This post concerns the subject of suicide and should be read with care. If you, or anyone you know, currently have thoughts of suicide, the clock is running. Please call (800) 273-8255 or hit this linkfor help 24/7. You can talk to someone right now. Please close out this blog and call or visit the website. If you are in a country other than the USA then please go now to a site for help or call your local Emergency Servive.
Stop. Please scroll back up and consider what you are about to do. There’s nothing worse than what you’re feeling right now. I get there often. I know feelings of deep loss, guilt, inadequacy and heartache. I’m so very sorry that you feel them too, but there’s help for people like us, and no matter what you think right now, you deserve that help. You do. Please go after it right now. We are stronger and better with you than without you. And you still have better times ahead that your mind will not allow you to see right now. Call or click. Please.
***
“Yo! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you mangy privates!”
That’s what I heard in basic training. And it’s the dumbest thing you or anyone else can say to someone in a crisis. It doesn’t motivate. It hurts.
An existential crisis. One in which the person, military or civilian, is told to saddle up anyway when they’re unable to take anymore.
The implied explanation of “unable to take anymore” is the same as the obvious one. A man or woman has reached their limit. They’ve tried. They’ve given everything they had and found themselves lacking. They feel guilty. They think they’ve failed or will fail. That they’re not good enough. That death is the best way out.
Fort Leonard Wood reported an all-time record number of suicide attempts and chain of command reports of suicidal ideation in 2019.
First, I believe 2019 is the first year such numbers were reported under a new initiative. But bear in mind that the military has always kept records of suicides. The numbers include active duty, reserve and National Guard troops. No one is ignored in death; that part is reserved for the living.
There are two overall reasons for this. One is, people who find themselves in over their heads are desperate, and seek out the military as a way out. They’ll be trained for a job, get three meals a day, be busy and grow stronger and more disciplined. Of course, that’s the goal of armed forces as well. Recruiters don’t care; they sign up a volunteer and the rest is out of their hands. It is only after the training begins that problems surface.
But the second part is merely the nature of the military. Its training is down to a science: tear down the civilian and build a soldier in its place. It is an unyielding and tough period for drill sergeants who school for the job and are given the task of training recruits according to a set of rules considered inviolable. There was never room for deviation or special treatment for any one recruit. With the exception of remedial PT (physical training) for recruits who failed the first PT test, everything was the same for everyone, for better or worse.
This strict regimen should quickly root out those unfit for service. Most of the time, it did. Some never made it past Reception because depression and homesickness took root their first night on base.
I’m not sure about now, but when I arrived, all the new recruits arrived in the middle of the night. The purpose is to take away your bearings, disorient you and begin the breakdown process. Hell, I couldnt even tell I was surrounded by mountains.
At Reception, you see some scary things. None of us had haircuts or uniforms yet. We fell out in the morning in bright yellow sweat suits and cadre sergeants called us “Bananas”
My second night there I was aware of more trainees coming in. Being somehow uncomfortable with keeping his hair until we went to the barbershop, one guy took a disposable twin blade razor and shaved his head. He spent all night in the latrine doing it, and in the morning before I saw him I heard people comparing him to Jason. Oh, yeah. That Jason.
I saw the back of his head in the chow line the next morning. He was so cut up that he looked like he’d cut his hair with a lawnmower. He got an Article 15 for that stunt. Nobody gets an article 15 in reception.
A week of getting haircuts, uniforms and shots is followed by the “Duffle Bag Shuffle” in which a short march by a reception sergeant guides company to its basic training area. Once stood in formation, drill sergeants come out of nowhere, seemingly from every direction, infiltrating your ranks and screaming into the ears of E-nothing privates who absolutely don’t know what the fuck is going on.
And the breakdown process has begun. It is designed for mild shock and making privates submissive to command.
Once divided into platoons, the recruits get to scramble into their barracks where drill sergeants are waiting to make the process of filing in beside bunks orderly. No talking and no buddying up. By now they’re rattled anyway. Shaking from head to foot as they stand at attention, not knowing how long they will really be that way. Legs wobble. Eyes water: what happened to my world?
The breakdown process is intensifying. A kid without any vestige of facial hair is berated as a shitbird by a drill sergeant. The guy across from him is told to come forward and dry shave the shitbird. The shitbird is left bleeding. The drill sergeant is pleased.
Back to soldiering. A demonstration on making a bunk and hanging uniforms in wall lockers. Then back out on the quad for basic drilling and marching. To move as one. Fuck up and everyone is “dropped”, meaning that they assume “the front lean and rest position”: ready to do pushups.
A lot of those will follow. Nobody counts. Only the sergeant really knows and he’s got other things on his mind.
Time passes slowly. Sleep is sound and hard. That’s when the mindfuck really begins. Early to bed, and there better not be anyone fucking around, but up at a different time. Sometimes 05:00, sometimes 03:00. Nobody knows anything except it’s dark and they’re tired.
Unreasonable expectations follow. Run this fast, this far. Climb this obstacle in 15 seconds and your feet better be back on the ground on the other side faster than that or you’re doing it again.
Slow to file out after chow? The platoon or company gets dropped for pushups or grass drills. Dinner ends up at your feet when it’s over.
Dress right, dress. Parade rest. At ease. Doesn’t it run together? Yeah. It does.
At some point my company was shipped in cattle trailers up to the New Mexico desert. Winter. Colder than you’ve ever imagined being. In the dark of the morning you’re stood at attention and left there while drill sergeants return to big tents with potbelly stoves. You’re tired, nodding out from sleep deprivation and the cold. You fall asleep at attention. You watch each other in undeclared shifts to make sure no one falls. No fucking talking. They’ll hear you. Drills hear everything. If a private farts in the desert they’ll hear it back at Bliss. You learn to hold it. You learn to hold everything in. No weakness. No doing anything the others don’t.
Sleeping in a two-man tent in bitter cold. Each with full winter gear still on, including boots, pile cap. Sleeping bag zipped all the way shut.
Graduation feels well earned, a day of self-pride that will be with you the rest of your life.
But some didn’t make it, did they? One night asleep in their bunk, which is stripped down to bare mattress the next. Where’d he go? Nobody dares ask a drill sergeant. They know better. We all know better. It’s taboo.
Unless of course something happened when you were there. Guy gulped a can of Brasso. Cut himself with a bayonet. Cried all night and gone before morning chow.
The new statistics are sickening. Alarming. Something has gone wrong. Fort Bliss doesn’t do Basic Training anymore but that’s the rearrangement from long ago. Cost-cutting and shit.
Drill sergeants had no idea outside of training at Jackson what to look for as far as a suicidal private. They only look for the obvious. But the act is very often spontaneous. Thought about as a way out while trying to stay strong. No soldier can be fragile; can’t show it and can’t talk about it. So suddenly it just happens. Then it’s over. Usually the attempt fails. But not always, and every minute from then on, that recruit is in danger.
I’m not encouraged by the report where it states that privates who attempt suicide are closely monitored afterward. I don’t believe that they are ever safe. They cannot be soldiers. It isn’t meant to be. And I dont give a fuck about their “history” not showing mental illness or suicidal thoughts. The Army doesn’t know shit like that and if they did should never have allowed him to make it to Basic in the first place.
Drill sergeants are not psychiatric professionals. That’s not what they do or what they’re for. Sure, troops have to be ridden hard, that’s the process and the procedure. Nobody’s arguing with that. Therefore the problem lies elsewhere.
But going up the chain of command is not the simple thing you think it is because there’s immediate resistance. You’re dissuaded from going for help. You’re not supposed to be fragile. You signed the goddamn contract.
Army chaplains get called in as if they’re any better. They are not. They can be some of the meanest and unforgiving bastards you ever met. I wouldn’t seek help from one of them; they’ll make it worse. As if God expects you to heal yourself and go forth kicking and to kick ass.
Training units have dealt with suicide for right near two hundred years. It is not in their nature to be understanding. A drill sergeant will call you names. The company commander will call you worse names. If that doesn’t stop you then perhaps a visit to the base hospital will. They’ll put you in restraints then walk away and leave you. That just fills you with joy and renews your confidence. Not so. You feel like even more of a failure, a freak. Nurses sneer at you. And they’re officers. You better not say shit. Your world, bleak as it seems, can get worse. Perhaps that dawns on you. Or maybe not. But it doesn’t matter; you’re in a nightmare, a horror movie written by a madman. God has turned and looked the other way.
It could be that the 2019 report wakes up high command. I hope so. People who have the will to serve should be regarded as the assets they are, to be handled and trained by observant and trained staff who won’t insult and do more damage to them if they get into a crisis.
America has a fine military and right now low recruiting numbers show that incentives for enlisting aren’t enough. Stories from veterans dont help. A new approach is desirable and essential. Because nobody who turns out to be fragile is dishonorable, but the way they’re treated is. That raises questions we should all be asking about the future of our military.
In the summer, the weird summer of 2003, it was hot. It was the year of the Valentine’s day blizzard, Hurricane Isabel and some deadly heat in between. We had just invaded Iraq, there was a huge eastern power outage and it just happened to be a freaky year.
One late afternoon at the end of the summer, I went outside to sit on the front porch with a glass of iced tea and a pack of cigarettes. It was warm but still pleasant.
As I sat there without anyone else to witness what happened next, a movement across the street caught my attention. I looked, and moving quickly from my right to my left, something–some…thing…ran upright, on two legs!
It was about ten to twelve inches tall, light gray or white, mammalian and impossible. Humans are the only species known to traverse that kind of distance, walking or running, with such speed, on two legs. A feeling of the uncanny ran through me from head to foot. I was frozen. Never had I seen the like; it was chilling, not awe-inducing.
It was wrong. I was seeing something that was not right.
It ran to a wooden utility pole with a streetlight. It climbed rapidly, using all four limbs. If it can do that, I wondered, why not run on all four limbs?
What happened next was even more freaky. At the top, difficult to see because the streetlight had come on, something big spread its wings and jumped off. It couldn’t fly, or didn’t want to; it just glided into the back yard of the house across the street, where it was dark because of trees, so I lost it.
I thought, after the shock wore off, that I had seen a cryptid (an undiscovered species), and this one a shape-shifter. I still can’t explain it.
I know what it’s like to see something you can’t understand, haven’t seen before, hope you never see again. I know what that’s like. It’s rather scary, but you can never forget it. The fear may go away, but the vision never does.
I wonder, then, given the perspective of such an experience, why people who know something dangerous is around insist on throwing caution to the wind. Maybe I never felt threatened by what I saw, but it still shook me up considerably.
This would be a different story if I had continued seeing it, but I didn’t. Something very large and unusual later flew close to me but it was too dark to see what it was. That doesn’t count.
But what if I had seen it? What if it had displayed dangerous behavior? Well first of all, I’d have avoided going outside at dusk.
With a known predator, things change. If wild cats like lynx or something larger stalked your area at night, you wouldn’t go out unarmed, and then only rarely, preferably with help.
In medieval England and Western Europe, there were rarely classic fireplaces in single family homes. Fires were centrally located and roofs had holes in the peak to vent smoke. No one was getting in that way. Further, windows were shuttered at night by heavy doors on the inside that were barred just as the heavy door was. After the ritual of locking up for the night was complete, a family could sleep, knowing brigands and animals were not a likely threat.
I wonder, then, why a stalker which kills so often is not similarly defended against. Long after the novel coronavirus appeared to strike so many down, we finally have a way to bar the door, yet not only are people not barring their doors, they’re flinging them open because they don’t believe that there’s any danger. Of course, danger does lurk, and it claims many victims.
Even after neighbors have been found ripped apart by predators, they continue to leave their doors open. When the local magistrate orders them to lock up, they refuse. They claim the right to leave their doors open.
Until one night when they hear their baby crying and realize some animal’s carrying it away to eat at its leisure away from the village.
They have learned a great lesson which never had to happen. Had they simply listened when the word spread that tigers had been spotted by the nightwatch, then acted accordingly, with some common sense, their baby would still be in its cradle, soundly sleeping.
It’s history. All along we have known that certain animals posed a threat. We learned how to defend ourselves and use caution. It was common sense, really; a barrier and weapons, usually ranged ones, were required for survival. Nobody wanted close contact or combat with large predators, so the barricades of walls, fences, fires and the fortified house were common.
***
Disease has come calling many times. It always took too many from us, leaving grief and a weakened population in its wake. The Plague of Justinian was to return many times, and was identified in modern times as Bubonic plague from an “extict” form of the bacterium Y. pestis.
Historians recorded the symptoms of Black Death and the toll. Today that toll of around 10 to 15,000 a day is questioned, but there’s little question that two forms of the plague were spreading. Descriptions of people dying the same day they showed symptoms point to septic plague, in which the same infection infiltrates, and remains in, the blood. Today it is treatable and can be survived if identified and treated quickly. But in the time of Justinian, it would have happened exactly as historical records indicate: wake up fine, dead by sunset. And we know that Justinian was a dick. He did nothing to understand or combat the affliction. He watched his people die and what do you think he did?
He raised taxes!
I’m sorry, but is this not the height of evil, of denial, and betrayal? Sure, sure, you can argue that there was little he could do. It is the first recorded spread of the plague on such a massive scale. But not being able to solve a problem and making the problem worse are the difference between good and evil. Justinian was a dick.
Plagues had been around before. I daresay many were so severe and occurred at such an early time that little to no record of them survive. Perhaps we will one day find an answer in a written language we haven’t learned to read yet. Or archaeological sites may yield written history. We haven’t found everything.
The Plague of Athens was noted during the Peloponnesian War, hitting the city hard in 430 BCE, less than a year after the onset of hostilities. That one was quite mysterious and remains so today. While no conclusive proof has been found, the University of Maryland found typhus the likely source, but others maintain that it could have been typhoid, bubonic plague (unlikely) or Ebola. Descriptions also lead others to believe hemorrhagic fever was present.
It’s doubtful that we will ever know. But in the face of this unknown killer, trouble in the populace and immigrants also presented.
This is the nature of any pandemic; it disrupts the lives of an infected or exposed population and all forms of trade. Soon bodies are everywhere. They stack up, posing a secondary health risk. In the ancient and medieval world, bodies were thrown on massive pyres or buried in mass graves. There was no time for burial rites, which were abandoned, usually by decree, as the risk of contagion was noted to be too high.
***
I’m reminded as I write this of refrigerated trailers dropped off at various places in 2020 to store dead victims of the novel coronavirus. I remember people being terrified. Health care workers being interviewed and saying they had to reuse masks, and, how many of them died.
I remember the lockdown and how I thought no one should be surprised by it considering the gravity of the situation. How quiet it got around here.
Then, knowing that the Delta variant was out there, the last of the mask and social distancing restrictions were lifted.
Sure enough, spikes on the line graphs, big spikes, are showing up. Worse, it’s particularly deadly to unvaccinated people who know everything they need to know in order to survive. Yet even vaccinated patients get the virus. They are all likely to survive with minimal symptoms, though. The vaccines are effective against it.
And now it comes time to ask the question, Why risk the end of your life and those of your family when it’s not necessary?
The reasons given are pathetic. “Documents” show that the government made it up. Or rushed the development of the vaccine. Or have microchips in the serum to track you. Or kill you. Or turn you into a Borg or a Manchurian candidate. Or tag you for abduction by martians.
The disinformation out there harkens back to the days of old, when no one knew what plagues were and attributed them to the unfair wrath of Zeus (which really did result in the refusal to make sacrifices and attend to the temples).
According to BBC News, “influencers”, YouTube personalities with lots of followers, have been approached by mysterious benefactors offering chicken scratch money to cite false claims about vaccines by brand name. The plot was exposed but questions remain about the perpetrators; it seems to go to the top of the corporation competing against the one being smeared. Big money is behind a lot of such bullshit and they’re trying to get people killed.
You think that, maybe, CEOs and board members are innocent because they never pull a trigger, but when their commands are carried out, their employees cause desolation and death. Sometimes it takes years for a scandal to be exposed, and defense attorneys insist that corporate leaders are always innocent. The truth is that by casting doubt on one vaccine, operatives know that all vaccines will be mistrusted. It doesn’t make sense, as a business tactic.
People die this way. And far from having plausible deniability, presidents and CEOs who approve of dirty tactics are responsible for people dying, just as the ones following orders are.
In such an environment and considering decades of anti-vaxxaer’s campaigns, it is little wonder that even people who lose loved ones will deny it was covid. It’s a government plot to thin population, it’s a plot to track you. Whatever.
It doesn’t occur to people that population thinning would be impossible to control, cannot be selective, and would result in the loss of educated and experienced workers, leading to disaster. Population control by pandemic is a stupid concept.
Not only that, but someone high up in the government would blow the whistle.
In the end, it is the individual who chooses not to be vaccinated. No reason they can give is good enough. They could die. Many already have. Way too many.
Depending on the country being discussed, vaccine supplies vary, as do percentages of population having been inoculated. But to have plenty, for free, it is suicide to refuse the needle. The Delta variant is more easily transmitted. It is deadlier. And maybe it is true that people are free to choose, but this choice is a no-brainer. Misinformation combined with preconceptions is lethal and in full play.
Meanwhile, terminal patients with cancer or anything you care to use as an example would give anything if a simple pair of shots could save them. It seems to me that anti vaxxers don’t want to die either; they simply choose the risk over something they have been taught to fear, or they still believe that covid is a hoax.
I’m sure that if I live to be a thousand, it will never make any fucking sense to me.
Let me take you back half a century to a home I knew for two decades.
Hell. I’d rather not. I live there still, in my mind. I described it many times over the past two years here on these pages. Scroll far enough, you’ll see “The House of Pain” and other posts. I’d like for you to read everything if you can stand it. From abuse to the supernatural to a neighborhood flasher who brandished an impossible weenie to frolicking in cat shit without knowing it, my life is here, laid bare for anyone to read. I’ve held nothing back. My mission was to show what becomes of the abused. How a bright, beautiful little boy grew up to be a wounded, sick asshole. There’s some funny stuff. Some scary stuff. There’s the bizarre, the tragic and the heartbreak of a victim. A true victim, not what idiot right wingers call “career victims who need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps”.
I didn’t want it to be like this. Nobody does. The victims of the world come in all colors and shapes and sizes. Religion cannot stop the harm being done to them. The law cannot make a predator think twice before acting. God in Heaven himself won’t step in front of them and protect them. That’s the worst part.
People who didn’t know my background asked many times, “If there’s really a God, why do such bad things happen to good people?”
I used to try to answer. I’d say, God doesn’t make people suffer, people do.”
But that is a half answer, and I don’t know the rest. I know that hardship makes us learn and grow stronger. But I don’t know what happens when one gets overloaded. Like me. Pious dicks have told me. “God will never give you more to carry than you can handle.”
Well, that’s not true. And I know, because I’m overwhelmed. Overloaded. Tired, worn out, fed up.
And I don’t believe that God piles us up with too many, or any burdens. Shit just happens, that’s fucking it. There’s nothing Godly about children being raped, beaten bloody and terrorized. God wouldn’t do that. I won’t blame him no matter what those morons think.
I know evil. I know it all too well, and I’m here to tell you, it’s for real. You can deny it if you like, but I’ve survived it.
I’m not really a survivor, though. I exist. I want it over because every day, I go back there, to my own home, I relive things I can’t describe in detail, and yet, part of me, when I think about it, might not really want to die. Because what the hell was all this shit about, anyway? I seek answers if I can’t have peace. I just want to know why.
Part of PTSD is severe depression. It’s a motherfucker, too. It kills people. It causes physical illnesses and debilitating pain. And the lack of will or the strength to do anything at all for days, weeks on end. Left untreated, it kills. Treatment by drug and talk therapy isn’t even a guarantee of survival. It can help, sure. But serious cases–like mine–may be resistant to everything available.
Trauma therapy is required. Before you can see improvement you first have to be allowed to be sick. Unfortunately, many doctors who administer drugs aren’t psychiatrists. Just regular doctors who maybe did two semesters of psych. I had one tell me not to come in and tell her anything negative ever again. I hated her from that second on.
Who the fuck did she think she was, anyway?
Look. After all this time, I still can’t describe what it’s like. I have tried. I don’t believe I’ve done a good job of it. How to describe not being able to take a shower? It has to come out as ridiculous. It’s okay; that’s not your fault. And I may not say it often enough, but I am very grateful for all who come here and read. Double for all who leave a “like” and even more for my followers. You make me fight just a little harder. I’m glad you’re here with me in spirit. I need you and you make a difference.
Yesterday morning, not having slept since posting at 03:00, I remained awake. I forced myself to shower and do two tubs of laundry. I went to market for some food. It’s a painful walk with my back, carrying groceries. By the time I made it to my building I was so bad that I was swaying despite my cane.
I ate a salad topped with albacore tuna and Old Bay, trying to fight chronic dehydration and vitamin D deficiency. I had to fight like hell to do all that, and wound up hurting. The pain is remarkable. I can’t describe it in a remark, though.
No more than I can describe depression and flashbacks. Or heartache. Loneliness. Darkness.
I just can’t.
But, just so you know, this morning I made my own miracle and did some things that had to be done. Perhaps God answered my prayer, too. I asked for a bit of help. Just a little bit. Maybe I was granted what I made a plea for.
But I’m not out of the woods yet. This is a dangerous time and I see that now. Often, people who have attempted suicide in the past end up finishing it. And since it is often a spontaneous act, I’m in trouble. But I’m going to hang. I think I’ve got another fight or two left in me. Those of you who pray, I wonder if you would be so kind as to mention me tonight when you are at prayer. In the meantime, this is the closest I can get to telling you what this is like.
Thank you for being here. You’re loved. Don’t forget that, okay?
I just woke up. About 01:30 local time. Somewhere in the afternoon hours I tried again to watch El Dorado, a classic John Wayne flick. I don’t remember getting very far. I’m like that lately. Hell, I’ve fallen asleep playing video games, waking hours later with my glasses and headphones still on, the controller still in my hands. My health declines; to improve I’d have to die.
I’m not complaining. After all, I’ve pretty much sought death all my life. Why I fought on is beyond me; it’s something I can’t control. Winding up in ICU on a ventilator after a suicide attempt, several times, I fought back. Why the hell would I do that?
Heart surgery nearly killed me. I was supposed to be in for three or four days, instead ending up in an induced coma for two weeks. I was groggy and weak when I remember being helped to a chair and a meal, and a doctor saying “You’re my hero. You look better every time I see you.”
But that meant I’d have to have been nearly dead. They were all reacting with surprise. Why?
I remember pointing to the tube several times when they brought me up. A nurse said, “Forget it, Mike, it’s not gonna happen.”
A nurse, on seeing me try to eat, said they were sending me to a nursing home for physical therapy. I was too weak to go home. But before I could leave, I had to take a shower. I did. They gave me a kit and I found a razor and shave cream. So I shaved. This absolutely stunned my nurse. I wondered why. That’s when I knew I’d been close. Real close. But I fought. I fought the tube and the catheter. I clawed my way until the Styx was far behind me.
What makes the human spirit so indomitable? Have you ever read a story of incredible survival against all odds? Like the one about someone surviving days at sea in a cooler? Or journeys that traversed long distances through enemy lines?
If God gave us the spirit to endure, I have one question. Don’t worry; I’m not mocking God.
I’m asking why it is that if we’re so bent on survival, our species is in imminent danger of becoming extinct.
Because that’s true, and we are in danger. Beyond philosophical questions, I want to know: why are we bent on destroying every human life on Earth?
Well, let’s put aside climate change for a minute. That’s the Big One.
Let’s start with this little item here. Because even if you’re of the mind that “homosexuality” is a sin, and the priest got what he deserved, remember one fucking thing: you are in the crosshairs too. And even if you don’t go to dating sites or porn sites, everything you do, and everywhere you go, and everything you say is monitored. Can be looked back on and taken apart by more than mere hackers. Your boss, your landlord, or anyone else can track where you go and what you say, even in chat. And you may deny it and say it’s impossible, but it won’t change the fact that it definitely is possible and it is a widespread problem and people are losing jobs and residential places for rent. It goes beyond that, though.
Imagine someone using it to stalk a celebrity, whether for blackmail or physical harm. Or for disclosure to the public a little at a time, the ultimate terrorism. Imagine being in such a situation and not knowing what’s going to be revealed next, and no one has contacted you; they don’t want money, they want to destroy your career, erode your fanbase, compromise your very soul.
Because that’s what’s happening.
I grew up in a time when things I said or did got back to my father, who beat me and tortured me mentally with leading questions. That’s not growing up, that’s living through hell. And to this day I wonder how he found out certain things.
He got people to spy on me. He paid them for their sneaking around. But that doesn’t account for every single time. And think about it. Other people went through much worse. People have snitched on others since the spoken word was invented. Sometimes for a superior position, sometimes for money, sometimes under duress, and sometimes for no other reason than that they were total dicks.
So you see, in this age of high tech, you’re not safe. You are your own worst enemy. You got comfortable. Complacent. Familiar. Dependent.
There’s nothing more or less that I’ve said than the honest truth. There’s no paranoia. No, you don’t need to be paranoid to realize that you have enemies. They spy on you every minute of every day. You think they need a keystroke logger? How about a warrant? Forget it. All they need is the proper app or other exploit. They have you cold.
The priest in question here had the undeniable right to privacy in his personal life. That was taken from him and the information used against him in a savage manner. What he did is not described as predatory, or having to do with minors. He used a dating app and frequented gay bars. The Catholic Church has acted in a way I find more sinful than any sin they think the priest committed. They used private information to destroy him.
It could happen to you, too. Keep in mind, our government isn’t keen to change the status quo.
Your right to privacy is an illusion.
I suggest you accept that and consider what you can do to minimize the damage you can be inflicted with, for we are in the Age of Ultimate Treachery.
My health is bad. I will not live to see where this will all end up.
I may have fought like hell to live in the past, but soon, that fight will leave me. I feel it coming. I’m fortunate. You have to stay here. You have my sympathy and my prayers.
I came across a clickbait ad recently that deals with actresses of the 1990s who people of a certain generation still love or, as the article put, “still crush on”.
It caught my attention. I know clickbait well, knew it was going to be a slideshow, where you have to click for each page, but the slow-loading ads make the page jump, invariably making me click on an ad instead, which makes everything worse. Each click, no matter how fast you hit the previous page key, gets counted. Those clicks let everyone on the clickbait site and their sponsors know that they’re being seen, that their despicable techniques work. And so more will follow.
This slideshow had the names and pictures of people I’d never even heard of in the 90s, and still don’t know. The “then-and-now” photos rang no bells.
So I got to thinking, and realized few today of that generation would know who I “still crush on.” And if we’re honest, we all have star-crushes.
I have a list, and yet in 1990 everything changed. That year I saw a movie that sometimes is difficult to watch despite being genuinely funny and well done.
The list is not by any means to be taken as misogynistic; these magnificent women are inspirational to me. I look up to them as more than pop icons. They’re hard-working, talented and most, from the little I know of them, engage in humanitarian activities. That’s a resume I never had. Oh, I could work hard, including the rare 24-hour shift, but even though I eventually took pride in my work, two things kept me from it for decades. The first was my father’s constant criticism and humiliation of me. The second was, what I did never made a difference to anyone outside of myself or my immediate coworkers. The world was never going to know me or what I did. Wouldn’t know what I fought every single day. What a victory it was just to “punch in”, to get to work on time or make it at all.
And I worked for 30 years.
Thinking that you don’t make a difference is a horrible thing. We get a lot of our self esteem from what we do even in a job we hate. I put it to you thus: no matter what you do, from pushing a broom and cleaning commodes to high political office, everything you do makes a difference. And more so if you have to bite the bullet, hold your tongue and do your job honorably.
I once had this dream. No more driving a forklift or standing the nightwatch. What if, just once, someone would get a look at me and see I was so ugly I’d be the perfect villain in a movie. I wouldn’t mind being typecast. I knew I could act.
I’ll never get that chance. It wasn’t meant to be. I was just too bound to the past, and hell, maybe it’s for the best. I never dreamed of riches, though. I would have lived humbly and given money to charities. Retired in the Rockies, in a cabin, writing lousy fiction.
All that said, there were actors and actresses I’d have loved to work with. I could put myself in movies they were in and imagine how a scene might have turned out.
***
Actors, models, athletes and singers are our scope through which we imagine our dreams. After every one of my dreams had been smothered, choked from me by abuse, the acting dream popped up. These women helped. I imagined acting with them, but more, I saw myself riding off into the sunset with them, to live happily ever after.
Keep in mind that some names aren’t going to be familiar. That’s okay. I want you to meet them anyway.
7. HELEN REDDY (1941-2020)
In the 1970s I was struck by lightning the first time I saw her. My young, distorted view of sex, the sexes and the NOW movement confused me, her message confused me, and my father encouraged his kids to hate her. But there’s no doubting her impact through song on a generation of women and girls. She encouraged them and called on them to do great things with their own lives and talents. Her beautiful voice was distinctive; when a song came on the radio, you knew it was her. She’s gone now, passing in late 2020 from complications of Addison’s disease. But we cannot forget her, any more than I could escape the gut punch I felt on hearing of her death. As if part of me was now gone, making that empty hole in me bigger. I encourage you to look her up. Her life and career and family are still an inspiration, and she helped me to understand that there was nothing wrong with, and everything to love, about strong women. We owe her a great deal and the least we can do is remember her.
My favorite songs of all time include this one by the one and only Ms. Helen Reddy.
I pray she’s free and at peace in God’s hands. Goodbye, Helen.
6. ANN-MARGARET (1941-)
Born the same year as Helen Reddy, Ann is still with us. She’s always been dynamic, often exuberant, extremely talented and ever beautiful. So many people still love her that she’s in the top tier of most treasured actresses and singers of all time. How do you ever stop loving someone like her?
Ann-Margaret, 1961
5. LESLEY ANN DOWN (1954-)
What a film and television career she’s had! She completely stunned me in an unlikely role: Olga the hired killer, assigned to kill Inspector Jaques Clouseau in 1977’s The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
Following Herbert Lom (Dreyfuss) escaping from an asylum for attempting for the fourth or eighth time to kill Peter Sellers’ Clouseau, the maddeningly dense and clumsy detective, he sets assassins from different countries to get the job done.
