demonologist, but a box of animal crackers.
As a practicing physician, she uses a clinic beside her church and both scare the shit out of me.
Demons?
Her beliefs go to the extremes of probable malpractice and teaching heresy. That’s a neat trick. For years, she’s espoused the idea that female demons (succubi) and male demons (incubi) are able to enter one’s dreams and have sex with them. An incubus can impregnate a woman and a succubus can become impregnated by the human male.
This belief is ancient and goes at least as far back as the ancient Hebrews. Their laws, set forth in the Pentateuch, forbade the ejaculation of any male except for procreation. There’s a story in the Old Testament about God smiting dead every man who married a particular woman but withdrew before ejaculation.
That doesn’t really make me feel warm and fuzzy. Men who had nocturnal emissions or “wet dreams”, meaning they ejaculated during sleep, were threatened with harsh punishment if they were dumb enough to tell anyone. So Hebrew men, quite probably with knowledge and guidance by priests, invented the succubus, the female demon who caused the dream and subsequent ejaculation. I’m sorry; this is tedious and distasteful, but necessary background.
Because there is no evidence that a succubus or an incubus is or ever was real. Guilt and avoiding punishment in a strict religious culture drove those inventions. That, and the horrifying story about God watching over everyone who wasted their “seed” and personally killed them. Of course, it’s possible that the legends were the result of cross-cultural learning when the Hebrews came into contact with the Canaanites or another culture. Then, the details were rearranged to suit whatever purpose they wanted; this wouldn’t even be the only example of “cultural pollution” which God had warned the Hebrews about.
Point is, even though the belief in reproduction between humans and demons persist to this day, no evidence of it has ever been brought forth. The Travel Channel, better known as the “Zak Bagans Channel,” has at least two series which featured episodes wherein an incubus and a succubus appeared. But the victims were not asleep and dreaming. They were awake.
Demons can’t do this sort of thing. As spiritual beings who have never had a corporeal form, they need a lot of energy to even manifest as a black shadow. These are called “shadow people” and have on many occasions been seen by believers and skeptics alike, usually out of the corner of the eyes, perhaps darting from one bedroom to another.
There are different kinds of demons, some more powerful than others, with bigger responsibilities. They are rebellious angels who have sworn their allegiance to Satan, and have fallen from Heaven. Where they dwell while not roaming the Earth is a mystery, but they don’t like it there. In occult practices, such as communication through spirit boards, they have described a confined, dusty, barren place. They wait to be invited into homes by people who foolishly fall for their tricks. They lie constantly and will pose, during seances and ouija board sessions, as dead relatives or even passed strangers who show a knowledge of and an interest in, one member of the group. If asked to show itself, the invitation is made, and there is abundant anecdotal evidence that they have often come through from their realm.
This can seem terrifying at first, as objects in the house move or random sounds are heard in the room or empty rooms in the house.
In every case, this activity increases as the demon interacts with whomever summoned it or another person who may be more susceptible to the fear it can cause and then use to gain power. Objects get thrown, misplaced and, in extreme cases, the living are physically and spiritually attacked. Scratches like three claws dragged across the flesh appear and they’re painful and they burn like an animal’s scratch. In a worst case scenario, a victim becomes possessed. This can readily be seen in behavioral changes, a pronounced aggression, changes in voice, physical strength, strange food preferences and an aversion to churches, bibles and blessed objects like holy water and crosses or rosaries. Roman Catholic medals will be shunned with great anger.
The possession advances. The victim may demonstrate a knowledge of things they can’t possibly know and may even speak in another language it never knew. This is a critical point in which time is short and an exorcism must be performed, properly by someone of great faith. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes the strain is too much for the victim. There are case histories of both.
Possession is not as rare as some believe, but Christians cannot be possessed. However, a demon can outwardly attach to the victim and cause accidents, illness and misfortune. The same ritual applies. If there is one in your house, it becomes more difficult. The rite of exorcism doesn’t always work, and sometimes it’s best to move out.
No, salt won’t keep demons out or in. Sage may temporarily work, but it’ll be back.
The most important thing to consider is this: don’t look for demons. Don’t ghost hunt. Don’t use spirit boards. Don’t look for answers from mediums, because too many are fakes and make everything worse. Likewise avoid witches; they get their power not from God, but demons which will turn on them, you or both.
But witches and demons cannot reproduce with people through their dreams. Okay? No. And endometriosis isn’t caused by sex with a demon either.
As for alien DNA being used in making prescription drugs, hell no. Anyone who believes that is in dire need of a lobotomy.
Emmanuel posted on both Facebook and Twitter and went viral. She said we don’t need a mask. That there’s a cure for COVID-19: hydroxychloroquine. A medicine ruled dangerous to COVID-19 patients by federal authorities. Trump retweeted her despite the alien DNA shit, and this happened.
Facebook and Twitter pulled her posts in accordance with their iron rule concerning misinformation about COVID-19, but who knows how much damage was done? People believe the Earth is flat!
Madonna also retweeted it. That’s hardly news, considering.
Emmanuel also believes that reptoids are ruling our governments from underground facilities like Denver International Airport. These beings can change shape and appear to be human. The entire Bush family is a bunch of reptile people.
I feel dirty. Like I need a shower that would last a week.
What a turnoff these dumbass people are. I may never want to touch myself again.
Look, I’m sick. Lots of us are, from different things, mainly the coronavirus or just plain stress over whether we’ll catch it, or grief over those we’ve lost to it; family, friends, neighbors and colleagues.
We are sick with a deep foreboding over the use of brute force and terrorism by unidentified paramilitary forces in Portland and threats of more “deployments” in other cities.
Both the virus and the shock troops are a threat to our country in different ways, but both are terrifying. A dumbass senator refuses to wear a mask, tests positive, won’t admit he was wrong. People die. Still no outward reaction from “conservatives”. Trump goes in front of the press and claims Dr. Fauci has “high approval ratings, but “poor little ol’ me” does not. It’s a continuation of his statement “maybe people don’t love me” and that’s similar to lamentations made by Richard Nixon following the 1962 loss in the California governor’s race. He said to the press, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Of course, he would have more.
Trump is a diseased, self-occupied, self-centered, self-destructive bag of possum peckers. His mistakes are not really missteps; they are all his decisions and have gone against every competent adviser he’s had, throwing tantrums and firing those people in favor of idiot yes men and women. And even those are scared of him. Reporters are scared to ask him certain questions. Republicans fear him to the Nth degree, lying for him, backing him, endorsing him. Hell, you’d be forgiven if you thought he was the antichrist. He lies so much that some fact checkers say his total tops a hundred thousand.
In Portland, the world has seen everything we have seen: unidentified paramilitary officers shoving protesters into unmarked vans, which constitutes kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault. Sources say they’re made up of ICE and Border Patrol agents acting through Homeland Security on Trump’s orders. The world has seen Trump bungle the pandemic and opinion is divided; many feel sorry for Americans. Third World countries feel sorry for us. News services like BBC, CNN, Reuters and others carry stories of America that stuns the world. How can such a powerful country be brought to its knees by only a single man? Why won’t anyone take action?
Who can blame them? There’s a travel ban against Americans in Europe because the danger of the coronavirus is too great to risk the least bit of contact.
Trump finally proved he was a burlap sack full of marsupial phalluses when he concentrated on suburbanites by calling white women “housewives” and promised an end to low-income housing in their areas.
But his sexist way of referring to white women in suburbs shows, at last, that he doesn’t care about anyone. That even his supporters mean nothing to him.
His pity party was disgusting. “People don’t love me”, and “It can only be my personality.”
Those are manipulative at least, self-destructive at most. Yeah, he’s crazy, but pointing out the fact that his personality is a problem may also be seen as yet another self-inflicted gunshot to his foot: he wants you to know he’s aware of his salad-filled head.
But the last straw was when he walked out on the press because he’d retweeted another fucking idiot claiming that hydroxychloroquine is a COVID-19 cure. That same woman believes that extraterrestrials have donated snot and sperm for use in pharmaceutical products. Among other fucking shit.
Holy shit.
I suppose you could have a bone to pick with me because I’ve posted about demons before, but I’ve got witnesses to some really horrible things. I stand by my words, but I realize that Trump does, too.
But I wonder sometimes if he’s really trying to throw this election. Yeah, he really is crazier than a Hefty bag full of possum’s penises, but sometimes, I think he’s making so many people die, is pissing so many people off, that he’ll lose in November for dead certain.
Except: there’s one thing.
Never underestimate this guy. You still have to oppose him. Fight him. And you have to show up at the polls in November and get rid of this squishy plastic bag of animal dicks.
It’s weird enough for me. I mean, it’s the kind of weird that only I seem to notice. Since writing my post “Silent Summer,” it seems like a spell or something has been broken. Last Friday, the sounds of summer returned. A few moments ago, I heard an owl. Gradually, all of the pieces of the summer symphony nature performs have been added to the area.
At first, crickets and a single cicada. Over the past week, more of them. Tonight, the full orchestra is putting on a grand show. It’s good to hear.
Funny, the things we take for granted. Until something is gone, you never really appreciate it. We humans, we’re an ungrateful bunch.
But this leaves a mystery unsolved: what caused the eerie, deathly silence in the first place, and how could it have lasted for so long? My next door neighbor actually talked about it with me, so I’m not questioning myself.
It was there. Silence in the surrounding area during summer, with stands of trees and patches of forest so close, is a sign of danger. If you’re in or near the woods and everything gets quiet, and you’re not making a lot of noise, you are not the cause. Even crickets within a yard will chirp again if you’re there and standing still. But to have the woods go quiet as far as you can hear, you need to get out and make tracks on home.
I don’t have the answer to the mystery. I took it as a bad sign, an omen perhaps, and now I believe that apex predators were in the are. I had a bad feeling, there was a heaviness in the air. What silences a forest?
It could have been weather related, but I never saw anything like this, and around here, crickets and cicadas will perform all the way past October. Especially crickets, though if the temperature drops low enough, their chirping is slower, but this, I’ve never seen in summer.
If not weather, how about something geological? I’m not aware of anything significant. I do believe there were things out there in the darkness, lots of them, over a vast area, which I sensed and which made the night quiet and slightly frightening. I have a few horrible guesses what they could be, but for now, I’m not sweating it.
Yesterday, the brilliant writer and reporter Christopher Dickey died in Paris. It put my memory in a pleasant place despite the world losing an intrepid reporter and eloquent writer who mentored younger journalists.
The loss of good people always hurts, and since the coronavirus hit the United States, we’ve lost too many people, and we’re going to lose a lot more. I don’t want to come across as insensitive to this. I find more heartbreak in this period of history than in any other I’ve lived through. It is far more heartbreaking than my childhood. More painful but, I guess, in a different way. I’m aware that this world isn’t centered on me; that I am not going to be remembered when I’m gone, and nobody will likely even know that I’m gone. But the people who have suffered and died during Donald Trump’s presidency, they are missed. As Mary L. Trump said in her interview with Rachel Maddow, one of the most horrifying things that the president has done, putting children in cages and kidnapping and allowing them to be tortured, motivated her to write her book, “Too Much, Not Enough”.
COVID-19 is killing people in absolutely sickening numbers, and Trump may deny responsibility, but it’s all on him. Mary L. Trump is a hero. I hope people will read her book and sober up. She gives us a portrait of a disgusting man who is both dangerous and who should never be underestimated.
*****
Death may not be the true end for people of certain cultures and religions, but that has never made the surviving families and friends feel any less broken of heart. Not if the dead were truly loved.
*****
When Christopher Dickey died, he didn’t leave behind a father. He left behind a wife, two siblings, a son and grandchildren. Working for Daily Beast , he was active up to his final minutes.
He worked for the Washington Post, then Newsweek until it merged with Daily Beast. He was 68 when he died, having lived a productive and memorable life.
But it doesn’t seem that he liked his father that much. Author James Dickey of Deliverance fame — he wrote the novel and appeared as the sheriff in the hit movie — was a notable poet. But he had a dark side, as all of us do, and he acted on that dark side often. He seems to have been dysfunctional as a father and husband, he kept a mistress, and he drank. He was evidently pretty hard on Chris. And Chris blamed his father for the death of his mother; she was neglected and began to drink.
Christopher did seek a reconciliation as his father was near death. He wrote a book called “Summer of Deliverance” in which he recalled spending time with his father on the film locations.
That is also on my reading list along with Mary L. Trump’s book and John Bolton’s book.
My only experience with James Dickey was pleasant. After watching Deliverance in 1984, I was talking about the film with a colleague. We couldn’t agree on one thing that the film deliberately confused the audience with. After the rape scene, Burt Reynolds as Lewis shoots the first mountain man with an arrow. The second mountain man, listed by IMDb as “toothless man” flees, with Drew (Ronny Cox) chasing him for a few yards.
After arguing about whether to report the incident, a consensus is reached to bury the “cracker” (another name for a mountain man). This is sound, they think, because the river they are canoeing on will be flooded by a dam. Any ground on the banks will be covered by a deep lake and the body will never be found. But afterward, back in the canoes, the four of them encounter Rapids leading into a gorge. Drew is told by Ed (Jon Voight) to put his lifejacket on, but Drew doesn’t, and pitches forward out of the front of his canoe. Both canoes collide and all four are swept into the rapids. A deep pool sits under sheer rock face, and there Ed discovers that Lewis has been seriously injured. He and Bobby (Ned Beatty) drag him to a rock shelf and recover the aluminum canoe; the other one broke up. Despite his pain, Lewis tells Ed that Drew was shot. Armed with bow and arrows, Ed climbs the rock face after dark. He knows the second mountain man is up there, waiting for them to move out from the rocks into the river.
In the morning, Ed shoots the second mountain man and is scared to find that this guy isn’t missing his two top front teeth. On closer inspection, he finds that the teeth are a partial, and when he gets the body down to the others, asks Bobby to identify the guy. But Bobby isn’t sure. He’s traumatized by being raped by the cracker that Lewis shot.
At no time is it ever said for certain whether Ed shoots the right guy or not. My colleague debated. It turned into an argument: did Ed shoot the right guy? Probably so, because he’s up top with a rifle, looking down at the river when Ed catches up to him. I wondered how I could find out. I decided to get a library card and read the book.
The book was excellent. The film is listed under the “Horror” genre, and since I’ve been through the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Florida, I was able to picture in my mind things that weren’t exactly in the film. I find the southern east coast to be thoroughly chilling, haunted, dangerous even on the interstate (don’t run out of gas), and despite natural beauty, fodder for nightmares. God willing, I’ll never have to go back.
The book was no help, however, in solving the mystery of the man on the rocky top of the gorge. I told my colleague about it. We argued the same thing over again. Finally I looked at the jacket, saw where James Dickey lived, called information for his number, and got it.
I dialed him up and his second wife answered. “Are you a reporter?” she asked.
“No ma’am just a fan with a question, ” I said. James Dickey answered the phone. I told him about our argument and he explained that whether Ed killed the right man or not didn’t matter; that part of the story was about survival. “They did what they had to do to survive”, he said simply. And added, to my everlasting frustration, that he himself didn’t know the answer, had never even considered it. He said he had a new book coming soon, asked if I would read it, I promised I would, and we said goodbye. I found his willingness to chat with me, his southern accent and his eagerness to discuss the subject very endearing. I’ll never forget it.
That was when I knew very little about him. That he was an alcoholic and at least verbally abusive makes me very sad. Our short phone conversation was in the summer of 1984. Dickey passed away in 1998. Now, father and son are together again. I hope they know peace and happiness in God’s care.
*****
Sadly, some fathers create monsters. Donald Trump’s father, according to Mary L. Trump, was a real shitball and so hard on his kids that one son went on to drink himself to death. Donald learned how to be vicious, vindictive and a liar, along with a racist and a cheater who could never excel at anything. If he didn’t steal it, he could not posses it. If he didn’t pay contractors, he at least gave them insults concerning their work. He cheated his own siblings out of their share of their father’s estate, and he cut funding for the medical bills for an autistic boy, a nephew, I believe. That’s your president. That’s the man who got evil people to put children in cages, deny them bathroom facilities and hygiene essentials, put them through tortures in the heat in tents, being bitten by insects and made sick by the heat. I never bought the stories that attempted to debunk the claims of torture like sleep deprivation and sexual abuse, starvation and lack of basic healthcare. We heard the story of a child who was left with a fever who later died. We wondered, if there was any humanity in us, how many more died in the ICE concentration camps.
We should have been outraged. Should have been. There were protests. At first. Before he died, Elijah Cummings was outraged and questioned some meatball about stories coming out that the mylar blankets the kids were given were covered in solid waste. I don’t remember any follow-up to that inquiry. A month ago the kids were ordered released because of COVID-19. But their parents are South of the border. Where will you release these kids? Across the border, where they’ll be trafficked by cartels? The land of justice…the land of the free and the home of the brave, the country that used to hate it when human rights abuses happened in other countries, has become a land of vermin and a cesspool of the worst humanity has to offer.
Mary L. Trump gives insight, as a clinical psychologist, into the lack of character, morals, ethics and decency her uncle is made up of. When he came forth from the womb, his fate was sealed already. He was a slime even as a child, bullying schoolmates. He hated people of color; refused to rent shitty apartments to them, even faced a court proceeding for it. That only made him more hateful.
I won’t say much more about Trump. Weve looked at two dysfunctional fathers and seen one son whom we now mourn, whose truthful reporting and intrepidity will be missed.
The other son went on to dismantle a government and kill so many people that his soul will surely be reunited with his father in a dark and tortuous place.
I go outside to smoke. Sometimes I talk to neighbors, but rarely after dark. After the Winter, I didn’t notice it. I got sick. I’m sure it was the beginning of the pandemic. I was sick for over a month.
But now there’s something akin to the heavy silence of winter at night, and it didn’t register for a while. I mean, so many of us, we have a lot on our minds, right? Who’s got the ability to be observant, you know? We’re sick. Tired, worn out. Scared. Depressed. Broke, out of work. Oh, fuck Ivanka Trump’s new bullshit: start something new, or whatever the hell she says. It’s not constructive nor is it encouraging in the least; she can be translated as, “Hey, poor people, eat cake!” She’s Ayn Rand with botox and silicone. Ain’t no jobs, witch. Not for the millions your father put out of work, so shut the fuck up.
Excuse me. I’m so easily sidetracked these days. I’m aware that there have been cases of COVID-19 presenting in patients as different types of brain dysfunction and I do have some issues with the gray tissues for sure. No delirium, no unusual pain, but memory loss, spotty but, I’m told, definitely there. Like not recognizing some guy that others swore I knew. Fuck, that’s scary. It makes you sick to your stomach, it’s so scary.
Anyway, as I was leading up to and wasn’t getting there, I still trust my base senses. My hearing is reliable, sharper because of my bad sight. Unless I’m dissociated and off in my past getting beaten or fucked.
And at night, I’ve been made very uneasy with the silence around here. I’d hear something at a thousand yards even if it was the croak of a frog, that’s how quiet it is. Trees all around, so many that I have to wear a boonie hat because weird shit drops from the trees. Oh, spiders, tiny bugs, even young slugs. I never heard of slugs climbing trees before but they sure do it to the tree outside of my front door. Its oak. Not the door, the tree. And shit falls off it. Baby squirrels. Geriatric squirrels. Like that. I’ve gotta say, there’s something wrong about that tree. One time I saw a juvenile squirrel fall to the ground right in front of me. It hit on its back with a whump! and ran right back up the fucking tree. I swear, it’s as if something in that tree throws them down. I’ve never seen so many squirrels fall from trees before. In fact, I never saw a squirrel fall from anything until I moved here. Twice, smoking under the tree, I felt something like claws trying to grab me by the hair. I’d say I musta been skipping meds, but there’s no way I did that.
Aside from taking squirrels to the dumpster on the every other blue moon, nothing’s going on. I had a post on my other site, and wrote that when the lockdown started, it was deathly quiet in my neighborhood. I couldn’t hear traffic, not on 29 or 32, nothing.
Of course now, Maryland isn’t in full lockdown. I have, on several occasions, heard assholes on their balcony partying. There’s definitely alcohol involved; lots of it. Lots of it.
And on 4 July I heard fireworks. You know, illegal shit. No displays were going on around here. Not in the whole state, as far as I know. But cherry bombs and roman candles were going off, close, real close. It sounded like a goddamn firefight, and I kept flinching. Each time one went off, I had my guts clench tighter, my neck would not move, and I finally froze, back there again. On my side against something I hoped would cover me from flares with parachutes. And a fucking MG nest that I should never have been anywhere near. Fuckingfireworks.
The next night silence returned, but the damage was done. I was a fucking mess. Klonopin hadn’t helped. That took a few days, more klonopin than I should’ve taken, and a shitload of junk food, and I found chocolate chip cookies to be the finest panacea on Earth.
Oh. The silent nights, stretching on from there. Now I’m not saying I hate it. No, at first I found it quite peaceful. But not now. This morning, around 03:30, I went outside to smoke, and the heaviness just swallowed me. Not the heat, not humidity. A separate heaviness unbroken by the slightest sound. No crickets. No cicadas. No frogs.
No traffic.
Nobody out, not teens fucking around throwing rocks at the stop sign. No voices.
No foxes, screaming for whatever it is they scream for. Those little bastards scream like a woman, and they’re smaller than some fucking housecats I’ve seen! Fuckin loud, too.
The deer left the area. One didn’t make it. Got killed by a car.
It’s been too quiet.
And what if the fawn wasn’t hit by a car?
Because at 03:34, I did hear one sound. It has happened before.
About a month ago. I was talking to my neighbor, who was up late and came out to burn one. We heard a knocking sound. One knock. Only there is no door where the sound came from. Just trees.
This time no one else was around and I heard it more clearly. It sounded like someone had a 3-inch diameter wood dowel, about 2-3 feet long, and it struck a fairly big tree with it. Just once.
That ain’t no animal. My skin crawled. I wasn’t scared, but it was weird. Something was there, in the darkest part of the area within sight. No footsteps before or after. I can both see and hear deer over there despite bad sight and prescription sunglasses. No deer were there, and they traverse that spot but never linger; there’s no food there.
And what I thought about was the silence. How unnatural it is. COVID-19 doesn’t account for animals being silent when the summer night should be alive with the chirping of crickets and the songs of cicadas.
I seem to be stuffed with some sense of foreboding. As if nature knows something bad is coming. That’s the heaviness I feel.
Something is going to happen. Something we’re not going to like.
I’ve never been through a summer the nights of which are deathly quiet. When nothing stirs. Except for an occasional knocking of hard wood on a tree trunk.
If you are not the sort of person who believes in the paranormal, and particularly if you find yourself turned off by the slew of TV “reality” shows which are almost entirely fake and scripted, then this is for you.
Let me ask you a question: are curses real?
You can look up the meaning, but this is the definition to which I refer:
1.a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”she’d put a curse on him”; I do not refer to spoken words considered “PG-13” or “R”.
There are supernatural curses. They’re real. There are different kinds, but one in particular seems so prevalent that it gets shrugged off by most people.
TYPES OF CURSES
Sports Curses
THE CURSE OF JOE NAMATH
Super Bowl III
Let’s start with something softball, easy to take. It’s a source of humor for scores of NFL fans, kind of like the Madden Curse, which appears to have been more coincidence than curse. That one involved the real players who appeared on each new Madden NFL video game cover, a new cover each year. Those players went on to have highly unlikely awful seasons or serious injuries that ended their seasons. But there are other curses in sports, and those are real enough for fans. After years of trying to reverse a curse uttered by a fan who was ejected from a World Series game in 1945 for bringing a goat, the Chicago Cubs won a Series in 2016. The efforts to nullify the curse first involved the fan who cursed the team, then a family member later, to no avail. When goats turned up dead on statues it went into the realm of the weird. Even a vegetarian restaurant tried to get fans to go meatless, and a severed goat head appeared on a statue. After 2016, the weird activity seems to have ceased. Thank God for that. Farmers had to be worried that the goat was becoming an endangered species.
In days after 1945 but still in the long ago, there was the National Football League and another league, the upstart American Football League. Don’t ask me when or where, but at some point the two leagues began contests that were crossovers. A fan’s dream. It was awesome, but the mighty NFL had the talent and organizational experience to wipe any field with AFL blood.
This was an age long ago and, some say, best forgotten, when the game was pure and messy and fun. Players didn’t make much money, had off season jobs, wore crew cuts and flat tops, Madras shirts and dress slacks with dress shoes. Often thin neckties were also worn.
It was not uncommon for fans to show up in a sport jacket and black tie. It seems so very long ago…
Then the New York AFL Jets with a coach who had an eye for talent urged the signing of a young quarterback out of Alabama’s Crimson Tide named Joe Namath, who then brazenly asked an absurd amount of money to sign. Head coach Weeb Eubank knew what he wanted, and the team agreed to Namath’s price, at that time more than any other player including Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas. It outraged players, coaches and fans alike, but then Namath went into the game and showed what he knew and what he could do.
Not a scrambler by any means, having separated a knee in college, Joe was a pure passer whose arm performed miracles. In the meantime, both leagues decided to have an annual championship game, and that was history. College games in the postseason were called names like the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. So the two leagues decided that for pro football, only one title would do: the Super Bowl. A sports phenomenon was born.
The mighty Green Bay Packers won the first two, against the AFL Chiefs and Raiders. Bart Starr was everyone’s hero, while no AFL team could ever measure up to the NFL.
Then came the New York Jets with their Broadway-loving, woman-chasing upstart quarterback, Joe Namath. He guided an extraordinary team to the playoffs and Super Bowl III which put them up against the Baltimore Colts and famed John Unitas. That should have been daunting. Namath didn’t see it that way. He knew Unitas wasn’t going to start; his arm was sore and he was showing his mileage. Earl Morrall would be starting for the Colts, and he was good, very good. But everyone underestimated him without fail despite his being one of the reasons the Colts were in the game. It’s a shame; Morrall went on to help the Miami Dolphins with their 1972 perfect season, but nobody remembers him. When they think of that team, they think of Bob Griese who was out with injuries part of the season.
Joe was unfortunate enough to say, pregame to the press, “The Jets will win on Sunday. I guarantee it.” He was upset by all the condescending questions by the press, and it wore him a bit thin.
That just wasn’t done, and fans of the Baltimore Colts and the NFL hated Namath even more; this was worse than Babe Ruth calling his shot. If Namath ever got hate mail, I can’t remember him talking about it. I need to read his book, but I want a signed copy. But that statement caused a lot of anger and outright hatred toward Broadway Joe. Despite this, the Jets led the entire game. Unitas came in late and drove downfield for a touchdown, but it took time off the clock and the Jets won, 16-7.
The curse comes in at this time. Whether it was because of waves of bad karma from Baltimore Colts fans or the scores of people who lost large sums of money on the game isn’t clear, but the Jets haven’t been back to the Super Bowl since.
There are theories from the practical to the absurd, but despite a tongue-in-cheek post on the Jets message boards where Namath playfully claimed to have sold his soul to Satan in return for the Championship, the long-suffering Jets fans are willing to believe anything.
It doesn’t matter, because the facts speak for themselves. There’s been trouble in management ever since, making horrible decisions that lost key players and gave coaches so much shit that the turnover rate is staggering and no quarterback has ever prospered there. One game saw Vinnie Testaverde pass for over 400 yards against the Baltimore Ravens, and still the Jets lost despite managing such a feat against that legendary defense. That season saw the Cleveland Browns of old, now in Baltimore and renamed, break their own curse and defeat the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Namath, for his part, doesn’t blame a curse. He picks apart everything from owners who had no idea of what they were doing to key injuries, to quarterbacks and otherwise. So the Jets last year debuted new uniforms. They’ve already tried that before. It didn’t work. Team mismanagement on such an unbelievable scale is evidence for a curse if evidence for such was even needed. You’d have to go to Cleveland and Detroit to find equal ineptitude. New uniforms are not a solution. They suck A anyway.
Once bad luck is apparent in every level of any business, I start thinking about the Curse of Joe Namath.
I’d say there is a solution, but whether it can be done, I’m not sure. First, the main office has to recruit management talent, good talent with a feel for the game as a whole. You don’t just need a quarterback. You need a top-notch head coach, and the Jets haven’t had one of those since Parcells bailed. Defense, special teams, an offensive line, a top-draft running back, a place kicker. None of those will fall in your lap; management has to be able and willing to scout, negotiate and pay. And the Jets have scrambled egg-brained management…and owners. Second, they have to remove Namath’s number 12 from retirement and all starting quarterbacks have to wear it. All uniforms should match the 1968 uniforms, with no deviations for “throwback day” as this will change the karmic process. Even the facemasks must revert to the Riddel gray. That’s a start.
What do you think? Curse, or no curse? Look up the weird history of the Jets since Super Bowl III for yourself.
And now that we’ve had some fun, let’s get a bit more serious.
Cursed Places
A cursed place, a physical space; be it land, a house, a farm, a business, a forest. It doesn’t matter. It can be anywhere.
AOKIGAHARA
At the base of the dormant volcano that is Mount Fuji in Japan, there is a dense forest named Aokigahara, or, “The Sea of Trees” and also known as the “Suicide Forest”.
It is so named because it’s been the place for people to kill themselves in unknown numbers at least since the 1950s, but more so around 1960 when a Japanese author wrote a novel about a heartbroken lover going there to take her own life.
People from all over the world go there to die. It is a hiking park, and is open to all. But some go in and never come out. Unless their bodies are carried out in a bag. Some suicides aren’t found for a long time. Aokigahara is about a thousand years old but survived the last eruption of Mount Fuji in 1707.
Because lava hardened in places inside the forest, there are tubes and deep recesses into which people crawl to take overdoses or poison to end their lives. Sometimes a body isn’t found despite periodic searches by park officials and volunteers. One man supposedly found 37 bodies in 36 days.
The nature of the forest is indeed very chilling; hikers can easily get lost because trails, for some reason, are too often strayed from. This is terrifying, yet the same quirk is probably responsible for the delays in finding and recovering bodies.
The Japanese authorities no longer give the number of suicides per year that they determine or suspect have occurred. And they’re desperate to stop the interest in Aokigahara as a suicide destination. They claim that “Japanese people don’t go there.”
But they do go there. Japan has a heartbreaking suicide rate, and they do die there, along with people from other countries. And that’s a big problem because if a body is not found in a certain time after death and given rites, the belief is that the spirit of the deceased will become trapped in this world, and worse, become an evil spirit, a predatory ghost.
Stories of survivors seem to corroborate this belief, as they relate the sense of a being pulling them toward going through with their suicide even as they’re having second thoughts.
However, science is desperate to account for everything paranormal, and to this end experts point out that the basalt under the mosses and trees is high in iron concentration which interferes with a compass or cellphone reception. It doesn’t account for sightings of demonic creatures, hearing voices coaxing them to die, the heaviness that follows hikers, the terror of being in there when night falls. People also relate heavy silence, an absence of birdsong or smaller mammals and even insects, although many species of birds and mammals do inhabit the area, and one thing is certainly abundant: spiders. That just makes the whole thing creepier. Especially to westerners, and Josh Gates found this out when his show “Destination Truth” filmed there.
With untold numbers of suicides having been committed there, the forest once considered sacred is cursed and occupied by cursed spirits, since the killing of oneself is an unnatural act, a crime for which absolution can be granted only in cases where a person is so infirm of mind and body that, surely, God understands.
Cursed People
PICKETT’S CURSE
Civil War battlegrounds are cursed for certain. Not counting the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812, and massacres of Native Americans by settlers and of settlers by Native Americans, the Civil War was simply barbaric by any definition; men died of sickness and starvation, exposure and heat stroke more than most people realize. Horse droppings were supposedly gone through by hand to find corn kernels, according to William C. Davis in his book “A Taste For War: The Culinary History Of The Blue And The Gray”.
That book is not the first place I’ve seen this reference. As the war continued, battles often lasted several days and resulted in bodies and body parts strewn across vast areas of land. Desperate battles went from artillery, musket, carbine, bayonet and revolver to hand-to-hand and was as savage as the worst your imagination can conjure. Men tore at each other’s throats, gouged eyeballs out, bit one another as would ravening wolves, and into the night after the fighting stopped, the screams and moans of the wounded and the pleas of the slowly dying kept silence at bay.
The next day fighting often resumed while the bodies lay unrecovered. Piles of bodies had to be buried on-site by graves details after one side or the other left the area. On rare occasions, a tense ceasefire allowed the recovery of wounded and dead soldiers. Then, fighting resumed or one side would bug out at nightfall.
When humanity is so reduced, shedding all vestiges of civilization except for the killing hardware they carry, the land on which they kill and are killed is soaked in blood and a residue of intense fear, hate, anger and utter helplessness permeates everything, from buildings to trees, even rocks. War is killing, and killing is murder. Murder is an evil act which, like the residue it leaves, curses the place where it is done.
Perhaps the worst places come to mind easily: Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Shilo, The Wilderness, Petersburg, Vicksburg, Atlanta, Richmond.
In Gettysburg, the three day battle of 1-3 July 1863 killed or incapacitated or saw captured more generals than any other battle. The casualties are still being debated to this day. The battle saw fighting in the Devil’s Den (where Lt. General John Bell Hood was hit by Union canister or grapeshot, losing the use of an arm), below Little Round Top, which also saw a major pitched battle, and Cemetery Ridge, among others. But there can be no place worse than the open ground where Pickett’s Charge took place.
Gettysburg day 3, “Pickett’s Charge”. As the map illustrates, Picket attacked by sending his division as ordered into the Union center along the wall at Cemetery Ridge. Generals Pettigrew and Trimble never made it to the ridge, but Armistead actually crossed the wall and tried to turn a cannon on the enfiladed troops on the Union flank before he was severely wounded. This attack was doomed, as General Longstreet had told Lee, and the aftermath haunted Lee and Longstreet both, but devastated George Pickett and chased him for the rest of his life.
The slaughter was so horrific that afterward, Lee said to him, “General Pickett. You must look to your division.” A shocked George Pickett said, “General Lee, I have no division.”
He was never the same afterward; the curse of that final act of the battle stayed with him for the rest of his days.
The truth about Pickett’s Charge isn’t what you may think. He was only part of Lee’s attacking force under Longstreet, and his bravery was questioned later when nobody could remember seeing him during battle, while General Armistead led his troops across the field with his hat impaled on the tip of his raised sword. Rebel troops advanced nearly a mile over open space where cannon picked them apart with such terrible ordnance as grapeshot, then canister bombs, and, closer to Cemetery Ridge, muskets that opened up with enfiladed fire from the flanks of the Union line along the ridge. In the center, canon had been silent, kept in reserve until the Confederate soldiers were closer in their advance. Generals Armistead and Kemper, among others, were seriously wounded, and Lew Armistead later died. The losses were so devastating for the CSA that between Gettysburg and a victory in the Western Theater by General Grant immediately following Gettysburg, the South was doomed to lose the war.
Pickett was so bitter that his after-battle report was ordered destroyed by Lee, adding to his darkness. He resented the press naming the charge after him, since it wasn’t his attack and his division was not alone. He took harsh criticism for the failure of the charge, even though Longstreet had already predicted its failure to Lee, who ordered it anyway.
Pickett’s Curse is but one of many that stain the grounds of Gettysburg. I have never wanted to go there, and as a sensitive, I know I never will.
The curses of Pickett, Lee and Hood remain. In fact Hood, who mended and returned to the war, later lost a leg to a shot (some reports say a cannonball) that shattered his femur and necessitated amputation. Hood lived to marry and have children, but he died of Yellow fever days after his wife and one of their daughters.
Since he was from Kentucky and I have a lot of kin there, I’ve checked to see whether I could be related. My family had at least a handful of Confederate soldiers, even though Kentucky was essentially neutral, at least for most of the war. So far what I’ve found is worse. Of all his children, only two seem to have been married, and none had children. There was the one who died with Hood and his wife; the others seem to have lived obscurely. It bears further research but it has the mark of a family curse. For my part, I went to ancestry.com to find answers: why did parts of my family wind up so evil and sick, enough to injure their own, leaving legacies of wounded, wrecked shells of a next generation? Why did mental illness or demonic influences or both become so prevalent? My parents were Southern Baptist Sunday School teachers, and nobody in Lake Shore Baptist Church ever knew that hours earlier, around 23:00 to midnight, they’d both been engaged in child sexual abuse. How the fuck does that happen? I searched for answers. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I’ve found so far: slave owners and Confederate soldiers, victims of Native attacks that blurred the lines of any concept of white invaders vs. a large indigenous population and atrocious acts committed by the settlers. So much hate and blood in the names of freedom and survival that Caligula himself would have vomited over it. The answers begin to fall into place.
Other places are said to be haunted. Gettysburg is certainly haunted and cursed. Sometimes you think a place is haunted, yet you will find no ghosts there. Not even in some places frequently visited by ghost hunters. They hear sounds, they feel a heaviness in the air, they don’t even want to stay, but they want proof of the haunting. In the end, it often turns out that they should have left when their gut told them to.
INDWELT AND OWNED
One thing that happens is that a person moves a family into a new home, and within a short time, weird things begin to happen. Full-blown poltergeist activity is rare, and there’s no such thing as a poltergeist anyway. But activity can ramp up, and when things are moved, lost, misplaced or doors open and no one’s there, well, count on it; this is often just the beginning. Almost invariably it gets worse and family members, usually children, get nightmares or even see things in their room at night, as I did. In my case, what was there didn’t seem to make noise. It wanted to cause fear, and it did a good job, because silence is terrifying, far more than any noise. It also caused bad things to happen, and nightmares.
In many cases, it tries to hurt people physically. You’ve heard of the three claw marks on a victim’s back, three scratches that burn, like a cat’s scratch? That’s not a ghost. In Christianity, this is a demon. Other religions have other names for them, but whatever the name, it’s a demon and it’s there to wreck your life. Mark this well: they hate you and will do everything they can to hurt you; they can cause physical illnesses, financial ruin, family infighting; and they can be argued to have taken lives.
These are seen as “shadow people” often, and a sighting doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be attacked. People report seeing them even when no other activity is present. These folks are sensitives and mediums. They may not know it or even believe in such things, but they can see the demons going about, sometimes just passing through.
When activity does get raised, there’s no living in the house. Exorcism is for possession in people. The rite usually doesn’t work on homes. Priests and pastors and others can do cleansing rituals, but unlike the epilogues of reality shows, where “The activity has stopped” shows up at the end credits, it rarely ends like that in real life. Activity may cease, but it’s only a matter of time before it returns, worse than before because now, it’s pissed. Things get so bad families can be forced to flee. Cleansing done by “smudging” or burning sage will never get rid of a demon. Some can be temporarily displaced by it. They don’t like the smell. There are an unknown number of different kinds of demons, and those most powerful can breathe; I’ve heard them and known others who also have. Trust me, hearing breathing next to or on top of you while you’re lying down will scare you enough to jump clean against the ceiling. You need to cancel your lease or sell, because that’s too close, and the entity is already far too familiar with you to ever stop.
The dwelling is occupied by a demon because it has been cursed. There are different ways this happens. One is that, quite simply, bad people have lived there. The things that they did were so awful that demons were attracted. If a murder or attempted murder, assault, rape, ongoing sexual abuse and incest were part of the incidents, that’s enough to bring a curse on the dwelling, rendering it an unholy place, and therefore attracting demonic entities, who feed on fear and suffering. Rooms where a lot of abuse took place are hotspots of activity, but more than one room can be active. During your walkthrough with a realtor, you’ll never know.
Another sure way a house can be cursed is that builders or previous owners purposely contacted demons. Whether through black rituals and summoning of spirits, ouija sessions, or even dedication of the dwelling to Satan.
One family had continued trouble in their home beginning the first week they were there, and being Christians, sought help from their pastor. He visited and did a blessing and a cleansing. It didn’t work and the activity worsened. Finally, during a subsequent visit and intense prayer, he had the couple lead him to the basement. It was a finished basement, one of the reasons they’d liked the place so much. The pastor pulled an edge of the carpet up and back from the wall, and sure enough, there was a pentacle in the concrete that had been drawn out before the cement had cured. At that point the pastor advised them to move out immediately. He explained that the house had been dedicated, consecrated to Satan, and unholy land cannot be reclaimed.
Still more ways exist. Homes can be cursed easily by the focused hatred of neighbors. Pure emotion and wishes that you will meet with misfortune can cause dark forces to enter your home. It is the same with witches. They can perform cursing rituals by creating potions and calling on demons or as they sometimes think of them, “nature” gods or “elementals”. Once done, it is impossible to know what they did and therefore to counteract it without ongoing help from a priest and a medium. Let’s get something else straight.
Demons are, by definition, spiritual beings, angels who have refused obedience to God. There is very little else we know, even if we believe in them as defined. We have the biblical accounts of Jesus casting out demons and then later, his Apostles also did this.
Demonology makes unfair presumptions to students, and the Roman Catholic Church remains the go-to authority on the subject. Books mislead by inclusion of named demons from classic literature and even folklore. There’s one name not mentioned in the Bible that I’m familiar with and, since I was very young, I would have this name pop into my mind periodically. I’m not sure if there’s any correct spelling but it formed as the name “Azizel”. It isn’t “Azazel” or “Azazil”, both of which which are referred to in extracanonical books from the Bible and Qur’an. All I know is, it is evil and it is persistent. It could be that he’s some kind of leader, but the name repeated in the mind of a sensitive for years? Bloody scary.
Cursed Objects
Probably the easiest way to cause misfortune is to bring a cursed object into your house. It could be an antique, say a rocking chair, cradle, figurine, doll, even things like flatware sets, like those rendered in silver. How an object becomes cursed is not always easy to find out. But, when a new or old object is brought in, it pays to be on the lookout for any unusual types of sounds, dreams, visions, or the change of behavior in a family member. Some objects seem charming, and in one’s initial desire to have it, any intuitive feeling by touch is ignored. Later, clues can be had several ways. You observe such changes as the above, or an eerie feeling looking at, touching or even being in the same room with the item.
It pays to be careful and not introduce many old items at once in your home ( like you might do with garage and yard sales, antique and thrift stores where you load up on lots of neat stuff for cheap prices). If something happens, it’s more difficult to single out the source. Usually, once a cursed object is removed, any activity stops. Contrary to superstition, these things can be returned, or if that’s not possible, thrown out.
This happened in my house when one day, my son and I were playing a video game and decided to take a break, and go to the kitchen for a cold drink. Just as I was in the doorway, I heard a loud crash behind me. In the room was a closet that was added on. It didn’t go to the ceiling and a bunch of old stuff from my in-laws was stored up there. I’d gotten my son a toy helicopter that was really a collector’s item; it was for 12″ soldier figures like the original G.I. Joe. So it was big and too heavy for actually playing with.
It didn’t retail for that much, but today can fetch over a thousand dollars. Ultimate Soldier collection AH-6 Attack Helicopter
I had it sitting on top, with the skids lateral to the edge. It could not have slid sideways, yet it had done that, crashing to the floor in pieces. I went into the room, my back prickling, hairs on my neck raised. I knew something creepy had just happened. I looked at where the helicopter had been, and a plastic bag was projected over the edge as if it had pushed the thing off. I knew nothing of what was on top of that closet, but I somehow felt the bag contained a doll or a stuffed animal. I didn’t want to touch it. But to be frank, it had to go. I looked inside and it was an old stuffed cow from Cloverland Dairy. It was the ugliest thing ever. How the hell can someone make a stuffed cow that’s uglier than a real cow? It was bloody cursed. Where the bag containing it had been, a Christmas tree angel lay on her side, as if she had hauled off and rammed the bag with the cow, trying to push it off. It almost made it, too. But it sure got our attention, and I took the bag out to the street trash cans and that was the end of it. I considered throwing the angel out as well, but decided to wait. When nothing else happened, I left it there.
MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE, TOO
Except that was hardly the end of trouble in that house. In the winter of 2004-2005, it was demolished and hauled away in roll-off dumpsters. What led to this was so strange that, to this day, it compels me to examine the circumstances in an ever-widening manner, including events I had not considered to be a factor previously. The house may have been haunted, but no one had anything particularly horrible to tell about it. Built in 1927, at least two people died there. In window seats later taken out, Baltimore Sun newspapers dating back to World War Two were found in fair condition. You could actually thumb through them like yesterday’s paper. Unfortunately, they were disposed of. Lingering spirits usually take great exception to changes of any kind to their former house. Renovating an old house can trigger ghostly activity in a house the new owners never even knew was haunted. Ghosts who lived comfortably in a place they loved, celebrated holidays in, sheltered from the worst weather conditions, slept peacefully in, cooked amazing food in, then went to meet their maker in, do not have much patience with people who change even little things that meant so much to them.
However, a single-level house with a cramped dormer added to it contained bizarre mysteries best left alone and unpondered. Hardwood wainscoting, rich and old, had tiny closets set into it. Things like those are, of course, frightening to people who have seen too many B-movies. You don’t go poking around where you don’t have to. In book and film alike, that’s where nightmares lie.
The interesting part is that in 1997 my fatherfather-in-law died in the house. In life, he was a big man of gregarious nature, but he had a hair-trigger temper. His wife and kids suffered years of verbally abusive outbursts, and I remember one time hearing my mother-in-law saying, “I wish he would get cancer and die.”
And that is exactly what happened. It was never spoken aloud, but I know she always deeply regretted those words. After many years of marriage, she was heartbroken when he passed. Did such an utterance curse her husband? There are stories which, if you believe them, absolutely back such an assumption up. Even in religious context: Christ’s warning to love one another, forgive those who abuse you and to resist judgement upon another’s soul. Karma is the same concept, just with accompanying and explicit warnings. Every thought, every word, every deed, revisits the person they come from in kind. Its “Reap what you sow” in forged steel. Even a second of anger can harm the spirit of the person who is the object of it. Karma may be thought of as a companion to negative thoughts and emotions or deeds. But it doesn’t stop there. It also becomes a boomerang that inflicts the same or greater damage to the first subject.
CURSED FORT HOOD
In the past year, two soldiers went missing from Fort Hood, the Army base named after General John Bell Hood. Prior to that, there had been two mass shootings just 6 years apart. Both missing soldiers have been found, the second being E-4 Vanessa Guillen. She was killed in an armory, taken off base and dismembered, then placed in a shallow grave. One suspect shot himself. One is in custody. Does Fort Hood bear the curse of its namesake? I don’t know. I think it’s likely. There’s currently a petition for taking the base out of service. That is never going to happen. But changing its name is imperative. In fact all military installations bearing Confederate Generals’ names must be changed. It’s time.
THE SMITH FAMILY CURSE
I’m 60 years old. I’m in failing health and I can’t anticipate another five years of life; it is so unrealistic. I sit often and wonder why I’ve been through so much. Why I had to outlive my children. Why a photograph in black and white showed a boy with a happy smile and sparkling eyes posing beside a baby sister, and what dictated that those two kids had to end up so hurt, so dysfunctional, in so much pain decades after things happened that dulled the sparkle in those eyes. I wonder why I had an uncle who vowed never to marry and have children because he refused to pass on whatever evil ran in the family. It means my uncles and aunts may have been, probably were, abused. It means the family on both sides had bad blood, from Confederate soldiers to slave owners to incestuous sex and madness.
I watched my father build two businesses from scratch, operating from an office in the house. When we moved into the house in Pasadena, Maryland in 1962, my parents could barely furnish it, and I remember playing with carved wood toys on the hardwood floors as it got dark. The lights were never turned on until nightfall because the electric bill would get too high to pay.
By 1970 he had built two businesses to impressive levels. He leased an office in Glen Burnie next to the Glen Burnie Mall. The building had a warehouse and he made money with it. The trucking company was Comet Fast Freight. By 1979 he had built a fleet with new Budd trailers, two Peterbilt 352 Pacemakers, a fleet of Volvo F86s, and more. But mistakes had been made. In 1974 dad began a massive renovation at home, including an in-ground pool, fence, retaining walls, sundeck and a double driveway. Lush green grass now covered what used to be dirt and weeds. The feds were curious as to how he managed that, a new fleet, and an office renovation that took all of the summer of ’76 to complete. Worst of all was a massive warehouse in Jessup that he would have to fill and keep full in order to pay the lease and turn a profit. But he couldn’t fill it. At no time was it ever more than two-thirds full. Then he bought the self-serve car wash across from the Glen Burnie headquarters and didn’t report the full income because it was cash. He had cash flow problems and so didn’t report the cash income from the car wash in full, using it for payroll. By 1980 several accidents occurred that turned out to be quite costly. One happened on Interstate 70 east, a load of something headed to Baltimore pulled by one of the Peterbilts. The driver fell asleep, Jackknifed and flipped onto a car, blocking all lanes and making the car burst into flames. The pinned woman was further injured by inhalation of smoke and dry chemicals from the extinguisher someone used.
The accidents were disastrous. Then came the FBI, looking into just how a man with private businesses managed to build a small empire in less than fifteen years. They were looking for bonded cargo, a load of coffee in an overseas container that had gone missing.
By 1981, the warehouses were empty. Chattanooga Glass pulled out. Burlington Industries pulled out. Koppers pulled out. Schenley left. And just like that, Chapter Eleven. In 1983, the trucking company followed. A fortune made and pissed out the window. Bad decisions? Absolutely. What nobody else knew was that in those later years, he was obsessed with one of his daughters, calling her his “second wife” and after hours, he did bestial shit to her. Every bit of this was a result and renewal of the family curse and some genetic factors that may also be a curse. He wound up in prison, as did my mother, for rape, statutory rape, unnatural and perverted practices, child sexual abuse and more. He died not long after his parole.
CONCLUSION
I believe we’re living on borrowed time. This country has much to atone for. We do indeed bear the iniquities of our fathers, and until we drastically change our direction, begin treating each other as equals and finding a way to stop being hypocrites, the United States is doomed.
Also, we’ve been increasingly hated by other nations, and it’s scary. We have the chance to stop that.
As a species, look at what we’ve done to the Earth. Read honest, science-based material, not right-wing propaganda. Your waterfront home, with the pier and electric boat lift? It is already worthless and you don’t even know it. Unload it now and head inland before realtors cease being greedy enough to take it off your hands. Before they realize it’s about to be part of the ocean.
If America is the land of curses, we can do something about it. We can stop glorifying traitors to our country. We can stop hating each other, killing, raping and bloodying our land. We can atone for our past misdeeds and vow never to repeat them.
We’ve had enough. Don’t let this once in a lifetime chance slip away.
How to counter any curse like this begins with love, and how we treat each other.
I’ve seen enough. I don’t know who it was but some dickhead actuallyasked Dr. Fauci if the left and the media were being fair to “President” Trump.
His reaction was vanilla. Reason: he knows he must remain where he is in order to help save this country from Donald Trump’s ignorance and insanity. The next question from Dickhead was “do you regret not calling for the public to wear masks earlier?”
Wait. Wait a fucking minute. It was the republicans who denied COVID-19 was going to be a thing. Remember that?
Fauci answered, “we’re going to play that game…if you’ll remember, we had a paucity of PPE and we didn’t want healthcare workers who were risking their lives to have facemasks taken by the public.” Not a word-for-word quote, but essentially correct. How can politicians be so short on memory that they actually try to rewrite history, and how the hell are they so callous that this dickhead brought up deaths from drugs, AIDS and even managed to somehow throw mumps into his name salad?
Mumps?
First of all, that’s the fucking attitude that’s already killed so many people who had COVID-19. Trump’s attitude was, and remains, “fuck it.”
They’ll watch the economy tank, a million people die, businesses fail, and do nothing but throw blame on Democrats. Which is like your kids breaking everything in your house right the fuck in front of you and blaming the neighbors out back that you can’t stand. Today in hard-hit Arizona, Trump’s having a rally. He will not wear a mask. In Arizona. And his staff keep getting infected. He’s not merely stupid. He’s evil, bent on exalting himself as a god who can’t be hurt, get sick or make a bad decision. And while he’s at it, fuck everyone else. He’s not alone because his cult of political and civilian worshippers back him up. By now I doubt any of them even really know they’ve believed the lies they once took objection to. They live in a fake reality.
If you want me to write about him with a bit of respect, or all-out reverence, you can go fuck yourself. Ain’t gonna happen.
Guess what is gonna happen, though…
A lot more people are going to die. God damn these motherfuckers. God damn them all to Hell.
You can’t possibly sustain the constant barrage of news and breaking news, the latter of which has been glued to cable news screens for months. Weve gone through much, and it isn’t over. We need our downtime.
Among the movies I’ve suggested for staying home and staying safe, there were some good titles, something for everyone. Now I’m going to recommend something very different: videogames. They’ve been around for decades, have an interesting history and evolution, and everyone can play.
I’m not a hardcore gamer. I’m not a purist and I’m not cut out for multiplayer online games. I’m just a casual gamer with a list of favorites and a list of games that weren’t worth their price because they were shitty or too hard.
I also have a wish list, now that I’ve acquired a PS4 that has abilities I never imagined in 1999.
That was the year I discovered the original Playstation and fell in love. I found not only that I loved games but that it was the one way I could reach my son, have fun and bond with him. And that was priceless.
I bought my own Playstation in January of 2000. I started with two games, “Duke Nukem: Time To Kill” and “WCW Mayhem” and spent hours after work being sucked into the gaming world.
While the Duke Nukem game remains one of my favorites, I played other games that I loved every bit as much. Looking back, the graphics were stunning to me, the audio and cut scenes immersive, sucking me into their world of fantasy and adventure. I eschewed puzzles in games but found that platform games always had them. Mostly, I was okay until I got to jumping puzzles. My timing was just not good enough and I’d get hung up. On weekends when my son visited, he would help.
I discovered “Medal of Honor” and, being a WWII buff, loved it. I got hung up a lot as the first-person shooter was new to me and I died a lot. But it was the start of something big, a genre that continued until “Airborne” and “Vanguard” for Playstation 2. Sadly the series has ended, but some of the original creators defected and gave us the first “Call of Duty,” a franchise spanning WW2 games to modern warfare. I thought that with “Medal of Honor: Underground” was the pinnacle of the series because, glitches and all, the ambience gave the player a sense of firefights happening in the distance, especially in the Paris levels. It turned, in later levels, to a freaky, scary thing, as a resistance fighter entered Himmler’s prized Wewelsberg castle. But still, great stuff.
I had my try at “Driver 2” and found it unusual; it was undeniably too hard, all night driving was eerie, and the game was chock-full of glitches that made it more creepy. Never did beat that game.
Then there was Madden football and back then it was more fun than it is now. My son loved the Spyro games and the one I loved the most, my favorite game of all time, came out in the summer of 2000: “Chrono Cross”, a follow-up to Super Nintendo’s “Chrono Trigger.” It was easily a hundred-hour game for anyone’s first RPG game, and it had a score that no video game can ever equal. Players could rove the world with two other characters in their party, but the characters which could be recruited were unusually high; 40 of them. Depending on decisions during play or other members recruited, some would be unavailable for recruitment. Everything I did had an affect on where and with whom I would go next. Some characters were almost useless in the traditional turn-based battles (you took a turn and attacked, healed your party or defended) and the CPU took its turn with enemies). Sometimes boss fights weren’t fair at all. A boss is a major character, and you will meet several in the course of a game, and they’re there to beat the snot out of you. They’re also kinda pissed that you’ve made it so far, and the fights are usually drawn-out affairs that test your patience and your nerves. You may, in some Role Playing Games (RPGs) be forced to retreat, fight smaller enemies to gain hit points (the number which defines how much punishment you can take before you get a “Game Over” screen. Most games also give you MP or magic power, as spell casting is a powerful way to battle. The game had 11 possible endings and you could replay it, making different choices, recruiting different characters, and face new enemies and new places. It was almost depressing when I finally finished it.
“Silent Hill” is a title you know as a movie, but first it was a game, and holy crap! Jump scares, boss fights and the urgency to get your character’s daughter back in a town full of demons and zombies. A definite puzzle game, people needed guides to help them, but one type of monster that looked like shadow children carried knives and would laugh while they attacked Harry Mason, who just wanted his daughter back, drew criticism from fans who found them too intense, so Konami never used them again. Harry and his daughter were supposed to be going to the resort town of Silent Hill for vacation. Harry awakes after a traffic accident to find his daughter missing and the town profoundly changed into a nightmare. A classic, worthy game.
“Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver” was stellar. A cursed Raziel was turned into a vampire, made to serve Kain, who gets jealous when he grows bat wings, a stage of evolution Kain doesn’t have. Kain rips off Raziel’s wings and orders him thrown into a pit to hell. A powerful eldritch creature Raziel can’t see but only hear promises to help him exact his revenge if he can eliminate enough of the vampires and gain powers along the way, powers Kain never had. There are some good puzzles, most of which have to be solved in order to enter new areas, and coolest of all, Raziel can’t die. If he loses enough energy in the physical world, he goes to the spirit realm and can consume the souls of the damned. Once his energy is restored, he can go back to his physical form. Good graphics for a Playstation original and a classic game.
Of course, Playstation had its share of duds. Among the most hated in the console’s library were games such as “Powerboat Racing”, “Escape ODT (or die trying)”, “Spot Goes To Hollywood” Spot being the character that was the red spot from 7-up cans, but I dare you to try to get past the first level without having your controller thrown across the room by some demon you didn’t know lived inside you. And let us not forget “Teletubbies”, a game so devoid of anything to do that even kids hated it. It was so derided that some gamers modified the code and turned it into a first-person shooter, allowing the player to shoot the dumbass fuckers. Or that’s what I read. I certainly didn’t.
On the end of its run, Playstation began accomodating budget games like “Largo Winch.// Commando Sar” which the now-defunct Playstation Magazine reviewed as “www.stupidname. com”. I’d like to move on now.
Along the way, there were stellar games, and you can still buy some of them. Games like “Syphon Filter” and the original “Resident Evil,” the one and only. There were a lot of cart racers, and one even featuring Disney characters. “Bogey Dead Six” was a fighter jet game that was good, but freaking hard, and “Ms. Pac-man was incredible, a masterpiece.
PLAYSTATION 2
There’s no way I can go through all the best titles in the PS2’s massive library. There are so many games worthy of owning, and all have drawbacks and goodies. Yet they’re classics, and it’s a shame they won’t be ported or remade for PS4. As far as the PS5 is concerned, the rumored price will turn out to be prohibitive to most gamers.
Playstation2 had a magical run. At first, designers didn’t grasp its potential and it led to games promised by developers being dropped or defecting to the Xbox. In those cases, production seemed hurried and reviews weren’t that great. When the first Madden game, “Red Faction” and others hit the shelves, suddenly there was a race on. PC games like “Half-Life” were ported from PC, and original updates to WWF/WWE games blew the Xbox version out of the water. Personally, my favorite PS2 games ranged from shooters to platformers to slash-and-hackers like “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance” to the original “Kingdom Hearts” which was an RPG melding of Square Characters (Final Fantasy) and Disney characters and worlds. The latter was a masterpiece and a true labor of love. With a great score, cutscene ecstasy and reasons to revisit every world several times as different features become available, and so many cool and loveable Disney characters in the game, the original is a classic that can’t be touched. The sequel that I played took a hit in difficulty and failure led to replaying the same levels again and again until my thumbs felt as if they’d fall off. It kept me from going any further and getting into the story. I hated it.
NASCAR and Formula One, Gran Turismo and Need For Speed all had great games on the console.
“Silent Hill 2” made history as one of the most consistently voted “scariest game ever” titles, and it was. The franchise had a good run on PS2 and stories sometimes meld and sometimes not. The second game doesn’t take you to any of the locations of the first game but you end up close to those sections. “Silent Hill 3” sees the death of Harry Mason, the first game’s protagonist, and his daughter gets to go to parts of town from the first game as well as a superbly creepy shopping mall. I’m not afraid of much, but being inside a mall with no other people in it and no power is one of them. Urbex YouTubers do this shit, and they’re crazy. Abandoned malls are the stuff of nightmares. I played SH 2 and 3 and wish I could have played the others, as each developed its own brand of creepiness. I missed so much when I got sick.
Anyway, COVID-19 is spiking. Its because people aren’t staying home enough, they’re taking foolish chances, even protesting the wearing of masks; surely the height of stupidity and recklessness. If you’re bored, order up a PS1, PS2 or PS4, and lose yourself in stories you’ll never forget.
Okay, that was interesting. She clearly planned her “presentation” well enough, complete with Elmer’s or perhaps a more “aromatic” glue fixing her pictures to a sign. And she wrote and read from her own, really demented and hysterical speech. Holy shit. But look. If you want to prove that you’re a “patriot” by singing a song, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you get the fucking lyrics right.
Some people can’t be troubled, though. It’s just not enough to prove yourself an idiot and mark yourself as a candidate for psychiatric observation; no, you just have to sing, too. And fuck it up.
I’m not calling into question a person’s right to speech. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to write. But she’s a mess, a train wreck, like everyone else who reveals themselves Trump supporters. I know I laughed at the clip, and it’s unusual for me to do that when someone so obliviously embarrasses themselves. I usually feel bad for them. But this is funny until after it’s over.
That’s when I stopped laughing and eventually felt overwhelming dread that she’s not alone.
That’s truly sobering. Trump has apparently sold out the venue for his rally on Saturday and people are already camping out waiting for it. Right in the middle of a county with coronavirus cases rising fast. It was supposed to be on Juneteenth but he changed it and I can’t tell you why. Then he claimed to have made Juneteenth famous, that nobody had ever heard of it. And then we had to hear that he “polled” African American White House staff and they had never heard of it either. At least that’s what he claims. It’s horseshit but his cult followers won’t care either way. Right now he’s losing voters to Biden. He’s pissed, too. He’s pissed about lots of things. He’s asked, “Do you think the Supreme Court hates me?” Hes called them out and he’s rejected having masks be compulsory in the enclosed venue (to buy a ticket you had to sign a waiver). He’s ranted that people are wearing masks because they hate him (if that’s true, then why the need for a waiver?). And as far as COVID-19 is concerned, he’s lied so many times I can’t keep up with it all, but one of his latest was something about him inventing the “greatest machine (ventilator?)” ever. Ever. He’s totally fucking out there.