After a madcap string of bumbling moves at Oktoberfest which ends with them all killing each other, Omar Sharif is the last one left except for Olga, played by Down. Disguised as Clouseau, he gets into the hotel room Clouseau is staying in, and Olga sneaks in. The two end up bumping uglies, but the Arabic assassin is killed and Clouseau returns to find Olga in his bed. God, she seduced me, from a scene in a slapstick comedy! Make no mistake about it though, Lesley Ann Down is worth watching this or any other film she’s been in. From guest spots on TV shows to major films, her talent is exceptional.
4. GLORIA STEINEM (1934-)
She co-founded MS Magazine and was a leader of the feminist movement from the harsh 60s into the 70s and nobody on this planet is fit to even summarize her influence, the changes she helped to make (a work that, sadly, is not complete) or the many wonders she performed with typewriter and in candid interviews wherein she was eloquent but pulled no punches. Many women who came before and after have not been given proper credit or attention for hard, and at times dangerous, work. But when it came to articulating the trials of women in the era of barefoot housewives and the potential, which men ignored, for women to be given equal rights, job opportunities and pay, for independent women to be safe if they chose to work, wear a miniskirt or protest, Ms. Steinem remains the best. If not for her, we might not even be where we are now, and with everything still hanging over women’s heads, that’s too terrible to imagine. Here’s to an American hero: we love you, Gloria. Thanks for everything.
Gloria Steinem, icon, hero
3. SHERRY LANSING (1944-)
Another WWII baby, Lansing is one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, yet few ever knew much about her except for fans. I mean, she mostly got bit parts, and did only a few guest spots on TV shows like Ironside.
But then she went behind the camera and whoa, what she has accomplished!
First woman to run a movie studio, Paramount Pictures. First woman studio head to put hand and footprints in front of Grauman’s Theater, or to get a star on the Walk of Fame. She also produced such blockbusters as Fatal Attraction.
That is incredible and absolutely wonderful. You can’t help but love someone like that.
Along with my admiration, she snagged my heart in 1970’s Rio Lobo.
Sherry Lansing has been honored many times for her accomplishments. Lansing in Rio Lobo The scene that broke my heart and made me love her. She kills the sheriff, played by Mike Henry, at the end of the film.
While a bit player in the film, she steals the show, upstaging Jennifer O’neal. On the men’s side of the film, Jack Elam comically upstaged the Duke. But Lansing made a real difference to me. I can’t stand seeing women hurt and the makeup and her acting combined to make her character unforgettable. Well done, Sherry. You’re awesome!
2. MERRILEE RUSH (1944-)
In 1968, the ultimate hippie girl was Merrilee Rush. Her album “Angel of the Morning” hit hard with the single of the same title. Ever since, I’ve been in love. Another WWII baby and strong, gifted woman, she changed the music world in a single song. It’s been used in film and she performed it for television, and it has since been covered loads of times, but she did it first and she did it the best. Any Questions?
1. DAYLE HADDON (1948-)
A strikingly beautiful Vietnamese-Canadian actress, she changed everything for me when in 1990 I finally had the chance to watch North Dallas Forty, starring Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Dabney Coleman, Steve Forrest, John Matuszak, Bo Svenson, Charles Durning and of course Dayle Haddon as Nolte’s love.
A brilliant film, well edited and shot, with a great screenplay and an all-star cast, it was acted with perfection by every player. Combining latrine (I’m never saying “locker room talk”, that’s OB) humor, neat football footage, football management intrigue, romance and betrayal, it has all the ingredients. The soundtrack is stellar. Haddon’s exquisite beauty almost made me hurt, and left me with a forever heartache.
In the 70sIs it possible to age so hauntingly well? Here’s proof!She leaves me breathless.
A model, actress and business owner, she’s also worked with UNICEF and does a lot for African kids, mostly through funding for schools. She’s an authority on and advocate for aging women to do anything they can to be well, proud of their looks and to use anti-aging products and methods, the end goal being to boost self esteem and good health. It’s not rare for women of celebrity to want to give back when they’ve gone through things that gave them empathy, but Dayle Haddon is one who certainly didn’t have to. Her heart and her intellect are out there for everyone to see. I followed her on Instagram for a while, and she reads comments, which made me happy. But I got away from social media.
I love and “crush” on this extraordinary woman, and she’s never far from my thoughts. If I have any regrets it is that I don’t feel right having genuine feelings that have nothing to do with sex for a woman I’ll never meet. I guess that I feel kind of creepy. Or like a creep, I don’t know which.
But as I remember my life and tell it here, for anyone to see, I’m struck by how much horror and evil I’ve had to live through, how many times I’ve hated, been angry, broken in heart and spirit, my mind turned against me by illness, horrendous abuse…and terrible loss.
And I wonder what my life might have been like if I had been allowed to develop normally, if I had just been loved by my mother and father instead of being an object of their hate, anger and fierce control. And I think of all that shit, and you know what? I’m not sure it’s creepy at all to love anyone. The more any one person feels and voices love, the better our chances as a species to survive these dark times. Love is, in pure form, the best part of us. It has the power to fuel dreams, to give us empathy, to urge us to be kind, to help people who need a hand.
I can’t do much, and my time is short.
The last thing I want to do is die with regrets, but that’s what will happen. I don’t think I’ll go out regretting feeling love.
I say, no matter your age or station, crush on. If it remains safe, if it’s real and not obsession, it is a good thing. I’ll never regret that.
As weird as you please. That’s the most I can say about this story.
Oh, it’s scary, too.
In fact, you’re likely to be left with a full case of the creeps after you’ve finished. You’re definitely going to pay more attention to your surroundings.
The Futility Of Seeking Answers
We read articles. Watch documentaries. Read volumes of books, and although intrigued, we never understand what goes on in the mind of a predator, men so empty of everything that is good that we’re never going to get what it is that makes them monsters. What it is that went wrong, so very wrong. Or how God can allow them to live at all.
And it’s true, what they say; you could be in line at the deli counter in your supermarket and never know that the man behind you has killed 13 people. Or raped 10 women.
But what about the ones who set off alarms, the ones who chill your blood to the last red cell? The ones you do notice?
I’m sure you’ve seen them. They can leave an impression not with mere looks, but words. Words that give them away as being dangerous. Words, or moments of silence. Either one is inappropriate in its turn.
And so I come to the one man I can never forget. The one I kept crossing paths with. A predator without a soul.
The First Encounter
There was a car wash, a self-serve with bays and high pressure wands and islands in back for vacuums. I was at one of them, cleaning the carpet in my 1985 Mercury Cougar, a car so shitty that none could be seen on the streets after 1990.
The distinctive 1985 Cougar
At the island closest to the Baltimore Diesel building there was a woman of about 25 years using the vacuum on her Jeep. With the top down I saw that she had a wee baby in a carseat carrier. She was taking too long and it was getting too much sun, but the little one just chilled.
She was very beautiful, a blonde in cutoff blue jeans and a bikini top. I’d have given her a stare, but then I saw something that took my attention well away from her.
At the same island, opposite her but mere feet away, a young man who had supposedly been using the other vacuum stood still, rigid, unmoving as if posing for a portrait. He stared hungrily at her and immediately set me hyperaware. The potential threat he posed to her was inescapable; I had never, ever seen anything like it. I can’t tell you exactly what I saw, but I can tell you what I did not see.
It wasn’t sexual attraction.
It wasn’t sexual arousal.
It wasn’t remotely the look of one who’s lovestruck.
Surely a more feral, hungry creature in a human body never existed. This was the closest thing to my father I could have imagined seeing. And yet, he struck me as far more dangerous than my father had ever been, and that is saying something. A man who held a .357 magnum to my head.
This guy, this thing I was looking at, it was some beast straight from Hell. It’s really all I registered, as I was focused on his proximity to the woman and seeing if I could detect any movement that indicated his gathering for attack.
I hated it…him…and I knew that if there was anything that could keep her safe from him, it was me. No one else was using the car wash. No one was outside at Baltimore Diesel. The Glen Burnie Mall sat to the north behind me, but someone there would be unlikely to see anything. Less likely to intervene. All my life I’d seen the watchers, chickenshits who saw but never acted. I’d been one. But today, no. Not this day.
The woman probably took too long because she refused to look at the fucking creepy guy. I’m positive that she wanted him to leave first. She was almost certainly afraid that he would follow her. The intensity of his stare would have unsettled anyone.
But he wasn’t leaving. And she finally had gotten her fill of pretending to vacuum the carpet in her Jeep. She got in, cranked the motor up and left. And, as she knew he would, I also knew that he was dead on her six when she turned through the gate onto Holsum Way toward Ritchie Highway.
And, unnoticed, I was dead on his ass, leaving no room for anything to get between us.
She turned north on Ritchie Highway headed toward Brooklyn Park. Left lane. Went past Holiday Inn, Hardees, up the hill. She turned left onto Hammonds Lane, and by then I knew that he was aware of me. I’d been on his bumper the whole time. Nobody fails to notice that.
He made the wise choice of not turning to follow her. I made sure that he continued on, giving her enough time to get home or cut through to Linthicum Heights. He wasn’t going to find her. I broke off and went home.
The Second Encounter
I can’t remember how much time had passed. I was now a driver for Bob’s Transport in Dundalk. I’d lost my job at B. Green & Sons, a job I loved. One night while at the dispatch window, checking out my paperwork so I could go home, the Predator walked in. He was a driver too, and I told Hawk, another driver, that I’d seen this guy before. I said, “watch this guy. He’s a psycho.”
A few nights (we worked graveyard shift) later, Hawkins said he believed me, that he’d seen Predator do something screwy with a woman at the window at some place where we picked up freight. But I lost that job not long after because of an accident. I thought, at least, there was an upside to it: I’d never have to see the Predator again.
I was wrong.
The Third Encounter
Sometimes when I fell down, I fell very far. So in the summer of 1992, I was a lowly security guard stationed at Brandon Shores BG&E power plant. On office duty at the gatehouse one day, in walked the Predator. In uniform, same as me. He never recognized me. But I knew him. I was never going to forget him.
For some reason, starting swing shift that day, he’d brought his mail with him. Sitting in an old swiveling office chair, he opened a letter and let out a whoop. He said that he had been accepted into the Baltimore City Police Department academy. He said, spinning round like a kid in his chair, “Finally I get to kill people!”
It was the last time I saw him.
I never did get to know if I had made a difference the day I tailed him. When we act to protect someone from harm, we don’t often get to know if we made a difference. It is this fact that keeps me not merely humble but hard on myself. I don’t know and tend not to believe that I ever made a positive difference to anyone.
But at least I tried.
That’s more than a lot of other people do.
And the Predator?
I don’t know what became of him. My guess is, logically, that he was rejected by the BPD and went on to another shit job. And that eventually he took his psychotic anger and hatred out on someone who crossed his path and never lived to tell the tale. Because predators always end up showing the world just how evil and depraved they are. They can’t hold back the beast within. They don’t even want to.
The mom with the bikini top wasn’t out to tease anyone. She was catching some rays and staying cool. And predators aren’t moved to action by skin. They’re motivation is hatred toward women and a need to control and dominate. He was possibly angry, but not aroused, by her summer attire. Perhaps he thought himself some avenger for God against sin. Perhaps that’s why a badge also appealed to him: it would be a mark for him to wear as a killer angel. It would be legal. I truly hope that he met his end trying something evil like that. It is a sin for me to think it. But is it not also out of concern for others?
It is. And if that is true, then am I not somewhat vindicated?
He would have already been replaced by a thousand others, some like him. Some worse.
And the decent among you must be vigilant and willing to intervene. So you may not get to know if you made a difference. So what? You don’t do the right thing for recognition. You do it because it is the right thing.
“NASA Reports Moon Is Wobbling” is a fucking hysterical way to start your morning. The coffee is brewed, I’m sitting comfortably after a pain pill, and the warm embrace of dope, clonazepam and caffeine have me. I’m theirs at the moment, able to think without pain and nerves and the cloud of age-induced suck that is growing more steadily than I’d like.
I can see it now, all across the country: “Ed, dear, what’s wrong,” a woman asks her husband from across the living room, as she watches Netflix while he’s on the Apple Macintosh that sits on an elaborate computer desk and is bell-and-whistled for everything from gaming to monitoring stocks while writing articles for his UFO site.
But Ed isn’t going to respond. He didn’t hear her. He’s frozen. Terrified. Shaken to the soul.
Of course after 60 seconds of the latest episode of upchuck, she notices his cringing silence. “Ed, what?”
Finally, a hushed and terrified whisper: “It’s wobbling.”
Martha will remember that ages ago there was a toy with a TV commercial that said in song, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” And that kids in school referred to the more rotund people of the world as “Weebles”, fat, rolly-polly toy people. Martha will giggle. But Ed will hear it and call her over to read this article. While she attempts to read and comprehend, he begins shouting and pacing the floor. “It’s wobbling! Fuck, I knew it! The government has been lying all this time! A conspiracy, that’s it. It was a conspiracy! We’re all gonna die, because it won’t affect just the tides! It’s caused by alien interference as a prelude to invasion!”
Hey, someone is going to make this connection. You know it, I know it. In the next county over from Ed and Martha, someone will read Ed’s article about the coming apocalypse and start neighborhood patrols looking out for zombies infected by aliens. If a patrol spots a distorted shadow, which shadows tend to be, as someone takes the Hefty from the kitchen out to the trash cans, perhaps the patrol will even attemp intervention while armed with a butter knife or, worse, a gun.
Some people will get hysterical–not the laughing kind–and hurt themselves or someone else. Because they will not see the article above. No, they’ll read Ed’s article and come to even worse conclusions than he has, because they’ll grab the Bible and match the event with the Book of Revelation: oh shit! “And the moon turned red!”
We are adrift in a vast ocean of misinterpreted knowledge. I tell you, it’s scary.
But people don’t always use their ability to reason, comprehend or trust. Indeed, some people cannot, and never could. Others choose to believe the complex lie over the simple truth.
And some people are just plain stupid.
•This week, Annapolis, Maryland. A woman went to a Mercedes Benz dealership and asked to test drive a car. She has not returned. The car is valued at $45,000.
Some people no doubt have concluded that some kind of harm befell her. Others, that she’s possibly mentally ill and just committed a stupid crime. I don’t know anything else about it because that’s all the article provided. She asked to test drive a car and never returned. So far, it’s pretty funny. And the funniest part is, if she stole it, why boost a car from a dealer, and, of course, why a car valued at forty five grand?
It’s a fucking Mercedes dealer! Go for something really expensive!
She’s gonna end up in prison anyway, so why not go out with some style for pity’s sake!
But who ever said everyone’s gifted with equal wisdom and judgement? In truth, people are stupid.
•Years ago a woman lost her license to drive. Judge took it because of too many DUIs and driving on a suspended license. Now she had lost it for a really long time.
The next day she had a date. You know, the kind that can’t be missed: a sex date, a booty call. So she was going to have to drive.
Well, since she had no license, she’d have to take someone else along. But she was still going to drive.
Her ex-husband agreed to ride shotgun, and during the drive, she realized that she had neglected to shave. As she did not have a mustache and her legs were groomed and smooth, this would involve sliding her shorts down to her ankles in order for her to get to the nooks and crannies. Her boyfriend deserved the full treatment, after all.
If you think you know where this is going, you’re probably correct. Because as she spread one leg wide to dry shave a cranny, she had to use both hands, one to hold the razor and one to keep the fold of skin accessible. Hubby the ex dutifully grabbed the wheel.
But he could not reach the pedals.
She rear-ended another car. It was a warm Florida early evening. So of course she jumped out and, pulling up her shorts, switched places with her ex. She’d blame the accident on him.
That fooled nobody, from cop to judge. Besides, there were witnesses. Nobody forgets the first time they see a bottomless woman in public at the scene of an automobile collision.
Nobody.
•Being in high school is tough. Dating is even tougher when you’re both planning on skipping the movie both sets of parents were told you would be attending at Marley Station Mall.
For my brother, ten years my junior and bleeding testosterone like Captain Quint bled in Robert Shaw’s final scene in Jaws, it was more complicated than any average date.
His girl was dressed to kill. Prom attendees would have been envious. She even had a ribbon in her hair.
They weren’t going to the prom. They weren’t going out to a formal dress restaurant. They weren’t even going to McDonald’s. Nope. None of the above.
They had been told that Northeast High School had a dark place to park in back. It wasn’t the school they attended, which they knew better than to use. More modern, better lighting. You know.
Her daddy had put her in a brand-new Honda Civic. Clean, tight. Good car.
And when high school kids get horny, they’re more empty-headed than usual. And being in a dark place behind a school can be very agreeable for such a condition. Because it really isn’t ideal, but, again, they’re notthinking.
And some young women don’t want to get pregnant. No intercourse for them. Oral and hands only. And that is how it went.
It went well, apparently. Because he was approaching orgasm and began to look for something to “clean up” with. Because she had made him swear not to “put semen in her mouth.”
And, being as she was in an expensive dress, and there wasn’t so much as a tissue in the car, he…didn’t want to make a mess. So he opened the door, got out, and stood there on the asphalt in the dark, vision dimming with his ecstasy…
As his sight returned to normal, he became aware that a long rectangle of yellow light had appeared on the pavement in front of him.
And he was facing it, facing away from the car.
And the light came from twin steel doors. Access for deliveries and employees of the night crew, the janitors and maintenance workers.
Every one of whom were now staring at him from five feet away, in stunned silence.
People often use such awful reasoning and judgment that all we can do is stare and be shocked into a disability to do or say anything.
Imagine some guy whose hands were greasy from working on the boiler, though, 30 minutes later: “Well, that’s something you don’t see every night” to kitchen worker Juanita Park, whose trembling cannot be stopped by his dry wit.
And people react very badly to a wide range of things. But a bottomless woman, possibly bleeding down there from a shaving accident, running around the hood of a car, or some kid jizzing on the school parking lot? Funny stuff. Later, ya gotta laugh.
•A young man in Tokyo went to the park at night. He found a bench to sit on. Steel, with many holes in it. He decided to test one hole for its potential for sexual gratification. As he became erect, though, blood engorged his Johnson. On the other side of the hole.
He was stuck.
And he remained stuck. It just wouldn’t go limp enough for him to withdraw. Finally, he had to use his mobile device to call for help.
However much we wish fire and rescue crews had leaked photos to the internet, that didn’t happen and it is left to our imagination to visualize the rescuers carefully cutting most of the bench from its legs for emergency transport. Men and women alike felt bad for him but it got worse.
In the emergency department the cutting continued. He was evidently given the needle, but ultimately the steel vagina had to be completely cut away. The elapsed time exceeded that which is considered safe, and beyond which vascular and nerve damage set in. It was probably his final erection. Poor choices often have lasting consequences. The universe is not forgiving.
***
The moon is indeed going into a wobble. And in the next decade, coastal regions will be changed, because even though the moon does wobble regularly, this time rapid warming is adding tons of fresh melt water to the sea. It is the perfect time to start looking for buyers for your low, waterfront property, especially if you have your own private pier. People who make shitty judgements will snap it up so fast you’ll have a hard time trying not to laugh in their faces.
On the other hand, if you’re the kind of woman who would test drive a Mercedes and not return it, or the kind of guy who would stick Jimmy in a vacuum cleaner hose and turn the machine on, then by all means, keep your property in the cove.
The fourth of July is my least favorite holiday. I went out to smoke. I knew the danger, so it’s my fault.
See, I don’t just have PTSD. I call it more than that. I call it Fucked-up. It includes severe depression, hellish nightmares, sleep disorder, mood swings, aggression, daredevil syndrome, addiction, self hatred…and more.
The stress part is hard to describe. But maybe you can see it in this, my latest Fourth of July misadventure.
I lit the smoke with Zippo bearing the U.S. Army logo. So far so good.
Due south, two klicks. I registered fireworks. Didn’t sound like fireworks. Sounded like the blind-fire of both machine gun nests and small arms auto fire. Like when we were running through the jungle to an exfil point far enough away that I just knew it: they would catch us. I was too green. In wartime I couldn’t even have been called a cherry.
But I smoked and that’s all good, right? Except my heartrate and respiration were elevating. By the time I noticed that, it was over, but I remembered it.
Closer. East, half a klick. Mortars. Or field artillery. Once you hear the first, they all blend. Doesn’t matter what it is. I do remember jumping, then holding my hands over my ears. I dropped my cane that way. But it wasn’t my cane. It wasn’t sliding down the concrete steps either. I heard it in the dirt. Dirt very far away. Far south. In the kind of place you usually fear animals at night, not people, even though you should. Like that, only no tourist would want to go there, especially not back then.
I looked down. That’s no cane.
It was a rifle and I had to get it! Fuck, you never drop your weapon, you die like that! I don’t know what happened. I guess the touch of it broke up whatever shit you call that. I wasn’t gone, couldn’t have been, not more than a few seconds. I held the cane, didn’t use it. The rest of the way to the door was a scramble like I didn’t know I had the power to do. At the door, halfway inside I realized I still had a lit Marlboro in my lips, clenched as tight as my gut. I threw it away and hurried to take a Klonopin. It took thirty minutes to resume regular breathing.
What the hell is that called? I’ve gone back many times to my childhood, to a certain horrible thing, because a memory was triggered, but that always happened inside my head. This was the first time I ever took a trip and found my eyes looking at a dirt track, a game trail instead of where I really was standing and seeing an object as anything but what it was. A rifle. Not Army. Not U.S.. And definitely not a cane.
As I was willing myself down the steps, the close proximity firefight kept going and combined with that which was further out, I had an awesome time. I commenced a bitter monologue with myself:
Happy Fourth of July, asshole. Why the fuck didn’t you take your meds on time? You know what this shit does to you. This time you deserved it. Didja like it, asshole? One day. Fifteen minutes of putting suppressive fire on a heavy MG nest so the Hispanic guy could get past the pissant base. How many mags, 4? That ain’t shit, asshole. Yougot to run away. Imagine guys that didn’t. You still smell the powder, don’t you? After all this time? You were fucked in the head before, so, what? Didja think this would be fun? Shitbird. Go fuck yourself, asshole. Just another American asshole. You signed the paper before you left. Three days. To do something there is no record of. You got volunteered because even with a family they knew you were expendable because your wife nags the liaison sergeant and is fucking your recruiter, you dumb shit. Besides. Nobody gets out of shit without damage, even the ones who hide it are hurtin’ and it takes a special kind of courage that you ain’t got, living with shit in your mind, shit like walking out every day and not knowing when your turn is coming. Every day your odds get worse. You don’t know what that’s like, asshole. Be glad you don’t. You got too much in your head already. Always have, boy. Eversince–
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
I told myself to shut up? That’s pathetic. Scary and sad at one and the same time.
***
The Fourth of July is my most feared holiday. Every year it gets worse. Time doesn’t heal wounds. It merely facilitates the consumption of brain cells.
Next comes New Year’s Eve. Maybe that night I’ll just wear a nicotine patch.
In case you haven’t clicked the link, it’s better late than never to say the “film” is a slasher movie and as such falls into a genre I rarely watch without some sort of reason.
I happened to fall asleep watching Harry Potter on Sy Fy and woke up to this shit a half-hour in.
Now look. Don’t get me wrong here, okay? I know what you’re thinking. And I get it. Most people alive today who would watch a slasher flick don’t remember the Hanna-Barbera kid’s show that ran for three miserable seasons, giving kids permanent brain damage. It was a labor to watch, although I still get a kick out of the theme song. I could listen to it once every, say, 50 years.
Someone once said that there was nothing else to do with the Banana Splits.
Well yeah. They only did three seasons, two of those in the 1960s. Why the fuck did anyone have to do anything with them? It was bloody stupid then, and this movie made everything worse. However, if left to be a horror movie instead of a slasher flick, it may have worked. The first victim, on seeing his killer up close, worked very well. Hell, it got me, and that’s hard to do. That plastic, grinning head just there, not moving. Then the Split shoves a prop lollipop down Stevie’s throat and kills him.
And did I mention that the Banana Splits are animatronic? Yep. Sure. And they’re pissed that their show just got cancelled and the episode being taped in the beginning was supposed to be their last. Aside from the angst and personal issues of the future victims, that’s it. Standard slasher formula.
This one’s dumber than most, though. I watched it for 30 minutes that I can’t get back.
My list of top ten worst movies of all time has just changed. That seldom happens.
The thing is, there are way more people alive now who never saw or even heard of the Banana Splits television series than those who have, or did, choose whichever word you want; grammar has long been cast aside anyway. Or, if you prefer, “anyways.” Just don’t tell me either way, okay? Ignorance is bliss for everyone, is it not?
Hey, all I’m tryna say is, there are no rules. For anything. Nothing is out of bounds, nor is anything sacred. You see people. They cannot care any less who died during this pandemic. All they care about is going back to bars, movies and parties. Inoculated or not, they really don’t care about that; they believe they’ve been wrongfully denied their basic rights. We’re ready for the next killer virus, aren’t we?
So fuck. Why worry about some stupid movie which parodies a stupid kid’s show, right? A show everyone who remembers it wishes they didn’t. Or, if they watched an episode recently, found that it’s not so kid friendly after all. I mean, look at the fucking credits. That shit is scary.
Okay, maybe not to you. If you cut your teeth eating popcorn to A Nightmare On Elm Street then nothing can scare you now. Not even real life.
Or maybe you do remember a time when horror movies gave you the shits without being slasher pictures. When just the sight of Vincent Price or Bela Lugosi was enough to do the job of scaring you until you had to use the rest rooms. When drive-in theaters dotted the country and nobody did much making out when such actors as they were onscreen, but you still wanted your date close on that bench seat.
If you’re asking what a drive-in theater was, you were born too late. You’ve missed out on a real treat.
A time when some things just weren’t done, and I mean mostly in cinema. Ratings kept would-be blockbusters in line. The coveted “G” rating became more difficult to achieve after a while. Perhaps the last of the 60s; I couldn’t say.
The movie in the spotlight here was released to video directly. And it made money because location shooting was nil and sets and mediocre actors were all combined for the cheap. How could it fail to turn at least a hundred buck’s profit?
Could it be that some people actually remember the stupid kid’s show, and relished the trailer that clearly displayed some lunatic screenwriter shitting all over it?
In various sources the film is listed as horror or comedy. There’s nothing funny here. There’s no comedy, not even the dark kind. I thought 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason had some funny stuff, but that’s different, two motion picture franchises battling it out in an unusual parody. One that just got away with being born from slasher schlock.
On the other hand, neither does Splits qualify as horror. In a scene where one of the Splits robots cuts a man in half, nothing is left to imagine. His intestines are quite visible. That’s just the obligatory cheap shit that really just demonstrates how shallow audiences have become. Nobody wants to think during a movie anymore. There need only be a thread of a plot, and sometimes none at all. Just put a cast together and give them guns and let them blow shit up. Everyone will love it. It’s true.
The day is coming when theaters will disappear forever. Even DVDs will cease being pressed. It’s all gone to shit, and what will be left, all that will be left, are streaming services. It’s well begun. You will have to pick one or two, because the price of a subscription will be prohibitive. The networks will have to do the same to even be seen, much less exist.
We have sunk to levels I once imagined happening only in Orwellian lore.
We have met our mortal enemy, and he is us.
This has long been coming.
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians should have been taken as the warning it was. It served that purpose better than any chapter of the Book of Revelation. Or “Revelations,” if you prefer, because fuck it. English isn’t even English anymore.
This post contains adult themes and the subject of suicide. It contains other themes that some may find disturbing.
In this question and one long answer on Quora, I found the subject I had read about earlier: people who claimed to be reincarnated. They sometimes, as children, remember their past lives (but most vividly their deaths) and remarkable things happen. There are many stories of highly detailed accounts of people remembering their lives in the past, to the point where they can speak foreign languages, give their fathers instructions for installing brakes on a car, identify the house they lived in and, again, how they died in exacting, gruesome detail. One person recalled being burned, then being above their blackened body, watching medics put it into a body bag — everything that would be done for such a casualty.
These people report a place, afterward, where they sat and a being with a blindingly lit face offered them a choice as to what their next life would be, starting with a compulsory selection of who their parents would be.
This really disturbs me. It supposes that there is some predestination, some element of fate involved, a concept I disagree with. Yet even in that disagreement, I find no way to argue against it, as it does not seem to cancel our everyday freedom of choice. We still live and make our own daily and long-term decisions.
Or do we?
You know what this seems like to me?
Total Recall. As in, the films. Both were awesome movies but dissimilar. Arnold’s blockbuster was a pretty weird and funny science fiction thriller, while Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel chewed up the big screen in 2012. Sorry, but I like both movies equally. The 2012 version is much darker, and didn’t need to exploit little people or use a fake breast prosthetic (with 3 breasts!) to make it weird. Arguably, Kate Beckinsale was a sexier and far more terrifying antagonist than Sharon Stone, Farrell was more action and less one-liner-silly than Arnold, and Biel was so good that we fell in love with her.
Some might even have imagined another movie with Beckinsale and Biel in an MA-rated love scene. Okay, I lied. I don’t know if some people imagined that.
But I did. And I’m still in love with both of them.
Wait a minute, what was I writing about? Hold on while I scroll up and see.
Okay. The concept that one soul, between lives, gets to choose their next gender and even their parents.
Look, it’s 19:21 and I’m just now on my morning coffee. Be patient, I have feelings, you know.
Wait, okay? Can I help it if I ran out of coffee last night and had a long, drugged, peaceful sleep, nightmare-free, and willed myself back to sleep about fifteen times until 16:00?
No, of course not. We all want just one night like that. I wish we had more of them. Uh…what was I talking about again?
Oh. Our hero, Quaid. He got to sleep with Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel. Don’t you just hate him?
The exquisite Kate Beckinsale
Shit. Where was I?
Oh, the Recall thing. Idea was, you paid your credits and they’d download memories of anything you wanted into your brain. Far fetched science fiction, but very well done.
The suggestion that one is “between lives” and gets to choose their next parents, is, frankly, disturbing. One woman had a miscarriage or stillborn baby. Later, she gave birth to a son. As he learned to speak, he told her, “Do you remember the baby you had in your stomach? I made him go away so I could be born. I picked you.”
That’s about as creepy as anything I’ve ever read. As a spirit, he killed a baby in his mother’s womb?
If it’s hard to swallow, welcome to the club. But, what if?
Then there was a case where an even more disturbing concept was presented. It involved a spirit who chose to be born to pedophiles. Yes, it seems that between lives the being with the glowing face can give you “previews”. You can still accept or reject the parents you’re shown.
One individual chose abusive parents because he or she wanted to protect others from being born to those parents. They also reported feeling that it was better to be a victim than a perpetrator.
Another little girl described being trapped in a tight space and drowning. She told her mother about it. She said she picked her mother. Instead of being unreceptive, her mother described being a Native American mother who searched for her missing daughter. She found the child dead under a layer of ice in a river or large stream. She held her daughter and said, “I looked and looked for you, but it was too late.
Another child said to a mother who lost her father at age 11, “You were my child now I am yours”.
The case of the drowned girl choosing the same soul to be her mother is touching and puts forth the idea that we may get not just second chances, but do-overs. A mulligan in real life.
This part of reincarnation is new to me. It is frightening but heartening at the same time and naturally makes me question why, if I had such a choice, I would have chosen my evil, sick parents.
Why would I do such a thing?
Of course science rejects all of this out of hand. I love science, despite rarely understanding it. I get good articles out of livescience though, and they’re great for the average reader.
Wait. What’s an average reader?
Americans are becoming less literate. Really. Remember when I complained about the media using the word “tout” when I’ve never once heard it spoken aloud in my presence? There are worse examples.
People call magazines “clips” and it’s so widespread that news media gets it wrong and video games and movies constantly make the mistake. Clips are rounds secured by a clip. Magazines are used by automatic weapons like machine guns, submachine guns, assault weapons and semiautomatic handguns which are not revolvers. They hold loose rounds in a box with a spring at the bottom to ensure that they readily feed into the weapon.
Deja Vu All Over Again
Since we’re talking about memories of past lives, let’s talk about Deja vu (sic). The French meaning is “already seen” and has nothing to do with the feeling that one has been somewhere before when they know they haven’t.
More and more, I attribute such a feeling as a memory or cognitive misfire in the brain, or a normal event we do not know how to take and cannot understand. I rarely accept reincarnation as a cause of the feeling unless the person experiencing it can add detail which can be checked. Many of those cases have been followed up by researchers and often, the stories and details do match to the degree that it’s possible. It could all be real.
But the news media is guilty. A simple yet egregious grammatical error which gets used all the time is “Deja vu all over again” and quite simply, it is redundant and should be glaring to people who have degrees in communications. Perhaps we’re too far gone. Soon, English will no longer be anything but gibberish.
Where was I?
Oh! Past lives. Well, I’ve had memories that I cannot explain. I’ve written about them before so I won’t rehash them, but two seem to have taken place in Maryland. Now if I chose my parents and was given a peek ahead, would I have done it because I wanted to be in Maryland? That thought connected to a mystery which has plagued me to no end.
The out of place memories aren’t nice. One was about losing a woman I loved.
Did I think, or was I shown, some scene where I found her, also in her next life?
Because, and this part bothers me, as for most of my life I have been stuck with a mental picture of a woman’s face. A beautiful woman with long, straight, black or dark brown hair. Long ago, she would have worn a hat. I can tell you that she was taken by a man in a buggy drawn by a horse or a double team. I watched helplessly, couldn’t stop it. I believe I may have committed suicide afterward. I later found the house that I believe I was staying at the time.
That’s an experience that will have you sleeping with the lights on.
In the last century I have a memory of sitting with a woman on a beach watching the sunset. Her face I can’t see. Could any decision I possibly have made “between lives” have been to find her again? If it happened during World War Two, and other memories lead me to believe it did, and the beach scene was before I shipped out, never to return, could I be searching through time for what some people call a “soul mate”? Because obviously, in order to pick your own parents, you would need to be conscious that you are in fact a soul without a body. You would probably remember everything about any and all past lives. You would be aware that others go through the same thing. A process, if you will. If you have ever loved someone with an intensity such that their loss so damaged you that you never truly recovered from it, would you choose horrible parents if you knew that there was a chance to find your lost love in your next life?
I dare say that not many would turn down the chance, because love like that is, in my eyes, quite rare. I think you and I would gladly endure anything to find our soul mates again.
In “this life”, I’ve always been romantically attracted to women with long, straight hair of black or very dark brown. That’s confusing. A source of frustration and puzzlement. I never understood. And yes, all my life I’ve seen her; even as I think of my earliest memories.
Could be why I loved Kate Beckinsale so much in Total Recall. She looked like what I saw in my mind.
****
A therapist once told me something without even pausing to think about it. I missed someone I loved, but was never with. It was after my father’s business, East-West Trucking, folded. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I did love her, but I was worried that I might be obsessed. So I asked if the therapist thought so.
“No, thinking about her isn’t obsession and I believe you love her, but I think she also reminds you of someone else.”
And that could be true.
But if the woman I loved at the time was the one from the past, we missed each other. When we met, we were both married with children. No relationship was possible.
But something remains unanswered. What about choosing parents who wouldn’t love me, instead causing great trauma? One person claimed it was better to be a victim than a perpetrator. If he was only given two sets of parents to choose from, then holy shit.
I would not want to see his other choice.
Another claimed to know that if they lived hard lives they would be motivated to teach, and help others. While that may not seem to make sense, people with answers like those can be considered “old souls” whose past lives have been difficult, and there have always been many of them. They choose adversity to gain knowledge and therefore to help, as an example to others and as being experienced and worthy of trust from those in times of need and great pain seeking counsel.
I don’t know. I’d like to believe that someone can get a chance to prove their soul is better than what God may not wish to judge them them to be after a life ends. I’d like to think old souls volunteer to go through horrors to help others. That’s noble, a rare human quality.
But losing your soul mate and never being able to be close to them again?
That’s so sad that I cannot readily believe that God would put us through that. And I also still find predestination problematic theologically, scientifically and therefore improbable.
Dear God. What the past year has done to me. How about you? How are you doing, and can I help?
I’ve got something I know will help.
Call it a panacea, because no matter who you are, no matter what’s happening with you, there’s nothing that can’t be helped, soothed or made better by a chocolate chip cookie.
We need a couple of railroad box cars-full to be run up to Capitol Hill. Everyone up there’s got some kind of problem that’s not getting any better and in fact grows worse by the hour. This country is endangered, all because of one man whom the Republican party refuses to disown.
Donald Trump. The devil will never welcome to hell a more stupid, puerile, bigoted, deluded, vindictive, harmful soul than when he comes to collect that of Donald Trump.
And Trump will be in good company. It’s amusing to think of who he will be joining down there. For example, he idolized Hitler. I wonder how old Adolf and his nemesis Uncle Joe will react to Trump’s arrival. Because they both killed more people. They both caused suffering in degrees and on a scale that time can never excuse us from remembering. You doubt what they did, go back and look at the filmed footage. See those civilians in the streets climbing among mounds of earth around craters, piles of rubble, some of it cut stone from medieval stonemasons? They haven’t had a morsel of food in days. Water is scarce. Their skin is burned from flame and bleeding from unimaginable lice infestations.
Watch them. Nobody looks up. They’re not even thinking about the next air raid. They can’t hear the planes coming anyway; most have hearing damage from close proximity explosions.
Does it matter in the end whose bombers did that to them?
Oh, I know, you have made no judgment, or you already have. You see the actions of every fighting force as evil, or one side as just.
History tells us that history itself is written by the winners of every conflict ever recorded: to the victors go the spoils.
What was it like to be on the ground during the incendiary bombings of Dresden and Hamburg?
The fires burned so hot that, as with the same attacks over Tokyo, the last bombers to drop their loads were buffeted, their crews battered, by violent updrafts. Heavy bombers were hurled hundreds of feet upward.
There was an almost immediate backlash from such ruthless tactics. From the Nazi propaganda ministry and leaked to the Swiss, thence the world, the death toll was inflated, and from men in Britain and the United States some heated dissension; the targets were mostly, if not all, civilian ones.
It was deemed terrorism. They actually coined the phrase “terror bombing”.
And so it was. It was always meant to be. It was a warning to the German people that the war had terrible consequences.
Later it was claimed that there were railroad marshalling yards responsible for distribution of German munitions and supplies in the cities, giving the raids some justification, but rumors also had it that Allied POWs were kept there. If that’s true, it was a typical Axis trick: let it leak out that Allied POWs were held in a strategic location to keep the bombers away. Meanwhile, they could operate key facilities free of aerial danger.
Whatever dissent existed among allied commanders then, although truly admirable, it faded as the war eroded the German fighting abilities. Thousands of pilots and airmen died delivering the message which had earlier included dropping propaganda leaflets.
But Hitler gave no quarter on either front. In Soviet territory his command officers sent word that they were doomed unless they pulled back. He threatened them with arrest, and by extension, execution.
Two months would pass before Hitler shot himself. He died a monster and ultimately a coward.
In the Pacific fierce fighting on an unimaginable scale continued. Read any book about the war in the Pacific, and it cannot begin to tell the whole tale. G.I.s and allied British, Australian and others faced gruesome effects every day. They sometimes went for long periods without relief and suffered from jungle rot, a hellish malady that, if untreated, became worse and could end in amputations and death. In the Pacific theater it was merely one of many health threats like malaria that removed men from actual combat and resulting in casualties and diminished fighting strength of infantry and amphibious units. When several missions with incendiary bombings over Tokyo failed to get the desired result, Harry Truman decided on what his advisers handed him as a last, drastic resort.
The fallout of the war in Europe went on. Countries were divided up between the Allies and Soviets and don’t let anyone lie to you. It was not the end of suffering. That merely began a new chapter.
How a Nazi-admirer rose to power in this country came as a shock. How the movement has infiltrated our government is terrifying. The bastards are blind, hungry for power. If they get it, God help the human race.
Trump stoked an armed crowd to assault congress and they did it. That wasn’t his first time. He’d also tweeted that groups in Michigan should act against their governor. They came close to killing her.
Trump also hoped the COVID-19 pandemic would kill Michael Bolton, one of his former aides. That pandemic has claimed over half a million lives in this country. And it’s still here.
Donald Trump first called the virus a hoax. When he could no longer do so, and it didn’t take very long, he switched tactics. In this CNN interview a recently published book is discussed which claims that when infected Americans on cruise ships were inbound, he wanted to have them diverted to GTMO, a Navy prison in Cuba and a place of atrocities committed against suspected terrorist detainees during the administration of George W. Bush. How he (Trump) came up with the idea is anyone’s guess.
All throughout 2020 we heard or read Trump bitching, “the reason we have more cases is because we have more testing.”
He actually said, “If we get rid of testing, the numbers will go down.”
Well how can you argue with logic like that? The astonishing fact that so many fell for it shames me. Are people really that stupid? The whole world saw that, and they’re not going to forget it.
They saw what he told them to see. Nothing penetrated their closed minds when he tweeted. He was a god.
This is a man who shits on a toilet of plated gold, folks.
Another recent headline has it that daughter Ivanka, object of his most oft-admitted sexual obsession, and her husband Jared Kushner, are distancing themselves from Trump over his unrelenting and utterly false claims that Biden fixed the election.
So when he gets to Hell, how would its most famous inhabitants welcome him?
Stalin might say, “You may have killed your own people but you never came close to the record I hold. Get down off my level, idiot!”
Hitler might say, “You told a lot of lies. I like that. You used manipulation and that’s awesome. But you never sold your country out with a war the likes of mine. You are nothing!”
And on Capitol Hill, his adherents are trying to dismantle this government.
I think we all need to think it through. If they win, another world war is inevitable. America will be the instigator, as it has been in every conflict since World War Two. They are soulless and have no conscience. They are evil and crave disaster and death. Don’t listen to them.
And in this moment, relax. Walk away from the phone and TV, groove on the sunshine and the gift that life is, and have a chocolate chip cookie. You need the break. And the magical panacea. Be good to you.
The time in Great Britain is 18:31. In South Africa, it’s 20:31. In Romania, the time is 21:31. In Guatemala, 12:31. In Vietnam the time is 01:35.
My time is 14:31.
Wherever you are, be well. You’re in my thoughts. And in my heart.
You look back on your life, and if you’re anywhere near my age, you’ll see great things.
I won’t.
You will see some pretty dark stuff, too. I do see that. Stuff so ugly you might have even forced it down inside yourself so far that it took what’s called a “trigger” to bring the ugly back up. Everyone has those kinds of memories, and not one among us can deny it. Maybe the memories still hurt. Maybe you’re ashamed of them. Or maybe you just get angry. Maybe it renews the part of you that ended that memory, that situation, in a way you regret.
I don’t get that. My ugly is always on my mind. I never buried it. There was no place to put it. I was full of ugly things. Memories. Emotions. Anger. Hate. Pain.
And when I was a real asshole, that constant stream of ugliness in my head got in the way.
Of everything.
I was stuck. But I didn’t think of it that way. I just felt and did things I could not understand.
I hurt people. And revenge was not beneath me.
The last woman I was intimate with has passed. The short time we were together is a painful and embarrassing memory. I should never have had anything to do with her.
I stayed with her for a week. She was so horrible that I was miserable. One day she kicked me out. Then left for work.
Did anything I just say strike you as being a bit dumb?
Well, all of it is.
But I mean the part about kicking me out and then leaving for work. Especially after treating me so terribly.
Never do that. It’s asking someone to take revenge on you.
And revenge was definitely on my mind. After loading my car I had hours to spare before she returned. I went to work.
She was always locking her keys in her downstairs apartment. So she left a window unlocked.
I locked it.
Then I went to her doors, front and back, and filled the keyholes with crazy glue. She would not be sleeping inside this night. Not unless she got a locksmith. And since she left work at 23:00, an hour before midnight, she wouldn’t get one. But I wasn’t finished. I put a liberal amount of Ben Gay in her Noxema and mixed it with a pencil. God help her when she finally did get in and head straight for it.
I turned my back and walked away.
Never piss off an asshole. They can change into a dick if pushed too far, and putting them on the street without notice? That’s certainly a way to make the change happen.
I regret it, but I can’t change it. The regret reminds me that revenge doesn’t feel good. It leaves me hollow and it is evil. There’s no satisfaction in it.
I have done this in worse ways, with no physical action on my part. I’ve told lies to shift blame onto others for what I had done. Betrayal of friendship, an end to it forever. A burned bridge that can never be raised.
If you search my archives going back two years, you’ll find other things that I have done to turn my back on someone who never deserved it. Oh, some did, sure. Toxic, dangerous people who had negatively influenced me. People who used me. People who I was just better off without.
But mostly, I just turned my back and left them behind. And certainly I don’t count the number of people who I just drifted away from, which is absolutely normal but still sad.
My life has been, very often, a lonely one. I came to embrace solitude because I had no one to answer to and no one’s feelings to worry about. But after a time I would become disoriented by it. One time I worked a month’s hours in two weeks and then happened to come home while there was still daylight and the house looked alien to me. I kept looking around to figure out what was out of place. Nothing was, but it looked so different that I was honestly afraid.
People, I believe, are meant to be social creatures and alone, they can become dysfunctional. Something cannot remain missing without causing damage. But some people are so broken that a social life is out of the question. They don’t have the tools for it. These people are regarded much as they always have been: hermits, witches, warlocks, nuts, monsters, demons. History is stuffed with stories of the macabre and the superstitious people who hated anything “different”.
In my life, I was counted as shy when I was a kid. I was really hungry for friendship, though. But already I was broken. By the time I was in fourth grade it was probably already too late. All of my friends knew something was wrong. My enemies knew how to exploit it.
Some are gone, passed into the next chapter, the one awaiting us all. I am in touch with none of them.
Some, I knew on Facebook. Years after grade school, though, they aren’t the neat kids I knew. Pasadena seems like a bastion of redneck conservatism. Those who have moved away included. Pasadena’s big, so not everyone grew up to be dicks, but in my neck of the woods, or the area I grew up in, well, let’s just say I’m not going back.
If one thing has made me happy, it’s that last night I called my older brother. Joe was happy to hear from me. We talked a while. Past things, present things.
I told him I can never face the others again. I described what happened in my post “Why So Angry”, an unfortunate family thing that happened just after my son died. Max Lucado once wrote, “We carry the stones of regret in a burlap bag everywhere we go. Sometimes we throw those stones at the people we love.”
I was doing that. I broke contact with everyone.
Burned every bridge, closed every door. Can’t go back. Can’t fix it. He alone means too much to me to do that to. In this I find hope for my soul. As if, perhaps, it can be salvaged. Maybe even redeemed.
But I’m so broken. I never knew how much I was broken until I began this blog two years ago. As I’ve been triggered or inspired, I wrote. Not just about what was done that broke me, but what I’ve done as a broken person. I have to reassure myself that I do at least have a heart, a conscience, and a few morals. If the Lord is merciful, they might be enough to save my soul.
Having been an asshole for years, I am frightened. I’m running short on time here. I have so many stones of regret in my burlap bag. They’ve gotten in my way, slowed me down, hurt me.
I don’t know why I got stuck. I don’t know why I could never go anywhere with my life. I’m just broken. And more and more, I feel how alone I really am. I can’t pray. I’m that broken.
So I ask, if someone out there can have pity, please say a prayer for me. For my soul.
It’s now 12:30 in India. 08:00 in England, 10:00 in Finland, We may live that far apart, but I am thinking about you and I’m grateful for you. Be well, and try not to burn any bridges today.
I guess it must show. Or I project it somehow even in a mask, a hat and dark prescription sunglasses. Is it my body English? Does the anger just invisibly register with people?
I can’t say. All I know is that most of the time, I’m unaware of it. I’ve learned to live peacefully and to aspire to altruism in the manner of Christ’s teachings. If I said in my last post that I don’t get disappointed or discouraged if I get no views or likes on my posts, it’s not because I don’t appreciate every visitor, every like, every comment. A few weeks ago a commenter left a lengthy response explaining their opposition to vaccines. I disagreed but respected their right to choose, to believe what they will, and act on their beliefs. I still appreciated the reader’s visit and the effort taken for conversation.
There’s something funny though.
I will never have a hundred followers like a sponsored blogger with a paid-for domain.
I won’t ever be able to stick a full page beauty shot of myself on my leading page. There’s no beauty to see, and I’m an asshole who doesn’t really like himself very much anyway.
Late yesterday I walked to the store. I bought a few things, then stopped on the way back for smokes. Finished with being indoors, I took my masks off (I double mask) on the way home. Groceries on my back, walking with a cane, I lit one and took my time on the way home.
It was hot, one site giving the temperature as 90°f (32.2°c) and another listing it as 92. I was irritated; Fucking same city, people! But two degrees difference? Fuck you, stupid weather apps.
The air was humid but pollution caused the AQI to climb to 55. Too bad for a man in my shape to be outside, much less lugging a bag of groceries. But you can’t tell me anything. I’d gone anyway. The only real reason I checked the weather first was to see if it was going to rain. It didn’t. The storm was far to the south.
Why was I so mad? It built up as I walked across the parking lot. I tried to decide if it was hazy or not. It felt like it should be. But my damned eyes.
In the store it was the same shit. Always, people looking at me as if I scare or disgust them. I’ve been accused of being paranoid, but it’s not like that. Nobody stares, it’s not dramatic. Just when they glance at me in passing. Even allowing for how vulnerable people feel if you’re wearing shades and they aren’t can’t account for it. I got the same looks before I saw the doctor.
And people weren’t wearing masks. Maryland has loosened its restrictions for Covid and idiots are inside every place you go, unmasked and uncaring.
Fuck. Why put others, who might not be vaccinated, at risk? I fear it’s too soon for no masks inside; if one person dies because of it, that’s fucking stupid. And more than one will surely die. We’re not out of this yet. We won’t be until the month when no cases are diagnosed, no one is hospitalized and nobody dies. We’ve gone through hell. All of us. Why fling caution to the wind now? We’re talking life and death. People tempting Death piss me off.
But who am I? These people want their pizzas, Italian ice and groceries and will never go back to wearing masks now.
They still give you dirty looks though if they need to close in on you to grab a jar of Nutella. And you’re in their way and they can’t wait. Morons.
Yet the foot stickers on the floor for distancing are still at the checkout lanes. No, it doesn’t make sense. Shit that makes no sense pisses me off.
I posted a comment on Google where you can rate places and I rated the shopping center one star for all the panhandlers. It got so bad that I heard one guy say into his phone that he was banned for a year by the shopping center but yet he continued his asking for money. He’d ask for a dollar. Nobody gives him one dollar. In a day he could have a hundred bucks in his pocket. He’s always clean, hair cut neatly and he still gets money from people who are intimidated by everyone asking for money.
Once upon a time, I’d have punched the fucker. Once, I pulled up to a convenience store. I parked near the bank of pay phones and a guy was standing to my right front slouched against the wall. He looked at me and spat on the ground.
Now you can beat me half to death, throw bricks at me, I don’t care. Looking at me and spitting will enrage me like nothing else. It’s a gesture of more than contempt and disrespect. It cannot truly be put into words. I got out of the car. The entrance was to my left, away from him. But I didn’t go there. I walked up to him and with every once of force I could impart, punched him in the groin. He immediately fell forward, doubling up, fell completely to the ground with both hands between his legs, and explosively threw up.
As if nothing had happened, I walked into the store and poured coffee and bought smokes. When I left he was still down, sobbing in gasps like he couldn’t breathe. The stink of vomit was everywhere. I’ll bet he never did that crap again. I didn’t give him the respect of a punch in the jaw. I gave him what he gave me: treatment like he was just a scummy sleaze.
I regret it. I did five minutes later, as adrenaline and anger bled off and left me feeling depleted.
And I won’t punch the scammer-begger, but I still want to. Why so angry?
It’s been there the whole time, dormant, contained. I had no idea.
It seems as if that level of anger should be long gone. Discovering how serious it is has left me shaken.
There’s nobody to talk to. I can’t afford a therapist on Medicare. What am I doing?
I go back. I know where it comes from.
Being terrorized, raped, beaten as a kid. From siblings who were always better than me. From my disgusting behavior toward them.
Her name was Heather. And I was in a bad spot, deeply depressed, fully PTSD symptomatic, lonely. And still a screwup with women.
I’d long since sworn myself to celibacy but on Facebook her picture was amazing. She knew my nephew and his wife. I don’t remember how it happened but I missed a signal somewhere and thought when we talked she might be able to get interested and I said something that she told to my nephew and his old lady. They in turn told me to back off. I could have died of embarrassment. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
Fast forward. It’s two years later. My older brother came to town, and we always got together with other family, whoever could make it.
This time the dinner would be too far away for me to travel. Pissed off, I wrote into the group text that I couldn’t go. Not even an hour later, my sister who had stopped going to the get-togethers years earlier replied that she’d be there. Worse, my nephew’s wife, who never went and who I suspected didn’t care much for me, texted that she was going.
I replied that I was offended; not until after I said I would miss the get-together did my sister and my nephew’s wife decide they could make it. I also added that it had been a couple of years since the Heather thing and I was still being judged on it.
I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them since except my older brother. And I don’t care. I never want to speak to them again. I love my older brother too much to hold a grudge. But I know what the others did, it was right there in the group text and they made no effort to hide what they were doing; they probably just thought that I had said I couldn’t go and had gone off. Didn’t think I’d see it.
But I was still getting notifications. They didn’t care. It never even occurred to them I might see the texts and be hurt.
Or angry.
And the anger is still there. They may as well have spat; coming from family, it hurt and offended and embarrassed me. How could they hate me so much, about as much as I hated myself?
Nah, nobody’s ever hated me as much as I hate myself.
The same brain that thinks I deserved better, thinks I deserved everything I got.
I just don’t know why I got so angry. I mean, I know where it comes from. I’ve lost everything I had and never had anything I was supposed to be given as soon as I took my first breath.
And that’s not all. Things piss me off. You know how I feel about the Republican party and their ongoing campaign to rid the United States of all Constitutional rights. That has me on edge anyway, but there are other things that gnaw at me until I’m sure I’d punch someone the fuck out. Which I can’t do because it’s evil, but also because it’d be contradictory.
Cruelty and abuse piss me off. Not just in humans. That guy whose horse won the Kentucky Derby. Doped the animal to cheat. I wonder how much he secretly bet on his own horse, the scumbag.
You know how many horses break their legs and have to be euthanized because of fucking horse racing? Check it out sometime.
Greyhound racing. Everyone who does that shit ought to be sent right to fucking jail because it’s no better than dog fighting. Those animals get retired and put down. They’re injured. Abused and “conditioned”. Fucking barbarians! You ever tried to “rescue” a greyhound? Ain’t nice to have to watch.
TV pisses me off. The goddamn commercials insult everyone’s intelligence. How can I even think of one to use as an example, when there have been, and are, so many of them? Actually the question mark is out of place; I wasn’t asking. It’s a sad, enraging, bullshit thing. It should be illegal to lie about products and services but it’s really not. Once the law services on Madison Avenue get into the fray, we’re screwed. The next commercials will not only be worse but will pointedly be far more insulting. Marketing studies, you know? And questionnaires, surveys, hell. We gave them our secrets. They use them to bilk us out of money we can’t afford to spend on their processed foods, their useless shit…
It makes me so mad, that level of “fuck ’em” attitude retailers and manufacturers have toward us. “They’re stupid,” goes the conversation in board meetings, “sales of widgets went up during the pandemic. Online purchases rose 45 percent!”
‘Nother thing that pisses me off…the Army, according to an Associated Press investigation, has been hemorrhaging assault weapons. Some wound up discovered in gang member’s homes. Some were used in crimes!
It’s inside work, to be sure, but it shouldn’t happen. Ever. Armories on Army bases are supposed to be secure, yet a couple of MPs without even having unrestricted access to them, got partway in and forced entry the rest of the way. Some were AK-74s, beasts with three-shot bursts of automatic fire that got sold for as little as two hundred dollars U.S..
How can this unthinkable, inexcusable shit happen?
Sexual harassment is so pervasive that even a colonel was recently caught up in a legal case because she apparently facilitated the cover-ups. A woman. A colonel.
Disgusting.
Keep in mind, this is news. Anyone in the world can read or hear about it. Doesn’t anyone in Washington care? Are there no honorable officials left?
Reality shows have disintegrated the part of our brains that use logic and reasoning. We eat this bullshit up until every cable entertainment and educational channel floods you with it and if one fails there a hundred more ready to go into production at a moment’s notice.
Subscriptions for streaming are a point of agony and rage to me. You pay for cable and internet. Then you pay for a subscription, but is what you want to see on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or CBS online, Discovery Plus? They crept up on us. Hulu was once free. If you subscribe it’s autopay. Every month. Lose track or forget, you overdraw your account. Fuck that.
I can’t afford Netflix or Amazon. Therefore I have no desire to see anything they have.
Climate change pisses me off. Nothing is being done in this country about it because people are lazy and entitled. They’ll play activist and drive their gas mowers, cars and they still refuse solar power. And they listened to Fox News and Donald Trump for too long: wind power kills thousands of birds, you can’t watch TV if there’s no wind, and so on.
Republicans who believe this shit should be ashamed. Well they will be if they ever listen to the truth. Donald Trump became Don Quixote in one sentence, a remarkable moment in U.S. political history.
I’m saying everyone is wrong sometime about something. But to intentionally take up some asinine stance on something because of people caught lying on a regular basis, no, I’m not going to give them a pass. Even I, eventually, despite conditioning and being highly suggestible at times, always fight for the truth. And if I can fight myself for whatever the truth is, so can others.
And another fucking thing: who the hell started this “It is what it is” bullshit, and why do otherwise intelligent people have to use the term 90 times a day?
I’m fucking sick of it. Do you even pay attention to the words? It’s an insult.
Sometimes you may admire someone. Express it and find they don’t return your esteem. You probe further as to exactly how receptive they are, you’ll eventually get a no that sounds like “I can’t” followed by “it is what it is”. See how you like it then.
And stop saying “tout” for hell’s sake. Its a stupid fucking word. Do you hear the stupid bleeding from it when an anchor person or reporter uses it in a sentence? “The White House touted the rollout of a new…”
Waitafuckinminute!
You really think people do that? That someone says, “I want you all to go out and tout this to the public”?
Stop it.
And what the hell was all that shit with VP Harris, not “visiting” the border but going to Guatemala and telling poor people who obviously have no access to news, “Dont come here (the U.S. Border)”?
What the hell?
Yeah, I’m pissed, you’re right. Because first, the gesture and the message were strangely out of place, and second, an insult to the Guatemalan government and guatemalans. They got singled out for a great big “fuck you” in front of the world.
It happens to be true that the Border Crisis never ended. It’s also true that it will never end because most central-and-south American countries are poor. The smuggling, gangs and drug lords are obvious but only a part of it. Each province, division, town or city has its unique position on the danger scale. The misery scale. The environmental health scale. Safe drinking water? For some people no. Boil lake or stream water if you live near enough. Too poor for bottled water? Too bad.
How about homicides? Wanna talk about Honduras?
People don’t come north to have a better life. From Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela they come in the hope of survival.
But I don’t get it. From Trump’s campaign slogan about rapists and his white elephant wall to Harris’s bizarrely timed and placed warning, it doesn’t make sense. We have the duty to protect human lives. Condemning them isn’t quite humanitarian.
You know what really boils my oysters? The United States is not one of the safest countries in the world. In 2019 the U.S. was ranked more dangerous than Uganda. And Uganda is a place that should appear on tourist lists like, never. You will be kidnapped, arrested, shot, bombed or tied to the machinegun stand in the bed of a pickup truck and dragged down the airport runway.
Since Trump campaigned the first time, I’ve seen articles on several occasions where other countries warned their citizens not to come here.
Until you dig into the subject you’ll never know that Canada, Vietnam, Ghana, Poland, Germany, Mozambique and Bangladesh are safer.