And this event is being described as a “superspreader” event. In other words, if the average COVID-19 patient infects two other people, this event will just plain kill a shitload of people and nobody seems to give a damn except for those who stand susceptible to these morons who will return home and kill them.
And since incubation can be indeterminate, between 5 to 14 days, and some will be asymptomatic, those victims will continue to spread it if they live.
Have you noticed that people are paying less attention to the numbers? Did you know that a month ago, several politicians from red states actually said they were going to stop the daily updates even if they really can’t? Based on my observations so far, it’s possible. Politicians, public behavior and myths have cooked a perfect soup. COVID-19 isn’t going away right now. It isn’t going to go away anytime soon. There’s no need to fear a “second wave” this autumn: the first one won’t even be over by then. Forget a vaccine. It’s too soon, and we may never get one anyway. That’s what we need to prepare for. You can’t count on Trump or any of his brainwashed cadre to tell the truth. The truth is, Trump fucked us with every step he took or failed to take during this pandemic; now we’re looking at the deadliest year in our history and that’s without a war. It’s going to claim more lives, and it will not stop.
The latest studies have proven that masks do help to stop coronavirus from spreading when used with physical distancing and obsessive hand washing. Yeah, it was working in areas where it was mandated and not voluntary. At first, yes, we were told masks weren’t effective. An article still pops up once a week with false or outdated information which has it that masks in public are useless, but its it’s dangerous not to wear them.
In this way it becomes harder to laugh at the woman in the video. It becomes easier to hate her. She will kill someone. If not by catching and transmitting the virus, then merely by example because people listen to morons like Trump and his death cult.
As we get to July fourth, it shakes me to the core to picture what we’re going to see. In my life, there’s never been a worse man in the White House. No one, not even Richard Nixon, came close to this man. And never mind the upcoming books by his niece and John Bolton. The former is reportedly flouting a signed non-disclosure agreement to publish hers. Now what kind of family would have something like that between cousins, uncles and nieces? What the fuck happened, anyway? Because it had to have been particularly horrible.
And I’ve saved John Bolton for last. People are applauding this piece of shit. Why? He’s a pussy! He could have testified any time during critical hearings and investigations. If he’s such a patriot, he would have. A true patriot couldn’t have been stopped.
He didn’t. He hid behind Trump and only now, when it looks like Trump may lose, only now, when a prestigious publisher stands ready to cut checks, does he claim to be brave with a tell-all book. John Bolton is a traitorous, cowardly and greedy man. He’s everything that’s wrong with this country. Because a weasel and a traitor, an unpatriotic piece of shit like him can’t have one or two weaknesses; he’s probably a bigot and a womanizer too. Don’t buy his book. The details will be discussed ad nauseum on cable anyway.
We’re in big trouble, America. Big trouble. Watch the video again if you doubt me.
CAUTION: This post is for adults. It has graphic and possible triggering subject matter, crude language and sexual material.
It went on and on, the nightmare. It began badly enough, but that didn’t last for long. I was in a dream place, you know, the place in a dream that’s half real and half filled-in? Like that. I was walking out of the woods, to the old Montgomery Ward store at the old Glen Burnie Mall. Why? Hell if I know. It didn’t look right. It was alone with no mall. It had gigantic store front windows. I looked, and in both I could see dozens of nude women, painted and posing, still-life art. Erotic but not erotic. Just nude art. What the fuck is wrong with me? What, I can’t have a wet dream, I gotta be so dysfunctional that women are reduced to alabaster mannequins? Holy shit.
How long I looked, I don’t know. Not long but long enough to see that they were real, not statues. Some smiled. Well, I walked on past, shaken, never wanting to see it again. Would I have to return this way to go home? Never thought about it. The parking lot was empty. Bold as brass, along toward me walked two girls, probably about 20 years old, one dark haired and tattooed, one blonde. Both clean shaven and the blonde’s genitals high and visible. I stared, they grinned and giggled, and I turned to look when they passed. It was something new. Nudity was allowed anywhere and I just hadn’t seen a lot of it. But the times, I guess they had just changed.
Then it was night. Just dark. I entered a store, but it happened again, one doorway leading to many others, and once I picked one, I couldn’t go back. I was in a labyrinth again, this one mostly straight but still a maze all the same, and what’s worse was, I knew it. I mean I consciously knew I was dreaming, and I said, “Oh, no, not again.” Sadly, lucid dreaming isn’t a cure for nightmares. I woke up several times. I even propped my head up to watch TV, but sleep took me back like a prisoner and the dream continued. Stuck going from store to store, not buying anything because I found myself without any money, and in the next minute I had two canes, one traditional and the other metal and uncomfortable to the left hand. I needed them to walk. But did I? I didn’t remember that. As I walked along, a highway above me on top of a slope I wasn’t able to climb up to, I sometimes emerged outside, interacting with several people or groups whom I begged for help. Lots promised to help but then vanished, and others tormented me to some degree. A group of boys seemed concerned, then decided to mess with me until they realized who I was and backed away in dread, into the woods, behind a streetlight. How I had gotten up on the road I don’t know. I don’t know why the sudden realization of my identity was so terrifying to tough older teenage boys.
Some thing, some certain, specific thing happened. I don’t know what it was. An older black couple helped me get to the road, but there was nothing else they could do. Nearby I could see the giant screen of the old Governor Ritchie Drive-in theater. It was in the right place in relation to Montgomery Ward, more or less. It was too creepy. I don’t know of a Drive-in theater left in this country. I think they should be brought back, though.
Out of the maze of stores I seemed to have walked miles through, I wasn’t that far from my starting point. Yet I was helpless. Three women showed up. Not my age, a bit older, but not much. One seemed familiar and I can’t remember the other two. She was blonde, likely by coloring, had her hair in a style on top, had a gap in her front teeth, was very tall and strong-willed. She asked for my cell number but I had to struggle to remember it and I didn’t have it on me. I gave it to her, and for some reason it reached my ex and her husband. She said they were one their way, which meant that I could get out of the dream. None of this shit makes sense to me. Being trapped, and knowing I was dreaming it, and waking up several times only to have it keep going while I was awake and continue when I fell back to sleep is something I’ve never experienced. Like most people, I try to find some meaning. Why all this bizarre shit? It’s getting worse. And I don’t want to dream about nudity. I really don’t. And I hate the fucking trapped, maze-dreams I can’t escape from mostly ever, this time in a truly remarkable way.
It could be that I was filling out annual paperwork the other day. The program requires I have an emergency contact and next-of-kin. I don’t have any. Perhaps that’s part of it, dealing with that thought. Old people whose children are gone don’t have next-of-kin. Get over it.
Look. I don’t have answers. I have questions. I’m haunted. I’m trapped. I just got rapped in the nuts on prescription co-pays again. I take twelve pills in the morning and the rest of the day I’m useless. What I take later doesn’t even matter after a cocktail like that.
BITCH, BITCH, BITCH
I wish I could have more insight into my damaged brain’s workings. I don’t. And of course, some things I never want to know. Right now, I’m not by any means alone. People are experiencing sudden loss of memory, short-term, forgetting why they went somewhere, watching TV and not remembering what they’ve just seen. If it’s on demand, they have to rewind. Errands are missed, time deadlines, appointments, you name it. Things do not go well with us.
It’s not hard to see why. The COVID-19 cases are rising so sharply I’m terrified that the mass grave thing might become a thing again. I hate seeing others suffer, and so do most other people. But when we can do so little to stop it, that hurts. Yet during this time, we can help. We can wear masks, use physical distancing and stay home whenever possible. I went out today and I was very pleased with everyone but one person who seemed like she didn’t care and only wore a mask because it was required in the store. People here are serious about it. That’s good. But it ain’t like that everywhere. Pictures of people without masks, grouped too close together at restaurants, those get to me.
The BLM protests had to happen. George Floyd was murdered in cold blood. But people close together, unmasked, well, that’s a price we have to deal with. And we can bitch all we want, we can blame all we want, and we can listen to ass wipe Trump lie if we want, but he’ll still be an ass wipe, people will still die, and there won’t be any second wave of the coronavirus because we are not through the first wave yet. We ain’t even close. Trump had Pence lie yesterday. The Wall Street Journal praised Trump’s “leadership” in the crisis. You can find bullshit anywhere now; once-reliable sources are compromised, and I pray that trend doesn’t continue. Because you don’t want to be caught drinking from the wrong cup.
If you’re not on social media, forgive yourself immediately. It was toxic before Trump. It’s a deadly atmosphere now. It is bringing morale lower. The hatred is everywhere. Zuckerberg is not to be found. He took it over, now it’s a monster. He drank from the wrong cup before he was weaned.
It’s not fair. Or it’s scary. We have nightmares of being trapped, chased, and worse. Your dreams may not be as demented as mine, but I’ll wager they’re pretty awful.
When we drink from the wrong cup, nothing good can happen. I did that once.
THE WRONG CUP
It was the dry summer of 1994. During a heatwave the devil in hell himself would have bitched about. I don’t know much about it. I had no idea it was coming, and I had driven to Glen Burnie to the mall. I stopped on the way to get a Big Gulp from 7-eleven. I always had one with me. I got to the mall, parked at the section for Montgomery Ward. I was headed to Radio Shack. All of the sudden, the sky turns olive green, thunder cracks the sky, and I had never, until then, seen rain like that except from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes. I opened my door to see if it could really be that bad, and barely got part of my head out and it was soaked. In an instant, as if a five-gallon bucket of water had been poured over me. I shut the door, but immediately faced a problem: between the Big Gulp and the rain, I had to piss. It was okay. I had an empty Big Gulp cup on the passenger side floor. I pulled down my jeans, arched my back and filled the cup. I had plenty more left, so I quickly emptied the cup outside, then finished pissing. I wasn’t about to open the door again, so I sat the piss cup on the console and smoked a Winston. The radio had a tornado warning out for the area. I could believe it.
Long minutes passed. It didn’t let up. I was guessing five inches fell in short order. It was like that. Downhill, the parking lot sloped toward Montgomery Ward’s entrance. Water was almost up to the doors. I saw someone cross the water. Knee deep. I sat and waited. Thirsty, I picked up the Big Gulp and took a drink. I was dry after the smoke. I immediately opened the door to spit and throw up. It was piss! I’d forgotten all about it. I tossed the cup on the pavement, rinsed with soda, and ever after threw my cups away before getting another soda. Fuck that.
We’re all having nightmares. Even if we don’t remember them, we do have them. We have never been in such a position as we are in now, and it’s scary. We forget why we are in the store. What we went to the bedroom for. It takes three trips for us to get it right. We’re in a daze. Shell-shocked. And there’s more to come. Stay on your toes, and to the extent that you can manage, remain awake, and pray your souls are not taken over by darkness. Do good things for yourself and others, and whatever you do, don’t drink from the wrong cup.
And Bear, fuck you. Telling people to drink piss. What’s the matter with you, anyway?
The following contains dramatized and controversial material. Some may find it disturbing.
2012
It’s getting further into the Christmas season in New England. You’ll never know what you were doing when the radio crackled a heart-stopping call.
Shots fired. “All units, the individual I have on the line says she’s continuing to hear shots fired.” You roll. It’s the goddamn elementary school! Someone inside is shooting a firearm! This isn’t your worst nightmare come true. No. This is a nightmare you never imagined in the first place. Anyway it doesn’t matter. It’s happening.
There’s an officer on scene, just arrived behind the school. The building is in sight. You arrive 13 seconds after the first unit. Now the troopers are coming too. In all the northeast, there are none so feared as Connecticut state troopers. If you’ve done something wrong, they’re gonna know.
Then the next call comes. The shots have ceased. In minutes, you and other officers evacuate the students, almost none of which could possibly not be in shock. You go easy, but urge them on. Outside, goddamn reporters are already filming, the fucking vultures. The school is searched. Three times. You finally see the shooter. He’s just a kid. You saw the weapons brought out. Fucking AR-15. A handgun. What the fuck?
You may go home later, but when you do, you will be different. You’ve heard about cops who had faced the most terrible of things. They all share a few things. Like PTSD. Heart disease as they feed the depression or drink the pain away. Suicides. Early death.
You saw the bodies. Twenty wee children. Six adults. You saw them. Smelled the powder still in the hallway. No. Though you have a job to do, you turn away from everyone else while your eyes fill with tears. You know you’ll see those poor kids for the rest of your days. You wonder how you’ll ever endure it. You wipe your eyes, take a deep breath and get back to work. Then you remember the bathroom. What you saw there is going to haunt everyone who saw it for the rest of their lives. And no civilians except for the parents will ever know. You know their lives are all but destroyed. You know it. But you can’t think about it now. That is for later…
2016
You serve the people in the city of Orlando, Florida. And during the winter tourist season, you can be pretty busy, but the summer is a whole different matter. There are high crime areas. There are drunks at parties. There are traffic accidents and moving violations everywhere. You think some days are the worst you’ve ever had. That every day on the beat after this day is bound to be gravy; nothing could be as bad as the watch you just pulled.
And then you get a call you’re never, ever going to get over. You hear the dispatcher, but you can’t feel anything but adrenaline. SWAT is on its way, but you’re called, too. For all you know, so was the fucking entire force. There’s a shooting going on, a bad one. You hit the light bar and the siren, and maybe, as you drive, you get this feeling. Like, fear mixing all too slowly, as if time slowed down, like in the movies. It’s a terrible feeling. It’s nothing compared to what you’re about to see, and hear, and feel.
Twenty four hours later, you’ve returned. The bodies are still there, still being processed by the crime scene people. Fifty bodies. All victims of the same lone shooter armed with an assault rifle. The cell phones still ring. On the bodies. Some are quiet, some probably have dead batteries. They were ringing constantly last night. But the ones that rang intermittently are ringing again, now, and you think you’ve never heard a worse sound in your life. Some of the fallen have not been identified. You know that you will never have another traffic violation, drunk and disorderly, or any other call that will make you think you have it bad. Because this…
This…
This will always be with you. The victims’ faces are different. By now, their eyes have clouded completely over. The stench is powerful, a familiar odor but one that you’ve never dealt with on a level like this.
Some will have closed-casket viewings and funerals. Some things, even a skilled mortician can’t fix. And it’s so senseless. This was a celebration. It was innocent, there was dancing, music, drinks, fun… These people never knew that when they walked into this room, they would not be leaving it alive. That they weren’t going home that night.
There were other victims. Last night you helped get them out. It was madness. In all, 102 people were shot. Forty nine dead, fifty three wounded, and some of the critically wounded will die. Because being wounded by a bullet isn’t like stories or Hollywood crap. You can linger for months, and then just die.
Someone in the locker room told you that it was the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. To you, it seems an odd thing to say. Because now, the outrage is sinking in. The shooter had an Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle. And a handgun,. Glock 17, which will prove to be the backup weapon of choice common to lots of mass shooters. He left his brass everywhere. Like a war zone. He’d emptied one magazine with the rifle and loaded another. Not because he hated LGBTs. Because he wanted to avenge the deaths of Islamic people at the hands of military forces in the United States piloting drones, among other reasons.
Reports by cable and network news are already saying it was a targeted hate crime against LGBTs. Later, you’ll learn that Omar Mateen was Googling “Orlando night clubs” earlier last night. An investigation will reveal all were protected by armed guards. It’s likely that the man found that out, ending up at the Pulse not because it was a gay nightclub but because he found it agreeably defenseless. None of it will ever matter to you. It’s death, mass death. It’s a horror. It shouldn’t happen. Not here, not anywhere.
You listen to the ringtones. And you wonder… and after a few seconds, you know… there will be another, a worse, a bigger body count, somewhere, probably not too far in the future. As you think about it, you begin to ask yourself one question… and it will go unanswered, because it’s a shitty, unfair world and you know it. The question comes to you without words as you look around at bodies on the floor and the place where last night music played and drinks were served and it was pleasant in here, but now it’s silent except for police radios and the dying cell phones ringing, soon to never ring again. You’ve seen some shit in your time. Stuff you thought was bad. Stuff you knew was bad. And you’ve lived with the nightmares ever since. But as you look for your supervisor, wondering just what the fuck you’re doing here, that question comes back to you and this time it has words: how the fuck do I live with this?
2017
You didn’t see this coming. Typical for early October, the temperature that day had reached about 90, but after sunset it slowly began to drop. Cruising with your window open, you thought it was still in the upper 70s but it felt pleasant under a clear sky. A decent Sunday night. You hoped it would be quiet in the last hour of your tour of duty. Nothing much had happened on this early fall night. You know about the festival going on at the grounds beside McCarran, but it’s Sunday, and people have to be at work and school in the morning. It’s almost over and you just hope for nothing but a peaceful exit from the grounds when it ended.
On the radio, dispatch is talking to another officer about someone’s history. Something about a person having a hernia surgery. Then there’s a response about a silver vehicle and a silver jeep. Generic chatter, stuff you as a veteran can tune out but still register. It’s not your call, and nobody’s going to need backup.
The chatter is as subdued and unintelligible as every other law enforcement channel in the whole fucking United States. Yet like every cop, you can understand it even though no one else can. You relax and yawn, because the night is almost over. It’s actually called Paradise, the area you’re cruising your beat in. You may think all the jokes in the locker room are funny as shit, but in exactly fifteen seconds, nothing about it will ever be funny again.
“We’ve got shots fired! Shots fired, sounds like automatic fire!” It’s rare for a brother or sister officer to sound like that: the guy is frantic. You can’t even tell who it is.
Some garbled sounds from the radio. But you’re not yawning anymore. You’re upright like a statue of a Greek god on a throne in your seat, hairs on your arms raised. You’ve heard shouting on the radio before, but no matter what hairy shit was going down, you have never heard another cop sound like that.
You haven’t been dispatched. You don’t know who that was or where he is. You have a few seconds of merciless uselessness that you can’t tolerate. No cop enjoys that feeling.
“He’s at Mandalay Bay, he’s about halfway up! I see the shots! He’s at Mandalay Bay! About halfway up!”
And you ain’t far away. Now you know where to go. But you don’t really, because like a lot of Vegas hotels, Mandalay Bay had a fucking weirdo for a chief architect. What side is this sniper on?
Wait, what the fuck? A sniper with an automatic weapon that high? This can’t be happening! But your training and experience kick in. You don’t need a dispatch call for this. You just need to hear where the shooter is and where he’s shooting.
“Control, that is correct. Active shooter, many people down stage left.”
Another officer: “Do we have anyone covering the southwest corner between Mandalay Bay and the venue?”
Another: “Can anyone in the CP tell me where it’s coming from?”
Response (female, officer or dispatcher unknown): “It’s coming from Mandalay Bay!”
Then: “719, I’m gonna form a strike force, I need five officers on me.”
You know what to do now. A strike team is going in after the shooter. For the “many people down at the venue,” you have to go. Good God, how many people are at that concert?
The shooter is loosing hundred-roundbursts. They’re right over your head as you go into the fenced open-air venue. You get into a bent position and press on. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. Bodies lying on the ground everywhere. Some have to be dead. You hope not all. One woman is in tears, she and her friends trying to get out and you look around carefully. “You’re good from where you are. If you can’t see Mandalay Bay, he can’t see you.”
Then calls about other shooters come in. And it could be true. The sounds of the shots are so close together. The rounds are hitting a larger area now. Adrenaline alone is keeping you from collapsing. You begin to check bodies. One woman who’s hit in the leg is bleeding. You need to get a tourniquet on it. If she’s left here, she’ll die. You get another officer to help get her to your cruiser. Paramedic units can’t enter an active shooting scene. Your trip to the hospital is fast. Doctors and triage nurses are waiting outside. The wounded started coming in a few minutes ago. They get the young woman out of your vehicle. “That’s been on for fifteen minutes, that tourniquet,” you say.
You have to go back. The shooting has stopped. A radio call reports a strike team forced the door to one of the shooter’s two suites open. Their horror is clear. The man had shot himself. Around him lay an arsenal. A fucking arsenal of AR-15 rifles, one AR-10, and more. Hundred-round magazines were everywhere, and some 50-round mags as well. The whole thing lasted ten goddamn minutes, and when you get back to the Harvest festival grounds, the lights have been off since the shooter was still firing when someone killed the power. Even with flashlight in hand, you are stunned by the carnage. The dead are everywhere. The wounded moan and scream but dare not move because they’re in shock and still terrified that to do so will get them shot again. Even if unable to silence their pain, they’re playing dead.
You’re not going end-of-watch. This will be the longest night of your life. And not one detail can ever be forgotten. You’ll have nightmares for the rest of your life. Your wife won’t understand. Same as husbands won’t. They’re going to beg their boyfriends, girlfriends and fiancees to quit. They sat in front of the TV and were scared shitless that their loved ones were dead.
During the massacre, bedlam: one officer shouted, “We can’t worry about the victims! We have to get the sniper before we have more victims!”
“Be advised I can hear automatic fire from one floor above us.”
“I’m at the end of the 32nd floor. We have a security guard shot in the hallway. He’s down!”
“He’s shooting at the medical tent! We have one vic shot in the head!”
At the end. The casualties were staggering. 59 people were dead. 869 wounded. One Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer is among them. For whatever reason, Stephen Paddock had become the most lethal shooter in domestic criminal history. And you will never be that same cop you were at 22:00 local time on 1 October 2017, and there’s nothing that will ever change that. Still, you ask yourself: how am I going to live with this?
Four days later, a candlelight service is held in honor of Charleston Heartfield. He’s the brother officer slain by a fucking madman. Among members of the department, that night brings a respite from the shock. For a moment, the emotional reaction can bleed through. Some cry. One is hugged by another officer. The crowd genuinely grieves for the fallen hero, hurt for his son and widow. Las Vegas cries. You cry with them. And you don’t know how you can go on.
2018
You’re having the nightmares you feared. This country is sick and getting worse every day. But in a little over four months, something will happen 2, 500 miles away that will shock you, sicken and make you seethe with anger. Unlike other historic events, you’re not going to remember where you were when the news broke. But the evil and vile details, you won’t forget. And they’re going to change you again. And the Mandalay Bay shooting won’t make any more sense because of it, but finally you will have that answer your wife asks for still: why do you insist on keeping “The Job”?
Because on Valentine’s Day, at just after 14:00 local time, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida walked in with a Smith & Wesson Ar-15 style semiautomatic assault rifle and proceeded to shoot students and staff on three floors in ice-cold blood. It would eclipse the Columbine Massacre and Sandy Hook and take its place as the worst school shooting, and you watch in disbelief as you learn a deputy on duty at the school remained outside even as he heard shots fired. There’s no greater dishonor than to stand by as an officer of the law and allow kids to be killed. One school staff member hid in a closet. It’s not just deputies that failed the kids, you’ll tell your wife. But teachers have died protecting kids, like at Sandy Hook. These staff members were garbage as far as you’re concerned. You’d like to have a minute alone with that chickenshit deputy.
You point to the TV. “That,” you tell your wife, “is why we do it. We’re supposed to mean something. Stand for something, help people. We know what the risks are, but unlike that pissy deputy, we go in.”
And cops do go in. They save lives. They die doing it. To most police officers, that shield means something. Something bigger than civilians know.
In Dallas, they ran toward the shots.
In Manhattan on 11 September, 2001, they surged into the twin towers. They had no time to think they may not come back out. Even if they did, they went in anyway. Most didn’t come back out and some were never found.
We mourned those intrepid souls, our fallen heroes. Not just New York. The whole country. We cried for them all, the first responders who died that awful, ugly, horrible day. Firefighters. Police. Paramedics. Everyone who was visiting. Everyone who worked there.
Before the towers fell, anyone a block away heard a sound that made some of them throw up. Others would scream. People above the burning impact areas where the planes had gone in were seen with their heads outside broken windows. Smoke, thick and black, belched from those windows. They still could not breathe.
The cameras on the ground recorded what made people scream and vomit. Bodies of the jumpers hitting the pavement from such heights made a sound Hollywood couldn’t reproduce on a multi billion dollar budget. There would be no forgetting it. If you were unfortunate enough to see those bodies land? That trauma was only a part of that unbearable day, and yet it’s one that affected people around the world.
Like so many disasters before, the police were mourned as heroes. Survivors got hugged. But now… that’s all over.
There are shouts of threats. Name calling. Curses. Cries to defund police departments. A blanket condemnation of every cop in America, a thing no different than bigotry against all blacks, whites, Latinos and American Indians. And it has sobered me and I’m not one of those cursing cops.
What happened to George Floyd was heinous. There’s no argument there, and anyone who tries is purely wicked to the core. But although I want justice for the man, I don’t like what’s been going on since he died. I liked Al Sharpton’s eulogy. I wept. But then it was exploited by cable news shamelessly while other major news had never gone away. Reporters were in positions where they knew goddamn well they should not be. The coverage sickened me. I honestly got sick.
When corporate owned news bashes the police and puts cameras in crowds waiting for cops to do the slightest thing so they can show the video a million times, something is fucked up.
I will never call for the police to be defunded. They get extra training. They carry extra equipment. They are often first on the scene, before medics and firemen. They have to negotiate intense situations medics can’t even get near, and they do it, every day. They don’t hesitate. You’ve heard that 99% of cops are good. It’s more than that. You’re going to have to use decimals and no fair counting an honest mistake as the actions of a bad cop. You’ve done it as have I. We’re like that, harsh, reactionary, judgemental creatures. Well, I wish we weren’t. I will never hate cops nor lump them all together as bad. They’re not. They’re human. They have feelings and carry scars. They have families to take care of along with taking care of you and me. And you throw shit at them. Try to provoke them so you can use your cellphone camera.
Shame on you all. Then you’ll need a cop. You’ll call 911 one day. If they’re not there in ten seconds, you’ll complain. Try to hire a lawyer. Post negative shit on Twitter and Facebook. Because I know you. And that’s just how you are.
One of the worst things about PTSD is the feeling of impending doom you sometimes get. It’s hard to shake and impossible to ignore. I get it about six times a year, and there’s no telling how long I’ll be a prisoner. I’ve never admitted this in quite these words before. I couldn’t. How do you face such a thing? Because, when it happens, it’s overwhelming. You’re honestly certain that the world is coming to an end.
In 1999, a shitload of people had this. The hysteria was contagious. Many references were made to the “end of the thousand years”. Nostradamus was said to have predicted the battle of Armageddon in December of 1999. There were fears of computer systems crashing, leaving cities without power, and that mayhem would surely reign.
The movies that came out that year didn’t seem to help much. Schwarzenegger was in an underrated film, “End of Days”, Johnny Depp was in the terrifying “Ninth Gate”, which let everyone down with an absolutely dumbass ending to a decent story. But there were plenty of debunkers and unbelievers, too. Watching wrestling, which was better at the time, was fun. Chris Jericho went by the nickname “Y2J” in a thumbing of the nose at the worriers. His Titantron entrance showed chaos erupting.
Plenty of scholars pointed out that Nostradamus was at best a scribbler of fantasy whose writings were completely open to any interpretation a reader wanted to apply.
In November, the superstitious and pseudoscientific population took a truly weird event as an omen. In the eastern Atlantic, Hurricane Lenny was born. He did something that confounded the NOAA, no small feat. He traveled east. He was the first to be observed doing so exclusively, without looping once either north or east. He was born over water and died there, a freak among Atlantic storms which are known to be unpredictable.
The threat we faced was nothing more than fear. On New Year’s Eve I watched the countdown to midnight in Times Square. At 00:00 hours, nothing happened. Nothing blew up. Nothing shut down. Nothing crashed. There was no chaos, no mayhem.
People are often scared of the things that never happen and the things that do happen but defy easy explanation, like Hurricane Lenny. I’ve sure been hit by both. It seems that it’s in our genes.
But what gets me the most is when people should be afraid, but aren’t.
I saw that people reacted to the coronavirus with a mixed response. In some states, people stayed home, but by then the virus was well seeded here. The United States has been the epicenter of COVID-19 for months. Now people have had enough and are reopening businesses. That could have been done with minimal risk and physical distancing. Masks are mostly illusory and provide little protection. But those, combined with distancing and testing, are effective. Quarantine after a positive test result is essential. Some people did it. Some didn’t. Some were contagious way before getting tested, making it worse, so what we had before the protests was a climbing rate of infection. Stories of a decline were false or just wishful thinking and denial. No decline existed. New York may have seen a drop but that’s a different story.
The protesters are in close proximity to each other. Some wear masks, some don’t. But the lack of spacing, the viral load concentration between people as they talk or breathe heavily as they walk distances that elevate heart rate, is a really big problem. I deleted my blog “The Last of the American Dream” because nobody ever read it. To get views, you really need a paid WordPress domain and search engines have to like you. And people have to “like” your posts. I don’t have either advantage and people just don’t come here. My other blog was more political and science based. I followed up news stories on climate change and fact checked, then tried to explain in simple terms what to expect. Believe me, it’s not good. These days nobody wants to read about it. No one wants to put it on the cable news. You can ignore or even disbelieve anything you want. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It is there. Every update I read proved a past prediction about the speed of glacial melt in gross error. Sea level rise isn’t the guide, it’s merely an effect. Watching huge wedges of ice shelf fall into the sea is partially a guide, but what so many miss is that the more ice is lost, the more danger we are in, both short term and long. It should scare the shit out of you, because it’s too late to stop it. Seawater is very good at retaining heat. That seawater, perhaps a degree or two warmer than in past decades, eats away at ice. The sun heats the air more, so that blue pools of melt water are clearly seen on top of expanses of glaciers. Melting has been achieved from above and below. The tundra is thawing. Fear among scientists that an inevitable release of methane will happen, will be epic and catastrophic, are true. Yet no one talks about it. Except scientists and teenage girls smarter than any of us can ever be. Nobody reads. Nobody listens.
The pandemic may have shut down a lot of emissions as highways were empty of traffic for a minute. The Los Angeles sky cleared. The earth didn’t constantly tremble from motor vehicles. I know we can make changes. But now it’s forgotten as the fossil fuels burn again. None will remember. The climate change wasn’t slowed. It wasn’t long enough to do that. In truth even if it had been sustained for two years or more, the temperature would still rise because of what’s already in the atmosphere, which isn’t visible, as smog is.
It’s a pity people aren’t terrified of what’s in store. Every prediction is obsolete before it’s made. It’s far, far worse than you can imagine.
Being unable to imagine something is no sin, but knowing that an event or condition will come and doing nothing about it, is.
We are in an existential crisis. As a country. As a species.
Nightmares are here. More will come.
TRUMP’S AMERICAN DESTRUCTION
You can lie to others. Even to yourself. If you truly see Trump as a saviour, you are full of lies. He has set a record for lies told by a sitting president, so don’t be too hard on yourself for being full of shit.
Everything he’s done has caused irreparable damage to this country. Now Joe Biden admits to fears that Trump will as president bring all his powers to bear in order to limit ballots. He’s considered the possibility that even if he loses the election, Trump will play dictator and refuse to leave the White House. Fuck, I predicted that in 2017, then again last year on my blog. You saw the White House surrounded within days of the first signs unrest following George Floyd’s murder. A new fence. New concrete. Mercenaries brought in to show his power, armed to the teeth, as all dictators begin. He was castigated for his threat to use regular military personnel against protesters; be thankful he backed up. Someone finally stood up to him and made a difference.
That difference will vanish into nothingness when he tries it next time. He has a mission. He clearly acts on the whim of Vladimir Putin. The mission is to take this country to a level of weakness that will allow Russia to complete its invasion of Ukraine and take other countries as well. It’s about resources and military targets. While our military focused on the hopeless war against terror, draining money and wasting lives and time, Russia consolidated every resource for home defense. They can’t be prevented from military operations in other countries with the condition he’s put us in. Putin bides his time, awaiting the hour he knows Trump and his family and confederacy of goons will provide for him. We know Trump was professionally groomed without knowing how deep he was in the shit.
Putin isn’t as stupid as his puppet. He’s watched the United States lose face militarily since Vietnam. He knows what Nixon called “peace with honor” was bullshit, a dishonorable defeat in a war we should have known better than to get into following the French colonial forces getting their asses kicked. When we disengaged, everyone seemed happy. But around the globe, it was seen as proof that America didn’t hold up to its commitment to people it had vowed to save. That on the ground, in the air and even at sea, American forces could be beaten and bloodied.
That war did more damage than anyone but a few can ever know. Veterans returned broken, guilt ridden and damaged beyond the possibility of healing. Scholars picked it all apart in thick volumes that should be required reading. Documentaries were made. In the end, what remained was a nightmare Kennedy and Johnson had inflicted on our country. We’ve been mocked ever since, tested, shoved, provoked and battered as a result of incompetent intelligence and leadership. Money taken from intelligence resources and put elsewhere. Resources which would have kept us out of Iraq and prevented needless death and the destabilization of that entire region.
We are so slow to learn. Even slower to stop, take a breath and consider our actions and give proper appraisal of the possible consequences. Vietnam and Nixon changed everything. We rebounded but with his presidency the corporate world had taken hold of the republican party by the balls, and it never let go. It never will. Water rights are taken by corporate interests by the most horrible means, and in return we get chemicals that are added “for taste” but aren’t tasty at all; they simply make one thirstier as well as being a potential threat to fetuses if enough is taken in by an expectant mother. Not that each bottle contains toxic levels, but over time and with enough consumption, it’s possibly a threat. In any event it is a dirty goddamn trick. Microplastic material is found in alarming amounts and a devoted drinker has been said to take in the equivalent of a credit card in a week. But soon you’ll have no choice but to buy your water from these brazen corporations. Or, to be more accurate, illegal conglomerates who make money enough to fight court rulings and fuck us up the ass. And we take it readily, without asking for any lube or some gratuitous foreplay.
Chaos has been the rule of thumb during the Trump administration. Christ what a ride. And it’s a horror now, today, on a level we’ve never seen. We never asked for it. I have no patience for motherfucking morons who say, “He’s your president! He was elected so show respect!”
That’s normal considering they were never respectful to President Obama. They bitched despite never having one dishonorable thing he ever did for them to bitch about. The conspiracy theories never panned out. The accusations were nonsensical bullshit. He worked his ass off for us and saved us from a terrible economic situation that was the result of carelessness and greed. Trump’s been all about tearing apart everything Obama worked so hard for.
THE PANDEMIC
The Trump White House was super slow on the uptake. Someone in there knew something, sure as hell, because the CDC was required to clear statements with the administration first. And more was done to muffle the threat. We have ourselves to blame for sitting still. We got news. It was reported. Nobody wanted to believe it. Since when does something that bad suddenly travel that fast?
I read everything I could. I knew it would be bad, but I thought it would be worse than it is at this point. I talked about chaos theory and why predictions were too limited to be accurate. The NOAA has trouble predicting the paths of hurricanes, which don’t cooperate very well with data input. Programs have limits. As far as coronavirus is concerned, I knew and warned that it was impossible to predict, that this wasn’t an SIV, but a SARS disease, more contagious and more deadly than H1N1 influenza. There are variables, I wrote, which cannot be foreseen, but can and will cause the spread among the population to behave unpredictably. It was going to be worse, in other words, than the programs could calculate.
For example, who could have predicted that travel restrictions imposed by the White House would have so many exemptions? Who could have known that summer weather wouldn’t stop it, that there would be no resurgence in the fall because it never went away? Who knew Arizona or Texas would be hotspots in June?
Chaos theory dictates unpredictability in any closed system, and biology is a closed system. Outside forces may occasionally intrude, as in extinction-event meteoroids, but even that comes from an unpredictable, closed system we can define as the known galaxy. Aside from such rare events, we feel secure without reason to feel secure in any way. Disasters happen suddenly, no warning given, or with short warning. Even hurricanes can be tricky, making devilish moves and making landfall when no one was prepared because watches had been lifted. It is rare but it does happen. Just look up spaghetti models and rummage around. Have a go at it. You’ll see what I mean.
One variable impacting the pandemic is the murder of George Floyd. It outraged, as well it should have, a large part of our country. The protesters did us proud, but there’s the devil to pay. Already spikes are being seen in the infections of coronavirus. It will get much, much worse. And severe heat won’t matter. As we enter summer, Arizona is fucked-up. North Carolina has a governor second-guessing reopening public spaces or businesses. Half of the contiguous United States is seeing a terrifying rise in cases of Covid-19.
Combined, hurricane season, global warming, social and economic upheaval, political corruption and the coronavirus have put dark days in our path. Chaos theory is in full play, showing it’s not just real but that we’re weak, all too mortal, and that we must pay for our habit of not heeding warnings. Our habitual abuse of the environment. And for cowardly failing to stand up to a man with no soul. He should never have made it this far. But he has made it this far, constantly being aided by republican politicians and corporate money and clout. If I wonder whether this is the beginning of events predicted in the Bible, you’ll forgive me, yes?
You can disagree, of course. I’m sure I come off as a madman. But tell me: this time last year, did you see this coming? If someone had told you, what would you have thought?
If you’re like me, you couldn’t keep up with it all. Or even process everything. What a week that was. I’ve never seen anything like it and nothing in my memory can compare to it. And yet, George Floyd was not unique in that horrible way he died. So people asked, “What’s so different now?”
I looked at the TV. I looked at videos and read articles. With a thrill of nausea and lots of dread, I saw the tear gas used on protesters, saw crowds running, saw the church burn on Sunday night, then, Monday, a debacle the likes of which I’ve never even imagined as Lafayette Square was gassed and crowds charged by cops with shields and riot sticks.
Which was followed by a bizarre speech by Trump with an open threat and a singularly bizarre walk by Trump and an unbelievably scary entourage to the burnt church. The fucker used a church and an upside-down bible as props for a photo op. No shit, and it’s still hard to believe.
Then, in a blinding speed, images and sounds like nothing that could be real, but was.
A 75-year-old man shoved. Lost his balance because he was shoved. Immediately bleeding from an ear and the posterior skull. Listed as serious but stable condition. But how serious? That’s a severe concussion and probable skull fracture you’re seeing. He could have died.
Surrealism: a reporter and his crew fired at as they try to retreat. Cannisters and rubber bullets. Two Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks buzzing protesters, a maneuver someone called “dusting”, which is basically terrorism. The twin engines and the monster blades of the Blackhawks are weapons at low altitude. If you’re beneath them, you’re getting hit by particles of dust, small debris and anything they feel like dropping. You better tuck into a ball and cover your face. No shit. Whoever justifies this shit is stupid.
But there was no shortage of that. It didn’t begin or end with Trump’s bible modeling. He was asked if it was his bible, and he really answered, “It’s a bible.” Translation: “I don’t own a bible.”
While Reverend Al Sharpton gave a powerful and simply perfect eulogy for the family of George Floyd, others were beginning to fall away from supporting Trump. A number of former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs were vocal in their disapproval of his threat to use regular military personnel to police the streets of any state he chose, and Joe Biden failed to tell officers not to shoot at suspects. Instead he suggested that they aim for legs instead of center of mass. Joe wants to win, but waffling is not a good strategy. There’s no middle ground in a firefight and nobody aims for legs, but then again, that’s if someone else has a gun and can, or is shooting back. You aim center of mass unless you’re the highest tier in an elite sniper class. Then you can try for headshots, but even that’s mostly Hollywood and videogame bullshit. If you’re forced to shoot, you’re forced to kill. Fuck around, and you’ll be the casualty.
Besides, you know how easy it is to hit a major artery in the leg? If a shot goes astray and you score a leg shot, your high velocity round will be very likely to cut or sever the femoral artery. That’s still a kill.
Why all the stupidity? Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Diblasio are not handling things. The tear gas. The pepper balls. Vehicles running into a crowd.
The result: officers shot by anarchists or just plain dickheads using brute force against civilians as an excuse, which makes everything worse.
The police have been less than honorable in every city where protests took place save one, Newark. What are they doing different?
Hitting kids over the head with riot sticks has nothing to do with law and order. It has everything to do with wanting to crack his fucking skull open.
In my life, I’ve seen and been the victim of things nobody should ever see or endure. But though I’ve been bitter about it, there wasn’t enough evil in me to act on it. Oh, when I thought about shooting my parents, I was well and truly capable. I would have been convicted of first degree murder, too. But I’d have saved my nephew from things I knew he was already having done to him. Cops kneeling on a man because he had a rap sheet until the guy dies isn’t done to save anyone.
It’s done out of racist hatred and a disregard for civil rights and the sanctity of life that chills my blood. Watching George Floyd die is to watch a part of your own soul break off and die. Seeing that cop with a hand in his pocket, squeezing the life out of Floyd and smirking is to watch a cold-blooded, first degree homicide. That’s exactly what it was, straight murder. Other officers watched. And it doesn’t matter that one said something. It doesn’t matter because they all stood around and watched a bully cop with a bad record commit murder. Now they’ve been photographed in orange, and they should get used to that color. Other cops are pissed. They’re striking out at people because a “brother officer” is “guilty of doing his job”.
Meanwhile, honorable police officers are lumped together as assholes and murderers. That’s not cool, but what’s less so is when someone says, “If you get a bad hamburger it doesn’t mean McDonald’s is bad.” Speaking about police officers to a crowd. That’s not the way to handle this. It’s degrading, simplistic and grossly condescending.
Trump, on the other hand, notorious for not wearing a mask, toured a plant where swabs for covid-19 tests were made. In there, he alone wasn’t wearing a mask. The entire batch made that day are confirmed as contaminated and we already did not have enough.
Then he claimed based on flawed numbers that the economy was doing great, and that George Floyd was looking down on him and smiling. African American jobs were up, he said. Which confirmed, if anyone had any doubts remaining, that Donald Trump is a racist idiot who is so self-serving and egotistical that he would actually talk like that while the nation was caught up in protesting the man’s murder, his family was grieving, and he was standing there mocking them and perfectly happy to risk more unemployment when the coronavirus spreads.
Covid-19 is not over, is not slowing, and will continue to spread. There won’t be any second surge in the fall; we’re already into June and there’s no reason to believe next month will automatically be free of COVID-19. That’s unreasonable, unrealistic and too close to Trump’s lies and delusion than anyone should be.
Fortunately I have just the man to properly explain all of this. If a comedian can’t be funny right now, it’s not because he’s not willing to try. It’s because laughing at this shit is unthinkable. He gets in a couple of jibes, but this is the most serious episode he’s ever done.
Somehow, during the COVID-19 pandemic that’s taken over a hundred thousand lives, and in the midst of the storm caused by the murder of George Floyd, death hit home with me one more time this morning. And it hit hard.
In July I would have lived next door to him for six years. He was a slight man, always on the thin side but vital for a man older than me by at least a decade. He used to help the community association with replacing light bulbs on all the front porch lights and setting the timers. He cleaned up the pet waste bags and replaced them. He was always walking around, always.
There was a neighbor close by. She was confined to a wheelchair, and she was a big woman with MS who had once been a ballerina, proof that life can be so pitiless. She often fell while trying to get on the toilet or in and out of bed. She’d call Rich, who had a key. If he could not help, she already had medics on the way because her Life Alert or similar device could detect a fall. The guys from Tower 10 often came too, as it took a bit of muscle to lift her up. Sometimes she got hurt in the fall and the medics took her. But Rich helped her with a lot of things because he was just that way.
When I first moved in, I had no cellphone or cable. Nothing to do at all. But Rich would bring over his copy of The Washington Post once he was finished, and that really helped me feel connected to the world. Last year at Thanksgiving, he and his wife brought my housemate and me a plate. Rich was always thinking about others. He was a kind, generous and honorable man. He was a true friend.
About two years ago, he went into intense abdominal pain. He’d had it before and he thought he knew what it was. He visited his gastroenterologist, who detected a blockage in his bowel, just like the first time. Only this time surgery was necessary because the blockage was severe. During surgery as the doctor removed the blocked section of bowel, a growth was spotted. At first it appeared to be something that another procedure could fix. But for good measure a sample was taken for a biopsy.
The bad news came back: cancer. The growth was malignant, but the oncologist thought it could be handled with chemotherapy and surgery. We both had the same gastroenterologist and oncologist, something we took a bit of bonding over.
After a short recovery, he seemed back to his old self. Except for his treatment days. But it usually didn’t stop him from doing the things that occupied his time in retirement. I got used to the soft sound of his footsteps. If he was close enough I could tell him by his silhouette. His walk. The way his hands always faced palm to the rear. Even one foggy day, with my cataracts and retinopathy and, at the time, a hematoma, I knew that was him coming towards me. You can get to know someone very well just by recognizing the sound of their footsteps. You can even estimate parts of their demeanor and personality. It’s amazing what you learn when you depend on other senses when one is failing.
A year ago he was given more bad news. He spent the holidays going through radiation therapy and more rounds of chemo, and the most aggressive things the doctors could throw at him. He once told me, “I’m going to fight this thing.” But I’d heard those exact words from someone else. When Rich said it, I knew he had little time left. When his stepson told me the cancer had spread to the lymphatic system, I knew it wouldn’t be much longer. I stayed positive, asking Rich how he felt, and he’d say, “Not too bad today,” I would say, “That’s what I like to hear!”
I felt like a fucking heel. A liar. I hate dishonesty. I knew he was dying, but I put on some act like the asshole I am. I should have shut up and let him keep talking.
He never spoke much in the first place.
Following the holidays, I saw him doing the same chores, driving to the supermarket, and his energy seemed level enough, but he was dropping serious weight. Day to day it might not look so dramatic, but I saw it because I could identify him by his silhouette. The man was dying. Fast.
Three weeks ago I saw him walking around. Then his stepson told me Rich was in the hospital. He said it wasn’t looking good.
Suddenly, he came back home. His stepson told me that there was nothing else the doctors could do. I knew what that meant. I never saw him alive again.
A few days ago they got him a hospital bed. But his stepson told me that Rich hadn’t eaten for several days, couldn’t even open his mouth except far enough to take his pain medication and a sip of water. He had stopped talking, too.
At about 02:30 hours, today, in the dark of night and during a thunderstorm, or between storms, I can’t remember, Rich began to talk. He was talking to his mother and some other relatives. All of them had long since passed. They were coming to help him not be scared when it happened.
St 02:32 hours, he died. I told my friend, his stepson, how very sorry I was. Those seem such empty words. It’s all I had. I waited outside for a few hours waiting for the undertaker to arrive. It’s bad enough that I can’t imagine the world without him in it; I had to say goodbye. I was glad of only one thing. I’d once told him, “I love you guys.” He said, “We love you, too.” One of the few times in my life those very important words were not left unsaid.
When they brought the body bag outside to the stretcher, I was shocked. I could not believe a body was in there. It looked like a rolled up canvas sheet. I had to ask which end his head was on. They told me.
I said the last words I will ever say to him. He couldn’t hear. His mom had taken him to a place where he was free of pain. He was finally free…
I said, “Goodbye, Rich. What a helluva friend you were.”
We are at a true moment in history when we have a choice to make. Keep fighting for what’s right, or go home and get some sleep.
What will we the majority, we who have this choice to wield our combined power, do with this moment?
It’s a hard decision. Soon, things will happen that will make activists and protesters tired, and some will quit the fight. Those who remain must not waver in their resolve. If they do, we all lose everything.
The economy looks to be recovering. It’s an illusion, a vestige of automatic reactions to the fears of another great depression. But we’re dangerously close to one, much more so than at any time in my 60 years. It will make memories of 1974 and 1979 and 2008 vanish. It’s even being done in a different way this time; it’s not an accident, not a vagary of different causalities the people won’t understand. This was part of Trump and Putin’s plan all along. For proof, I offer the first three years of the Trump administration. Look at a timeline of major events and eventually you see the pattern: Trump and Republicans do or fail to do something, and Russia gets quietly stronger. While you weren’t even looking, they’ve made a pact with China to share military advancements. If we went to war, we would lose. It would eventually go nuclear if Trump wanted it to. I rather doubt it. His job is to let Russia dominate the world.
His failure to act on warnings by the CDC wasn’t an accident. Trump knew exactly what he was doing. Or what he was failing to do. Now you hear out of his mouth or read in his tweets outlandish bullshit. He’s even blamed President Obama for the coronavirus!
And of course, nobody knows what “Obamagate” is and my auto-correct says the same, even when put in quotation marks. But he keeps telling reporters, “you know what I’m talking about, but you’re fake news so you won’t print it.”
He hasn’t had any kind words for the family of George Floyd. He’s instead marshalling police from prisons, police with no markings on their uniforms, and some really scary shit is about to happen. Tear gas wasn’t enough. The threat to use regular military personnel wasn’t enough. Now choppers buzz protesters: terrorism from the White House. Soon rubber bullets will be gone, and metal jacket rounds will be locked and loaded. How far do you think he will go? He’s put lives at risk from COVID-19 and takes no responsibility; as we passed 100,000 dead, he made clear that he regarded it as fake news. In contradicting himself as he so often does, because he is a commonbullshitter, he’d previously claimed that COVID-19 would be gone in a minute. Did nothing about it. Andrew Cuomo’s daily press conferences were scary and they were the fucking truth. Trump had to respond; he claimed he had “reacted faster than anyone” (among world leaders). His changeup bullshittery should be seen for what it is: all lies, every bit of it. You know what Jesus called Satan? The father of all lies. He did. And that’s the true power Trump worships: Satan and himself.
With unemployment so high because of the coronavirus, recovery is a lie. What you’re seeing on the news, about housing rebounding, is either false, or real but volatile and unsustainable. We’re going into a depression, and it’s not an accident, not a result of any one cause. Just the carelessness of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. Along the way they have sunk the very corporations they have served. All but the biggest holders of cash reserves, meaning the components of ALEC, will vanish. Oil and coal made them money. Made them rich and powerful. And that kind of cash and power means political clout. Ol’ Joe Lunchmeat on the street? He’s fucked. Especially if he’s black.
Expectations of a huge surge in the COVID-19 pandemic are already beginning to prove true. Cases have overcome testing; it’s no longer a case of more diagnoses because of more testing. And the protesters know this. They’re willing to give their lives for equal rights and respect for all people. They are heroes in the midst of a pitched battle that will only get worse.
The police do terrible things. Body-slamming a black school girl to the ground. Shooting kids with no provocation. Too many names to say out loud at once. Even Reverend Al missed Freddy Gray; there’s too many names. There always has been.
For the police officers who strive to do an unenviable job with honor, you have to help. Taking a knee is a nice gesture but nothing more. Stop this murder and assault on unarmed men and women whose civil rights are being violated right in front of you. This moment in history tells you that’s non-negotiable; you get your fellow officer to get his knee off the man on the ground or you’ll be counted as guilty as he is.
Whatever’s going on within the grounds of our White House, it isn’t right. I don’t believe for a second that their assault weapons are loaded with rubber bullets. They more resemble mercenaries than police. Trump wants blood; but more, he still wants to be dictator for life and to destroy democracy with such finality that we can never get it back.
This is the moment. Refuse to follow orders from Trump, and you’ll save lives and your soul.
We need to remember the lives lost to tyranny and murderous hatred. George Floyd’s children need to know that their daddy awaits them in heaven, but they also need to have faith in all of us that we won’t let his murder be in vain. That he’s one of many waiting in heaven for justice, and that justice is going to come.
It’s time. I was raised by bigoted parents who told me so many terrible things about black people that I was probably more phobic and hateful than they were. But that wasn’t what I wanted to be. Change was hard. It took years. But I had to do it. It can be done. Love can overpower hate. All you need do is want it to. We need the law enforcement and justice system to understand that we don’t hate each other. That we stand together on streets all over the country, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and others. We can’t stop. Not now. If we do, they’re going to sweep the streets with the bodies of the Innocents. That’s too terrible to allow. Don’t give in. Stand together as brothers and sisters and don’t you give up. Because this time, we can do it. This time, we can change the country. Maybe the world. We have no limits. One people. Equal. All loved by our creator. Here we stand at a true crossroads in history. What will we do?
I once saw a video of President Obama taking a walk on a nice afternoon. It was really Unforgettable. He gave special White House M&Ms to kids, shook hands and had group selfies with smiling folks who could immediately see that he wasn’t a monster, as Fox News and red state senators had claimed. He carried his jacket over his shoulder and for a few minutes, he was real to the people who shook his hand. They never forgot it. I’d wager that some that magical afternoon were changed by it. He is an extraordinary man. He’s also rather humble and can disarm anyone with his smile, his sincerity and his obvious care for others.
Richard Nixon once had trouble sleeping, so he went in the presidential limo to see some protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. He engaged in conversation with them and left them very confused and upset that their president was obviously a disturbed man.
That’s nothing compared to the only known excursion by Trump thus far.
He ordered the protesters cleared by force, you know: “The Line” rushed them after firing tear gas and possibly rubber bullets, and that was aired live, or parts of it were. Meanwhile, Trump gave an unforgettable and unfortunate speech. “I am your law and order president,” he said from the now-soiled podium in the rose garden. He then threatened to order “regular” (full time) Army units across the United States into law enforcement if governors couldn’t control the crowds. You know this story. Days followed that saw pundits and both retired and working lawyers and politicians debate for the cameras whether Trump had authority under constitutional law to do such a thing.
They cited the “Insurrection Act” and if it had ever been invoked before, and if in fact it enabled Trump to actually make good on his threat.
I’ll tell you that he did say it in a threatening way, referring to state governors in the third person, future tense, which should loosen the bowels of every freedom loving American.
Televangelist Pat Robertson, on his show The 700 Club, had this to say: “Mr. President, you just don’t do that,” adding that we should all love one another. Admirable words from a man who once said that Trump was chosen by God. But we can get back to this in a minute.
Let’s get one thing in the clear first: there are certain conditions or actions required by the Insurrection Act that have to be met before a president may invoke it. None have been met.
The first is that a state legislature must convene and agree to ask for military aid. Nobody has, and I cannot anticipate such a thing happening.
In the event of a state’s legislature being prevented or unable to meet, the governor can make the request. Any governors who do this now will be guilty of conspiracy to undermine civil rights. They really need to think that one over.
The second circumstance is a bit less clear, and this is rather chilling because it reads exactly like the president can simply judge the situation and say it’s necessary, and with Trump, that’s enough for me to caution you to stock up on Imodium AD.
There’s irony in the next condition in which federalization of state militia (Army National Guard) can be made (the Pentagon would generally include National Guard divisions under the command of regular brigades and divisions, deploying them as full-time soldiers. Air Force and even Marine Reserve units can also be considered the part-time equivalent federally of the ARNG, which a governor has direct control of; for example, white stenciled paint on a bumper of a National Guard unit in Maryland would read “MDARNG”). This part gets slippery to lay persons because the wording makes clear that a situation of denial of civil rights must exist, as in the case of people of color whom the Ku Klux Klan were killing and harassing and committing arson against to drive them out of a particular area; or where courts upheld no civil rights for people of color; law enforcement and courts of law visibly denied civil rights and turned a blind eye to the Klan’s criminal acts (it was used to ensure the safety of black students during the early days of desegregation of schools).
In any event you’ve no doubt heard that the Insurrection Act superceded or replaced Posse Comitatus. That’s not so. In old western films or TV shows, you’d see county or municipal sheriffs gather up a “posse”. None were deputized; they were forced or volunteered to serve. It’s got nothing to do with the subject we’re on. It was ironically the prevention of using federal troops to occupy the former Confederate States of America (CSA) during the aftermath of the American Civil War. It was largely responsible for southern states having a congress with representative and senatorial structure that we see today,in addition to gubernatorial structure as we know it. Irony has never reared up to terrify us as it has with Trump’s threat. Interpretation of Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act seems rather simple. The former prevents the federal government from direct intervention or occupation with any and all states. The latter gives a sitting president the power to act decisively and suspend Posse Comitatus under extraordinary and desperate conditions.
There’s some arguing over social media as to whether or not the Insurrection Act has ever been used. I had to research it myself, and it turns out that it has. What I thought to be National Guard troops and medics were not. Those were in fact federal troops. President Hayes used it to break a railroad strike. That’s because there were no airlines, and no cars yet existed by the end of his term in 1881. The strike was crippling the nation. Hurricane Hugo, which I clearly remember as a monster storm, also occasioned the invocation of the act. During the L.A. riots in 1992, it was used. I thought that was National Guard, especially after Hugo. Trump deployed regular troops to the border when he claimed an “invasion” was coming from south and central America. The Corps of Engineers was restricted to stringing up razor wire in places where the border had little in the way of solid structure. This frustrated him because he wanted to fire upon the “invaders”; remember that this is the man who once asked why, if we had nuclear missiles, we never used them.
The troops eventually fell out of the news headlines. We were never really told as much, so we can assume that the military budget and inability to use infantry combined to frustrate Trump. He was a child who wasn’t being allowed to play with his toys. The tantrum which followed caused other countries to protest the dreadful violation of human rights under President Trump: children in cages or in tent cities in searing heat, having healthcare withheld, along with food and water. How many people, adults and children both, died under such conditions? We don’t know. Reporters were locked out, not given updates, and no doubt, the books were cooked. All because Trump wasn’t allowed to behave like a dictator and shoot people he didn’t like, despite an extraordinary tweet he made during his campaign:
Such bullshit. He proved he did not love Hispanics at all. He proved only the depths to which his loathing for them really went.
Donald Trump’s speech on Monday was a threat to use brute force to crush protesters under the heel of the US military. It had no connotation whatsoever of defending peace and the law or of protecting civilians. As he spoke like some half-assed dictator, the firing of tear gas cannisters could be heard. That was the clearing of the streets to accommodate his walk to the church set ablaze on Sunday, the night before. Later, the White House released a video of “The Walk” with Triumphant music. Hail Caesar, the conquering hero!
Fuck me.
I know what he was doing, and it wasn’t just to appeal to his radical right evangelicals. He was saying to the protesters, “This is my territory, and I’m marking it like a fucking lioness.” Gangs do similar things. When moving into new territory, they usually have members walk or drive on certain streets repeatedly. They may or may not conduct their affairs in the area, but they’re telling you they own it now.
Trump should never have been seen holding up a Bible. It’s obvious by now to all but those locked in the throes of denial that he’s not religious, certainly no Christian, has never read from the gospels, and may very well believe he is god-like. Frankly, I’m surprised that touching a Bible didn’t cause him to burst into flames.
The biggest problem about “The Walk” is, however, not just Trump committing sacrilege or even gassing protesters. The worst part is who accompanied him. And who reconnoitered the immediate and adjacent area beforehand.
The Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were along for the trip, but both claim that they thought they were going to speak to the troops, meaning that they’re lying or were tricked into making it look like Trump had control of them. Either of which is really a scary idea.
The reason I doubt their veracity is that prior to the crowd being gassed and charged by The Line, Attorney General Barr had walked through the crowds, checking them out. That’s not his job, and how long have we known that on the slightest suggestion by Trump, the man would eat Trump’s shit and count the calories along the way? Oh, yeah: the day he took the job, that’s when.
This is one of those surreal moments when I find myself agreeing with Pat Robertson. Mr. President, you don’t do that. It’s time for reconciliation and equal treatment. It’s time for us to love each other.
Last night as I watched live coverage of the DC area riot, and trust me, that’s what it was, I saw this live as it happened. It’s not an isolated incident either; reporters were targets for police in a lot of areas. It seems to be spontaneous, done by officers who blame all of this on media broadcasting the video of George Floyd’s murder all over the world, which to the minds of some, must be what caused all of this: the fake news media. Which, of course, Trump has tweeted since this began, remarkably increasing the mantra over the usual frequent outbursts on Twitter and camera. On a phone call with governors today, he ranted and shamed them for not using more National Guard units and not using more force against protesters.
Let me make one thing very clear. It’s a bad time to be a cop. In New York, officers marched with protesters while one recklessly forced an NYPD vehicle into the crowd. They’re either targets no matter how good they are, or they’re counted as evil by wearing a badge because bad cops also wear badges. That said, Trump has been egging the violence from civilians on, stoked the furnace, and now calls for military troops to come in and fuck shit up.
He’s being himself; he got where he is because he is good at polarizing and dividing with a simple vocabulary and common rhetoric.
He’s still doing it and he will not stop. From claiming that paper ballots by mail are a danger to democracy to considering sending the 101st Airborne to quell what he sees as a threat to his power and reelection, he’s continuing his mission to take American people and putting them under the heel. He’s still backed by congressional Republicans who won’t stand up to him. It’s part blackmail; he gets the dirty on people then threatens them. The dirt is substantial, as it must be to have made them so pliant. For some, the revelation of their dirt would wind up with criminal cases and Barr would be licking his ass all the way. For others, families would be destroyed. There’d be damage to national security, and as proof that Trump doesn’t care about our country’s safety, I remind you that after his inauguration, a Russian eavesdropping ship was parked off the east coast for an unacceptable time when it shouldn’t have been allowed that close in the first place. He had a private oval office meeting with Russians and wouldn’t permit any media except TASS. How many more examples do people need to know he’s a criminal with a purely criminal mind?
None of the protesters who really want change are provoking the police. According to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, their ranks have been infiltrated by anarchists and other fringe types, but mostly plain criminals of various ages. The crimes they’re going for is entering a store and using the cover of the crowds to get away with armloads of merchandise. The anarchist types are the ones flipping cars, setting fires and attacking police. There’s a slight blurring in there, as some angry people do get violent, and those aren’t restricted to any race. I get that; they’re angry beyond certain levels of control. But multiracial protesters are peacefully coming out to show that murder is simply unacceptable and that police murdering a black man over a fucking twenty dollar note cannot be tolerated, will not be tolerated.
This is a bad situation. Dire. We can witness the end of the United States of America and see it turned into something horrifying, or we can get our shit together and cause change.
At the heart of all this are several things converging at the worst possible time. First, the economy was bound to crash. No bull market had ever been sustained for so long, and I saw it with dread. The longer it lasted, the harder the fall would be. Indicators told keen economists that it was going to happen but their warnings were ignored. It took the COVID-19 pandemic to push us over the edge, and struggling businesses such as department stores have followed Sears: JC Penney has filed Chapter 11, and with the news being so concentrated on COVID-19 and now the social unrest, I can’t find much else. Suffice it to say that our economy is in the toilet. Now it will kill people who should not die. Crowds during this pandemic, whether masked or not, will unquestionably spread the disease. Within a week we will see either a suppression of COVID-19 numbers on the news, or a sharp spike. Either way, the spike will be there.
Let us not forget that during the stay-at-home months, Los Angeles was photographed with a crystal clear skyline. Geologists could hear the Earth for the first time in modern history with cutting edge tech. The cars weren’t moving. Factories went dark or slowed down. Not as many trucks ran because essential goods had priority. Stars could be seen in places where young people had never seen them. We saw what was possible in regards to climate change. And climate change is the uncredited player that makes everything worse. Without it, probably no COVID-19 pandemic ever happens. Infections peculiar to warmer temperatures have been observed.
There’s a super fungus that exploded in the world scene suddenly, and it’s one thing among others that have adapted to warmer temperatures. It’s believed that the fungus could not survive inside a human body because body temperature alone would kill it. Well the fungus survives body temperature now, and it is virtually untreatable.
COVID-19 may not have happened. Imagine that. One of the components to climate change predictions is supercanes, storms so powerful that they make every hurricane before it look like a thunderstorm. Another predicted component is super pandemics, and I have no reason to doubt that we ain’t seen nothin yet.
In the current pandemic chaos was already in play, but the murder of George Floyd was unbearable, and all I can do is hope that all of this won’t be in vain. Trump claims he won’t allow Floyd’s death to be in vain. But he has yet to express sympathy. He said he will use the regular Army to put down insurrection, a threat instead of a call for peace. For calm.
If that happens, kiss democracy goodbye. He will become a military dictator. No election in November.
Think it can’t happen?
Or are you in favor of it?
We’re in undiscovered territory. We’ve never been here before. You and I can’t see what will happen. We don’t know.
Donald Trump’s just become the greatest threat to this country in all its history.
He’s posing with a Bible in front of the church that burned last night. God damn the fake son of a bitch. The evangelicals will have orgasms over that shit. It all just got so much worse.
I just wanted to smoke a Marlboro. I have to go outside to do it. Most of the time nothing happens. It’s peaceful and tranquil here. I enjoy seeing and saying hello to my neighbors.
Then this kid comes up, sits down on the sidewalk and tokes up a water bong. At first I was socially distanced sufficiently to not smell anything. Then it smote my nose: the exact same odor of a skunk.
I hate skunks. Small ground mammals are disease carrying varmints. They are a plague. None, of course, more so than rats and skunks. If you have never smelled a skunk, you may be counting me cruel. Once you do smell one, there will be no limit to your loathing for them.
They’re varmints. Run away if you see one. Run in terror and don’t dare look back. If one sprays you, you’ll vomit. A lot. Baths and showers can’t help you. Your clothes are now dumpster feed. Fortunately you don’t have to go it alone. There are ways to remove skunk spray. But remember, as wild animals, they carry things you don’t want.
I was thinking, and this is off- subject of course because I’m mental and an asshole and I sidetrack easily.
Possums are possibly the least dangerous varmint. They rarely attack. Skunks, racoons and squirrels, as well as those bold chipmunks? Plague carriers. No shit. Among other diseases. Even when they’re not aggressive they’re bold. They’ll forage right under your ass if you’re sitting. But possums? Leave em be especially if you have a big yard. They devour ticks, spiders, you name it. For ticks, no chemical rids them faster than a plodding ugly possum.
Skunk Weed is an even bigger menace than any skunk. It smells like a bad case of B.O. mixed with roadkill in July. And except for being on the highway behind a hog or chicken truck on a hot day, nothing else comes close. Well. Except for that day in July when a breeze kicked up and you realized you hadn’t seen your neighbor since Christmas…
This kid’s fucked up. Thinks coronavirus is a bioweapon. Thinks Obama was the worst president ever. Thinks Trump is brilliant but has a lot on his plate.
Trump ain’t brilliant. He’s a fucking moron who sits up at night watching OANN and Fox, then tweets anything that pissed him off. Momma won’t let him touch her. He doesn’t bother with his son. He eats Big Macs and tells whoppers. The worst thing on Trump’s plate is an order of fries. Jesus this kid really thinks Trump is a good president!
And he’s going to vote for him. Naturally.
I don’t know how this guy gets so much of the shit. Yesterday he had the bedroom window open and I could hear it when he poured the water out to drop two stories. He also hummed. Same handful of notes. Repeated without cease all day yesterday and all night. I went out today at midday. He was humming.
I went out at 16:30 hours. Still humming, no deviation whatever from the same short repeated “tune”, if you can call it that.
I was watching movies. Went out about 20:00 hours just after dark. Fucker’s still humming, same tune, tempo, volume. I tried to ignore it but now it was getting on my nerves. Suddenly I understand what it’s like for those poor folks in New Mexico who hear the “Taos hum”, a low frequency constant sound nobody can identify or explain. Between you and me, New Mexico ain’t all that. I’d move to another state entirely. No second home in Taos, no going back, sell the house at a loss and move to the Appalachian lowlands where those sumbitches sleep like a log at night, unless they’ve been sprayed by a skunk up there. In witch case, ain’t nobody in the whole house sleeping for a week.
I watched a live YouTube for a while, a guy who’s got mad knowledge of TV trivia and locations where any show you can name was shot. Soon as my head clears, I’ll give you a link, because you would love this channel. I took a break and went out to quell a nicotine fit and the fucker was still humming. That’s some high, you know? Holy shit. Skunk weed may smell like a dead donkey’s ass but if you get that kind of high, then I guess I understand why the kid’s doing it.
Well. No I don’t. Is that the way things are now? In my time, weed smelled good. It tasted good. Sometimes it’s all I could think about. This kid’s got some shit that would have made my generation throw up. Fuck the weed, we’d just take reds.
At 23:00 EDT I had coffee and went to burn one afterward. The fucking kid hummed the same tune without one tonal deviation, and that’s extraordinary. I would never have thought anyone would be capable of such a feat. I mean, is this Guinness World Record shit or what? Like on the Brady Bunch when Bobby and Cindy wanted to set the world teeter-totter record?
I was still awake at 00:12. I wanted a smoke but hesitated. I knew he’d still be humming. And he was. The harder I tried to ignore it, the more agitated I became. It would take a jet engine running wide open to drown the fucker out. I don’t have one of those.
I tried to sleep. At 02:45 I gave up and went back out for a Marlboro. The kid was still at it!
Then he stopped. He screamed at the noise level of a B-17 engine, “Mom, where’s the fucking charger?”
One last thing. 03:00 isn’t the hour to be yelling. He actually came outside and yelled at me, “You got a extra lighter?”
Of course I do. But I said no. I’m not a very good person to be pissing off.
Tell ya what, kid. You take that charger and your glass bong and your skunk weed, and you shove them as far up your ass as they’ll go. I mean, get shit on your elbows, you crazy fucker!
Republican politicians aren’t the only ones responsible. Everyone shares guilt in the creation of a country coming ever closer to its demise, final and terrible and ruinous to the entire world. Blame goes to those who never voted in 2016. Clinton did win the popular vote. That’s true; but if more voters had turned out in critical districts, she could have won more electoral college votes. Russia shares blame. They officially denied involvement in the election, but there’s no evidence that they didn’t, and every bit of proof that they did. James Comey shares blame. Close to Election Day, he was part of an investigation into Clinton’s emails and whether a housekeeper could have been exposed to classified data. It got out. The outrage produced in America was palpable. Listening to a podcast of the show famed ghost hunter Jason Hawes did after the series “Ghost Hunters” had wrapped, I was a fan until the news of the latest Hillary Clinton investigation got out. He typed in the live chat something about “nobody should have that much power” and I responded with swift and beseeching words: don’t let the Hillary Hunters win. How many times was she investigated only to be found free of any offense?
And of course, Trump bears the largest share of blame because he ignorantly stirred racial tensions and hatred that a corner of society seethed with after eight years of service by a black president. As soon as he saw what it did, he fanned the flames even more. His campaign rallies were outrageous. He told a mother with a crying baby to get out. He encouraged people in the crowd to assault protesters. He had security throw people out without their coats. He mocked a disabled person. He called John McCain a loser because he was a POW.
Every bit of this so damaged the run-up to the election and the Clinton campaign that indeed, people voted for him over her, and some just abstained. These were critical votes.
As soon as Donald Trump was sworn in and gave an inauguration speech so bizarre that George W. Bush called it “bullshit”, the bad things began to happen. We all hoped that the Secret Service would take his personal cell phone, which would have followed protocol and that those incoherent hateful tweets would stop. None of that happened. Everything just got worse.
There was the debacle at the airports. Muslims blocked from entering the country. Huge protests, the birth of The Resistance.
The Resistance died when asshole Michael Moore left protesting to make money. A film project. Talk of a TV series. Still later, Keith Olberman stopped his Resistance videos for Esquire. He declared stupidly that the Resistance had won. He was really just a fucking quitter.
Meanwhile a semi-approval of Trump appeared on NBC News that was so incomplete that it answered no questions about where the rest of the immigrant children are. The article is stupefying in that it makes the point that a “safe place” for children is very close to Mar-a-lago. Between you and me, that’s terrifying. If the fucking reporters who wrote and edited this shit were allowed into such a place with minors then anyone can gain access. We have no assurance that there’s any real safety at all. Stories about kids being transported in the dead of night to places far from the border like Manhattan died a quick death and were never followed up.
Since this article was published, part of a supposed “investigative series”, almost nothing has appeared. I googled “where are” and the Google fill-in showed that people have actually searched for “where are the Ozarks,” then “lungs”, “kidneys”, and the “Outer Banks.” If you don’t see something it likely hasn’t been searched for. I’m sorry. I appear to be the only one searching for the lost children.
For the past three years, Republicans in office have mysteriously enabled, been cowed and bullied by, and finally embraced Trump. Why is a question without any remotely understandable answer. I mean, I was republican in the late 70s and early 80s despite moral reservations. Reagan showed me what true barbarity was. What true dishonesty and clandestine conservative crimes were. I thought he’d be okay because of Nixon’s downfall. He wasn’t.
The George W. Bush presidency made it all worse. Wars we just didn’t need to start. Men, women…and children…died by the numbers. The Middle East was destabilized as I predicted in 2008, but I couldn’t see what was next. And I’m not even going to entertain any stupid conspiracy theory about September 11th. Bush had nothing to do with that and the idea is beyond stupid. But the republican party had changed into something it had never been before the Nixon years. And Bush was fed enough flawed intelligence that Iraq was doomed, along with over 4,000 soldiers.
In addition to soldiers we had lost in every military engagement in United States history, now we had more heroes to mourn. To remember.
There have been more wars for the United States than most people are aware of. Ask most, they’ll cite the two World Wars, Civil War and Vietnam. Most don’t know about the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution, the Korean Conflict, or even the series of wars that comprised a larger conflict. The American Indian Wars were really broken into what was often wars against single Indian nations.
Right or wrong, just or unjust, soldiers fought for their country and gave their lives.
There were always deserters. Always religious objectors. Always, those who just plain ran and hid. But they were never the majority, and no matter what–whether you prefer peace over war, like I do, those fallen heroes made this moment, as you read this, possible. Historians still argue about how close Nazi Germany came to winning the war. But what if they had?
These questions insult the memory of those who fought. Those who died. They never stopped believing they had to win, or that their country would win.
There’s a saying that supposedly came out of the Vietnam War. Helicopters actually served in World War Two and Korea, but Vietnam holds the distinction of being known as “the helicopter war”. Hundreds of UH-1 “Huey” helicopters took infantry and airborne troops to places all over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. They were sometimes restricted from actually landing and idling the engines, meaning the troops jumped a short distance to the ground. This was because even if the ship hadn’t taken fire on approach, the LZ was considered extremely dangerous. To lift back off after landing took longer and more power than if the pilot hovered just off the ground instead. Even the hated Chinooks could do this.
Once on the ground, troops had to cover each other as they advanced to relative safety of cover. That’s if they hadn’t already been dropped straight into a firefight. And the superstition was thus born: you never watch the choppers leave.
It wasn’t merely bad luck; it showed that you weren’t focused on your fellow soldiers, and that’s during critical minutes that can see mortars, RPGs, grenades and AK-47s light up your LZ.
Part of the superstition also held that doing this doomed a soldier never to take that extraction flight back. It was bad luck.
Wars have always given birth to superstition. In the Great War, and the one that followed, tobacco was a staple that helped soldiers cope. But matches often got wet. To save them, a guy who lit a cigarette would stand and light the cigarettes of several buddies too. This gave, at night anyway, enemy snipers and grenadiers ample time to zero in and target them. Hence the expression “never light three cigarettes on one match”. Or just “three on a match”.
Here’s to the memory of all those who fought. They were scared. They were killed doing what their country told them to do. They had honor. They believed in what they were doing, even if they disagreed with certain things about a particular war. In their memory, we have observed this day.
But many are not at rest. Their memory is disrespected by a government void of compassion and civility, which embraces a liar. Embraces corruption and the rotting of the country they loved enough to risk, then give their lives for. They have been betrayed, their graves spat upon. This is nothing like the country they knew. Nothing.
But sometimes maybe you do watch the chopper leave. I look forward to watching the chopper that will carry Donald away from the White House for the last time.
And the Republicans who embraced him who will remain?
If I could, I would slap every one of you in the face. You are traitorous bastards who dishonor all for which we have fought and stood.
Missouri was never a place I dreamt about visiting. However, this bunch of morons tell me in one photograph that some of the people have no regard for human life. Not even their own. I don’t just blame Donnie Douchebag, either. The media constantly sends people mixed signals, and a lot of people don’t know how to process such chaos. Some don’t bother trying, and assume they know everything by listening to and reading online bullshit.
My God I have rarely seen such mass stupidity. This time there’s no Jim Jones mixing fruit punch, there’s no Heinrich Himmler or Reinhard Heydrich ordering entire divisions of military personnel to murder millions of civilians just because they’re Semitic. The world will always have madmen who are capable of getting people to do great evil.
And as pathetic as it is, there will always be people without need of leadership to get them to do the most moronic shit.
This time doesn’t fit those situations. Think of the photograph in the linked article as a bunch of parents having a chicken pox party for their children. Because it’s kind of on that level. It’s fucking sadistic and stupid. Oh, they know what they are doing.
But wait. Let’s not be unfair to fucking Missouri, which has a college football team that plays on blue AstroTurf so painful to look at that any televised game makes you want to gouge your eyes out. There’s enough stupid to go around. I’m sorry that I’m not shocked. I should be. COVID-19 is still every bit the threat it was. The news is confusing, yes. Statistics are confusing. Testing is confusing because there are two tests and both seem to have problems. The antibody test is still being argued over. The virus tests have given false negatives and false positives. The work continues to clarify, facts, and to perfect and produce everything used to inform us abd diagnose, treat and prevent coronavirus.
Nothing indicates that the need for social distancing has gone away. Nothing indicates that the use of masks is no longer needed. Indications are to the contrary: the spread of COVID-19 will increase exponentially in short order. Because morons want to swim and drink a fucking pitcher of margaritas. Cocktails with stupid dumbass fucking umbrellas sticking out of the glass. Fucking selfish on top of being historically stupid. They’ll study stupid shit like this in “History 101” a century from now.
I wonder how far up the spikes in different states will go. Because it’s not a question of whether the spikes will be there; when and how severe are the only questions right now.
All of these people (in or on the pools, balconies, living rooms, hot tubs, patios, bars and restaurants) should be immediately considered exposed.
And the tragic part isn’t that they’ll just infect each other. If they’re all that selfish and idiotic I can’t exactly care about that part. The tragedy is the spike will consist of everyone the partiers infect who didn’t take risks but will die. Elderly relatives, siblings with diabetes, co-workers, and more.
Sometimes I really want to die. It passes quickly enough, even though my depression and self-hatred remain interminably. But goddamn if I’m as sick as the people out in pools or sweating on beach towels without masking or distancing, or crammed into bars drinking to the “great coronavirus hoax”. Fuck all if I’m that sick.
A court of law will never try anyone for doing this shit. And no test can forensically prove who a person catches COVID-19 from. And contact tracing? Really? That was always a fucking joke. Now it’s completely out of question and I’ll break the TV with an office chair, I hear any more about it. Enough already.
But I know this: as true as all that may be, these people will get someone killed. That should be grounds for manslaughter charges.
I’m not kidding and it ain’t funny. Being an asshole and a selfish piece of shit are two different things. I know what people are doing. Buying all the toilet paper, hand sanitizer and alcohol including the prep pads.
But that is all for nothing if you’re not staying in. You’re just stupid and you’re taking risks with your own life and the lives of others. But you’re already decided. To you, there’s no risk at all.
I raise my glass of ice water to you as I sit here at home and say, “Fuck you.”
History is full of terrible shit. War, murder, disease, children starving to death, being sold, sent to work in mills and other shitty places where crude conditions and then primitive machinery killed them.
All of that is more than history, though. It’s how things fucking still are. Just because it’s not right in front of you doesn’t mean it ain’t there. Those lost immigrant children? Nobody talks about them. Can I really be the only one? Is it possible that, in all the world, no one else cares about thousands of kids who were kidnapped by the United States and then vanished? Look at what we have allowed. Look at what we have turned into. I can’t really be the only one who sees it that way, can I? In this pitiful world of idiots, am I the biggest of them all?
Why, after all this time, do I bother thinking about them? Why does wall-to-wall coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic keep all other news, all other investigative reporting, off your TV screen and out of your online news? Why the fuck has the story, whether true or false, that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine been the main subject on cable news all week?
We are an assembly of fools. We are ruled by greedy, power-drunk fools who shouldn’t be allowed to slice lunch meat. We are fed garbage that manipulates our emotions by the people who claim exclusive rights to the truth. We buy what they want us to because the same four commercials run every break the networks make. They know you’re in shock, hypnotized by constant horror stories. To get through that, the commercials have to get offensive.
In one ad, Progressive Insurance has to have a conference call on video and that should piss off everyone who’s had to resort to video conferencing, but even more so people who they sell their shit to who can’t see a friend in person and have to Zoom just to catch up (not to mention the families who had to say goodbye to dying COVID-19 patients that way). Because let’s face it: phone calls are insulting these days. If someone won’t face time with you, then they must not really give a fuck, right?
And in fact, the commercials are designed to jolt you from your numbness induced by the constant idiotic shit that’s zombified you. The Geico commercial where a family complains about the plumbing is revolting and insulting. First because they think tap dancing sounds like bad plumbing. No, it doesn’t, and no one would think that; for pity’s sake, they’d be far more likely to think they’re in a haunted apartment. But the sad truth is that they would know exactly what the fuck was going on. And the revolting part, that’s easy. If you like this fucking commercial, you’re too far gone and cannot be fixed. Look at this fucking shit! The whole family dressed the same, tap dancing while cooking, eating, brushing teeth. What a load of insulting ignorant bullshit. It’ll wreck your fucking nerves. You should never be the same after seeing it. But one thing is always going to be true: it’ll surely rouse you from any stupor.
Then there’s the goddamn drug commercials. I looked it up because I was sure I was wrong. Humira was advertised for skin disorders. But hadn’t I seen another ad that said it was for Crohn’s disease?
Sure enough, I had. It’s used to treat other shit too, no pun intended. I wonder how many millions of people take the goddamn stuff, but I’m not looking it up. I really don’t give a shit. I may stand out in an assembly of fools, but I take no joy from it; my masochistic tendencies only go so deep.
Now I sit in a wilderness. It was already this way when COVID-19 broke out. It’s worse now, of course. I shrink from others, even friends. I don’t know why. I need them. I depend on their friendship, support and love more than I am able to express. But there’s the depression, so black and suffocating that it renders inert every good thing you can think, do or say. There’s PTSD and the nightmares. Those fucking vile nightmares…and the will to live or even move gets sucked away like wet sand on a beach being taken by a storm. Until there’s nothing left but a body. A zombie that can’t even express what’s led me here, because I’ve forgotten how.
I’m in an adult mental health rehab program. It has saved me. Kept me alive, off the street. Helped me heal at times. The healing stopped long ago.
At first they were my SSDI rep-payee. They got my check, I got a hundred bucks a month. Years went by, my doctors changed. They left because they were pressured to condense visits into 15 minutes. One doctor apologized to me for leaving. He knew he was helping me. He said, “I can’t help you without your input. Fifteen minutes is not enough. It takes away from everything I do because I spend more time updating records and inputting data, and in the end, you suffer and I can’t take part in that. It violates every ethical value I believe in. I can’t treat for mental health with cookie cutter medicine.” Therapists also bailed and now I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I’ve had a session.
It was money, of course. When I became my own rep-payee, I lost Medicaid. Suddenly my copays were adding up. They pulled me into the office one day. Two Indian women. Backed me into a corner and said that if I couldn’t pay my outstanding bill I’d be kicked out on the street. Because if I wasn’t paying, services would be denied. And if that happened, the housing program would “discharge” me, which is a Cloroxed way of saying I’d be put on the street. Where, of course, they knew I would die.
Once I actually had to write an essay on why I should be “allowed” to remain in the program. Wait. You want me to tell you what? Bullshit. You want me to beg for my fucking life, because you’ve got my file, and you know I’ll die out there. You know goddamn well I can’t afford an apartment. You know I don’t have the living and coping skills to survive even if I could afford a place of my own. You’re telling me to beg for my life to be spared.
I wrote the essay. I was allowed to stay. So I was allowed to live.
I’m now in the top tier of the program. I live in what’s called “assisted living” which is a major step up from “supported living”. It’s where I belong. I live in a two-bedroom condo in a wonderful neighborhood surrounded by nature, with my best friend as a housemate. Things are good most of the time.
Until the cycle of depression hits me like I just ran into a fucking wall. And hitting the wall is beyond the understanding of anyone who doesn’t do it. It’s horrible.
But being denied the chance to regularly see a therapist has taken a toll. Where usually I love to listen to people, and occasionally help them feel better in so doing, I can’t at times like this. They become a burden because depression and PTSD, intrusive, racing thoughts, combine to make them toxic and suddenly, everything is about me. There’s no room for anyone else. I have nothing to offer, no comfort to give, no patience even for myself. Indeed, I hate myself. Somehow despite being fucked, beaten, raped and almost murdered, I managed to work for thirty years. So my SSDI check is too large to allow for Medicaid; you should see my bills. Stacks of them in three different places. Without a paper shredder sometimes I have to burn them in the fireplace because they have personal information. Not to worry, though; they’ll keep coming.
One bill went from my cardiologist to a collection service. They called me one day. Among lesser charges was a $200.00 fee. It was for the radioactive isotopes from a nuclear stress test that I missed. Hey, I get it: medical imaging isotopes are in short supply. The biggest facility that produced them shut down long ago. They’re expensive and hard to get.
But I had to tell the woman on the phone, who wasn’t the least bit nasty and was being quite professional, “Look, that test was scheduled for February 14, 2018. It’s exactly the time I would have been leaving for the test that my son overdosed on fentanyl and died. I got the call. I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t save him. My daughter was already dead. Now my boy was gone, too. I was supposed to keep an appointment? I got billed for it? Ma’am, I never understood that level of coldness, not from a doctor. I told them what happened. They either didn’t believe me, or they didn’t care. They should have been sympathetic. They weren’t. They were so cruel on the phone. So now I see another cardiologist, I like him better, and Dr. Alex Chudnovsky who works on hearts, has no heart. So you tell him this: he will never see that money. I’m not paying for something I had to miss because my son died.” The collection woman was crying. She said she would pass it on, but it might affect my credit. I said, swallowing a sob, “You think I care about credit? Lady, my children are dead.”
The rehab program never reacted. They have a whole team that meets every week. They go over the current conditions and recent events of their clients. No one ever said a fucking word. I never got a card of sympathy. No text. No call. When I went into the back offices to pay rent a number of staff who knew me saw me. Not one person spoke to me. Not even in greeting. I found it a singularly horrifying, offensive and heart-rending experience. How fucking heartless are these people?
I’ll tell you. When my facilitator told them I really needed therapy after my son died, you know what they said?
They told her I could have one therapy session at a reduced rate. No shit.
Two years later, I can’t forget such a fucking cruel thing. They left me damaged and bitter. If I ran a program like that, I would be passionate. No one would fall through the cracks. I’d tirelessly beg for donations. I’d show prospective donors what mental illness is really like.
It’s a mental health rehab program. And here am I, expendable. If I’m lost or kicked out now, they get to say they did a good job and I brought the end on myself. After all, past suicide attempts often end in a final, successful act. They’ll cite statistics and write me off not as a failure on their part, but mine. And nobody will ever be the wiser. I told my facilitator today, “I’m expendable. How you think I feel? I began tracing my roots. I found out Daniel Boone is my 6th great uncle. How do you think I feel, knowing there’s such strong blood in my veins, yet I’m running out of fight, no matter what I’ve survived? I feel expendable.”
With COVID-19 killing people in every state, I don’t say any of this in an effort to get your sympathy. I don’t need sympathy from you. I want you to learn from me. To notice that this world treats people like me as if there’s no use for us. That such attitudes and treatment are counter to the concept of rehabilitation. That nobody should feel expendable, worthless and soon their number will come up. And no one will ever miss them. That everyone will forget. Because they never mattered in the first place. And that final realization is enough to break their hearts beyond anything they’ve ever experienced.
There’s no excuse for allowing your clients to be untreated. No excuse to allow money to stand in the way of saving lives. No excuse for never expressing any sympathy or acknowledging in any way that a client lost both of his children while under you care. God forbid you actually let that person feel valued, cared for, supported.
God forbid anyone should take helping mental people seriously.
If I ever say again that I’m not bitter, contact me and call me a goddamn liar. Because I am bitter. I’m offended. I’m outraged that people take up a mission only to reveal they never cared at all. Why treat us like this? Just line us up and shoot us. It’d be more merciful. I was in contact with a second cousin on Ancestry. Suddenly she stopped communicating. Probably because she sees I’m a mental case and a fool. Toxic.
That’s a good idea. I’m gonna go on Facebook. Everyone on my friends list who never interacts or communicates with me will be blocked, never again to have the chance to be exposed to my mental illness or to realize I’m a fool. I didn’t get on social media to collect pictures of people who aren’t really friends. Good idea, cousin.
Mental health workers: I’ve just thrown a gauntlet at your feet.
You got the guts to pick it up? You want to prove me wrong, or just a fool in an assembly of fools, like you are?
WARNING: The following post has triggers and adult sexual content. It contains references to suicide, child abuse, rape and their subsequent trauma, social dysfunction and mental illness. Read carefully, stop if you can’t handle it, and leave comments or contact me if you wish. This memoir is an ongoing account of my life. It was never pretty.
And when I get to Heaven, to St. Peter I will tell,
“One more Survivor reporting, sir,
I’ve done my time in Hell.”
A jogger just went by. I was outside, smoking a 72. Which, of course, is crazy.
The jogger was loudly clucking, like a very slow chicken. Which, of course, is crazy.
You and I may have heard about people doing crazy things lately, and that’s true enough, but people have always done crazy things.
I know. Don’t think I came through abuse, rape and assault lasting over a decade without actually going a bit nuts. Guys, especially when entering adolescence, have a source of guilt girls can hide, even though they feel just as guilty, just as soiled. Sexual contact, whether forced or consensual, causes some level of “excitement”. Stimulation, however scary, eventually causes a physical response. And adolescent boys can’t hide it when they have an orgasm.
After the guilt sets in, it will not easily go away. It’s a lifelong companion and the enemy of your soul. It will consume every good and positive thought you would have had. It makes you unfairly blame and hate yourself.
That leads to bad choices, costly decisions and pain. Incessant, unyielding pain. It is my contention that every survivor is automatically traumatized. There are few things in life more horrible than sexual violation. What comes after is a hellish existence.
An adult who endures this but who grew up in a relatively safe home and social life may be silent and never report it. The shame is too much to bear, the pain too much to ever give vent to, not even with a spouse or friend, or spiritual leader, not even a doctor.
I can only talk about them from things I’ve learned over the years. But the violation from as far back as I can remember, at least four years old but in the criminal case only to age 7, that I’ve written and spoken about many times. I’ll never get the whole story out; there’s just too much. And I know it first-hand, and that’s the worst way to know about any kind of abuse.
While on this journey of laying my life out for everyone to see, I’ve inadvertently hurt others. I tried to contact old friends on Facebook. They either weren’t there or they decided not to interact with me after a small taste of my writing.
I never wanted that. I regret it no end. But then, I have a lot of regrets. They haunt me. Like the memories that can never be wiped away, the pictures in my mind, the movies of the past, they haunt me.
I’ve told the truth. From the supernatural events to the mundane, which you can find in my archives, every story, every detail is laid down as I remember it. That thing in my room when I was little was real. This was no child’s imagination fueled by fear. That thing was there, and whatever it was, I felt its intense hatred. I didn’t understand hatred. But that was my first experience with it.
What I want to say now is about guilt and regret. Those things often hang out together in my mind. These days, approaching my sixtieth birthday, I’m disabled and alone. I have time to deal with them, face them on days I feel strong enough. And I remember…
Loneliness. In a family that kept being added to, I was always lonely. Dad would pit us kids against each other. He would come home from work and before he could open his car door, we went to our respective rooms for safety. Invariably one of our names would be called in anger. The belt would come off and someone went to bed with their back striped. You stuck to the sheets. You didn’t really sleep. We never trusted one another. I did very little ratting, but I was often the target of it. Looking back, I’d have to say, I’d rather it be me than my sisters or baby brother. But I couldn’t save them even when I was older. There’s some justified guilt for you. And I became a lone wolf. Everyone knew it.
One of my biggest regrets is my social life. My interactions with others. While other boys in my third grade class were dreaming of being astronauts and baseball players, I fantasized about what my teacher looked like naked. And what we could do together. I’d begun my training as a sex object. Sex was always on my mind.
I loved a girl that year. She distracted me from my abnormal fantasies. She was beautiful and happy and I never even made friends with her. I left her alone. I realized such a beautiful girl didn’t deserve the fucked-up thing I was becoming. I love that girl to this day. And the truth is, I imagined she’d just hurt me like I was hurt when my girlfriend the year before left with her family for Thailand. I never wanted to feel that kind of pain again.
Odd; school pictures show me smiling. I rarely smiled. I laughed, but only at the expense of others.
But I digress. I’ve loved others over my sixty years. I still do. They’re a comfort and a source of empty regret at one and the same time. In high school I dated two girls. I loved them both, not at the same time, of course. They both dumped me. It hurt. I was suicidal. I even tried to cut my wrists. It hurt too much, and I looked for other ways.
Somehow, I got through it and my life seemed to have turned better when I met and married a woman who thought I was a nice guy. It would not occur to us until later that we were better friends than lovers.
In 1984 I met a receptionist named Peggy. She was exquisitely beautiful and she made my heart pound so hard every time I looked at her that my kidneys hurt. She was soft-spoken, with the voice of an angel. I knew she could tell. I never actually told her, but she knew. I was head over heels in love. Here was a special person, one who made me listen to sad classical music in my car, violins speaking a truth I couldn’t bear: I wasn’t good enough for her. My wife came to the same conclusion about me. I’ve been alone ever since. I’ve had affairs, trysts, but nothing serious. I’ve been celibate since the Twin Towers were still standing. To this day, I love that woman. I regret never having told her how special she was, even if I could never be with her. I wish I could change that. Regrets are merciless and they don’t leave you. Not easily, anyway. As surely as I carry all those I’ve loved with me, I carry the regrets that go with them. The things left unsaid. The crazy things I did, that they always found out about. Most of all, I think the regrets of being socially awkward and sometimes misunderstood may nag at my mind the most.
I didn’t know how wounded I really was. I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know what it was. From one job to another, from one apartment to another, one town to another, I carried some insidious malignancy in my head that made me nothing close to normal. I didn’t understand it. I felt like everyone hated me. I knew they hated me. The last time I saw Peggy, she had a look on her face that broke my heart. Hatred. Anger. I can’t get that image out of my head.
In 2000, over a decade later, I was living alone. I had no friends. A crazy demonic girlfriend I couldn’t get rid of. And I was getting worse. The depression would keep me in bed for days. I’d miss visitation with my kids. I was descending into a pit. Once at the bottom, and I could picture it, I was sure I’d never get out.
It took me three serious suicide attempts. Twice I wound up in intensive care on ventilators. Once at St. Joseph’s Hospital and once at Howard General. For weeks, I didn’t even know who I was.
But I still hated myself. For anyone who ever hated me, I assure you that I hated myself more. PTSD is a condition affecting millions. That along with bipolar II disorder, and learned behavior they call personality disorders, well, I’m a mess, and the decision to go to the state hospital in Sykesville was the best decision I ever made. I was properly diagnosed and treated. I was allowed to be sick, and in that, I began to slowly grasp that I had to learn to live with being so injured. First, I had to find a way to forgive myself. The guilt was out of place. It belonged to my parents, not me. The regrets I have to work on. I’m doing that. Yesterday a girl walked past, singing a song. She was pretty. She returned a bit later, waved enthusiastically and said, “I love your flannel.” It’s a hoodie and I hate flannel, but it’s the last thing my son ever gave me. But without hesitation I said, “And I loved your singing.” She was so happy. It was never my nature to be outgoing. There was a time when I would have said something mean. Or nothing at all. Friendliness scared me. My defense was cruelty.
I liked the way I handled a simple friendly compliment. Actually she may have been stoned, she was so happy. But that’s groovy. It was nice.
I saw my friend Stephanie who works at the grocery. I told her I admired her courage during this dangerous time. In parting I said, “Be safe, okay? You’re my hero.”
I’ve never been sorry that I was nice or that I had a friend. I’m still taking meds and I enjoy talking with people. Much more socially comfortable than I’ve ever been. There’s just the nightmares, dissociative states, anxiety stress and panic, the dirty feeling like I can never get clean, and of course, depression.
And guilt. No matter what, I’ve got to do something with it. Forgiving myself for something that wasn’t my fault is a tall order. Remember that scene from Good Will Hunting? I want all of you to know. Every one of you. You’ve been violated, beaten, had your mind fucked, been told you’re worthless until you believed it, you who feel dirty, guilty, you who hate yourself and all the awkward shit you do, all you who thought about or tried suicide, all you who have mishandled or purposely fucked up relationships, to know one thing: it’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault. I may not know you, but we’re brothers and sisters. We have been through hell. Too much of it, and life’s not fair, and we all know it. Forgive yourself. It’s not your fault.
If you need help with post traumatic stress and anxiety, there are resources easily found online and in your area.
If you or anyone you know is suicidal, having suicidal thoughts or feeling like you can’t go on, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-800-273-8255.
Your life is worth more than how you’re feeling it is. You’re not worthless. Suicide is final; often done on impulse in a moment of deep fear and despair. You can’t change your mind once it’s done. No matter how terrible you feel, I don’t want you going that way. And if you think no one loves you, well I love you. Brothers and sisters, remember?
I’ve been a coward all my life. Afraid of bullies. Afraid of pain. Afraid of being embarrassed or humiliated. Afraid of being abandoned. Afraid of being sick. Afraid of loving someone because everyone I loved had hurt me. That last bit was true until I was about 14. That summer I worked with my neighbor Larry. He didn’t hurt me. And I miss him. My first true adult friend from a time when I was a cowardly little kid.
Fear is partially ingrained in our minds, our innate selves. The other parts we have to learn ourselves. I once burned a finger and though very little, I of course learned to fear fire and high heat. I learned even earlier to fear my father. I remember riding a tricycle and he wanted me to come up and sit on his lap. I cried. I seem to have cried pretty loud. Like screaming, until he let me down. You know how you get fear like that. Yes, you do.
Fear as a conditioned response and fear of ordinary things like the darkness of night are very different things. But the mechanisms in the response end up feeling exactly the same. Fear sucks, we hate it. Unless, of course, we can experience it in a controlled way. Like watching a horror movie, reading a Stephen King novel. And sometimes, even that’s too much. If the input causing the fear response becomes too intense, we are no longer in control. We put the book down and sleep with the lights on. We walk out of the theatre. It’s okay; it happens all the time. Hollywood has test screenings to see how audiences respond. From the responses, they may make additional cuts before releasing the film to theatres worldwide.
When the first print of the original King Kong was test screened, the scene where men fell into a chasm and were eaten by spiders caused people to get up and make for the exits in haste. That scene didn’t make it to the original theatrical release. It was later restored, and the Jack Black film has that scene, but on crack and steroids and shrooms. I guess things are different now.
The original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff has a scene where the monster is watching a little girl throw flowers onto the surface of a lake. They’re pretty flowers. So the monster, thinking the girl is pretty, picks her up and throws her into the water. She drowns. Test audiences found the scene too disturbing. It was cut and only years later, restored.
Fear causes other responses from the”fight or flight” reaction to trauma to anger, unreasoning and thirsty for revenge.
But fear is healthy most of the time. It keeps us safe. We check our own emotions and hold our tongues for fear of starting a fight, getting arrested, losing a friend. Proper fear is good.
And fear has nothing to do with cowardice. Being scared enough to avoid pain or run from a fight is actually a pretty brave thing. John Wayne defined courage as being scared to death but getting in the saddle anyway. Sometimes, though, the right thing to do is to not get up in the saddle. It’s down to judgement and perhaps something as arbitrary as how we feel, physically and mentally, at the time. If we’re not up to it, then that’s okay. Maybe we need help. Maybe, some time. Everyone is different. Fear remains the same.
HYSTERIA, STRESS, ANXIETY AND THEIR TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
The one thing fear does, especially when coupled with a mental illness such as PTSD, that is not productive or desirable, is to cripple us. Everyday tasks, the most ordinary things, like going out to get the mail, become impossible. We’ve ceased to be afraid and we have become prisoners of anxiety and stress. It’s never good. Some can work through it; most will need treatment, such as drug and talk therapy. We need a support system and coping skills. We’ve learned behaviour that keeps us disabled. It is a bad place to be. Without treatment, people typically self-medicate, using illegal substances and alcohol. It’s tough to save them at that point, and you can beg someone to seek help, but they won’t do it unless they choose to do so.
But there’s another kind of abnormal fear, and often it is not seen for what it is. By the time anyone knows, something terrible has usually happened. Intense fear can only be tolerated for so long. The imperative becomes not quelling that fear, but acting on it. Instead of being a paralytic, it causes radical behavior fueled by anger. The need to stop the source of the thing causing that fear. The need for control.
I knew a man. His neighbor was a Holocaust survivor. Now, back then, in Pasadena, Maryland, and a few surrounding areas, Neo-Nazis were growing in number. They put flyers in mailboxes to recruit, and at the time this was not a hate crime in Maryland. They would also put anti-Semitic messages in the mailboxes of Jewish people. This man, he was old. He was old enough to have seen and to remember seeing the unimaginable. Stuff that even footage can’t convey. He would read these flyers, go inside his house, and get a baseball bat, come back out and beat his galvanized steel mailbox into an unrecognizable chunk of metal lying on the ground next to a steel pole.
I’d say that was a perfectly understandable and healthy response. Action from fear, action fueled by rage.
But what if people drift toward such responses when they are not healthy and not normal? That desire, that need to act, to end the fear and by immediate association helplessness, can take a horrific turn.
That’s when you get something like this. The article tells all there is to know, but make no mistake here; it should never have happened. How it ever became legal to bear arms in the capital building is beyond my ability to comprehend. But more to the point is, people’s fear of the COVID-19 virus had overloaded radicals who went into action out of anger. Their fear of catching or spreading the virus was gone. In its place, rage. Radical groups have a group mentality in the first place. Otherwise, no group. The scariest ones go “paramilitary” and buy all sorts of weapons, including assault weapons and handguns, and sure enough, many are owners of bunkers. You don’t even have to dig your own and line it with sandbags anymore. They’re sold, already made, ready for installation. They include air vents and a locking access hatch. They’ll customize almost any feature you can imagine.
I’ll grant you, the Michigan protesters are radicals already predisposed to a simmering mistrust of authority. And if measures are not taken, one of them will surely pull the trigger before this is over, initiating a firefight in which law enforcement and the radicals would both take casualties. Such a thing will not get anyone back to work, or get any mall reopened. It will be an event that can change the country in ways these radicals will not appreciate.
Being fair about it, I’d have to admit that the Michigan protesters are in no way representative of the majority here. But they’ve managed to prove two things.
The first is that they’re self-serving and wrongly feel entitled and use “civil rights” as a shield. They cannot tough it out with the rest of us. They’re cowards in the truest sense. Too cowardly to hang in there until we can see social distancing really work properly. Cowards. They cannot bear to do what the rest of us do, no matter how scared we are. Courage, said John Wayne, is being scared, but doing the right thing anyway.
The second thing these protesters did is more serious. They may not have broken the law when they entered the capital building armed. That’s true. But to do it in anger and cause the government workers inside to don bulletproof vests, and fear for their lives, is terrorism.
We’re all worried. Scared. We’ve been traumatized by untimely unfair deaths. We’ve lost jobs. It’s a disaster.
I wake up from nightmares you can’t imagine and realize my kids are dead and I’m all alone. But I live with my bipolar and my PTSD and I take my meds and I care so much about other people that my problems vanish on hearing someone else’s story. So I ask: are you as tough as I am? Can you hang with me? Can you do better than I can? Or are you going to admit to yourself, and prove to the world, that you’re really just a fucking coward with a gun who needs to scare the shit out of others to feel like you’re in control?
You’re stuck inside for long periods of time. It’s stressful and frightening. You worry about money, jobs, your life. May I suggest going out, wearing a homemade mask, and going for a walk? I’m often surprised at how much of a tonic taking a nice walk can be. Maintain intervals between others, at least six or ten feet, take allergy medicine if need be, but please do go and stretch your legs in the spring sunshine. It’s great for your nerves, it chases away depression, and can even end constipation: when you return home and cuss for lack of toilet paper, and find some Christmas paper napkins with holly from that horrible party your boss threw where no alcohol was allowed and someone insisted on playing that hippopotamus song, which pissed you off because you know hippopotamuses are really killers even if they don’t eat meat and therefore kill people for sport, relax. Time to settle in and read a book or watch a movie.
To wash away all reminders of hippopotami, here are some ideas for your consideration. Let’s see what we can get into, shall we?
Films
What are you in the mood for?
Fantasy
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017, Columbia-Sony)
Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas
Faced with a board game which is old school, a teen ignores it. Then he hears drums. You know that’s not good. The board game has been changed and has become more modern: a videogame cartridge. He decides to give it a go.
Years pass. Four students serving detention are charged with cleaning the school basement when they hear drums…
It’s okay to love Jack Black again. Not since School of Rock has he been unleashed to prove his acting chops like this. “King Kong” was a truly great remake, and I honestly loved it. But he was good in it; this time out, he’s great. Dwayne Johnson has a love of movies like this, or at least, he’s good with them. And guess what? The game cannot be played with the console and a controller. Nope. Like the title says, it transfers the players into a jungle. And guess what again: one of them is promptly eaten by a hippopotamus! No, don’t throw away your Christmas napkins! It’s okay. Put the napkins down. Cause what if you can’t find any TP this week?
Like videogames do, each character has more than one life. But they soon see dreadful evidence that if they run out of lives during gameplay, they’ll die in real life.
Jumanji:The Next Level (2019, Columbia-Sony)
The original cast returns, along with Danny DeVito and Danny Glover. Three years after the first game they barely beat, the four friends are reuniting for a casual dinner. One doesn’t show. You guessed it. He tried to repair the game that was smashed at the end of the previous game, and now he’s gone. Glover and DeVito are superb, adding a richness and ultimately a bittersweet element to the story. This is great fun with total silliness, suspense and and great character use. Must-see sequel. I’m not sure if I’ve ever used those words in the same sentence. Well I am now. And that brings us to…
Jumanji (1995 TriStar, Sony Pictures)
The original with Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt, Bradley Pierce, Bebe Neuwirth (whose character actually turns up in Jumanji: The Next Level.
You need to see this one first. Because the Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black films are not remakes. They’re sequels. The first film with Williams gives a fleeting, scary history of the board game. Magnificent film series. Great fun. All three get perfect scores from me.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010, Walt Disney)
Nicholas Cage, Alfred Molina, Monica Bellucci, Jay Baruchel, Teresa Palmer, Alice Krige, narration: Ian McShane
All the way back to Merlin the great sorcerer, Balthazar (Cage) and Veronica (Bellucci) fell in love. Jealous and bitter, Horvath (Molina) turns against them and Merlin. Balthazar learns that the most evil sorceress, Morgana (Krige) can only be destroyed by the Prime Merlinian. It just so happens that after searching for a thousand years, he finds Dave (Baruchel). Wicked good fun and an especially evil and delicious turn by Molina (he played Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2 with a show-stealing performance). One of Cage’s best ever, Monica Bellucci is gorgeous and not at all a bad sorceress, and Jay Baruchel as the coming of age apprentice, scared, nervous and sweetly in love with Becky (Palmer) whose beauty would intimidate any guy like Dave.
Contains violence and adult themes but okay for TV-14 audiences. Worth it.
Classic Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
Five Million Years To Earth (1968, 20th Century Fox) A forgotten black-and-white masterpiece of sci-fi and horror, both delivered equally well, this is a British film which deserves a spot in your DVD rack. It’s deep, and it covers a subject not often properly handled even in the dramatic genre. I’m not going to tell you. You’ll have to get there yourself.
When digging out a new section for the London underground, skeletons are found. They’re determined to be hominids but five million years old, which seems to fly in the face of science, so scientists are consulted. Then part of a large metal object is revealed in the dig, and it’s guessed by military experts to be part of an old Nazi German V-weapon.
Except that’s a very wrong assumption. And of course, that means trouble.
This film is a classic. You may find a copy under the UK title, “Quartermass and the Pit”, but either way, it’s relatively rare. If you love classic Science Fiction and Horror, this one’s definitely worthy of your efforts to see. I haven’t seen it since 1978, and I still remember the scenes that had me curling up in a ball.
Invaders From Mars (1953, 20th Century Fox)
One of the best sci-fi horror flicks of the fifties, with a relentless buildup and an ending that will have you holding your breath. For classic science fiction, it’s hard to top this one.
20 Million Miles To Earth (1957, Columbia Pictures)
Astronauts return to Earth with reptilian eggs. One hatches and everyone in the universe wishes it hadn’t. With monster effects by Ray Harryhausen, originally filmed in black-and-white but colorized later, either version is the same basic film, and it’s delicious stop-action goodness stacked with horror. A worthy film for casual viewers or hardcore sci-fi fans.
Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1959, 20th Century Fox)
James Mason, Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl
Mason plays a geologist who obviously goes on a journey to the Earth’s center. This is a wonderful film, with plenty of action and suspense. You’ll love it if you’ve never seen it, but if you have, you know it’s a great one to watch again after all these years.
Comedy, Horror And Everything In-between
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Universal)
This one’s both scary and a hoot. It was the first crossover between the comedians and Universal’s classic creature features. Someone decided that comedy and horror went well together, and they were right. And the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf-Man and Count Dracula in the same flick? You don’t get any better than that. Although Boris Karloff had long since ended his stint as the Monster, no worries there. Glenn Strange does the job with a creepy near-silent turn and it makes the Monster seem much more frightening. Perfect score, no doubt Abbott it.
An American Werewolf In London (1981, Universal)
David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter.
David (Naughton) and Jack (Dunne) are Americans backpacking through the English countryside. I can’t imagine why two American lads would do such a thing, but back then, it was a thing. Stumbling through a rainy night, they leave the road and wind up on the moors, which hostile locals had warned them away from. They hear an awful noise as the clouds break, allowing the full moon to become visible. That’s when the attack comes. With ground breaking effects even by today’s standards, cheeky British humor and a nightmare sequence worthy of an award by itself, this one’s a classic and even boasts a good soundtrack.
The Mummy (1999, Universal)
Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vasloo as Imhotep, the mummy accidentally resurrected by Evelyn.
Hamunaptra, the ancient Egyptian city of the dead. It’s here that Rick O’Connell, a mercenary for the French Foreign Legion, is introduced. During battle he is captured and sentenced to death by hanging. Evelyn, in search of Hamunaptra, comes to see him in prison and tries to buy his freedom.
Eventually he’s released and guides Evelyn and her brother to the city of the dead, where she accidentally raises the evil priest Imhotep, who had been mummified alive for his crimes. Imhotep begins to regenerate using the bodies of mortals which he consumes. He sets about trying to use Evelyn’s body to resurrect Anck-su-namun who was Seti I’s mistress but Imhotep’s secret lover.
Lots of chills and humor, a classic which was included in Universal’s attempt to reimagine the creature features of yore.
The Mummy Returns (2001, Universal)
Main cast returns, with Vosloo turning in an awesome job as Imhotep and Patricia Velásquez sexy and evil as Anck-su-namun reincarnated. The plot is that in the Year of the Scorpion, Imhotep’s resurrection is sought by those who know he is the only one who can defeat the Scorpion King, who is a slave to Anubis. While questing to put Anck-su-namun’s soul into her reincarnated body, Imhotep also wants to defeat the Scorpion King and command the Army of Anubis for himself. Plenty of laughs, a few chills and a woeful CGI character that in itself is unintentionally funny.
Arachnophobia (1990, Buena Vista)
Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Mark L. Taylor as Manley, with Julian Sands as Atherton.
Now this is a good flick. If you have arachnophobia for real, I’ll warn you that this is not for you. It actually seemed to help me. The film is about invading spiders, hybrids between a common house spider and a new Venezuelan species discovered by Atherton. John Goodman is the comic relief as an exterminator, and is outrageous. Classic horror-comedy.
Something For The Kids?
The New Adventures Of Pippi Longstocking (1988, Columbia)
Tami Erin, John Schuck, Eileen Brennan, Dick Van Patten
My kids loved this one. Even now I can hear that infectious song, “Pippi Longstocking is Coming into Your Town!”
I’m not giving you any plot. It’s too delightful and you should go headlong into a wonderful childhood adventure film that will remind you of long-ago adventures when you had all summer to imagine and chase everything. Go on; trust me.
The Muppet Movie (1979, Henson/ITC
This was a hit during the great movie summer of ’79, and had loads of competition. What a summer that was! Starring the whole Muppet cast and too many cameos to list, this is the one that started it all. Brilliant and funny, rarely shown, well worth the price of a disc.
Drama, Romance and Action
North Dallas Forty (1979, Paramount)
Nick Nolte, Dayle Haddon, Mac Davis, John Matuszak
Nolte is a pro football player for the team the North Dallas Bulls. The film satisfies on several levels, mostly the hilarious relationship between quarterback Seth (Davis) and Phil (Nolte). The training room scenes, Phil’s very real need for painkillers and his habit of urinating in the whirlpool have him on the trainer’s shit list. Seth calls him “poot”, at that time a southern word for “fart”.
Phil begins an unlikely relationship with Charlotte (Haddon, whom I’m desperately in love with to this day) and despite arguments and her lack of understanding of such a brutal sport, they manage to come across as two people who are hurt and just plain need each other. The last game gets messy and extremely dirty with cheap shots, and in the 60s and early 70s this was not rare. No perfect score here, but worthy and with a decent but dated soundtrack.
Falling Down (1993, Warner)
Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Tuesday Weld
Douglas shines as a man pushed too far. He goes on a hike across the city to attend the birthday party of his daughter despite a restraining order against him by his ex. Tour de force by Douglas, one of his very finest roles.
Binge
The Bourne Collection
The Bourne Identity (2002, Universal)
Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Brian Cox
A fishing vessel pulls a man (Damon) in a wetsuit, unconscious, from the sea. He’s been shot, and when a crew member digs out the slugs, he finds a laser that flashes a cryptic number on the wall. The man regains consciousness, but doesn’t remember who he is. He quests to find his identity, but only has flashes of memories which cause physical pain. He pays a woman (Potente) to drive him across Europe, but it seems that someone keeps homing in on him and trying to kill him. Unlikely fight scenes, car chases and firefights don’t undermine Jason Bourne’s resolve to find his identity.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004, Universal)
Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, Brian Cox
As the series gets darker, Bourne finds that the CIA had a black ops program called “Treadstone” and we’re introduced to Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), Deputy Director of CIA. The chase goes from Europe to Russia and Bourne finally remembers his first mission.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, Universal)
Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Scott Carpenter, Julia Stiles, Albert Finney
Pamela Landy is seriously in doubt as to just how much of a threat Jason is, believing that if left alone, he would vanish. But he calls her and she reveals his real name, and his memory begins to cascade back to him. Finney is outstanding as the man behind the monster, the head of the former Treadstone operation.
Jason Bourne (2016, Universal)
Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Tommy Lee Jones
After 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, worthless because Damon isn’t featured as Jason Bourne, Damon returned in this picture, far overdue. In Legacy we find out what happened to Pam Landy, and get flashbacks of Finney’s character. Otherwise I see no reason to watch it. Julia Stiles as Nikki Parsons tracks down Bourne after some hardcore hacking. She informs him of an event during Treadstone that brings Bourne out of hiding and sets him on a mission to get the man who ordered it. A satisfying end, if that’s what it is, to the Bourne saga.
Based on No particular criteria, here’s a list of films that you may enjoy during your long days and nights at home. Some can be seen free of charge on cable, some for rent.
What are you in the mood for?
Action
Faster (2010, CBS, Castle Rock) Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton. Johnson is released from prison after the warden (Tom Berenger) goes through an unnecessary list of injuries he endured in a decade of hard time. Johnson plays Driver, a wheelman in a bank robbery in which his brother, Gary participated. Another crew finds out about their score and wants it. Gary is killed. Once outside the prison walls, Driver wastes no time starting his campaign for revenge.
This is a stellar small budget film. It explores revenge and forgiveness with a relentless score and a lot of suspense. Score: 8 of 10.
Fantasy, Family
Christopher Robin (2018, Walt Disney) Ewan McGregor is a grown Christopher Robin, whose job and nasty boss have him in a tight place. He must neglect his family and work too hard. He’s long forgotten the Hundred Acre Wood, and he doesn’t remember the day he left his best friends to go to boarding school. Until one day, someone from that long ago, an old friend comes looking for him. With Hayley Atwell and Brad Garrett. Definitely watch this one with your kids. You’ll surprise yourself. And it’s better than I thought it would be.
Drama
Silver Linings Playbook (2012, Weinstein) Two characters, Pat Solitano Jr. (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence) are reintroduced after Pat gets out of a Baltimore hospital and moves in with his parents. Pat and Tiffany are strongly attracted to each other, but that causes trouble. Because Pat’s just not right. He caught his wife cheating on him and nearly beat the other man to death, and a court ordered him to inpatient treatment for Bipolar Disorder. His wife has moved and has a restraining order against him, but he’s determined to get her back by reading books and losing weight. But he agrees to help Tiffany in a dance competition in exchange for her giving a letter from Pat to his wife, whom Tiffany’s sister is friends with. Meanwhile, Pat’s father (Robert De Niro) is an Eagles fan whose superstitions don’t go well with his bookmaking, and he’s convinced Tiffany is hexing the team. This film is a masterpiece from the opening scene to the credits and the soundtrack. Every character is perfect, including a nice turn by Julia Stiles as Tiffany’s sister and Chris Tucker as Danny, a friend of Pat’s from the hospital. Not a single line is off. The script is excellent and everyone pulls you into their character’s world with ease. It’s my number one favorite film, and I’m extremely critical. It’s funny, sad, handles the theme of mental illness perfectly for the characters. And really. Who doesn’t love Jennifer Lawrence?
War
Platoon (1986, Orion Pictures
Cast: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Dale Dye, Johnny Depp, John C. McGinley, Kevin Dillon, Keith David, Forest Whitaker.
The definitive film about (and against) the Vietnam War by Oliver Stone, based on his experiences as a veteran. The grittiness, the incomparable cinematography and sound put you there with characters that aren’t just convincing but will hold you in their grip until the credits roll. Stone wanted to show something more immediate, terrifying and sickening than John Wayne’s Green Berets, a film I’ve found laughable. But Platoon delivers on every level. If you’ve never seen it, you should. You’ll cry. You’ll be exhausted when it’s over. It’s intense, so be careful.
Missing Baseball?
It Happens Every Spring (1949, 20th Century Fox)
The incredible, inimitable Ray Milland is college professor Vernon Simpson, struggling to find a formula that will defend wood against insects. And what he comes up with is hilarious. A true blue classic. Worth it.
Comedy
The ‘Burbs (1989, Universal)
Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher, Bruce Dern, Corey Feldman, Rick Docummun, Gale Gordon, Henry Gibson, Courtney Gains, Brother Theodore, Wendy Schaal, Robert Picardo.
In a neighborhood cul-de-sac, something’s going on with the new neighbors, and three friends don’t like it at all. They try to get to the bottom of it and demonstrate life in suburban America so realistically that it’s one of the biggest cult comedies of all time. Beautiful film start to finish.
It’s Time For Superheroes
Marvel Cinematic Universe And Fox Crossovers
No need to go into detail. I have my favorites, others have theirs. But with over 20 films, binge away and remember that microwave popcorn is very bad for you. Try a hot air popper.
In order of Marvel Chronology, not release date:
Captain America: The First Avenger (finally, they got Cap right)
Captain Marvel
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk (maligned but better than you think. And loaded with Easter eggs)
Iron Man 2
Thor (ok)
The Avengers (iconic classic)
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World (crap)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (fan favorite)
Avengers: Age Of Ultron (crap but necessary to see Scarlet Witch and Vision’s origin)
Ant-Man (brilliant and fun)
Captain America: Civil War (essential and pretty damn good)
Spder-Man: Homecoming
Doctor Strange (one of the most underrated)
Black Panther (must see spectacle)
Deadpool (Funny, extreme gore and a classic. What’s not to love?)
Thor: Ragnarok (essential and the only good Thor movie)
Guardians of the Galaxy volume one
Guardians of the Galaxy volume two
(The Guardians films are the best of the whole series)
Avengers: Infinity War
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Avengers: Endgame (a three hour, satisfying payoff for loyal fans)
Spider-Man Far From Home (for Mysterio fans only)
Deadpool 2
How About Some Music?
A Hard Days Night (1964, United Artists)
The Beatles in glorious black-and-white, during a few days of a fictional tour. Great fun and one of the best soundtracks ever made. And it’s full of wonderful dry British humor; worthy of any collection.
All That Jazz (1979, 20th Century Fox)
Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Leland Palmer in a tripping Broadway story, and you have to trust me on this one.
American Graffiti (1973, Universal)
Ron Howard, Harrison Ford, Candy Clark, Cindy Williams, Charlie Martin-Smith, Wolfman Jack, Richard Dreyfuss, Mackenzie Phillips and Paul Le Mat as John Milner in one of the greatest musical-comedies of all time. You’ll be hooked a few seconds in when Bill Haley and the Comets come on the radio with Mel’s Diner in the backdrop. It’s about teen love, cruising and music in 1962 California, a true icon of American film and culture from a period so profoundly romanticized, but never better than right here. But on that note…
Grease (1978, Paramount)
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway (no, that is not Kevin Bacon. Stop it).
It was on stage before American Graffiti was released. Different but similar. High school seniors, love and racing, but unique from musicals because of its ridiculous casting, low brow comedy and a weird fan theory regarding the final scene that won’t go away. Don’t overthink it. Enjoy it for what it is.
That’s just a start. More to come. It’s important to stay home and be safe. Movies can be great therapy, so take advantage of them and enjoy. And don’t forget: microwave popcorn is bad for you. Get an air popper.
My God. Was it ever cold. Freezing. My car didn’t like it. I’d been having trouble with it, and just had the distributor replaced by a scambag garage on North Point Boulevard. I couldn’t pay the bill right away by delivering pizza, and some part of me mused that they’d slim-jimmed the door, popped the hood and put the old one back in. If so….I had it coming. I was a true asshole then. Seeing a married woman. Always argued with her, and so I was that night. But the cold…as she drove away from me and crossed Merritt Boulevard, at a median crossover, I tried to catch up. Traffic was clear which meant that the light at the top of the hill on Wise Avenue was keeping it back. I began to cross. I made it one lane toward the crossing but the engine was misfiring. She wouldn’t move but at a slow, jerky pace, my 1984 Mustang. Stupid to have a car that old much less a Mustang with a 4-cylinder. What a piece of junk, faded metallic burgundy-red and all. It was ugly.
She stopped, engine running but barely so, and I looked to my left. The light had changed. Traffic was heading down the hill fast, and I was straddling the left lane!
I saw two headlights. Coming up so fast I remember thinking I’m not going to make it, and my eyes remained fixed on those lights, but for some reason, they got smaller, my sight tunneled, and I saw two tiny pinpoints of light.
It’s funny, what led to that moment in time. I was so down on my luck that I’d been reduced to delivering pizza. For the past week, I’d gotten into my car to go to work and the radio was on a religious station. I never listened to that stuff. I would reset it to FM 104.3 The Colt, more or less a classic rock station. And the next night, it would be set to the same religious station when I got in. I tried to think of who could be doing this to me. It wasn’t possible. No one else had an ignition key. Even the scamgarage guys couldn’t be responsible. I was living miles away. And I had a shitload of enemies, so I always watched my mirror. No one ever followed me.
I don’t remember the impact. An eyewitness said the full size van had struck me so hard that my car went airborne and spun around three times before coming to a stop. When I became aware of anything around me, I was surrounded by darkness. I could move, and I was on my feet, but I was alone and surrounded by a darkness so black that I was aware that it was a bad place I was in. I looked down. Either I could see my feet or I sensed myself standing upright, and there was nothing under me. I could tell the dark emptiness went deep below me: I was standing on nothing. Before me, the same. All around me, that same black emptiness. And that was how I was gonna stay. This was punishment. I’d been a loner most of my life. Even when I was married. When I did choose to get close to someone, it was always dirty rotten scummy stuff. Adultery, I knew that one all too well. Ghost hunting. Stuff I knew better than to do, but did anyway. I had been headed here all my life. It was despair. A place I couldn’t get out of. I heard nothing. I couldn’t speak. I was all alone, so very alone. And remembering that feeling now scares me so badly I can’t describe it.