And you’d never know which countries have better opportunities for education and employment. It ain’t us. That pisses me off but not because I think those countries are inferior. But we followed World War Two as a superpower. We were supposed to have learned from Japanese internment camps and the Holocaust. All the guys who died and were buried overseas or at sea, all the empty chairs at the dinner table that never got used again…we’d learned from it. We went into an economic boom and people bought houses and refrigerators and cars.
Damn it, we’re better than this!
This is the end of my Fuck! post.
If I were Catholic, I’d be saying Hail Marys for the next 24 hours.
Surely God has pity on men like me; we may get mad. We may hold grudges. But we try to learn control. Today you could probably spit at my feet and it would be forgiven.
For all my vices and my mental health, you know what I think?
I think I should like myself just a little…and not be so angry over things I don’t know how to change.
I seldom check my blog stats. If I get 4 views in one day, it’s amazing, but others have massive numbers of likes on a single post. I don’t often get to read other blogger’s posts, but when I do, I enjoy it. It’s such a privilege to read the experiences and opinions of people I don’t know. I’m getting a peek into who they are and what they’re passionate about. I would rather read blogs any day than a bestselling book. What we share is still unique in all of history; once posted, our words can be seen by anyone around the world. The power is awesome, the responsibility to be respected.
I don’t want one of those 4 views to hurt someone. I know the power of words to trigger others, to injure them. It’s not why I’m here.
When I started this blog, I had others up as well, and had taken others down. They went for months without a single view, and I was disheartened. As a writer, there can be nothing worse, not even harsh criticism, than not having been read at all.
To be ignored, unnoticed; that truly hurts. We all fear it as writers. As humans, we all know pain and can feel isolated.
I seldom look at my stats because I fear being alone, ignored and unappreciated. My case is perhaps not unique but is made more painful than most because in my life even when talking in person, I lost the interest of my friends too quickly. I was left standing alone and feeling stupid, a total fool, too often.
But I developed my own style of storytelling and speech, and it helped. I believe I owe this to the many authors I read extensively while growing up. I absorbed the best of them, their flair for suspense or drama and humor, which, no matter how light or dark, always turned more people off than made them laugh.
But now, today, I write this single blog, and anything goes, because all things are affected by my past. A terrible past full of terrible things and terrible memories. The bad experiences of my life are assembly line parts that made me what I am, an American asshole whose intent is focused on reliving and venting my pain and hoping that, somewhere along the way, someone with more potential than I ever had can find something they can use.
I had to forget about views and likes, although I have sincere appreciation when I get them. I had to forget about hoping for lots of followers. I felt that I was writing to a more narrow audience about more narrow, specialized subjects. Therefore, numbers could not be any part of my goal as a blogger, and that was liberating. It was refreshing. I could write about anything. My past, my life, already an open book, could be offered up any time according to my mood and physical pain level.
Distractions And Reaching Out
When we go through painful things, the worst thing we can do is to give in, to fail ourselves in a battle for our lives, our sanity and our souls. We usually ignore advice because we understand, bitterly, that nobody else can know what we are going through every day we live. We find our own ways to survive. Some end up being, shall we say, unorthodox.
But we’re talking about survival here. It’s no joking matter.
When my son died suddenly on 14 February of 2018, his sister having preceded him in death, I was a mess. At some point I realized that God was not very interested in what I did next. Suicide crossed my mind. Slinking into the woods with a rope was my cowardly plan, finally to end almost 60 years of unremitting agony. To leave behind a brain full of memories so disgusting that if I were to write an autobiography, no publisher would dare touch it.
But I had one thing to do with God that held me back. The fear of eternal pain unlike anything I could imagine: Hell.
I needed a life ring thrown to me.
As unlikely as this may seem, I bought the PC game The Sims 3 and the Night Life, Seasons and Supernatural expansion packs. Not knowing how this alone could help, even if it is a time-consuming game, I did searches and found a website with tons of mods. And these weren’t just any code modifications. Oh, no. It was a whole suite of mods combined to change the game into something more realistic and challenging than publisher Electronic Arts could have imagined.
If was the NRaas and KW package. I read about it and I wanted it.
But I had never modded a game before. This went beyond cheat codes and Game Sharks. I followed the instructions to download and couldn’t do it. So I left a post on the message board. I said my son had died and I was desperate for a big distraction. A man in Sweden, Norway or Finland (I’m sorry, I’m not clear on which) offered to help because he felt sorry for me.
First was the ZIP package. It took two weeks for me to finally get the program working. He got a laugh out of me but was more patient with me than any teacher I’d ever had.
For almost a year I sunk myself into making celebrities that looked exactly like the real thing, but whose naked bodies I could shape and tone and color hair and eyes for. They could even have sex in almost any place or position and it was hilarious and time consuming and fun. I wish I had a new PC and I could do it all again.
Sometimes when you send out a distress signal, you’ll be surprised by who will answer it and how much time they will invest in seeing you through.
Although the prim nature of The Sims might seem inviolable and lest you think I should be ashamed, I stress the point, it kept me engaged and safe for a year of hell. A year of firsts. The first time I couldnt give either child a birthday or Christmas gift. The first holidays without a visit. The constant memories of what they meant to me and the emptiness I felt without them. Those things should have crushed me to death.
I also had neighbors and friends, on Facebook and off, who supported me and kept me talking. You can feel real love for anyone, even an online friend, and love can save your life.
I’ve long since lost contact with my Western European gaming coach, and I’m the poorer for it. I wish I could thank him for saving me.
Of course there are others to thank. I’ve lost contact with them all. Some were Facebook friends who subscribed to this blog but will never return. I’m sorry for the behavior I displayed which precipitated that; again, I’m the lesser for it.
Surviving The Internet
It’s a madhouse, isn’t it? The hurtful comments, the hatred, and the resulting backlash by the idiots who run sites like Facebook. Recently they’ve been talking about an algorithm as well as human oversight to monitor Facebook groups. It’s pure censorship with the threat of permanent banishment for comments that garner complaints. The problem is, it cant be done. The capricious nature of the mere concept dictates that innocent people will suffer. Judgement is rarely fair. It is not impartial nor has it ever been. What is acceptable to one person as the use of free speech is outrageous to another, no matter the nature of what has been said or written.
That’s bias, a thing everyone must fight within themselves or in others. Human nature cannot change, and bloggers eventually have that one reader who, no matter what they have written, will become that one reader’s favorite enemy. They leave no choice but to block them or assign a setting for all comments to be moderated before they are visible to others.
I’m not sure why this is, but no matter what blog, article, message board or YouTube video I comment on, I never get a single answer or like. As if nobody sees it. Perhaps I’m that insipid, or I’ve already been censured by moderators. I don’t know.
You need to grow a thick skin for wherever you go online. It’s also a problem for some people to know that a harsh plot or comments are not singling them out. That it may not be about them. And isn’t is a tall order to let things go even if you have a reason to believe you are being called out?
Simon Says
Case in point: this week on one of Simon Whistler’s many YouTube channels, there was one that I caught on. He made a video about unsolved mysteries, and that’s a popular subject. However, there’s never anything new. He even covered the infamous derelict ship Mary Celeste and I’m like, really? Are your writers that fucking lazy?
Because as maritime mysteries go, Mary Celeste is the most often used in TV shows, books, videos and magazines. Even pre-K children are tired of hearing about it.
Based in the Czech Republic, Whistler does educational videos and appears to be a square guy, trustworthy and affable.
Why then does he often take pot shots at his subscribers? “Because you like the dark stuff,” he says after launching his true crime podcast. That’s shade.
Inferring that your subscribers are sick in the head is something only a man like him can get away with. He’s done the impossible, hitting the trifecta of You Tubers: he’s gained a mammoth following, he’s got sponsors and he’s added channels that allow him to study any subject he wants. His audience keeps growing. He’s big-league.
I guess if he wants to throw shade on or eat his own, it’s cool. He can lose a subscriber now and then, right?
Well, he’s too busy or too rich to pay attention to who he offends.
I’ll tell you right now, gamers are a varied and therefore often a sensitive lot. Their hobby gets criticized more than model ship builders, gardeners, photographers, painters, film buffs, DIYers, travellers, car collectors and even philatelists, who are often derided for no good reason.
Gamers go through criticism for the violent content of games, terrible behavior in multiplayer online games, even having to put up with shitheads in congress who want to blame mass shootings on video games instead of assault weapons being available to just about anyone who wants one.
As a casual gamer, even I’m not immune to the things other gamers must endure, like having a stock PC that cannot handle most PC games, thereby forcing upgrades; expensive consoles, expensive games and peripherals, updates, expansion packs and extra DLC you have to buy, or else get left behind. And that’s a mere sampling.
The gamers following a franchise get hit the hardest when one or two truly great games are followed by total crap. The Fallout series had me looking forward to getting in on the action with this trailer, shown on TV:
Alas. That’s the best part of the game, and thousands of complaints appeared after it was released. You look forward to something your hobby will be enhanced with and it’s crap.
Fortunately there’s so much out there that’s good that we can, for a price, compensate.
And that’s where my son comes back into the picture.
He loved Greek mythology and Ancient Egypt and all things old. Percy Jackson and Harry Potter were equally fun in his eyes. He had a PS3 and described a game he was playing and asked if he could bring his console over to get my help with it.
Years later–this year–I bought Assassin’s Creed Origins and not too far in realized that this was the game he had been playing. My son and I did not reach on many things, but video games were always something we could do together, and never have a disagreement or anything else but to just enjoy each other’s company.
I knew I had to finish the game. For him. A small gesture from a grieving father to a son who left too soon, leaving me with guilt, unsaid words that were important, and a hole that went through me from front to back.
In the game, the protagonist, Bayek, has seen his son murdered. One of his tasks is to locate stone circles he had visited with his son. Every time he finds one, he sits down and remembers a conversation they had. It’s Bayek’s way to honor his son’s memory. These scenes made me cry. It wrenches my heart every time I turn on a game that he isn’t here with me to share the fun. Every day I awake and I’m empty and cold and I hurt. I really want my children back.
Simon Whistler in his recent unsolved mysteries video cracked the remark that something was about as “relatable as an Assassin’s Creed game.”
What’s more relatable than a father grief stricken over his dead son? I surely related to Bayek.
Having written a post on both Origins and Odyssey it was easy for a moment to feel sensitive and directly called out.
Then I realized he couldn’t have read the posts I wrote; he’s not got the time, he wouldn’t find me anyway, and during the video it looked as if he’d had a wee nip or two.
If You Want To Write, Then Write
What’s your passion? What turns you on, makes you want to write? Don’t let the moment pass, just write. It can be anything you want, although I don’t recommend using hate speech. If we police ourselves, no one else can claim that they need to. Be what and who you are. Seek, and tell, the truth. Be open, but remember that opening your mind first demands that you open your heart.
Don’t be easily hurt. Writers get slammed. It’s just how it is. Don’t assume you’re being targeted by someone who likely never heard of you.
And have fun. There’s a time for the serious things and a time to be light. Go with your mood, not with what you think others want. Writing for someone else is to bow to mostly imagined pressure. People will read you because you’re you. Change that dynamic and you’ll give up. When writing becomes a chore, it isn’t worth it.
Remember that words are extremely powerful. Use them with careful consideration and don’t hurt others. Put yourself on a mission to make the world a better place. You may just succeed.
Here’s something that made me laugh out loud. It’s a trend in men’s underwear, did you know that? It’s real: an inner pocket for your–I mean men’s–junk. Some brands hold the whole package and others the testicles only. The TV ad for the Hanes brand is a bit on the side of stereotypical; a man who some would judge must be gay wears the product and rides a mechanical bull. I’m sorry, but that’s funny.
As you know, I spent a lot of time on the Playstation 4 game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. In the game, which starts just before the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE, historical figures are depicted with somewhat amusing lines and voice acting. Of them all, Alkibiates, a real statesman from Athens and the Delian League, gets the most comical and suggestive treatment. He’s a hedonist, a bisexual, always hinting that Socrates could use his mouth for better things than oratory.
And he resembles the guy in the Hanes ad, whose preoccupation with himself is part of the comedy in the commercial. Here’s a cut scene from the quest wherein Kassandra must escort the drunken contender for Sparta to the Olympic games.
And since Odyssey was released in 2017-2018, Madison Avenue has had plenty of time to see this game and play it. If there’s a coincidence between the two, then it’s one of the most uncanny I’ve ever seen.
To add to the comedic coincidence, the name of the contender for Sparta is “Testikles,” and now you see why I question so much. Did someone do this on purpose?
By the way: Alkibiates defected to Sparta. The real one may have been quite the coward. Or, he saw what Athens was doing to its own allies and rejected the Delian League, which derived its name from its capital, the island of Delos.
C130 Rolling Down The Strip
Two Army Airborne soldiers were found dead on Fort Bragg Army base and the CID believed at the time that they were involved in street drugs.
Fort Bragg North Carolina is home to the Airborne Rangers and the Green Beret Special Forces. Those are the most demanding branches of the U.S. Army, training and placing elite troops. The pressures and demands are high. Although no tox screens had come back before I read the article, I can’t put forth a guess as to what drug or which combination of drugs killed them. Overdose of uppers for performance or downers to sleep will kill you. And self-dosing always increases.
After the master sergeant there was arrested for trafficking cocaine, I should have anticipated something like this. If their connection was cut, the common users would go to the streets and that’s suicidal. We mourn for the dead, but are left with lingering and frightening questions. Questions that we fear answers to because more young men will surely have to die first.
Meanwhile In India, This:
I don’t know what the hell happened here. Did brain damage affect every member of two households beside each other? Did mental illness affect two families simultaneously?
Or did the two people in this story just manage the impossible for an entire decade?
You tell me. Oh, it takes place in India, but it could happen anywhere, so forget race. Two young people whose religious backgrounds were different decided that they had to be in love. So much so, that the girl moved in with her lover next door, and nobody saw her again for a decade. She even evaded his family by slipping through her window for bathroom breaks. To entertain herself she watched a small TV connected with headphones.
Her lover managed to keep his spare bedroom locked and became bellicose with anyone who asked him why.
Yet no one else thought this behavior exceptional enough to insist the door be unlocked, or to demand that he seek professional help. And the police department dropped the ball when investigators failed to check out the next door neighbors after the girl went missing. It’s like they gave up, for pity’s sake.
Until next time, if you think something is a coincidence, it probably…isn’t.
If you’re serving in the armed forces and you have a drug problem, you don’t want to be arrested, kicked out or wind up dead, and there’s no reason why you should. Here’s a place to start looking for help, and know this: there’s no shame or dishonor in asking for help. It’s quite the opposite. Save yourself and your career. Hit the link, make the call and utilize your chain of command. Be honorable. You need help. Get it.
One last thing: no matter what country you live in, pay attention to your next-door neighbors. Please. And buy some binoculars, a parabolic microphone, maybe a thermal camera.
When it comes to climate change, I prefer the more direct and accurate “global warming” because that’s what we’re looking at, and why should we have to apply political correctness to anything so dire and urgent? Just because we’re not all going to boil in our own sweat in a year or two does not mean that we are not facing extinction.
That said, Republicans have fought, first the very fact of global warming and second, that the cause is human activity. And they buck the simple truth that it’s us causing the coming catastrophic changes by uttering stupidity and doublespeak and generally making asses out of themselves.
Louie Gohmert is a Republican congressman from, of course, Texas. Now as far as I know, NASA wasn’t consulted by him and he makes it rather clear that he heard from someone that the moon’s orbit was changing along with Earth’s orbit around the sun. Well, so far he got it right: the Earth does orbit the sun, and the moon really does orbit Earth.
The problem came when, talking to a Forestry Service official about global warming, he asked if the Forestry Service could change the moon’s orbit as well as Earth’s orbit to combat “climate change”.
It seems like something Ted Cruz would ask, doesn’t it? Cruz has an IQ lower than room temperature, so he probably likes “climate change”and of course we know he prefers Mexico when it’s snowing in Texas.
Hey, Gohmert! Forget “climate change!” I think you have a problem with municipal water supplies in Texas, and maybe some testing is in order. Either that or Texas Republican politicians are just plain fucking stupid.
The following blog entry contains triggers and adult subject matter. It is intended for adults only.
In New York, we have Andrew Cuomo to thank for mass confusion and bitterness. Last year a blogger outright blamed the death of his in-laws from COVID-19 on Cuomo.
Look, I’m not going to sit here and defend the man. In the article linked above, his behavior is described as “skeevy” which sounds worse but means less than what he’s been accused of. I’d call his behavior downright creepy. He had been vetted as a demigod by the press, and thus made untouchable. Many who have met him, but cannot know him as those closer to him do, have defended him with an alarming amount of zeal and venom. Being a democrat, I am disappointed and frightened.
Because the democratic party doesn’t need this. Any bad publicity is dangerous to this country’s political future. After January 6, 2021, no person should ever question the threat Republicans have become.
That doesn’t mean we should endorse cover-ups. The article leaves no doubt that watchdog journalism is lagging, biased left or right, the truth trapped somewhere in between.
CNN did in fact practically deify Cuomo, regardless of his brother having a show on the cable channel. And I will admit, that, while Andrew Cuomo did a fair job with his press conferences, he also ended up using them, and the positive feedback from them, for self-aggrandizement and a book deal.
Because. They always write fucking books, don’t they?
Then they actually sit and have conversations about who will play their role in the movie. They’re all the same, and with Trump saying that he will be back in office by July, and a bunch of loopy idiots believing him, Democrats needed to come out of the elections looking better than this. He’s a stain, Cuomo is, impossible to cover up, impossible to miss. His ego is sickening. And, yes. He cooked the books and lied.
The blogger said his relatives were casualties of Covid who should never have died. No one can truly judge the ultimate outcomes in a pandemic; it is a case of everything we know being inapplicable because of chaos mathematics. Because people in a closed system, a house, a village, a city, a province, a country – will behave in unpredictable ways and render all casualty projections crude guesswork no matter how many programmers are running variables through a system. Human behavior cannot be reduced to an algorithm.
Cuomo compensated his ego by lying during a crisis that never needed to be downplayed. The truth was what everyone needed, and now he’s just a character in a horror flick, one so bad that no director would touch it.
But if anything, the blogger found someone to blame. Isn’t that what we all want? Someone to blame for anything bad that happens? And if there isn’t anyone to blame, don’t we just pick the easiest target and throw the worst accusations, however crazy they are, at that target?
Oh, wait: I forgot to mention one thing. The blogger kind of tossed in the accusation that Democrats are engaged in depopulation.
For pity’s sake, not that again. Fuck that’s old. Make it go away, God!
A recent PSC featuring Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama stressed the fact that while they urged people to get a Covid vaccine, it was up to them, that they had a choice.
That, in the most devastating pandemic since the Spanish flu, getting the shots was still your choice to get or refuse. That’s freedom.
Trump, the man who cried “hoax”, was vaccinated. He did not shout it from any rooftop. But he got it.
Meanwhile, after leaving office as the most dishonorable and dishonest president in history, he started his own blog. When millions of readers failed to log on, he shut it down like a petulant little boy whose birthday party no one showed up for, breaking his few presents and holding his breath until his face looked like an overripe strawberry.
But here, we get back to my central point: we have the freedom of choice.
The pandemic was no doubt made worse by the poor choices of people all over the world. When countries initiated border restrictions and social distancing, and businesses shut down, many defied the rules and spread the disease. Nursing homes were hit so hard that some had trucking companies spot reefer trailers on their lots. That’s because assholes who visited them infected them. Nobody to blame. No conspiracy theory; just people who had no honor and would not face the fact that it was they who exposed the elderly to COVID-19…and basically killed them.
Some weren’t supposed to have a choice, depending on where they were. Lockdown meant, “Stay in your house.” A lot of rumors came from countries around the world, but I know that here, parties went on, masks weren’t worn even after the initial shortage was over, and people still went and made choices that we cannot deny got people killed.
Andrew Cuomo heavily restricted gatherings and travel in New York, and people were threatened with fines should they choose to defy those restrictions. He talked a good talk and most listened. Largely out of fear of dying, not any fear of the law.
If you were caught walking without a mask, most NYPD officers just gave you a mask.
Now people have more freedom and with it more choices.
It’s fascinating that few people chose to read Trump’s blog, but it means nothing because he’s clearly become more delusional since leaving office and might be unmedicated to boot. But the weird movement he started with Steve Bannon and a party of psychopaths hasn’t gone away. It won’t go away.
And if he’s unable to tweet, that shouldn’t lull you into thinking that the rot within the GOP will fade away. Like ship worms, the rot and evil are eating the party alive and no one has the balls to try to stop it. That…is their choice. Republicans have sold their souls in exchange for power, and, like all deals with the devil, been forced to commit to something which will be their undoing, yet can cause much collateral harm: we are in trouble.
And…Facebook might let Trump back on. His ban was six months, not permanent, to be reviewed after the suspension expired.
In my recent post about incest, I failed to make a critical distinction. It’s regarding choice, the right to choose, and the right-wing habit of placing blame where it doesn’t belong because they never want to appear responsible for practically anything, and anything that will further their cause will be used to frighten you.
What I’m getting at is my reference to a porn addiction which began when I was a child and was shown 8mm movies by my parents, with a sibling also watching.
I must clarify one very important thing: I am not anti-porn. Viewing pornography is anyone’s choice to make. If it is restricted after becoming so widely available, nothing good can come from it. That’s repression, and it involves the basic human function of sex. Sexual repression is nihilistic and will cause way too much harm. This article I found by accident, but I had already noticed that major internet porn sites had gone through a shakeup; something had happened, and I didn’t know exactly why.
It was as noticeable as it was puzzling.
The changes involved format, content and the ability to download it. This was startling; I knew it was legal in nature as soon as I saw it, but what had happened to make such a change necessary?
My god. The porn industry was policing itself!
It had before, but never like this.
Over the years, AIDS-infected porn stars have caused tremendous fear in those they’ve worked with, beginning with Mark Wallice, who was accused of falsifying test results after he knew he was positive. According to Wikipedia, that’s questionable, and yet it’s not. Because the health of another person in any job shouldn’t depend on one man’s honesty. In the porn industry, it does, but that’s really an illusion since testing is not prevention, and to this day, condoms are rarely used. But still, in 1998, before smartphones and broadband availability or affordability, the amateur and piracy markets had not yet become pervasive, limited largely to VHS tapes and a few DVDs. A shutdown of the main porn industry was extraordinary.
This is nothing like those days. Any time a part of any service industry begins to police itself, whether it be hospitality (which could use a shakeup) or entertainment, including music, film, TV, video games, it means the wagons are being circled.
It means that a legal fight is coming, and leaders of a particular industry know that repressive policies and laws are being drafted that will curtail the scope of their audience and therefore the profits they currently enjoy (few actors in porn ever got rich, but studios and distributors did).
The gaming industry was under such a threat in the early aughts because of violence. Not so much with Medal of Honor, but when Grand Theft Auto 3 came to the PS2, my god. You’d think the Battle of Armageddon had started; it was surely the end of the world!
To prevent congressional attacks and laws restricting content, the industry leaders, mainly publishers, agreed on a rating system that would warn consumers about content and whether it was appropriate for minors. It worked, although parents did not always pay attention. Some only noticed ratings after watching their children playing the game, at which point they freakedout. They tried to sue, but they didn’t fare well because the ratings system was in place and had been widely reported.
It was left to parents to be responsible for everything their children could see, hear or play, an argument that went farther into the past than they knew.
The conservative vultures fly in circles above internet porn. It is something that they believe is appealing to right-wing voters. It’s become a crisis, they say. And if banning all internet porn can be done in one state, namely Utah, the promise is that it can be banned by legislation in 15 other states. But there’s this thing about conservative politics lately that should scare everyone. Voter suppression bills are being drafted in multiple states which lost to Democrats last November but technically shouldn’t have; some of those are red states. And if I tell you that even in a blue state like New York, Andrew Cuomo has caused harm and resentment, even if some of that resentment is misplaced owing to conspiracy theories, then be very careful; conservatives are working at this moment to take away the rights to choose what you watch and who you vote for and without proper resistance, can actually do it.
Republicans like to scare the shit out of everyone. If they can cite a study that backs them up, or worse, inspires them, they’re all over it and men from the pulpit to the senate floor will start a panic if they can. It’s what they do, but if you look at what they’re doing, you’ll become a human lie detector. Because the fearmongering is built with lies on a foundation of biased or outright fabricated studies and reports. Often written by men and women with letters behind their names, these studies are so entrenched in lies that some are unintentionally funny. In the late 70s, dry cleaning fluid, bacon, tea and a few other major products were declared carcinogenic. No, I’m not lying; you can’t make this kind of stuff up. Paul Harvey got so fed up with the cancer nonsense that he described it like this: “they take a bunch of lab rats, pump something in through tubes constantly and when they die, they (the scientists) say, ‘See, they can’t take it’.”
But did anyone stop these stupid biased studies?
Nope. They just made worse ones. And money, usually in government grants, powers these goofy endeavors.
Take the afternoon I spent circa 1994 listening to Rush Limbaugh for example. Normally he moved from one segment to the next covering various stories. Not this day. He went on and on about some study that concluded that women will “reject” the sperm of a man who cannot afford to take care of or provide for them. I couldnt turn it off because he was serious. He believed it and was using it as a theme for the might of white men educated and all smug about their futures.
He managed, in one day, to discredit himself as an intelligent man; he further offered proof that women “on welfare” couldnt possibly have children and men out of work couldn’t possibly be fathers, and furthermore, that women had the supernatural ability of Darwinesque natural selection in their vaginal tracts.
What horseshit, because he’d made a living insulting everyone who ever took money from the government when in times of need. If women had such innate superpowers then where did all those babies he referred to as “welfare kids” come from?
How could he, claiming to have intelligence “on loan from God,” not understand that no such study was possible in the first place? Did some creeps at a university watch women have intercourse and then get them into stirrups and watch as every sperm cell was “rejected” and accounted for?
This is what Republicans do. It’s their trademark, bigotry, lies and fearmongering. Imagine if a marriage was canceled because of a woman hearing this and deciding her fiancee might not keep his job and be able to get her pregnant. Because the worst thing about Republican lies and fearmongering is that someone always believes them.
In the battle brewing over pornography, they’re doing the same thing. Calling it addictive and a mechanism for a threat to public health.
Hypocrites! They resisted measures that would have kept people from dying of Coronavirus complications. Plain and simple. They’re about as concerned for public health as a mass shooter armed with an AR-15.
The arguments against porn are, but are not limited to: it encourages violence against women; it is easily accessed by minors; it gives young people a distorted view of sexuality; it is addictive by nature and constitutes a risk to public health.
Good points, but misleading. My case is not a common one. And besides, because of my prevalent PTSD, I must correct what I called an addiction and instead label it as compulsive. It doesn’t feed any sexual need for arousal and merely floods the brain with more dopamine and serotonin than I’m getting, and usually it calms me and allows me uninterrupted sleep with no nightmares. With the chemical reaction, anyone can argue that this constitutes an addiction, but that’s flawed analysis. When not viewing adult material I do not have any withdrawal symptoms at all; indeed, I’ve gone for months, even years without it, and I was the same in every way.
However, the shame and the stigma with it are overwhelming for some people. I had neighbors in my last neighborhood who were so nosy that in a house with seven bedrooms, they must have stared at my windows, watching for any sign of movement. Due to a budgetary situation the house was, as a group home, not adorned with the most private window coverings. With curtains closed, and from a block away, a certain neighbor apparently was able to see my computer activity. Don’t ask me how he managed it; it remains a fact.
One day, I made the mistake of leaving my computer on, signed in and everything. A staff worker named Kelly used the time I was out to get hold of a partial search history and then forward it to a neighbor who was a police officer. As unprofessional and illegal as it was, soon a group of neighbors had printouts of my entire history and were across the street, reading it and commenting quite audibly that I was one “sick motherfucker” and that they would all join forces in monitoring my behavior.
That’s the stigma of living in a group home. That’s the stigma of looking at porn. It’s everything you can imagine it is, humiliating, embarrassing and terrifying. Nobody should ever know such a horrible situation.
The officer had expanded the partial search Kelly gave him. No warrants, no questioning, no arrest and no conviction, but suddenly I was the neighborhood sex predator. It got worse.
I got several emails that were being sent to people in my area, and it said a sex offender lived in the area, and was recognizable by a limp and a cane. At the time I needed surgery and I did use a cane.
Even when I arrived at a new place the emails continued. I should have consulted an attorney. If my name ever showed up, I would have.
You should be free to do whatever is legally your right to choose. But you’re not. Watch anyone you know go through what I’ve described and you’ll be filled with rage. You should be. Violating someone’s privacy and then engaging in harrassment over anything you find is against the law.
I wish it worked that way. But from the minute you logged into your first computer, you started an electronic footprint that anyone can see. You may be blackmailed, fired from your job, divorced, expelled, harrassed, bullied, maybe eventually murdered. Because some people don’t respect your freedom to choose anything at all. They think if you don’t go to church, you can’t possibly be a Christian. Or that if you watch hardcore porn, then you’re secretly gay or bisexual, if you’re a man. Because hardcore porn has penises in it. They really say these things and they believe them. The homophobic hate is the scariest because people die when it gets worse. And it always gets worse.
If you are on disability, you’re taking taxpayer dollars because you’re a lazy person who doesn’t care about working for a living.
I’ve been accused of just about everything except for the failures I freely admit to. People act all sympathetic and say I can’t blame myself for the deaths of my children. As a father, yes, I can, and I don’t have the right to dodge whatever responsibility, however small, I had. But the sympathy dries up when it comes to freely talking about what I’ve freely done. There are many things I can blame on my parents and others. Watching porn isn’t one of them. Maybe they showed me something I found more interesting and appealing than what was being done to me. I don’t know.
The injuries I sustained during my childhood are many and run deep. But if I can blame certain things on them, then there are some things I cannot. Perhaps it’s true that I was conditioned for sexual preoccupation, and that may have contributed to my promiscuity as a teen and younger man. Or compulsive masturbation or whatever. But some things I can’t fix blame for on anyone.