Then I heard sirens, close by but fading. Stopped emergency vehicles. A jaws of life worked the passenger door open. A voice said, “My name is Paul. Can you hear me?”
Everything hurt. Everything’s broken, I thought. Why am I here? Why am I back if it hurts so much?
My face was wet. The cold air made it unbearable. I didn’t even know it was blood. My eyes opened. Well, one did. One had blood in it. And everything hurt so much. I’d known pain. All kinds of it. Pain of my golden mommy, who made me feel so loved when I was tiny, mounting me every Saturday night while dad watched. “Teaching” me. Turning me instead into a fucked-up dysfunctional freak who knew no boundaries when it came to sex, causing me to question my sanity and whether the whole universe was really Hell. Had I died the night my father knocked me out twice and threw me down the steps, the night I found blood in my ears and on my pillow later, and didn’t know how serious that was? Was I already in Hell, tormented by an imaginary life, a life that would never make any sense?
“Paul,” I whispered, desperate with panic and terror, “Don’t let me die.”
“You’re not going to die,” he said simply. I couldn’t move. Never saw his face. My left arm dangled, bloody and cold, out the window. Wait. Where the hell was my window? My married mistress screamed my name. I heard her running. She’d lost me, gone up Wise Avenue and realized I was not behind her. It must have taken fifteen minutes to backtrack and find me. Long enough for paramedics to get there first.
“But I already died,” I told Paul. “I was in Hell.” He didn’t believe me. I never even saw his face. But I could tell.
But then, I could see why my heart had stopped. On my way to hitting my head on the windshield, I’d struck the steering wheel with my chest. I looked at it in the unfeeling wonder of shock. I’d never seen anything like that. The steering wheel was bent up and at an angle to where it was almost on top of the dashboard.
I was put on a short spine board, loaded into an ambulance. I could see my car as I was elevated into the meat wagon. Every inch of glass was gone. It turned out that the van had hit me a second time, from the rear while I was coming back down. Witnesses thought I’d surely been killed.
About 00:00 hrs.
How long I lay in Bayview Hospital, I don’t know. I could not walk. The pain in my back that was so excruciating turned out to be a strap buckle from the spine board under me when I was cinched tightly to it. With crutches, I made it to the latrine, where I pissed blood. I almost passed out, seeing that. I reported it to a bitchy nurse who couldn’t have cared any less than she already did. She ignored it. My youngest brother showed up with his wife and took me to stay in their spare room.
Aftermath
I languished in bed for days, barely able to move. Two things bothered me the most. The first was my hip. Intolerable pain was moderated by nothing. The second was worse. Bruised ribs. To turn myself in bed, I had to reach across my body to grab hold of the mattress, then pull my body over on the opposite side.
I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why the radio changing channels like that? Why the dark plt? I knew it wasn’t Hell. Had to be Purgatory. But I was raised and taught in such a way that Purgatory didn’t figure into my concept of spiritual realms. In hindsight, I believe my teaching to be mistaken.
I’ve often asked God, why me? Why did he save me, spare me? I’m nobody.
And a lot of people better than I had lived shorter lives. How was I supposed to feel about that? I know the blow to the steering wheel stopped my heart. The deep and painful bruising alone couldn’t be more proof to me. Yet before the medics got into my car, I was back. Can’t explain that one. Except for God sparing me.
It was weird. But it didn’t change me. I continued to be an asshole, and sometimes, a dick. I got a new used car and a union job at a gas filling plant. I totaled my car three times, the last one (actually none were my fault but my record was against me) definitely not on me because a wigged-out dickhead on some fucking awesome drugs stole a pickup truck and ran a red light. And because he was in some gooned-out state of mind, he fled the scene right in front of a Baltimore County Police officer sitting in his car at the Merritt Boulevard fire station. Oddly, the station dispatched to my accident of 5 January, 1995. This was October, 2000. When the guy hit a curb and flattened a tire, he couldn’t maneuver the truck and he bailed and fled on foot. That was a really bad move, because he was off Dunmanway, in Merritt Point Park. In fairly deep darkness as it was cold and rainy, he managed to run right into Bullneck Creek. An officer stayed with me. Kept me at the scene. My car had extensive damage but was legal and capable of being driven. It was totalled because the insurance company just refused to fix it again and gave me enough cash to put down on another car. But standing around with the officer, who was cool and kept asking if I was alright and if he could get me anything, I could hear the chatter over the radio. The pursuit officers were frantic. They could hear someone calling for help but even with spotlights saw nothing. I felt an awful dread come over me. A K-9 unit and a chopper with a bright light responded, but the cries for help had ceased by then. They called off the search. I went home. Three weeks later, near Thanksgiving, a pilot spotted his body floating. Why he was still a floater I never understood, but he had never left the creek, regardless of what the tides had done.
I get why he died. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was drugs and a mind unable to reason under their influence. It hasn’t been any easier to understand death no matter how many times I should have died. And didn’t die, but others did. Oh, the list goes on.
Now I’m faced with the same existential puzzle. Why am I still here while so many people are dying all around the world?
Well, my time will come. I don’t believe in predestination. When people die, they just do. I don’t think God cherry picks souls, and if I did believe that, I’d likely be an atheist. But I’m a believer. And sometimes, God says it ain’t time yet. The why of it isn’t for me to know. But I still feel horrible that so many have left us during this time, never to return. Some never to be missed nor mourned. They were homeless, or had no family, or came from a nursing home, long since forgotten by family. It breaks my heart.
I think it’s a horrific time in history. People better than I am are gone. People who fought the coronavirus, who had the courage to keep doing essential jobs. I’m not playing the “why not me” game. While I breath, however long I do so, I have to keep trying to make a difference. It can be small; that doesn’t matter. It just has to be something that helps the fallen rest. Maybe to show or remind one person somewhere that they taught us something.
When medications aren’t dialed in just right, it’s really sad. People with mental illness can be difficult. Annoying. And sometimes really stupid.
One morning I was cooking scrapple and scrambled eggs. I cracked two eggs into a bowl but I didn’t beat them yet. I was missing something. I thought, Milk. Scrambled eggs need milk.
I didn’t have any, though; at the time I was using Coffee Mate in my coffee. So I thought, coffee creamer…milk.
I put a teaspoon of it in the bowl. I had to turn to my side and flip the scrapple, so I did. But when I turned back a scary sight met my eyes.
In the egg white, little bubbles…no, little marbles of actual white were slowly riding through the albumen to the top.
I panicked; I’d never seen anything like it before. Had I bought eggs with undeveloped embryos?
As I watched in total horror, the white marbles began to absorb each other. They’d connect, stretch with a blob on the bottom, thinning into a connection with the blob on the top. Moving slowly. And it kept generating more blobs, and they did the same thing!
I was horrified! What had I done? Had I somehow created some living thing by accident? Would it continue to grow and escape from the bowl and chase people like The Blob?
My scrapple was burning. I took the skillet off the burner. I looked back. The white blobs were still moving!
What the fuck! It looked just like I’d made a lava lamp! I wasn’t eating this shit!
I emptied the bowl into the trash and threw away the Coffee Mate. Scraped off the scrapple. I’ve never used Coffee Mate since. And I don’t eat scrapple.
I saw my doctor. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was always losing my memory and I fell a lot. I was referred to a neurologist. He said I watched too much TV, the fucker. When you have times when you don’t even know your own name, when you’re walking home and suddenly don’t know where you are, when you black out, you ain’t watching too much TV. Something is wrong. One other thing he said, though, was that the drug Lyrica could be responsible. I’m not gonna say I became a good cook, but I discontinued the Lyrica and the memory blanks and falling down stopped.
Can’t get gloves? Cundrums–I mean condoms, no lubricant, work well on fingers and can be held secure with clear packing tape around your palms. You may need help for that part.
Besides. What comments you’re going to hear from cashiers as you leave the store! People will even take your picture and shit.
I got interrupted one night when I was a teenager. Cop pulls up of course, with the spotlight right on us. “Park’s closed,” he says. He got a look at my date and decided to leave without watching us get our shit together and leave. I was so upset I stuffed myself back in, condom and all, zipped up, lit a Camel and drove the half hour to her house, dropped her off and drove the 25 minutes back to Pasadena. Where, once I got inside, I of course needed to piss. You see where this is going, right?
Yeah, it was stuck. Shriveled up and stuck like it was glued on with industrial epoxy.
And I gotta get it off. And I never hadda do this before. Oh, hair was stuck in there, too. That’s why I understand man-scaping now even though I won’t even think about it. There’s no sense trimming the weeds around a dead sapling, is there?
But I digress.
How was I gonna get this bloody thing off?
I know what you’re thinking. Just stick the damn thing under the faucet and run warm water from the top down, easy peasy.
I was only 18. How was I supposed to know! My father’s out in the den watching TV. I run the water, flush the toilet, and dig my thumbnail under the top and give it a yank. I had to choke in my scream. That shit hurt. I was free of the Trojan, but I was bleeding. And back then, we didn’t have Neosporin. Merthiolate tincture, rubbing alcohol. Peroxide. Bactine. Fuck it all, they each hurt so I tried to pick the lesser evil. I got that wrong, too. I screamed with my mouth closed and I swore I would never, ever put on another cundrum. I mean condom. Never again.
So maybe my ideas aren’t so great after all. I always try to help. Only to end up remembering I’m still an asshole.
Wanna stop telemarketing calls? Even if you’re on the so-called “do not call” list, you’re going to get them. For recorded calls there’s only one thing to do, and that’s make a complaint, and most don’t bother.
But if you get someone live, you’re in for a treat. There’s so much you can do to make them so miserable that they will put you on their own no-call list.
Man: (Indian, Pakistani) I’m calling you about your past due accounts. If you please tell me your last four digits of–
Me: What are you wearing?
Man: Excuse me sir, I’m trying to get your account straight here, and I just need to get–
Me: What are you wearing, boxers or briefs?
Man: Sir, you are being very rude. You have to be professional–
Me: No, I don’t, you do, but if you tell me what you’re wearing, I’m sure your colleagues won’t make a big deal out of it. You sound like a briefs man to me. Am I right?
Man: Sir, that is very wrong. I must have the last four digits of your social security number!
Me: Why? You’re calling me about an account, and you don’t have anything but my name and phone number? I’ll bet you’re really hung. Measure it for me, just real quick.
Man: Sir, we can not share intimate–
Me: Well you want personal information from me, I think it’s only fair that you give me some idea of your penis size. Why is that too much to ask?
Man: Sir, you must know that this call is being recorded.
Me: You’re scamming me and you’re gonna do what? Take me to court for asking how big your dick is? I think you’re a little guy. You’re compensating, aren’t you? You got a little dick–
CLICK
Next caller: (recording) “It is urgent that you call us right away to ensure that you qualify for 4.2% interest on your Visa card. Please press 1 to speak with a representative.” I press 1. The unaccented English is replaced by Bangladesh-Paki-Indian one. “How can I help you today?”
Me: I don’t know, you called me. Scammer: Are you calling about the credit for your Visa/MasterCard? (How many scams are run out of that office if he has to ask?)
Me: I don’t have any.
Scammer: You have American Express card, sir. (I had a prepay card but stopped filling it)
Me: How’d you know that?
Scammer: I have your information right here.
Me: Then why’d you ask? You scamming me?
Scammer: Sir, I’m trying to help you.
Me: What are you wearing?
Scammer: ……………
Me: Come on, what are you wearing, boxers or briefs?
Scammer: You are an idiot.
Me: I’m wondering if you’re hung.
Scammer: I fuck your father! (I’m not certain he meant to say that)
Me: And I did your mother last week.
Scammer:…………………..
Me: Whatcha wearing? Wait. I don’t wanna know. I think you got a little dick. I think you’re angry and you’re compensating.
Scammer: ……………………
Me: Come on, I can hear you. It’s okay to be angry. You should try meditation, get in touch with your feelings.
Scammer: Fuck you
CLICK
It may be foul and inglorious, but HE won’t be calling again.
And a favorite:
Me: Hello.
Caller: I’m trying to reach (my name).
Me: (trying to sound old and confused) Is Albert there?
Caller: What?
Me: Is Albert there?
Caller: Who the hell is Albert?
Me: (hesitation) I’m looking for Albert.
Caller: (slightly agitated) Who’s Albert?
Me: (very confused voice) I’m looking for Albert.
Caller: I called you.
Me: Well, is Albert there?
Caller: No!
Me: Well…I’m looking for Albert.
Caller: (angry man for sure at this point) There’s no one here named Albert, so stop asking for him!
Me: Well….when will he be back?
Caller: (furious now) Will you shut up about Albert? I called you, dumbass!
Me: (hesitation, confusion, delay) Well how can I reach Albert then?
Caller: (haughty, mocking, still pissed) You’re either fucking with me or you’re crazy!
Me: I’m not a homosexual, so I don’t wanna fuck you.
Caller: I–goddam it, you’re crazy!
(click)
I’ve used the “Albert” strategy several times with success; nobody I’ve used it on has ever called back.
Remember that you must never give any personal information to anyone. Especially not over the phone.
While we’re all caught up in the coronavirus, sequestered and scared, I thought I would post something with a bit of levity, but I have to tell you something pretty awful. Scammers have switched from usual routines and are selling home-testing supplies for COVID-19 detection. There is no such thing but people are scared and they’re falling for it. Utilize caller ID, if it can be set to detect spam, and don’t forget that scammers have fake IDs. Hell, I got one from FiOS once. It wasn’t FiOS.
It’s a bowl of soup kind of day. I had some on hand, Progresso Pot Roast with Country Vegetables. I don’t know what the fuck country vegetables are, but apparently they’re potatoes, carrots and green beans. I hate soup. Guess where I’m sitting now? I’ll give you a hint: I ain’t got a table or a TV in front of me.
After I had the last drop down in my belly, I belched. Who the hell ever belches after eating soup? And you know what that belch tasted like? Cucumbers. Raw cucumbers, no pickling juice, no pickling spice, just raw cucumbers. There ain’t no fuckin cucumbers in Progresso Pot Roast with Country Vegetables.
I stood up. I smelled battery acid. Like I was standing over a car battery that’s being charged. I made it outside into the wet, cold, fresh snowy air long enough to indulge in a cigarette. The battery acid followed me.
If I make it out of this small room (which has no table) any time before I die of old age or dehydration, whichever comes first, I’m gonna take some Imodium. Two to start, then another after I inevitably return to this prison.
CAUTION: ADULT LANGUAGE AND MATERIAL. POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING. DISTURBING CONTENT.
In every neighborhood there’s one guy who can make some people sick while causing some kids to fall off their bikes in gales of laughter, cause others trauma, and piss off all the rest. One day I saw first-hand who that guy was in our neighborhood.
I’d heard stories. Never directly, you understand; it was just me overhearing adults talking.
I had a spider bike. I guess I was about nine at the time. One day I was riding with Phil Thornton, my best friend. We rode around Valley Drive to Park Creek Road, then at the North Shore on the Magothy sign, turned right to Edgewater, heading to Dutch Ship Road where I lived. It was cool and overcast. Early Spring, 1969.
A vintage spider bike
Phil was behind me. The hill going up Edgewater Road was a bit steep for bikes with one sprocket or gear. It was slow going. To the right were two houses. The one at the top wasn’t a concern. I can’t remember who lived there, but that’s because they kept to themselves. Now the house I had heard about was midway up and I was abreast of it, and I looked, and the front door was wide open. An older couple lived there. The man was the one I’d overheard the bad stories about.
North Shore Road at Edgewater Road.
“Hey Phil,” I said, looking back, “Art’s door’s open.” I had told Phil the stories as best I had pieced them together. I stopped to wait for Phil but unfortunately I looked back at the open door.
It was at that moment that Artie the Weenie wagger walked across the open doorway, fat, pale and stroking an impossibly long dick. I mean a foot of the thing, curved upward and uncircumcised with an angry red head. I’ve never forgotten this image; it was too shocking and absolutely hilarious. I collapsed in fits of laughter and the door slammed shut. I gasped out loud, “Did you see that?” I pushed uphill with my feet, totally unable to pedal; my legs had gone wobbly and weak as I gave in to deep, abdomen-cramping belly laughter. Phil had an older bike. In struggling up the hill, he’d had to concentrate his attention on the road. He didn’t see what I saw.
On reflection I came to realize I wasn’t freaked out by it because of my own sexual abuse. I’m glad he didn’t see Artie in the open door.
Eventually, kids’ parents forbade them going there for trick-or-treating. One day, a blue and white Anne Arundel County Police cruiser was parked in the driveway. And just like that, old man Art was gone. Left behind was his long-suffering wife, a sweet and kind woman who sold the house, unable to escape the abuse heaped on her by neighbors who blamed her.
That was how people were back then. Boomer parents blamed her for not satisfying her husband. But I had seen her in tears over the shit her husband did. I mean, she had no power to suppress the urge of a man who masturbated in front of little boys.
I heard stories later. Girls in groups selling Girl Scout cookies weren’t even safe. He didn’t molest them, but despite their numbers, they’d get an eyeful.
Then there were the days before anyone knew. When Artie was new in town. At least two mixed groups of kids went there on Halloween, 1968. He answered the door in a bathrobe and made them come into the house. They felt trapped, as I recall.
Weenie waggers are as old as men with dicks. I escaped trauma because I was already three years deep in trauma caused by much worse than seeing a fat man with an abnormal wang beating off in his doorway.
Artie Left and we never heard from him or his wife again. Soon he was just a bad memory except to me. I still laugh every time I get reminded of it. But I’m an asshole.
But he left behind kids and parents who couldn’t talk about it much, and who probably never got over, the sight of Artie in his open doorway.
I’ve seen a bunch of bad shit in my time. Been through my share, too.
Now, I can’t claim academic creds or knowledge. I got my GED nine years after dropping out of high school on my father’s order. Didn’t even crack a book and passed on my first try. I used to be proud of it. I’d proved my father wrong. I called him right away from Fort Bliss. My wife at the time never forgave me for not calling her first. She never understood why I needed to shove it in his face. In 1978, after my junior year, I had six goddamn credits. I’d have been in school another two years and probably still not have enough to graduate.
That year at Wroxeter-on-Severn school in Arnold, MD, I had dated a girl named Julie. All we ever did on our dates was park and have sex. In the Spring I got a blowjob from her down by the Severn River in the woods. Someone saw us. Well, someone followed us and I never did find out who. But in short order, it became known that the prep school wasn’t “inviting” me back, and that’s when my father informed me that I was so stupid that I may as well drop out and go to work for him full-time.
I’m getting off the track here. Julie broke up with me in early July by way of a postcard from Ocean City, New Jersey. I was plunged into a period of depression and self-loathing that no matter how much she and her parents hated me, it was nothing to how much I hated myself. I would never have, from that time on, a normal relationship. At least I learned from it. I’ve not been in an intimate relationship since before the Twin Towers fell. I’ll die alone.
At least, I tell myself, I did finally learn. And taking the GED almost a decade later, earning it without opening a book, was vindicating. I began to realize that I was no dummy after all. I had passion for learning and I studied several things. The first was history. My teachers had made me bored to hell with their stupid lessons, one asswipe doing nothing more than to read straight from the textbook for a whole period except for examination days. I also knew he was fucking two students who were sophomores but what the fuck did I care, I mean, I thought they were sluts and he was a rapist but I couldn’t prove anything. So fuck em, I thought. He lasted two semesters. I rather suspected that staff had deduced his promiscuous proclivities. Fuck him.
I was bitter. I grew more bitter over time. I dove into a study of the paranormal and ancient mysteries. I’m still studying. It’s a subject you never finish. My experiences with evil and the paranormal made me thirst for understanding.
I also studied The Passion. I believed in God, but I had to know if that belief was good or bad. In the Bible, so many horrors were written that I really didn’t like it very much. Well, that’s not completely true. Some selective reading from the New Testament was okay. I concluded, as have many before me, that some of the book is the inspired-by-God truth. But written by men. And men are imperfect, frail, weak, always tempted toward evil and crime for personal gain; political and religious agendas could well have influenced scribes.
Inconsistencies between the lyrical prose of many parts of the King James version changes many meanings, leading fundamentalists to take nonsense far too seriously. And when I read any version, The Passion made no sense to me. I understood the meaning of the resurrection, but I was missing something. I had to dig for decades before I found it.
I wasn’t stupid after all. But following the revelation that I wasn’t going to finish school, one of my father’s employees, a diesel mechanic, told me that my father had told all of his drivers and mechanics about the blowjob in the woods. God I was embarrassed. My old man was the most evil, hurtful son of a bitch in my life. And for much of my life, through beatings and lectures, I was too much like him. A racist, a workaholic. But racism had been reinforced by experience.
I lived through the Baltimore riots of 1968. It was terrifying. Why my mother had to go into the city, I can’t recall, but she did, and I was with her. Black youths threw a bunch of crates into the street, hoping to hang her up and stop the car. Had she stopped, I can only wonder what would have happened.
That was the beginning of my race-based fear. That story changed my father, too. He got his handgun out, broke it down, cleaned and oiled it. He made a declaration I can’t repeat even in writing.
In junior high a few years later, at a school so overcrowded because of bussing that there were split shifts, a morning and an afternoon split of students, we heard rumors of a race riot. Fortunately the police were there as the morning shift left as the afternoon shift was incoming, and nothing happened. But I was terrified. I was also bullied by one classmate who was black, but he eventually found me funny, and let up. And I determined never to be like my father.
And come to think of it, I remember “White” and “Colored” restrooms. I saw the signs but couldn’t read yet. Somehow on a trip with my father, being very young, I opened the door by myself and went to pee. I was in the wrong restroom. Some men scared me, but an older man in suit and fedora waited for me to finish and stood guard. He yelled at the others and they stopped their teasing. The old man took my hand and led me out and asked me where my daddy was. My father saw me and grabbed me and later, of course, there was a belt whipping because I’d scared him. I can no longer see the old black man’s face, but these many years later, I still hear his gentle but stern voice: “Now you go to your daddy, boy, and don’t you do this again.”
We look at science and medical advancements and think we’re really smart. Instead we are looking at our own foolishness and everything it has wrought.
Miles of garbage floating in the Pacific. Hazardous chemicals in our food. Species going extinct, crops failing, bees vanishing. In 50 years our map will be different because of climate change. Many will die along the way from heat injuries, inaccessible drinking water and food shortages. Homeless children already haunt our cities and no one cares. What we’ve become is something I never imagined I’d see.
CORONAVIRUS
We’re less than a week away from March Madness. The NCAA has said that it may not admit spectators. Or it may, but in limited numbers to give people space. Meanwhile, all the New York-based late night shows have begun to tape without live audiences. The Coronavirus has shown itself to be a major threat if we treat it as Italy and China have done. And we have a nutball president telling people that they can still go to work if they test positive. Only that’s just bullshit and still merely half the problem since even getting tested is unlikely at present.
I’m not going to downplay this. It’s bad and it is spreading. I see people taking precautions, but I see more people not doing so. They don’t give others space in checkout lines. They don’t clean hands when they should. The virus had been previously though not to survive for long periods on surfaces, but now we know different.
Then I see the ones that act hysterical, wearing masks, their eyes wide with fear if you come anywhere near, and it’s chaos. Trump and Pence are not only proving our government incapable of rising to meet a crisis. They’re also proving that they, the two of them, are so inept that I can’t be the only one wondering if they can even wipe their own asses.
Look. I’ve been through a bit of shit. Seen a lot, too. But I’ve never seen anything like this. March Madness without any spectators? The Late Show with no audience?
Never been here before. We have to do better, but we have to demand better. How can an individual self quarantine if they haven’t been tested? The flu season isn’t even over yet. Trees and grasses are beginning to react to warmer weather. Allergies aren’t far off. Symptoms of other things can and will lead to more hysteria, which I’ve seen break out many times. Not like this is causing, though.
One year ago I posted this on Facebook. It’s raw, unedited for language, but it came straight from my heart and the Good Lord understands. He knows how we suffer. He knows how we will react. My apologies to Him for my lack of faith.
Here’s the post:
I’m up late because I can’t sleep. Again… I have no one to talk to, so I’m just gonna ramble if that’s ok with you.
I’m always haunted. Night time is when all the worst things happened when I was growing up. They would come to my room after the other kids were asleep. Sometimes at one in the morning if a brother or sister was sick. But after they were tucked in with Vick’s in the vaporizer and the NyQuil was kicking in, they would come. They replaced my doorknob with one that had no lock. And it didn’t matter if I was asleep or awake, dreading what was about to happen, feigning sleep. It didn’t matter if I felt or claimed to feel sick…it was gonna happen. Mom would take a bath first…I heard the tub filling, and I knew.
You think it’s fucked up, me writing like this. I don’t blame you. So read no further. I’ll never know, and if I did, I’d merely say you have to take care of and protect yourself.
Since I was very young… Iike 6, probably younger, the dark has terrified me. I don’t want to sleep. I fight it. All day long I dread it. But I can sleep better during the day, have fewer memorable nightmares, and if I get enough sleep, I’ll feel pretty good. But I’m not the only one haunted in the dark. And I’m not the only traumatized person who’s lived to almost 60 while being dysfunctional, mentally ill and broken. There are millions like me, many in far worse shape. I beg you, if you’ve read this far, to think of them. If you pray, pray not for me, but them. If you have the strength to send positive vibes, don’t waste them on me. Use them for the ones who can still do something with their lives…. And of course, cry for them.
Having gotten that out of the way, let me get to the reason I’m up right now. Don’t ask me this fucker’s name, but you’ll know who I mean. It’s that monster who broke up his marriage, his wife threatened to take his kids away and so, naturally, he killed her. Then he strangled his younger daughter in front of the four-year-old, who asked him, “Is that what’s going to happen to me?”
Those words have burned a hole in my heart. I’m hurting and I’m sick in my soul. I can a almost hear her. Soft, innocent voice full of shock and fear. How can anyone harm such a wonderful creation, such an innocent soul, who asked that question because she did not know how else to plead for her Iife and couldn’t understand what was happening or why?
But we ask, and there are never any answers. Never. Criminal profilers and psych graduates know nothing. The offenders get interviewed and say nothing even though they use words. Then there’s doctor-patient confidentiality, often abused because in a capital case the doctors have to testify often, but are stuck by the legal rights of the accused. If something the accused said to the shrink isn’t case related, it’s inadmissible. You know how many hard core animals walk free or get leniency because a dead child matters less to the judicial system than the rights of their murderers?
About ten years ago, a 16-year-old in my town was raped. The rapist was given what amounts to walking papers. Go ahead, look around. Check state case histories. Don’t settle for Google links to blogs or some statistics aggregate bullshit. Look deeper.
Those little girls. They haunt me tonight. They probably always will. Michael Jackson probably was the beast people claimed he was a long time ago. And the rapper who went nuts during an interview with Gayle King? That ain’t no innocent man. If he was, he’d never have acted that way. The innocent do not behave thus. And in all of this, I am forced to wonder: where was God while those girls were being murdered? Why did he look the other way? I don’t get it. I’ve seen miracles with my own eyes. Why couldn’t they have one?
Why are there thousands of Hispanic children at large in our country, and how did that happen without the American people rioting in every city in our country? And why are they being trafficked right in front of us? Why have some of them reported being sexually assaulted, and nobody’s investigating (claims of every case being investigated is bullshit), and why aren’t victims getting help?
And why is Betsy Devos involved? Why are these children being called “orphans”, and why are some being fed into facilities she’s associated with? These kids ain’t like I was. They’ve had everything taken from them, every shred of innocence, privacy, dignity. They will never fear the night as I do. No. They will fear day and night both. They’ll fear everyone they meet. And they’ll haunt me as the little girls who are dead haunt me. As the boy I used to be haunts me.
Betsy Devos claims the title of “Christian”. She’s nothing of the sort. Wealthy people violate the most basic criteria. Jesus said “A man cannot serve two masters: God and money.”
Google the net worth of televangelists, and you’ll get your eyes opened really fast. We’re talking millionaires, and every one of them as materialistic as the most jaded rapper, actor or rich politicians and doctors. They don’t just have a Porsche and Mercedes Benz, and matching second cars like Ferraris.
Televangelists, a few years back, went through some weird phase when they couldn’t live without their own private jets. One motherfucker said, from his pulpit, that he paid cash for one. Then he bought another one. With cash. He told his church members to their faces they’d been bilked and played. They cheered the bloody bastard.
Joel Osteen seems cheerful; always smiling and positive. But this piece of shit lives in a ten bedroom mansion with just his wife and kids. Does he offer shelter to the homeless? Fuck no, you kidding me? During a hurricane he lied and said his church was flooded. Refugees not welcome here in God’s house. When cameras recorded the lie, Osteen changed his lie to cover his first falsehood (some believe he had a member overrun the mop sink to add effect).
A female televangelist once ordered granite or marble tops for her toilet tanks. When the story got out, she turned positively outraged. They all live by the credo, “I earned every goddamn penny. It’s nobody’s business how I spend it.”
These people and more back Trump and even his actions with immigrants and especially their children. There is no greater dishonor, no graver sin, no crime as horrific, as harming children.
When Allied troops finally entered the slave and death camps of the Nazis near the end of World War Two, the world was sickened by the newspaper articles alone, never mind the filmed footage. By then, not many children were left in the camps. Most were murdered, lying in pits covered in lime and earth.
We used to have a double standard about children. Labor, forced and deadly, was fine. Then we passed child labor laws. Now, today, we don’t seem to give a damn.
We’re numb. Dead inside. We cluck in mock sympathy and fuck with words. They mean nothing.
Say what you want about politics. Climate change. Whatever. But unless and until we get back to caring for and protecting all children, we’re doomed.
And tonight, I’m haunted. I will fight sleep. Because I can’t face the nightmares sure to take me.
Some years back, and by that I mean in the 80s, there was a department store called Hoschild Kohn in the Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The mall was a nightmare. I mean, old and creepy. At one end there was a tall fountain surrounded by smoothed boulders and plants. Floor had a pea gravel finish. Every sound echoed. The water stunk. Aviaries with wire mesh extended from the floor to the ceiling. They stank as well. Over the fountain went a stair, and up top was a Horn and Horn cafeteria. Never once ate there. Back in the 60s when shoes were made in America, I’d get hauled along with my brothers and sisters to Plotkin’s shoes. Creepy store. Had fun house mirrors on the wall with a clown painted as if holding each one up. There was a Lane Bryant in the mall. Another shoe store in the middle that was sunken and yet open, and a Kresge five-and-dime. The rest is a blank to me because I really fucking hated that place.
No matter. When I was a teenager the place was thankfully falling apart. Not structurally; it was built of strong stuff. But the bank and overpriced jewelry stores were losing bucks. At first I was sorry. The place did have a Walden Books… Shortly before the mall’s slow demise, Hoschild Kohn tried something I still consider laughable but creepy.
They were hemorrhaging cash. Of course, when you don’t turn inventory over fast enough, you’re a goner. Costs of operation, utilities, leases, payroll…can’t be met without bank loans. And by then ever larger interest on loans used to purchase inventory are your death-knell. By the time you get to start paying the principal on one loan, you have to take out another one just for seasonal inventory like coats, hats, gloves, and so on. I’ll point out that ten years into the future, the mighty Montgomery Ward would follow close behind.
Well, you gotta hand it to Hoschild’s. They thought (or someone in some boardroom said) that the real problem was shoplifting. And there’s some truth in that; back before electronic surveillance and security scanners at doors, there wasn’t much else but store security guards to discourage women from shoving curtains up their skirts. No shit, that really happened. Really. Got caught, but it was widespread, and you couldn’t catch them all. So Hoschild’s decided it was a problem worthy of a drastic response. And the Anne Arundel County Police rose to the challenge. But they did it in such a way as to practically say to management, “You can’t run your store? Well we can’t fix that.”
They had a couple of female officers work the store undercover. And I don’t mean as roving detectives, patrolling incognito, either. Oh, I know, I know. You’re wondering well, if they didn’t do that, what did they do?
They dressed up in store clothing, complete with wigs, thick makeup and accessories, tags with string still dangling from sleeves, stood on a pedestal, and pretended to be mannequins!
And the coppers leaked this to the media! And even described one “decoy” as a black woman. And that store, in Redneckville-of-the-Mid-Atlantic, wasn’t in possession of very many black mannequins. It all went wrong from the start. Parents would point her out to their kids. The older kids made fun, wadded up gum wrappers, and threw them at her. The younger kids cried and clung to mummy and on subsequent trips into town, they’d sob in their child safety seats and beg her not to take them to the place where the scary living statue was. Once, as I stared, I saw her change poses, I’m sure to rest an arm or whatever. I’d say, “Aha! You ain’t no mannequin”, and sure enough, someone who didn’t know about her would be nearby, and I swear, you could hear the hairs rising on the backs of their necks! Some drained completely of color. Others were pissed because they didn’t like being scared.
Finally the store moved out of the mall to the former Hutzlers building. The end was near. Because studies prove most store theft is done by employees, it usually isn’t a serious problem, at least when management catches on, and arrests and terminations are the evidence. A mismanaged store trying to stay 60s and 70s was doomed, and women pretending to be dummies weren’t going to change that simple fact.
Just a slice of history from one small ‘burb in the Land of the Free. After Montgomery Ward followed in the nineties, Hecht Company also vanished.
You can’t expect to save a business with a couple of dummies.
Why then would people expect to save a country with a couple of dummies?
Look. I’m a wreck from head to toe and it was already bad enough before I got sick. By my count I’ve had the flu four times since Christmas, or the same one with relapses, I can’t really tell. The fever, cough, diarrhea, headaches…. Running nose.
But lately the worst by far would be the runaway nightmares. Not quite like PTSD nightmares, yet the same except they’re jacked up on steroids and LSD. Because they are vile.
Do you ever dream about being chased or trapped? Of course you do. Almost everyone experiences those, maybe not regularly, but at times in their lives when they are most stressed, or feeling isolated. Beyond that thin requirement, no one really knows why our own minds torture us so.
In fact….No one even knows why or how we dream. It’s the Undiscovered Country. We still can’t figure out why we get sleepy and then sleep, although case histories have informed us that going too long without it can induce a myriad of horrifying symptoms, one of the worst being hallucinations. Go beyond that and the person simply dies. There is a specific disorder, FatalInsomnia, and like the name says, you get it, you die.
That would be merciful next to PTSD nightmares which are augmented by fever, as I am finding out on my own. I do have insomnia and sleep apnea, a seemingly unlikely combination, yet it is so. And since Christmas, I don’t remember any nightmares being as fucking traumatic as those of the past week. They’ve been during deep sleep, however brief, and they’re some of the worst I’ve ever had.
I’ve talked about dreams before. In my post “Bolero Hats and Thunder” (see my archives) I described a particular nightmare that had prophetic elements to it. Oh, I lived to tell the tale. That’s not really all that good. The demon comes back.
Don’t start thinking I’m being hard on myself here or saying something controversial because I fancy myself some asshole who’s been through enough to know everything. I only have one reason I want attention. That is so you or someone you love never ends up like this. Early intervention with PTSD can ease some of the suffering. I recommend regular therapy whether single or in trauma groups by experts you must personally vet. I also recommend talking to your doctor about possibly taking certain medications and absolutely you must consider exercise and diet. See a dietician who can access your records, don’t rely on web sources and, whatever you do, please don’t buy snake oil from TV ads and infomercials. Those should be banned by the FCC. Nothing about them is proven. “Doctors” who endorse these fucking products are quacks. Remember what’s at stake here. Your mental health and your physical health are not separate things. This is your life we’re talking about.
I have no answers for PTSD dreams. The syndrome is an actual physical condition: post traumatic stress disorders cause multiple symptoms in people including eating disorders, panic episodes, flashbacks which can lead to a dissociative state of mind, resulting in the mental reliving of incidents that may have happened long ago (studies by hospital trauma teams have turned up a disturbing connection between PTSD and serious accidents in the workplace and on the highways because of “distraction” by episodes of dissociative states), nightmares and sleep disorders, coronary disorders including heart attack, blood pressure disorders, digestive system disorders including IBS and IBSD, severe depression and severe hypomania which resemble bipolar disorder but really aren’t, and behavioral changes of each end of the spectrum, notably a disinterest in sex or a promiscuous and risky hypersexual lifestyle. There’s more, but the combination of any of these are different in all subjects; no two people are alike.
Articles, books and papers by professionals have tried for at least a century to lay out what PTSD is and what causes it and how to cure it.
In ancient times warfare caused the same psychological effects as it does today. By the time of Alexander the Great, battlefields were strewn with bodies and body parts. Guts, brains, entrails filled the air with a stench any medic or close combat veteran or villager today knows and can never forget. The night would bring sieges of battlements by crude artillery, or it would fall silent except for the screaming and piteous cries of the dying. For some, one battle was enough. Others took longer. To even think PTSD wasn’t real is to overestimate humans then compared to now. What always happened was something recorded as far back as ancient Assyria. That’s not even considering what happened before. Hunters wounded in a violent battle in prehistory by a mammoth or an even worse animal trying to claim the kill would never be the same. It would not be called “PTSD” until late 1979 when Vietnam veterans were in- country one day, on a jet the next, arriving home in 48 hours. We can assume a little about veterans of earlier wars. Post-World War Two and Korean Conflict veterans were treated at Veterans hospitals stateside, and depending on their symptoms, kept for the rest of their lives or released. Others went straight home. One distinct difference between 1941-1945 and what followed is that returned soldiers could proudly wear their dress uniforms and be welcomed home by adoring crowds even in small towns. To some this and the travel time on a ship to the states could have been a help in transition. Buddies supported each other, some listening, some talking, but even with that, heroes always had problems. Artilleryman Frank Cunningham once had to take a Thompson or an M-1 Garand and charge a Nazi machine gun nest. The MG-42 was the heavy machine gun feared by allied infantry and artillery alike; it spat bullets at such a high rate that charging a position was considered suicide. The troops called it “the zipper” and there was rarely only one. A fixed gun in a bunker window was called a “murder hole”. The weapon had only one weakness: the assistant gunner had to change barrels because the rate of fire made them overheat. While the change and reload time could be fast, it did give infantry time to find better cover, or, in Frank’s case, time to get close and toss a grenade and eliminate the position. He was awarded a medal, one of several.
In a report I once read, the authors claimed that mild cases of PTSD cleared up on their own or with minimal professional treatment. I dismissed it out of hand then and I still do. MRI studies have shown that there are actual changes to the brain and they’re not just real, they’re permanent injuries. Some images show profound changes while others seem minimal, and yet no matter what, the subject suffers from the same range of symptoms. That means that a dramatic change has taken place which disrupts everything down to the interruption of neurotransmitters and how they are used by their receptors. That’s really tragic. Soldiers come home different. Storybook marriages end, sometimes messy, sometimes deadly. Victims of domestic abuse, from battered spouses to sexuality abused children lose who they were. In the case of protracted emotional and violent physical abuse accompanied by sexual abuse, the surviving child will, at the instant of the first abusive act, cease to develop normally. Development is arrested and a new child evolves and continues to do so in progressively dysfunctional ways long into adulthood, even after the brain has finished development, in the late 20s. This is due in part to learned behavior, which is collectively known as personalitydisorders, of which there are many elements within each that can combine to defy any certain disorder being named. The resultant diagnosis is “Personality Disorder, Unspecified”. And it’s damnably maddening to treat just it is for a patient to cope with even if he or she understands the mechanisms involved. Later I’ll put it differently: the symptoms of personality disorders and PTSD often appear to be the same.
IN YOUR DREAMS
When he came home, no one really noticed anything about him that seemed to stand out. Frank Cunningham married, had one child and never spoke of his experiences in Europe under Generals Bradley and Patton. A few times, he told his daughter a small story. She became a nurse and came to know he had to have nightmares and other problems. So strong was he that there was never anything again that he was afraid of. That’s also a symptomatic response to the hell he endured and witnessed. After a war, what is there to be afraid of? Once, as a political figure, he threatened infamous mobster Crazy Joe Gallo, the man who was suspected of taking part in the public hit of mob boss Albert Anastasia, head of the Anastasia crime family. Crazy Joe even hired a black hitman to assassinate Joe Colombo, the head of the former Profaci crime family, now the Colombo family, after Colombo drew undue attention with his pronounced activities in Italian-American civil rights, as they knew it was a scam he used to make money from donations while callingout the FBI for carrying out biased operations to target Italians as gangsters. Colombo was shot at a rally and paralyzed, and died 6 years and change later. Between these incidents, Crazy Joe once badly frightened a schoolgirl when she was going home from school. When Frank Cunningham heard of this, he waited for Joe Gallo. When next he saw the mobster, Cunningham somehow put the fear of God into the man. He was one of very few Crazy Joe ever backed away from. To put this into perspective, Joe Gallo was as evil and dangerous a man as any other gangster in the Mafia’s heyday. Being a rogue and having earned his mob sobriquet, he was a loose cannon, and as such, perhaps one of the most dangerous men in New York. Gallo was shot to death while dining in Little Italy in 1972. He went out shooting and bravely drawing fire to himself by charging to the front door to protect his family. Now picture a man who towered over him one day and made a man like Crazy Joe Gallo walk away. He never did fuck with a civilian in Cunningham’s considerable jurisdiction again.
That’s just one possible outcome of PTSD. You fear nothing. You’ll protect anyone no matter who threatens them.
Along the same line as fearlessness is something far worse and far more dangerous: daredevil, disinhibition, compulsive risk taking behaviour. The exact mechanisms for this are still being studied, but what we seem unable to agree on is that thrill seekers and professional daredevils have a different and opposite set of key instigators than risk takers. Complications of the argument are that dopamine and MAO are certainly involved. But what’s the difference?
Academically, I cannot say. I disagree with some conclusions based on my own experience. A thrill seeker can be labeled with a “personality type” which frankly I don’t have any patience for. I see them as people who like the rush of hazardous sports and activities, with personal injury avoided with skill gained by experience. Racing accidents, downhill skiing matches, cliff diving and extreme sports are never without casualties, but that is hardly anyone’s intent.
On the other hand the risk takers are without such concern, usually acting compulsively or impulsively; consequences and hazards are put on the periphery or completely disregarded. When still a fairly new driver, I loved driving fast. But I had neither the experience, and therefore skill set, to perform at high speed. I came very close to dying or killing someone else multiple times. It wasn’t as if I constantly drove insanely, but at times and under certain conditions, something came over me that I have never been able to describe. A warm summer evening, a good rock tune on the radio, girls watching from another car…. Who can tell? When the light turned green, I floored it. Nuts. Who can really tell me what the hell that was? Because I was fearless unless I saw the bright blue bubble gum machine on my bumper. I started to be more aware and made sure those 1977 Pontiacs were not in sight before letting whatever chemical that took over loose. Chased many times, but in a highspeed chase, never caught. Why that was a point of pride shames me now but I didn’t care then. Oh, I didn’t want to be caught; the risk was the fun. I even lost choppers twice, and that’s almost impossible.
Along the way though, I racked up over 35 accidents, including totalling the same car three times. I know, I know. Sounds like bullshit. But it’s true. It was a ’93 Mazda 323, a tiny but tough car. Eventually I was just too scared, as my condition worsened, that I had beaten the odds for far too long. It wasn’t a question of if I would kill someone; it was a question of when I would.
But also, there were accidents when I wasn’t speeding, doing donuts, cornering or ruining tires by burning the rubber clean down to the steel belts and kicking up sparks in the night. The dissociation that hit me without warning also made me ram several cars in the rear. But the risky, uninhibited behavior wasn’t limited to driving. It fueled my sex life, it egged me into dangerous situations and I never seemed to learn my lesson.
Be careful; taking risks, mood swings and serious depression, feelings of being worthless, suicidal thoughts, dysfunctional relationship history and other symptoms of behavior can be diagnosed mistakenly as borderline personality disorder, or BPD. You have to be clear when consulting a doctor. The overall behavior involved with PTSD can closely resemble BPD. The problem is how you proceed with treatment and the incredible stigma of BPD as compared to PTSD. People who are diagnosed with BPD are shunned very often. Although the disorder is treatable and has been observed to ease with age while PTSD does not, word searches for it have sad questions. People ask if a BPD patient is dangerous, is sociopathic, lies constantly or if they’re even capable of love.
Any person is potentially dangerous, and there’s no use in denying it. How many times have you seen a reporter stick a microphone in some shocked person’s face after a neighbor shot and killed someone? Know what they say? “He was always so pleasant. He’d do anything for anyone.”
There’s no stone engraved that says only certain types of people can kill. Nothing, by the same playbook, says that a person with PTSD can’t perform a job, raise a family, be a good mother or father. In fact, people prove it every day. The same is true of schizophrenics, behavior disorder patients, those with OCD, autism and everything else. What remains to be solved and mitigated are the dark dreams of the sufferers of trauma.
We know so little of the brain and dreams, that nightmares are bound to be, as you’ve probably found out yourself, a mystery. Some sources claim a difference between stages of sleep and dream intensity. Some still cling to old school beliefs that people don’t dream except in the REM state, although we know by now that every stage of sleep can produce dreams. The data show several periods of dream sleep during a normal night, with dreams lasting seconds to perhaps even an hour. During the deepest sleep if a nightmare occurs, and people are awakened suddenly, sleep paralysis, that warm place which coming fully awake from is a long and frightful struggle, keeps one from moving or speaking. Experiences tell us of a history of”old hag attacks” during this time, when people feel a “weight on their chest” and see some witch or ancient demon sitting astride them. That would be fine if sleep paralysis alone could account for it, but it doesn’t even come close. The reason: a large amount of literature on the subject contradicts it completely. Not that sleep paralysis isn’t real. But cases go back as far as ancient history of other people witnessing the hag attacking someone else who was sleeping while the witness was awake. Last year I heard a first-hand account of such a case. A mother and daughter sharing a studio apartment: the mother, apparently unaware, slept. The daughter awoke suddenly and saw a hag attacking her mother. She of course woke her mother up and the hag vanished. What’s even more frightening is that the daughter swore adamantly that the “hag” was sucking energy from the mother’s mouth into its own mouth. Steeped in folkloric horror stories, this unfortunately seems quite likely to be very true. It explains why victims wake to feel weight on their chest and trouble breathing. Indeed, the realm of sleep is one of both delight and suffering. It also accounts for six to eight hours of sleep leaving one feeling sick and weakly lethargic.
AUGMENTED NIGHTMARES
There are many things that can cause nightmares to become so severe that they are actually traumatic in their own way. Factors such as health, diet, drugs (OTC, prescription and illicit), smoking, increased stress during the day’s work routine, the deterioration of a relationship, having a loved one gravely ill, financial situation and others all seem to play a part, like extras on a film set. You may not notice them, but they affect the quality of a film nonetheless. For a silly example, I give you Jurassic Park 2: “The Lost World”. It was a silly movie from the beginning to the end, but some of it had sillier moments than others. The extras made for some of the most hilarious bits, like when the T-REX was chasing its infant, carried in the back seat of a convertible by Ian Malcolm. On a street scene, some Japanese tourists are running away, in a tip of the hat to classic Godzilla movies. It’s so quick that if you blink you’re going to miss it. But all things considered, bit players are not so trivial after all.
Of all the bit players when it comes to PTSD nightmares, one of the most powerful is a low-grade fever. You don’t need much, but a fever tends to strengthen at night. When I’ve dreamt this last week, the result was always so bad that my attempts to stay hydrated during the day ended up with something getting drenched in urine during deep, dreadful dreams I couldn’t escape.
I don’t mind telling you this. These are things rarely addressed openly except for the distilled and impersonal websites that range from reliable information to medical myths. The internet is a digital minefield.
WHAT YOU DREAM MAY HAVE SIGNIFICANT MEANING OR NONE AT ALL, DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU READ
I’m a believer that for every nightmare, there are infinite possible reasons, and none are simple. If I agree that the human brain is still the real Undiscovered Country, then dreams are important. They do carry significant meaning, no matter what experts want to fight about. Leaving their quarrels behind is easy for me; I know that ultimately, they tangle so because they don’t know.
LABYRINTHINE TRAPS: RECURRING
My first nightmare of the week was memorable. Influenced no doubt because I fell asleep watching TV, and was surrounded by electronic devices which affect the level of ambient electromagnetic energy (which is claimed by various studies to affect the brain), I found myself with Rachel Maddow in some sort of after hours setting. She was a really funny, charming and somewhat eccentric. Or she’d had a few drinks. We were alone for a second and she was dressed in her normal suit. Then the fever and my PTSD kicked in and ruined my brief time with someone I admire.
She suddenly had guests and she was kicking back. Somehow she had long hair and let it down. She got wild, and began showing strangers large flip cards which morphed into gifs with sexual acts. Different kinds, all graphic. Then she turned into a full figured blonde who was evil and menacing. She chased me, and the building was old, very old, with once stained wainscoting and hardwood floors, all now gone to seed; scuffed and dust-covered. The hallways stank of old urine long ago soaked forever into the hardwood by pets. In a building with no air conditioning. I was running, trying to escape her. To escape it. This place was a true labyrinth, dark, dusty, no way out, one hallway turning a corner and leading to another. I never got out, but toward the end, the corridors shortened, there was little room to move, and yet several doors lined the dim scene. I knew that none would lead to freedom.
Of course, I awoke with wet crotch to find that the second airing, which begins at midnight eastern time, was halfway through. Rachel Maddow was calmly interviewing a guest. I turned the fucking TV off and went to the kitchen to kill the fever. A combination of one Alka Seltzer tablet in half a glass of water chased two Extra Strength Tylenol. Fuck a fever, I thought. Fuck Rachel Maddow too. I’m never watching her again unless I have a pot of caffeine-loaded Starbucks Veranda brewing. No offense, Rachel, mon ami.
Two nights later, weary from the constant coughing that had my intercostal muscles either sore or excruciating, depending on whether they were upper or lower, and again with a fever that rose as the sun set, I fought sleep. I drank coffee and took Tylenol. You think it helped, right? Cause you really want this post over already, don’t you?
No. It didn’t work out that way. Never does, for assholes. Why on Earth would you have imagined otherwise? Did you forget whose site you’re on? Shame, shame on you.
And this time it was even more terrifying than the first. A long time ago I had a 1970 Mustang Mach One. It was white with black GT stripes. I was traveling, not in the past, but some weird-ass future, a road somewhere in Columbia, when it turned suddenly into a dirt track with steep earthen sides, a deep cut into the ground, if you will. I got out to search on foot for the way out, as one wasn’t visible and had to be hidden in the repeated colors of piles and cliffs of clay and dirt. I knew I had passed a yellow diamond caution sign but the symbols on it made no sense. Why had the road stopped? Why had I continued to follow the way forward into a trench? What the hell was this, anyway? Was some tunnel being built? That made no sense; but I found myself climbing a less steep part of the trench’s side and was horrified. Huge “Safety Yellow” construction equipment worked at digging and moving dirt and typical Maryland clay. Menacing things, more than double the size of anything I’ve ever seen. At the top I also saw that so much dirt had been excavated that towering piles of it like mountains prevented me from seeing the way out. I slid down to return to my car and a guy in a hardhat said it was gone. I looked back to where I had left it and it was gone. Looking around I could see part of the right side under a new steep pile of dirt. The hardhat dude handed me a large manilla envelope and a red file folder and said to file a claim later, but for now get out of the area.
This began a frantic flight to freedom. First I found a shack for the construction company, entered it and found secretaries at desks like they were in a corporate building. What the fuck! Scared, but refusing to panic, I followed their directions through a door. I kept coming to places that got lighter over time, with a few windows to see the sunshine I had not seen at the beginning.
How long it all went on, I don’t know. Buildings seemed to connect through a single unmarked door. The doors gave way to new carpeted hallways and large spaces ranging from sparsely furnished and deserted to a doctor’s waiting room with sick children, all unaccompanied by adults. I got the hell out of there by asking a receptionist which of the many doors led to the street. I used the one she lazily pointed to as if she had to answer the question every day.
It went on and on. At one point I became aware that I was coming awake but I went right back to it. The next large space I found had a tall ceiling, full of big windows. The doors were big, leading out to wide, concrete steps and a concourse to a courtyard. All ultra modern, very pretty, but a dead end for me. I found that it was enclosed by tall stone walls with planters on top with ornate trees. I was able to hear traffic close by, but there was no way to scale the walls. They were at least a dozen feet tall.
I finally saw a highway through one section of a building but there was no exit. Two Russian women cursed me and said I was never leaving.
EVEN WORSE
Last night was a real ordeal. Fighting like hell to stay awake was useless. Somehow I found myself in a hybrid version of my childhood house in Pasadena and the worst house I ever lived in and still have nightmares about despite its demolition in early 2005. Parts of it were dirty and old, I found myself cramped onto a cot in a small modified section next to my older sister. For all intents and purposes we are enemies and have not spoken since summer, 1988. In the dream, we were close. A long time had passed and we were older. Our parents, now long dead, could be heard downstairs. Hurling curses and insults at both of us. My sister had a boyfriend but he turned out to be a real turd and left her. We were both desperate to escape the house. I climbed down an unfinished addition being built and I think I was scouting places to go for refuge. I’d seen the houses in real life but not since the 1970s because they’re in Greensboro, NC. But we weren’t there. We were in Pasadena.
Coming back with no ideas, I hugged my sister and cried. It looked like escape meant running with no place to go. I didn’t want that for her. But then it got really twisted. For comfort we became closer over time. Not in a good way, but not exactly crossing a line. One night I saw her getting dressed and holy shit, she had a penis!
What the hell? She’d managed to have a kid while being a hermaphrodite?
This wasn’t my sister! I knew who it was but there was no time to even cope. My parents were sex offenders but had passed some test and qualified to house orphaned children. They began taking up spaces until I had no choice but to leave. I frantically packed what I could in a backpack, but as the children settled in, they began to attack each other with extreme violence, including sexual assault and flesh eating. Before I could escape, I awoke, once again wet of crotch and deeply troubled. The sound of blood gushing through arteries filled my ears even as I gave up trying to forget my horror and revulsion. I took a half milligram of Klonopin, drank coffee, having washed and changed into my day clothes.
Interestingly I had not fallen asleep with the TV on. The power to everything was off. And chillingly, I awoke at the stroke of three, same as the night before: the third hour, the hour of shadows, or demons.
I have had evil spirits haunt my dreams and torment me many times. These experiences are not to be trivialized; they can do damage science denies. Have you ever heard of someone who died of a heart attack in their sleep and someone invariably says, “At least he didn’t suffer”?
How do they know that? If needing to find a restroom in a dream (as happened in the three dreams I’ve described) ends in either waking up a wet mess or making it to the bathroom in time and pissing for ten minutes straight, then demonic and torturous nightmares can certainly trigger a heart attack.
It’s a matter of contention, but the ancient Hebrews believed that nocturnal emissions (ejaculation during sleep) was a grave sin. Even the old testament relates the unlikely tale of a bride of several husbands who refused to impregnate the woman, “spilling their seed on the bed” or, in modern lexicon, “pulling out” instead. So God killed them.
So prevalent this belief in sin seemed that some scholars claim that the demonic succubus was invented. This was a female demon which sexually assaulted men in their sleep, thus accounting for the mess they awoke in.
Really? Like, everyone else automatically knew that a guy in their tribe or camp had a wet dream? Well, according to some interpretations of the law, he had to confess to it, and a succubus became the perfect reason to let him off the hook. Not being an expert on ancient Hebrews or their laws, I take the tale as true simply because incubi and succubi really do date far back to ancient times.
Then again, so do satyrs. The fact remains: there’s still so much we don’t know about the brain and the weird things it does. I’m so often amazed at what humanity has accomplished in the relatively short history it’s had on Earth. Pyramids that morons still claim humans could not have built, and therefore were erected by extraterrestrials. Angkor Wat, an enormous city surrounded by the largest religious structure ever built. So many wondrous things we as humans have done. Leaps in disease diagnosis and treatment, machines that can detect damaged areas of the brain, caused by great psychological trauma. We’ve sent men to the moon despite legions of idiots who say it was all faked by Hollywood.
Yet myths and false and dated beliefs are not going away anytime soon. We still don’t know why we dream. We guess. We do sleep study after sleep study. We can treat mental illness but not cure it. We can’t even cure the worst sleep disorder in existence.
All we can really know is what we experience and share. Eventually, who knows what we’ll find? Knowledge doesn’t come easily and usually not very quickly. We search. We learn from small clues.
All I know is this: mental illness sucks. PTSD sucks. Nightmares suck. Fevers suck. And PTSD nightmares combined with a fever?
Absolutely dreadful.
With the coronavirus spreading, let’s take a moment to remember that if you’re experiencing fever, you’re going to have your dreams change to black and terror-filled shit that no one should have to endure.
I lost my son two years ago on this day. It was Valentine’s Day, 2018. He died almost immediately after taking a single dose of a street drug.
Here is an excellent list of the deadliest drugs. You need to read it, because at one time or another, chances are, you’ve been on or used them. Most are prescription drugs or even over the counter drugs. Easily obtained, most of them legal. Number one will shock you. I was surprised that I’m on or use more than four of them yet have never been warned by a doctor or pharmacist of how they can interact with horrible results.
But my son didn’t die from any of these. It was fentanyl, an opiate much more powerful than morphine. If the dose is too high, as the street version almost always is, especially mixed with heroin, the result is depression of respiratory function, quickly followed by pulmonary shutdown. If not found and quickly treated by CPR and Narcan, the victim dies; biological death doesn’t take very long.
When my son was checked on by his mother, he was already blue and had vomited just before going fully unconscious. At the time he would not have been able to speak. No cry for help. Just a suffocating death.
If you have heard of fentanyl but don’t seem to anymore, there’s some parents in Ohio you might want to consider. This sad and horrific story should break your heart.
My heart is broken. Has been so many times I’ve lost count. You begin to wonder how much a heart can take. I’ve often wondered how I’ve taken so much and lived. The deaths of my children have left me with a mind that avoids thinking about what happens after death; where they are. After his first fentanyl overdose my son was changed. He talked of seeing his sister in Heaven, of running and playing on lush grass with a happy heart. Months later I got the call from his grandmother. The call I’d known was coming but dreaded. My boy was gone.
Fentanyl simply kills. Patches for pain relief are serious business. First responders to a street version overdose wear hazmat gear. They have to. A few grains of powdered fentanyl are as strong as half a bottle of morphine. Merely touching it is extremely dangerous.
Narcan is essential to have on hand when you live with an opiate addict. Unfortunately, the death toll from fentanyl goes on.
In an instance where a user is unresponsive, administer the Narcan. Start CPR if necessary. Call 911; there’s no time for Poison Control. It’s life or death. Mostly its death. You can never stop it all. Addicts lie. They tell you they’re clean. Ask for money for McDonald’s or a pack of cigarettes. Next thing you know you’re standing beside a coffin in a fucking cemetery.
I can’t advise you. I’m sorry. All I can do is grieve with you.
Science likes to play with our heads. You know that, right? It tells its students shitty things that they then must pass on to us, the little people. The uneducated, unsophisticated, the workers who have no time or will to do their kind of legwork. So we do weird things in turn, mocking everything they say and dismissing it all out of hand.
Memories, they say, are unreliable. On that single premise of something that is really far more complicated and much more deep, courts of law have believed or disbelieved, and it’s always been a problem, but now, much worse. If a witness for the state can be taken apart sufficiently to cast reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, a guilty rapist or killer goes free. Or an innocent man goes to his death because doubts as to the memories of defense witnesses have been used with great success.
One night I went somewhere with a friend. I cannot remember the year but I can place it in the autumn or winter for certain. It was 1974, or 1975. A dark night I can never fully remember or forget, nor will I dishonestly fill in the blanks. There are names I remember but will not use. It’s just because somewhere in this dissipated soul of mine, I keep finding something good that won’t let me do certain things. I won’t say I’m a good person. I just have my limits.
What prompted me to open with a few observations about memories and science is that this night haunted me for years. And, I suppose, if I’m writing about it now, the haunting continues.
All I can tell you is, a close friend in my neighborhood had a big brother. Not blood; a volunteer from some non-profit organization called Big Brothers. The volunteers were given a young man who had no father in his life, paired with him on the goal of mentorship. It was a time when we had naive and altruistic idiots who worked for free to get brownie points for college education and credits.
This one cold night, I was invited by my friend to go along with him and his big brother to a weenie roast. Some place called Benfield Park. I don’t know if that was a real name. It was in Benfield, near Severna Park. If such a park existed then it’s had a name change, or, more likely, been bulldozed for the Interstate 97 freeway, or the fucking business parks that are a blight to once peaceful and green suburban hoods or forest land. Either way, no such park exists today. Have to admit that I did at least check before writing this; such a horrible night deserves to be researched, as I would hate to disappoint any sensitive fucker out there with letters behind their fucking name. That’s not a nice thing to do, and besides, I’m already ceding to their demands by admitting this night is a brief fragment of memories broken with blanks between them.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps it was autumn, not winter, because my mother would never have allowed me out without a coat if she’d known how cold it was going to be. But I had nothing but T-shirt and jeans. And in the dark, I sat on the top of a picnic table, feet on its bench. Cold and shivering, pissed because people I did not know were there, and in a situation like that, I didn’t function well. I said nothing and I did nothing. And I shivered. My teeth clattered. And I was full of fear, full of anger. I did ask to go home. I was ignored. Now, hate filled my soul. In the darkest of nights. In the bitter cold.
The truth is that even had I worn a ski parka, I’d still have wanted to go home. These people alternately ignored me or looked at me like I was some fucking idiot, and when, finally, the big brother decided it was too cold to remain there, he drove us to some house. I supposed he lived there. It was bright and warm. I was more pissed, felt like a prisoner, because that meant I wasn’t going home anytime soon. Someone popped some popcorn. They didn’t have that carcinoma-inducing microwave shit from Conagra back then, and I didn’t care for any no matter what. I wanted away from all these people I didn’t know. And I don’t remember when I finally did go home.