Conclusions
I’ve seen arguments on both sides about porn. It’s disgusting. Five years ago I read several articles, at least one from an official Christian leaders guide, that gave a large percentage of porn downloads to pastors and church computers. The protestant and catholic churches were in a real quandary: how to stop something that ultimately would be seen as damaging to the credibility of church leaders? How does one stop a man from doing anything in private?
The issue remains in limbo.
So too is it a major activity for Republicans, which makes everyone fighting porn a hypocrite of the highest order. I doubt legislation will pass restricting internet porn, but if it does, they’ll know all the loopholes.
There is scant evidence of social harm from pornography. It’s probably even saved a few marriages. I can’t side against that, because a divorce is not always the answer. Divorces destroy. It’s even true that a couple watching a movie will better communicate their needs, thus strengthening the union.
Porn is sometimes offensive even to those who regularly watch it. Many have no stomach for B&D. Extremely negative for women, breast rings are painful and likely cause deep tissue damage along with vascular and nerve damage. Men lose their penises or their ability for erections because of restrictive rings. And films where mouths contact the rectum don’t have disclaimers about the chances of getting quite sick. But you have a choice as to what you watch and what you do.
Outlawed and bootleg porn are even more extreme. I saw one involving a young woman and a horse. To accommodate the horse, she laid upon a raised table and spread her legs. The horse didn’t thrust right away, and the girl thought she was safe. She was not; one powerful thrust went all the way in and she immediately pulled away. She walked, in shock, to a wooden deck and sat down. She later died of peritonitis.
Extreme sex is therefore best avoided, in porn and in practice. But in general I have to defend your right to watch it and the government has no business trying to stop you. The comparison to voting rights restrictions is appropriate. It’s all about Republican muscle and the fight to continue their fascist rule in 2024.
If you let up…if you don’t pay attention to suppression and oppression, soon you will have no rights left. No abortions regardless of whether your life is in danger. No choice in news networks. Or schools. Or churches. Your children and grandchildren will grow up in a different world, one you cannot imagine.
Kinsey’s research was contaminated. His works have been denounced as so flawed as to render them the scribblings of a charlatan. And then there’s the fact that he was a voyeur and a hedonist. That made him incompetent and biased. Writing while you’re horny isn’t the best way to deal with the subject of sexuality.
Warning: this blog deals with adult and disturbing subject matter. Please use discretion. It contains triggers.
Several people in my family, that is to say, siblings, have tried to research and understand what happened to our family and why. A half brother put himself through college because he wanted to know why some siblings were more well adjusted than others. If we were to compare him to myself, for instance, he comes out as the picture of hard-working, intelligent, driven, gregarious and well-adjusted, whereas I have deteriorated and lost my ability for meaningful relationships, which at best were stormy and dysfunctional; or to perform even a part-time job, or stop suicidal thoughts, to ease depression, to cope with anxiety or even eat or sleep healthily or on any schedule.
Abnormal Psych 101
It never took me being a genius to know that what began before I was six years old was “wrong”, and even though that word did not occur to me then, I knew how it made me feel. Tired, preoccupied, dirty, ashamed.
As I grew older I perceived that I was different from kids my age in several ways: I was learning disabled, afraid of everything around me, and that I had this secret which, if I tried to confide in a friend, immediately lost me that friend. The subject was strictly taboo and never discussed. I had to go to my older brothers if I needed to talk. Together, we probably kept each other alive. The brother who would go on to get a degree in psychology accepted my collect calls during crises I couldn’t navigate on my own.
And it was this, as much as anything else, that made his thirst to know why we all turned out so differently unquenchable.
The first time I tried to kill myself he visited me in the psych ward. He didn’t understand why. Why, so suddenly, was I giving up.
He said I was only sick because I wanted to be. I told him to leave. He did not intend harm or offense; his mind just didn’t get how anyone could want to die. He had conditioned himself to be positive in all things, to show no one weakness, to always be ready to offer solutions, suggestions or a shoulder. In a way, he had become the surrogate father in place of the monster I grew up with.
And it wasn’t in him to understand why I grew worse as the years went by. In fact he hadn’t even noticed it. He never thought of me as being that kind of hurt and handicapped. But I was.
In his college education I am not certain which, if any, answers he found.
Even after better studies over the years than anything Kinsey did (how he contaminated his own findings is now an undisputed truth), not many people can claim to have solid knowledgeof why incest is so prevalent yet without boundaries or conditions such as living in urban or rural areas, socioeconomic status, education or intellectual prowess. It is not restricted to the stereotypical mountain dwellers, the south, or poor families with limited living space. A family living in a Manhattan highrise condominium can do things that you don’t want to imagine. No one wants, outside of fantasies, to think about it. Why it is so is one answer I search for.
Kinsey vs Canada
Whereas his volumes Sexual Behavior In The Human Male and Sexual Behavior In The Human Female had the appearance of being exhaustive and had many graphs, his numbers and assumptions were biased because his methods could never accommodate truth. He was, no pretense here, about as scientific as a baby boomer kid with a chemistry set: mom and dad knew that the little shit wanted to make things blow up. They bought it for him anyway. That’s how I view Kinsey. Whatever he looked for, he found. He even took information from incarcerated pedophiles and rapists, among others, and those are notorious for inventing stories with lurid details because it turns them on. (1.)
Or makes them laugh at the gullibility of others who ask stupid questions.
Other (Case) studies with a seriousness putting Kinsey to shame (how could anyone recall having their first orgasm at one year old by contact with the family pet?) have either stood the test of time or laid a foundation for more research that continues today. Without a doubt and in all honesty I find it difficult to talk or write about my mother and that she had sex with two stepsons and two sons. And so far I’ve never come across any texts regarding studies of families like mine. Oh, those families exist, you can be certain of it. But strangely, I have concluded that very few of these families prior to the late 1990s were ever broken up (by disclosure of the victims) over pervasive incest. My thoughts are that, the more children that are involved with incestuous parents, the more the parents had to condition them, and thereby instill fear of disclosure. There could be a family of two parents living in the home with ten children, and not one would dare tell anyone outside of their family. The conditioning is managed over time and involves threats (blackmail), fear of physical harm (severe beatings as discipline) and the occasional reward for reinforcement. In other words, all bases are covered to keep children and adolescents silent. In my case, my sisters were conditioned to tell lies about me out of fear of being punished for some made-up offense. In this way, we ended up in sibling hatred that insured no two of us would, first, have a sexual relationship, and second, combine to turn on him.
But there’s a quirk in the mechanics of incestuous families.
The smaller the family, the more likely that things will end badly for the offending parent. A conclusion as to why this is would require one to consider each case one at a time. For, as much as the nature of the offense remains the same, the effects and any causality in such an ending will have only passing similarities. In other words, we don’t know; it would sound more reasonable if it were the other way around, that smaller families would keep their secrets.
But putting any and all human behavior into neat sets of groups has been tried. It doesn’t work. Ectomorph and Endomorph are words which my spell-checker don’t have. I haven’t heard or read those words since high school. Pavlov’s dogs were replaced by canines in shuttle boxes. The Humane Society probably had fits about that.
Research and the knowledge it gives us is astonishing. What marvels we’ve used that knowledge for, and yet, we live on a precipice. We have taken great pains to end up much like the biblical end of days despite so many believing that the whole book is pure fantasy, stories which are the basis for the biggest three cults in history.
My contention is that while we treat ourselves and our children so horribly, yes, wewill meet a dreadful end. We’ve turned our planet into a big time bomb. Climate change can destroy in more ways than one, and who cares?
Not as many people as you think.
Why should they care? Look at what they do to their own children. Look at how they end up.
Studies
A paper published in the Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal by Bruno M. Cormier, M.D., Miriam Kennedy and Jadwiga Stangowicz, Psychodynamics of Father Daughter Incest (published 1962?), available in pdf, is startling. Cormier was a early forensic scientist, way ahead of his time. The paper indeed provides insight into why my father fixated on one sister in particular, and why every day for the rest of the time he was free, he displayed some of the most evil behavior any man can manage. Indeed, such was this fixation that it compromised his behavior in every aspect of his life and ended in his own demise.
In the paper, the authors presented two cases of father-daughter incest. Both men were prosecuted. Both unrealistically believed that reconciliation was possible and that they could return to family life even after incarceration. Both accepted that there was a problem, but that’s questionable: were they acknowledging a problem because they honestly knew there was one, or because they got caught?
In one case the father had more than one daughter along with several sons. He paid little mind to the boys but doted on his eldest daughter until she was 14, then began the incestuous relationship. She became his wife in his mind, replacing his wife who no longer gave any reaction to sex, although she never refused him. The term, in the 1960s, for a wife who was unresponsive in sex or didn’t engage in it at all, was “frigid”. A debasing word to be sure, but to western men it’s typical of their attitude toward women. Indeed, if the paper was published in 1962, then cases that began in the 1950s or earlier were no doubt studied. Women, treated even more badly than today, were expected to be wives and mothers who ran the home, did the shopping, raised the children and had supper on the table at 6 p.m. Afterward, when the children were in their beds asleep, they would pour their husbands a drink and be ready to open their legs if their men wanted sex. It was an unwritten law.
The men in the cases presented were unsatisfied with their marriage. One had extramarital affairs, but guilt broke that up. By the time he started the incest, he found in his daughter the things he sought, both from his mother, who had been too firm, and from his wife. The daughter would use blackmail on him for money or nice things, but eventually abruptly left and got a job in Montreal. On her first visit back home, she reported him and he went to prison.
The other man took all four daughters to be his to initiate into or teach them “how to”, regarding each as property or in some way a possession. With one in particular, his “first”, he was jealous, very suppressive of anything she wanted or needed to do. No dating, no time alone with a brother. He was exactly like my father. Except that, when the man in the study tried it with his youngest daughter, she fled and told a neighbor and he too went to prison. All four testified against him.
The Smith Family
At an early age, my sister (second of four) and I were sat down to watch 8mm movies with both parents. One was titled “Mr. Fix-it”. Yes, I really do remember. Just thinking about it now will have me sick for a week. I’ll press on.
Several times following that night we were put together in the same room while our father had sex (rape) with my sister while our mother performed oral sex (sexual assault) on me.
He must have thought he’d done wrong, because after those few times they kept us apart. Let me be clear: by then he had already taken up his mental conditioning and pitted my sisters against me. I hated them, except for the eldest who I have no eyewitness accounts of sexual abuse from our father. And I did try to look out for my younger sister, but she was far more conditioned than I, and would push me past my ability to restrain my temper. True, I took beatings for them. Better me than them. I hated violence against girls even if I did hit my sister, the one I knew was involved. That was in grade school though and I’ve never forgotten it or forgiven myself.
By high school, dad’s paranoia and possessiveness had grown to promethean levels. I drove to school with her and, as I told the story in my blog “Nineteen Seventy Eight” I had a condom break one night when I was with my girlfriend. I left it in the car by mistake, under the seat. Well, he found it. His accusation, followed by an hours-long inquisition, was that I had been having sex with sister Second-of-Four. But it was ludicrous. I hated her. I mean, really hated her. By then she was so hateful that I got used to her telling my father shit that he could never have known. She spied on me. Lord, he’d trained her well.
I eventually heard from her long after she’d moved out and gotten married. For a short time, working as a nurse, she had an apartment in Glen Burnie. You know he hated that. It’s like the case where the girl moved to Montreal. But my sister was still too close to home. Dad demanded a copy of her house key. She refused. He responded by knocking on her door day and night, waiting for her to leave for work, and generally terrorized her.
Oh, he sexually abused the two younger daughters too. And my youngest brother. He was taken for testosterone therapy by a quack country doctor to increase his penis size. Yeah, like that works. How could two parents claiming to be teaching us about sex be so stupid? Well, they managed it.
Actually when it comes to incest, a lot of parents like to claim their son’s or daughter’s virginity and say that they’re “teaching” them about sex. In one of the cases from the 1962 Canadian publication, the father claimed exactly that. Implying it was his right and his duty to show his daughter how, only to discover that she “knew more” than he had anticipated.
And he must have felt cheated and angry, believing that she wasn’t even a virgin, or at least had engaged in some kind of sexual contact.
The possessiveness continued both with my father for my sister and with my mother for me long after both of us were married. In the study, one girl was described as married and well adjusted.
Just as with my half brother who is still mystified by my enduring and worsening condition, he seems so untouched by it all.
Appearances can be deceptive. I know better. He may not have the troubles I do, but nobody comes from incestuous parents and gets away unhurt. Nobody.
I can’t say that I know of or have studied any adult-onset incestuous relationships, in other words, sexual relations initiated between adults and their parents. I must leave it to “consenting” adults to ruin their lives if they feel they must. But the adult raised in incest is never well-adjusted. Some do handle it better than others, sure. But what you don’t see is the hidden, deeply buried pain and memories they usually master on their own. To go to treatment, to see a therapist, is to open that deep hole and face things they know they can’t handle, so they don’t. They will never admit that the past hounds them just as much as any other victim. Indeed, the pain of other victims is rarely noticed.
But the difference is a mystery; why does it happen, how is it possible and why do others spend the rest of their lives as I have?
I’ve been promiscuous, a drug addict, an alcoholic, a sex addict, an adulterer, a porn addict, and not once have I ever had a “normal” relationship with a woman. I’ve loved very much, but always knew it wasn’t going to end well.
I became a voyeur and a porn addict and after marriage would buy hardcore magazines and masturbate in my car because my wife could not fully replace what my parents had made me want. Two 8mm movies. That’s all it took. I’d have times when it was more satisfying to masturbate while looking at pictures than having real sex. The fact that I got caught a couple of times by women walking beside my car and who even, in so doing, witnessed an ejaculation, just thrilled me more, made it more appealing. I was in hell. And I didn’t even know it.
I can forgive the authors of the study for using the term “well adjusted”. Back in 1962, the same year my sister Second-of-Four was born, trauma wasn’t as widely recognized or understood as it is today, and post traumatic stress disorder was not yet a psychiatric diagnosis. What we know as dissociative thinking was considered back then to be daydreaming or, perhaps, a reaction to street drugs, depressants and psychedelics mostly.
I am forced to wonder if the victims ever reported nightmares or anxiety that restrained certain activities. Because usually the victim doesn’t associate those with past trauma until diagnosis, should they ever seek help. But in 1962, I wonder if the authors would have made that association. They were obviously ahead of their time, keen researchers and analysts, but they were the beginning of learning the extent of damage caused by incest. I’m gratified to know that the four sisters stuck together and were so courageous, but the authors do note that cases where daughters turned on their fathers were hardly unknown.
After years of research myself, I’m no closer to being over the damage, understanding the mechanisms or the problem of child abuse and incest, or why such a horrible thing is so pervasive. I don’t understand the aftereffects on victims or the sexual dysfunction. What made me a voyeur and an exhibitionist, a porn addict, a horrible boyfriend and husband? I’m further away from peace than I ever was, and I’m haunted by the past. I would never do those things now, but I’m also diagnosed and in treatment. I can be fairly objective in researching this topic, but in the end, the accumulation of horror stories only trigger me more. I climb back into a hole with walls around it where nobody can get to me. And I stay there with my god damned memories.
(1.) – On forums (remember Penthouse Forum?), message boards and porn sites that accommodate story submissions, presently incarcerated men have been widely known for their stories, in both first and third person narratives, of sex between women and animals, incestuous relationships with their fathers or brothers, and other very degrading behaviors. Clearly they’ve committed some sort of crime that has netted them an extended period behind bars. The nature of the crimes is, on the surface, easily deduced and yet there’s no way to know. The only clear fact is that some stories are written by the same people; women are deemed trash, and the writing fills some sort of need to degrade women.
We can guess that their upbringing and development was interrupted by divorce, that the mother was either absent, overbearing or negligent. Anything else is invalid based on the fact that all cases must be evaluated individually by trained professionals.
Kinsey’s handouts were clearly taken as fact, ignoring the obvious need for lewd fabrications by some participants. Claims of pedophilia and rape, bestiality and adultery, even masturbatory behavior, must therefore be considered fiction.
Warning: this blog contains graphic discussions of both adult language and themes as well as violence. Some people may be triggered by this and I advise care when reading. I don’t want you hurt.
Not long ago, I was trapped in a group home with a monster. The guy’s mental illness was ten times the sum of everyone else’s in the 7-person home, and he scared me. Badly.
I’m not afraid of much. I spent my childhood and many years afterward terrified of everything. When a bully scares you too many times, though, he loses his power over you. Your fear will vanish and be replaced by thoughts so evil that murder is the least evil thought you have. Thoughts of slow torture, terrorism and after extracting every ounce of pain, draining the last of a person’s soul, then you will let them die.
Chris was a schizophrenic who every weekend visited his way too-elderly parents and always came back on Sunday night drunk, against the strict rules of the program. A rehabilitation program. A program he was never fit for because he was obviously too far gone.
One night after a weekend of hard liquor binging, he came home and pushed me into a corner. He had bullied me before, but nothing like this night. Eventually the police were called. He was suspended for a week. Then he came back. Management was always like that. Before expelling a resident they have dozens of steps the offender has to tick off. He was just getting started.
But then he came at me again. He said something and I told him to shut his trap. I went to the office to talk to my caregiver, and he came through and said something in passing that I judged a bit too much, as if he was testing me. I wasn’t having it. I just wanted to kill him. I said, “Hey. You don’t talk to me like that.”
And when I get that way, which is rare, I’m scary. He knew I’d do it. He knew I wanted to kill him.
And part of me wonders even now, if I should have killed him while I had the chance and enough cold disregard for his life to slice and dice him.
It came closer to happening than I ever would have thought. Me, kill another human being in cold blood? How could I? How could I even think so casually about doing it?
I’m not a good Christian. But I am a Christian. We don’t murder other people.
I had been pushed way too far. A coward doesn’t like to be scared. I hated it. And I wasn’t scared anymore.
He asked for and secured a transfer to another home. And this is where I have the awful thought that I should have killed him when it was in my power to do so.
Because about three years later, in the woods near his group home, he dragged a little girl to where she couldn’t be heard and spent a whole day raping her repeatedly. I tried, after hearing about it, to find an article or an arrest report online. There was nothing. Rumours said she was 16. Nope. Had to be even younger if the girl’s name and her rapist’s name couldnt be found. That happens when authorities want to protect the victim. I know, because I was a victim too.
But he was found, identified and arrested. I thought he would go away for at least a decade.
He didn’t. I saw him when getting my covid vaccines. That was a shock. Mainly that our system fucking refuses to give rape victims the justice they deserve. But also because I know that it’s not a matter of if, but when, he will re-offend.
His first victim is damaged for life. Excuse me, let us not mince words here. She’s fucked up for life.
Any shithead alpha males who want to tell me that she probably asked for it I’ll have something for. Goddamn idiots. I’ve heard that dumb shit all my life: a woman in summer clothes walks by. Some asshole pervert says to his buddy, “No wonder there’s rape.”
Monsters!
When this animal rapes again, someone else will suffer. Long after he’s dead, they’ll go from feeling eternally soiled to the shame, guilt and humiliation of it, then feel suicidal, then, if they survive, cycle right back through it. Counseling and drug therapy can help, but there is no cure for a goddamn thing no one should ever have to be put through.
If he was prosecuted and imprisoned, and he was, then the girl was courageous and had a rape kit done and she testified or was deposed. Either way that was even more trauma. And I…
I could have stopped it. Me. I had it in my power to end him, and I didn’t, and now a young woman is growing up in pain and a forever feeling that life isn’t worth the pain you go through.
So how am I to deal with this? Should I feel proud of myself for not committing murder even though I knew he was dangerous? I thought he was homicidal, but a rapist? I should have seen it. I knew about bullies and their need to control and dominate. Same as rapists. I goddamn knew and I let him live. I spared his life. He then ruined the life of another.
And he will again. Because that’s what rapists do.
How to judge myself, and how will God judge me? Are there not times when we see the truth, but fail to act, and in doing what we think moral, actually commit an immoral act? Do others not count, can we even say that, and how can I justify not having saved that child from a lifetime of pain?
Is there a way to know, to really know the consequences of our actions as well as our inactions?
Of course not.
I feel terrible about the girl. I feel terrible about his next victim. And if I had known the future, then yes. I would have killed him.
But we can know a dangerous person. We can be sure of their potential for causing harm. We cannot kill based on the instinct or insight no matter how powerful it is. Any good police officer will tell you that a person who has not committed a crime cannot be arrested.
And so it is not for any of us to destroy life based on intuition. It’s murder, and once done, we never get to know if we were even right.
And yet I’m haunted. Over what happened and how I might have stopped it.
It is a pain I wish I never had to know.
But it is nothing compared to that of a girl violated by a monster, the very worst kind of monster.
You know what the monster did the next day? He went around telling people that he had a new girlfriend!
There is murder and vengeance in my heart. It does not belong there, but I can’t get rid of it. And I’m bitter. Why am I sitting here crying about it when I have normal feelings for once in my life? The feelings are natural reactions to the utterly horrible things that happen, to us. To others. Because of us. Because of others. Because as real as you may think God isn’t, there’s surely a devil. And don’t we love him, don’t we at least act like we do?
I’m thankful for nothing in this case. I grieve and seethe with silent rage. I am, at the end of the day, still an asshole, and I will always be an asshole.
Here in the United States, we set aside one day, the last Monday in the month of May, to honor the memory of all who have fallen while serving the country in uniform.
For some, and I’m ashamed to say it, this extended weekend means nothing more than the traditional start of the summer barbecue season. Public swimming pools around the country open, summer clothing prices drop for special sales, bikinis are purchased based on this year’s trending fashion, and garage doors stand open while guys who seldom get their hands dirty tune up their riding lawn mowers. I’m not without sympathy, the wounds these guys carry to the ER make me snort with laughter.
In places not many people ever remember or even hear the names of, there are services in memory of the brave men and women who died in the line of duty. This year, 18 soldiers, airmen, marines and others fell. Nobody will know their names, save family and friends, because we have as a nation numbed ourselves to the point where the faces and the names are nothing.
Or perhaps I am wrong, and it was always this way. That’s history before the Vietnam War, before my time. I hate the idea that we were always this way, but I’ve never seen anything to the contrary. A paragraph in a history book for a battle, a biography on a general, a portrait, a statue. That is all that we will give them for all the things we have enjoyed or continue to fight for.
Once, during World War Two, it might have been different. We as a nation honored and supported in every way the service men and women in the European and Pacific theaters of the most dreadful conflict the world has ever known. It is because we were attacked first, a sleeping giant, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto called us. On learning that our aircraft carriers were not found at Pearl Harbor, he knew the operation had filled that giant with a “terrible resolve” and he was not unfamiliar with us; he had spent time in America and even attended college. He had traveled and he knew very well what we were capable of, even if, on 8 December of 1941, we did not.
Internment camps for Japanese immigrants and Japanese citizens of the United States were locked up in plywood shanties surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. Then we proceeded to show the industrial might Yamamoto had warned his country about while we also displayed hysterical and reactive hatred and bigotry. He knew we would do that, too.
After Churchill and Stalin insisted that they would help us defeat the Japanese, but Germany had to be defeated first, we engaged in both theaters, and my God what about ugly show we humans put on. Had Hitler not defeated his own forces in the end with his insanely stupid and wasteful tactics, leaving his country in ruins, and had the nuclear weapons been used on Japan months later, it could all have kept going until humanity was almost wiped out.
Things done differently, you and I would not be sharing this time together. We may not have been born at all. If not for the United States, do we want to imagine where the Berlin Wall might have otherwise been? Perhaps it wouldn’t have been necessary; suppose that it was the English Channel which marked the extent of Soviet Union territory.
We and our allies combined to do the impossible. We beat Nazi Germany and gave Stalin something to think about. Now, here we are.
After VE and VJ day, it seemed that the prominence of American armed forces did nothing but get us involved in conflicts we had no business engaging in.
That’s a matter of opinion; many South Koreans would say that they hate having their country divided, but considering the glaringly painful alternative, they’re better off. Was the Korean Conflict a waste?
I’ve known veterans of both WWII and Korea. Some served in both. The stories they told me were never detailed. The men I knew were tough without doubt, heavy drinkers and smokers and hard workers who knew how to cuss just enough so their words had weight. You listened to such men, even if you thought of them as bastards or pricks.
In my case it has taken hindsight and accumulated experience to realize many were dreadfully affected but silent. Whatever happened to them to change them into angry and abrupt people, it was a closed subject.
We know what it was like because plenty of accounts have survived, but outside of the nonfiction section in the library, they might as well have been away for vacation.
Newsreels and articles in the papers were censored, but in every war, there were always a few who broke the taboo and spoke. Mostly, it violated a code of conduct veterans stuck with for the rest of their lives.
The Vietnam veterans I knew were different. Most weren’t complaining, but being in combat had changed so many in drastic ways. They openly gave details because they had trouble living with the horrors they’d endured. Marriages ended. Suicides and hospitalizations were all too common. Arrests were made for everything from shoplifting to homicide. And it is no myth that protesters publicly abusing them added to their trauma. They stopped wearing dress uniforms and medals. Marks of achievement were the badges of shame.
They had not fled to Canada, burned their draft cards or even tried to escape the draft with medical or educational deferments. They went, and came back with parts of their bodies or minds damaged or missing. An ungrateful nation threw rocks and called them names. It was a shameful time in our history.
President Johnson had done good things, but his reelection was doomed by the war. What we remember is flag-draped coffins and nightly news stories on the networks. Something had changed.
Vets found out that other vets who had been cooks or clerks were bragging or bitching about the Nam, and the combat veteran had a dirty name for those. They called them REMFs, or “Rear Echelon Motherfuckers.”
How dare they claim benefits or talk to reporters when they might just as well have been home the whole time?
However the split in reality happened, or when it happened, doesn’t matter. Anywhere from 1964 to 1970, America changed.
The young generation never got over the guilt it caused, and, much later, insisted on supporting troops. Most people gave lip service about the modern veteran, but it shows up as the empty words and platitudes that it is. Only recently has it been revealed that Agent Orange has caused damage still being discovered in surviving veterans, and only now is compensation and treatment being discussed. We never stopped turning deaf ears to them. We have never stopped eating our own.
***
I doubt very many people even know or care that 18 service members died this past year. I believe they would, on being told, say “That’s it?” And then forget it as they rub their noses on their smartphones.
The job of recruiting may never have been more difficult than it is today. We’ve turned into a nation of indifferent and unpatriotic slobs. The attack on our Capitol building in January proved that if nothing else, democracy is not even a tangible concept to a generation of loons who shouted Trump’s name while beating Capitol police and shitting on the floors of the House and Senate chambers. They all had death on their mind, the deaths of the House leader and vice president at the very least.
To add to such terrorism and dishonor, and in fact to condone it, word comes of a filibuster to stop an investigation. If you thought in grade school that Benedict Arnold was a son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that you had it right. And that’s what I think of Snowden and the Walkers and everyone else who turns traitor, including Senator Joe Manchin (D-WVA). It has been traitors who, at times, have cost us the lives of our own. Damaged our security. Dishonored themselves and their country as if it were nothing more than deciding to go for a walk.
I don’t know why this is happening. But the Republican party has turned on the people of the United States and in so doing diminished even more the sacrifice of their lives of our military men and women, especially now. They are trying to make the service to our country by veterans and our honored dead meaningless, all of it in vain.
There can be no greater dishonor.
This Memorial Day, I will remember. I’ll give thanks. I’ll pray for the souls of the departed to be given peace in God’s hands. And for their families to be able to grieve and ask for help should they need it. They more than anyone else should see Republicans trying to take away the very things we Americans have fought for, and died for.
To all of our current military personnel and veterans, I thank you. Your service and personal sacrifice means so much more than even you can know. You are part of something bigger than yourselves and you swore an oath in good faith and with honor. God bless and keep you.
How far back does your memory go, and what would you say if I asked you about your earliest memories of the things you feared the most?
Everyone has or has had a boogeyman. For me, I’m not sure if you have read it, but something was in my room, and it terrorized me. I could even see it, and in my archives you can find the story.
But that’s not what I’m writing about tonight. It’s not a supernatural monster I’m referring to, either.
A web image search has provided nothing. The word searches, nothing. As far as the world is concerned, it never existed. But I know it was real.
In 1964, I remember it. By 1966, it had ruined my summer life. It came on a regular schedule, two days a week, but I don’t remember which ones. Its arrival was announced suddenly, no warning given. The monster was just there.
It was orange. Today I would know that color as Safety Orange, a color now reserved for certain brands of heavy equipment but replaced mostly by Safety Yellow.
The beast had a roar. It was fierce. And even if the neighborhood kids laughed at me for running indoors where my mother was closing windows that faced the street, I’m still here while some others are gone. Cancer, premature aging complications. Whatever.
This extraordinary writer has not only the best image I could find (it’s the one at the top) but he describes perfectly the same terror it induced in me. Please go read this excellent and humorous article.
The monster was a straight truck; that is to say, not a combination vehicle like a tractor-trailer rig. It was a truck with frame extended to house a flatbed deck. On this deck were a large tank behind the cab, then a huge drum sprayer that sprayed insecticide up at the trees lining the street, but it was so powerful that the droplets always went over the house and into the back yard, right onto the ground where our well was.
The monster’s sprayer was so powerful that I can still hear it, have never forgotten it, will still hear it as long as I live. The leaves and branches being blown as if some storm were coming is both a vision and a sound that still plays in my mind like a film loop. A horror movie in shorthand.
The deck had a seat for an operator to the immediate right. He was on the rear end of the deck.
Although he directed the angle of the sprayer, up or down, and could also turn the deck at shallow angles to his left or right, the deck could not be turned to face the left side of the vehicle. He always faced right.
This made it necessary for the driver to ride down the street, turn around, and come back to spray the side which was across the street. So far, we have two runs on my street. The neighborhood was not the one street, but almost some elliptic loop with a few side streets. And the street on the side of the neighbor’s house across the street from me was so close that he’d get us again. Then I heard the truck turn around at the top of my street (Dutch Ship Road) where it met that street (Edgewater Road) and go back down the other side. That’s four near passes so far. It terrified me.
But worse perhaps was the spray operator. He was the same guy, for years, and his weathered, expressionless face was washed of natural colors. Hardhat and gloves with his SHA uniform but no gas mask. I knew after a while that he had seen me running. I got the feeling he rather enjoyed it.
After writing about this in a Facebook group some years ago, someone commented that she was related to the Old Man of the Orange Monster of North Shore. I don’t remember what she said.
Being away for the 1970 Brood X cicada event, which I wrote about previously, made me think of why, on returning home, I heard none of the din that should still have been lingering. In other words, it should have been too soon for the event to have been completely over.
That made me remember the Orange Monster, which wasn’t grounded until a year or two later. And by grounded, that is exactly what I mean. Passing the SHA garage and yard in the autumn of 1973, I saw the decks with sprayers still attached sitting on the gravel, the trucks with their long frames either auctioned off or fitted with light dump truck bins.
Spraying the state had been outlawed.
During the terrible reign of the monster, yes, birds fell out of trees. Hell. Nests fell to the ground, knocked out after being dislodged by the beast’s dragon breath. Yep. They had pretty, delicate robin’s eggs in them. Dead bugs fell like rain. Moths, bees, caterpillars and other airborne or tree dwellers. You name it.
Sometimes bats would get all screwy and run into a house, then fall into the grass. People were afraid that these occasional victims were rabid, but bats can do things like that (maybe they’re extraterrestrial beings that have not adapted well).
Seriously, I don’t know the extent of damage to wildlife but the book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson published in 1962 was a damning assessment of pesticide use and its consequences to the environment. Chemicals wound up in waterways, wells, vegetable and grain harvests and more, and ultimately affected us.
She was more right than any detail she may have erred on. Of course, she was promptly and savagely attacked by corporations and the political right, which combined were effective in reducing her credibility and in the process made her appear to be a crank scholar. Worst of all, she was a woman, and fair game for sexist behavior from those who opposed her conclusions.
DDT
One reason I did not hear much of Brood X on my return from Carolina was that one of the properties of DDT that made it appealing was that it readily got absorbed by insects through their exoskeletons. So cicadas, hoppers, crickets and all insects with exoskeletons were wiped out almost on contact. While it wasn’t as well absorbed by mammals through contact with the epidermis, prolonged or repeated contact was eventually found to potentially cause cancer.
The reason it was eventually banned in the United States was the possibility that it was a carcinogen, and retained for long periods of time in the soil or plants, with a half life of about 15 years, give or take, so it kept killing pests well after applications.
That kind of killing power made it highly desirable; it showed this power during World War Two in the efforts to battle malaria and even Bubonic plague. It eradicated bedbugs in the states, along with body lice and other nasties, and was sprayed on everything from cotton to tomato crops. It was effective at disease control in Germany in 1943-44 with typhus.
However, and surely Carson had done excellent research, DDT was impossible to use without repeated applications, and in a marine or freshwater ecosystem, where runoff accumulated, the half life turned into a staggering 150 years. By 1972, experts had presented Carson’s case, now backed up with a wealth of anecdotal evidence, to the effect that in the United States it was banned.
The Orange Monster’s roar ceased, and it was seen no more.
With such a half life, and with the fierce attack it inflicted on the central nervous system, I’m forced to think back to 1970 and I hear the words: “Silent Spring”.
I remember how ignorant I was. Naive. Cicadas were, to me, locusts. That’s what I was told. They brought plagues and were themselves a plague. I had a natural aversion to insects and that became a phobia because I saw the hysteria apparent in others when dealing with them.
For pity’s sake, you’d think they were facing off with snakes, and none of that helped me. My own phobia extended well into my adulthood but is mostly a memory now.
I’ve gone outside at night this past week to smoke. In the short time it took, up to five cicadas would drop from the tree, climb up my pants legs or down my shirt, and hitch a ride inside. There was a time I’d have been sobbing in hysterical revulsion. Now I just get rid of them. I release some outside, but opening the door risks more coming in. So I give them a ride down the U-bend to the stygian ferry. It’s a shame. They really are remarkable creatures. Fascinating. And with birds gorging on them, the food chain is a greased machine this year. Quite amazing, actually.
Yes. The Orange Monster was real. I hid from it. I had nightmares of it. And yes, the dangers off DDT were also real.
Now that the story is told, I ask again: what was your boogeyman? I challenge you to write about it. As a blogger, unless you have a specialized sponsor, you are free to explore your passions, your fears, your past. And why not engage? You have experience and insight no one else does. The world is a sick place. Make it better.
This is my first time seeing Brood X come out and play.
In 1970 I was in North Carolina and it wasn’t happening down there. In 1987 I was in Texas. In 2004 I was in North Carolina again. Now, in 2021, I’m getting a first.
And it’s a plague.
You should hear them. It’s loud. Day and night they drone on in the distance, so numerous that there’s little deviation and just a constant tone unless the swarms move, which seems to be a group activity since the cicadas are so keen to mate. But there’s that fungus waiting to eat their genitals away and provide some coitus interruptus. Even bugs are in danger from fungi.
Because COVID-19 is not over, I disagree with the casual attitudes of some people. Hosting parties was never anything that stopped, but the light is green now for small ones and the honor system is the method by which all behaviour is now kept to “safe” levels. That’s going to be effective. Sure it will. Sure it will.
With people out and about, unmasked, I’m not sure what to think about the threats we face. Just how serious is our situation, and what measures can we take, and what weapons are available to us?
Candida auris. It began to show up in patients who had COVID-19 in 2020. A yeast fungus, the spores can invade through a minor cut, by inhalation and perhaps more. So far it has a one third mortality rate in hospitalized patients. It seems to attack, through blood, the kidneys and liver and has probably made pneumonia in covid patients worse.
Empowered by our poor judgement in the use of antibiotics and antifungal medicines, it has grown resistant and threatens immunosuppressed patients on treatments for other conditions including CoV-2. It can take advantage of rheumatoid arthritis patients and others and that’s about all I know. Except for the fact that it won’t be magically disappearing. It’s a true and legitimate threat.
It is our next plague, not animal nor plant, but alive and deadly all the same.
On first observation in the covid pandemic, scientists were highly alarmed at C. auris. We know why, don’t we? Because we’ve been exposed to it and other fungi all our lives. Everything from mold and mildew are old familiar foes, same as with athlete’s foot and jock itch to yeast infections. Nobody likes them and nobody thinks they’re funny.
Well…maybe I’ve had a joke or two. I am, after all, an asshole. One day a man in a Corvette convertible was next to me at a red light. He looked as smug and pretty as the typical ‘Vette driver usually is. I simply looked at him. I turned my head, which made him look at me. Deadpan, I said, “I have jock itch.”
I pulled off when the light was green and he fell behind. I smiled, knowing I had perhaps ruined his day. He was uncomfortable; his eyes had bulged. His face showed that he was not thrilled with my cross-lane declaration. And I so loved shocking people. He probably never forgot it.
But Candida auris is not jock itch. No situation can accommodate a joke about it.
To make it into the human body a fungus must be able to withstand body temperature. Most had trouble doing that for a long time but not now. Because of global warming, all kinds of pests have adapted to warm temperatures and have been observed alive and well in the bloodstream.
Things I’ve never seen or been much aware of in my lifetime are now in the spotlight. We are not in a very good position.
We’ve all been careless, inattentive and shortsighted. When that finally comes to haunt us, really haunt us, we will lament, and yet still point the finger at others in accusation.
Candida. It’s been around and we naturally have close relationships with it. What changed, that now it kills immunosuppressed people? I need to do some research, but in starting to do so, have found only ads in the guise of “documentaries”. God, are we really gullible and stupid enough not to see what liars and the hawkers of “remedies” are filling us with?
Candida isn’t new. It’s just that during the early days of COVID-19, doctors noticed that immune system depression facilitated it. And that it killed.
It was commonplace, a nuisance. Now, a known threat.
How ironic, at least to me. In 1970, the first year I missed Brood X, Candida meant nothing until this song was released:
Brood X is loud. Having never seen this, I’m amazed, you should be here, you should see them falling off me when I’ve come in after smoking for five minutes. And you should hear this.
My apologies to friends in African countries, the Indus, Australia and Southeast Asian countries, because you put up with much worse. Forgive me. You’re tougher, wiser and have nerves of steel compared to most of us Yanks.
I wonder what the orchestra leader known for his speech and good nature would say about this. A man who plagued my childhood when I would have preferred to watch just about anything else, his bubbles and his music were as exciting as watching the rain from my bedroom window. I guess, however, that some of his music infected me, like an invasive species destined to become a parasite and cause me endless confusion about who I was.
As years rolled on, I was doomed, only getting Baltimore AM radio and listening one second to the Beatles, followed without commercial break by Cliff Nobles and then Gladys Knight and the Pips. And the mix was really pretty good, especially since I’d hear Anne Murray next, then Bread, then Led Zeppelin. All for the price of a string of ads that made today’s breaks look like the marathons of torment that they are. The good old days of AM.
Welk was lampooned endlessly and even played himself on a dizzying and hilarious episode of Here’s Lucy. At least that’s how I remember it. You know Lucy. Her brand of G-rated comedy is forever gone, and I’m sorry for that. She always got us with some kooky plot and took us for a ride. One episode had her bragging that she knew Lawrence Welk although she really didn’t. She tries to pretend that a dummy likeness of Welk is real, but her kids have gone behind her and actually gotten the band leader to visit. Front and center was the phrase, “Wunnerful, wunnerful.”
But the man who left the world behind and made his wife of 61 years a widow was like that. And what can be more honorable than gentle, self-effacing humor and a marriage that lasted more than half a century, with three children raised?
Today I can listen to and enjoy any genre of music. Except death metal and gangsta.
Right now in my region the “Generation X” or 17-year cicadas are coming up from the soil, ready to mate and propagate the species. But as scientists a century ago noted, soils in the region contain a fungus that makes the males crazy for sex and makes two thirds of their bodies fall off. Including of course their genitals. Instead, spores take the place of their packages and the fungus is spread during any subsequent attempts to mate. What a hilarious situation, making me think of the human male: bent on, and always scheming, to copulate. I wish some of their packages would fall off.
What a wunnerful world it would be.
These dropped 30 minutes after I last swept the porch. They’re a nuisance and on the street I hear them crunched under the tires of passing cars. It should revolt me but it’s hilarious knowing their Johnsons are gonna fall off. Wish some men had the problem.
While getting my second COVID-19 vaccination I saw a whiteboard scribbled with a bad attempt at poetry. It was about someone whose identity I knew immediately. It went something like, “If you love me, then leave me the hell alone.”
It’s unremarkable until you consider that the workplace is large. And worse when you get that he aimed it at a co-worker. The really bad part is that they not only had a relationship, but that the relationship produced a child.
Excuse me, but that’s some cold shit. Words meant to hurt, for all to see. It is why some companies try to restrict their employees from even dating. It’s understood that after work, there may be gatherings for drinks, but sex is always a bad idea. Romance is really frowned on because when it ends, it often gets pretty intense and ugly. Bad for business to say the very least.
While I can’t possibly tell you a lie, like how human beings can control who they are attracted to or who they fall in love with, I maintain that when things get complicated, the workplace is the last place you want the aftermath to be seen. I’ve seen it happen and bullet holes in a car because of it. Don’t. Date. Anyone. At. Work.
Now the man in this story, he’s human. He couldn’t control who he was attracted to. He couldn’t control his package either, as the resulting child makes abundantly obvious.
But emotions can make anyone do hateful things, or do what’s necessary but in a hateful way.
I say this guy is behaving in such a way that he has caused undue harm which everyone now knows about. That’s something that has a cost, a price which comes due and never expires. We know, in the end, he will be paid back by fate. By karma. By God or whoever or whatever it is that evens up with shitheads like this typical man.
Some things never change.
Some do.
There was a time when such a thing would have caused trouble, and plenty of talk. I heard it decades ago, before the term “just living together” was a thing. I thought it was immoral because that’s what I was taught. Paul Anka made waves in conservative (at that time almost exclusively white) America with his song “(You’re) Having My Baby”, because it was taken that the first-person accounts from the male and then the female in the song were not married. In reality the song explicitly says she didn’t have to do it, she could have had an abortion. So conservative pro-lifers should have liked the song. They have never thought like that, and they never will. They screw their credibility with contradictory stances, statements and deeds.
Conservatives trying to void the election results and the Q movement are doing the same thing. Some idiot lawyer whose name is Lin Wood spouts contradictory bullshit, citing God as being behind Trump, who is still running the government from behind the scenes. During a speech he said that if the military needs a first strike they’ll call Trump for the codes. Adrenaline surging through his veins he then struts the stage, obviously eyeing up the blondes in the back of the stage, then goes on to call Obama, Biden and Bush (?) child sex traffickers.
The jerkoff then says, “Send this video to Hollywood! Send it to the House of Windsor! Send it to the Illuminati!”
What the hell is he talking about and why is he being cheered? Because all of those are involved in right-wing conspiracy theories that are nuts. So nutty in fact that any left-wing fantasy, past or present, is paled by mere cursory comparison. You don’t have to eat a whole apple to know it’s rotten, and this stuff reeks so much that anyone getting close to it must be really sick. They’re missing something that prevents the rest of us from poisoning ourselves on food that stinks to high Heaven, it’s so rancid.
Note: it is United States policy not to make first strikes. Such a thing as a strike would require detection of a launch from another power. Wood is off his rocker. And Trump doesn’t have nuclear weapons codes. Anyone who thinks that is nuttier than squirrel scat.
But if we are even casual students of history, we know that a biased, crazy white man can talk crazy and still gain a tremendous following.
Hitler practiced speeches in front of a mirror. History shows that he knew his craft well enough to kill 6 million Jews.
Most of the world knew immediately how dangerous Donald Trump really was. Most of it knows that he is even more dangerous now. Although it is a breach of protocol, the mess in Arizona has spread to Georgia, where a judge ordered a recount and inspection of ballots in Fulton County. The plot to unseat Biden continues. It’s not going away. Like some fungus that makes cicadas go off the deep end, it is not funny enough to just laugh at (it could pose a threat later. Word searches about psilocybin which the fungus produces in the infected insects, the same psychedelic compound in magic shrooms, indicate that people are trying to find out if they can trip by consuming cicadas. No, really. If you have Google set on finishing possible searches related to your first word typed, and you see something there, it’s been searched. And knowing how silly and daring we American fools can be, I would say the searches are by now well into the millions). In January a patient with bipolar disorder went off his medication and tried to self medicate with boiled shroom tea which he injected. The fungus attacked his whole body, liver, kidneys, lungs, and he’s lucky to be alive today.
That’s not even the weirdest “drug misadventure” I’ve heard.
Why are we doing this? Why are we letting it go so wrong? What makes us so damned self destructive?
Even as a ceasefire was negotiated in Israel, a man wearing a yarmulke was attacked and beaten here, in America. He’s not alone. Antisemitism is alive and well.
I understand hate. We all do. We’ve all been targets of it. No one gets out of here without tasting the bitterness of hatred, or hating someone else or even some thing like a job. It can eat you inside out. And when it is let loose, violence often happens.
You know what I hate? Bigotry. Racial hatred and violence. There is no good reason for any of it. Nothing justifies it, yet the threat it represents is lost on those who hate. Saying “Hitler was right” while you’re assaulting a Jewish man is a harsh example of the terrible danger this country, and the world, is in.
Don’t be a part of it.
We can settle differences and disputes. We can talk to each other and listen. We can learn that we can make friends with anyone. That once we get to know another person, it becomes more difficult to hate them so long as they, too are willing to face you and do the same.
But how can we ever get anything right when on a basic level, a man cannot be strong or selfless enough to stand by his child and its mother?
I’ll say that we as a species have the potential for more greatness than we know. But we have turned our planet into a sewer and a toxic waste dump. We’re killing off animal species so fast that our future will be different in ways we cannot now anticipate. Deforestation by humans and wildfires like the one currently going on, which was deliberately set, are decreasing oxygen to noticeable levels. Whole towns are built over and on the sides or bases of volcanoes without regard for the toll if they erupt. We take chances and we dare fate to do anything about it. Find an old, stout tree and climb it. The branches are big enough to walk on. But go too far and you’re done for. So many people climb or attempt to climb Everest that traffic alone risks lives. A lot of people get left up there because they can’t be brought back. We build and buy waterfront homes and disrespect the power of typhoons, tsunamis and hurricanes. And yet we have all the information we need to know how foolish it is. We have become jaded, fearless and selfish. And nobody will talk about whole families living in the streets, no chance to be rescued. We have annual Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless and pat ourselves on the back for our charity. And when the dinner is over, we forget the people who have 365 days to beg for food.
We have become barbaric and uncaring. Celebrities and politicians do things for charity and it gives them extra camera or soapbox time, but how hollow it is for people whose reality will end with their deaths from the elements or disease, their bodies found only when decomposition gets far enough along that no one can miss it.
Doctors used to say that it was a myth, dying of a broken heart. Today not as many do. Some swear it to be the cause of death; that they’ve lost patients that way. I know it happens. My broken heart will eventually kill me. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet; perhaps it is the time I spend here with you, hoping, praying that it might help in some way to give a warning, have a word or sentence stick with you, something to pass on. I would be at least useful that way. After all I’ve seen and endured, I really need to feel useful. I’ve gotten some comments that give me hope that I’ve been successful in some way. I even have followers, and that humbles and heartens me. I appreciate every like. I’m honored that people read. But I’m scared. We should all be.
This is a crossroads of history. The world is not at peace. We have caused grievous harm to it. And on a personal level we are bent on hurting each other.
I wonder if Lawrence Welk would think any of this is wunnerful.
There were times in my life, whether enabled by illness, drugs or a moment of clarity, when I wondered about the worst question I’ve ever asked.
I asked myself, or I asked my God, or the empty space around me. Didn’t matter. The question was always there.
The question is, why has humanity not learned the one thing that would save it?
I have no answer. Yet in even simple forms I have asked the question from an early age. I did not intend an attempt at being a sophist. I would never have had or understood the depth of knowledge required to do so. Survival was my main concern. I lived each day under threats and the memories of threats — some so terrible that I could never see them for what they were. Threats of worse violence than I had experienced so far in my life, of abandonment, and, by association, death. A child does not handle the concept of death well. But abandonment, that fear is even worse. My father made me get out of the car one day on Hutzler’s parking lot. Devastated and in what I now realize was shock, I walked to a sidewalk to sit down and begin my life of having no family, no home, no world.
Death? Could that be any worse than being left without anything? I could not know.
So I would, a bit later, perhaps at age 10, ask why people were so exceptionally cruel, why they revelled in the power to inflict pain. Bullies who did not know I was beaten-down saw me as a docile, frightened punching bag. My father had the idea that he would make me tough. It never occurred to him that he was instead doing the opposite. Over the years his disappointment grew. His criticism carried on long after the beatings stopped.
Why did he not see, why could he not realize, what he had done? Why didn’t he see and learn that he had been wrong?
Why do people never learn that violence and terrorism are counter to the subjugation they so desperately crave?
The question, I’ve determined, is not rhetorical. It needs an answer. It demands one.
We can be, as a species, brilliant. We can accomplish great things. In a time so far in the past that I am constantly in wonder of it, humans had civilizations which were keen planners and builders. The pyramids were not built by aliens, but by people. In Babylon, ziggurats stood tall and majestic. All after hunter-gatherers had learned agriculture and husbandry. In all that time, thousands of years, one thing remained constant. History tells the tale: we consistently feel driven to slaughter each other.
It can be a war over property, usually rich in resources. It can be one of provocation, being attacked. Or perhaps brought on by desperation following famine or a plague. The rise of ISIS was the direct result of a drought. That the group used religion to fuel their cause is hardly surprising.
In every war ever recorded by written form or archaeological evidence, we know for a fact that many people died. That is, after all, the goal: taking enough lives to get the other side to capitulate. The casualties have always included women and children, a thing we claim today constitutes war crimes. But we still do it. Why haven’t we learned?
Are humans, by nature, evil and warlike, homicidal and power-hungry? Are we thieves, taking by force that which we do not possess?
Are we so lazy that we steal instead of earning?
Do we need to feel power so much that beating children is fulfilling?
Does most of humanity, as many believe, consist of good people who allow evil to happen because they feel helpless to stop it? Do protests mean as little to those in power that there is no quarter, and never anything learned, but some things, mostly begrudgingly, conceded only in extreme cases?
Why in the world would people be moved to fight so quickly over religion? The one thing that gods seem to want the most for worshippers is prosperity. But does belief in one or more higher power dictate violence?
If a man is a Christian, why does he not follow the teachings of Christ? All people sin, but that doesn’t account for genocide, wars, oppression, exclusivity and bigotry over extended periods of time.
If humans could build pyramids, they also had sufficient knowledge to build war chariots, manufacture weapons and engage in terrible battles. In every war, the field of combat left the ground strewn with bodies, both whole and in parts, and enough blood to sicken all but the most hardened of generals. A sight, surely, to learn from. And yet it never has stopped.
Israel is at war. Right now. Today. I know that reports don’t say that. But when lobbing mortar shells and firing missiles begins, it is a war. Women, children, the elderly all die in numbers that grow daily until they lose their impact: death means nothing. Bodies in the streets…mean nothing. Perhaps a disease will break out. Covid cases might rise. No matter; what counts is who wins.
Why do people refuse to learn, or worse, to ignore the things they do learn?
The answer is required.
And it is a terrible thing, the answer. It took years, but I have at least part of it.
The answer is: people do learn. From their knowledge we get new weapons, new battle tactics, new ways to keep men alive to return them to battle.
We could use our lessons to better humanity. Sometimes we have. Never often enough. Technology and medicine advancement largely come from the demand for new ways to equip a military body.
And we sit by in silence and we do nothing because our safety depends on such a force as to overwhelm and deter any other country.
Right now we in the United States are, as always, divided. We see the news footage. Rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and Hamas mortars causing Israeli airstrikes to fell buildings and kill indiscriminately just as the rockets have. There are conflicts everywhere but the Israeli fighting is not new. While I’m neutral and want it to stop, believing both sides are wrong, there are many in my country who hate Netanyahu and think Pesident Biden should intervene and those who think Israel should kick all Palestinians out of Gaza and other territories. Neither side sees the truth.
The truth that a six-year-old girl pulled from a pulverized building’s rubble now has no family and can never be the same, the rest of her life to be filled with both waking and the nightmares of sleep. The truth being, no adult, no national leader, no general should ever have had the power or the disposition to cause her life to be so horribly affected.
I don’t know her name. But her eyes as she emerged from the rubble, I will not forget. No one should ever forget her eyes. Look at her. Look at what they have done to her. Do that, and still tell me that you support either side’s actions.
If you can do that, I have some pretty dirty things to call you.
However I think, or feel, affects nothing. I am neither a diplomat nor a leader. I am not particularly intelligent. I’ve never made a significant difference to anything or anyone. My history of being given the lash, of being brainwashed and sexually abused, it’s all here on the pages of this blog. That’s my contribution to society. It is, in all candor, the only thing I have to offer, and yet I fear that too few eyes will read the story, and fewer will get anything from it.
A child. A precious thing. To be nurtured, protected, encouraged. To watch as it grows, a miracle impossible to ever fully appreciate because we have proven that we cannot.
Tell yourselves, “But she’s alive,” and pat your own backs for being so emotionally and intellectually sophisticated.
Dolts! How can you, and how dare you? You’re not going to get out of it that easily. Such thoughts are selective, evading the other children who have been killed and suffered grievously before the mercy of passing could happen. By not standing up for them, you approve their injuries and deaths. That means you dishonor their lives and their memories; that you also disregard the worth, priceless though it is, of all human life.
Prince Harry has essentially been forced to take up for his wife because of how she was treated in England by the royal family. He has done so. He had, not merely the right, but a debt of honor to speak out. The response to his words was the rejoinder of ones guilty as charged:
“With all that he was given, he has no right to complain.”
As has been said by uncounted people throughout history. The minute you begin doing the things that must be done, everyone who hurt you says the same thing: “After all we’ve done for you…”
They do not know that we get it. We, the walking wounded, understand. But if we hear the words and understand them, then this is the translation:
“You owed us and yet you betray us like this?”
If abuse is surrounded by finery, pomp and circumstance, is it then not abuse? Do the guilty get a free pass?
He obviously grew up under pressure. His mother was killed and still disrespected. She is to this day. His father, according to Harry, treated him the way his grandfather treated his father. He says, “I’m going to break that cycle.” The meaning is evident. He understands honor more than his father or brother ever will. And this is just basic. As an American I may not be a qualified critic of the Royal Family, but as a victim, I am qualified in this matter.
Even worse are the rumors of Harry and his wife Meghan being stripped of their royal titles, further displaying actions typical of the guilty: revenge and retribution.
If a prince deserves the chance to oppose undue abuse and actions, then what difference is there between him and a child of six whose world was destroyed by an air-to-ground assault, which Israel claims are “precision attacks”?
Does the little girl have the same human rights as a British prince? What should be given to her, and what portion of justice will she receive?
I look at the red carpet. Not in Buckingham Palace. In Hollywood. It is such an affront to all who suffer that I am sickened by the dresses, the boasts of the price tags, the supercilious banter. Hollywood does a service for the people. They entertain us. Yet the price of a theater ticket has branched off, especially during the pandemic, making streaming services a premium. Should I wish to watch certain shows, I must first pay for cable and internet. Then I need to subscribe to Amazon, Hulu,Netflix and more. Even the networks take us to the cleaners; CBS being particularly shameless. Everyone has their hands out, and people who could use the money for essentials throw cash into those hands. Do they ever ask, these mega corporations, what they do to their customers?
No. Occasionally they advertise that “CBS cares” and other bullshit claims, thinking that we won’t notice how insulting and superficial those ads are.
For what reason I do not know people line up to have their money taken by people who appear on red carpets and pose and are so full of themselves that God in Heaven must get close to throwing up.
Those who have money and celebrity, those who have power with weapons, forget what we never can. That out here, death means more than they know. That honor is not negotiable, that it doesn’t come in degrees; you know honor or you ignore honor, or you never understood it.
In Israel, right now, there is no honor to be seen. It is absent from both belligerents. That means that restraint is only slightly used and escalation to more horror is near. Hate, bitterness and vindictiveness have a power over humanity that all too easily smothers the good in us. If we are not an inherently violent species, we have utterly failed to prove it.
If we are not an inherently evil species, we need to prove it at once. We have the capacity for greatness and honor, for sympathy and love. We should act on it more often.
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” — Ghandi
If only more people saw this as a challenge to do better, the world would have seen, and would be seeing, so much less suffering. Whether you believe in his divinity is up to you. But Jesus did leave us a great call to rise above the eye for an eye mentality and to be peaceful, to forgive and to love. The right wing Christian does not hear this calling, nor even understand it. The world needs our help. India is a zone of death. Why do so many oppose us helping them? Among the opposition to Biden’s proposal you will find many wealthy Christians. I tell you, those are not Christians, who worship the Triune God, the mark of which is an imperfect but selfless person. No, they worship money and power and they are not shy about hating their fellow humans because of who they worship, who they love or even who they are. They hate the poor. They hate nonwhite races or other races not like themselves. They are not opposed to war or capital punishment. They vote for leaders who would see the suffering of millions.
Learn how to see what they are. Love and pity them but do not do as they say and do not listen to false teachings. Do not chase after the rich; they will steal everything you have and leave you empty, bitter and in rejection of your faith.
It is up to each person to answer the call of the peacemakers, the men and women who seek justice for everyone and an end to destruction and dessication. Don’t follow the ones who would render our world desolate. Most of all, be kind. You need not believe in a higher power to do that. I leave behind this account on Saturday night. I do it for others, not myself. It’s an act of kindness, the only one I have to offer. Remember that words can be used to spread love…or hate. Use them with care, don’t be afraid to show love, but fear hate for its power to cause ruin. I have good friends here who have loved me without condition. To those who did have conditions, I’m sincerely sorry. To those who have been hurt or angered by my words, I humbly ask your forgiveness. Forgiving an errant person benefits you more than it does them.
I will leave this post up until the weekend in the hope that more people will read it. Be kind, forgive, but demand change. Because if this country leans any further to the right, it is doomed. We cannot imagine it, but it is more possible than many believe. It will take each of us to stop the hatred, the senseless deaths of innocents, the minotaur in Florida and his cult. You don’t need to be rich to make a difference or to leave a legacy. All you need is your heart.
Inspired by one small memory, I expanded it into a parting expression of the challenge for all to be kind, love freely and to guard against the people who seek desolation. They chase money and power and they will crush you under their heels regardless of your loyalty to them. No amount of power or money can satisfy them; they will vengefully destroy everything in total blindness as they pursue darkness.
We must be careful to engage them on legal and moral terms and not by being like them, or becoming what we hate. Many people believe that we are on borrowed time. I’m one of them. Stop every furnace, combustion engine, coal burning power plant and everything down to lawnmowers right now. Know what would happen? That’s right, global warming goes merrily on. We’ve already put up so much greenhouse gases that, like plastics made in 1950, it’s all still there. And we can’t stop it.
As polar glaciers melt at a pace even experts find surprising, the effects of freshwater entering the ecosystem and taking microorganisms with it are frightening, the stuff of nightmares. Permafrost melts, threatening a massive release of methane into the atmosphere. It will happen. And everything you’ve seen so far, from impossible blizzards to stronger hurricanes coming ashore are nothing to what you’re about to see. The droughts, lightning storms and wildfires will only get worse. And we are within a decade of coastline maps being dramatically changed.
The next organism that will cause a pandemic is already alive. Perhaps one, two mutations away from becoming a killer of millions.
NEOs, near-earth objects are large bodies of rock that pass just outside of, or worse, inside of the orbit of our moon, are causing scientists concern. We can’t detect their approach until they’re very close, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because we can’t do anything about them. Know what movie NASA shows its applicants? Look it up. Hint: it’s really horrible and is used as a test. They see how many errors the prospects can spot. Extra hint: there are many of them.
We need to do better to salve, but not stop, global threats.
And we can’t do that when evil comes between us. We need each other. Helping foreign countries helps us. We’re stronger together. But too many can’t see past greed and hate. That is our biggest threat.