You can do all the Psych 101 you want, but would you mind me saving you the trouble? You take a sheltered, controlled, abused kid and without warning throw him into a situation like that, and you’ll get nothing good from it. I was too dysfunctional. Too traumatized. Too fucked up. And no matter how traumatic that night was or wasn’t, I never forgave. I never forgot. And if the story ended there, I’d really like it; I’d be happy to to leave it alone.
But none of my stories ever end well. In North Shore on the Magothy, the uppity neighborhood I grew up in, I never forgave. I never completely forgot. The back yard where I’d once played with plastic soldiers and dinosaurs and steel Tonka trucks, unaware that the fucking neighbors all let their cats out at night and I was sitting in a litter box, was landscaped, an in-the-ground pool was put in, and grass was finally grown. It was prettier, but still Hell. The neighborhood became a place of hell even outside of my yard. The bullying at school went on and on. Bullying in my neighborhood was replaced by avoidance. My friend with the big brother was the last I would ever have there.
Once my anger could no longer be contained, when calling the Mr. Softee man’s sexual habits into question no longer provided an outlet, I embarked on a mission of revenge. My favored method was property damage. Vandalism. Hit people back in their wallets. But somehow I always fucked up. I was seen. And that frustrated me more because you can guess how my father reacted. In a state of frustrated anger, it’s a bad idea to even leave your bedroom much less the fucking house. At my friend-with-the-big-brother’s house I stood and threw a rock through the plate glass patio door of a house occupied by a family I hated for no particular reason. He told on me. The neighbor came round to my house one night telling my father to fork over half a grand to pay for the door. If I had dared speak, I’d have called bullshit on the amount. I got called to the porch, my father asked if I’d done it. I said no. I blamed my friend, who of course ratted on me. That didn’t sit well with the neighbor, but my father didn’t like that fucker anyway. He was adamant. He told the guy to get off his porch and never set foot on it again. Or else.
Inside, my father did a funny thing: he failed to question me even once as to my guilt. My father never brought it up again. And he was like that, and he may have been a monster and he may have fucked me up for life, but when it came to defending me against another person, he fucking took up for me and he never left a doubt that if they persisted he was going to throw down. I’m grateful for that.
Still, the story goes on. I never saw my friend with the big brother again. But life is a real motherfucker. I did run into the big brother again.
Two years passed. He shows up at my church, and he’s my Sunday school teacher. And I grew to like him. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Soon he finished God college, became a pastor, moved away.
Stories like this, you know, can’t end there. He left his church on the Maryland Eastern Shore, came back to his old home, became the pastor of a church near Millersville, north of Severna Park, where I’d spent that night freezing in some park that no longer exists. I passed the church one time and saw his name on the sign. I stopped in to see him. He was, I imagined, an old friend.
He was a kind and decent man. But I was by then no longer a minor. I had a stormy relationship with a girl I used for sex and affection, because I didn’t know what to do. I was lonelier than most. More terrified, more haunted than most. I didn’t want to be alone. Somehow, she loved me. She wanted me to be better. She really cared. One day we were in my car and a song that was still hot came on.
“Listen to this. It’s you,” she said.
“You see the world through your cynical eyes,
You’re a troubled young man I can tell You’ve got it all in the palm of your hand But your hand’s wet with sweat and your head needs a rest
And you’re fooling yourself if you don’t believe it You’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe it
Why must you be such an angry young man When your future looks quite bright to me How can there be such a sinister plan That could hide such a lamb, such a caring young man
You’re fooling yourself if you don’t believe it You’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe it Get up, get back on your feet You’re the one they can’t beat and you know it.”
And she was right. She loved me. Enough to have watched me go through inner pain and let it out in anger. Enough to see me in the lyrics of a song by Styxx released a year earlier. We had great sex. We loved kissing and holding hands and going to movies and watching Saturday Night Live. But I don’t believe I was capable of loving her. At least, not in a healthy way. The relationship was doomed.
She asked me to seek help. If I didn’t change, she knew she couldn’t have me. I went to the pastor who used to be my friend’s big brother. I trusted him to do things that couldn’t be done.
In the end, even he grew frustrated with me. He drove me to Crownsville State Hospital so I could commit myself. It was a betrayal I never forgave. He drove away and left me. I hated him. And if the song by Styxx applied, then it was incomplete; I was worse off than that. I never saw my girlfriend again. Never saw the pastor again. I’ll never trust a pastor ever again, either, and I won’t even go to a church for a fucking wedding.
I left them behind. I didn’t know what I was doing; I was surviving but without any idea how to survive, like a blind man playing chess. It can be done with a computer these days, if the player can remember where every piece is on the board. And memory, that’s a transient and mischievous thing.
If you were shown a Fibonacci series of 50 numbers on a paper, and given seconds to see it, could you remember it one second later and repeat it? Of course you couldn’t. But a mathematics professor could, because a few remembered numbers at the beginning would tell them what comes next. They would know.
But if you go wading into the poison of the internet, memory is often discussed as infallible. The most notorious example is the Mandela effect. People swear Nelson Mandela died in prison and that they remember it clearly. But he didn’t. They remember a different spelling for the cartoon series “Looney Tunes” and swear the Berenstain Bears children’s books used to be the “Bernstein Bears”, and that some inter-dimensional event occurred which deposited us in a parallel world.
People believe strange shit, while ignoring established facts, empirical scientific data. Climate change is an imminent threat, but people still claim that it’s either a lie or a natural phenomenon. I’ll get a lot of satisfaction if I live to see waterfront property sunk like fucking Atlantis; I’ll watch the news and roll over laughing as the rich fuck themselves and realize it too late, because I’m an asshole and that’s what I’d do.
It’s amazing, though, that science questions the reliability of memories, yet those memories are often cemented forever by unlikely chains of events we couldn’t see coming even if we were especially gifted with precognition. I judiciously contemplate my memories. I do. My mission here is to let you see me as I was, as I am. To be as vulnerable and honest as can be. Hopefully you learn, and never wind up like me. Hopefully you see something in yourself that you can change. If you want help and you need it, go find it. Don’t be like me. It’s okay to ask for help. It wasn’t when I was young.
These days it’s hard to muck out what’s going on. We’re in an existential crisis as a country and a species. Lies surround us like a Dolby system. Our lives depend on many things. I’m not optimistic. I’m still cynical. Still doubtful. I see evil everywhere.
But if I can give you hope, then today I choose to say this: the death of an American legend always hits us hard. That’s because we have the amazing capacity of love and deep despair. If there can be no appreciation of the light without the darkness we all face, then I give you the shocking and heartbreaking loss of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna this past weekend. I see people mourning. Honoring him with shot clock violations, wearing his jerseys, leaving mementos at an impromptu memorial outside Staples Center. I see people from all walks of life in grief, sharing memories. Shedding tears. Heartbroken, devastated. You know, as hard as it is to even think about, people are showing us all what makes humanity better than racists and other evil people make us believe we are. There is hope. There is. As long as we can love and grieve such a loss, we can overcome any evil.
And don’t worry so much about memories; I believe that there’s a good reason for their capricious nature. We don’t remember everything wrongly, mistakenly. Some details may become obscure or muddled, but so long as we’re honest, it doesn’t matter. If you’re asked a question you can’t answer, then do not try to. We’re all just surviving. Nowadays that’s hard enough.
Three years ago today. I’ve been thinking of late, wondering how long it’s really been. I couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember. Although I’m in “Facebook prison”, my memories are visible; I just can’t comment on or like posts, or set out anything new. But at least I got to see this.
3 years ago…
I just went outside to smoke. My good friend George (it’s strange, isn’t it, that everyoneshould have a friend named George?) came walking past with his morning Starbucks. He wanted to know how I was doing. He knows I’ve had a rough time lately. But when I answered him, he said, “I kind of knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but I’m meeting my wife at 12 to be put into a nursing home.”
Shock. I just asked, “Why?” But I knew. I just couldn’t fathom how fucking heartless she really was.
“Well, I’m gettin’ to where I can’t do a lot of the things I used to do.”
What do you say to something like that? I knew he’d been diagnosed, and I’d seen him once when he looked like he really was lost. One day he walked past me and didn’t recognize me at all.
It was only months ago. In the summer. He would come by while walking his dog, and stop for a visit. I fed his dog bacon treats, and it had taken two years for me to get her trust; she was a particular kind of hunting dog and her instincts were sharp. She was always on guard.
George talked about painting, taking a class at Howard County Community College. He told me how he used to work on defense systems for fighter jets at Northrup Grumman. He programmed a flight simulator that was really groundbreaking. He’d been all over the place doing so many good things.
I gave George my phone number. Of course, I’ll want to visit him, but I know he won’t call. I know I’ll never find him. I know I just said goodbye to him for the last time. Very soon, George will not be George anymore.
I already miss him. I’m already crying hot tears that mock me while they roll down my face. Big, burning tears that tell me I’m weak, that I got too close, and once again, I got hurt. That I should never open my heart, or wear it on my sleeve the way I do. That I am a fool and a cupcake.
I’m not just crying for myself, though. I’m not that selfish. I cry for George, because of all the unfair things that can happen to a human being, this disease may be the most unkind. To lose one’s own identity and life’s memories a little at a time is a cruel, vicious fate.
I’ll miss him terribly. Today the world is a sadder place. And once more, my heart is broken…
****
And that was three years ago. I never saw George again. His wife still walks by with the dog, but I can’t even pet the animal who still looks back at me when they’ve passed by. Dogs never forget. She knows I’m a friend, but she doesn’t understand why I don’t rush up to her, bacon strips in hand, ready to give a neck scratch. George’s wife never seemed to like me much. She doesn’t like me near her dog.
I don’t care. I miss my friend. I think of him often, and I wonder if there are any days left when he remembers me. I wonder if he still paints. I wonder a lot of things.
Sometimes I don’t post for a while. It’s because I can’t. Words don’t come, my mind’s a blank, I’m busy with nothing, but I’m an asshole. Please don’t forget that…
I don’t remember. Was it ten years ago? More? I hear it less now. Those who are intolerant have come forward in all their hate — except for those who cowardly use the word “tolerance” as a show of how moderate, liberal or how “Christian” they are.
Stay away from them. Be intolerant of the tolerant ones, for they wear sheep’s clothing and are ravening beasts underneath it all.
If I’m a Christian and I say, “I tolerate witches, atheists, Buddhists, or something else, what it really means is that I hate them, I condemn what they do, and most of all, that I am better than they.
There’s too much of that in the world. Far too much. There doesn’t have to be a gulf between us. We are brothers and sisters in every way. We are to help each other, encourage each other, and most of all, love each other.
That’s true. It is indisputable and it is, has been, and always will be our mission in life. Otherwise, life has no meaning. Otherwise, we dishonor ourselves, not others. Otherwise, there is no point in living.
Wars and violence do not give meaning to our lives; they very often take that away from us. Do not be tolerant; respect the right everyone has to make their choices as their hearts guide them to do. There’s nothing worse than judging those choices in others whether they respect your choices or not. There is no greater disgrace than turning away from another who may need support, friendship, an occasional visit or call, a chat on messenger, or a few bucks just because you don’t like their personal choices. You’ve done more than be intolerant. You’ve cheated both of yourselves out of a potentially strong friendship because you’re too elite, too bigoted.
I awoke thinking Christmas is a humbug. Last night something was in my house. I was watching a movie. Behind me in the dining room, there was a noise. Something fell onto the table; the sound of plastic hitting the polished oak. I got up, looked all over the dining room, and there was nothing that could possibly have caused such a sound. It was cold by the table, yet because I have a heat pump, and it was quite cold, the thermostat was set to 77, and I was wearing a sweatshirt and a knit hat.
Sometimes I wonder. Time is catching up with me. I know it and I can feel it. I don’t know how long I’ll be around. Sometimes it’s my depression and anxiety; those will fill you with dread and doom. Other times, that’s not it. I heard another sound a few minutes later but couldn’t tell what it was or where it came from. I wasn’t scared, but I felt, time’s catching up with me and someone is trying to tell me.
But today is a good day. It’s been a good week. Two neighbors upstairs presented me with a box of Bonnie and Pops chocolates. They’re out of New York, they’re famous, and man are they good. I looked up the tin I got online. It retails for thirty five bucks. Wow.
This morning I was so hungry I didn’t think I could go all day without using stuff for my evening meal, the only one I take at the end of the month because I’m broke. My neighbor Jeremy and his little girl showed up bearing steaming hot cinnamon rolls. I made coffee and now I’m feeling pretty good (later they brought over a whole dinner!).
Stephanie gave me a Christmas card. I cried (see my earlier post).
Then my very excellent friend Chris showed up. He gave me a Christmas card, and I was overwhelmed. Then I opened it and there was a gift card for the market up the street. And my very best friend wired me twenty dollars yesterday.
Just when I thought I was bottoming out, my friends showed me I’m not alone. I cannot find the words to give any of them the true honor they deserve.
Sometimes, I forget I’m not alone. Sometimes, I can forget the ghosts that try to tell me my time is coming, and I remember that I love and am loved by good friends.
When the time comes for me to get out of here, I’ll leave behind some who will miss me. I’m grateful for that. And for you. I wish you all a happy and prosperous holiday season.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! My favorite Holiday video. Enjoy and have a wonderful day!
From a Facebook post two years ago this day, December 21, 2017…
He still dreams. He can do that. I’ve always believed that as long as someone can dream, they can live. Because to know a dream is to have hope. With hope, anyone can survive.
Well, I may have been mistaken. And I’ll get to the why part in a minute. Right now, I feel like telling anyone who will pay attention that for two years running, the life expectancy of an average American has dropped. I remember when it was supposed to be rising. It doesn’t seem like it was very long ago. But the reason, or most of the reason as I understand it, is drug use. As in, opioid addiction.
Overdoses cause traffic, work and domestic deaths, and the numbers are staggering. But the drugs under the opioid nomenclature also cause death from long term use. I’m not going to pretend I’m a health expert, and it’s really simple anyway. In the long term, doses need to be increased to maintain efficacy. The body gets resistant. And alone with a bottle of Percocet (oxycodone) and a nasty set of withdrawal symptoms, anyone will take more than their prescribed dose. It happens. It is not restricted to any demographic. It crosses every line into every corner of our country regardless of education, intelligence, income, race, religion or occupation. And there’s not really anyone to blame, because it’s past time to bother with that. When this many (NHCS reports 63,600 deaths from drug overdoses in 2016) people are dying, it is time to figure out what to do to stop it. Nothing else matters.
Recently, the surge of an old enemy, the street drug known as Scramble, has become dangerously available, and people scoring what they think is heroin with a few added ingredients, but nothing exotic, are really buying a substance that’s about to drop them. And sometimes when they drop, they can be saved. And sometimes they can’t be.
First responders need to know things, really before they arrive to a scene, what’s going on. If they can get Nalaxone, or Narcan, into a patient fast enough–or better yet, if a family member or caregiver can have it handy–then respiratory function can be kept up until oxygen or a respirator, as necessary, can be used. In too many cases, heroin mixed with fentanyl causes almost instant reduction in respiration rate, and if it gets low enough, or stops, the cardiopulmonary process stops. Death is minutes away without CPR.
Well with all that, you’d think that once around the block with an experience like that would scare someone into being less inclined to risk it again. But that’s not what happens.
The Scramble combination is powerful. And usually there was already an opioid addiction, and the supply runs short because they have to take a thirty day supply in a few days, or because a doctor has suddenly cut them off–oh yeah, that happens. Not all doctors are necessarily nice people. So an addict looks to the street dealer for help. With fentanyl involved, it’s a dead end street.
I understand this. I’m going through it with someone close to me. I’ve gotten three calls in one month informing me that this family member has overdosed and is in or on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. Three times. Two were within three days of each other.
The reason I may have been mistaken about my philosophy on dreams and hope and survival? He has dreams. But he’s going to do it again. Getting him help depends mostly on his willingness to help himself. Then there’s the kind of help available. If the problem was alcohol, it would be no problem. They would do detoxification at the hospital. Here, that does not apply to drug addiction and repeated overdoses.
All substances allow you to keep your dreams when you’re not at the extremes of a high or withdrawal. But they’re not enough, dreams. Neither is anything else. A spouse, fiancee, loving family, a great job…once the opioid use goes into overdrive, not much can stop it. The numbers say it plain: Death is stalking the user.
I hear an old man’s voice in the throat of my son. I see Hell in his face. And sure enough, the word came: kidney and liver function are off. That’s one of the long term results of being hooked. And I have had to watch it, and I’ve begged, warned, cried, expressed my deepest fears to him…and it does no good. I don’t want him to die, of course. But I can’t stop it from happening.
I’m not here to give anyone advice. I don’t have any to offer. I’m not here to educate; I’m not qualified. I’m not even complaining; no one cares. I’m just saying that we are facing too many crises at once, and it seems we’re losing a couple of battles here. We can’t have that. But instead of hearing reasonable talk and thoughtful discourse, all I seem to be getting is people who are bigoted saying things like “it’s poor people, let them kill themselves”, or “that’s a black problem. So what?”
On the other hand, big pharma doesn’t want too many restrictions, it’s bad for business. Corporate heartless protocols.
Yeah, I’m with the BuzzFeed dude reviewing “Home Alone 2”. It’s not for children. It’s got a sequence that tops the first film in the showdown between the Wet Bandits and Kevin, a genius who can get fucked over by his own parents two years in a row and turn his feelings of being unloved and rejected into a mercilessness worthy of Caligula and Nero combined. I need not go into the story, the BuzzFeed article is as accurate as it is funny. But considering what happened to the Wet Bandits in the first film, well, they died. They wouldn’t have survived half of what evil Kevin did to them, especially the bit with the paint cans. Of course at that point they have severe burns, internal bleeding, fractures, and their chase of Kevin McAllister was already over and they were dying anyway: https://youtu.be/sAyNfRGtrOc
But I’m not here to talk about the many iterations of the Home Alone series. Kevin would have suffered severe PTSD just from being left behind by his own parents: https://youtu.be/yh7-wAy_8ss
Make sure you stay til the end of the video.
And that’s not what I’m here for. Still not it. Oh, this is evil shit, but I ain’t started yet.
Now on the surface, in the above trailer, the new FX film “A Christmas Carol” looks dark, gritty, perhaps even more scary than other versions, of which there have been so many, including one with Mr. Magoo. The cartoon Magoo, not the shitty flick that made diehard fans hate Leslie Nielsen. Everyone has their favorite Ebenezer Scrooge, every one has their favorite film version.
This ain’t gonna be it. It aired last night but Fox is threatening “encore” showings next week. Threatening is a harsh word, but worthy. Stay clear of this horror-filled, very adult version of the Dickens classic. It’s got nudity. The words “fuck” and “fucking” are used. And there’s more. I’m not sorry for spoilers at this point; I’m doing you a favor.
Ebenezer Scrooge, it turns out, was sexually abused by his headmaster. No, I’m not messing with you. Seems young Ebenezer’s old man was sadistic and pretty much “sold” the boy to the headmaster. Of course, his sister comes to get him after she and her mum likely murder the elder Scrooge. She’s not very subtle; when the headmaster protests, she sticks a pistol in his face.
But Scrooge suffers from PTSD and is filled with hate. He cannot thank nor ever love his sister. Nor his nephew, who ends up pissing on Scrooge’s grave.
The ghost of Christmas past is terrifying and makes Scrooge relive a time when Mrs. Cratchit is humiliated by him, made to strip, thinking he wants sexual favors for giving her the money to save Tiny Tim. She’s of color, and unforgivably stereotyped as an islander who swears revenge on Scrooge by summoning spirits (voodoo?) to torment him with the truths he cannot and will not be bothered with or by.
At that point I was counting on such a dramatic change in Scrooge at the end that the darkness of the film would give way to the proper ending.
But whoever wrote this shit was relentless. We get no payoff from suffering through such a ghastly tale. What happens is that Scrooge becomes fixed on saving Tiny Tim. He may or may not have been successful; we’re left without seeing the results of his effort. Mrs. Cratchit, who understandably hates him, sees him out and he refuses to apologize. Her last words are to the three spirits: “There is a lot of work yet to be done.”
The story has been called “infallible” by critics. It’s a tale you just can’t fuck up. Although I disagree, having seen Henry Winkler and Bill Murray slaughter Ebenezer Scrooge. Pretty much every version stuck to the story, and they’re all good. Personally, I favor the Reginald Owen and George C. Scott turns as the miserable old man. And leave it to Fox to do some sick shit like this with such a foolproof story. Somehow, I’m not surprised. Nor am I going to be able to forget this dreck. I leave you with one final thought: I would let my kids watch “Bad Santa” before I’d let them see a frame of this piece of shit.
And no, I wouldn’t recommend “Bad Santa” for children. You can understand, right? Now.
One of my favorite weird news stories made me laugh with every update I read. I neither condone nor encourage serial crimes of any kind, and perhaps the only reason I laughed so hard was because I was on the East coast. Still, we need to consider mental health and provide extraordinary ease of access to healthcare, and the Midwest could be a good place to start…
It began in the spring of 2007. A small town in the Midwest would never be the same. That’s because it went on for over a year, minus a short break, until the fall of 2008.
Maybe the church was first, but it really doesn’t matter. By the time the police chief was preparing to stake the church out at night, the problem had spread. And the chief would say to local reporters, “Hey, it ain’t funny.”
Whether it was funny or not depends on an individual’s point of view, but the chief was downright grim about it. Perhaps, to some, his attitude made it even more hilarious.
Whatever one felt about it, though, the crimes continued. To listen to a woman who worked in a store that had been targeted, it was nothing but terrorism. Pure and simple.
Then it got worse. The police chief convinced himself that more than one person was involved, and that was scary indeed.
Because when you’re the chief in a Midwestern town of less than three thousand people, you don’t want to think someone can go on night after night, staging a crime spree that you hope never makes it to the national press, because if it does, you’re not going to look too good. And the chief of police in any small Midwestern town would rather run away and join the carnival than look like he’s incapable of catching a serial criminal in his small Midwestern town.
But this chief stayed on, even when the story did break national news outlets. He stayed on, because now, maybe it was a bit personal. Besides, who knows, maybe he hated carnies.
But the crimes went on. The local schools were targeted, a rather ominous and sickening turn. On more than one morning, an owner or employee opening a storefront business had the stomach turning lurch hit them like a dose of castor oil. “This is so sick,” they would say, taking a bucket of water, soap and some rags from the back of the store to the front. One source described a woman stifling sobs as she worked, claiming it was “so humiliating.”
And so it went. In one night alone, almost every window at the hotel had been affected. Quiet during the winter, spring 2008 seemed a time when the perpetrator was playing catch-up. The whole town was in the hazard zone; no business or dwelling was safe.
By then the unsub (unknown subject) had long since been given a handle: The Butt Bandit. He never stole anything, never even illegally entered any of his targeted structures. I suppose that, what with the nature of the crime, the word “Butt” was inevitable; “Bandit” just seemed to round out the moniker nicely.
But by then he was a legend. No one could catch him. Only one witness had fleetingly seen him. The description went like this: tall and thin. That’s it. Mainly, of course, because it was a small Midwestern town, and during the hours in which the unsub struck, there weren’t many people even awake.
I’m not really convinced, nor was I back then, that law enforcement was all that keen about catching the unsub. Because, after all, that’d be one messy bust. Grease plus dirty ass plus a ton of paperwork equal one job no copper in their right mind would look forward to.
And it surely took a long time. By the summer of 2008, the unsub was more active than ever. He even repeated attacks on previous targets. The woman who stifled sobs now scrubbed away with teeth-gritting hysteria.
Because the Butt Bandit really wasn’t funny, unless you lived on the Atlantic coast like me and could just read about it, never getting used Vaseline Petroleum Jelly on your hands.
That’s right: the unsub would walk to a target, drop trou, smear his butt cheeks, and sometimes his scrotum and penis as well, then bend over and lean backward against a window, press as if using a rubber stamp, and leave a very clear print on the glass for all to see.
Finally, late into the fall of ’08, he was somehow–finally–caught in the act. Charges of vandalism (at least nine counts, which didn’t begin to touch everything that he had, uh, touched) and wrecking up the peace of the small Midwestern town. The Butt Bandit…was busted.
But sometimes, there are things you never get over. So it is with the small Midwestern town of Valentine, Nebraska. Oh, they may not wish to talk about it, but it’s never been forgotten.
I believe that in half a century, the Butt Bandit will take his place alongside other folk legend characters, becoming immortal.
I thought I would tell this to help you get your mind off Trump.
Huh? Donald Trump?
Oh, he’s going to be immortalized, too. Next to him, the Butt Bandit will be a national hero.
My jokes come back to haunt me. Always. Years ago, when I was on AOL, and you didn’t have to give your life’s history to leave comments on news articles, there was a story that inspired me to comment that Freemasons were spiking municipal water supplies with estrogen in order to boost sales of Viagra and bring it to non-prescription status.
Never one to miss a chance to overdo and run a joke into the ground, I began leaving this hilarious conspiracy theory all over AOL news posts. I didn’t get any responses, and when the thought of it no longer made me collapse in gales of laughter, I dropped it. No more use for AOL, and they began restricting comments anyway.
Months later I see an article that says hormones had been detected in the water supplies of major cities. Someone got the idea of testing the water specifically for hormones!
Of course, hormone levels were nowhere near a hazardous mark, but I always wondered, and still do, if my joke had anything to do with the tests being ordered. I’ll never know. But I’m very suspicious that I rolled a snowball downhill.
I’ve made other jokes. They usually are ignored. However, some trust me so much that they believe what I post. That’s sad. A joke is not so funny that you should risk losing a friend over it.
I’ve got a twisted, dry sense of humor. It comes with an appreciation for Monty Python. It comes with the risk of laughing at things which will get me punched. For my part, I’ve always wondered if I made it onto a local Lodge’s shit list, and maybe they’re watching me. I can’t have that.
I’m now administering automatically generated electric shocks to my nipples via automotive batteries and hotshot cables every time I get the idea that anything about a spiked municipal water supply could be funny.
Like Freemasons giving the men in America limp dicks with estrogen pumped into reservoirs, LOL!
SHIT FUCK SHIT that hurt!!!!
I’ll be going now. I have to look for my right nipple.
I slept on and off. It’s rare to go more than three hours at a time sleeping these days. But yesterday it lasted all day. Then the full moon arose. And whatever anyone else says, whether scientific or statistical, empirical, anecdotal or pure horseshit, the full moon does affect certain people adversely. Scholars can go shit in their hats, too. Too many people with letters behind their names have already been caught making flawed, even false conclusions, and usually it’s for a buck. They need funding for their college-based group, they’re publishing a book or paper, and who knows what.
There’s science, then there’s the unknown. Sometimes there are unknowns which science refuses to even consider possible. For example there’s the Full Moon Effect. No, I’m not talking about werewolves. And crime statistics do not support the claim that a full moon means an increase in crime.
However, there’s beat cops and emergency responders who will tell you something more. They’ll say that it’s a night when the weird shit happens.
The weird shit? Well, yeah, but not weird like funny, humorous. Sick and tragic stuff. Freak accidents at home. Suicide attempts that are unusual in nature.
I know one thing for sure. Being mentally ill and suffering through the most symptomatic days, those are horrible. I’m in a depression right now. I don’t even want to write this shit. I don’t want to be doing anything.
Depression may not be sitting and crying and sobbing. It’s usually a really big deal. I got no energy. No desire to do anything. I hate to move or breathe. I don’t know what triggers a fibromyalgia flare up, but it was here. I hurt from head to toe and Tylenol won’t touch it. I was on a popular medication for a while and it helped but I was always falling, fainting and losing my memory.
And then there’s anxiety and panic attacks. A few hours ago I started trembling. My whole body shook violently and I couldn’t catch my breath. I thought the world was ending. I wanted to lie down and let it happen so it would all be over. A Klonopin helped, but I’d rather be free of that shit.
No one who doesn’t suffer from severe symptoms of bipolar and PTSD can know what it’s like to have all of the symptoms show themselves at once. And maybe I’m not ready to blame the moon phase, but when I looked up and saw it, I hated that fucker with everything I had. Getting flashbacks, terror attacks, have pain pounding through every cell, that shit sucks. And I got nothing to say that you can call positive. The lights I put up last week now make me feel like stomping them under my boot. Christmas is a vile time for me. How could I have imagined otherwise? It was once my favorite time of year. Now, just a reminder of death and loss and how alone I am.
I owe money on copays from years back, and can’t see a therapist. And no one understands me. Some claim to, and I appreciate that sentiment, but no, they don’t understand my crazy. I thought I could tell one friend anything. But for a while now, I’ve been getting told to stop, and they’re impatient, sometimes claiming an incoming call, sometimes when I can tell I’ve gone too far and they just don’t want to hear any more.
That’s okay. I understand that; it’s the way it’s always been, all my life.
Then, even though it was never a movie I’d pick, I watched “The Silver Linings Playbook” with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.
I related to them. Having a mental illness and being misunderstood, being ashamed of having to take meds, I’ve been there. I knew the drugs they mentioned. I’m even on, or have been on, a few of them.
It struck me when he was out running and Tiffany would catch up to Pat, and doggedly try to get his attention. They shared an attraction, but he wouldn’t admit it. I think it’s her best role, but it left me confused. I wish I could have met someone like her.
If you see any of yourself in me I have some advice.
Life ain’t no movie. You ain’t gonna be kissing Jennifer Lawrence. You’re not gonna have the energy to dance. You won’t like crowds and you’ll never ever perform in front of them. And no one will ever understand you as much as you wish they could. They’ll make fun of you. They’ll tell you to change the subject or they’ll make excuses to get away from you or hang up. They’ll tell you they love you, but never in front of anyone else. Don’t be bitter. It’s just how they are. They ain’t like us. Be happy for them. Because there are already too many of us.
It’s good to think positive. Have goals. But I don’t know about a silver linings playbook. It’s just a fucking movie.
About three years ago, I stopped and said hi to a new neighbor. She’d just had a baby girl. Later that day I saw her again on my way up the footpath to the shopping center. I stopped and said hi again. I scared her. Or just creeped her out. Sometimes that happens. I look like I just walked out of Folsom after half a century. Okay, actually it happens all the time.
One night, maybe the same night, she walked by with her husband. I was sitting down the steps by my door having a smoke. He stopped at the top of my steps on the main sidewalk, kissed her passionately, and that was sweet. It’s something I’ve seen before, though. It’s a guy thing. A signal to another guy. Or guys: stayaway.
I left them alone after that. I understood. And there’s never anything you can do about it; a wall has been put up. It was okay with me.
A couple of months ago, I was outside talking to my next-door neighbor. He lives closer to them than I do, so they know him. It seemed awkward for me to be standing there while the mom and the girl, now walking and talking and as precious as she could be, said “hi” to Chris but not me. It was still okay, I understand these things. And I’ve probably gotten far less pretty these fast few years. I’ve taken to shaving with the lights off. So, it’s all good.
One day the girl mistook me for Chris. Which I took as a heartwarming compliment. Oh, to see through a child’s eyes. I remember what that’s like. I said “Hi” to her and and Chris came outside and so we both were talking to the mommy and her girl.
I even met the mom’s dad, an Asian-American man close to my age, and I liked him and his infectiously wonderful laugh and easygoing nature. I got to know the family just a little. And that’s how the promise got made.
The girl’s mom mentioned that her daughter loved Christmas lights. Funny. I’ve had lights up every year I’ve lived here, but last year a section of one string didn’t light, so at the end of the holiday season I took them down and tossed them. And with my son gone, I figured Christmas was a bad day for me anyway. Christmas day 2017 was the last time I saw my son alive. I guessed it was just time to put it all away.
But when I heard my neighbor say her little girl loves Christmas lights, I said, “Well, I wasn’t going to put lights up this year, but you know, just for her, I will.”
Her mom is young, but I found her friendship touching. Her husband is a strapping, really sturdy guy. I thought of him as a type-A male with an attitude. But he’s been nice. It’s good to know names and be okay to say hi when you see someone. Because that’s what makes life easier, less lonely. And it’s how I wish everyone could be.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours washing windows and stringing the lights, which have to be run on the inside because the condo has no outside outlets. I saw the mom as I was taking a break. She and the little one were outside and I had not seen them in a couple of weeks. She had been sick. I said I was putting the lights up. She pointed to them and the girl’s eyes went wide, and she smiled.
After dark, when they were on, there was a knock on the door. Mom and the girl were there and the girl said, “Thanks, Mike!”
And my heart melted.
It isn’t much.
So here’s where I’m going with all this. Sometimes making friends takes a while. Be patient. Sometimes, good things really do happen.
And when he gets to heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell, “One more father reporting, Sir. I’ve done my time in Hell.”
I awoke late today. First I thought it was Monday. I drifted off again. When I next woke up, I thought it was Sunday. It was near 13:20 hours. Past noon. The nightmare had continued each time I awoke, a relentless, haunting, vile affair which held me in its vise-like grip, and once asleep again, it took me to places I didn’t want to go, where I saw faces I didn’t wish to see.
NIGHTMARES IN REAL LIFE
These things are not rare for me. It happens all the time. Each time I can, usually, find something to rationalize the ugly and frightful dreams. Like last evening when I was forced to take Benadryl. I was feverish, freezing, every joint, every muscle in different stages of aches and pains. I’ve had my flu shot. It’s just a bad cold, I tell myself. I could have gotten it anywhere.
But then, I’m shaken by the nature of my nightmares. I see my parents. I hear them talking. Talking to me. Teasing, taunting, telling me I’m shit, trash, like they told me all my life. The faces of my children are there. Benign. Silent. Impassive. I don’t know why they don’t save me from the horror. Don’t they know I’m being tortured?
It would be wrong to blame them if they refused to come to my aid. After all, did I not let them die? Was I not able to save them? Is a father’s guilt not inexcusable?
DECEMBER 24, 1994
It was cold. You know, really, really cold. I was delivering pizza for Papa John’s. The store closed early, around dusk.
With nothing to do, I wandered around Dundalk. I worked there but was staying with a younger brother in Pasadena. I didn’t want to go there and sit the rest of the night.
I had been dealing with an eye infection, and since I was recently separated, my heart was broken. I was allowed to see my kids on Christmas, but I had no plan to visit. Working for nothing more than gas for my car, I hadn’t the means to buy even one small gift for each of them. And on this, my first Christmas not living with them, I wasn’t showing up empty-handed. That was unthinkable to me.
THE STORY AND THE CURSE
I went to Bayview Hospital in Baltimore after treating my growling stomach to a Wendy’s triple. Which emptied my wallet of my tips. By 23:00 I walked in from the parking lot to the emergency entrance. My eye had this weird infection that clouded my sight. I would wake up to find a white paste on my left eyelid. It affected my vision, made it hard to see street signs and house addresses at night. So I didn’t care how long I’d be there; it needed care and I had nowhere to go the next morning.
The waiting room was full. Parents with sick children, adults with injuries, probably nothing serious, but pain is pain, and suffering is suffering. I checked in and went back outside to smoke.
There was a time when I took my anger and pain out on others. Okay, I lied. I still do it. Just less these days. But I used to be awful. I never let anyone off the hook. The hell. I took it out on everyone.
One day I’m working a shit job slicing lunch meat, and some lady with a speech impediment comes in and orders a pound of “tookie”. I asked, “tookie?” And she nodded. I looked at her. Silence. Then she says, “Tookie.” I looked at her. “Tookie?” I ask. The lady with her, about the same age, says nothing. I figured they’ve come from a home for the mute or something. I knew damn well what the first lady wanted. But she was gonna have to work for it. Because I didn’t like her looks. Fake blonde at her age? Ought to be punished for such a travesty. I stood there, staring. I hated slicing lunch meat. I hated using that rotary slicer. Fuckers are responsible for more lost fingers than rabbits, squirrels and power saws combined. I could sell cigarettes and soda all night long and not care, but lunch meat? God I detested it.
The Tookie woman never budged. There was a long line at the register. I didn’t give a fuck. I wasn’t giving in to the centenarian suicide blonde and that was fucking it. “Tookie”, she repeated. I shrugged, and asked “What the fuck are you talking about?” Finally her friend says it for her. Her “friend” liked watching Tookie Woman suffer as much as I did. I sighed, got the turkey breast from the case, slammed it onto the slicer and deliberately sliced it extra thick. Four sandwiches and that shit would be gone. She–they–never came back. Now stay with me. This is going somewhere.
Fucking asshole comes in one night. Wants one piece of Braunschweiger, holds up his thumb and says, “like this.” I say, “Like what? You want it the length of your thumb or the width, or are you communicating your dick size?” Braunschweiger Man gets pissed, storms out. Month later, he’s back. Orders the same thing. It’s for his bloody dog for pity’s sake. Oh, but it has to be cut just right. So I take the roll out and use a knife to slice it. “No! That is not acceptable!” he shouts. Now for a second, I’m stunned. This motherfucker is so particular and testy that I think maybe he’s a undercover shopper gonna tell my boss on me. I apologise and soon he decides to take the shit. He pays and leaves. Month goes by. I had time to tell my manager about Braunschweiger Man. She tells me not to put up with abuse and if he orders that shit again, refuse to serve him. Sure enough, he gets this mean look on his face. Holds up his thumb. I say, “Stick that thumb up your ass.”
He turned a molten-steel red. “What?” I said, “Get the fuck out of here, and don’t come back, you dick cheese!”
Couple years go by. I land a great gig making acetylene gas in a union plant. Couple more years go by. They close an office and open a new office section in our building for customer service representatives. And Braunschweiger Man is one of them. And he remembers me.
A year goes by. There’s a company-wide restructuring. Braunschweiger Man winds up in a position of authority over me. And he remembers. And behind the scenes, he is a corporate ass kisser. And he works some strings. The union gets busted. I’m on the street.
I saw him a year later. He got fired. Brags he’s selling insurance now and getting rich. I’m a security guard in a fucking dollar store.
I still hate Braunschweiger Man. I haven’t seen him in a long time but between us, I’d have lost the union job anyway as my condition got worse. Lost the dollar store job too, but one day, honestly, I just woke up and I couldn’t move. I was sick, I was depressed and I wanted to die.
Of course, I had PTSD all along. Severe clinical depression with bipolar affective disorder and PTSD all tend to worsen with age. But that misses the point. Braunschweiger Man remembered. And he took the opportunity to harass me. Because every one you are mean to, and every one you make fun of, and every time you choose to fuck with someone or just take shit in general out on them, it comes back to you. Every time.
I’m not here to preach. I still get off on cussing Republicans and evangelicals. But I know it’s really wrong. I do. And I feel bad sometimes. I wonder, can I really call myself a Christian what with all the sinning I do?
At least I’ve learned a lesson: if you’re ever working in a convenience store slicing lunch meat and you get a customer who gives you the shits, just do the best you can to do your job. Later on, he’ll decide on his own to shop elsewhere. People like that are never satisfied with anything, and never stop acting like spoiled, pompous, entitled assholes. They never stop looking for people and places that will take their shit and kiss their ass. Oh that’s right, I forgot to tell you. Braunschweiger Man was a deer-hunting, beer-bellied, fuckball republican. Nowadays he’d be wearing a red hat. He’d be a MAGA Nazi.
Tookie woman was a casualty who was innocent. I never saw her after that but trust me: karma remembers. I know. I lost… everything. It wasn’t worth it. Kindness serves you better. ❤️☮️
It was April. The fifth, to be exact. At the Eastern Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Westover, Maryland, the system failed and an inmate was out-processed eighteen months earlier than he should have been.
Now of course, these things happen. I can’t say how often; usually we read about a prisoner sentenced to eighteen months, yet still inside after twenty years. Prisoners released too early, however, as in the case of John Frederick Thanos, can bring trouble to the outside. In short order, the world would know that lesson all too well. John Patrick O’Donnell, clerk for the prison records, for whatever reason he had, asked his boss, Chief of Classification for the Maryland Department of Corrections, Warren R. Sparrow, about releasing prisoner John Thanos. And just like that, two men became, through sheer carelessness, responsible for turning a monster loose on the State of Maryland. He got a handgun.
You know where this is going.
It turned out that the man had some violent tendencies, so before I go any further, it has to be asked why a rapist served time at a medium-security prison at all. Rapists are treated far too lightly in Western culture, particularly in the United States. Youve heard the stories — convicted rapists sentenced to two years. Or six months, causing public outcry, and on an occasion or two, putting judges off the bench. On rare occasions, even being disbarred. Recently a judge and several politicians — Republicans — advised women to “keep their legs closed” and other vile things. The question must be answered, why this is so? Why the hell is it possible to send a rapist to light time at a prison not having maximum security? Why is America a rape culture?
And John Thanos was born to evil. It isn’t clear, decades later, what his psychological evaluation consisted of. His mother and sister would later maintain that he was so disturbed that he was incompetent to stand trial. That was immediately cast out as a defense because he was pronounced otherwise, although not without serious mental illnesses, one being borderline personality disorder. And people with that kind of learned behavior and mindset are very often highly dangerous. He had been severely abused by his father, who started out parenting by cutting the heads off animals or breaking their necks for fun in front of the little boy.
He was psychologically abused and sexually abused. His world must have been Hell on Earth. He was in trouble almost from the beginning. And the abuse, cited by his attorneys during trial, seemed to trigger him. He called them names and threw other verbal abuse at them. He was then treated as a “hostile defendant”, a term one does not hear every day. In fact, he was hostile to reporters who asked him questions from the other side of a chain-link fence as he was led from a transport vehicle to the back entrance of the courthouse. He said shocking, weird and crazy things, taunted reporters, and videotape, if I could find it, would truly disturb anyone who sees it for the first time. Thanos even taunted the judge and at one point even stated that he wanted to repeat the crimes. And those crimes…still haunt me.
Somewhere in Baltimore County, on dates I can’t pin down, he shot three people: Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio, who was only 14. Two killings took place together. Melody was working at or visiting a convenience store. Her parents later sued the DOC for prematurely releasing Thanos. Warren Sparrow got demoted.
By 1992, John Frederick Thanos was convicted and sentenced to Death by Lethal Injection. The first inmate in Maryland to be executed by that method; and the first prisoner executed since the death penalty had been reinstated. But that wasn’t exactly the whole story.
At the sentencing hearing, he rejected all efforts by his family to have his life spared. He said, “I’ve been convicted and I accept it.” And he had this to say when he had the opportunity to make a statement. “I don’t believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats’ bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to those loved ones,” he said, indicating the families of the victims. Those words will never die. The records all contain them, from sources such as The Washington Post clean across the Atlantic Ocean. Two years would pass. And John Frederick Thanos was put to death. I had mixed feelings about capital punishment before that case. But I thought, regarding a man who graduated from rape to shooting kids in the head — he literally walked up to them, icy cool, and raised the pistol and pulled the trigger — that the death warrant issued from the bench was fully justified. But for me, it never ended there. I never forgot him. And as it happened, later in the same month that Thanos was released from ECI, the prison gained a new inmate — my father.
If you know my story, you know this has to be awful for me. For a long time, I’ve thought ECI was a max prison. I would have thought he would be sent to Jessup, but no. If you don’t know my story, look at my archive. Then you’ll know. Because I remember John Frederick Thanos. And I know, under different circumstances….
I stopped by the Harris Teeter supermarket for a Starbucks blonde pour-over with steamed half and half. I saw my good friend Harry sitting at a table in his wheelchair. He said, “You should pull up a chair and join me.”
Harry was once involved in an accident. His injuries should have killed him, but he made it. Somehow, he made it. He had a head injury. It affected his motor movement and speech center. It takes great effort for him to talk, but he can definitely hold a conversation. And every time we talk, I learn something simple, yet profound at the same time. His speech is not unlike that of a person with cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. There will be higher pitch where none is intended. Breaks. But he’s sharp and he’s a wise man. He asked what I’d been up to. He lives close by, but I rarely cross paths with him. I need to change that.
Harry is extraordinary; confined to a wheelchair yet he propels it with his legs. Ain’t an ounce of quit in him.
He talked about his parents and how, even at 67, he needs order, a routine, rituals. Like an afternoon nap. His folks were alcoholics.
He asked me to remove my glasses, they made him uncomfortable. But they’re prescription, with three different strengths and grinds. They’re also the darkest sunglasses I could get. My sight is getting worse despite prescription drops, OTC drops and my best efforts to stay out of direct sun.
But my glucose levels must have been spiking because my visual acuity keeps getting worse. I explained this to Harry. He continued the conversation. I remained even after finishing my coffee; they never make it hot enough and even steamed creamer doesn’t matter.
Harry laughed. Joked. Was positive. If he, without the full use of his own body, can be positive and inspirational, then so can I.
I shook his hand, and he has a steel grip. I like that. A strong and self assured man. I bade him good day but stopped and said, “Brother, I want you to know, it’s always a good day when I get to see you.”
I’ve surely done more than my share of burning bridges. Not this time.
The night was as pitch-dark as any I’d seen since the desert. A distant streetlight on a dock where a large cabin cruiser was moored lit the massive, sloped yard behind the pier, but would not reflect across that black water.
There was no breeze. Nothing moved in the humid air of that hot night so long ago. I had two bank spikes beside me. In one stood a Shakespeare six foot rod, heavily armed with a Penn Spinfisher Z and Berkeley XT hi-vis green 20-pound test mono. The other was a shorter, more stout red Shakespeare bearing a Shakespeare spinning reel loaded with Berkeley XL 17-pound. My hooks were 1/0 kahles baited with freshly cut eel sections. As I awaited the end of high tide and the movement of the minnows and perch to exit the creek and the big catfish to follow them, some weird things happened. Something no bank fisherman could ever forget.
Still of the night. Even, smooth water. Not a sound. No crickets. No cicadas. No nocturnal birds. And above and to my left, no traffic on the Bear Creek drawbridge which carried Wise Avenue to Holabird Avenue on one end miles away, and North Point Boulevard on the other. Last call for the two bars within earshot was over. Dundalk was a ghost town; the water, all mine.
I sought only one fish. A channel cat, by my estimation about a twenty pounder. I’d seen him before. Hooked him once, and I didn’t see him that time. But he made a sideways run, not exactly characteristic of cats, who just go deep or head to the nearest cover. Usually carp make lateral runs. But big and feisty as this fish was, I knew it wasn’t a carp. It was a monster cat. My monster cat. And if he left Bear Creek, I knew it was never far, never for long. One night at sunset, I saw him come up for a mouthful of mosquitoes and gnats. His head was massive. He didn’t sound, or jump. Just stuck his head out of the water, opened his maw and was gone. I cast a line in the spot. Nothing. Nothing, not even a nibble. On this dark night, however, that fucker knew I was there. A ripple spreading into a wide arc came toward me from the stygian darkness in the middle of the creek. Then another. And another, getting closer together. Something was moving out there. I turned a weak flashlight on. I used it for tying knots, attaching terminal tackle and baiting hooks. But this night, something weird, something creepy was up, and something huge was breaking the surface out in the channel. Because the ripples turned into waves. And the waves kept getting bigger. I was thoroughly spooked by then.
I turned on a fluorescent camping light. A wave washed over my Chuck’s, soaking my feet. And I saw it. It was a monster. It swam on its side, looking at me with one eye, a pectoral fin in the air. Almost as if waving at me. But at 03:00, the dead of night…the hour of demons…I sensed malevolence. It swam into the darkness. Then it came back, its other side exposed, the opposite fin in the air. Looking at me. I thought, impossible. Then it did it again. Going back in the original direction. Then, once more, the other way. I’d never heard of anything but dolphins, whales and sharks doing this, and none of them were there. This was a catfish, admittedly a monster cat, but it didn’t act like one. This thing circled me like a fucking predator. Only one other fish is that evil, and that’s a tiger musky. But those demons are freshwater, so I got the fuck out. Left the area.
But I wasnt gonna give up. I bought beefy gear. Two Abu Garcia 6500 reels, loaded with 30 lb test Stren gold. I bought bigger hooks for bigger bait (except for big game fishing the hook size should be decided by the bait size not the fish size). Big O’Shaughnessy hooks. I began to switch bait. I tried clam snouts, peeler crab, stink bait, you name it, I had at least 3 on hand if I had a hook in the water more than fifteen minutes. I used heavy sinkers for long casting, good bottom holding and attached them to the main line with 10 pound test in case it snagged. It would be easy to break and keep my terminal tackle.
I learned to tie a Bimini twist in 30 seconds. The rods were switched out with seven and eight footers with lots of glass for more leverage in a fight. You never let a hooked catfish run; you have to horse it. That bullshit about fighting them is for fishing shows that can be edited. You get that thing in as quick as you can.
I’d started out a novice to bank fishing but had plenty of time on the Chesapeake hooking blues, rockfish and more. But that didn’t require casting; you let the lines out and put them in a holder and waited while the captain trolled and watched his fish finder.
My first attempts at bank fishing were something out of Gilligan’s Island. Poor Gilligan would go fishing and reel in mines and shit.
I’d hook minnows and use floats. Every damn float wound up snagged in a tree behind me. After a week it looked like a Christmas tree.
One time I made a cast toward the channel. It was early on a Sunday morning. I watched as bait and sinker sailed 30 feet into the air and right down onto the drawbridge. A car skidded to a stop. I’d struck the windshield! Holy shit! And damn it! He was cussing but I couldn’t see him. He would follow the line and look over the rail and I’d be in trouble! So I wound the slack in on the reel, gave the rod a hellacious jerk, and the rig came sailing back over the rail. I wound it in like a fanatic, and ran for cover under the bridge. Finally he moved on. I packed up and moved on.
Another time after the Night of the Monster, when I was using an 8-foot rod, which will enable longer casts, I had better control, but unknown to me, I had put the bait and sinker clean past the channel and hit the shoals on the other side. I was all kinds of proud at my mastery of rod and baitcasting reel, but then a guy with an outboard crossed under the bridge, inbound from a day on the water.
I was oblivious to the fact that my line went out so far, and therefore that the line was floating on the surface across the channel.
Until, that is, his motor chugged to a stall as line was stripped off my reel as if I’d hooked a great white. I was trying to set the hook when I saw the guy pull his motor out of the water. His prop was absolutely engulfed in Stren gold monofilament, and before he could see me, I cut the line and hid in the bushes.
That finally did it for me. I retired from fishing forever. When your luck is that bad, you gotta know it’s time to hang up the waders.
One year later, I read a local piece in the paper. Some dickhead in a boat had caught a 20 lb. channel cat near the Bear Creek drawbridge.
My fish was gone. And I’ll bet it was the guy whose prop I fouled who caught it.
I saw a neighbor last week. Walking her little boy in a stroller. He’s the right age to be able to voice his discomfort but still unable to quite express it as well as he wishes to.
They were on their way in and he was out of the stroller when I was on my way to the store. I stopped and spoke to the mom, because I like both she and her husband, although I think it matters none at all; I don’t matter to many, and I do prefer it that way. Sure, it gets lonely. But that’s fine because that is, at least, peaceful. But I spoke. Asked how things had been with the family. Said hello to the boy, whose name I obviously have no business using. He gave me a hug.
There’s a time on a rare day, when someone gets to experience something unexpected and pure, something one shall never forget. That was such a moment. I thanked him and told Mom that my heart was moved. Not wishing to cause undue worry by lingering, I bade them goodbye and moved on.
Sometimes it occurs to me despite being in the throes of depression and hopelessness that all hope need not nor ever should be abandoned until that time when one’s last breath draws too close to avoid. Our hope rests in the souls of the little ones. I perhaps should have told Mom to be more careful in teaching her son about people he doesn’t know, but I’ll trust that by now she has done so. It’s simply not that kind of world, nor was it ever, when the innocent ones could be let out of sight.
I am grateful for the hug. So seldom does one like myself ever get a gesture of simple, innocent friendship and trust, that it was unforgettable.
For a time, I did not cry. It takes so much effort to shop that after I return home, I am depleted in every way possible. I usually eat and then fall asleep. But that afternoon, I thought back to the hug. I cried.
Can children be that powerful and not even be aware of it?
To an extent, yes. But they grow up at different rates and with various influences guiding and shaping them.
Often they surprise others with a keen understanding and ability to express it, and many were the times they changed, as I know in my heart, history from what it may have been to what it is now.
We should not underestimate them. But more importantly, we should never hurt them, nor spare any effort to save them from harm. We should, all of humanity, be ashamed of the terrible harm we’ve caused. Refugees across the world suffer while seeking freedom from harm. And racism, religious bigotry, and pure evil stand in the way. There, wherever it happens, the voices of the young are not to be heard. There is only the silent pain or the sobbing. How will we account for our terrorist actions against them?
Occasionally when one speaks to us, to our collective conscience, their words carry considerable weight.
I’ve read many articles like this. Who can forget “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus”?
It gets brought out every Christmas season like the old multicolored strings of lights handed down to us from parents who bought them for a dollar back in 1958. Not to mention that most unforgivable invention, the horrifying Elf on the shelf.
The hearts of the little ones need to have good things to feel. Their minds give them voice to touch our own hearts, to call our own minds to aspire to better things. To have hope in them, in the future. What a shame more of us never answer that call.
One night, a few weeks back, I was bored. Going through some nekkid lady pictures on a porn site on my phone, while some boring Science Channel repeat I’d seen about 30 times droned on. I have no life.
Reclining on the sofa, I was blinking and battling sleep. I fight sleep because of the nightmares. They’ve always been so relentless and pervasive. Sometimes I wonder why I bother, why I keep myself alive, when in more lucid moments I fear going into a permanent nightmare if I kill myself.
But old assholes like me, we don’t fight well anymore. With a sleep disorder and a fear of the demons in my dreams, I eventually succumb and fall asleep no matter how hard I fight. I just crash. And even a beautiful model doesn’t stop that kind of inevitability.
I heard a voice. It laughed and said, “Time to wake up ” and from the trenches of sleep I barely heard it. It repeated the words. There was a pause. More laughter this time. The voice, clearer now. An Asian woman. She laughed again. Like an angel laughing. A beautiful, entertained laugh.
I snapped awake.
Oh, no.
I realized my single moment of clear wakefulness was already fading into a numbness and sleep was coming back no matter what. There were seconds left to act. I grabbed the phone, sitting unheld on my chest; my arms had dropped away. I pushed and held down the key to power down, and dropped back into deep sleep. And a couple of hours later, I awoke, clear-headed enough to, at a small morning hour, make a cup of Colombian coffee in my $8.00, 4-cup Walmart coffee maker. I flailed gently toward a cabinet. I didn’t need anything in there. I turned to one to my left, opened it. Stared, vacantly while the coffee brewed and the machine made suggestive sucking sounds. “Mike, you got a sick mind,” I said. I focused inside the cabinet, got a coffee cup.
I sat the cup on the counter. I put only enough coffee and water in for one cup. My housemate and best friend was in his room asleep and has a Keurig anyway. On a four cup carafe, the line for 3 cups gives you one full cup of coffee. I have no clue why it has a “3” there, often wondered, never googled it. One of those things I don’t need to know, and should never raise the question in my mind, but does anyway.
No fuckin life, old man. The world don’t know or care. It got weirder as you grew old, and you’re just now noticing it? Dumbass.
I managed to get the half and half, Splenda and a spoon into the cup as the coffee maker made sounds that mocked me. Electric raspberries. Nothing I don’t deserve, really. I always feel I should get mocked by everybody and everything. I…am a loser.
As I sat drinking coffee, I remembered the voice. I got up and came back with my phone. Sometimes turning it back on will render the last page I was on. My heart sank. Truly painful embarrassment rushed through me as I realized I had somehow connected to live, open mic chat with someone on one of those sites where professional models…do things…and she had heard only snoring. Lots of it, and loud, too. I snore like a 1960 Caterpillar bulldozer.
I’m glad she was amused. I drank my coffee and went outside to smoke. Maybe I had made her day, somewhere on the other side of the world. Maybe she’d had so many crude and abusive men visit her space that this was a hilarious break for her. For the record, I might look at bikini models in pictures, but I don’t exploit or use sex workers. Even assholes have lines they don’t cross; it’s what keeps us separated from dicks.
I shouldn’t do none of it. I finally figured out that there’s no arousal involved. It’s an addiction. Engaging one’s addictions, indulging and feeding them, sends serotonin and dopamine rushing to get soaked up by specialized receptors the brain can’t otherwise feed. And usually a slight euphoria or total dissipation of anxiety occurs, and I fall asleep.
And except for briefly being awakened by her laughter, I did not have any nightmares, at least nothing that haunted me on waking.
And I’ll take what help I can get. Because I’m an asshole. Because I’m too far gone and too sick to fight anymore.
I wonder who she is. I wonder where she is and I hope she never forgets the night I snored over her speakers. I hope her laughter never fades as she remembers. I hope that by sheer accident, I brightened her life. Even if just a little bit.
He was already gone from the “yard”, as we called the outside of the warehouse on Wellham Avenue, across from the Glen Burnie Mall. You’d see it on a map today as “Holsum Way” which was because Hauswald’s Holsum Bread lived there.
The 318 Detroit Diesel stuck under a maroon GMC Astro had duel exhaust running underneath instead of vertically, behind the cab. Though it stood tall, the tractor was designed for something we weren’t using it for. It only had a three-quarter size cab length. That meant the sleeper bunk behind the driver was more narrow than what cabovers usually had. This was because it was a short wheelbase single-axle, meaning that the rear didn’t have a “twin screw” or two axles behind, which you see under the nose of the trailers they pull. It had, as a result, stricter weight limits than a TS, and if caught at the scales on Interstate 70, was a sure overweight ticket. No one gave a shit. Least of all, the owner of Comet Fast Freight, my father. He told Jerry to leave late in the day to hopefully cruise by the weigh station when it was closed.
Above: A GMC single axle, 3/4 cab Astro
Well, before we could lock up for the night, George, the dispatcher, got a phone call. It was short. We were both in the dispatch office but when he hung up he went straight to the driver’s lounge and lit a Raleigh with a battered Zippo he’d carried as a Marine in the Korean War. I followed him, lit a Camel with no filter with a Zippo I’d bought at a kiosk in the mall one day on lunch hour. “What the fuck was that all about,” I asked. He was clearly distressed.
He rested his elbows on a high window ledge, dragged heavily, and didn’t answer me. I was a forklift driver and an all-around jackoff who had no set job limits. As the boss’s son, nothing was outside of my job requirements.
“Hey, bud. What’s up?” I asked again. George Shanabrook was a friend. We’d talk about anything. But he clearly thought I didn’t matter at the moment.
I found out that was true quickly enough. After the silent burning of the Raleigh, he went back to the dispatch office and called my father, home early for a change, probably to beat the shit out of my younger brother for some trivial shit. Or to rape his favorite daughter, whom I later learned he called his “second wife.” What a piece of shit.
“Howdy Doo,” George said. That greeting told me that what George had to tell him was going to bring dad back to work.
From North Shore, up Route MD 100, no small trip. Route 100 was unfinished. He had to exit near the end of Mountain Road. Then go the rest of the way up Ritchie Highway. It would piss him off, the sick bastard. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but my gut told me I’d best be there when he arrived. It didn’t matter if I knew what was happening. It didn’t matter if I could not help. I just knew to be there. At times I was a devious and clever problem solver, a critical thinker who could override emotion and be helpful. I had my moments.
This day wouldn’t have such a moment.
“Howard County Police called. Someone reported one of our drivers has a woman tied naked to the passenger seat!”
A pause. “Yeah, he’s hauling ass, Ralph. They haven’t seen him. They’ve got the troopers on it. Heading west. It can only be Jerry, he left 45 minutes ago. I think you’d better come back in.”
I’d heard some weird shit growing up around truckers, but I was speechless. It was hard after 1975 to render me speechless. I’d turned into a smart, dirty-mouthed, mean asshole. Yet here I was, mouth hanging open. I wanted coffee to wash out the loose tobacco from the Camel and ease the dryness in my mouth. A dozen flies could have flown in there, and I’d have never noticed.
The phone rang again. An old phone with buttons for different incoming calls plus a Watts line. And a red hold button that flashed.
George’s eyes bulged wide under his strong plastic-framed glasses. My gut sank.
What the fuck was going on?
I knew the driver well. Jerry was from West Virginia and had a sick and very willing sense of humor. In other words, he didn’t just think up funny things; he spared no effort in doing them. He was a big fan of bottle rockets and used to aim them over the back fence at Baltimore Gas and Electric’s service trucks — and drivers — at night. I laughed at the yells of consternation as the poor bastards tried in vain to figure out what was going on.
George was no novice to sick humor either; our back yard where trailers were dropped (sitting on their landing legs) was open to the main parking lot. One night he was supposed to hook up to an empty trailer and take it to a glass company in Keyser, West Virginia to pick up empty soda bottles. It was dark. He hooked up to it, kicked the tires, then went to close the swinging doors.
And noise was coming from inside the trailer, up in the nose. Two teens, fucking their brains out. Before they could react, being naked and all, he shut both doors and took them for a ride around the entire Baltimore Beltway, or Interstate 695. Let me just say, riding in an empty box trailer at highway speeds, in complete darkness, is not something you want to do. Not for a minute, and not for the hour he took. He even paid toll at the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the couple never knocked on the sides or anything. They were probably thinking the ride was over.
When he returned to the yard, opened the doors and let them out, they had somehow managed to get dressed. They slowly and very shakily got out and left without a single word. George closed the doors and went on his scheduled trip. He had been in Korea. Killed Chinese regulars and North Koreans. This wasn’t shit to him but a hilarious torture ride for kids who were trespassing. He may also have been a bit jealous. His teenage humping days were so far in the past that he probably got pissed over that, too. We all miss those years, don’t we?
I know one thing, knew it without being told: those kids were bruised, sprained-up, and terrified. I’ll bet anything, they never went near any kind of trailer after that, probably not even a camper with a bed. And they probably broke up, too. A thing like that will definitely end a relationship fast. I roared when he told me this story. He told it without smiling, face impassive, voice like the narrator of a fucking episode of some old and boring documentary when TV had censors who wielded the power to end careers. Oh, it happened, alright. I still laugh when I think of that story. Hey, easy. I’m an avowed, confessed asshole, okay? I admit it.
When dad got back to the office, more phone calls had come in. About three or four, all from the Maryland State Police. One thing I forgot to mention about the old GMC Astro: The windshields were huge. From the front you could see the driver’s knees. And according to the trooper’s dispatchers, people had reported seeing a woman tied to the passenger seat of a maroon tractor pulling a Comet Fast Freight trailer. Must have been thick rope, I guessed.
But they couldn’t catch him.
Because that 318 Detroit motor could shit and git. And Jerry and his CB always knew where the bears (state troopers) were. Except this evening as the hot summer sun was setting, because he had no idea that he was being chased. Dad took a call that some weenie of command rank used to tell him, “If he crosses into Pennsylvania or West Virginia, he’s guilty of kidnapping and…”
I’d seen my father upset. I’d seen him red-faced with savage rage usually, it seemed, directed at me. But never had I seen this expression on his face. Helplessly enraged and frightened all at once.
Several more calls followed, the police wanting to know if our driver had checked in. I heard that come through the handset and laughed out loud. By now, I was appalled that Jerry was doing this, but at the same time, laughing at the desperation of the state police. Without being told, I knew that they even had a Bear in the Air, a term back then for a police helicopter.
They were waiting for him. He had passed the exit to go north to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he was, as my father had told them, heading straight into West Virginia on Route U.S. 48-40.
When they pulled him over, cops and feds ordered him out of the cab. They had guns drawn. One opened the passenger door and shone his flashlight up. He cussed. Then he laughed. And soon, everyone had to take a turn looking at what all the fuss was about.
There in the passenger seat, secured not with rope but tarp straps, was a stark-naked, vinyl, inflatable, blonde-haired love doll.
And so, Jerry rode on, not even a ticket in his pocket because he had been caught doing nothing illegal.
And of course, you know me, because, if the story ended there, I probably wouldn’t bother writing it.
It’s funny, but it’s not as weird as the stuff I love to write. Well, now it’ll get weird.
Because a few months later, after Jerry was fired, another West Virginia trucker told me the end of the story.
Jerry had often taken his doll along with him for gags. He often got reported for violating kidnap laws and as the police caught on, they stopped responding. “It’s a blowup doll,” the dispatchers would tell the complainants. It was just Jerry.
But there was a sad fate in store for that doll.
Because Jerry once got a case of the clap from a truck stop hooker. And even people who don’t drive trucks know about those. Often people in cars with CB radios cruise truck stops looking for some love on the tarmac; everyone has their vices.
Well, how was Jerry going to tell his wife how he had given her VD (as venereal disease was called back then, replaced today by STDs) and how was he going to explain to her how he got it in the first place? That was the problem. And being Jerry, he had the perfect alibi.
Like the Grinch, faced with Little Cindy Lou Who, who was no more than two, he thought up a lie and he thought it up quick.
“I loaned my love doll to another driver, and I guess he musta given it to her.”
The implications of this lie are so grotesque that I was hesitant to go this far with the story, but then again, I’m an asshole.
But his wife believed him.
No, I’m not lying, you couldn’t make up shit like this even drunk. Not even high on anything you’d care to name. Because real life is so much more bizarre than fiction.
His wife wanted revenge. Pissing razor blades, dosed with antibiotics, she took the doll, cut it to deflate it, tied rocks to it and then tossed it into the Tug River.
I would not see Jerry again, but for a brief time we spoke on Facebook. I’m back on there for a very short time to cause trouble, but so far they seem to consider me rather tame.
It’s time to be an asshole. Excuse me, please, and thanks as always for visiting my house. I love having you here.
The usual right-wing rhetoric has been turned to Max Output. The shit is getting deep. Although this is not a purely political post, I still dare you to keep reading.
Here’s a few of the worst lies making the rounds and prompting migraine headaches for a bunch of people who know a lie when they hear one.
Donald Trump actually said out loud that guns don’t pull their own triggers, people do. But that’s only part of his stance on gun control. He said “You have to know, there’s mental illness out there.”
Thanks for that, Donald. You should know, right? But Trump is so crude and sexist that he’s sent a public, spoken-in-front-of-God-and-everyone message to Israel that they should deny entry into their country the women he’s been saying hate this country. He said, “They hate Israel.” This has never happened before in the recorded history of this country. No president would, no matter how hateful he felt toward members of Congress, ever have said such lies. Especially not during a run-up to an election; it would have been political poison. Trump has lowered the standards of every possible government function to the point where it doesn’t matter that he’s a clown and very disturbed.
Climate Change, or global warming, is (a) a myth; (b) not man-made, (c) not as bad as liberal alarmists make it out to be. The truth is that none of that shit matters anymore because highly educated men and women and the evidence all scream that it’s time to plan for the worst. If you saw the weather forecast and there was a heavy snow warning, what would you do? You’d refit your plans and schedule accordingly, because no one wants to get into an accident, stranded in the car or the airport, or worse. Right? We’re being given something far worse than a heavy snow warning, and the fucking president and right-wing clowns, even scientists, are telling us it’s “fake news”. Or, if they do acknowledge it, they blame it on liberals and illegal immigrants.
Hillary Clinton is still guilty of shit you and the rest of the world have never even heard of, plus everything she’s been investigated for and cleared of. Fucking clowns beating a dead horse because they need every lie at their disposal to avoid losing a general election after Trump has pissed all over the place.
***
Of course, clowns are everywhere. It not like you can avoid them. The left has plenty of them too. When they respond to a question during a debate and then are asked to qualify that answer, it’s fucking hilarious; they freeze, and their eyes get wide, and they ask, “who, me?”
Oh, frog shit, that’s funny. They talk in general about plans. Plans that will halt global warming, save us from an increasingly shifty economy, stop Russia from running this country by proxy (talking to you, Moscow Mitch) and by God don’t ya know, these clowns attack each other, and they’re not clever at all, and we’re hip to Bernie and his percentage bullshit followed by a “people shouldn’t have to…”
I hated the bastard last time and he ain’t said or done a fuckin thing to change my mind. When he says the word “legislation,” I gag. Not the vomit kind of gag, just the gagging kind of gag where you’re so disgusted you can’t even throw up in your mouth a little bit. Because it’s bullshit. All of it, it’s bullshit, it’s bullshit, it’s bullSHIT!
Fuckin douchebag clowns can’t get their shit together.
And what the fuck were they going to go to Israel for anyway, when, if any one of them had been thinking, they’d have seen it was going to fire up the Oval Office fart machine?
Look, I don’t want to come down on the Dems here; I truly hoped we were better than this. And I fucking don’t care what happens, or what he does or tweets, because we know Donald Trump is a nutter, that he’d fuck a Cabbage Patch doll, then offer it a cheque. I get it, we all do. What we need to do is stop this tripping over our own words bullshit and get our act together and vote this glory hole-mouthed dickhead out of our building.
You think this is too strong? Does it offend you?
It’s been earned a thousand times over. He brought this on himself. If he gets a second term – if McConnell sticks around without flipping on his back – we’re all fucked.
I hate it all enough for me and you both, okay? But you can’t stop being offended by these men and their scary-as-fuck racist women who, I swear to God, are more vicious than Reinhard Heydrich, Joseph Mengele and Pol Pot combined. You get numb after all this time, and that’s normal. It’s human. A failing we just somehow got burdened with. But I’m begging you to fight it. Contact your favorite candidate. Remind them that you had high hopes for them and they’re fucking up. Fuck, why not? I’m sick of this political bullshittery that’s been going on. Don’t get complacent around clowns.
Because clowns are not funny, and never to be taken lightly. Remember “It Part Two” is due in theatres. Remember that sick piece of shit John Wayne Gacy.
I know, I know. It was really funny, in the movie “Real Men” when John Ritter and James Belushi are in an alley and Belushi asks, “Who are these clowns?” and a gang of clowns coming to kill them walk into view. Yeah, the whole movie sucked except for that lonely one-liner-sight gag.
But I remember that scene. And if you have by any chance stuck with me through this F-BOMB-filled post, then you know you have to know why I remember that one scene from an obscure and dreadful movie you’ve never heard of.
Don’t Send In The Clowns
It’s no joke that clowns are bad news. Seriously. When my ex was pregnant with our first child, she got a shitload of clown shit at the baby shower and I kid you not. Clown figurines. A clown dresser lamp. A painting. A clown marionette, for shit’s sake. Clown pillows. A kid’s size clown chair. And we thought, okay. So my ex put it all in the nursery. When our daughter was maybe ten months to a year old, I’d already noticed that her room was always cold. I’d have to turn the heat up to where it was unbelievable in the rest of the flat, just to keep her warm.
Then, at eleven on the night of 23 December, 1984, my wife and I were in our bedroom getting all frisky and shit. Her back was to the door to the hallway. It was quiet. An icy drop from a daytime high of near 50 °F during the afternoon and evening had it near the freezing mark by then. Weirdness happens on such inhospitable nights, when one really just takes simple comfort being inside.
So quiet. We were less than 70 meters from Route 100 in Glen Burnie. No traffic. Dead silence. And that’s creepy by itself, on a road where no hour is too indecent for folks to escape from Pasadena.
Well, something walked down the hallway toward our room. We could hear the soft padding of feet on the pile carpeting. It walked right up to my ex, right behind her, and stopped.
Of course, we stopped as well. Got up and ran naked into the living room.
Trembling. Terrified. In shock, I lit a Camel and knew even the full effect of the unfiltered nicotine wouldn’t help me. The inevitable, “Did you hear that?”
You know. Like everyone does when something fucked-up and beyond understanding happens. Because of course she heard it which, naturally, is why we both ran into the living room in the first place.
“Yeah,” she said, which didn’t help my cowardly ass one bit. So, like everyone else also does, “What did you hear?”
“Footsteps,” she said in a mortified whisper. And after only two years of marriage, I truly believe that this question was the beginning of her understanding, a dawning, if you will, that she had married a fucking idiot.
But even if that was the end of the story, and it ended up with us sleeping on the sofa bed, it’s already a foreign thing to you, because you weren’t there and maybe nothing like that ever happened to you.
But that’s not the end of the story. Because my stories never end so simply. You remember the post about the cat? That loveable fucker knew shit. And something didn’t like that, and kicked that cat sideways across a deck to show its displeasure.
And I know you have read the bolero hat post. And if you thought it was just me being driven mad by a can of Armour Vienna sausages in fucking barbecue sauce, or that I had a mental health history or whatever, well, I wish all that were true. I wish none of the supernatural shit in my life ever happened. But you can bank on this: I hate the fact that this ain’t where the story ends. Because the next moment had to be one of the worst things I have ever had forced upon me.
As I drew heavily on the Camel, and all was dead silence, something jumped on our bed. And no, there wasn’t anyone in there. We had seen nothing. And if you’re thinking it was our combined hysteria, you can just please open up your mind, or go read something from a sponsored blog written by someone whose picture takes up half the fucking page, someone who is in love with themselves but won’t admit it because they’re paid to write a diary about how conflicted their life is but leave you all choked up because there’s always hope.
My God what skullfuckery. That’s not really a proper word, by the way, (but ask Dj Shadow, who knows better) but I can’t always tell you horrible shit with proper words, and I’m not being paid to do this, and even if ads appear on my posts, I have no control over them, and if I did, you’d like me even less for what I’d have there. This ain’t some world full of roses and green grass and not-so-poisoned fruit. It’s hellish. It’s a place of evil and disease and poisoned food and untimely death, and I won’t give you much hope. If I do, it’s barely there at all. And it’s always surrounded by evil and a hard ride.
Besides, I’m an asshole. I don’t pray outside of abortion clinics for the end of the very thing I fight for. The only fucking thing that matters. Freedom.
That night in 1984 hammered home to me the fact that everything evil in my memory so far, especially that shadow on my wall and the things done to my body and mind were all too real and would never, ever stop. Because whatever it was that jumped on the bed was no ghost of no little kid come to visit. The springs creaked so loud that I never could put that sound together with the soft padding of feet on the carpet. Whatever it was, it had serious weight. And it was jumping repeatedly on our fucking bed. So we waited until it stopped. Ran in there, grabbed clothes, got dressed in the living room. I went downstairs to warm up the car while she bundled our daughter up. We went to her parent’s house. Sat up all night drinking coffee and listening to momma, who was wise about such things. Turned out, she was up from a nightmare and knew without us calling that we were going to be there.
“Get Rid Of All The Clowns”
She sat across the table and told her daughter, “I told you after the shower to get rid of all that clown stuff,” and I asked why, because I had made no such connection.
“Because clowns aren’t real,” she said simply. Clowns, she said, don’t represent anything. They don’t even have a real-life counterpart. You can dress up as Superman, but at least he’s a man, albeit from another world. Not real, but a representative of a living character from fiction. Like Dick Tracy. Iron Man. Captain America. Clowns? Nothing. Therefore any item. Any marionette. Even a painting…can be cursed, attached by or to, a demon.
That one hit me hard. I knew in my heart that she was right. But I had not yet become an amateur demonologist. I was from that night on. She had this nightmare, and in it, despite us living on the third story, three clowns (three is a number significant in demonology as it mocks the Holy Trinity) were standing on thin air outside our daughter’s window, peering in and scaring her. In the dream, Beth was standing up in her crib, crying hysterically.
We followed momma’s advice. My ex did not want to throw it all away and so asked a neighbor who also had a small child if she wanted it. All of it, in a big box. To my mind that was a sick thing to do, but okay. And no further incidents happened in that flat. To this day, the one thing that I know for certain will petrify me on sight is a fucking clown. Working in a dollar store years later for part-time money, I was facing the door one night when a clown in full makeup and costume walked in. To my utter shame, I froze, mouth open, eyes wide but vision tunneled by pinpricks for pupils and she said, “What? I’m just a clown.” Fuck that. And fuck you too, lady. As far as I was concerned she could have been there to steal shit or rob us. I watched every step, every move. It should have made her uncomfortable. It should have made her leave.
But the one thing you can never do before a clown or a demon is show fear. She wasn’t a demon, but I could not fucking intimidate her. I had already given her full and shameful knowledge of my own fear. That gives away all of your power.
That’s the same dynamic with clowns like Trump. Goons who are also clowns will try to divide people who could otherwise combine to take away their power to humiliate and terrify.
What I’m asking for from you is this.
Knock off the Facebook hating and spreading of fear. Stop being part of it. Stick to funny cat videos or do political matters properly, and fan the flames no more. And together we can and we will throw out every clown who has endorsed death, poison and lies.
If you want hope, there it is. It’s really that simple. Not easy. Simple. Expect election interference and all manner of skullfuckery. Expect it and vote and demand numbed-out friends to vote. We can win our country back if we do the right thing and vote, thereby stuffing the clowns in a box where they’ll stay until it comes time for them to go to Hell.
I used to include the stuff in my cooking. No longer will that work for me; I made the grave mistake once of reading an article about it.
Now I can’t even look at the bottles in the store.
Thanks to the cretin who just had to make a big article about what he saw in a random search on Wikipedia and ruin shit for everyone, I now know that Worcestershire sauce has fermented fish in it.
It’s not that I’m allergic to fish. Not yet anyway. It’s even true that some brands sell Worcestershire sauce without the rotten fish. I can’t. I just can’t, and I’m sorry; it ain’t a comfort.
When you know something, you know, as in learning about it for the first time, like face mites – a real thing that I encourage you to look up if you’re getting lesions on your face – you ain’t ever gonna be the same again.
I ate potted meat until I found out what garbage it’s made out of.
I used to eat imitation crab meat til I found out why part of it is red, like crab, you know, to trick people into eating fish sold in place of crab meat. I’ll bet you know this one; the red is juices and solids taken from the body and sucked out through the legs of the cochneal insect. This disgusting shit is mixed with certain salts and turns brilliant red (carmine). Food coloring. Yes.
And face mites, they crawl on your, you know, face, and eat dead skin and shit, but while they have a mouth, no anus.
Nope. They just explode and their shit microscopically just spatters your face. Someone told me the bloody bastards are beneficial.
Oh, Bullshit. How is a bug that eats your face then explodes in a shit storm gonna help anyone? How?
We go around thinking we know everything. Well, we don’t. We know from jack, that’s what. In too much of a hurry, we are. We want to know cool stuff. You know, to show off in the tavern or bar, or maybe the…uhm, bowling alley. Do people think that there’s not really rat shit and spiders in their food?
Yeah, they really do.
They even believe guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Yeah. Every time a gun slaughter happens, from homicides to massacres, the dumbest shit gets typed all over the fucking internet. It’s “mental” people. It’s people who play videogames.
This time, yeah. That shit came up. You remember our president, the guy who stood in front of a fake presidential seal and of course, never knew it because he’s a dildo? You remember that guy?
Well, he said people deemed threats, and I’m not sure how one determines that unless “warning behaviour” such as displayed by the El Paso shooter, and Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the Virginia Tech shooter, and…
Ah, you get it. But it’s illegal to lock someone up for life in a mental hospital if they’ve done nothing but toss out a bunch of words. Because President Obama got so many threats half the fucking country would be in a Thorazine haze or a padded room if everyone who typed hateful threats all over MySpace and old message boards had been institutionalized.
You also can’t be arrested if you’ve committed no crime. Technically. Unless you’re black and minding your own business, right? Then getting arrested is the least of your problems cause you’re really about to get shot or tazed or choked to death.
But “Totalitarian Trump”, the Dildo In Chief, the one who ordered the USS John McCain lashed outboard of another vessel so he wouldn’t have to look at the name, he wants the movie MinorityReport turned into reality…
So I suppose anyone playing videogames that involve violence, those people will be rounded up and put into razor wire-surrounded camps. Jews, blacks and Hispanics first.
Because what else would he do? You really think he ever said anything that made sense? I’d throw a gauntlet at your feet if you dared say yes.
Mass shootings are now the fucking direct result of illegal immigrants!
So is…wait for it…
CLIMATE CHANGE!
Shit makes no sense to me. I don’t know everything. I don’t even want to know everything. The more I learn the less I feel like I want to live.
I don’t know what to eat anymore.
I don’t know which medication might kill me or leave me on dialysis.
I don’t know if washing my face is a waste of time because something I can’t see that don’t have an asshole is just gonna fuck it up.
Hell, I won’t even buy bar soap; just the liquid body wash. Because I fucked up and read something about shit growing on bar soap between the showers you take.
Smoking is one of the dumbest things you can do, and everyone knows it. It’ll kill you. It is killing me, or, more succinctly, probably already has, and I’m not far enough along to drop.
The doctor visits are ongoing. There’s gonna be biopsies and x-rays.
I don’t give a fuck.
I like smoking. But one thing is certain, and you can take this to the bank.
I ain’t eating no more imitation crab meat and using no more fucking Worcestershire sauce.
Had a biopsy yesterday. Need one more, I fear. My time may grow shorter than I thought it would. And I never thought I’d make it this far.
I’ve been an asshole for so long that now, looking back, I’m both amused and ashamed. But mostly amused.
Because when I was a quiet, abused kid, I had coping mechanisms that, looking back, I didn’t think of that way.
In the hot summers, from 1965-1973, I and my siblings had a few things to look forward to. It wasn’t much. But to us, any Oasis in a sea of barren sand was a treasure. One of them was the summer ritual of the Good Humor man making his rounds, jingling the bells in his open cab truck.
He had ice cream sandwiches. The Good Humor Bar. Toasted Almond and Chocolate Eclairs. Nutty Buddies. Twin pops.
When I was younger it all seemed so innocent. But it wasn’t. Maybe nothing ever was; I don’t know. Seemed like it. Well…for a while. And that was okay with me.
He’d get out from the right side when you stood by the side of Dutch Ship Road. In the back of the truck and on the right side there were small doors from which incredible treats came. He wore a change holder on his belt. It was loaded with coins. That was part of the ritual. He was always nice, polite, very kid-friendly. He was our hero.
David Stinchcomb ran a Kool-Aide stand. He was very good to my younger sister and gave her free drinks in Dixie cups. No small thing considering he lived on Edgewater Road and had hills to negotiate on his bike.
God bless him. Her life was already so miserable.
Then of course we had Sealtest dairy. They delivered fresh milk in glass jugs with foil caps. Mom could leave a list in an aluminum box with a cork lining. Butter, milk, eggs, orange juice and even ice cream sandwiches.
But my favorite was always Mister Softee. I can never forget the creepy ice cream cone-headed mascot or that magical music box. I could hear his truck all the way down in Boulevard Park, across Gray’s Creek, and I knew we were next. What magical treats he had! Soft Ice cream in cones. Sprinkles. Round ice cream sandwiches called Cartwheels. And everyone’s favorite, the banana boat, a banana split served in a plastic boat.
NEMISIS
Sometime between these years my behaviour changed. Out of sight from my house, over on Edgewater Road, I attacked without reserve. Without remorse. Without mercy.
Toward the end. Before my father heard the shit I was doing and made me spend my summers working for him in his Glen Burnie warehouse so he wouldn’t get any more phone calls from outraged neighbors.
The first target was the Good Humor man. He often had a young teen girl riding the hump on the right side. She was a “helper”.
Bullshit. What was a grown man doing riding around with different girls doing? I had no money for ice cream and that pissed me off. The beautiful older girls pissed me off. Talking to me in baby language. Fuck that; I asked Mr. Dressed-in-white, “Does her mother know your helper is sucking you off?”
And “Does her dad know she sucks your dick?” Mr. White Suit was not listening to any more of this. He asked me my address. I didn’t give it and he forbade me ever to approach his truck again.
On to Mister Softee. One day all I had was a nickel. I asked what I could get. This motherfucker gave me the frights. Sometimes you just know, especially if you’re a victim. He was a monster in an inverted sailor’s hat, a slob never having any business handling food. He said that for a nickel he could maybe give me a squirt of ice cream in my hand. Now there’s no way I could get a hand far enough in the window to get a squirt of ice cream in my hand. That meant I would have to go inside the truck. And I wasn’t about to let myself fall for a trap like that.
I said, “Fuck you, asshole. Does your wife know you trick little boys inside your truck?”
Yes. At 12-years-old I did have such a vocabulary.
He got mad but just closed his window and drove on.
But I wasn’t done. I was on a mission. I wanted him to quit and go away. It got to where even if there were other kids waiting, if he saw me, he wouldn’t stop. So I began to hide in the woods. When he stopped and opened the window, I’d come out and ask him if his wife knew he liked to have little boys. I asked him why he came in cream cones before filling them with vanilla ice cream. I told him his wife was with other men while he was working. I said she told me it was because he had a tiny dick.
Twelve years old and I was driving this guy mad. I was an ice cream dude’s terrorist.
And I knew more about sex than anyone else did. The other kids didn’t know half of what I was talking about. But after a while, they got on me for constantly ruining their magic moments with the Mister Softee dude.
One day I popped out of the woods and accused him of something so evil and foul that he asked where I lived. I didn’t answer. He asked the other kids. For once, they stuck up for me. No one told him. Boy was he pissed.
I’d pushed my luck far enough. A friend’s mother sent over a treasure trove of comic books. I knew it was a trick to keep me inside, but it was okay with me. You ever heard of Blackhawk or the Metal Men? I had Justice League, Action Comics, Charlton Comics, Aquaman, you name it. Classics I wish I still had. But…it worked. It drained some of my rage, desperation and idleness.
But I look back, you know? A bit of shame and lots of mirth. Because for a while, I was the kid who was the bane of an adult’s existence. I can still picture him getting into his truck and popping a pill or taking a toke and praying that he would not see me that day.
It was a bad gig. No doubt. But for a while, by acting insanely, I preserved my sanity.
To this day I can’t eat Good Humor or soft serve ice cream.
Back in the early 80s, when Comet Fast Freight was in its death throes, there was a driver who leased his cabover Brockway on. His name was Jeff. And he was one stupid motherfucker.
I don’t know how this guy ever managed to buy his own tractor. I was more mystified by how he had gotten a license to drive a tractor-trailer rig.
But I guess sometimes people who shouldn’t buy guns buy them anyway, so there’s that.
Because Jeff was dangerous. At first I just thought he was dense, and I had met plenty of drivers who were that thick but ran their asses off and made money for my father. This goon…wasn’t one of them.
The first sign of trouble came when we got a call at the dispatch office that while trying to return a container to the Dundalk Marine Terminal, he’d panicked. Having crossed the Key bridge, approaching the toll booths, he had the realization that he had no cash for the toll.
Naturally, he ran the booth without paying and proceeded to take the next exit off I-695 toward the docks. And since transportation and toll facilities police always had a pursuit car on station at the toll plaza, he was chased down. He did not pull over.
He made the left into the pier entrance, where multiple lanes always had lines. He had to stop. By then more chase cars had joined the merry, bizarre chase. He was surrounded by cops with their handguns pointed up at the cab.
Since it was so bizarre, they pulled him out, made him lie on the asphalt, and of course searched the truck. Under the mattress in the sleeper compartment they found a film cannister, the kind people commonly hid drugs in back then. No cop ever found one of those and believed it contained film. Ever.
Lucky for Jeff, they knew it had contained PCP-laced pot, but had no stomach for booking him. He was ticketed for moving violations and allowed to continue his day.
As soon as I, standing on the loading dock, heard this fucked-up story, I was for letting him go. You know, cancelling his lease. I told the dispatcher, George, that surely there was worse in store. I had this gut feeling. You know, like the first time you had honey barbecue wings from KFC, and fell in love, yet something told you that corporate dicks would eventually stop selling them. Because, corporate dicks.
I was right. Jeff wasn’t finished and his burned-out brain was making me want some drugs for myself. Just grass. No fucking PCP, not for me, no thank you please.
One summer day, a Friday. Pay day. Dispatch got a call that dispatchers will get maybe once in a lifetime, one so scary that you never, ever forget it. George got that call. But for him, oddly enough, he’d had some other crazy phone calls come in, because this was Comet Fast Freight, so this time, he didn’t get upset. He just hung up, went out on the dock and lit a Raleigh cigarette. I followed him out. He said Jeff was on his way back to the yard, and I’d see what was wrong soon enough. So I lit a Camel and stood there with him, waiting in silence.
It was the end of a Friday, the sun was hot but getting low. We all wanted to go home.
The sound of the Mack engine coming down Wellham Avenue which, incidentally, would later be renamed Holsum Way, told us the mutt was inbound. When his tractor came into sight, I took an unintentionally horrified gasp. “What the fuck, George? How’d he do that?” I asked.
Cabover tractors are the ones that have no nose and stand taller than a long-nose tractor, called “conventional” cabs. And Jeff had done something to the top of his cab, of which I’d never seen the like. Oh, I’d seen overturned rigs towed into the yard. I’d seen one where the driver fell asleep and drove a tree into the cab.
But this? No, I had no idea what I was looking at.
All of the clearance or I.D. amber lights along the top were either smashed or missing. His air horn, that kind that sits on top like a chrome bugle, was crunched like an accordian. The rest of the rig was undamaged. So he’d hit something his truck couldn’t clear overhead. I had that sinking gut feeling again. You know. Like you get when your power goes out, and you look out the window, and everyone else has power.
He came into the office to face my father’s wrath. Because of returned checks, we were down to the last bank that would deal with us.
He was asked what happened. Because the bank had called and said Jeff had attempted to drive his truck through the drive–inwindowlane and struck the overhead canopy with some force. The overhead was substantially damaged.
Jeff replied that it was a lie. When asked why a bank manager would tell such a story, he said it was because he knew how to get into their vault.
“You know how to get into their vault.” My father said flatly. His eyes showed mirth behind rage. Yeah, Ralph Smith could do that. It was funny if it wasn’t directed at you.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “I was inside and I saw the girl stand in front of the vault, and she stamped her left foot real hard three times. Then she clapped her hands real loud two times and the vault opened.”
“Let’s go outside,” my father said. Now he was disgusted and probably a bit rattled by what he’d just heard. And he led the way outdoors. George and I followed.
We went to Jeff’s truck. “Well if the manager was lying, then you tell me what happened to your horn and your lights,” my father said.
“My wife found out I was cheating on her and she got a hammer and smashed them.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Who would cheat with you? You smell like smegma at sixty feet.”
“Shut up, boy,” my father said darkly. I shut up but part of me was amused.
“The strongest man alive can’t climb up and smash a horn flat with a hammer,” George said.
But Jeff stuck to his story. And he now looked at me as if he wanted to punch my lights out but I began wishing that if he was allowed to stay on, he would drive his rig off the side of Mount Storm.
My father needed drivers at a time when everyone else was jumping ship. Seasoned drivers know when a trucking company is going to go out of business, becoming what’s known as a “fallen flag”. They go elsewhere. Jeff was too stupid to do that.
But I had that sick feeling in my gut. You know, like you get when your daughter brings home her new beau, and reveals she’s pregnant, and the fucking guy has no education, no job, no car, and you realize they’re going to move in with you? Yeah. Like that.
Well, Jeff made my gut prove correct again. One day on Interstate 70, coming from West Virginia and only about forty minutes from making the yard, he did something. Something no one else could explain. Something that, in other words, wasn’t possible.
He blew the back half of his transmission clean out. When I say that, you can take it word for word: the housing exploded, ejecting gears all over the highway, along with shrapnel from the housing, or outer casing. I’d never heard of such a thing. I’d seen wrecks. Blown engines. Burnt tires from being run while flat. The damage from brake fires. I’d seen a hell of a lot. But never had I seen a rig towed into the yard by huge wreckers with a transmission half missing. You can flame a clutch by “riding” it. You can break teeth on gears by grinding them, but you have to be working at it to do it.
But this…this was a first, not just for me, but the mechanic as well. His guess was that Jeff somehow tried and impossibly jammed the shifter into reverse at speed.
When the housing of a transmission, as with an engine block, is broken, it means replacing the whole thing. There’s no repairing it.
But Jeff had no intention of incurring such an expense. He said he knew exactly where it happened, and he was going to drive out in his car and pick up the parts so the transmission could be fixed.
I told him, “You can’t,” and he said, “Yeah, it can be fixed.” He glared at me. He was a class A burnout, but he had looked up the word “smegma” and he hated me more than when I’d said it.
But it was true. He did smell like smegma. Even when he was sitting in his truck with the engine idling. Diesel fumes couldn’t stop the stench. I believe that was the beginning of my sinus problems, and why today I have to use Afrin like maybe six times a day, and why the spray doesn’t work. I have to turn the bottle upside down and tilt my head back and use it like a goddamn lavage.
Jeff did return with a box of transmission parts. None of the housing frags were in there, but fractured and exploded gears, yes, they were there. I busted up. I mean I fucking roared with laughter. He was told it didn’t matter what was in the box, he needed a new transmission.
He was also told to pull the company placards off his doors. And have the tractor hauled off the yard.
I never saw him again. But every time I use Afrin, I fucking remember him.
In the fall of 1993, something that has plagued me ever since happened. It started when I worked at a convenience store in Dundalk. Working swing shift, it was getting dark early and one day around rush hour, I had a line at the register. I saw a woman further back in the line, and something I can’t explain happened.
When I saw her, I felt a bit off. When she got to the counter I asked if I could help her. She said solicitously, “Yes you can.”
There wasn’t anything I could see that was remarkable about her. She was pretty but not beautiful. She had brown eyes and I had never liked many women with brown eyes. When I looked into brown eyes, I saw my father, no matter who I was really looking at. To this day I get triggered by brown eyes, which I find to be just one more pathetic thing that makes me an extraordinary asshole.
Yet, this woman did something to me. I would have followed her anywhere she asked me to go. I’d have done anything she asked me to do.
It was not physical attraction. Not infatuation. And it certainly was not love. What drew me to her I’ve never been able to understand. I actually had the thought that I would crawl inside her and let her devour my soul. All she had to do was beckon to me with a finger.
It was strange; she worked next door to the store for her father, who owned a pest control business. Yet I would rarely see her. One day she came in and asked if I could let her owe me for a pack of cigarettes. I was completely out of character when I joked that we could take it out in trade. But she didn’t bat an eye and said casually, “Okay.”
Months passed. I didn’t see her.
One night my wife and I went to the 7-eleven for a late snack. I’ll never forget it. I had a can of Vienna sausages in barbecue sauce. I would later blame this shit for the nightmare that followed, but whatever brought it on had nothing to do with mush made from pork and beef parts like cow lips and tongues. This was something else altogether, a dream so torturous and vividly detailed that, to this day, I remember it clearly.
The dream began weird and got worse. At some point in the midst of it I saw my boss’s van parked in front of the house. The woman, whose soul seemed to draw me to her so strongly, was loading my belongings into it. She had come to move me out. I felt as if I was supposed to be moving in with her, but then, the scene changed. Now it was dark and I was standing in the side yard. I was alone. A movement in the street caught my eye. A figure walked into the driveway. He was what I can, for whatever reason, only describe as a MardiGrasclown. No funny makeup here; this was like something straight out of a New Orleans graveyard. It had dark clothing, Clown White covered his face, and a wig of red-orange hair, long and straight at shoulder length, came down from a black bolero hat. In his right hand was a sickle. When he knew that I had spotted him, he bent low to his right and made a deceptive motion as if cutting a patch of tall grass beside the driveway. I could feel that he knew I sensed his deception, but by then I was frozen in place with terror. He easily crossed the yard and approached me. His right arm drew back and as he got to me he swung forward, cutting my head off with the sickle.
At first the scream was silent even though I was suddenly awake. They call that sleep paralysis.
Then, after moaning through a closed mouth, I sat up and gave full vent to my horror with a primeval scream that woke up everyone in the house and, for all I know, a few neighbors as well.
That was no clown. It was a demon.
Within a few months, I was really kicked out of the house by my soon to be ex-wife. I remembered the nightmare. Was it prophetic?
Well, I didn’t really know. The woman with the brown eyes was gone. Her father had retired and closed his shop. Now I never even saw her white Camaro up there. When I looked for it I felt empty, a sense of loss.
I forgot the dream while trying to survive on the street. I still had my job but was homeless. And the brown-eyed woman was gone. She had not been the cause of the end of my marriage. That was up to my flirting around with another woman. Why I did that, I guess, was a search for genuine affection that I knew was not part of my marriage anymore. I was a broken and dysfunctional man who, since I was a boy, only wanted affection. But there had been so little of it…
The months turned into the hot dry summer of 1994. I was ghost hunting, working at the store, and staying with friends.
Then, everything upended again when my car was totaled. That was January 5, 1995.
That summer, one evening out of the blue, the brown-eyed woman showed up and asked if I was ready for my part of our “trade”, which I had forgotten about because I was being a sexist pig when I’d said it and only joking. Which wasn’t like me at all. But as she asked, I remembered and said, “Sure.”
She picked me up the next day for lunch. She took me to a waterfront restaurant in Miller’s Island which isn’t the island, but a peninsula ending in a place called Cuckold Point. Which was wildly appropriate, when I look back.
On a hot summer day, we sat at an outside deck table. There was no lunch, just a round of drinks. We chatted, but I began to get a grip on how scary this woman was. Her eyes never seemed to focus. She wasn’t there to initiate a sexual relationship. She would do it, but it was going to take time. I was mystified and mesmerized. Suddenly I wanted to be in bed with her. But it wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. Again, looking back, I realized she was on something. Not heavy, like heroin, but something. She looked at me and said, “I see the sea in your eyes. You’re a pirate.”
What the hell that meant, I didn’t ask. It was ridiculously stupid. I called her “Gypsy” just to make it even. She really didn’t see into me at all. I am not and never have been a fucking pirate. Hell, I was scared of deep water.
She took me to work afterward. In the parked car, I kissed her. I really felt it then: I would have followed her to Hell just for one night with her.
But at the exact second our lips made contact, a loud peal of thunder cracked the sky directly above us. There was no storm coming in. The sky was brilliant, cloudless, blue. A kid who lived nearby named Scott saw this, heard it, and burst into laughter. He was on the sidewalk in front of the car, walking toward the store’s entrance.
When I got inside, Scott was still laughing. He said, “That’s not a good sign, Mike.”
No shit. I didn’t take it as one, either. Rather, because of so many experiences with the supernatural, and given the hold this woman had on my soul, I saw it as a warning. Yep, I really did. Straight from God. That’s what I thought. That’s what I felt. But I was helpless before her. I wanted her. I’m sad to say, there was nothing magical about the kiss. This is a true story, not some B-movie. I cannot say what it felt like exactly; I just know I liked it.
And if the story ended here, I guess it would still be decent campfire faire. But it doesn’t end yet. It actually gets worse.
Because I was an asshole.
I was seeing a married woman. It was sexually intense and full of drama. And, still unmedicated, I was getting worse all the time and didn’t know why. We’d break up. She would stalk me. I’d awake at 3:00 am and have a sudden urge to look out of my bedroom window, and she would be in the alley below, parked, a cigarette glowing inside. Whether she or the brown-eyed woman was the more evil, I didn’t know. But the stalker I viewed as a mortal threat. She was a nutter, following me everywhere I went. Sometimes I got back with her just because I was too scared not to. She often involved her grown sons, and they chased, threatened me and convinced me that madness, the lethal kind, ran in her family. I feared for my life.
In October of 1995, I bought a used car. It was in the shop getting work to pass inspection. And one very cold night, the brown-eyed woman showed up. Wanted more “trade”. It had been so long since I had seen her that I was quite excited to go out with her. She said she would pick me up after I closed the store. But when I locked up she wasn’t in the parking lot.
Thinking I’d been stood up, I prepared for the cold walk home. Then I spotted her white Camaro on the hill where her father’s business had been. What was she doing up there? Oh, hell. I was adrift in a sea of insanity. Why question anything anymore?
I walked up to the car, saw her slouching very low in her seat and something finally hit me: she was married, just like my stalker! She was hiding inside her own car. In case anyone she knew drove by.
Of course she didn’t want to be seen!
It was dark on the parking lot. It was late on a Saturday night. Everything made sense. She was married. Took drugs. Was nutty. But I opened the passenger door anyway and slid in.
My heart immediately took a hammer blow. I couldn’t breathe. I was terrified that I would die that very night.
She was wearing a bolerohat!
The same hat the clown from my dream had worn when he decapitated me with a hand sickle!
And I should say right now that I had never seen a bolero hat in real life, only on TV. I’ve never seen one in real life since that night, either.
She barely sat up to start the car. There was no greeting, no small talk. No kiss.
She headed out of Dundalk, through the winding, wooded road to Miller’s Island Road. We found the restaurant closed for the winter. A pair of high beams lit the interior of the car as we headed back to Dundalk. I said, “We’re being followed,” and I knew who it was without looking. The stalker. The one I had been having sex with.
The brown-eyed woman knew how to drive that Z-28; she jammed the shifter down and gassed it, executing a perfect drifting U-turn straight out of a Burt Reynolds film. I told her who it was. She said “You’re mine, and she’s not gonna get you.”
She left the stalker in a cloud of smoke from peeled rubber and I was wrenched sideways in the seat.
That’s when I’d had enough.
While the stalker was still out of sight on that lonely road, I said, “Let me out. She’ll see I’m not with you and leave you alone.” She was almost emotionless as she stopped. I got out and ran far enough into the woods that despite the lack of foliage, no one could see me. I waited in the frigid dark until I felt safe enough to walk the road.
I never saw the brown-eyed woman again. Never.
As time passes, I don’t forget her. Or the dream. Or the bolero hat. And I’ve been convinced that something terrible would have happened had I remained in that car. The words “You’re mine” echo across decades.
I don’t know what that meant. She was married. I wonder if she meant something more sinister, if she really had wanted my soul. If she was married then she wasn’t a demon. A demon represented her in my nightmare though; I think it likely that one was attached to her. Drug use can facilitate such attachments.
Not long after that eerie night, something strange occurred to me:
I had never known her name. I know only that I courted evil. And death.
Sometimes dreams are a warning by a higher power. If the dream is especially disturbing. If it is particularly vivid and detailed. If a demon is in the dream.
And you’ll be wise to take it seriously. Do what your gut feeling says.
And if you see a woman with brown eyes, wearing a bolero hat?
WARNING: This article contains material of a disturbing nature and contains mature subject matter. It contains triggers for victims of abuse. Read with care.
OBITUARY
Accidentally, while hunting clues for a cold case murder, I ran across my father’s obituary. I didn’t want to see it.
Nice, isn’t it? Except I never heard once that he was a lawyer. In fact, there’s evidence that he never made it past 7th grade. He did work for B.F. Moffitt, who was successful in legal work with or against the then-feared Interstate Commerce Commission. Moffitt, by all accounts, was an honorable man. Ralph Smith wasn’t. And this obituary boils my blood.
It says, very simply, that he was a lawyer, later owned Comet Fast Freight in Glen Burnie, and he died at age 75 in Salisbury MD in 2002 after a lengthy illness. Fucking vanilla shit. It doesn’t mention that he was one of the worst sex offenders in state history. Not a word.
A decade earlier the same paper said something very different.
Following are several articles from after the trial. Read them, and I’ll tell you something really fucked up.
Jay Apperson was a fine writer and reporter. I knew he was the only spectator in the courtroom during the three-day trial of my parents. We later did things I don’t believe he understood, and that’s what you should expect from a story so horrible; how can he be blamed? But a month after the verdict, when the sentencing hearing came up, reporters from printed media, TV and Radio were there. I particularly remember watching CBS reporter Bruce Morton later on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. Mr. Morton was obviously unable to keep a bit of emotion out of his voice. When both Ralph and Betty Smith drew about 99 years apiece for their crimes, the state dropped the remaining cases brought against them for crimes against the rest of my siblings, who I won’t name. It wasn’t fair; they’d taken the time and invested emotionally in writing their police statements and being interviewed first by Detective Jill Klinger of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Anne Arundel County Police Department, then by Assistant State’s Attorney Cynthia Ferris. They got no closure.
But then, neither did I. The trial and my time on the stand was traumatic. And it forced me to feel emotions and speak out loud the unspeakable. It opened up every wound I’d buried. And to this day, those wounds bleed.
As for the 99-year sentences, that was a joke. The judge ordered the terms to be served concurrently; therefore the charges with the most time, 15 years, would be served. They would be eligible for parole in considerably less than that. But they didn’t get their first hearings past the Department of Parole and Probation. Betty Smith served ten years in Jessup Women’s Correctional Facility while Ralph Smith “Esquire” served around eleven. He was in ECI, Eastern Correctional Institution in Queen Anne, after which he wound up in Salisbury, most likely in a halfway house. He died there or in a hospital.
He left behind a shattered family, and all have had their personal struggles. Not being one to compare one person’s pain with that of another, I’ve learned to keep a perspective: all victims of rape, sexual assault, incest and child abuse are, by medical, anecdotal and empiric evidence, walkingwounded. I have seen the evidence for myself. It fucks people up.
NEW YORK
One of my biggest regrets is going to New York and appearing on Phil Donahue’s show. Afterward, I thought it took some of the credibility away from our case. I know Jay Apperson thought so. While there, we were approached by Spectacor Films and offered money for the rights to make a film about us. It was a mistake I was too young and too damaged to understand (Spectacor’s portfolio consisted of feculent films like Amityville 3 or 4). When Mr. Apperson reported it, I thought we’d fucked up. We looked like greedy attention seekers. We were not. We hoped to help other people to stand up to their own abusers. I hoped also to show people in my past why I had been so weird, that it wasn’t my fault. That I was just a messed up kid.
I was happy that I abandoned the book. I was happy the movie contract expired without so much as a draft-script written. When the project was pitched, not a single sponsor would touch it. Too horrible, they said.
Decades later, no one remembers anything of us. We didn’t change a goddamn thing. How I’d dreamed we could. How bitter I was that the world moved on without me. As I grew ever more sick, I went through a divorce. I tried to kill myself. I went through jobs. Then my children died. My whole fucking life was a waste. As if I never mattered, never should have existed. God damn it.
I need no longer speak to my sister. She’s a goddamn Neocon saint whose relationship with the Lord is historic, unprecedented since the death of St. Paul ofTarsus. Piss on her. She judged me and told her friends lies about me. That’s a mistake; I heard about it and now I pretty much think of her as more fucking mental than I am. I didn’t deserve that bullshit. That bridge is burned forever now.
But I feel sorry for her. She’s missed the whole point. Forgotten it. Forgotten her own fucking words to the press. How we could finally be a family.
I don’t like the whitewashed obituary. The man didn’t deserve it.
You see from the articles that the case of the State of Maryland vs. Ralph and Betty Smith was a big deal. The grand jury said the reports read “like a horror story” and the State’s Attorneys office was cited as saying it was the worst case of child abuse they’d seen. The Honorable Judge Raymond Thieme, after it was over, was said to have entered his office, thrown his robe on the floor and stormed from the building. The source said she had never seen him do such a thing.
Sometimes, I think back on that. Even he needed closure, and probably wished he could forget the shit he had to hear.
Ralph Smith had moments when I looked in his eyes. He would take his glasses off, rub his eyes, and for just a second or two, I saw into the soul of a human being trapped in a diseased body. Did I see regret?
No.
Was it guilt?
No.
It was a broken heart.
Then the devil got into him again and the man was gone, replaced by a monster.
And he did not deserve that vanilla obituary.
“VINDICTIVENESS”
Defense attorney Thomas Morrow told reporters: “Even if the charges are true, I can’t understand that level of vindictiveness.”
Holy shit. What a crude thing to say. What a stupid thing to say.
Well it wasn’t vindictiveness at all. Perhaps some desire for vindication was there. But that’s not what started it. I started it.
I was motivated at first because a sister, long lost, called me out of the blue one day. She was in such obvious pain that I knew she couldn’t keep it inside anymore. Some of what happened to her happened to me at the same time. We were made by my parents to watch 8mm porn films, then do things together, and then we split up; my father and my sister alone in another room, my mother taking me into another. We both saw, did and knew things we both had to do, see or otherwise. When she called, she told me about the things I hadn’t witnessed. Things our father had done to her that were so evil, so horrible that I can’t describe even one of them here. As I listened, my heart was aching. Things people should never have to imagine, much less endure, were vividly pictured in my mind. Before the long call ended, I was full of rage. Goddamn it, they had to pay.
I had an immediate plan. I was going to go to Bart’s Sporting Goods on Ritchie Highway, buy a shotgun, drive to Pasadena, kick the door to their house of pain and evil open, and fill my parents with double aught buckshot. But I happened to spot a copy of the Gazette lying on the coffee table and I picked it up and read it. There had to be a reason I was so motivated. Because there was a story about kids from my neighborhood who grew up with us. They had gone through the same type of abuse. They waited until the youngest turned 18 years of age, then went to the police. Their father was arrested, tried and convicted.
I remembered those kids. One very little girl, the youngest as far as I know, a little girl whose face should have been lit up by an innocent smile, showing up at the bus stop with red, swollen, watery eyes. Tears flowing. Her body held in a position I knew caused by physical pain. I can’t get it out of my head; I’d known something was wrong. When I learned why she’d been like that, I regretted that with my own experience, I didn’t see it for what it was. I will always be sorry I didn’t know, couldn’t help, and they were right down the street all those years.
Maybe I didn’t have to commit murder and throw my life away in an act of revenge. Maybe, this family I’d known so little about had done something we could do. As if there was a hand guiding me to read that paper.
SAVING A NEPHEW
A few of us talked. My youngest brother, still living at home, dropped a bomb on me one day: a sister who had gotten divorced and had a toddler son had moved back home. If being a parent is hard, being a single one is really difficult. But that’s no excuse for what my brother told me she did.
It seemed that when the boy cried and wouldn’t go to sleep at night, she would get our father to beat him with his belt.
Goddamn, it’s hard to write this. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish it never happened. But it did.
Suddenly the imperative was to get the boy away from that. It wasn’t about payback. Justice. Revenge. The kid had to be saved before he was so traumatized that he became one of us.
I contacted the boy’s father, living in North Carolina at the time. I told him our story. What was happening to his son. And I said she had two weeks to get him the hell out of there, or something very bad was going to happen. According to my brother, the asshole did call her, but she convinced him that I was quote “full of shit”.
She had thrown down a gauntlet. When my youngest brother turned 18, he moved out. We went to the police and made statements, and that is why and how it all began. I have no remorse; once sentenced, my parents lost the house. They went to prison. The boy was as safe as we could make him. But I’ve never forgotten that my oldest sister was still a monster, and I’ve worried over the years that my nephew never got out of it unharmed.
AFTER
In 2015, I was outside smoking. A warm summer night. A neighbor had a window open. His daughter was screaming and her father yelled, “I’m your father and I can beat you whenever I want.”
Very uncharacteristically, shaking with rage, I finished my cigarette. I went inside and took two Ativan to calm down. I should have called the police. I didn’t.
The knocking on his door pissed him off. He’d been nice to me, always saying hello and smiling. But now I knew what he was. He was my father. Different shell, same demon.
He stepped out onto the porch. I leaned to whisper in his ear.
“I heard you. I know what you just did. The next time I hear it, I will kill you. She’s worth it. I’ll go to jail, but you’ll be sitting on Satan’s lap, you piece of shit.”
He turned. I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I looked right into his eyes. He knew I meant it.
It was a mistake. He moved his family out. I couldn’t help her; I’d probably made it worse.
I have the hope that he was so scared that he sought help. Or he changed.
I believe the hope to be unrealistic.
In the end I wonder what I’ve ever accomplished that was good. It all seems so useless, so futile.
The monsters don’t change.
They can’t. Ralph Smith died a monster. And everyone forgot what he really was. He got a lie for an obituary.
The world forgets.
And I…am an asshole.
Post-Update, Father’s Day, 2022.
The final verdict is in; Ralph Smith never practiced law.
He never finished college. When he was working for the motor truck association, he was a fucking clerk, typing tariffs and doing billing.
I have a cousin named Bonnie, and another named Terri, on Ancestry. Both are hostile toward me and one is responsible for making his ancestry profile make Superman seem like a milquetoast compared to my father. The motive: they’re from the south. Family can be serial killers, but they’d conceal it if they could. I’ve blocked all updates and emails from the site, and I’m never going back. Because fuck the Smith family. Inbred shit beyond the ability to accept truth or to tell it.
Trigger Warning: the following contains language and themes which may invoke strong negative reactions in some individuals. Please proceed with care.
LIAR, LIAR
He could have you thinking he was the sharpest businessman south of Wall Street. He could tell you anything about any period in history. “Dissertations”, as an employee once called the talks. Of course the employee wasn’t one of his truck drivers, it was a dude with a college degree who knew that Ralph Smith did a lot of filling in the blanks. Some of his filler was clever, but most of it was straight bullshit. The truckers never knew or cared and only bided their time until they could hit the road. I got a laugh out of that. They’d be all glassy-eyed, staring at the road maps in their memory, and never hear a fucking word.
Where exactly he was born, I couldn’t say. He grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. Little is generally known of him prior to his enlistment in the Navy. He claimed to have been aboard the USSBoxer after World War Two was over. While on land, as one story went, it was his job to taxi F-4U Corsairs, get the tail wheel up, line up a target downrange and off the tarmac and fire the guns so they could be properly zeroed. But once, though not a pilot, he said the plane felt so good he just kept going and took off. The operations tower supervisor got on the radio and screamed, “Smitty, you get that aircraft back down here on the double!”
He managed to land it but the story ended there. He never said how he landed it or if he was punished.
First of all, the F-4U Corsairs were difficult to fly. It wasn’t kind to first time flyers. The plane was a fighter but not a small one by any means; its long nose, inverted gullwing design with a span of 41 feet and a light stick at high speed, but a heavy one with lower speed meant that control would have been extremely difficult for anyone with zero hours of flight training in any aircraft. There was also enough engine torque to roll the plane if a propeller blade hit the ground, which was more common with the long blades used on F-4U-1 models. It grew less common when the shorter four-bladed props were added to later models, most commonly the F-4U-4, but which appeared late in the war and helped make the craft safer to fly off carriers. No matter what, all these things made for a plane that makes Ralph’s story highly improbable. Not impossible, but in the realm of the most unlikely bullshit kind of story.
What he would have found is that the Corsairs were tricky. At low speed, he’d have had a heavy stick. If he didn’t apply proper throttle, pre-stall speed would make the plane begin to roll right, in other words dipping the right wing. Again, with pre-stall speed, the craft would buffet. That’s aero-speak for shaking the shit out of you and kicking the stick out of the hand. Anyone could panic. Crashes on landing weren’t uncommon, which was one reason the Corsairs were deployed on carriers and then given to Marine squadrons ashore. Later in the war, they saw carrier action again but by then the F-6 Hellcat was the main fighter at sea. The likeliest result if he actually pulled this stunt would have been a crash.
It was also unlikely that if deployed aboard Boxer that he would have served ashore with Marines.
But Ralph Smith was never one to think anyone else could fact-check a tale. He’d put enough bullshit in and mix it well with things real pilots told him.
His “exploits” led one guy to call him “Walter Mitty” behind his back.
But bullshit is effective; and when mixed with just a little bit of friendliness and a pinch of honesty, people liked him.
MARRIAGE AND EARLY CAREER
He was married three times. First to a woman named Jenny, who nobody seems to know about. It didn’t last long, though. She departed for reasons unknown. His second marriage produced two kids but ended up with his wife leaving him and being basically traumatized for decades.
Third marriage: Betty Hutchins of Kentucky, a nurse, and six more kids. During this time he claimed to have killed his business partner by gunfire in southern Virginia or northern North Carolina for double crossing him and leaving him broke. If anyone ever investigated the man’s disappearance, I never heard about it. All the details were left out. It was a construction company and it concerned a place around “Lake Laura”, named after his first daughter.
Sometime between the Navy and this time he claimed he’d been in Hollywood and had tap danced with none other then Danny Kaye, who’s name also made it as a middle name for his first daughter. After leaving the Hollywood scene in what seems to have been a rather dodgy and fast move, and I speculate that this was a potential scandal involving whatever he did to his first wife and possibly bisexual behavior, he went back to Carolina.
After the construction business failed, he apparently worked for a while for B.F. Moffitt, then moved north to Maryland and bought a trucking company, Boyer Transportation, after working for several years at Maryland Transportation. Since there is a company of the same name elsewhere, my search returned no results on another Boyer. It could mean he ran his trucks illegally under Boyer placards and rights. That’s only the beginning of weirdness. He quickly renamed the company Comet Fast Freight, and worked from his home in Pasadena. He had to meet drivers at Frederick, Maryland for paychecks and delivery manifests. I’ll say this for him: he really worked hard. By 1972 he had leased a small warehouse in Glen Burnie, just south of Baltimore. Spacious offices made it perfect for running two businesses, Comet and Atlantic Terminals and Equipment or AT&E. He warehoused products like Coco-López, Van Houten cocoa powder and empty soda bottles for Rock Creek Beverages. He expanded to add a warehouse in Curtis Bay, which was so old and filthy that Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers, who contracted to store bags of powdered milk, pulled out. Somehow he got out of that building and into a smaller one on Penrod Court in Glen Burnie.
Between 1960 and 1970, his family grew by five more children. His income began to show in his house, but for a decade, it was furnished with used shit from wherever he could lay his hands on it. Hardwood floors eventually got carpeted in ugly blue-green and orange shaded sections.
A console TV was added. Then it went up and for years it went back and forth between color and black and white TV sets. No flat screens back then. Personally I knew he was responsible for some of the sets going up. There was no cable. Pasadena was separated from TV stations in Baltimore by miles of buildings and trees. And it took him years to add a rooftop antenna; with rabbit ears we rarely drew in a clear picture. Yet he blamed the TV for the trouble and would take the back off and go in with pliers and screwdriver to repair shit. I had to stand in front of the screen with a mirror. I hated every minute that he was home. His father was a radio and television repair expert, so that may be one reason Ralph Smith never fried himself like a chicken.
PREDATORS
I was my mother’s second child and my father’s fourth. Between 1967 and 1976 I was “taught” once a week about sex. This mostly consisted of me being taken from bed into the den, and while my father watched TV and read a newspaper, my mother would perform oral sex on me. On New Year’s Eve 1970, after the youngest of my siblings was born the previous June and she’d had her tubal ligation, Ralph and Betty Smith decided it was time for me to graduate to intercourse. I was always cautioned never to tell anyone about it. Yet they said it was biblical to obey and honor “thy father and mother, that thy days be long”, quoting one of the Ten Commandments. As it was put by him, I’d die by an act of God if I refused to submit to rape, or “sex education”.
It was never easy having Ralph Smith as my father. He used threats, torture and mind-fucking to keep us in line.
THE CHURCH YEARS
I don’t remember when they joined Lake Shore Baptist Church. Don Moore was Pastor. That’s a long time ago. With such a big family to stuff into a Mercury Marquis, we were always, always late. I hated the embarrassment that caused. To prevent it happening again, he and my mother became Sunday School teachers. Imagine that.
Hours after my regular Saturday night rape by mom, which always took place in the midnight hours, exhausted and anguished, I would be in my father’s Sunday School class and he expected me to be called on to answer questions. But I hadn’t had time to study the lesson. At home he would berate me for not being prepared.
In the summer of 1973 after school let out, I was made to work in his warehouse. All heavy and dirty work, but after his manager went home around four, I had to stay with my father until he went home. That put me eating dinner at eleven pm, showering afterward, and getting back up around six am. I hated him. And he loved to take a 13-year-old kid, his son, and berate and curse at him in front of anyone around. Sometimes, the truckers would take me aside and say they were embarrassed to have heard such shit. These were tough men. But I pulled at their hearts when they saw tears in my eyes. They’d whisper, “For what it’s worth, I really feel sorry for you.” They had suddenly seen a side of Ralph Smith that they did not like. They never knew about what he was doing at home to his daughters, what he and his wife did to their sons. Years later I talked to a few of those drivers on Facebook. Now, even knowing that my father was a demon, they reminisced fondly about working for him. What fucking dicks would act like that? I burned those bridges. It was satisfying.
Yet, to this day, others remember him fondly too. Some of our neighbors did not believe those of us kids who wrote out police reports and testified against both of our parents.
They just didn’t know him. And fuck them all, the sick bastards.
DEVIATE, THIEF, MANIPULATOR, NARCISSIST
Ralph Smith was such an extraordinary pig and narcissistic bastard that he tried to make a bargain with the church. He promised to fund a new wing if they would make him a deacon.
They refused. He’d been divorced and that disqualified him. He eventually got mad and left the church. God I was glad to be free from that fucking place. There were people there I loved very much, but I had already grown adept at burning bridges. So I gladly turned and walked away when he said I didn’t have to go anymore.
Sometime in 1974 into 1976, he came into a shitload of cash. He was scamming the IRS but that was the least of it. He also broke a law that forbade him to strip overseas containers within a 50 mile radius of the ports of Baltimore. Often it fell on me to transfer the loads onto Comet trailers, saving the company a fortune in deadhead miles, which means hauling an empty container back to the port. On his trailers, he could deliver the bonded goods and get a load back to Baltimore with few empty miles. More money.
Freight sometimes went missing altogether. This is sketchy; I know almost nothing of it, but it did happen. Once, a container of coffee went missing and that time the FBI came around. My father knew they were coming and instructed me to answer their questions: I knew nothing.
Well I didn’t. He was telling me to lie but all I had to do was tell the truth. I’d heard a comment, ambiguous and meaning nothing to me because I never knew we hauled the shit.
It got weird at the trial in 1990 when he testified that I’d sworn revenge on him for the load of coffee. That’s his testimony as to why I would report to the police years of sexual abuse. It was lame. The jury knew it. Funny thing was, if I had known anything, I’d have kept my mouth shut. I was more afraid of him than the feds. Goddamn bastard once held a loaded .357 to my head, cocked it, and warned me never to cross him or I’d die. That’s my father. That’s Ralph Smith.
ONE OF SATAN’S OWN
One late autumn afternoon, at sunset, I headed out to my car to meet a friend for pizza. I was 17. I got to the car and found I had forgotten my keys. I went back inside, down to my room. I didn’t bother turning the light on because I had a straight walk across the room to my desk, where my keys were. Halfway across the room I stopped and froze. I wasn’t alone. I sensed great evil, which I had become sensitive to. Some thing was there in the dark, and it felt like pure evil had me in its sights as if the devil in Hell himself were there.
I couldn’t move. I was terrified to the point that had I not already used the bathroom, I’d have let go my bladder.
After an eternity I heard a movement in the dark and my father stepped out of my closet and said, “Yeah, I’m in here.”
There was something extraordinary about the man. Some force that I’d never sensed until I felt him without knowing he was there. That day I believe I “saw” his true self. There’s no forgetting it.
A LEGACY OF PAIN
It surprised everyone when Ralph and Betty Smith were arrested and tried for rape, statutory rape, incest, unnatural and perverted sexual practices and child sexual abuse.
Some neighbors believed them guilty. Some did not. And I spent way too much time worrying about it.
Ralph Smith spent 11 years in the State of Maryland DOC. He lived two years after parole. He wasn’t visited by a single person. His place and cause of death and his grave site are unknown to me. Nor shall I look. I face my own mortality and I live with his legacy: pain. Horrible nightmares. PTSD. Dysfunctional in every way. Never having known two days in a row of happiness or even peace.
Because I am damned. Because I’m an asshole.
MEANT FOR MORE THAN JUST THIS?
There’s a song by Alabama Shakes. “Hold On” is the title of the excellent track. My God it’s like Brittany is me. Someone up above keeps me around. Keeps telling me to get back up. To hold on. I really didn’t think I’d make it to 22-years-old. I was 21 the day Ralph Smith held a pistol to my head and pulled the hammer back.
Somehow I’ve survived and I’ve been wondering why. What was I meant to do? I’ve survived so many times when I should have died. I’ve outlived my children. I’m a mess and my time runs short.
The best I can do is tell people to hold on. You’re here for reasons you don’t know and may never know. But you’re here. You and I, we have to tell people to stop before it’s too late. And that someone up above wants us to hold on.
If that is the true legacy of Ralph Smith, then I’m okay with it. I’ll keep writing. I’ll bare my soul. I’ll do it for other survivors. Because that’s an honorable job to have.