Disillusionment: I had a ninth grade English teacher who had the word on our vocabulary list, and gave us an example of the meaning. He’d worked in a church as a boy. Idolizing the pastor, he ran errands and did odds-and-ends jobs. One day he happened on the janitor showing the pastor a colorfully embroidered set of handkerchiefs, each depicting Snow White doing “different things” with each of the seven dwarfs. He was disillusioned.
I understood. I may have been the only one in the class who did.
I was already disillusioned and long past being damaged. Damaged beyond repair, as it turns out.
If only life were like movies, comic books and video games, I could have made a comeback. In the end, or at some point, I’d have gotten the love of my life. Made myself a success and had time for deep sea fishing, drinking beer and going to football games. I’d have raised kids who would still be alive.
Then I would retire to the mountains and write novels while snow fell outside and the fireplace had a crackling fire in it.
LEVEL UP!
In a video game, every birthday I would have leveled up. More XP. Stronger, wiser.
I’m close to leveling up for the 61st time. Level 61.
I will not be stronger. I will not be wiser. I’ll still be a loser, one year older, in more pain, still broken.
No repair, no recovery having been made, because life is just that way for losers.
At around level 61 in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the game sent a level 99 mercenary into the Greek Islands. I spent hours eluding him, but one day I had a bounty on my character and the merc who showed up first was the level 99 behemoth. Tired of having unfair shit thrown at me by the game, I took him on. I beat him easily. Again: life is no video game. If it were so, the many level 99s I’ve faced would have done no harm. I could be writing the great American novel right now, well into the night, looking forward to visiting my grandchildren after COVID-19.
Now, I look forward to nothing.
There is nothing that I can feel excited or enthusiastic about. I’m flat. No highs, no days when I can say I’m blessed to be here and really feel it. It is a fact. Nothing more.
What have I become?
This is mental illness at its most basic. I cannot easily socialize because my words are lies. I care and really want an answer when asking a neighbor how they feel. Faced with the same query, I lie: “Oh, I’m fine, thanks.” It’s the act of a liar, and I should feel shame, but instead I feel nothing.
This is how I felt the last time I tried to kill myself: I felt nothing.
The physical pain is there; a constant reminder that I must still be alive. On the inside, I’m dead.
Incapable of love, sympathy, righteousness. Everything good I thought I was, is gone. Was it ever there?
For a while I thought I was going to have a place in someone’s life. That I would be a part of something resembling a family.
That was stupid. A loser can never win. Once alone and unloved, love can never again fill one’s heart, and if it does, something will happen that will end it. When a woman began to be adversarial, I understood. She was going through too much. When I was called a disparaging name, it hurt. I didn’t immediately unplug, I tried the phone. I knew I’d get no answer.
That’s okay. I understood that, too. I guess I deserved it. Being an asshole, I’m sure I did. So I disconnected all those involved. Clearly, I was fucking up their lives. I do that. To everyone.
I will let you down.
I’ll hurt you.
And I just can’t hurt anyone else. I’ve done far too much of that.
I’ll disappoint or hurt you enough to chase you away. Sooner or later I do that to everyone. If I think they’re ambivalent or about to leave my life, I cut the ties first. It hurts less that way. At least that’s what I tell myself.
What have I become?
Because trauma, low self esteem and deep, long-cycle periods of depression have more power to take apart who I am and whatever talents or any good in me than I have to fight back.
To this fucking day people still tell me I have to move forward. It’s more insulting that the worst abuse I ever got from my father or my ex-wife. Don’t tell me to go forward. Don’t you think I wish I could? That it was that fucking easy?
Don’t tell anyone to go forward, move on or whatever else you think sounds good. It hurts. Because some of us can’t.
On these posts, any reader can see that I’ve been up and down but mainly down.
You know what I want to do? I want to talk about how openly stupid and deviant the Republican party in the United States is. How they throw themselves under a former president’s belly like mewling kittens looking for teats. And I want to discuss in front of the rest of the world how people who voted for him after he constantly lied, committed crimes against humanity, lied about those, bribed and brainwashed and lied more to get reelected are among the most stupid bastards on this planet.
I don’t have it in me to do it and give it justice. The United States is doomed if this trend toward fascism doesn’t stop. With our arsenal, everyone else in the world should be praying that Joe Biden is successful and gets reelected because that would mark eight years of a gradual recovery of sanity.
I can’t tell you that. It should be evident but I’m sorry, we of good conscience must always stand against evil. I want to talk about that.
I can’t.
What have I become?
I’m also unable this time to remain on social media. This time it is not because I can’t take the hate on there.
It is because I’ve hurt people…friends…
With my own words. Always so down that I could tell people were unfollowing me. Always such a downer…a sick man trapped by misfiring synapses and betrayed by his own brain, trapped in the past, chased by ghosts and in constant despair. Who would want me on their friends list in my current condition, I asked myself.
And this time for the good of others I left a post saying I’d shut down my account in a few days.
Some know that I stabbed mutual friends of theirs in the back. They’re no longer communicating. Can you blame them?
Others don’t want me to give up.
I’m grateful to them. More than words can say, I’m so very grateful. But if I stay, I run the risk of emotionally reacting, hurting any one of them. Words can do such great harm. I can’t risk it. I can’t be on social media. I can’t.
Level 61. Wow. Never thought I’d get this far. I know it isn’t fair, because while a loser like me goes on, good people with families have lost their own. Not fair. COVID-19 continues on and idiots refuse the chance to be vaccinated. They think a lower mortality rate means it’s over. They lost family too, and still won’t bother with two simple, free shots that could save themselves and save others from them. People have left us. Gone forever, leaving behind families and friends and jobs and bright futures.
And I sit here wondering why, why am I here, why someone else could be taken while I’m spared Death’s reach.
For all my years on this earth I have seen so much suffering and injustice that I am both thankful and feeling cursed by my sensitivity. Look at what is going on right now, and again I refer to COVID-19. In India, the infection rate is simply apocalyptic. I mean, they’re even out of oxygen.
People in news footage lie helter-skelter on pallets, mostly on the ground, any several of which you see will die or already have died. The strain of the virus doing this has already made it to the US, and the travel ban may be on, but we really need to help the rest of the world if we can.
India needs help now. We’re the ones who can give the help.
As I write this, Rachel Maddow is discussing the Biden administration’s proposal to lift patents for the vaccine to facilitate generic manufacture and distribution in order to provide an already sectioned 16 billion dollars in global aid.
It’s really complex and certainly will be strenuously fought by the corporations involved as well as Republicans. And there’s more involved than the manufacturing process. But helping India, and other countries with no vaccines, is the right thing to do.
When did it become okay for America to turn away from rendering help to other countries? The answer begins with Donald Trump. A man of no conscience, devoid of anything remotely human. A man worshipped by the power mongers of the Beltway and the abominable ones who come in the name of God or Jesus.
When, or if, I cycle out of this extended period of deep depression, I hope I’ll feel how blessed I am. Yesterday I received my second COVID-19 vaccine. The odds that I will survive to level up just got better.
I hope I can feel gratitude for it. I hope that by my level-up day, I’ll have picked up some powerups for extra stamina like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Or that I’ll stumble upon some treasure. And live long enough to use it to help people.
You read the title right. The last time I was intimate with a woman, the Twin Towers were still standing.
What brought this to be was not an immediate, conscious decision. It happened because of two things, both related.
My undiagnosed mental illness had me on shaky ground. I was erratic, moody and very insecure. It had been that way every time I was in a relationship.
Then there was jealousy over imagined things…insecurities and low self esteem made me convinced that no woman would ever be happy with me. I just couldn’t believe it. Invariably I would begin to question. That would turn into accusations. I hurt the one I loved, I confused and frustrated them to the point where they had no choice but to walk away.
I have loved many times in my life. Being abused and made to have sex at a preadolescent age changed my development and my perception of love and sexuality. At an early age I felt unloved and lonely in a house with four sisters and three brothers. I so wanted to have a girlfriend and be loved and yet had no belief that any girl could love a piece of shit like me. So when I did fall in love, I was too afraid to voice it. In Lee Ann’s case I thought of her as someone I was not only not good enough for but also as a special girl destined for a life of happiness that I would never be able to provide. She was the first girl I had too much respect for to take the chance of hurting. I left her alone.
That was when I was in third grade. I’ve never stopped loving her. I’ve never stopped loving anyone I ever loved. I don’t have that capability and it has caused me a lot of pain but I carry that pain gratefully. I have a heart. At least I can say that.
But that doesn’t mean I’m okay to be in a relationship. In fact my last one made me lose good friends. She got hold of their numbers and, never even having met them, called and badgered them as to where I was whenever I wasn’t with her. My friends stopped taking my calls.
I finally ended it. I moved to another town. She found out where and changed my address in order to intercept my mail. Why, I don’t know. I had to make a police report and another for the Postal Service. She did other things which constituted stalking, and that wasn’t my first time with a stalker. Wasn’t the last, either.
I was a low shooter. I picked girls who were dysfunctional or less than what I wanted and if you’ve ever done that due to your level of self esteem then you know I’m being truthful here. It’s really a thing.
And it means you need help. Low self esteem will lead you to a dead end where all of your dreams die. Where you talk trash about yourself in front of friends who are hurt to hear your words. A dead end that has all the opportunities for drug and alcohol abuse, even suicide.
The decision to go celibate sounds really hard. It isn’t at a certain point. I realized that I was never going to be able to have a normal relationship with any woman. I was saddened by the revelation but it was the truth. And sex with no love is not a thing I ever enjoyed because of my desperation to be loved. I wanted the whole package or nothing. I chose the nothing.
I’m not counting self pleasure; that’s not covered by my interpretation of being celibate despite the technical definition. For me, it means to surrender a part of your life for your own protection, whether that be mental, physical or emotional.
Some consider what I chose a sacrifice. I don’t. I’m proud of it. To be getting emotionally involved with someone who you’re never going to truly be happy with is wrong. Wrong for you and wrong for the other person.
For the past few years I was involved with someone I met on Facebook. We had lots of hours of conversations on chat, phone and video. I came to genuinely love she and her family. I still do, but I’ve known for some time that it was impossible for us to meet in person. I knew all along that even if we did, she would never have been happy with me.
I knew because of several things but the other day I had to break all contact. I had dreadfully overreacted to something she wrote in a comment. I took it to heart when she called me a name which, had anyone else done, would have been funny. A year ago it would even have been funny coming from her.
I didn’t think it was funny and it hurt me. She responded in such a way that it made me break all chances of contact. Except then she left a voicemail that made me not regret it at all.
She threw things in my face. She had been there for me.
She left out things I’d done for her, and of course that was because she was angry. She missed every sign that I’ve gotten worse; she’s had a lot going on lately and my deteriorating mental condition – severe depression, anxiety and sensitivity, along with noticeable changes in sleep patterns are easy to tick off in a sentence but have been hell to live with. I spend days borderline suicidal. I’ve not known such a deep and extended period of depression in years, my nightmares are enough to make me question my sanity, and I feel terrible pain from some back injury that I believe happened just because of aging. I’m sorry I severed ties. I know it hurt her.
But it is much better to hurt someone once than to maintain a relationship that will keep causing pain. I’m simply getting worse.
Moreover I’m getting my house in order. I didn’t even notice I was doing it at first. It’s some kind of need that I can only think of one cause for.
While I did such a shitty thing to someone I loved, my level of caring about others has increased. It’s my nature to love even people who seem to hate me. It’s my nature to hurt for people I know even on social media. If I put a sad emoji up, it’s because it’s how I feel. Sometimes I’ll tell someone how sorry I am, and I mean it. I never say how deeply I’m sorry or feeling their pain. Or most of all how worried I am.
COVID-19 didn’t just make me sick. It changed my whole world. I have had long lasting damage from it, mostly with memory and that’s mostly forgetting people. But I noticed behavioural changes as well. My southern accent usually is well hidden. I used to slip into it only when very tired or very nervous. Now it changes and kicks in all the time and I hate it. I feel as if I’m going to sound as if I have multiple personalities. If I did, they’d all be assholes. Just saying.
I hear shit wrong too. The Terminix commercial where the deck falls with a couple on it has a guy with a British accent step into the foreground and say something but it sounds like “Don’t get caught sucking your dick…” and the rest is indiscernible.
Everything is just fucking wrong. It is a given that my physical pain isn’t helping. I know when I’m seen for it I’ll be sent for X-rays then a CT then an MRI. They want money. The MRI is what I need. But I need relief and treatment too. Simple tasks can send me into a pain level that brings me close to tears, and pain is something I have become used to. Not like this, though.
With all of this going on, I’m not even fit company for a phone call. Against my nature I’ll be thinking about myself, preoccupied and distracted, and I do believe it will get worse, as it has been for months.
That said, I can’t live like this. I want to help people. To cheer them up and tell them they’re treasure to me. My next door neighbor, a widow, hasn’t been handling her grief and anxiety well. I love her dearly. I told her that today. I said that to me she’s treasure. That I hurt too, seeing her suffer. That I’m here for whatever I can help her with.
That’s what I want to tell everyone I love.
But my life has never gone the way I wanted it to. These memoirs, they’re full of things some find too disturbing to read. Some posts are, to some, too outrageous. The paranormal stuff, mostly. But it all really happened and at times there were witnesses.
Therefore I have not always gotten to be or do what I wanted. When my parents killed my dreams and turned them into a preoccupation with sex, making what should have been dreams of becoming someone who mattered into sexual fantasies, the day came when all I had left was the hope and desire to just be a decent man. To overcome their racist beliefs, their example of control and manipulation and to treat everyone in a kind manner.
I couldn’t even have that. My PTSD and other forms of mental illness keep me from being anything. I just exist. I take up space and waste it.
Behind me, online and in real life, lie the dead. My children, friends I had as a kid, family. There also are uncountable closed doors and burned bridges. I can’t undo any of it.
I ran away from people who were getting too close. I didn’t want to be hurt anymore. Some ran from me. I drove them to it. I drew a line. A circle around myself in the sand. Nobody gets inside it. I no longer make women turn their heads. I make them cross the street to avoid me.
I’ve become my own prisoner in my own circle of hell. I have no hope more often than I have it. I am alone, as I always knew I was fated to be. It was part choice and part instinctive self defense.
No more pain. I felt too much. I cared too much. I loved too much and love always got me hurt. I became a coward.
I wish things had been different. That the bad things would go away and let me live, really live.
Yet I find, on this night after a day that saw George Floyd’s killer convicted, that I’m ashamed. Seeing his family’s pain, I empathized because I know loss. I have cried for people I never met. I always will because after all, I can’t really stop loving and caring.
To readers abroad, as always, I’m grateful you’re here. I can’t imagine what you think of the United States but perhaps you’re confused. I’m confused and I live here. It should not make the news, the horrible things that you’ve been seeing. The shame of the Trump presidency will never go away. Killers roam our streets, mass killings are more common than you can know, cops killing people of color are monsters with badges and no consciences and we are less to you than we wish we were. For so long, especially after World War Two, we had a national pride that I believe hurt us. We thought we were so great.
Now we’re pulling the last of our troops out of Afghanistan and perhaps there aren’t so many of them as to make a difference but in the minds of extremists it will be a great victory. They will immediately begin to engage in heinous acts, mostly against women. Our presence there has had an influence on culture and politics. Leaving will destabilize all power of the government and anyone who had extended contact with us will curse us. It is a mistake to leave now when our mission was not accomplished. It is dishonorable to leave, knowing what girls and women will go through. All we accomplished will be reversed and it will be worse than before we went there.
It is a betrayal in my mind. I don’t like war, but to bug out is to do the same as we did to the Kurds. It dishonors us and leaves people to be tortured and to die.
We’re in a national mess, and President Biden wants to do things to clean up that mess. I’m sure his decision was hard for him and yet I strongly disagree with it.
Meanwhile Republicans are against him no matter what he wants to do. He’s a good man with a big heart. He called George Floyd’s family today. A president who cares, and is honest, is special. More so after the debasement of America by Donald Trump. Russia knows now is the time to test Biden and is massing armor and infantry on the Ukraine border. This follows harsh lessons Biden tried to teach Putin, a man notorious for not learning anything except new ways to attempt world supremacy for Russia. He loves to test, probe and corrupt. Whoever follows him will very likely be even worse.
The Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine was ordered stopped being administered last week, but here in Maryland one corporate entity producing the vaccine had some kind of incident and that made it worse. Anti Vaxxers just got handed unlimited ammo to convince others not to be vaccinated which, down the road, will cause death.
In all of this, and more, I feel stupid bragging about 20 years of celibacy. As if the world turns around me and anyone cares.
But it was necessary and I’m kind of proud of myself for it. Perhaps I’ve caused less misery than I otherwise would have.
But I still cause pain, no matter how hard I wish I had no power to do so. I can’t be the simple, decent guy I wanted to be. I can’t even manage that. I won’t cop out and blame mental illness.
Because there’s just more proof that I’m an asshole.
It goes where it will, never resting, never needing sustenance except for the one thing it does to those left behind. Life is taken by Death; it is the one true constant in our world. Grieving souls feed its cruel appetite.
It loves the pain and after it takes away from us, we never forget that our time too will come.
I’ve written about death here, and it always hurts me. There is no value in keeping pain to oneself; doing so makes everything worse.
Yet letting it out has often led me to question the value it holds as well. Does anyone read, do they hear the words of the grief-stricken people left behind? Do the wails and sobs fall to deaf ears?
The true story is always going to end in tragedy. If we admit to being mortal, that is. Fictional heroes that never die are written about all the time and always have been. Those mighty men of old who did pass on always seemed to do it on their own terms, with courage and honor.
Literature does what it is intended to do; it distracts, entertains and allows us the occasional dream.
And if it is true that cheating Death is a staple of yarns old and new, I must point out that the opposite is also true. Death cannot, in the end, be avoided after all. We have long loved the sad tale too, the last words spoken, the final kiss, the closing of the eyes forever. To deny this is to deny our humanity. We love the comedic and the noble tale, but a good tragedy, yes, we open our arms and beg for them.
I can’t remember the grade I was in. Fourth or Fifth. An announcement over the PA system before the school secretary announced bus numbers assigned everyone at Bodkin Elementary to watch a made for TV film that night. We weren’t to be given marks on it, but the principal wanted us to watch it.
I didn’t know what I was in for. Brian’s Song was about the last two seasons of NFL football played by Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears. It was about his unlikely friendship with Gale Sayers, his roommate, who was African American. It was about their closeness and Piccolo’s diagnosis of cancer, the useless treatment that followed, and his death.
Although the main actors, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, looked nothing like Piccolo and Sayers, the screenplay was well written and the entire cast knew what they were doing. The music and the acting combined to form a tear-jerker I’ve never been able to forget. I’d seen screen deaths before, but I cried my eyes dry that night. The saddest part was that I didn’t cry at all when real death struck a couple of years later. My paternal grandfather passed in 1976 from cancer. I wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral but even if I had, I may not have cried very much. Oh, I loved him. It just felt remote and he’d lived two states away. I’ll bet I could count the number of times we had visits on my fingers.
Over the years, Death crept closer. My grandmother was a harsh loss. I had adored her. Then I got married and had two children. Neither one lived to celebrate their 30th birthday. Death comes as it will, for whom it will. Angels and doctors cannot stop that.
COVID has given so many of us that harsh lesson. Death still stalks the world armed with it; vaccines and masks help, but the weapon remains deadly. How many have had to say their final farewell to an intubated loved one by a video connection? The meanest deaths accompanied by a cruel lingering vision the survivors are inflicted with.
Recently I’ve been as many people have been, out of the loop, unaware that certain parts of life had resumed, missing things that I’m either happy to have missed or very disappointed that I did.
I used to be a dedicated fan of the crime procedural NCIS, but when COVID hit, everything shut down. I wasn’t aware of the show going back into production.
I was aware of the story arc in which Tobias Fornell’s daughter had gotten into street drugs. This season, Emily died of an overdose. NCIS has never shied away from death. The team investigates death almost every week. Cast members have had their characters killed off since the end of season two. Sasha Alexander was first. Kate’s death is still complained about to this day. Mike Franks was killed by the Port-to-Port killer at the end of season eight. His ghost showed up a lot and even grew a beard, but that’s okay; the show had already jumped the Shark so many times that few people even noticed. Recurring characters get the worst of it, though. Director Jenny Shepherd was killed offscreen, opening the door for Leon Vance. But the recurring cast, sometimes their exits hurt us the most. The death of Fornell’s daughter Emily was occasioned by serious viewer outrage. They cried foul and called it unnecessary. Mainly because we had sort of watched Emily grow up and partly because earlier this season, ME Jimmy Palmer lost his wife Breena to COVID. Everyone loved Breena, beautiful, sentimental and strong, and during the continuing epidemic, we question why she had to go that way.
I’m glad I missed those episodes, but I know I eventually will have to see them. When Emily is found dead, Gibbs finds out by getting a phone call.
That is exactly how I learned of my son’s overdose and death: a bloody phone call.
That day, February 14, 2018, and the day my daughter was removed from life support, July 5, 2012 are the absolute worst days of my miserable life. Death had come for them and left behind something I don’t like when I look into a mirror. Not that I ever really liked myself much anyway. But since 2018, the mirror shows me the worst of humanity: a failure at everything, the worst of all being a parent. I was supposed to go way before them. They should be here. They should be here!
What’s left? What are we supposed to do now that those whom you and I loved so much are gone?
I’m glad that tragedy is dealt with in our culture, whether in literature, film, television or documentary. Without the tears we shed for others and ourselves, we would never be able to see, to learn, to grow stronger, to pass on what we know. As a species, we cope with loss the same way even if different religions and cultures have their boundaries and rules. We cry, we ache inside, we scream to the heavens that it isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and we demand to know what is the point of it all if Death steals away with our own children.
Death is a cruel transient, stalking, ever stalking. Seeking the weak and strong alike, and it makes no difference how good or bad a person is, or how old they are.
As I’ve been mentioning, I’m doing an epic playthrough of an epic game on the PS4: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. It could be the greatest game ever made. I’m over 400 hours into it, which would make hardcore gamers laugh at me. Nobody takes that long to finish a game, right?
But the story is indeed epic and there are two DLCs to add to it. They’re worth it. I didn’t buy the game because I wanted it to be over in a few days. I knew it was deep and that I’d want to wring everything out of it that I could.
It deals at times with untimely death, which the ancient world knew better than we do. A child is killed early in the game, and it did get to me. There are definitely triggers in Odyssey, but right now my character is stuck in the Underworld, in Hades. It’s a horrible place, rendered so well that suggestion makes you catch yourself having trouble breathing, as if hot ashes were really getting into your lungs.
The worst thing is that you constantly hear babies crying. Not in hunger or pain; every parent learns that there’s a difference. And those can be soothed and the crying made to cease. These cries are of terror and torment. I could tell when my kids were babies if they cried out of fear. They might have had a bad dream. They may have been scared by sensing that they were alone. But you learn the sound, and hours of cuddling later, they’re fine. These cries get to me. They distract, they trigger memories, they fill me with hopeless pity. Who the hell recorded this?
I don’t believe babies get sent to Hades, or Hell. Never could I believe anything so cruel and unjust as that.
Death makes us all think about an afterlife whether we want to admit it or not. In the end it just leaves us with broken hearts. Pain enough to last until our time comes.
We can console and we can pity the survivors, and we always should.
Those I pity the most, however, are all those who refuse to or are incapable of love. They cannot feel the sting of a broken heart. The pangs of first love. The horror of their baby crying in the night but refusing the teat or bottle. To know something is wrong but to be helpless before that something.
It isn’t our intelligence that makes us human. Grief, fear, the emptiness of loss…those are proof that we have loved freely. That is what truly defines us.
Many times in the past few weeks I began writing a post. I had something to say, then I just stopped, saved the draft, only to come back later and trash it. One was about the 2017 video game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and I seem to have forgotten the others.
That’s okay; it’s happened before. Odyssey may be the best game I’ve played in all my times of wishing that a bad game was better and a good game was longer. But even though I’ve put 400 hours into it and want to write all the reasons why every gamer should experience it, I can’t. Not being able to write what I want to is getting to be a real problem. Forgetting things, hoping the game’s puzzles will help, is hell. One day I will wake up and not know who I am. That’s a worthy thing to fear. Having seen it happen to other people, and going through lapses myself where people greet me by name and I swear I dont know them–I’m scared.
Perhaps the worst thing I, and many of us have dealt with over the past year is the isolation. While others flouted the advice to wear masks and use social distancing, we adhered to it because we accepted reality. Others only accepted it when they were in an ambulance.
Loneliness has been and always will be a killer. Added to stress, it affects both mind and body in ways we find fantastic, difficult to believe. It can raise blood pressure, cause digestive problems, heart complications, interfere with neural activity and that, right there, is mood. Mood is not just loneliness. Depression and what it can do is a serious health issue that hits everyone in various ways. Things get more difficult to do. You can’t get motivated. Taking a shower seems a gargantuan task despite knowing that you’ll feel better. A shave can make me feel better but forget it. I can’t manage it until I’m miserable from the stubble. Even then I get chest pains.
Sleep is something no one should take for granted. Changes in sleep patterns can indicate underlying conditions that you need to have checked out. In one year I went from having a problem getting sleep at all to an almost narcoleptic state. I can fall asleep playing a video game, eating, drinking coffee. It can happen any hour of the day and I get little to no warning.
I’ve had quite a few things get worse or change these past twelve months. I remember at the beginning, how I never heard traffic anymore. Being in the landing pattern of BWI/MARSHALL, I saw that change too; very seldom did a plane fly over. And with the skies silent, I could hear private aircraft for the first time in years.
Nightmares when I was sick last year with covid, fever dreams, gave way to my normal PTSD type dreams. If you can call those normal. But I began to sleep so deeply that I rarely remembered my dreams. That, at least, was a blessing.
I went from improvising masks to being able to take my pick. Still can’t get medical grade, but the signs are clear, masks help.
I went from seeing everyone with masks to rarely seeing anyone masked, or improperly masked. A worker at Subway had his nose uncovered. I left.
An abundance of caution rarely hurts anything. A lack of it often kills.
I just got my first Moderna vaccination this week. The protection kicks in a week or so later. It is not a pass for me to go out and act recklessly. The second vaccination won’t be, either. We still need masks and social distancing because this virus is changing, as they all do, as they have for eons. It’s what they do, how they survive. Same thing for all microbial species; that’s why our reckless use of antibiotics has caused super bacteria to emerge. In one way of thinking we are, as Shakespeare would put it, “Hoist by our own petard”, the translation of which means we’ve blown ourselves up with our own bombs. Funny how The Bard never fades from relevance, yes? Truly a man before his time.
Of course, Shakespeare did make the occasional mistake: in Julius Caesar, Act 2, the title character asks what time it is and Brutus answers, “Caesar, the clock has struck eight.”
While striking clocks did exist when Shakespeare wrote, they certainly did not in the first century BCE.
But who cares? And who cares that the last words of Caesar were not “Et tu, Brute?”
One thing’s for certain. We’ve done a lot of staring at or unplugging clocks for the last year. Time and seclusion don’t mix well.
Over half a million people are gone from us. They left behind bewildered and heartbroken families and friends. Some were stored in refrigerated trailers before final arrangements were made. And that’s a horror too many have either forgotten or never believed was real. We are a nation of mixed nuts. As proof I offer a call by a European university for all of its students abroad to return home because of other countries which have crude and primitive healthcare systems. We were among them. Us. The mighty United States. We should all hang our heads in embarrassment. And shame.
The bastards like Mitch McConnell oppose healthcare reforms. That man just made a bold two-faced statement to corporate America because they spoke out against the draconian and racist voter restrictions passed in Georgia. He said corporations should stay out of politics. But not so far as to stop political contributions. What a pissant. Idiot.
We have Republicans on video tape coming right out and saying “If we dont cheat, we’ll never win another election.”
How in-your-face can you get? And you should hear what they’ve slipped up and said about George Floyd. Or the siege on 6 January at the Capitol building. They would have ordered more protection, been more afraid, if it was ANTIFA.
Racist liars. They were all pissing themselves as they hid that day.
Maybe I have had problems writing because of bullshit like that.
An maybe because I’m fed up with the left hating on all people with religious beliefs. Most of it’s anti-Christian. I know why. The far right evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hate groups. Anyone still associated with those denominations is dangerous. I’m sorry, but if you dont stand up against hate and dishonor, you stand for nothing.
Somehow, as Easter approached, the anti-Christian hate posts increased. It got so bad that I had to post an answer to it. I dont disagree that the far right are hardly Christians; Jesus never said. “Go forth like wolves among lambs and teach evil and hatred.”
I dont think much of religion bashing. We all have the right to choose what we believe. Everyone gets that choice. Who am I to denigrate another for their faith? I dont get offended by others’ beliefs. What I do find offensive is being judged deficient because I believe in a false god. Personally yes, I’m hurt by it. It calls my freedom of choice and my intelligence into question. If I dont do these things to others, it’s because I know how they’ll feel. Because I respect their choices. I respect them.
On the other hand, I feel obligated to speak out about harmful cults. Like ones where “members” are mistreated, shunned, locked away and worse. That’s torture and conditioning. Not religion. I also will continue to challenge false Christians who have lost the meaning of their own doctrine, refuse to love others, embrace racism and who worship money and flaunt wealth. They’re poisonous vipers. Stay away from them. Tell the world what they really are.
Oh, 2020-2021; they’ve got their place in history. We are part of it. We saw it. Watched it, lived it. While the news made us feel alone, or more alone than we were, our diversions became limited. TV shows and films halted production. Everyone was affected.
Prices went up. Then as products came available agian, the prices went up even more. People lost jobs and the other day, when I went for my covid vaccine, I saw something that wrenched my soul.
On Route 108 in Columbia there is a business park. The largest building sits beside the highway. People who worked there had to number over a thousand. The parking there was chaos. People used three entries that I could see with more in the back. A corner restaurant carryout did a rush trade. It made so much money during business hours that it was closed at 1500 or 1600, and never opened on weekends.