But Ralph Smith is surrounded by darkness, and I’ve been there. He’s adrift on his way to divine retribution. He’s already in a hell of his own making. A Twilight Zone.
Everyone has bad dreams. The word nightmare is commonly used to differentiate between a simple bad dream and something far worse. These are sometimes quite vivid and even unforgettable. If you forget your dreams, it’s okay. That’s normal. Normal for others is remembering every second of a dream. They’ll wake up and tell you a novel out loud.
It’s interesting stuff because we don’t know yet why we dream. How we dream. Why some remember and some rarely do. Nor do we know what dreams mean because sometimes, they come true to some degree. Consulting dream interpretation books is akin to reading a newspaper horoscope.
It used to be accepted that dreams came in REM stage of sleep, but now we know we dream in every stage of sleep including while we’re falling asleep.
This happened to me once while I was a teenager. I was nodding off, and saw a succession of faces most finely detailed. Some brought no trouble to my mind. One did. He had blonde hair and a sailor’s cap with the brim turned down like Gilligan wore. I snapped awake. The guy was as evil as the thing I’d seen in my room upstairs a decade earlier. As evil as my father was.
I never could forget that face. It was stamped in my mind.
Years went by. I drove a tractor trailer for B Green & Co. and was on the old back dock one day looking for the forklift driver, Jerry. I couldn’t hear his lift running so I walked into the warehouse and turned a corner, where I came face-to-face with the guy I’d seen so long ago, wearing the hat I had seen him wearing. He was chilling; my blood ran cold with the look of hatred he fixed on me. A song was playing on a nearby radio: “Walk, Don’t Run” by the ventures.
PTSD affects the brain in ways that show up as abnormal on MRI results. The greater and more prolonged the trauma, the more areas that show abnormalities there are.
I’ve found that science is far behind what those with PTSD often learn on their own: that they are more receptive to the paranormal but can seldom control it; that they have vivid and traumatizing nightmares; that their social skills are never going to develop properly; that relationships are often stormy because self-esteem is low and they “settle” for the first person who gives them a second look, even marrying them after a few months of mostly sex dates; that they are never at peace or comfortable except in places they’ve gotten used to and that those places aren’t always good, therefore there is no peace, and the comfort is like a habit, an addiction, a cacoon.
Nightmares are a symptom of the disorder that isn’t reported in every diagnosis, but which is quite prevalent nonetheless. I generally do not count “old hag attacks” which the term nightmare comes from. I’m talking about sick, disgusting, horrible shit that leaves one so shaken that it counts as a trauma all by itself. The entire day or two following such dreams see the sufferer depleted, depressed and dissociatively useless and morose.
No matter how long I’ve researched, I’ve never come across any way to mitigate such dreams. No medication. No herbal remedy. No amount of exercise, no matter what you do, it’s going to happen.
I can’t even find any literature on the subject that I actually find believable.
Typical PTSD dreamers seem to have themes running through a particular dream. It is most often centered on whatever grieved or terrorized them, even if there were multiple traumas, as is the case with me. So of course I have many dreams caused by trauma that are very different. Sometimes only one element is present. Sometimes there are so many that I awaken sick and useless for a week, with migraine headaches, a need to eat unhealthy food or to smoke more than usual.
This Sunday morning as I slept I had one of the most tortuous dreams I can remember, relentless and truly terrifying.
I was back in private school, only it was a place I’d never been. Old. Hulking, with many floors and several wings. But I couldn’t find where I belonged. Where my classes were, where my dorm room was. At one point I settled into a room only to find it occupied by a girl I didn’t know. But there were no girls, only women. College age, more like, and I was just out of place. They knew about this and began to torment me, sending me all over this labyrinthine hell. At one point I was accused of wronging someone and she accepted my apologies. I reached out to hug her and she screamed and turned away. That’s when the real torture broke like a rogue wave. I had pain and grievous wounds. I kept being stripped to my jeans and bare feet. I remained as meek as I could. I just wanted it to stop. My mother called and said she and my father had lodged a complaint with the headmaster and that to make it up to me, I would be given Mac computers and other shit. I refused and said for them to get me out of this hellishness. She said they would come for me. In a snowstorm they evidently tried. In a yellow schoolbus. I went to meet them and found the bus empty, hollow and burned. The dream ended. I was stuck.
Nothing necessarily means anything. A psychologist would try to get to the source because the dream obviously distressed me even after waking. I was wobbly, very weak and light headed and dizzy with reflux enough to spit on a rat and watch it be digested.
What the therapist would do is note my fear of being naked in front of others and say lots of people have such dreams. What I would say is, there was over a decade of my life in which I had no privacy, no control over my own body, was sexually abused and traumatized so many times I wonder how I’ve lived with it for so long. I would also say that labyrinths and being chased through them by tormenters is another terror I frequently face in nightmares. And the antagonists being women is new.
Uh, wait. Is that because I’ve been writing about how I felt more respect for my father and more betrayed by my mother?
And being trapped and abandoned? Nothing new there. The screaming girl I tried to hug is new. I never, ever give unsolicited contact of any kind to anyone, nor do I want it done to me. I rarely shake hands because I can get empathic impressions that way and I’m tuned to the negative feelings only, nothing good. I’d just as soon we didn’t shake hands if you don’t mind.
Some of it makes sense to me. I have no one to talk to about this stuff. The other day I tried and was cut off by “I have to take this” which was followed the next day by a different reason. So I quit. I surrender. I’ll do it myself.
Stay with me long enough and you’ll end up sleeping with your lights on. I’m a weird man who’s had too much weird shit happen to him. If you read my post about the Angel of Death, you’ll be better prepared for what’s coming, but even as a stand-alone story, it works.
When I was in a group home, around 2010, this feral cat showed up. No collar. Dark brown and black. Big, like a tom, but I thought it was a semi-feral queen. I fed her on the back deck. Tuna, sometimes Fancy Feast. Never 9 Lives, she’d go hunt rabbits instead. She loved me. You shouldn’t do this but I’d lean over the deck railing while having a smoke, and she’d jump up, purring and giving me a lick or two. She’d rub against my face and at times when I felt kinda sad, she was very affectionate.
Now this house, built in 1900, was haunted. Not anything residual mind you; intelligent and able to interact. Twice before the deck was built, I stood, late at night, on the steps, on the wood platform at the top. I heard the doorknob work. A single heavy boot step behind me. I thought it was another of the smokers in the house, nothing more. Then, at the back of my neck, very close, a hoarse “Hey.”
I turned. Both times, nobody was there. By then I knew I was a sensitive. Spirits know sensitives. They try to communicate. But I’m not a medium so I am limited in my interactions and anyway they scare the shit out of me.
Any house that predates the fall of the Ottoman Empire is going to have something lurking about.
There were many ghosts in that house. I saw one very clearly. A light blue and white checked shirt and jeans. Thin build. Long blonde hair. She was standing in a part of the kitchen I was always drawn to. She was beautiful but stuck and troubled. She may have crawled into bed behind me as I lay on my side. I felt a small hand on my shoulder. I didn’t react. I should have. But it was okay with me; I sensed only loneliness.
Across the street and diagonally to the left sat an empty house that was built in 2000. Owners kept moving in only to put up a for sale sign within 18 months. I sensed death and something evil within. I always felt like I was being watched when I looked at it. My daughter died within days of parking in the driveway.
I’d twice heard high heels walking in the street below my window. Both times just before a friend died. The second time I followed the sounds with my eyes and was sure they stopped in the driveway of that foul dwelling. And I was sure I’d heard the Angel of Death come to warn me.
I got pictures in my head of a drowning but couldn’t make out any details. On Google Earth I saw that the death house across the street had a pool. I knew someone had died there. I warned my daughter about that house so why she parked there to visit I’ll never know. And she died by drowning in a swimming pool.
Well. The cat. I never did call it a name. It disappeared right before my daughter died. Came back after Beth died.
This cat was savvy, as cats usually are. I love cats. I want one but can’t afford the extra rent charge. Anyway, when she came back, she would eat, hang around for a head scratch, and then do something different. She would go down the steps of the deck and look back at me, as if she wanted me to follow. I’d never heard of that behaviour in cats. I stepped down into the grass, and she walked beside me. But she always went around the corner to the side of the house closest to the death house. It walked all the way to the street, ten yards from the house of death. It was as if she wanted me to go there and I wasn’t about to go. No fucking way. The cat was good. I wanted to take her in but she was feral enough to not like it.
But she knew something. Something she wanted me to know. Looking back, I had an intuition that I wasn’t going to understand whatever it was and I wouldn’t have liked it anyway.
One of the last days I saw her, she was lying in a bit of sun on the deck. One house member was there with a visitor. We were all sitting down. The cat got up suddenly, catching my eye. You can tell when a cat gets miffed, and she walked towards the steps. But she had only gone a step or two when she suddenly went skidding sideways, across the boards of the deck, a total of about five feet. Something I couldn’t see had kicked her hard, catching her in the side. How she slid was impossible, but we all saw it. We were all stunned, frozen.
The cat ran halfway across the yard. She stopped and looked back. I called to her but she walked away. No idea where she went after that, as a part feral will often go from one house to another when someone feeds them.
I never have figured out what the hell happened. Why the cat came around. Why it seemed to love me and yet guide me toward a house I knew to be cursed. Or what kicked it, chased it away and obviously didn’t want it there.
No one can figure out things like that. All we can do is guess, and in so doing, remain sensitive and open to and as kind as we can be to animals. They often sense things we never can, and they’re protective of us once they accept us.
This story took place over a span of two years. And yet…even condensed like this, I still get chills.
Thirty Five is the number after which I lost count. That’s 35 traffic accidents I could remember when I tallied them during a conversation with a friend. I was working for Potomac Airgas in Catonsville Maryland, later just plain”Airgas”. I ran a machine called an Oxweld acetylene generator and weighed cylinders empty then filled, which gave the net weight of the gas inside. The guy I was working with was a real prize and even though we were friends, he looked like a pirate to me, with red hair coming out of his nostrils and ears. He’d been there since the Union Carbide days. That was until a horrific accident at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal India killed 8,000 people after a leak to the atmosphere of methylisocyanate. This is still considered the worst industrial accident in history. The injured, many permanently, also numbered in the thousands and Union Carbide ceased most gas and liquid operations, and the Catonsville plant was taken over by Airgas. Rupert had seen it happen. He was glad to be rid of a verbally abusive foreman, so he stayed on.
He was a big man. He rode the biggest Honda motorcycle I’ve ever seen and still he looked like he was fucking a football. He said of my automobile accidents, “Jesus Christ, Mike!” but yet he often asked me for a ride home. He was timid about it, one time asking, “Think you can lift me up?”
I sympathized. It’s not easy sometimes, asking for something you need. Your tongue doesn’t work right. But I didn’t get that because we were friends. He had asked for a ride home before.
I didn’t like doing it. He lived in the Hampden section of Baltimore, very far out of my way.
I answered the question as to whether I could lift him up with, “Only if use the forklift.” My tact and generosity were limited because I’m an asshole.
Besides, he was so big, he made my Mazda 323 lean so hard to the right I had to compensate while steering. But it was worse when he had to get out. He had to open the door, turn completely to the right, his back facing me. His pants would ride down and I had to look away, because I didn’t think there was that much crack in the entire fucking city.
Then came the smell.
You got it: straight, dirty, ass.
I tried to make it to the end of the block, window down for fresh air, but never once did that work. At the stop sign I invariably had to open my door, lean out and heave my guts up. I’ll bet I had absolutely no red meat from all the Quarter Pounders I ate in 1977 stuck in my intestines. You’d have to flush like you do before a colonoscopy to be as empty as I was.
He once asked me to pick him up for work. In the morning. I waited but ended up having to knock on the door. His wife answered and said “Come in. He’s almost ready.”
The stench was so overwhelming that their cat burst through the open door. I thought it was gonna run. It didn’t. It just stood there. I knew what it was doing. It was taking in all the clean air it could before being trapped again in that godawful house.
I dared not touch anything. I felt filthy just standing there. A movement caught my eye. Roaches inside the glass base of a table lamp. Roaches climbing walls, big motherfuckers, too, biggest I’d ever seen. One took up a position inside the glass of a wall clock, and I was sure that he was a sentry, keeping watch on the new intruder who might one day end up as food. I had nightmares for weeks, maybe longer. I never gave him a ride again.
It ended up that he got fired anyway. I had no sympathy this time. For shit’s sake, I once saw him eat a KFC four piece. It was all gone in five bites, bones and all. You can’t do that!
In my time, although I have burned many bridges, I’ve been blessed to know great friends who helped me through some very bad times. One was Brent, a guy living in a group home with me and four other people.
Brent was a character. He had schizophrenia but it was somewhat controlled by medication and excellent support. He wore a fiddler cap with his long blonde hair cascading from beneath. His oversized wire rimmed glasses gave him a distinct look. But it was fitting for his character.
He was the only man that I ever met who got a ticket for running along the concrete median without a flashlight on a summer night on Ocean Highway in Ocean City.
He once lost his wallet. Had some roaches shoved down in the folds. He got a call from OCPD, letting him know that someone had found and turned it in. He was ballsy enough to go to the station to pick it up. And they gave it to him, with the MJ joints still inside. Knowing that, you’d think he was the luckiest bastard who ever lived.
Perhaps. Then again, I’m still on the fence about it.
One time he was collecting old bottles in a kid’s wagon. Not altogether that strange, really.
Unless, of course, you count the fact that he was wearing a ceremonial native American chief’s bonnet complete with the full feathers and everything.
And maybe that wasn’t really so bad either; if only he wasn’t walking on the shoulder of Interstate 70, a highway illegal for pedestrians to access.
A westbound State Police cruiser (going the opposite direction) had a trooper and a fresh cadet. One can imagine: “Damn, did you see that?”
and the answer: “Yeah, I saw it. Some days I hate this fuckin job.”
They had to take the next exit, come back and put Brent’s wagon in the trunk and drop him in a safer area.
And no. He wasn’t a kid then. He was in his late 20s.
Anyone with schizophrenia will have delusional stories. I got to know Brent well enough that I could sort most of them out. I won’t go into those because I simply don’t have any interest in making, or appearing to make, light of them.
Because he was such a kind soul and a devoted friend. He loaned me smokes when I was broke, money when I was out of meds, and he fed me when I was hungry. He gave me company when I was lonely and couldn’t sleep.
I’ll always remember the nights we sat on the porch, talking, listening to the radio and smoking cigarettes or cigars. Jimmy Buffet, Columbian coffee and Marlboros. And damn good company.
Brent once made the news. He was driving a straight truck. I never asked, but I rather doubt he had a license. The headline the next morning was “Man Goes On Rampage In City, Damages Parked Cars”.
He said he didn’t know how many cars he hit. But to get a headline like that? Oh, yeah. He fucked shit up.
Once he was pepper sprayed by the police but managed to get away. Face and eyes burning, he ran into someone’s back yard. There was a pond, you know, the kind for goldfish and frogs and Lilly pads. He was sloshing water on his face when the owner awoke and said he was calling the police. Brent lied and said a gang of kids had used Mace on him. The owner invited him inside, helped him flush his eyes, gave him a towel and a glass of wine and sent him on his way. Of course I believe that story. He’s the only one who could run from the police after being pepper sprayed and come out of it with a free glass of wine!
I loved my friend Brent. I guess he’s just one of those people you can’t help but love and therefore can never forget. Only a few times in our lives do we meet such extraordinary people. They’re a true blessing. Brent taught me patience and understanding. He let me see the rough edges of himself, and that was an honor.
Before you judge? You have to get to know someone.
Before you hate that which you do not understand? You have to gain understanding.
The second night of the first round of Democratic debates is now in the books, and I have just one question: what the fuck was all that last night?
I mean, holy shit! Kamala Harris scored a below-the-belt punch to Biden, who clarified what he really opposed, and she began her attack with “I don’t think you’re a racist”. But then she accused him of that verything and used her feelings as a little girl, as if back then she knew Biden was a racist demon. Later interviewed by Gayle King she said Biden had served the country admirably. What? Hey. You don’t get to say that after some cheap shot that made the audience cheer. I like Harris. I have been watching her for some time. But the truth here is, she’s a politician. And I have personal experience of being ignored completely when I sought her help over the rights of a group of women our society shits all over without a shred of fucking shame.
Biden did his best. But a charge like Harris leveled against him is impossible to defend against. Back then he was in a tight place in a tumultuous time. She sees nothing positive, hence the attack. Biden was never a segregationist. He, and he alone, can tell that story. “Investigative” reporting by left-hand media started this shit two months ago. Well, I remember those days. I remember the country in chaos as civil rights, desegregation and the Vietnam War were dividing our country and Richard Nixon took advantage of it with his “Southern Strategy”, which got him elected.
If we don’t get our shit together, Trump will spend another term in the White House, which he has shit all over as he has with our constitution, foreign policy, economy and everything else he’s been entrusted with.
Bernie Sanders is a total moron whose voting record is there for everyone to see he can be bought.
Several candidates choked straight off. Not yet ready for the big league doesn’t begin to describe them. I’d go with “didn’t belong there in the first place” and ignore them.
I knew the debates were going to be like this. They always are. But I have no memory of any being this fucked up, unless you want to bring up the “toilet debate” started by Rubio in 2015-16.
These are critical times. We’re in deep shit. I don’t want to hear “1965”. I want to hear what you plan to do to correct the damage done by Donald Trump and ALEC and Russia. I want solid plans on fighting climate change, repairs to foreign relations, the economy. Because we are headed for a serious crash. War. Chaos. Anarchy.
I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy right now. I need a fucking shower.
Trigger Warning: this post deals with sensitive and disturbing subject matter. However, if you are feeling alone, feeling unloved or rejected, or that there is no way out of a horrible situation, read this. It’s for you.
You know that a YouTube vlogger from Brooklyn was just pulled from New York’s East River. He was very popular, with thousands of subscribers. He had posted a sad video that was the equivalent of a suicide note, then vanished.
NYPD asked for tips to help their search. Desmond Amofah, known to his YouTube fans as Etika, was soon pulled from the river. Evidence places him on the Manhattan Bridge, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, and that he jumped to his death.
I’m so sorry to have come across this story. The 29-year-old young man from Brooklyn had his whole life in front of him. Gaining a following on YouTube isn’t easy to pull off, as many who have tried and failed can tell you. Etika had charisma. A presence. Something that made people watch his life above many others. He’d taken heat from employing some sort of homophobic-type of slur, and everyone famous gathers haters and trolls.
And we all know those are relentless and cruel, and unforgiving. Getting hateful comments isn’t something YouTubers just slough like a wet jacket when they come in out of the rain. Those comments hurt. How would you feel if you, claiming to take up for a group like the LGBTQ community, drove a man so low that he felt alone against the world? And by the way, that particular group isn’t interested in having someone hateful fight for them. They’d rather have someone disagree but with civility and peace.
There’s no indication that it was Etika’s remark and backlash from it that drove him to such hopelessness. But I suspect it was part of a bigger picture. Suicide is a complicated subject. The victim may have one main reason or many. And they may or may not leave a note or video or audio message behind to give a clue as to their final decision and how they got there.
TheWorldHealth Organisation (WHO) estimates that each year approximately one million people die fromsuicide, which represents aglobalmortalityrateof 16 people per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds. It is predicted that by 2020 therateof death will increase to one every 20 seconds.
The video Etika left behind was particularly difficult for me. He said he had pushed everyone away, and that he was alone. I’ve spent a lifetime running away from people or being so cruel that I have made them run. I know how it feels. Except he didn’t do that. By all accounts, his video caused alarm in his devoted fans. Many were physically sick with worry when, following the video, he went missing. Now…he’s gone forever. And they’re grieving.
Suicide doesn’t have any boundaries. It is not something restricted to the poor and desperate, prison inmates, celebrities who see their careers going downhill or their fame and riches slipping away, business owners who have gone into bankruptcy, the terminally ill or anyone else.
Suicide is final. There’s no coming back from death. You can’t correct anything, can’t repair broken hearts, bring others back from death, you can’t do anything at all. You’ve taken every opportunity you had with you to the grave.
Etika also said one other thing, something that hit me in the gut with a powerful blow: “I guess I really am mentally ill.”
Damnit. I want him back. Right here, right now. I want to hold him and tell him that mental illness is not a death sentence, that there’s hope, that all the stigma around it is bullshit. That he has an opportunity and a platform to discuss seeking help and actually getting it.
I wish he had used his connection to his fans to open a dialogue about what was going on with him and letting them follow and support him on his path to wellness.
We were stronger with him than we are without him.
And that goes for you. You’re reading a blogger right now who barely gets a view a month. There’s a reason you’re here. Before you make any decision so horrible and final, you need to stop and think about this one thing: YOU matter. Your life is, no matter how desperate and alone you feel, no matter how persecuted or hopeless you feel, priceless. You may be replaced in a job, but your life is unique and special and can never be replaced. I encourage you to seek out help. Right now, because if left to second guess this moment, you could really kill yourself. I don’t want you to do that. We may never meet, never cross paths. But I want you here with me on Planet Earth. Because you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You can, given help and time, go on to be a rockstar. You can do things no one else can do. Giving up now robs both you and the world of every good, every great thing, you have the genuine potential to do. And since you don’t know yet what those things are, deciding now to end your life is just not right. You are in danger. Even if you don’t have a plan, sometimes suicide is a spontaneous act.
Start here. A simple phone call that can begin a process that can take you to a better place, a more peaceful place.
You’ll talk with someone who will give you their full attention. Someone who wouldn’t be answering phones unless they cared about people just like you.
And I want you to consider something really deep.
The “history” channel left real history behind in favor of pseudo science-and-history that make us stupid. Aliens built Egyptian pyramids. Aliens in spacesuits visited meso-America.
You know what? That’s rubbish.
All of our stealth fighter tech and supercomputer tech came from reverse-engineered alien space ships. Twaddle. What do you think that says about humanity in general and the people specifically who came up with those things? It’s an insult. It presupposes that we’re incapable of growing and learning. It says that those who gave their whole lives to improving the human condition never even existed. It limits, and labels us, at one and the same time.
In my career, I’ve seen men and women solve problems with simple critical thinking, dispassionate logic and experience. Tough problems, the kind that can cause serious damage to everything from a small transaction to a company staying in business. I’ve often been amazed at the cleverness, brilliance and durability of the human race. I therefore find ancient aliens to be pseudo science-and-history. And I submit to you that you are a part of an awesome species. The things you can do are without limits.
In hospital after my third suicide attempt, a doctor I usually didn’t see stood in for mine. He looked at my file and said “If you try again, you will kill yourself”.
In that moment, I realized the finality of what I sought. I was forced to think about where God would send me. I didn’t want demons coming to escort me to the afterlife.
And I’m sorry, but whether you believe in God or not, you have to consider whether there is an afterlife, and where you’ll go. Because once you’re dead, your life ends and you’re going to be judged. What I’m asking you to consider is, what if God is real?
One thing I’m not going to do is put a guilt trip on you. A lot of people respond to friends who talk of suicide by saying “think about the ones you’ll leave behind. How can you be so selfish?”
It’s not selfish, what you’re going through. It’s a lot of things, but selfishness isn’t one of them. You’re genuinely suffering and feeling hopeless. Like there’s nothing you can do to make things better. No way you can right a wrong. No one else who understands the fix you’re in.
But you’re not alone! There’s hope. Help. You might worry about the stigma around getting treatment for the things troubling you. You can’t allow that to stop you. Better to choose life and take risks than to die by your own hand.
The benefits of getting help are enormous and many.
Talk therapy is a great way to vent, and gain understanding of your feelings. When backed up by drug therapy such as a simple antidepressant which could be temporary or long-term, depending on your psychiatric diagnosis, you can feel better in a few weeks. Be honest, tell them what’s going on. Don’t be scared of 72 hours at minimum in a hospital. Don’t be afraid of anything. You’ll have every chance to get your life back, and decide to keep it. After a few months I left the hospital in summer, 2005. I’ve not been to a psych ward since, even though if I were in serious need of help, I’d go in a heartbeat. It’s been challenging. Hard. But I’m alive, here today to tell you that you are important, special and full of potential that you can’t see right now. That you matter. And that we are stronger with you than without you.
If you’re in crisis, you can call the number above. I recommend a visit to the emergency room if you actually have a plan for your death. That means you’re in serious trouble. Call 911. Or get a ride. Prepare to be stripped to a gown and restricted to a certain area. It’s protocol for your safety.
It will pass quickly. You’ll be in therapy sessions and see the doc every day. There’s occupational therapy which is a lot more calming and fun than you can imagine. When you’re released you’ll have a treatment plan. Probably some medications. From then on you’ll have a support system you can call on anytime. And you will get better.
I care very much what’s troubling you. What your past holds. The fear you’re filled with, the tears you’ve shed. I’m sorry you’re having so much hurt. You and I are forever brothers and sisters in heart and soul. Claim your life. Get it back.
Because together we can do anything.
Finally, if you are one of those who make fun of people in crisis, you need to know that your cruelty can kill. I know that’s okay with some of you. I’ve met the likes of you before. You could benefit from some psychiatric help yourself. You really want a life on your conscience because you said cruel things?
I leave a challenge with you.
Be kind. Say hello to people you don’t know. Show sympathy even if you have trouble feeling it. And when someone else says something you don’t like, then here. This song is for you.
Be the better person. It’s a tough challenge, I know. Try it anyway. One wave. One smile. One kind word…can save someone’s life. Oh. You won’t get to know. That’s how it works. But at least you’ll know you’ve done no harm. I have to tell you, that is an awesome feeling.
Back when rock was soft and restricted to a teenage audience who fed dimes into bottomless jukeboxes, and there was an innocence in the music that adults didn’t hear, a song came out. Just one among many, it was a love song, but had a definite tone of something disturbing beneath.
As it was innocent, not many people caught it. The song was well done, easy to listen to, and writers Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards deliberately aimed it at the teen demographic. Something today creeps people out about adults writing songs for and about teens, which shows how much we’ve not only lost our own memories of innocence but stolen it from next generations. It’s been progressive, this loss, this crime of the arts. We are diminished by its spread of restrictions, stigma, and so much worse. In 1966, a second version of the song was cut by the group The Happenings. It charted higher than the ’59 version, and I heard my older sister play it all the time. I loved it. I understood it and heard it with an innocence even as my innocence was being stripped from me by sexual abuse and vicious beatings. It was the beginning of a time in which I was malformed into a cynic and a romantic, quite a strange and perverse thing for one so young.
The song is about a male teen telling his girlfriend to have a good summer, and that he hopes to see her in September when school starts. What could possibly be more innocent and romantic, right?
But the boy isn’t feeling very secure about their relationship; what really comes across is,
Have a good time,
But remember,
There is danger
In the summer moon above
Will I see you in September,
Or lose you to a summer love?
It’s heart-rending, his terrible fear. Many teens found it fit their tastes for romance and the fear of losing it; how the pangs of love were both happy and sweet but tinged with bittersweet insecurities. Which was perfectly normal.
Meanwhile, conservatives and the Christians among them condemned rock and roll in every form. Television censors were heavy-handed with variety shows like Ed Sullivan’s and niche programs like American Bandstand. And we are still paying for it.
REPRESSION SQUARED
Keep in mind: I’m a Christian, so when I get critical of other “Christians” I’m not gonna be very nice about it because, in the end, I’m still an asshole and I hate fakes and fanatics. Groups of repressive Christians have always existed since the beginning when the churches began to spread. People didn’t have Gospels and the bible, and bound books didn’t exist. The Apostles wrote letters and told the story of Christ by word of mouth. And some got carried away. And once that starts, it can’t be undone or stopped. Inertia by proxy drives it. Mania, hysteria and bigotry enter the message of love and forgiveness. Through the centuries it got worse and this is undisputed history. Bloody crusades and inquisitions. Reformations, councils and the split into so many denominations that require different interpretations of a simpledoctrine that, guess what? The prediction made by Jesus himself came true and is now so bad that people are fleeing the church.
It’s called “apostasy”, and it refers directly to a church preaching and embracing false teachings, or doctrine. And it is everywhere, and thanks to the internet, it will only get worse.
You may not have been around in the 60s, but what happened, in shorthand, is that the teens and young adults whose biggest worries should have been graduating from college and high school, buying a car or a house or which albums to spend their allowance on, were thrust together into a fight they had no business being involved in and yet, it was forced upon them. And they were willing and able to rise up and fight for their beliefs and their rights.
The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement gave them an awful burden. They could stand up or be silent. And that’s no choice for young people. Those who remained silent were always the majority. It was the news that made it appear otherwise. The media was covering the war and the protests against it. The protesters were deliberately put in a horrible light; film editing made it worse. Those who stood up were called names, the most tame of which was “hippies”, and they were arrested, attacked by police with tear gas and fire hoses and riot sticks.
Girls of every teen year above 16 stopped getting letters from boyfriends who were never coming back, unless it was in a body bag. His parents told the girlfriends, often with tragic results. Oh, songs were written about them, too. Got censored; the president and his DoD fought antiwar “propaganda” and counterculture with a behind the scenes ruthlessness that took the media off balance.
Pop and folk singers and songwriters quickly took to using vague lyrics and symbolism to keep conservative watchdogs off their backs. But attrition always has a price. Some families – wives, parents, siblings – and girlfriends and fiancees – who were neutral about the war – became powerful antagonists and even leaders fighting to end the conflict. People grew angry and weary of the “Missing In Action”, “Killed In Action”, POW or other news, whether it was within their family or that of a friend, most often delivered by way of some Western Union telegram, a true slap in the face. The casualties mounted. And the antiwar movement became a force all its own.
Of course, it wasn’t so simple. It was a sort of war on American soil, with a strange mix of people from all religions, all political ideologies, all economic groups against the government of the United States. That just made the Johnson and Nixon administrations grow defensive. Nixon ran on a promise to end the war. Once in the Oval Office, he ordered portions of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia carpet bombed by B-52 heavy bombers. Physical incursion into the latter two by infantry and mechanized cavalry with infantry support upped the casualties and resulted in the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot consolidating power, winning the civil war Nixon had tried disastrously to end in favor of the right-wing factions, and eventually the deaths of unknown numbers of Cambodian civilians. Estimates after the one million mark are unreliable. We know it was probably more but those numbers were subject to the government playing with numbers. At home, it was not widely known when the bombing began. Washington…grew more aggressive.
Repressive government behaviour and policies are the very birth of rebellion. The whole thing got worse when churches and Christian associations tried to counter the sexual revolution, the antiwar movement and the Civil Rights movement. When women organized for their own rights and burned bras, it seemed the whole country was doomed. Many “Christian” pastors and writers screamed about the coming Judgement. The stereotypical unkempt man wearing a sandwich board with the word “Repent” became fodder for comedy shows.
You should be able to take it from here. Either you or your parents know what comes next.
The evolution of the conservatives and Christian fanatics has been, to atheists and others, horrifying. To genuine and imperfect people of faith, it became a matter of breaking out in cold sweats. They thought that if the prophecies were right, the end could truly be near. Because how do you fight evil and apostasy that powerful? Pat Robertson wasn’t even close to the first who used Jesus as a reason to advocate killing, even murder. The Westboro Baptist Church wasn’t the first to protest the LGBTQ community, and wasn’t the last. The price our country has paid…continues to pay…for recklessly trying to control the lives and behaviour of people whose rights have been routinely violated…is too high. How much innocent blood has been shed in executions? War? Ethnic hatred (recent reports of deplorable conditions inside “camps” for migrant children prove that the government is guilty of ethnic-based crimes against humanity)? How many people have known pain and been traumatized by people in power who don’t like who other people love, who they worship, their skin color or their political affiliations and ideology?
How many gay and lesbian and trans people have been murdered in the streets?
CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN?
I think you know this question. Many have asked it since 2015.
They look back on history. The Holocaust. They’re scared it could happen again. We said “never again” in the sad but heady relief and joy after VE Day. Hitler was dead. In one of the final battles of that theatre of the Second World War, soldiers of the Wehrmacht actually fought with allies – on the same side. Weird times, to be sure. But months prior, as allied units found and entered labor and death camps, they saw things that no part of the war so far could have prepared them for. The stench hit them before they got close if the wind was just right. And no matter what the wind was doing, the smell of dirty and dead bodies was on them before they could enter the compound, usually after the Germans who ran it had fled.
A rank odor that they would never be able to forget. And what met their eyes was so horrific that the strongest among them cried, retched and seethed with a thirst for revenge. So many were in shock, their senses overloaded with horror and sorrow that for the rest of their lives they never talked about it. The nightmares never ended. A different kind of nightmare than the ones where they were in foxholes being shelled by Nazi mortars or 88 millimeter guns. Different from the D-Day and the Ardennes nightmares.
It is a myth that America was the country doing most of the fighting in Europe; that was always England. It was mostly our supplies and machines they needed. In the end, it didn’t matter. They were all men who had seen too much, done too much and suffered too much. Women who worked as radar operators, mechanics, plant production workers and nurses, the latter dangerously close to the fighting, all suffered their own trauma.
In France it was reported that more French women were raped by American soldiers during the war than by Nazis. That war unhinged the whole world.
At the time, it was little known by the public that Stalin had long been murdering his own people and despite needing every man to fight the Germans, kept doing it. For certain, Roosevelt and Truman, Churchill and their top commanders knew. They never trusted Uncle Joe, but the immediate concerns were the Nazis and Imperial Japan. So they pinched Berlin between them and wreaked utter destruction on the Third Reich. The Soviets got to Berlin first. They unleashed all their national anger in every part of the city. Many soldiers, officers and civilians tried to flee Berlin to the west and the safety of the British and American military. Those who did not make it paid dearly for the sins of Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Walther Funk, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Karl Donitz, Erich Raeder, Wilhelm Keitel, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and many others. House to house, Soviets used grenade launchers, artillery, tanks and machine guns to kill everyone who was left. Women found alive including female juveniles were repeatedly raped and then murdered. The darkest hours of human history were on all of Europe like a smothering blanket.
The men Hitler surrounded himself with were ruthless and efficient. These men lacked something essential to qualify as human beings, and by the boxcar, undesirable people by Reich standards arrived at concentration camps, never again to know freedom or a moment’s peace. Through bitter cold, infested with lice and sick with dysentery and worse afflictions, they died by the numbers. Most were executed by gassing with truck exhaust or Zyclon B, many were shot with MP 40 submachine guns or MG-42s. Some were just allowed to freeze. Others starved. Some were placed in ovens and cremated alive.
And it wasn’t just European Jews who were marked for these horrible deaths. Homosexuals, Christians, blacks, the handicapped and German political dissidents were all shipped to these places.
As the world saw the footage captured on film, outrage grew. The war crimes trials against both Germany and Japan brought the extent of the atrocities to the public. And we said, “Never again”.
And now, Donald Trump has made it possible. From Hispanic refugees including children who can’t be accounted for to adults imprisoned in my own county all the way up here in Maryland, we are sitting still while nobody says a bloody thing, and the initial protests have either stopped or have ceased to be of interest to the media.
Yes. It can happen again. It is happening, right now. Considering how we’ve been distracted by the Mueller investigation, Iran and China, the government is able to numb us and do whatever it wants, and we will not notice it.
My young days of innocence are more than a half century in the past. But I still remember it. The songs. The way people said “please” and “thank you” and school books had expressions like “see Spot run”. When I could play with a cap gun and no one thought of calling the police.
The Cold War was scary. But even though carried to the brink at times, reason prevailed. There were cowboy hats and cap pistols and rock and roll and malt Shoppes. And innocence. We live now in a time of unreasonablness and a refusal of leaders to face reality.
“DEATH TO SINNERS!”
Young people are indifferent to the future they face, from a hellish result of climate change within their lifetimes to the lost forever concept of innocence and wonder of the coolest things the planet, and what life, offers them. Gangs and school shootings and street drugs have taken the place of the beauty of learning and discovery. Sex begins with texts on phones, where the thrill of getting to know someone is robbed by giving and getting too much information, and nothing is taboo, nothing is worthy of keeping secret or within certain boundaries; all gratification is instant or quickly abandoned for something else. And so we come full circle, back to the repressive Christians of the far right, who seek to stomp out not merely sin, but sinners as well.
Recently a pastor at a Tennessee church tried to have a meeting at a local Cracker Barrel. They were refused entry. The reason: the pastor is calling for LGBTQ people to be murdered. That’s right. Killed in cold blood. All of them. There’s something really wrong with this guy, but using the Bible to justify killing anyone is as evil as you can get. Not that it’s the first time, but this movement is getting some real attention. Any real Christian should know that murder wouldn’t please Jesus, who stopped the stoning of a woman accused of adultery by an angry mob.
We need more people to stand up to twisted fakes, to get their shit together and protest en masse against imprisoned children, to fight climate change, injustices and corruption of all kinds in our government. But this is not the 60s and 70s. The young cannot be prevailed upon to even save themselves. They’re everywhere you look, alone or in groups, and not one of them isn’t bent at the neck over a cell phone. The creepiest thing is, a large group of kids can be sitting around. They know each other. There’s no one talking. No couples kissing. They’re all texting.
Studies are critical of this; one discovery is that people of all ages are growing “horn-like” bone spurs from looking down as they text and read…the largest group is the youngest. They cannot fight back against anything except a parent taking away their phones.
The innocence is gone. Perhaps at a point there was some benefit. The war in Vietnam was ended because not only was it unwinnable even with carpet-bombing, but because America hated it and rebelled. But it would be one thing if we still protested in numbers like way back then. Now it’s been left to Cracker Barrel to make a stand against hatred and religious fanaticism.
It’s summer vacation time. No one will listen to old songs and feel scared of losing a love because of the summer moon. There’s a different kind of danger now. There’s a lot of them. Doesn’t anyone care?
I was working for Bob’s Transport. Night shift. I liked working at night. Hardly any traffic on I-95 after midnight except for truckers like me.
I had been to the Giant Food warehouse in Jessup, backed a loaded trailer up to the dock and left it, and then hooked up to an empty trailer to take back to the yard. It was my last trip of the night. I headed north on I-95, and at the place called “Spaghetti Junction” which is so named because of so many on-and-off ramps over elevated highways, both 95 and 395, all looking noodle-like, curling in every direction. The highway was empty. It was between 3 and 4 am, so there shouldn’t have been much traffic anyway. But as I climbed the section that leaves the ground and goes elevated, a feeling I can’t describe came over me like some evil thing had entered my cab. Was it dread? Danger? Fear? Not exactly. At the time I had no idea that I was empathic. I did sense something, like the feelings weren’t mine.
As I got to the first ramp at Spaghetti Junction, I saw flashes of blue light ahead. The source was still out of sight. Uh-oh. Too many to be one cruiser with a speeder stopped. Suddenly nothing mattered to me. I wasn’t looking forward to going home and falling asleep before sunrise. All I could feel now was that something terrible had just happened and I didn’t want to see it.
Ahead was the highest point of the elevated section before the highway descended on approach to the Fort McHenry Tunnel.
God…damn. I’d seen a lot of freaky sights in my time on the road, but you’re usually not caught off guard. Wrecks would suddenly loom as you straightened out a curve or crested a hill. An overturned 18-wheeler made you worry for the driver, now in the ambulance that passed you going the other way ten minutes ago. But rigs lying neat as you please on their sides didn’t shock you.
I geared down, cutting my speed because I was next to the Key Highway exit and I didn’t want to drift into its “Exit Only” lane as I stared to my left.
65 feet off the ground, on a four lane highway, a car lay on its side with its roof against the Jersey wall. I was looking at its chassis. Two transportation authority cops were scrabbling sideways along the wall, crab-like and frantic. They were looking over the wall, shining their flashlights down.
What I’d been feeling changed. It was total shock. Disbelief, astonishment. I realized with an electric surge of horror that all this time I’d thought the decks of the northbound and the southbound lanes were joined, and they weren’t. I continued my trip back to the yard to shut down, turn in my paperwork. And try to find out what had happened.
Hawkins came in right behind me. He was always up on anything that happened in the night. He said a woman had somehow flipped her car against the Jersey wall. She climbed up through the passenger side window, and fell through the gap between the north and southbound lanes, 65 feet to her death on a dirt median on Key Highway.
I didn’t tell him what I realized. That I’d felt her soul, horrified and helpless. I will always wonder if her soul found peace. If she found the light that so many near death experience survivors talk about. Because one thing I knew for damn sure was that her spirit was alone. No angels would come to show her the way.
Nothing I’ve just written can describe what I felt that night or why I can never forget it. I think her shock was so sudden and so powerful that my tired state made me a receiver; I couldn’t have stopped her emotions from flooding me.
There is of course no proof I can offer to support this experience. I can only crudely relate it. I know we think of death in extreme terms. We fear it. Yet we believe in good and bad places after death. Whether it’s Sheol or Purgatory, Heaven or Hell. Atheists may or may not believe in an afterlife; some believe we just reincarnate and live another physical life with the same soul but different body.
I hope this soul found what she believed in, because that was a horrible way to die. I could actually look back and feel her horror as she realized she was falling. But below, there’s total darkness. It would have been a quick end, but I felt her not knowing how far she was falling. At some point in a second or two she may have passed out from overwhelming fear. And at death she was lost and bewildered.
I’ve had my own NDEs. Near death experiences, in other words. Being an asshole, I never saw any light. Just total darkness. I hung in the middle of endlessly black space, all alone. I never want to go back there.
CAUTION: CONTAINS TRIGGERS AND ADULT CONTENT! Read slowly and back out if you need to.
In 2005, I was in group therapy with an excellent doctor at Springfield Hospital in Maryland. He used the sessions to give us a look at several approaches to recovery. One of them was cognitive therapy. It worked. He gave us a single sheet of paper with a bullet list naming types of self-destructive and defeating thinking and the reasons people tend to use them.
I was resistant to most therapy because I was a victim of things people did that, at the time, were unspeakable. Newscasters wouldn’t get this shit on a written script. It was a taboo subject; incest, child sex abuse. Newspapers could do a bit more but never outside the lines.
When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, I was already wounded. Had been for as long as I could remember. I was fascinated with the Apollo 11 broadcasts, I remember when he stepped off that ladder, and yet…most of me, lying on a rug in front of the TV, was somewhere else, having things done to me that can never be forgotten.
It was in the same room that my mother and father “taught” me about sex. And would continue to do so until 1976 when I was actually asked if I wanted to stop. I had to summon courage to say “yes” because it seemed like another typical Ralph Smith goddamn trick. He would lay manipulative traps like that. Ask a question and if he didn’t like the answer, give out a rage-powered beating.
I had already, though I didn’t know it then, displayed behaviour and symptoms of trauma. The severe kind. Everyone’s different, that’s true, so I can’t speak for my siblings, who seem to be more functional than I. Oh, they all got the same shit as me, but I guess something in me made me especially susceptible to damage and an inability to cope with it.
Ruminations are wandering, smothering trains of thought triggered by various things. If I see the sun reflect through a tail light on a parked car, for example, I’ll likely be taken back in time to a memory or emotion from the abusive “teaching” years. Back when I noticed the world around me. Back when I could drink grape soda or have a grape Tootsie Pop without getting violently sick. The both of them are now forever linked to a particularly bad stretch of time I survived, though I was surely dead inside, and died many times.
Ruminations can be synonymous with brooding, but the word has a broader meaning. Ruminating can be positive. Nostalgia for a simpler time. Or dread and anger associated with oppression and terror because there was never really a simpler time. You had to grow up early because life picked you for shitty things. Ultimately, though, ruminating is not going to do you well if you can’t control it.
There’s hope, though. You can get control over these thoughts which cause everything from dissociative thinking to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Look it up. Read about cognitive behavioral therapy and ask a therapist about it. Find one who knows it and believes it’s effective; it’s a current fad that is being used deceptively, even though it has been around a while and there is no reason to listen to those who hawk it as snake oil. “Lifestyle coaches” are worse frauds than California Psychics, who continue to run TV ads despite repeated reports to the BBB. If you don’t have sufficient insurance for therapy, work out payment agreements. Severe PTSD and the ruminations it causes are no joke.
Self-defeating thoughts such as “I’ll never win” are viewed in cognitive terms as “fortune telling”, something you shouldn’t be doing to yourself; you have no business being that hard on yourself when you don’t know any more what’s going to happen ten minutes from now than you do ten years from now.
A trick I learned from the doc was more mindfuleating. You know, you go out for a burger and you wolf it down, barely tasting it. Now, go get a nice juicy organic strawberry and close your eyes. Clear your mind and concentrate on the strawberry. Feel the texture and the juice, let the flavor and the bite of fruit linger on your tongue. Chew slowly, never letting your thoughts stray from what you’re doing. Take this challenge with anything you like. Think of it like this: a kid eating cereal, staring vacantly at the back of the box. Or… A wine taster, sipping delicately, swishing the sip around in the mouth, over the tongue, concentration and pleasure plain to see on the face. That is the difference, simplified, between rumination and mindfulness.
Another neat challenge, if you’re in a safe place or you have a companion, is to take a walk. Doesn’t have to be far. Along the way, turn off the phone. Notice the smell of the air. Where I live, it’s full of honeysuckle and wild flowers and tree blooms. Look at the yards you pass. What’s in them? I used to walk past one that had a very old grindstone, complete with seat, on the front lawn. That’s cool, but driving past, you’d never see it. Challenge yourself to spot one thing that strikes your fancy as unusual. When you return home, you’ll be in a better mood, maybe not a great one considering what you’re dealing with in life, but you’ll still be better.
The article below is correct if extremely general. If you’ve read my stuff, then you know how much more I should be doing with the concept. But with severe, crippling or disabling damage like mine, there’s a roadblock. It’s a direct counterpart to cognitive living. It’s learned behaviour, often diagnosed as “personality disorder” or disorders. Due to repeated events and conditioning you can’t seem to fight back. Learned behaviours are comparable to what happened to dogs in a shuttle box experiment some years ago. Dogs were placed in the boxes. The box consisted of two compartments, the sides of which they could not spring over. Each compartment was connected to the other but could be closed off, keeping the subject restricted to one side. This was done. The compartment they were trapped in had a grid on the floor. The subjects received electric shocks from the grids, which they could not step off of because the compartment that wasn’t equipped with a grid was closed off. After a set number of these non-lethal shocks were administered, the barriers to the other side of the shuttle boxes were removed. The shocks resumed, but the dogs made no movement at all. Even when shown that moving to the other side stopped the shocks, when placed back in the grid boxes, they took the shocks.
This is learned behaviour at its most basic; in this case the behaviour was called “learned helplessness”.
It’s what prisoners who are institutionalized have to fight. Ten years or more and sometimes less is all it takes to teach helplessness. A life restricted to a place and a never-changing routine, with no ability to make any decisions whatsoever, and what results is someone who can’t live once they are paroled. Many break conditions of parole or commit felonies and plead guilty just to get back inside. Some commit suicide. They’ve done their time, but they’re hardly free.
With the case of the shuttle box dogs, eventually they were able to make it to the other side, but the process of teaching them to do it was arduous for their handlers. Learned behaviours and personality disorders are difficult to treat; so much so that the “bible” of psychiatric diagnosis was expected to have this entire section edited out.
Cognitive therapy is a real thing. It is a long road to travel. Noone recovers from trauma disorders. But with guidance and hard work, with early intervention, living with it is possible. My case is hampered because I went misdiagnosed for so long, and because I cannot afford therapy on Medicare. Not even once a month. You don’t have to end up like me. I have no fight left.
I’ll tell you this, though. And I mean every word. You are reading this for a reason. No one reads my posts. I have a free plan and whatever I post gets buried fast, especially on Reader but also on search engines. I’m sure you’ll recognize that you are here for a reason. And that if I tell you that you are special, that the world needs kindness and empathy and that you can get to a higher level and make a difference, you have a choice. You face a decision. Choose wisely. Time is running short for us all.
He had piercing, crystal blue eyes and tears welling in them. He wasn’t focused on anything. He had the Thousand Yard Stare.
We were outside on a porch, about twenty feet by six feet. Chairs lined the wall and faced another row of chairs backed up to a chain that ran along the outer edge. Thesmokingarea. Always crowded with smokers socializing, smoking their own or trying to get one from someone else. Tobacco, see, is a necessary medication in a hospital like this one.
Someone in the shade from the summer sun had a radio playing. The Eagles’ “Hotel California” had just played. Robert with the blue eyes was quiet as it played. When it was over, he said, “I used to wonder what that song meant. I never figured it out til I got here. It’s about a mental hospital.”
I’d never thought of it like that. It made sense. Some guy can’t continue on his own anymore, checks into the “hotel”, and finds himself surrounded by nightmares that make him tear a path to the door. The night time guy at the door says, “Relax, we are here to take in those who have earned it. You can check out if you want, but you will never leave here.”
Robert had himself a very astute observation. While most hospitalized patients are released as quickly as possible, some never are. They can’t be. They just…can’t.
Robert…was one of them. The song is not about a mental hospital. It’s kind of loosely based on a real place. A hotel, that is. Part of the beauty of the song was always its ambiguity; listeners can make of it what they will. And it will always be special to them for that reason.
Robert’s eyes got very wet as he stared at something in another county. And his soft voice uttered one of the most heartbreaking sentences I’ve ever heard: “I don’t think I’ll ever be a regular person again.”
***
He’s probably still there. Only acute cases get to stay. Under Reagan, the third mental health care reform of modern times had been enacted. In the name of civility, he’d “reformed” institutions. Draconian practices were outlawed. But that was a lie; what he actually did was cut federal funds to states and force hospitals across the land to shut down completely or to cap the number of beds that could be occupied. Hundreds, thousands of chronically mentally ill people, most of whom could never hold the simplest of jobs, or who were institutionalized and therefore dependant, were put out. Back then, and yet still, there was nothing in place to help them. A few programs, but never enough. They gravitated to larger towns and cities where they could panhandle and occasionally get a bed at a homeless shelter. By 1985 they were all over the town I lived in. You couldn’t help but notice them. Same clothes every day. Walking nowhere. Talking to people who weren’t there. I knew some guys, pigs, actually, who took advantage of a girl. She was a blonde who would have looked awesome had she anywhere to go and anyone to help. But she wore rags and had a rash I guessed indicated syphilis, and word got around that she tricked. These god-damned guys at a tire store on Robert Crain Highway gave her a twenty dollar bill and got her to orally copulate a dog. They took pictures.
By then, also, a term had come into use for old women who carried their possessions in green garbage bags, usually pushed around in a shopping cart. The horrible term was “bag lady”. God bless America, you know?
People today still utter Reagan’s name in reverence. Forget Iran-Contra. Forget high taxes. He was an orator who filled one’s heart with pride to be a citizen of the United States of America.
Except, for all I know, he never made it to Heaven. He had the blood of innocents on his hands, enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool with. Because by the winter of 1986-7, I never saw another one walking around. Not one. And most of them were dead. Illness, exposure, dehydration, starvation and predators all had a go at them. One guy sleeping under an overpass was stabbed to death. Probably by some “regular” person. For kicks.
***
At Springfield Hospital, and in the private Sheppard Pratt system, I had met and had plenty of time to talk with a lot of people. Some were predators. They weren’t going anywhere. Some were so out of touch that, like Robert, their lucid moments, when they realized who they were and the hopelessness of their situation, were few and fleeting. I liked him. Wasn’t a mean bone in his body. I wondered if he ever was a “regular person”, if there is such a thing. And if he was, what had the poor bastard been through that could hide his beautiful soul from his own mind?
Because that’s what mental illness is: being betrayed by your own mind. That’s it, no frills or fancy accessories. Whatever the cause, no matter the cause, it is simply a betrayal.
***
When I was between three suicide attempts in a two-month span, I visited so many hospitals I can’t remember them all. They’re all different. Even different facilities in the same system, like Sheppard Pratt, were as different as night and day.
One of their places was the old rehabilitation center for drug addiction and alcoholics in Howard County.
I think I was still so unstable from my overdose that when I got there all I did was sleep. I wasn’t allowed clothes. A gown. I wasn’t allowed to have a bed. Suicide Watch, you know. I had to sleep in the day room. It was shared by both men and women. So if I got an erection while sleeping, it was like I pitched a fucking tent for everyone to see. Humiliation does not deter nurses who suck their thumbs and steal shit out of your locker. As I stabilized and realized where I was, I was horrified.
The place was dark. So dark that I dare to this day to say that any degree of recovery is not possible there. And that even stabilization is an iffy deal. Artwork adorned the walls. Patients had rendered them. God damn they were ghastly. One oil painting in a prominent place depicted a dance outside during the so-called pilgrim era. People in the background watched as a couple danced. The man was best described as a predator. The woman bore the expression of one who was being forced. I hated it. The nurses loved it. Make sense outta that, regular people.
Nurses sucked their thumbs. Night shift mostly. The doctor had no clue what to do with my meds. I was getting worse with every passing day. I wanted just to die and have it all be over. I was in hell. My depression grew.
In the dining facility, I spotted something I thought was pretty cool. A potted, grafted tree. Tree grafting is a part of the citrus farming industry. Outside of that, it’s a lost art, and I thought, you know, wow.
Then I was told it was artificial. In Maryland, if you see artificial trees, there’s a good chance you have entered the mental healthcare system. I knew this. But an artificial grafted tree? How fucking mental is that?
The fact is, I met some of the bravest, kindest, noblest and wisest people of my life while in the hospital. We all get a tough way to go, not merely with stigma from “regular people”, but also uneven health care from doctors and nurses who hate us like all other “regular people” do. To them, we are nothing but a paycheck.
We go through some really awful shit. Literally. One day I had the runs. Three stalls on our ward is all we had. While two users were legit, one wasn’t. How he got his hands on skin mags I don’t know. But he spent hours in a stall. Someone spied on him and said the guy was beating off at least a dozen times a day.
Then there are your “friends” who are regular people. Call them from the hospital. Go ahead. They’ll never answer another call from you again. Even family will fuck with you: you’re making them look bad. You’re faking it. You’re only sick because you “want to be”. A brother who went through the abuse too told me these words when I was in the hospital after my first suicide attempt. I told him to leave.
One thing I know, after being both mental and an asshole for all these years is this: regular people suck.
In late summer 1988 I was training to drive a truck. I had a class A learner’s permit. My trainer was my brother-in-law.
One sunny day we were going through Hanover Pennsylvania, on our way to Quaker Oats, when I got a sick feeling in my gut. I was passing a large gravel lot on my left. Billy didn’t notice it from the passenger seat. It was old, with dirt mixed in. On the lot was an old produce market. The kind mostly made of plywood, only bigger than most. Enclosed, not open.
I snapped as if going back in time, seeing the inside strung with rows of naked lightbulbs and wooden bins on 2×4 legs. I saw two men, and suddenly the lights were off, the building dark. The two men were dressed in overalls and one even had something like a straw hat. One was tall and stout, the other shorter and thin. While both were menacing, I can’t tell you which was worse. But both were dead long ago; I knew that much. They were drawing me, aware of my presence out on the road. As if they knew me and wanted to draw me to my death.
I also felt as if I had known them. I forced myself to snap out of it and drive on.
On the return trip, I looked, and could not find the lot again. Several more trips later, I still have never seen it.
And this is a weird enough story, but one thing makes it worse.
I didn’t mind small, open produce stands by the road, but had never, since I was a child, liked big, enclosed produce markets. A coincidence?
I can’t buy that.
Almost ten years later, after a few fruitless trips fishing at Liberty Reservoir, I bought a fishing map. I was looking for prime spots to angle for catfish. It was a funny place, and although beautiful, I always felt unsettled there. Kind of like I didn’t belong, and when you feel that way, you don’t catch anything. You can’t get comfortable enough to let yourself go and read the terrain. Choosing points where steep dropoffs were, after a slight shelf where bait fish would be, is impossible. You can’t tell the difference between those or sheer drops. Depending on water and air temperature and sunlight, it makes a big difference.
I bought the map out of desperation. I was looking to catch some prime catfish. The four pound range. But on previous visits I’d had some weird images, and worse, bad feelings, wash over me for no reason. Still very unaware of how sensitive I was, I had no frame of reference to reconcile these experiences with. Therefore I tried to ignore them. But one image kept hitting me: an old car, very old, driving on a dirt road, raising dust. There was a river beside this road. The car travelled with the river on its left, then turned right, into an unpaved driveway. The house had a screened in porch. It was an old house, with not much else along the road, but it was hardly alone. I saw other places, but none so clearly. There was emotion attached to the scene, very negative, feelings that I knew were not my own. Anger, misery, fear.
On the map, nothing remarkable stood out. I saw only that I had acres of ground to cover, multiple access points, and that locating likely spots was going to be a long process. Bank fishing where crowds seem to gather wasn’t a thing I liked at all. Those are high-pressure spots where fish can be caught in short stretches of time and then nothing remains. People making noise, eating and drinking, leaving a bunch of trash, taking illegal fish, that’s what happens on crowded banks. I wanted solitude. Quiet.
On the reverse side of the map there was another one. In this, the image was ghosted and overlaid with aerial photos like a Google Earth display. No gaps that I recall, although that’s not impossible. It made up an intricate view of the area before Liberty Dam existed. And sure enough, I found that same car parked in the driveway of a house that I was sure I’d seen in the vision of the car turning into the driveway. I’m sure I could look all of this up online, and refresh my memory, and give you more details. I’m not up for that. The impression I got was that people in the area were happy where they were, and had been forced to leave. Before the Patapsco River was dammed, it must have run through a beautiful, lush valley. It took years for the reservoir to fill. I had the impression that many people in the 1940s had resisted vacating homes, because the car I saw was definitely from the earlier part of that decade. I’ve seen cars like it in newsreel footage of the time around World War Two. It’s haunted or cursed ground beneath that water and I never cared which; I never went back.
I’d fished lots of places in Baltimore County, and had been on chartered boats out of Severna Park and Annapolis, trolling for rockfish (striped bass) on Chesapeake Bay. There’s nothing like it. A bad day on the water can sometimes be the best therapy; even going home with an empty cooler is fine with me.
But it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see into the past. And I hated it every time it happened. I thought I was going crazy.
One afternoon I was driving south on Belair Road, U.S. Route1. I passed a very old house that reached into my mind, and I don’t know how I kept driving without being in an accident. I was in someone else’s body, looking through a window. The sky was darkening either by dusk or overcast. I’m not sure which, as the details fade with time.
A woman I loved was outside getting into an open carriage pulled by two horses. She was leaving me. It wasn’t her choice, though. A big man in very old clothing, I suppose eighteenth century, with a hat not unlike a tricorn, and a long coat, climbed in beside her and took the reins. He had a smug look on his face and sneered at me. He had pulled some kind of trick to get her to go with him. I felt bullied and very frightened of him. He turned the carriage around in the half-circle driveway and left. And I felt so broken of heart that I didn’t want to live another second.
Actually, this happened more than once in the northern parts of Baltimore and Harford counties.
Seeing into the past always had a negative aspect in emotion, very intense emotion, always of anger or loss. It was never positive or particularly revealing, as I never gained knowledge of names or nailed down any specifics. There was no reason for the these events. They just left me sick, drained and depressed.
But I had not learned my lesson. I had no idea that I was a sensitive. I didn’t even know what a sensitive was. I had no idea why this shit was happening to me. I felt like I was just nuts. I had no idea what I was doing when one night, after reading a book on psychic abilities, I decided to do an experiment. The book had a chapter on astral projection. It instructed me to meditate to the point where I went into a trance. I was a skeptic but wanted to try. It said I should pray and ask for permission and an angelic guide, then go wherever I wanted. While deep in a meditative state, I would find myself “walking” down a long hallway. At the end would be a door. I would kick it open and be exactly where I’d asked.
I was vague and just asked for a visit to the past. That was a big mistake which followed the bigger mistake of doing this crazy shit in the first place.
It was freezing. I was on a dirt road that gave way to a brick pavement encircling a brick building surrounded by black wrought iron fencing perhaps 7 feet tall. It was a Colonial period government building, not huge, perhaps a town or city hall. I looked to my right and saw a dirt road running parallel to the direction my body faced, but behind the building. On the other side of the road there were big houses with big yards and big shade trees. What I could see of the homes told me it was all antebellum. I was definitely far into the past. The trees were green and full, but it still felt cold, like winter, and the sky was unusual. I saw sunlight hitting the ground, but the sky was a weird color.
I became aware that I was not alone. To my left there was a spirit but I couldn’t look at it. It said, “Do you want a closer look?” I nodded. Without walking we were suddenly next to the fence, looking through it at large wooden crates stacked around the back. As I stared, a pair of feet on the ground in shiny black shoes with the toes pointed down, resting on the ground, caught my attention. The socks were really stockings. The legs were between rows of crates and I couldn’t see them.
Then something happened in the space of a second or less. Just a blur of movement. But the shoes were now toes-up, and I could see the knees of the legs. The body, obviously dead, had beige knee-length leggings and were bloody. The voice beside me said, “See what you have done!”
Well that was it for me. Whether it was my imagination or a real astral event, I wanted out. I was back on the sofa, wide awake.
At the time I was staying with my daughter for a few weeks. Her son Antony was almost a year old. And all of the sudden, he began waking up at night crying.
One other thing. The book had a bunch of stuff about colors and what they did. I think orange was energy, green was healing…and so on. I’d learned psychic self defense, which one used when in the presence of people who drained you, like psychic vampires, something I believed in then (but thank God for medication).
Somehow I was brought to the idea that envisioned energy coming from Heaven, going through me, and then to whomever I was trying to help, could calm down Antony and help him sleep. And somehow I remember thinking the color blue was calming. It made everything worse. Soon his room was full of flies. He would only go in there to pull toys into the living room. He couldn’t fall asleep in there. He was scared silly of his room.
Only later did I realize after earnest prayer that something I did was behind it. I asked God to show me the problem. Mind you, I prayed in the living room, but after asking the question and meditating quietly, I saw Antony’s room. Two walls were on the outer corner of the house. A longer and a shorter wall. The longer wall had two huge, jagged, gaping holes through which a hippo could enter. The shorter wall had one hole. With my experiment I had brought back a demon. It was my guide. I realized that God doesn’t loan his angels out for evil things we’re forbidden to do. The occult is forbidden, so what went with me was demonic. And it came back with me. It allowed him to blow holes in Antony’s walls so other demons could torment him. Demons love tormenting children; as I had done when I was a child, Antony could see these things but not yet describe them. He couldn’t even voice his fear except to cry desperately. Now of course these holes and what came through them weren’t part of the visible world, but they were revealed as I had asked. I then repented the stupid act and asked for the holes to be fixed and for Antony to be protected. In another vision I saw that the damage was not repaired. The holes remained. Instead, three angels stood in them, facing the outside, so I could see only their backs. These didn’t glow. I imagine that if physically manifested, they may have. But I was seeing the spiritual, and they looked like men. Possibly because seeing an angel in its true form is dangerous to mortals?
Anyway, they wore long robes, white but dirty, as if they had been fighting. They were serious beings, guarding my grandson’s room from further attacks.
I found out the hard way that a book, no matter how beautifully illustrated, can be dangerous. I found out that you don’t need a Ouija board to bring true evil into your home. And I learned that irresponsible actions can hurt the innocent even if you have good intentions.
That was 2004. I’ve never meditated once since then.
Today I talked to a very nice lady at FiOS customer service. She was patient and sorted out my problem. Her name was Lee Ann. I swore she had a Pasadena (MD) accent. She reminded me of the girl I knew in third grade. The one I fell in love with at first sight. The one I’ve loved ever since.
Customer Service Lee Ann reminded me of good things in life. That there’s still kindness and decency. She reminded me of a girl I haven’t seen since 1972, who still has my heart. And even though I never told her, it doesn’t hurt. It’s perhaps the most positive and decent thing I have left.
Seeing into the past, whether you want to or not, will happen. We have to deal with it. But today, thinking about Lee Ann, I discovered that sometimes, yes. There are demons in the rearview mirror.
But there are angels back there, too.
Note-
I can’t say where flashes of the past come from, nor can anyone else. Scholars would have us believe that there’s some sort of misfire happening in some area of the brain. But that doesn’t explain accurately placing a house and a car on a map long before you see the map. It utterly fails to account for the emotions you feel in close proximity to certain places. Or seeing people in period dress appropriate to a carriage and feeling as if you’re in someone else’s body.
There’s much to guess with here. Much to debate. Are we seeing bits of past lives?
I’ve never been one to fully believe in reincarnation. I have had stray “memories” not triggered when traveling, and one that’s haunted me since I was a child is a fragment, a bit of memory of walking up to a single-story house, not a large one, at dusk. The temperature suggests a cool but not cold evening in late spring. I “remember” approaching the place on a small road with thick woods close on both sides. I could see a light in the distance, shimmering through the trees as a light breeze blew branches. Up close, it is impossible to see the house as I’m suddenly at the front door. What bothers me the most is the window set in the door. Square but with diamond shaped panes and frosted or textured amber glass. The glow of light on the inside is bright but I have a feeling I don’t want to go in. I don’t want the door to open. A random thing, for sure. So what’s behind all this?
I have an idea, and you won’t like it. I said in another post that since I was very little, there was a shadow on my walls that I could see moving. I could feel its malevolence. It terrified me.
I know it was a demon. These come or appear in many forms, from black smudges in the air without form to shadow snakes to shadow “people” to “ghosts” of dead relatives to fully manifested animals and people. Since demons have been here longer than us they have interacted with billions of people. And since they are spirits, we can easily be influenced by them. We suddenly feel angry or afraid. Remember those scenes from Blue Bloods, Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch where the family all sit down and eat supper together? Well that’s how families took their evening meals, not merely here but the world over. But did you ever notice that, TV aside, sometimes arguments break out suddenly over small things, and quickly escalate? Demons love to interrupt and interfere in everything we do, and take particular delight in causing division in families, business, even church. They can pass into your dining room without being seen. Their presence is extremely disruptive. They may not stay. They may not claim your home as theirs but they can certainly visit.
If they can do that, and given that we know their numbers are great, imagine what happens when they are accidentally too close. Like when you pass a house where one has a claim to the territory. The spiritual can, purposely or otherwise, see and feel us, our memories and likewise, even have their memories transfer to us.
And it’s not just them. They retain memories and emotions from everyone they’ve ever come into contact with. That’s why these flashes are almost universally negative and come with emotions you otherwise wouldn’t be feeling. This is what I believe is happening. American families who eat dinner together are growing rare. Communication is always a problem. The demonic divide us, making a whole into weak fragments. God is left behind, making the demons more powerful and influential. It can even cause them to take up residence in your home. Some people never experience these things. Some do but don’t think about it because it’s too frightening. Everyone is a potential target.
They were known as the Greensboro Four. They were brave young men who, in July of 1960, had the balls to actually sit down at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, which back then we called a “five and dime” store. And yeah, they really did have stuff cheap. The lunch counter was willing to serve black people, but they were not permitted to sit down. They had to stand. The students were refused service, but remained seated anyway, engaging in what was called a “sit-in”. They became famous. The counter is now in a museum. These four brave nonviolent protesters risked much. They drew the anger of whites at a time when that was still extremely dangerous. They very well could have ended up lynched. That’s no lie.
And back then, what these brave men did was not exactly legal. The signs were everywhere: “Colored Only” restrooms, “White Only” restrooms. This was segregation, also known as Jim Crow. Laws that restricted blacks from using the same waiting rooms, restrooms, even water fountains as whites. Laws. I’m not gonna go into that except that I have to say, this was real. It’s the way it was. Slavery was supposed to be gone, but few blacks could count on an equal wage for hard work compared to whites. But there had already been protests long before Greensboro, and these gained in frequency and the numbers of participants, with one very obvious result: whites were angry and scared.
In that climate, Ralph Smith later took his wife, son and two daughters and moved north to Pasadena, Maryland.
He chose a neighborhood called North Shore on the Magothy. It was a developing neighborhood being shaped by Ross Koch, who put his heart and soul into his work. To lay out lots and grade them and dig foundations, he had a single Caterpillar bulldozer and two dump trucks. He knew how to build a four bedroom house and leave trees in the yard. That’s an art long forgotten in the era of scraping huge tracts of land flat, leaving nothing standing, then building rows of shitty homes, transplanting saplings and sod, and raking in the bucks.
It was so different a time that anyone growing up today would be lost there.
Ralph Smith fled the racial trouble and came north to work for a trucking company. Within a few years he had his own company, but never hired black truckers. There weren’t many who owned their own truck tractors anyway, and that’s what he used. Men who owned their own trucks and leased on, pulling Ralph’s trailers. They made money and he made money, running the company out of a downstairs room in the house on Dutch Ship Road. A neighbor worked for him part-time, and they worked hard. The house had no air-conditioning, so on hot days, with the windows open, it had to be miserable.
In the neighborhood, it started out okay. Ralph and Betty Smith had friends. We went to crab feasts, Christmas parties where the there was a Santa, and swam at the community beach.
How all of that went South is beyond me. After a time, they no longer mixed with anyone, and us kids were cut off from the crabs and the beach.
That last one hurt. By the summer of ’68, I was being sexually abused by my parents. Yes, it happened, and yes, boys do react when you rub or suck on them, even when on the inside they feel sick, dirty and guilty. So given a premature sexual activeness, I naturally loved going to the beach and seeing older girls in their bikinis. Oh, I know I stared, and I know they caught me, but they were never nasty about it. They thought I was cute. They sometimes laughed, which bothered me. See, sex abuse fucks with a victim’s self esteem. I thought they were laughing at me, in a bad way. Still, the sight of my first girl in a string bikini made up for it. So when we were no longer allowed to set foot on the beach property, I was unhappy. What I did not know was that my parents had stopped paying dues to the North Shore community association, therefore we had no beach privileges.
A lot happened during the first decade we lived there aside from my father starting a feud with the Association.
In the summer of ’68, there was a girl my age named Barbara who lived a few houses away. We became inseparable. God, I loved her. She gave me my first kiss. She held my hand, we rode bikes together. She had short brown hair, blue eyes and was leggy like a foal, and she made me dizzy. She reached into my heart without knowing it.
One day, one very bad day, she told me her family was moving to Thailand. Later I figured out that her announcement followed the winter TET offensive in Vietnam. Her father must have been Air Force, because Thailand was where all the heavy bombers used against North Vietnam were based.
When she told me where she was going, I knew only that it was far away….and that I would never see her again.
One rainy, dark and cold day when everything had been loaded on moving vans that were long gone, her father loaded his family into their car and stopped by the house to let Barbara say goodbye to me. I couldn’t do it. I’d been miserable for weeks, and this day I dreaded. I hid under my bed, wedged against the wall, a blanket pulled far enough down that no one looking under my bed could see me. I heard the doorbell, heard Barbara and her father, and I wept quietly. Mom came looking for me but apparently never detected my hiding technique; after a few minutes they left. I stayed where I was, muffling my sobs. The only time in my life I was ever so innocently and unconditionally loved was over.
Meanwhile there were things going on that actually made me embarrassed because of my father. Surely there had been grass planted in our big yard, but Ross Koch had made a mistake grading the lot. Summer rains washed dirt and clay along gullies, and there was little grass. When he went to cut the grass, my father raised huge dust clouds. It was embarrassing. Also, I knew he was cheating with a woman out back. He did horoscopes for her, and she worked in a grocery store. When I was the only one with him, I saw the attraction, the flirting and the familiarity they had. Was there no end to this man’s depravity? He’d beat us with belts and make us go to church, but everything was sick. Everything was twisted, and I was confused and post traumatic even though the trauma never stopped. In the class of 1969-1970, when I had to repeat third grade, I met Lee Ann. Of course I shouldn’t have been interested in girls, but the early sexual abuse had made me so. Lee Ann was beautiful, with a bright smile, and I fell in love hard.
But I wouldn’t go near her. I couldn’t. The last thing I could take was her rejection. I kept it to myself and she never knew.
One day, following a particularly severe lashing with dad’s belt, even my arms were bleeding. Angry red welts covered me. I was told to wear a long-sleved shirt. On recess I got overheated. I had to come inside and cool off. The teacher told me to rest my head on my desk, and suggested I roll up my sleeves. I cried. “No!” Because the sleeves had ridden up and bloody, watery welts were showing. I know she saw them. About that time Lee Ann walked in off the playground and saw me. Oh, God, please no! I didn’t want her to see me like this. I put my head back down and ignored her. I’m glad I never told her. Never tried to get close. Her family moved to Alaska. I’d never have been able to get over it. To this day she’s my greatest love.
In 1973 my father made me work for him over the summer. In the warehouse. Another part of growing up too early. I had become too like him. I hated and feared black people, I was turned into a sexual abberation, and I was mean. This attracted the bullies of George Fox Junior High School. My life was officially a fucking mess. By then I didn’t have a friend left in the world. Everything was perverted and disgusting. If not for Star Trek reruns and WCAO AM 60, I wouldn’t have been able to cope. By 1974, I was writing porn, epic stories with developed characters and a loose plot. I masturbated constantly so I wouldn’t “react” when my mother came to my room on Saturday nights. It never worked. Like I said. If you take and suck on or play with a penis, it’s going to react. No matter how disgusted you are. I’m sorry for being so blunt. But people have no idea it’s possible to rape a male without penetration. Women do it more than you think and forced incest happens to more than just girls.
Jesus I was a mess. By then, no one in the community had anything to do with me. In the summer of ’74, a neighbor installed a sun deck for my father and I got a respite from warehouse duty to be his helper. I’d been in so much trouble in school that I was suspended half the time. But working with this kind man who lived at the top of Dutch Ship Road was the best summer of my teen years.
My father came into a shit load of cash. And that summer he installed a deck, double driveway, in-ground pool, and had seed and sod on the newly landscaped yard. Any greener and the shit would have been AstroTurf. The trouble came when he had a white stone retaining wall put in the front yard to keep the grass in place. The community association didn’t like it. They were going to sue to make him remove it. They would have lost on the before and after pictures alone. A shitty place turned into a really nice looking one. What was wrong with that? But he had bad blood with the Association. He’d stopped paying membership dues and withdrawn years earlier. They finally settled for him removing the matching stone pillar on the other side of the driveway. Hell, it was an improvement anyway.
But the neighbor, Larry, I’d been his helper with the deck. I found him to be a friend, perhaps a teacher. Wise beyond his years. A true Christian, a guy who walked the walk with humor, decency and a kindness no one had ever shown me. I idolized him. I wanted to be like that. I decided I was too fucked up to ever be a great man. Something was really wrong with me, and I knew it, but I thought it was me. I didn’t know what PTSD was. Nobody did; the term had not been invented yet. Ashamed of my tangled thoughts, ashamed of my displays of behaviour that I couldn’t control, I no longer aspired to anything that would mark me as anyone history would remember. I couldn’t learn. School was too hard when I couldn’t focus my mind. I decided that all I wanted to be was a decent man like my friend was.
But that never happened. One day my sister and his daughter were swimming in the pool. As soon as I saw his daughter in a blue bikini top, I fell in love with her. I lusted for her and she filled my every thought. How could I be a decent guy with dirty thoughts like these? Because, was it normal? I had read a lot of books. Including large bits of the Bible. And yet I had no idea what “normal” was.
She knew I liked her. That wasn’t good because it left me wide open for a big hurt. Sure enough, that big hurt came one day on the bus ride home. I overheard her talking to Susan, a stuck-up skinny blonde who hated my guts. Her whole family hated my guts. My crush was sitting with her and had mentioned my name. Susan said, “Mike Smith! He’s terrible!”
And my crush never spoke to me again. I never even saw her again because my father pulled me from public school and put me in a private school in Arnold, down past Severna Park. He was tired of me flunking, getting suspended and beat up.
I left the church in Lake Shore. Now unless I saw her in her yard, which I never did, I couldn’t even cross paths. And it dawned on me that her father wanted it that way. It hurt but I loved and respected him.
I no longer had any contact with anyone in the neighborhood. The association hated my whole family. I was rightfully judged mental. It was then that I became an asshole.
I embraced being an asshole. If I could not have friends, then I would fuck with people at will. I keyed cars. Slashed tires. Broke lots of glass. Halloween pranksters had nothing on me; I was getting even.
After getting caught once, I learned stealth and I told no one. It made my anger more satisfying and much more dangerous. No one ever knew when they fucked with me that I’d eaten shit for years, storing anger and hate. They didn’t know when they walked away that they were only able to because I decided not to kill them. I carried knives and waited for the days I’d use them.
I never did. But as much as I could’ve, that knowledge gave me power and satisfaction. Knowing you hold someone’s life in your hands no matter what they think is more than empowering though; eventually it gave me a respect for life so deep that I shook off my father’s teaching and examples of misogyny, racism and elitist isolation. I would vote Republican only once. I became a liberal while somehow remaining an asshole. Near trick, that.
By the time I left that neighborhood, I had no desire to ever go back. I haven’t, either.
I looked up North Shore on the Magothy and it listed an interesting hit. Some dude who lives there calls it a throwback “Mayberry”, the fictional town from the Andy Griffith Show”, and that’s nice. The town Mayberry was based upon is Mt. Airy, North Carolina. Been there. Never going back. Fuck North Carolina. If you’ve been wondering what the point to this post is, it’s this.
Before we had a lawn, there was dirt. I used to play in it with my little plastic soldiers and dinosaurs and a Tonka bulldozer.
No one in that fucking town ever kept their cat inside. I’d be there playing and wondering what the smell was, and much later saw the culprits. Our backyard was a fucking litterbox.
Well, I’d like to think that North Shore has become a “Mayberry”. That neighbors really help each other.
I became an asshole. But I really like the idea that it’s a nicer place than it was. I hope people have gotten better.
Me, I never forget the pain and terrors I endured there. And how the neighbors made it all worse, while I sat with a striped back in the sand and frolicked in cat shit.
When you’re lonely and sick, when you don’t know who you are and realize you never did…you think some things. You have regrets. Because it is a time when even the strong can’t help but lose self esteem, self confidence. I don’t know how I’ve been this way for so many years and survived the times when it got worse. When I was barely human, reduced to misery I can never describe. How much can a man take? When he looks for spiritual guidance and instead finds a host of jackals who look at him as prey? How does anyone live through that?
1999
I was working at Airgas near Catonsville, Maryland. I ran a generator which produced Acetylene gas. You know, the stuff used for cutting torches. I rented the ground floor of a house, and was alone for the first time since I’d been married. I needed something I didn’t have. Most of my time was occupied and divided between work and sleep. The work was exhausting and left us in the Flammable Gas Section saturated with ammonia and lime, byproducts of acetylene generation. I’d return home filthy, stinking and exhausted. In the summer, it got hot. There was a drought so severe that the local news did a report from Liberty Reservoir. The water levels had gone so far down that places no one had ever seen were not only exposed, but growing grass.
Heat exhaustion was a constant. I’d get a shower and come out naked, the house hot and stinking as if a dead dog was under a crawlspace. Yes, that’s happened before, but this was the first time I had experienced it. Despite telling my landlord, he shrugged it off. Said he couldn’t smell anything. I think he buried his dogs in the crawlspace. He lived out back by the waterfront. Had a bunch of dogs. Anyway…
My bedroom was my refuge. It had a window unit, and in the cold air, no smell was present. I’d just cook in the kitchen and eat in the bedroom. I watched a lot of TV. Basic cable came with the apartment. For a while, I was content. But lonely. A 39-year-old man, single. Lonely. Not wanting anything to do with women because of the stalking (more like terrorism) I’d endured, I had to settle for watching TV. Working at night, that meant that I was bound to run into the 700 Club. Daytime television is not, and never has been, much fun. And feeling that emptiness inside myself, well, I saw the show one day and I remembered my roots, growing up in a Southern Baptist church. I needed God. My faith had long since left me; a broken family, a divorce, two stalkers…it just seemed as if the God I believed in wasn’t there when I needed him.
Pat Robertson was not unknown to me, but I had never seen the show. I watched as he and a co-host, a woman, prayed for healing for people they didn’t know. I was fascinated and taken in. Who, after all, needed a healing more? Plagues of nightmares since my childhood came and went. My mind was chaos. I could watch Monday Night Football and not be able to talk about it the next day. I didn’t even remember the score.
Off and on, there were drugs and booze. I preferred the drugs, but my addiction became so acute that I ended up withdrawing and spent all week in bed.
I keep sidetracking. Sorry. Back to the 700 Club. Pat Robertson snared me. I took him for a man of faith. I feel rather silly about it now, but then, I needed something. I thought he had answers. People would email the guy and claim to have been healed as he prayed. But his prayers were, like a fortune teller’s predictions, tricks. Generic, but bound to have something that many people would hook onto like a fish going for a piece of bait. He’d say, eyes closed, “I see someone who’s knees have bothered you for a long time, and the Lord is healing you now”. I waited for weeks until he would describe my problems. Never happened. Of course to him, people like me are vermin. No one deserves neither pity nor prayer; victims of abuse might remind him of liberal causes.
I heard the commentary he did when his news anchor was on. I saw him give a whiteboard talk about adultery.
Wait. Hold on a second.
His explanation was gross. It was in the Ten Commandments, he said, because wives and concubines were regarded as a man’s property, “and you are not to plunder that”.
Plunder?
Property? Property?
I was thinking, well, if that’s how it was then, maybe it’s changed a bit in the modern sense, when a wife isn’t considered “property.”
Jesus taught that it was a grave sin to even think of adulterous contact. And at the time, even in first century Israel, wives were not the property of a man. Even by strict Jewish law, even if they had to keep a low profile much of the time, they were hardly property.
It showed me that Robertson thought like a real sexist. My eyes opened. Then I saw one of their telethon episodes. The calls kept coming, people led astray by this fake, pledging money, trying to become”gold members” or some bullshit.
He’d show truckloads of bottled water and supplies going out to relief for disaster victims. I doubted that the money he was swindling was even dented by water bottles. Later he’d say things that proved he does not empathize with victims of disaster.
I’d been shaken by Christian leaders before; disillusioned and disgusted. Why, how I had fallen for this thief and heretic was a source of shame I shared with no one. Everyone knew I was an asshole, but that kind of went with being me; I couldn’t bear to prove myself an idiot on top of that.
I stopped watching, but not before I sampled some more bullshit. He had a reporter do a story about a teen who committed suicide after being really into Dungeons and Dragons, a dice game that could nowadays be likened to videogames like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, and many other video games known as role playing games. Imagine how I, with my past, with demons I’d come into close contact with, reacted. The report said it was an epidemic, kids seeing shadows at night in their bedrooms, even being possessed. And killing themselves. Freak me out!
Well, I believed stories like that. But I don’t remember ever having played any game that drew demons to me. What’s more is that when later I researched this “epidemic” of suicides among D&D players, I found something weird. There was only one such case, and the reason for the death was disputed. And that source also mentioned the 700 Club as exploiting the boy’s death to promote a campaign against D&D as a link to possession. Ouch, Pat! What the hell?
There’s more. Oh, there’s always more. Rants against “homosexuals”. You know, I’m not gonna sit here and play God, nor am I going to put words in his mouth.
Does God hate gay or lesbian people? I honestly don’t believe that’s true, and I’m not going to say so.
Did God whip up Hurricane Katrina to punish witches and gays? Oh, come on. Really? How’s that even a question?
And Haiti, did God cause the earthquake as punishment for the revolt against French colonialism and slavery?
Pat…
You’re just a pathetic racist. That’s no good, telling people that, speaking for God when he loves his children, saying a disaster is divine retribution. You don’t know that. I’m Going out on a limb here, but I’d like to say that those who would do God’s work should comfort people, not shame them and scare the shit out of them. Shame on you, Pat.
Anyway, back to 1999…
That fall, there were mad, terrifying predictions that when the clocks turned to 00:00 hours on 1 January 2000, the world could practically end. I never believed it, because for one thing, the only reason this was being predicted was because computers would automatically go back to 1900 instead of 2000. I knew better. Was never worried. On New Year’s Eve, I laid in bed, watching Time’s Square. That stupid ball came down, and, of course, everything was fine.
I don’t know how the evangelicals had predicted things would go, but Pat Robertson had already made predictions of the dates of the end of the world. He hasn’t been right yet. You know why? Because Jesus said, “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even I, but only the Father.” Translation: do not waste time worrying about it and do not frighten others with things you cannot possibly know. Instead live every day the best way you can and have faith.
But Robertson claimed God had told him. Shown him visions. I’ve got doubts about God talking to Pat Robertson.
I have another WordPress site, “How Close Are We?” in which I examine various things, and my feeling is that we are causing that day and hour to get closer. We still can’t know what will happen or when, but we are definitely pushing our luck. And God does not have to tell me. I can see dreadful things on the horizon without ever opening a bible.
But Robertson doesn’t stop at end-times predictions. No, he speaks for God. Go to his Wikipedia page and there’s actually a subheading that lists controversies. Now a man who claims to be a Christian is going to draw fire; no one can lead a life free of mistakes and sin, but he is extraordinarily consistent in setting himself up for harsh criticism. Of course, no Christian should ever wish that anyone would die, but he did much worse when he called for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to be assassinated. That’s not something Jesus ever did. He didn’t call for Pontius Pilate or Caesar Tiberius to be killed. He said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who spitefully use you.” And he said “You know the commandment, an eye for an eye, but a new commandment I give you; that you shall love one another.”
That’s it. Period. And it makes Pat Robertson a heretic. But recently he’s cemented that with astonishing things he’s said such as, “To be against Trump is to be against God.”
That’s heresy. That’s putting words in God’s mouth that anyone with a lick of sense knows is a lie. Know what Jesus said about lies? Well, he called Satan “the father of all lies.” That’s as plain as you can get.
There is no evidence for, and plenty against, Trump being some anointed leader chosen by God. The evangelicals of the far right fell for him because his racist and hateful views are their unspoken own. They fear and hate the same things he does. He appealed to them for votes, claiming to be something he’s not. He even said in an interview that he’s never felt a need to pray.
Pat, you’re not what you say you are.
Once I saw him read a letter. It was from a woman who had a Buddhist friend, and the friend asked her to go with her to a temple. The woman was asking Robertson if it was okay. He said, “Yeah, if you take your faith with you I guess so,” and later he called Buddhism a religion of demons. He’s also called Islam a satanic cult consisting of killers. It’s far from the truth; only those who listen to the babble of the far right believe that. Anyone who has ever worked with or known a Buddhist or Muslim will tell you they’re anything but. My experience with them has been positive. I fear Repubicans way more than I can ever fear Muslims.
And Robertson is hardly alone. From noted televangelists to Southern Baptist pastors, there are heretics, teachers of apostasy, those who lead believers astray of the Gospels, the doctrinal teachings of Jesus. I’ve had enough of Franklin Graham and Joel Osteen. And don’t get me even started on the seed Gospel, wherein you’re told you can get rich by giving pastors and televangelists money. That’s a grave sin, stealing from people by lying to them, and necessarily lying to them about the true meaning of the doctrine. That’s heresy and thievery.
Every time I’ve hit a spiritual low, I’ve looked for guidance. I’ve never gotten any. I’ve had to look within and keep my faith simple and easy to manage. It’s a hard way to go, but it beats what lies beyond.
A few years later, I would be on the road to homelessness. I looked up one day and said angrily, “Either you do something about this, or I will.”
I couldn’t make it on my own. I needed help. My health both mentally and physically was going south. I could no longer hold down a job. When my situation didn’t improve, I figured God didn’t care. That made sense; who was I to have a prayer answered? I tried three times to kill myself. I spent time after that in a hospital, and on labor day weekend of 2005 I was discharged. I’ve never gone back.
Sometimes, just a little bit of faith can go a long way. I still had a lot of sinning to do. I was near death after a heart attack and surgery. I don’t want to go back to the place I went. I don’t. I brought it all on myself. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. And I don’t have to go back to that dark, lonely place. It had nothing to do with going to church or giving Pat Robertson money.
It’s just about faith. That’s all it’s ever been about. I’ve lived a nightmare. I have. But even if I am an asshole, at least I didn’t turn out like Pat Robertson.
It’s one thing to have people call you an asshole. It’s quite another to turn around and prove it. On the 24th of July 1994, I went out of my way to do just that. If you like the ghost hunting shows on TV, you need to know, the real thing isn’t something I recommend. Because I’ve been there. And it’s awful.
In studying the behavioral tendencies in people with PTSD, I discovered something heartbreaking. Well, all of it’s heartbreaking, but one thing in particular stands out, and that is best expressed by the word “extremes.” Often, there’s no fine line, but a wide gap in types of behavior. At one end, you have those who guard their lives and isolate. They become antisocial, forced behind a wall where they’re safe. It can affect everything from social to professional performance and ensure a long term lonely existence in which the victim suffers in silence. It’s no way to live, believe me.
And then, there are the reckless, the risk takers, the suicide jockeys. And I’ve been both. The isolated tend to have limited relationships and while some are rewarding and satisfying, I contend that satisfaction is rare. We all need human companionship, or at least contact. I’ve also been at the other end. This never did fit my personality; I grew up scared of just about everything. I was shy, quiet, and kept to only a few friends, and after a time, fewer still. Seemed I was better at making enemies, and had a knack for attracting the wrong people, especially women. But for a time, I went the outgoing, reckless asshole route. I drove fast, and with PTSD, that’s plain dangerous. The condition leads to dissociative thinking. It’s almost like texting and driving, but worse. I’d be fine one minute, and the next, something had triggered me—a song, an odor, a flash of light—and I was somewhere else, reliving some moment of hell I had gone through, numb and unaware to the world around me. I felt and heard and saw things that had happened to me. Next thing I knew, I was biting the rear end of the car in front of me. In all, before I decided to let my license expire for good, I’d been involved in 35 accidents. That’s like what a race car driver experiences in a whole career, and some don’t even get close to that number.
But recklessness, like refusing to use condoms, which is also pretty much an asshole thing to do, can have results that end up causing even more trauma than the ones already in your head. Serious accidents are, yeah. Traumatic.
I did not know much about PTSD in the summer of 1994. I was only recently diagnosed, and never given any substantial explanation of what it was. I also didn’t know much about the supernatural other than what I had experienced when I was young. So when a girlfriend I was seeing while I was separated from my wife told me about a place called “Ghost Road”, I was half skeptic and half intrigued. I loved to write, and being down on my luck, I devised a plan wherein I would debunk this haunted location and write a story about it. I wanted to submit it to Baltimore Magazine, and see if they would publish it.
The story went like this. There was a lonely road in the area of Bowley’s Quarters near Essex, Maryland. It had a railroad crossing that was haunted. The ghost was that of a newlywed woman who died with her husband when their car stalled on the tracks and a train struck them. The woman walked up and down the tracks with a lantern, searching for the only part of her husband she never found after death: his head. A lurid tale, even if mild by today’s standards. It sounded fishy to me. She took me there, and it turned out that the road had a development of townhomes on the right near the beginning, with older houses on the left. These gave way to woods on either side, leading to a lazy curve which, as we got closer, revealed a streetlight, a wooden railroad crossing sign and a single track crossing the narrow road. Further on, a sharper turn led to a farm, some old homes, and a gated dirt road that led to shore homes. There was nothing remarkable at all about the crossing or the road itself, except for one thing. At first, I didn’t pay any attention to it. I would go back almost every night from April to July, hoping to prove that nothing was there.
I contacted the Baltimore County Police Department. No reports of fatal traffic accidents had ever been filed anywhere on that road. There were no incidents of cars and trains involved in accidents. I contacted the offices of Conrail, which owned the track right-of-way. Again, there had never been any reports of incidents on that section of track; it was explained that it was merely a spur, which is to say, a dead-end track that led to a delivery or pickup site. No trains traveled fast enough on that section where it crossed the road for anyone to screw up bad enough to be hit by it, much less run right into it. I once estimated the speed to be ten miles per hour, maybe fifteen at the most. Because the rail cars being hauled in were hoppers full of coal. They would come back out empty. At the end, roughly to the west, was the Carroll Island Power Plant. A coal-burning power plant, and it wasn’t far from the crossing. So far, the debunking process was going very well. I had the statements by Conrail and the police that nothing described in the ghost story had taken place. And common sense told me that a train moving that slowly was never likely hit anyway. I went into the real research phase, finding out almost right away that the same ghost story was told about virtually every railroad crossing in America where the setting was remote or heavily wooded. This may have become an urban legend, but before that, it had been a folk tale for about a century, and nobody could put pins in a map and cover every “haunted” crossing. It would be impossible.
At the time, I had an eyewitness. I only knew her in a business sense, so there was no reason for her to embellish. She said that she and her husband had, several years before, gone to the crossing and pulled off the road. They would sit in the back of his pickup truck and ghost-watch. And nothing really happened.
Until one night, very late, while they lay on sleeping bags, they began to hear noises at the treeline. They sat up. Nothing happened at first. But then, more and more, they heard things dropping from the trees to the ground, then moving through dead leaves and weeds. They had their night vision from having been there for hours, and they soon saw what was causing the noise: long, black shadows. Shadows. Snake-like, and just shadows. Moving toward them. They bugged out and never went to the place again. Their marriage broke up. When she found out I was investigating the location, she begged me not to proceed further. After what she told me, she grew concerned and her professionalism was gone for a brief second. “You’ll die. Why are you doing this?” Strangely, I never saw her again. But…I didn’t believe her.
Yet there was something about that place. Every time I made the turn onto the road, I felt my blood run cold. At first I counted this as a reaction of fear borne of some sort of expectation, but as I debunked the story, I ruled that out. No, I was sensing something, and it was powerful, though not on a level as what I had experienced as a kid. And that had been bad enough. So, whether I was alone or had my illicit girlfriend with me, I would often stake out the crossing later at night. I couldn’t shake the feeling of danger, but much more powerful was the sense of evil. Just plain evil down there. In April, after a violent thunderstorm, after the rain had stopped and the air was humid but still chilly, I parked on the side of the road with the crossing in sight, but not too close. I began to hear a voice, a woman’s voice, calling someone’s name. It sounded like “Karl” and it continued for hours, just the name, but never swerving in tone or volume. As the sky greyed with approaching dawn, it stopped. Could it be that the story of the widow was true?
I had already debunked that part, so what did this cry mean? I ruled out animals; this was a human voice, no doubt. Now, I had to find out what it was about that road that chilled my blood so, and why a woman had called all night for someone who never answered. I’d thought to look for her, but she would have been difficult to find through dense woods, and besides, I trusted my gut. It told me not to try. I sensed things then that years later, on medication for PTSD and bipolar 2 disorder, I can no longer register. I remember though, how sensitive I was, and that was a curse.
One night, not daring to stakeout the crossing any closer, I parked near the same place as the night I heard the woman. Something stepped out of the woods on the right, backlit by the street light at the crossing. It clearly was walking my way, but there was something immediately terrifying about it. It was no teen who had been toking in the woods. I remembered a scene from “A Nightmare On Elm Street” in which Freddie had very long arms. Although a silhouette, this thing looked similar, long arms stretched to each side. I beat it out of there.
But that just made everything worse. Now there were really sinister things apparent in a concentrated area. The investigation continued. I was terrified to find no other being with arms so long except in American mythology. It was a Wendigo, something reported being sighted just about everywhere except this area.
I wasn’t going to put that in any article. What was with this road?
I didn’t give up. Now I wanted answers. I kept on with my surveillance, but then came the night of 24 July. At two a.m. I approached the crossing. It would be my last pass before calling it a night. But the night was not over.
An oncoming car distracted me. The road was narrow so I had to cross and keep going. But to the immediate left, on the tracks, was a frightening sight. It was nine feet tall, mostly but not fully solid, its legs didn’t touch the tracks, and it had its back to us, going away down the tracks. As if it had just crossed the street. But we had not seen it. Not until we were in the crossing. Cursing, I rounded the curve and did a quick turnaround.
I parked at a gate beside the road that led to a dirt track which paralleled the train track. It was for rail and Baltimore Gas and Electric access, because overhead there were high tension power lines leading from the Carroll Island power plant. With me was the woman I was seeing, and her son. I looked down the track. The thing was still there, but further away than what my reason told me it could be. If I was going to get a look, I had to move. I said to her son, “Let’s go, dude.” I got out and started chasing the thing.
It was covered in a tan cloak like Sherlock Holmes wore. It came to knee length, but had no legs visible below the hem. It had a matching round hood, almost laughably big. And no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t gain on it. Ahead of it was total darkness, and a lazy, long curve to the right. I was a quarter mile from the car when it suddenly pivoted as if on an axis and now it was coming toward me fast. Frozen in fear, I looked at it and saw that inside the hood there was nothing but darkness. It had no head. And the cloak parted at the waist, revealing two running legs from the knee to the groin; no sign of lower legs.
My lady friend yelled down the alley between the pines, “It’s coming back!”
Yeah, I saw that. I turned on my legs. They had turned into licorice strands. And I was alone. Dude had stayed in the car.
It was a helpless feeling. All I knew was that my life was in danger; I tried to run, but it wasn’t working. I felt the thing behind me, closing up the distance between us. I thought I was going to die.
Finally my legs moved. I ran back to the car and grabbed the door handle. They told me that the thing was close enough to grab me but vanished as I touched the door.
There has rarely been a time when I looked back and have not thought that I could have been hurt that night. I’ll never ghost hunt again. Because even an asshole has to have limits.
There’s one thing I find terrifying. He, or she, is real.
The Angel of Death.
Back in 2008-09, I was on MySpace. I blogged there. I was not always well, or stable in mood. I did things that hurt people. I hate to say it, but secluded at a keyboard and free to type anything I wanted, I drew darkness toward myself. I was adrift in an ocean of free porn. I began to heighten my sensitivity to the supernatural. The group home I was staying in was built in 1900. Oldest place I ever lived in. And if you don’t believe in the supernatural, good for you. At least you’re less open to experiences that could change your mind. But I found that the age of the house had a bearing on what kind of environment it held within. In 1900, there was still an Ottoman Empire. The street I lived on was a dirt track. The property had a stable, perhaps even a carriage house. World War One hadn’t happened yet. Thinking about all the history of the world that had not been seen yet when the house was built staggered me. Soldiers who would fight at Normandy and Iwo Jima had not even been born. Wow.
But my medication list wasn’t dialed in quite right. PTSD w/Severe Depression was but one of my page-long list of maladies; I was sick. And I had already learned that when I wasn’t medicated properly, I was very much open to the supernatural. One part of this was that I would have premonitions and an uncontrollable curse of seeing into the thoughts or feeling the emotions of others. Always, without fail, these were negative; that is, I felt anger, lust, hatred, jealousy and more, and often I knew these weren’t my feelings. It usually happened when I was exhausted, had been dehydrated, and was depleted of everything that provided a healthy defense and strength. One very awful day in the summer of 2003, I got a taste of just how bad this curse really was.
I was standing near the corner of the house where I rented a room from my ex and her husband. It was stressful but at least I could spend more time with my son. For the record, I wasn’t on any medicine. I was exhausted and definitely dehydrated, weak, and did not imagine that what was about to happen was even possible, because it’s movie or bad novel shit. I was looking up the street, for some reason staring at this red pickup truck. I zoned. Then I was in a trance-like state. Not thinking, no longer aware of what my eyes were seeing. Suddenly I was in a bedroom, and I saw the owner of the truck. He didn’t live there; he did handyman work for the widow who owned the house. She was on vacation with her son and would be away for the entire week. I saw him, saw that it was her bedroom. He had the top drawer of her dresser open, and his hands were in it. Before that could register and I could perhaps snap out of it, I was in his body! Not astral projection; I was just seeing through his eyes as he felt his way through her panties. His hands were my hands. I could feel it, then see the colors. Teal. Black. White. I felt a sickening thrill, a very dirty surge of some sexual appetite slowly being fed bits of satisfaction by that which was forbidden, violating. It only lasted a few seconds, then I was out of it, aware of my real surroundings. After that I was sick, for three days, with a migraine and exhaustion made worse by the awful depleting nature of the surge of emotions I had felt. When they got home, her son came down to visit. At the risk of putting myself in the cuckoo category, I had to tell him what I saw. What I knew. And it turned out, well, it went like this: I asked him, “Does your mom’s bedroom have beige carpet?” I had never been in that house.
“Yes.” He became uncomfortable.
“Does she have an upright dresser?”
“Yeah, go on.”
“And if I stood at her dresser, is her door on my right?”
“Go on.” He shifted on his feet. We were on the porch.
“And does she have teal underwear?”
“Stop!”
“Yeah. I saw this through Bacon’s eyes. I don’t know, Jerr, I zoned out staring at his truck, and I was suddenly looking through his eyes, staring at her underwear, and he was going through them, feeling–”
“Enough,” he said.
“I had to tell you. It’s not like I can knock on the door and tell her this.”
“Hell, Mike, I can’t tell her this. She’ll think you’ve been spying through her window.”
“Jerr, she has to know. She has to know he’s dangerous, he’s a hungry animal, the worst kind. Don’t let her get more involved with him. Tell her to break contact. He’s dangerous.”
Ever since her husband died, Bacon had been helping her, and his motive was to move in. I knew if he did, if she was lonely enough, she would be in danger. I had felt his hunger. It was primal, evil.
Her son finally did succeed, without mentioning me, in getting her to send the fucker down the road. This is the curse I bear. In the group home, a few years later, after three suicide attempts, I was in treatment. But in the house in Elkridge, I was off-kilter, and the problem with psychotropic drugs is, you gotta have them all just right. Drop to the low side, or worse, get to the upper tolerance limit, and bad shit happens. And I could see and feel and hear things I wish I didn’t. In that hundred-year-old house.
I would go downstairs in the middle of the night. I have always had trouble sleeping properly, so I’d go outside for a smoke. Descending the stairs, I could hear someone moving in the dining room. But when I turned the corner, no one was there. I heard it in the kitchen, the next room. Again, empty. Outside was just as unnatural at night. Sometimes there was an oppression, a suffocating feeling to the air. Sometimes, as when a possum was hunting ticks in the grass, I knew nothing bad was around; animals are very keen to the presence of spirit activity. Other times it was just too quiet, eerie, and honestly a bit frightening. I knew there were spirits, inside and outside of the place, and considering the age of it, why not?
One night, cold and sprinkling rain, very dark. I had my window open a crack. I was writing a blog on MySpace. I didn’t know how long it had been going on, but gradually I became aware that in the street below, a woman with high heels was walking around in a circle. And she was trying to get my attention. I raised the window and looked out, but in the gloom I saw nothing. That’s when she stopped walking in a circle, walked from my right to my left, right in front of and beneath me. I still saw nothing. I bounded down the stairs, out of the door that was right next to the street. Nothing.
I saw no one and the heel steps were gone. With a suddenness, I looked at the house across the street and one lot to the left. I’d always considered it creepy, and in the two years I’d lived in the old house, that one had gone through two owners. Not renters, owners. That’s a red flag. It now sat empty. And every time I was near a window that faced it, or went outside, my attention, my eyes, we’re always drawn to it. That house was the only place the woman in heels could possibly have gone. But… It was vacant. My blood ran cold. Although I sensed no threat, not to myself anyway, I was filled with the feeling that it was a bad experience. If I hadn’t had so many, perhaps I could have ignored it. But I knew there was a lot more to life than what met the casual eye, and I knew this was something that I was supposed to pay attention to.
A few weeks passed. A friend of mine named John died suddenly, walking on the road near his house. Massive coronary. Dead before he hit the ground.
A couple of months passed. It was now summer. A hot day. I was in the bathroom. The window was open. The woman in heels walked past, one story below, and the window faced that house, still vacant. She came from the same direction, my room. Walked right below me. This time in bright sunshine, but I again saw no one. And her footsteps faded going up the driveway to that house.
I had researched the house in the intervening months. All I found was that it was built in 2000. One hundred years after the one I lived in. I saw the price the last owner settled on. Nothing else. No stories reported any crimes or deaths there. I looked at it on Google Earth. It had an in ground swimming pool. Something told me that there was an accidental drowning in it. Other than that, I couldn’t read the house; it defied my efforts to even concentrate long enough to see inside it or any residue from any unfortunate events. Yet my eyes we’re still drawn to that house every time I was outside. And not just to the house; to the large windows of an upstairs bedroom. Always with the feeling I was being watched.
A few weeks after hearing the invisible heels walk by, another friend, also named John, died of liver failure.
Someone I confided in suggested it had been the Angel of Death, come to warn me that I was about to lose someone I loved.
If the story ended there, I wouldn’t bother telling it.
But it doesn’t, no story so awful ever ends that simply.
In summer, 2012, the house was still vacant. People who did a walk-through never came back. I listened for the Angel of Death, but she never walked past again. Then something terrible happened.
My daughter had been abandoned by her husband. She’d lost her place. After living with her young son in her car, she finally came home. She visited me one day, and for some reason, I pointed out that house. I told her not to go near it. I don’t know why I did that. I told her it was a place of evil… And death…
To be honest with you, 2012 was a weird year here in Maryland. First there was a derecho, a storm uncommon in the east because it is characterized by powerful straight-line winds which rarely make the trip intact over the Appalachian mountains. The bloody thing nearly blew me over the railing of the deck.
Then there was a much more frightful day. 13 tornadoes hit the state and there would have been more, but some didn’t touch down. It was a weird, scary time.
And one night, after 23:00 hours, she showed up to visit. I couldn’t let them in because of rules, and the late hour. I went out to talk and saw to my horror that she had parked in the driveway of the vacant house. Almost against the garage door!
I warned her, “Beth, you can’t be on that property”, and we hugged and kissed and she went home. She had a party to go to on July 4th, but said she would visit me on the 5th.
I never saw her alive again.
My son called late in the day of the 4th. There had been an accident. My Elizabeth had drowned. She was at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore. Full life support. Next day I got a ride to see her. It was a heartbreaking sight. My ex-wife said “Beth, your daddy’s here”. A tear, just one, slid from an eye. I thought she might have heard her mom, but it wasn’t possible. To determine the amount of brain damage, they had her chilled. When they warmed her, they discovered that there was never any blood getting to her brain stem. She’d been dead a full day. They turned the machine off.
I was broken. I asked God why, why her?
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right!
WHY? WHY, ABBA?
Why couldn’t it be me? Hell, I didn’t even want to live. She had three children. My life served no purpose. Hers did.
I questioned everything I had ever believed about God. I still do.
But my children would not want me to. I’m still very much a Christian.
My faith is weak. And I see shadows in my room. I know my time is limited.
My children are dead and I cling to the hope that they are together in Heaven. But I can’t know that. I sometimes agonize over that question. I ask Abba, the Father, to have mercy on them and I tell him please, don’t punish them for having a father who was an asshole.
I wish I had done better. Every day they are with me in this shattered heart of mine. When the Angel of Death comes for me, I will not be afraid. Living, for me, is more terrible than death. What scares me about the Angel of Death is that she’s always coming for someone else; never for me. I beg you: hug and kiss your kids. Take a prime interest in all they do. You are the one who can save them. You are the one who can redeem me by making sure my plea counts. And in so doing, save yourself the heartache of regret and an empty hole where they used to be.
The scene above, from Star Trek (the original series) is from the third season episode “Requiem For Methuselah”. It is the final scene of the episode. On an uncharted planet, the Enterprise crew finds a lone human named Flint. How he’s come to be so far from Earth is a bit of a problem, but nevermind that. Flint has an android he made by hand named Rayna, and Kirk being Kirk, he falls in love with her. But Flint loves her too, and designed to her to fit his own needs. In one of the dumbest scenes of the series, they fight over her, and she demands they stop. Kirk smiles and says, “She’s human!” Oh boy.
Seeing two men she cares about fight because of her, she has a breakdown and dies. This scene takes place after the death of Rayna, when Kirk is heartbroken and probably feeling a bit embarrassed that he fell in love with an android and then accidentally killed her with his testosterone.
I watched this show as a young teen, probably around 1970, when it went into syndication. Local independent stations carried it in the afternoon.
I watched every episode, again and again, for years. It was an escape. A good one, because it worked on so many levels as a series. There was only one two-part episode, but continuity still counted, production values on a low budget were good, and it made me use my imagination. For one thing, the sets were not that extensive. The sets for the Enterprise corridors were very short, only twenty feet or so, if memory serves, and there may have only been three of them. So I had to imagine those sets were on various decks of the ship, and since the ship was crewed by 430 people, it was huge. The imagination of the viewers was always part of the show. That was part of its genius.
I digress, but here’s what I’m getting at. See, I always loved this scene even though I hated the episode. And as I grew older, into my mid-teens, the scene became an obsession. I was always in pain. Never happy. I hated so much, could not function well socially, and was growing ever more alone. And I wished Spock was around to help me forget. I wished he would do to me what he does to Kirk in this scene.
Now, critics through the decades have torn this episode apart. First, they say the Brahm’s piano piece Spock plays is nothing like what Brahms ever composed, that it is merely a few notes repeated several times, and that the entire premise and its sub plots are bullshit. I’ll go along with that; the third season of Trek was mediocre at best, a horror at worst, with only a few episodes that were watchable, and one that was good enough to have been better placed in season two. So, sure, rip on the episode. But this scene made me cry back then. I guess it’s the music, but it’s also the overwhelming series of nightmares my life had become. I did not know of anything like “child sexual abuse”, in fact I never heard the word “abuse” without the word “drug” in front of it. And I thought, I guess, that the term was just another way of saying drug addiction. Which back then was misunderstood, and to our collective shame, is not much more understood today.
And as I grew older, and it started to become apparent to me that I was more dysfunctional than I could bear to think about, I wished for a Spock mind meld, because forgetting would mean healing. And I needed a healing.
The only fan letter I have ever written was to Gene Roddenberry. I was getting deeper into a life-threatening crisis, going from job to job, with a wife and two children to support, and still wishing for the mind meld. But I just wrote to thank him for a show that, for a time, saved my life and helped me to cope.
I of course was lucky to even get the form letter in response that said “Thanks for your thoughts on Star Trek … Mr. Roddenberry is too busy to respond … ”
I knew that. He’d been getting tons of mail for decades. He probably never read it. No one likely read it. They just opened it up, saw the series title mentioned and sent the computer printed letter. I know more about how things are in Hollywood than I wish I did, since it takes some of the joy out of the entertainment I get to see, but what the hell.
But some time after that, this train wreck of a feature film came out. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. It was a hot mess, and I never blamed anyone for it; except maybe Harve Bennet, who was a producer. And who just had to do a cameo scene. In the film, Spock’s half-brother, Sybok, raids a colony and holds hostages; a Klingon, a Terran, and a Romulan. His demand is for a Federation starship to be sent. He intends to hijack it and take it to Shaka Ree, or the home planet of God, known to humans as “Eden”.
He “recruits” followers by doing a mind-meld on them, taking away their pain. As McCoy would later put it, “Sounds like brainwashing to me.”
And then Kirk delivers the only lines in the entire movie that are worth hearing.
Kirk is right. Although bad things happen to us all, they become a big part of our lives. They shape us in ways we never truly understand. I consider this tragic; I wish there were ways to learn and to grow without enduring horrors, mistakes, dishonor, embarrassment, shame and victimization. I wish we did not need to hurt so much.
And trial, abuse, and trauma, those are cruel teachers. Sometimes what’s left is just someone like me: an asshole. That’s okay; life isn’t fair, so maybe it isn’t always supposed to end well.
Still, I would never have made it this far if not for being who and what I am, the good, the bad, the unforgettable, the painful, and the terrifying. I wish I knew whether the screenwriters ever heard of my letter. Because I told Roddenberry exactly why I needed his distractions. If he did, and of course I couldn’t have been alone, then this is a scene written with us in mind. Strength and will, endurance, those are things born of trial, things life has to teach you by kicking your ass. And for the record, no, I am not one of those “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” kind of men. I’m an asshole, not a prick. I’ve been kicked in the ass so many times I no longer function well socially. If someone gets too close, I’ll find a way to cut them out of my life or at least place them at a safer distance. I’ve had enough goddamn pain. Knowing that there is much more to come makes me all too willing to avoid any extra shit.
I’ve learned several weird things about trauma in my life. For one, there is a high degree of correlation between PTSD subjects and the sensitivity to the paranormal. It’s true; I’ve known so many like me. In that regard, we have too much in common.
Another thing I’ve learned is that heart disease, substance abuse and social-and-sexual dysfunction are common in PTSD subjects.
There’s more. But one other thing you should know is, yes, it really does show up on brain scans. If you have a stupid-assed doctor, he won’t see it. It’s a relatively new discovery, so not even all neurologists will even believe it’s what they’re looking at. All they’ll do is, at most, request another scan, or, at least, see nothing life threatening and tell you to go home. And make an appointment with a headshrinker.
I’m sorry, but there is no fucking shame in seeing a psychiatrist or a therapist. But healthcare is being fucked with and if you’re on Medicaid, those co-pays will stack up fast. I was seeing a therapist for years, but when I lost Medicaid, I couldn’t afford it anymore. I have to see a psychiatrist for medication, and I’m always in the hole with her co-pays. A therapist would refuse to see me after a few visits.
So for now, I’m just an asshole, fading fast, and really not all that fucking upset about it. I think life is teaching me another lesson.
Yes, I have led a life full of misery and pain beyond anything I could have imagined. Even as it all began.
Welcome. Pull up a chair, grab yourself a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you a story. I warn you now that it is disturbing and may trigger you. I advise care, and reading slowly so that if you need to, you can close this post. The last thing I want is to hurt you.
Sometime in or around 1964, I had a bedroom facing east in a brand new house in North Shore On The Magothy, a development in Pasadena, Maryland. I had the room to myself, but I was not alone. I was never alone. Something else was in there with me, something not human. And I could see it. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Kids see things. Monsters, boogeymen. Except this, my friends, was not the Boogeyman, nor was it a big monster that lived in my closet. At the time my young mind knew nothing of what it was or why it was there. It just was. It looked like it was made of a drawing. Gray lines that crossed each other to form a shape. I would liken it to the animated character that represented Dennis the Menace on the live-action TV series: A tornado wearing a traditional fireman’s helmet. But it wasn’t solid, and I never saw it in midair. It was only a few inches tall, and it was always on a wall. It hid a lot, usually in the same corner, but occasionally, it would dart across the room, seeming to stick to the ceiling as it moved. It was fast, challenging my visual acuity, but I still kept sight of it. In daylight, it looked like it had one eye. It was the height of the golden age of chrome-trimmed cars, when bumpers, mirrors, window frames and door frames were all chrome, as were some types of wheels and wheel covers. You know, hubcaps. If I was lying in bed for an afternoon nap, I would see cars going past on the road out front reflect the afternoon sun into my window and on my walls. These reflections changed as the cars moved, traveling along a wall or the ceiling. I had something to compare the shadow with, and I knew no car was causing it.
Besides, I could feel it. It was full of malice, full of evil. I could feel the hate it had, and I knew it was something living. It grew stronger with time, and my fear more than likely fed it. I’d see it, and scream for my mommy. Unfortunately, my father was always there; his office was downstairs. And he hated screaming. If he was working, that was bad enough, but he also had migraine headaches that were relentless. He called them what everyone did back then, “sick headaches.” That’s because migraines often make the sufferer vomit. He had a hair trigger temper, with or without the headache. And did I mention that he hated screaming? Because, even at age four, upsetting him meant the belt. A thin leather men’s belt made long before the 1970s and the stupid extra-wide belts worn by hippies and jetsetters alike. This belt made for an excellent whip. I had two sisters at that time. And two older half brothers. They didn’t live with us. If the three of us did something he didn’t like, he’d line us all up, get behind us and the whipping would start. It would leave blistered stripes on our backs, and these would weep with clear sweat or water, I’m not sure which. He would swing until he was literally physically spent. Our screams of pain and loud sobbing would be met with more lashes until we were reduced to sighs that kids make when trying hard not to cry.
It gets worse. That thing in my room wouldn’t go away. When I saw it, I cried for mommy, not my father. By the age of four, I was already afraid of him, and since my memory doesn’t go back much further, I can give a pretty good guess as to why. Sometimes he would try to sit me on his lap, but I would cry until he let me go. Then later, I would be yelled at for never wanting anything to do with him. Then one day he brought home a Popeye nightlight. I no longer had to sleep in the dark. You’d think that would help. But now, instead of sensing that thing on the wall in the dark and being very often frozen in terror and unable to call mommy, I could also see it. I didn’t care if I got a whipping. Several times I was able to scream, and finally the light was left on in my room. That of course did not help. One night I saw it on the wall above my closet. I called out, and both mommy and my dad came running in. By this time it had happened so often that I could tell they were taking me seriously. I believe they could sense something; this night they were visibly upset, but not at me. Lying in bed, I pointed right at the thing. “Don’t you see it?”
Mommy said something like, “What is that?“
And it jumped on her. She gave a scream, not too loud, but it was full of terror. She could feel it. She ran out of the room, trying to shake something off as if a squirrel had jumped on her.
That was the night she stopped being my mommy. She was never the same. That summer, I had my fourth birthday. Our next door neighbor baked my birthday cake. I got a pop gun and an army helmet. The gun fired a cork tied to a string, so you could put the cork back in, cock the rifle and shoot again. Outside, on a sunny July day, with no one to play with, I played soldier by myself. And just outside my father’s downstairs office, I spotted something I had never seen. Wondrous creatures, like tiny birds. They hovered around something stuck to the brick wall. Never imagining what would happen, I shot at the thing on the wall. Yellowjackets immediately set upon me, and they hurt. Stinging and burning, I screamed, cried, and ran to the kitchen door for my mommy. But before I could get treatment for my stings, I got the belt for screaming.
Everything changed. She used to defend me from my father. She used to put salve on my stripes. She used to hug me. One day she brought home an orange drink in a half pint carton, opened it and put a straw in it, and told me to go outside and drink it so my sisters wouldn’t see and get jealous. Times were hard, and she could only afford the one. I never forgot that day. I felt so special. I felt loved. Mommy was so kind, gentle, always humorous, always ready to give me a bit of attention because I was sandwiched between two sisters. I was lonely. She would draw me pictures of Batman. If I was sick, she took me to the doctor and then to Bob’s Village Drugs for my medicine. If I could handle it, she would let me have a fountain Coke at the soda fountain counter. Served in an old-fashioned Coca-Cola glass with crushed ice and a paper straw. Once in a while a small toy would find its way home with me. Well, maybe it was small, but it was priceless to me.
A year earlier, when we had almost no furniture, and no carpet yet, she would sit in a dim light with us in the living room and we would play games. But after the night that thing jumped on her, she wasn’t my mommy anymore. Never again. Anything good in her died there and then.
But the horror was only beginning. In 1966, my older sister was given a Ouija board for Christmas. She got weird shit, too. I liked my Captain Action and G.I.Joe dolls, but I always asked for things that went with them but were sold separately, like the Captain America outfit for Captain Action, and the Jeep and the Sea Sled for Joe. You know who got them? My older sister. It was like my father was torturing me even without the belt. Even so, most of my memory during this time is full of gaps. One thing, though. A year, maybe even two, after my older sister got the Ouija Board, she had two friends over. It was after school, in the fall, when it got dark early. They turned out the light. They came out screaming. My father had the worst time getting rid of that bloody thing. The two girls, I never saw them again even though one lived right down the street. She was older, so I didn’t ride the same school bus and I just never saw either one of them after that. My sister would not, even decades later, tell me what happened. She told our parents. He threw it in the trash.
Next day it was back on her closet shelf and as she was getting ready for school, she saw it and screamed. Now my tough big sister, who often bullied or pranked me into shit that wasn’t funny, to hear her scream, that was extraordinary. I ran into her room, a forbidden zone for me, and I saw the thing sitting there along with older games like Candyland, Hi-Ho Cherry-O and Green Ghost, and a stack of others. Our father broke the board in half. I swear he was hysterical with terror. He stomped the glass and plastic planchette and smashed it.
After the next trash pickup, it was back. Same place, in one piece, even the box. He wound up burning them in a nice hot wood fire in the fireplace. I cannot recall whether blue or green, but the board, box and plastic melted and burned with a color I asked my father about. He had no real answer.
That was when everything in that house changed for the worse, when real evil was done. Again, you and I are here having tea together, but I warn you, this gets very dark from here onward.
There’s a belief about Ouija boards that goes like this: If you have made contact with a hostile entity with it, you must close the session by moving the planchette to “Goodbye”, and you cannot burn the board if the entity has entered your home. Some say it may still be attached to the board, and burning it releases the entity into your home, where it essentially has free run. Well, that’s exactly what happened.
Mom and dad began to take me out of my bedroom at night and into the den, in order to teach me about sex. They did some things together, but most of it was her having sex with me. I was seven-years-old.
At one point, they did something that would ultimately prove their undoing: They had me and one younger sister together doing things with them, and a few times, each other. They showed us 8mm porn reels, and moved me out of my old room into the old office downstairs, because dad had a warehouse and trucking terminal in Glen Burnie, a town between Pasadena and Baltimore. Usually, though, my night was Saturday. At the time, I had no idea that all of the kids were going through this except the older sister, who for some reason was left out. Probably because she was cold-blooded mean and had threatened to run away or call the police. But whatever, I didn’t know. As kids were added to our family, eventually four girls and two boys plus two half brothers, that house saw more child abuse than I can picture even to this day.
Years went by. Dysfunctional and afflicted, I would make friends, then lose them. I had horrible nightmares, trouble sleeping, and even though I never saw that shadow thing again, I guessed it was still in that room upstairs, or in my mother. It was the beginning of my experiences with demons, dark spirits described and fought by Jesus of Nazareth.
Every Saturday night, just hours away from Sunday School, my mother would come into my room late, after everyone else was asleep, and fondle me. I tried to pretend I was asleep. Sometimes I tried to fake being sick. She would put a hand to my forehead, say “You don’t have a temperature,” and if I still resisted, my father would come in and say, “Get your ass out here, boy.” And threaten me with the belt. How sick could you get? Threatening to beat your son for not wanting to have sex with his mother?
Oh, I know what some of you are thinking. That every adolescent dreams of having sex with his mother. Well, there are three things I’ve studied in my life. One is the paranormal. One is PTSD. The other is incest. All three still baffle me, but there are some things I’ve learned. First of all, having a sexual fantasy, no matter what it is, should never be allowed to come true. Reality is not the same. People get hurt, scarred, and victims commit suicide or crimes in the aftermath. Second, not many boys really do fantasize about having sex with their mothers; it may occur for a short time, but it’s fleeting. I always had this sick feeling in my gut that it was wrong, all wrong, and that there was a good reason for me to be sick about it, to resist the way I did. Another thing I’ve learned is that first-person porn stories, like the old “Penthouse Forum” letters, are very often about incest, but they’re bullshit. Today these types of porn live on with the internet, but much of the time, it’s written by men who have little sexual experience and less knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Many stories written as if by a woman talk about being penetrated in their cervix. Sick, but laughable; it’s almost impossible. Women who need cervical exams often have to be given pain medication, it has to be dilated by drugs, and any procedure may involve general anesthesia. Because it fucking hurts. But I digress.
Incest happens more often than I can stand to think. It usually involves rape, although sometimes even a fourth degree sex offense is so traumatic that the victim’s development arrests at the moment it is initiated. Whatever their age, their psychological, emotional maturity will stop and proceed abnormally from there. There is no cure for post traumatic stress disorder. Only time and treatment can help the most severe cases, and personally, I count every case as severe. Until the age of sixteen, I went through this. My social behavior got worse and worse. I wound up with literally no friends but tons of enemies. Any relationship I did have was dysfunctional from the beginning. My teen romances ended badly, with a girlfriend’s parents totally freaked out and pissed. By the time my father was involving himself in threesomes with my mother, I was finally able to defy him and demand it all stop. Sensing something in me he didn’t want to test, he agreed. But the damage was done.
In a community called North Shore On The Magothy, in a house no longer resembling the one I lived in, there was once a bunch of children tormented, tortured and raped. It has a new owner now; has for years. I’ve seen it on Google Street, and I don’t recognize it. But I will always know it as the House Of Pain.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 