Now the parking lot sits empty. Completely empty. All jobs were lost. Seeing such a sight, not having been there in the past year, was a shock that drove home just how much damage we’ve sustained. Now I can picture many more places once teeming with workers whose biggest worries were whether to make lasagna or order out after a hard day at work, now desolate, abandoned, a testament to human suffering that smacks you in the face. Truly a stark monument to death and disease.
We are diminished and we cannot ignore it. Even the military now admits that an all-volunteer force is no longer sufficient to protect this country, much less our allies.
Misconceptions and false rumors abound. Fighting them is a task Heracles himself would run from. Lies, they have a power all their own. Like living things, they grow and spread and they have more than enough power to take life.
One thing very true and frightening is the warning that the next pandemic looms near; the organism that will cause it already exists. But it doesn’t have to happen. Mitigation is possible. We know how to do that now. The question is, have we learned our lesson?
I would say no. Businesses suffered, as I’ve said, to the point of no return. But restaurants that did survive are now hosting inside dining. It is too soon and it is dangerous. I heard a report recently that covid cases are on the rise in 20 states; but Michigan and Pennsylvania seem among the hardest hit. The variants plus irresponsible behavior is proving our ignorance, stubbornness and the fact that we have not learned.
For myself, this has done a number on my mental health. The worst of the dreams, which resemble my fever dreams, are back. Last night I dreamt of a girl from high school named Jane who, of course, was beautiful and therefore hated me. In the dream, I snaked through those damned labyrinths and along the way she would appear, egg me on, kiss me, tell me sweet nothings, once even flashing me her shaved, uh, you know. My desire was only equaled by genuine love and I couldn’t make her listen to that part.
Of course this goes clear back to my fucked up childhood, when the worst betrayal of my life happened. My father was never a good parent. My earliest memories of him contain fear. But my mother’s betrayal came after I knew her as a mommy. As someone who colored with me, read me stories, kissed my boo boos and held me.
It played into the inherent fear of women most men have. That fear, indescribable for me, is the root of today’s bias against women in the workplace and every other part of life.
Of course it can’t be so simplified; human behavior is complex and prone to being set. Once set, like concrete, it is difficult to change. It has to be hammered apart and nobody likes that kind of change. Men fear upheaval that women simply view as righteous equality.
The dream (nightmare) wasn’t sexually pleasing. I never thought of that girl all those years ago in a sexual way. I didn’t love her. Was not infatuated. She scared me. I can’t remember why, but like so many girls that year, I sensed her loathing for me. I never want to dream of her again, but we humans haven’t the power to prevent nightmares or who is in them.
Now, I’d love to tell you about the video game, the only one I’ve ever spent 400+ hours on in the first playthrough, but I can’t. It has occupied time I would otherwise have spent concentrating on my problems and brooding, and it’s the only game I have ever wanted to so thoroughly beat, mastering every aspect of play it offers, and believe me, this baby is huge. I mean I’ve seen posts where people claim to defeat it in 60 hours, but they’re lying. Not even the base game, without the downloadable content which continues the story, can be completely defeated in 60 hours. They’re referring to the main storyline which is a totally different thing. Even that is improbable within 60 hours, but hardcore gamers do weird shit. I’m a casual gamer and faced with such a big, beautiful and multifaceted adventure, I have taken my time. Assaulting a fixed fortification by myself, I found out quite early, is rather futile. I never go through the gate, always attacking from outside and either above or below the walls. It’s time consuming and some players don’t use strategy; they barge right in. The game is too unfair for me to do that. It was designed by (brilliant) sadists for a masochistic consumer base. I’ll tell you more later with a gallery you won’t believe, but right now, I’m taking a break.
That’s because I have writer’s block and my mind has wandered off, I know not where.
I hope you all are well. Please leave a comment or a like to let me know.
In my 60 years on this blue marble in the vast universe, I’ve encountered evil, goodness, cruelty and kindness. I’ve listened to great classical compositions that were penned by a deaf man and ridiculous oratory from speeches to campfire tales from people who could hear. Hear, but never able to listen. Or think.
Being half a century old or more can be painful. Nobody can deny that. I went to a specialist for arthritis. He tried everything he could throw at me but nothing worked. He finally diagnosed fibromyalgia and tried treating that. Now I can’t take the drug I was on because I would fall, pass out and lose my memory. Doesn’t matter to me if it’s fibro or not; it hurts. Old bone fractures hurt. I get lower back pain like the devil. Dignity leaves bit by bit as you age too; accidents before you can get to the latrine are humiliating and can drive you to tears with shame even if you’re alone. The things my body has endured…over 35 traffic accidents, being squashed, falling from heights that should have killed me, drugs, fights, and of course smoking and heart attacks…have all combined to make me take aspirin and Tylenol three times a day, and those only barely moderate the pain.
None of that bothers me nearly as much as what my mind has had to go through. Brainwashing. Terror. Trauma. Nightmares. Anxiety and panic attacks. Self-loathing. Self doubt. Not being able to trust my own mind, never knowing what my mood would be, never being happy. Being scared of everything and brave about nothing. Certain that leaving the military was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Had I stayed my marriage would have survived and my kids would be alive today.
It pains me then, that I’m seeing something so outside my experience, awful though that experience is, that I find it astounding.
You know what I’m talking about? Yeah, the elephant in the room. On March fourth, according to QAnon, the real inauguration was to take place in Washington. It didn’t happen but that’s not the end of it.
The theories are nuts: that Trump and Biden are working together. That they have switched bodies. That Trump would be inaugurated for real. That Grant was the last US president who was legitimate.
There’s more. The age-old myth has returned that the Rothschild family runs all but 7 countries in the world; that they own the US Federal Reserve, that they started the War of 1812 to begin consolidation of assets and power. Then there’s the ones about the illuminati and new world order. Blaming the Rothschilds is exactly the kind of trick the Koch brothers want you to believe.
Today I found this. If you can get through the statistics, what you will get out of it shouldn’t surprise you. But it should cause you at least some degree of worry.
Christian Persecution
It’s never been clear which Roman imperator (emperor) began the persecution of Christians. Was it Caligula, who followed the demented and isolated Tiberius, who spent his last years chasing nude children through the woods of Capri? There’s no way to know; Caligula was not in power very long when he fell ill from a mysterious malady which changed him dramatically. It could have started then, but months after his “recovery” he was assassinated while taking a bath.
People usually blame Nero. He was a real character whom the common people loved, at least at first. He took care of them and yet that changed. Probably following the great fire, which he was blamed for starting. He wasn’t in Rome at the time, which gave scholars a chance to call such circumstances an alibi; as imperator he could have left town and simply left orders for soldiers to torch the wooden buildings of the mostly poor sector. I personally doubt this; he is known to have received a dispatch during his performance and that he rushed back to Rome and at his own risk pulled people to safety. That would have been enough to unhinge any leader. What he saw, burned people, what he heard, people screaming, and what he smelled that night was traumatic.
When it comes to the theory that he was urged to blame the fire on Christians we have no real proof. But afterward, we have equally difficult stories to confirm that at evening dinner parties in his personal garden, he impaled Christians high on stakes and burned them for light to see by. The sources are too few and we don’t know. What we do know is, he built a lavish, even by Roman standards, palace on grounds once occupied by the commoners, and this changed his esteem with them and the Praetorian guards as well. When an emperor lost the loyalty and faith of the Praetorian Guard, he was doomed. So it was with Nero, as with many imperators who followed him. That particular body of Roman legionaries was the only one allowed in the city proper; should another division or element thereof ride or march into Rome, it was considered an invasion, no questions asked. The guard turned on Nero before that became necessary and with some maneuvering by people he trusted, his fate was sealed. He committed suicide to prevent his assassination.
Other emperors would follow who did in fact view Christianity as a cult and a threat to the empire; undermining taxation and monetary tribute to the gods of Rome, many of which were from the Greco-Roman contact hundreds of years earlier, before Sparta fell to the Republic.
Religion had its price, always has. With first century CE growth of Christianity, it became more brutal than ever.
When You Become The Thing You Hate
It would turn out that as with all things, men of power, wealth and influence changed the simple tenets of Christ to something twisted and obscene. When it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the story of Jesus had already been modified. To what extent we will never know, but now instead of a few men in sandals walking between Jerusalem, Rome and Antioch with a simple message, it was a monied movement and a major business.
Churches were built until cathedrals were the preferred style, but big or little, simple or intricately constructed, they covered the land after the last of the mighty Roman Empire. That’s when things got weird.
The Crusades. The inquisitions. Dear God, the Christian church turned into a place where people were terrorized to become Christians and murdered if they refused. How did that happen? Where had faith in the peaceful Jesus of Nazareth gone? That man who dared anyone to stone an adulteress, who preached love and forgiveness, the guy they quoted from pulpit and pew, had become nothing more than an alibi for their grotesque lifestyle. “I’m forgiven” they would say. “I’m upholding Christ’s values”, they’d scream. This, while coming into post secular modern day, has become a battle cry for all who advocate death and suffering, obscenity and every evil thing in the book.
Pat Robertson has been a Christian Evangelical TV host for decades. In that time he has done a lot of damage. He’s contradictory, never sticking to any value: he once showed a photograph of Michelle Obama and declared, “That’s not a First Lady.”
When faced with pornographic photographs of Melania Trump, he called them “art”. Which is scummy, to say the least and purely hypocritical to say the most. Pat has called for the assassination of foreign leaders, among others. Perhaps his most deranged bit of doggerel, though, came when he said that “To be against Trump is to be against God,” and that Trump was ordained by God.
He was hardly alone, merely one of the biggest blowhards in a pile of human flotsam. But the white, right-wing voters clung to Trump especially in the Christian community. Other Christian leaders screamed that this was all wrong, but it was too late. The Trump cult was a reality. It wasn’t a passing fad, nor was it trivial in the least. On the day the US Capitol was attacked by domestic terrorists, we found out how serious it really is. The terrorist group consisted of a variety of people from military veterans, police officers, firefighters, QAnon “operatives”, and more. As shameful as it was, most are without a shred of remorse, instead encouraged by how far they got that day. And now, more militia groups are planning to join the next act of terrorism.
BOLO
I’m not bullshitting here: be vigilant. Be on the lookout. Anyone you know can be getting fired up right now. They may not have been in Washington that day. They may not have been a Q adherent that day. But people are too often emotionally changed by evil. They see it as desirable. Some feel apart and isolated and are desperate for a sense of belonging, and will listen to the most vile rhetoric and act on it. Others fear the “blacking” of America, a myth and a tool of manipulation against weak, bigoted, scared people who grew up in white neighborhoods or, conversely, in mixed neighborhoods and had bad experiences. Fear and hate mixed with bitterness are the ingredients of the white supremacist; weak, closed-minded and predisposed to extreme thinking, they now represent the biggest threat to this country.
And not one of them is a Christian. Never forget that.
They’re actually using Jesus as a mascot. Think about it.
I am currently on haitus from all social media. It’s necessary because my nerves are shot.
When I wrote the post on left wing hate, I shared it on Facebook and one person actually responded as if I had called them out specifically, and that’s not the case, because I have to include myself. My posts and comments were just getting out of hand.
Nope. I had nobody specific in mind when I wrote it. I simply saw the same things a lot of other people are seeing. Or should be.
Things from the childish, “he lost, get over it” from mostly progressives or very liberal and understandably angry folks to extremes like “all Republicans are garbage” or worse. And yeah. There is worse.
Now please, understand, I don’t like writing about this subject. Everyone has an opinion on politics; just look at your news feed on social media.
My opinion doesn’t count for much. I’m one man. And you can agree or disagree, that’s all fine.
But one “QAnon” congressional representative is already drafting impeachment papers for Joe Biden, and he’s not even in office yet. You know, I’ve heard some stupid shit on the news before, and while I know by now I’ve been wrong every time I have said “I’ve seen it all now” that I was using an unrealistic cliché, what scares me to death is that our country has been sliding down a hill with no boundaries. There are no gates for the slalom. The rules for behaviours once considered aberrant have been blurred.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about free speech. From the fucking porn you masturbate to and the religious material you read and beliefs you hold to your friends and favorite sports, it’s none of mine or anyone else’s business unless we are engaged freely in conversation. Judging people and prying and spying, those are different parts of entirely different matters.
We all have judged if we have any brains at all, and we make decisions based on them. Who to vote for, who to admire, what to buy. And all of that is fine. That’s life. It’s what we do.
But wrong decisions that cross the lines are becoming a huge risk to the freedom we are given, and take for granted. Or did until Donald Trump. People on each politically idealistic side were frightened by the witless, fascistic speech and inhuman deeds he and his administration were committing.
As we can plainly see, his voter base remains fully intact and quite dangerous. I want it made clear what that means.
Trump started out his campaign by calling cable and written news outlets like CNN and The New York Times “fake news”, and not only is that incorrect usage, it’s also an obvious lie. And the lie took hold, because the sentiment among the far right was already there. I know people who buy DVDs or subscribe to Netflix or Hulu and never watch them. The DVD shrink wrap is never broken. That’s scary. Their television is never tuned to anything else but Fox News or Newsmax or the terrifying OAN. It’s true, and it may be hard to imagine, but the majority of viewers who watch that drek can’t afford to get more than basic satellite and cable TV, much less buy videos. The poor who feel hard put upon by their government willingly go for far right wing news and ideology and they love to blame liberals, and man do they love a good conspiracy theory. The more lurid and farfetched, the better, like the one where Hillary Clinton was supposedly a cannibalistic pedophile and child trafficker operating out of the basement of a D.C. pizzeria. Which, by the way, did not even have a basement, but that little discrepancy didn’t stop a Carolina man from driving to that pizza place and firing shots inside.
Oh, sure, people were aghast. But others laughed at it. It was too kooky, right? But not harmless. Nobody was killed that time. Yet anyone who was there was as traumatized as anyone else ever involved in a shooting. Lies are dangerous.
And so, after the great big lie from Donald Trump that Mexicans and other Hispanics were about to invade us and were even tracked throughout their journey, became an imminent threat and the Army Corps of Engineers was stationed at the border, stringing razor wire and filling sandbags. Its not legal for military personnel to be used on US soil for combat operations except in the case of a real, honest to god foreign military attack, the probability of which is less than none. But Trump really wanted regulars with M-4 assault rifles lined across the border. There was some outrage over it but not enough and it was quickly forgotten, at least by mainstream media. Most people haven’t bothered to look up whether the engineers are still there. Legally, they couldn’t stay, just so you know.
US airspace and waters are different. Fighter jets routinely operate what’s known as CAP, combat air patrol, and the Navy and Marines deploy choppers and Ospreys to support Marine One. No problem there; it’s a nightmare, keeping a president safe. You know how many threats a president gets? And what’s worse is the threat of the unknown. You can’t be too safe.
The Lies
Then came lies that never ended, grew more outrageous and much more dangerous. Trump never stopped his visceral hatred of and lies about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He lied about so many things that whoever was tasked at Politifact with counting those lies probably needed therapy. Holy shit, what a job.
Now, the ultimate lie, the one where the election was stolen from him, has caused the growing anger, disenfranchisement and bitterness of his supporters to do the unthinkable: not protesting, but actually staging a violent attempt to assassinate the vice president of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. And who knows how many others. We’ve seen previews of this when Trump told people in Michigan to, in essence, kill their governor. Was anyone surprised?
Not that I remember. It was all over the news for a few days but people, remarkably, seemed to forget it. If it isn’t headline news, it isn’t news at all, therefore it doesn’t matter. Sadly, that’s a reality people have lived for years, especially since newspapers have declined in circulation.
The news has taken on an odd template: cookie cutter main stories dominate, usually limited to two or three topics. There is no news roundup for the world and the US in half-hour each format. Theres nothing. There are no news anchors on cable doing anything like reading you all kinds of stories; just hosts with those two or three main stories. Along with their personal analysis, and it wouldn’t be so bad if they at least broke every hour for a segment about just the news and nothing but.
For that kind of news you have to rely on local stations, almost none of which are independent anymore, or the Big Three evening news shows in a half hour format with commercial ads in breaks that seem endless.
In 2020, the dominant two stories were the general election and the COVID-19 pandemic. Big enough subjects to be sure. We are on approach to half a million people dead in the United States and Donald Trump made it far worse than it needed to be because of his lies and stonewalling. It played a role in the decisions people made at the polls; when die-hard Republicans lost loved ones and saw the truth too late; many saw too that almost everything Trump had said was a lie. And their mind was on one thing: getting rid of him.
That is not to say that many conservatives had not already had enough of Trump; plenty had. The reason they weren’t usually vocal about it was because being wrong–being that wrong–about voting for him was humiliating in the polarized political climate. Some people, in person or on social media, said to the converts, “glad to have you”, while others said, “fuck all Republicans, it’s you’re fault this shit happened and you’re going to hell.”
That’s the great division we face, a reality the news actually covers. But they do nothing to remedy it; the opinions used to be relegated to Face The Nation or other similarly formatted programs. Instead, it’s hour after hour of each host interviewing guests and asking leading questions that are followed up with the host revealing some tidbit and then condemning one party or another.
This was more true in 2020 than ever before, even as COVID-19 did exactly what Dr. Fauci said it would do in late autumn. It was true too of the post election coverage. If a major category five hurricane hit during that time, I wouldn’t know it unless I checked NOAA. If a major earthquake happened in that time I’d have to check seismographs at USGS. And I get it. We are in a health, economic and political crisis that has people out of work, dying and fighting.
It will not be resolved easily and certainly not with sufficient alacrity. Joe Biden has his hands full and has already gathered some of the best minds to help him out. But it’s not going to be fun to watch, much less so with thousands of people ready to kill “traitors” on sight. On inauguration day, you’ll be able to see things you’ve never imagined before in security measures. It’s a mess.
And whether or not the Senate votes to convict on Trump’s impeachment, his voter-cult base will still be what they are. Their numbers will grow, because history has proven so. Their fanaticism will be far more pronounced, because history has proven that it happens that way, and “history” never had instant, world-wide communication.
What I’m saying is, there will be another Donald Trump, and he will be far, far worse than anything you can imagine. The cult of MAGA will welcome anyone who is racist, sexist, dictatorial and who wants to take away every freedom, every thing, that they themselves claimed to be protecting the day of the Capitol Building siege. Every hate-filled website that enjoys freedom of speech will find out what it’s like not to have it as they are removed from service or told what to say or write. You thought Fox News was state-run media? Hell no; you’ve never seen that here, and it should be something you never want to see. China controls all access to the media for its people. It controls all media. Connecting to the web is forbidden except for the purposes of espionage.
Television? Don’t you love your Netflix, eh? On Demand movies, specials, sitcoms? You think it can all never be taken away? You better think about it again.
And while you’re at it, imagine other things that could happen under a worse man than Donald Trump. Imagine someone more corrupt backed by the branches of government that he will immediately compromise and then eliminate. That picture should make you think about a lot of things. Mostly, how to avoid it.
Because if we defeat this new cult, it cannot be through tunnel vision on the news. Nor by hateful rebukes to rhetoric on social media. It has to be done by disciplining our minds, controlling our words, and telling the truth. Our educational system is a shambles and yet our country’s survival starts with teaching children the real story of our country without censoring the injustices that have happened along the way. When I was in school there was an American history class that gave us textbooks that were graphic about slavery. But that wasn’t until junior high school. It has to begin sooner.
By high school age, information about every aspect of our government and every part of our history should be taught. I had two semesters of Medieval History which I had no interest in, and a teacher who was recruited by the school from Johns Hopkins mostly as a lacrosse coach, and who was fucking two students, was too stupid to teach without reading straight from his textbook made my learning disabilities wrap their tentacles around my brain to the point where I shut down completely.
What we need is obvious and yet resisted with vigor. I was reading about the Franks when Nixon’s terrible legacy was only just becoming known. I saw no sense in that kind of curriculum as opposed to current and recent events which would affect us for the rest of our lives. I at least knew that much. Nixon had fucked the United States up. It set a stage I could feel was going to be full of drama and disaster. It was a time when my Republican upbringing (not merely conservative) was being rejected by my conscience. Had I more education I could have saved myself the guilt later of knowing I had voted irresponsibly for Ronald Reagan.
It was Reagan and the actions of and during his presidency that took decades of divisive political beliefs clashing violently and set us on this path, to this moment in time. The man is still revered, but by now he seems like a pussycat compared to Trump in the MAGA party.
Too many people fail to see how terrifying that truly is; how far into pure evil factions of the right have descended. How dangerous they are.
The cross section of those who stormed the United States Capitol is like a sampling of the population. Military personnel active and retired. Police officers. Laborers. Truckers. The religious. The “average”. All full of anger. All full of hate.
With only one day between this night and the inauguration of our 46th President of the United States, the Capitol grounds are off limits. The perimeter is greater than that of any previous inaugural event. There may be no parade but that’s nothing to the sad fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is vetting every soldier in or to be sent to D.C. for security. Because fear of inside assassination attempts is all too real.
God damn this.
We should not be like this.
Yet we are here.
Pat Robertson said that “to be against Trump is to be against God” and that Trump was God’s Chosen”. He dismissed the “grab em by the pussy” remark as “locker room talk.”
Others backed that extreme religious claim up.
Mitch McConnell backed him. Not because he loved the man. He just had his own agenda and Trump would help him with it. Or so he thought. Trump was never for McConnell or anyone else. Just himself, the proof behind us now in those whose lives Trump broke; the fired, the marginalized, the compromised.
To stop this rambling post, I conclude with a single warning. Unite or watch millions die as our country dies under the heel of jackboots. The enemy is not going to be silent and will never again fear violence to get what they want. Unite to root them out one at a time or watch them grow in number. Unite to stop countering their hate speech with more hate speech or watch one far worse than Trump take his place. Unite with people you disagree with or watch as we fragment and lose our power that, combined, got Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected.
Today, Donald Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were permanently deleted. That’s a lifetime ban.
Now here’s Donald Trump Jr. and if you are easily sickened or upset, don’t watch. This video takes place in a tent following Trump’s speech to the crowd in which he told them to walk to the Capitol where he would join them. Knowing that what he’d just done was criminal, he had this setup ready and did not go.
In the video, Trump Jr’s girlfriend is seen dancing and it’s surreal. Like a party. As Dirty Junior pans around, his father’s watching a screen intently. That’s him watching the siege on the Capitol. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
When Vice President Pence told Trump (a resigning staff member confirms this confrontation took place several times, mostly by phone) that he didn’t have the power or inclination to reverse the election results, Trump said “We’re not going to be friends anymore.”
She had not yet resigned on Wednesday when, during the terrorist siege, she heard Trump call Pence and again say, “you’re not my friend anymore” which the probably terrified VP retorted, “We were never friends!”
Just Another Blog
First of all, I’m not a journalist, and therefore, free to talk to her any time. I have no boss to answer to. I just have to tell the truth, and that’s the best part of blogging: knowing you have a responsibility far heavier than any reporter because your words have to count. Once in a while you deduce something and can’t verify it so you simply call it speculation. If proved untrue you edit or remove the post.
We write freely when nobody may ever read our words. I don’t have a paid account so I’ll never get massive amounts of views or a lot of followers, but that’s okay.
As a blogger, that aspect frees me from any pressure to produce. And without that I can write by mood, not by a deadline and not with limited subject matter.
Once, long ago, I read a blog on Myspace written by a presumably disgruntled author who complained that blogs made it easy for people to pretend that they were scholars. He was probably a high school dropout. And by the way, journalists do have blogs. Scholars too. It’s good stuff so long as there are no conspiracy theories. Don’t promote that shit.
The man who sat at House Leader Nancy Pelosi’s desk has been arrested among 12 others so far. But the footing banner on MSNBC calls them “rioters”. That’s bullshit. On Wednesday they were “terrorists,” which is accurate. Why the change?
I have to ask the obvious question here: is it the same reason why help offered in advance of the 6th by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan was refused?
Is it because the “rioters” were white? This doesn’t count as a conspiracy theory but as a real conspiracy.
On the 17th and 19th, militia groups active on the dark web plan to go back. Some have declared themselves willing to lay down their lives. They will be met with force.
In the meantime Google has removed Parler from the App Store. Parler was popular with Trump supporters. Donald Jr. has also been banned by Twitter, and even the White House Twitter account is monitored and if Trump uses it, that account will be locked.
Karma
A man who was in on the attack died when he tased himself in the balls and had a heart attack. So if there is more of his ilk on the way we have no worries.
Archaeology 101
BBC reports that a fossilized human foot found in a field turned out to be a potato. Headline news.
Graham Crackers
Meanwhile Lindsey Graham was stalked through the airport by Trump fanatics who called him a traitor. He feared for his life I’m sure, but to them, he was a traitor. He changed his mind on the inconsequential vote after the siege, but that doesn’t change my mind about him.
No Respect
Mitch McConnell gets zero respect for his support of the election results. He initially ignored it. Conspiracy theories and Trump’s cult have compromised republicans beyond redemption because they sold their souls. To him. Not like selling your soul to the devil. Just pissant Donald Trump. Mike Pence has secretly been keeping Trump in check. He gets respect from me. He’s not going to blow his own horn but he may be responsible for us surviving four years under Trump’s presidency. Although 4,000 deaths a day doesn’t seem much like surviving.
Out Of Time
Calls for Trump to be impeached or kicked out by invoking the 25th amendment are unwise and unrealistic as there’s no time and probably not enough support. It would also begin Biden’s term with more division and there’s already too much of that. A possible solution is for Congress to ban him from ever serving in politics again. I doubt Trump will resign, but his balls have already been cut off. He’s a eunuch and Pence is essentially the de facto president. Trump cant even get near the codes for nukes.
Before he was banned permanently by Twitter, Trump wrote, “For all those asking, I will not be attending the inauguration.”
Brat!
Well pound my head and call me shorty. Really, Trump? We couldn’t have guessed that. You’re a brat in a sandbox you never let anyone else play in. It’s not your sandbox anymore.
You Like Colonel Sanders? Well, You’re Gonna Meet Him
In my opinion, Trump won’t live long enough to stand trial for sedition and conspiracy, which he is absolutely guilty of, or another campaign in 2024. He’s going to eat himself to death. Those Big Macs, fries and buckets of chicken take a toll. He’s due for a stroke or massive coronary event. And assuming he is prosecuted, is he psychologically fit to stand trial?
These are questions we will see answered, one way or another.
Yet this is not over. The militants will be back and their leader is Donald Trump. He’s a god to them. I wonder what someone beyond our borders thinks about this. Cant look good.
It happens that everything was seen at Ground Zero by a particular Irishman. Have a look at The Irish Post.
A fossilized foot…turned out to be a potato. Isn’t that hilarious?
Time To Rest Now
Look. We know this isn’t over. But let us take this weekend to buy new masks, wash our old ones, eat some good food, practice social distancing and replenish our supplies of hand sanitizer. We’ll rest, look to our health, relax and talk to friends. We need to be good to ourselves.
Forgive someone you’re angry with. Apologize to someone you’ve angered. Get some air, take a walk. Watch a movie. Read a book in front of the fireplace. Listen to good music.
You matter. You are irreplaceable and priceless and we need each other. After this week, please. Be good to yourselves.
They say it as if it is a very bad word. They use it in disdain with their meaning clear: all bloggers are shitty wannabes. This refers to anyone who engages in writing about politics, and there are many. Some are pure writers, going through research to give a crisp commentary you can understand in a world gone mad.
Most have emotional expression in their posts, and there’s nothing wrong with being emotionally motivated.
I heard something on a morning news program. Something with “bloggers” in the middle. Spoken darkly, marginalizing every blogger on earth because it wasn’t specific; just “bloggers” and nothing else.
Once, I wrote a blog called “The Top Ten Mispronounced Words In Baltimore” and someone liked it well enough that they linked it from the site of a Baltimore radio station. But then, a month or more later, I relapsed and wrote something full of anger. It wasn’t a nice post and I was filled with regret but it was too late. It was seen by the person I believed had linked my earlier one to the radio station website. He opened his portion of the morning news with a kind of sick expression. You see, this man split his time between a local television station and its sister radio station. He said, “Well, there’s not a lot of positive going around this morning.”
And without being paranoid or some other weird shit I knew in my gut that he had read the horrible post and I had lost him as a reader. That was okay with me; famous people make me nervous because I feel I have to live up to what they want to read. And it’s okay to write things you think people want to read. It’s not okay if you do it just for them, for whatever you think they want from you, if you don’t really want to write it or you’re not really feeling it.
Whether or not he had followed me after the top ten list, I can’t say. Whether or not he read my unhinged post and reacted to it, I have only my gut to go on.
Later on he announced that he would be choosing the best blogger in Baltimore and by then I knew how he was. Not the type of person I would like to have coffee with. He had a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth, for using sexist remarks, and worse. So there’s the possibility that he would pick people, bloggers, and think that I was watching, and be hurt when my name never came up.
But I’ve never been a top blogger anywhere except for a few times back on MySpace when mean people clicked on my blog and used something called an “auto-refresher”, which kept their browser on that page but kept refreshing it so that every two or so minutes, MySpace counted that computer as another view, driving me to the number two spot the next morning. It happened again a couple of times but not by people who wanted my blog to be seen because they liked it. They wanted me in the top ten because they thought people would see how stupid I was and draw a lot of bullies in to comment.
I had to learn a lot of things at the hands of mean people who did not like my perspective. Or my general political beliefs or my opinion on religion or whatever. I ended up with a massive number of people I had to block, and God only knows how many blocked me. What turned me off for the last time was that I began to find it very easy to say terrible things in comments or posts about almost everyone. Friends included.
I wondered what the hell had happened to me. What went wrong, and why.
The simple fact is that I let emotions run loose and didn’t choose my words very carefully, and never paused to cool off before hitting “Enter”.
I could make excuses.
I could say I was seeing doctors who gave me drugs that weren’t doing me any good, were in fact hurting me, affecting my mind and my body. And all of that is true.
I could claim that PTSD and bipolar disorder combined with the wrong medications were a factor, and that would also be true.
In the end, however, I claim full responsibility for every word I have ever written or said, the good, the bad and the worst. Ultimately we have the responsibility to be truthful, honest to our conscience and to all who might read our words. I have learned these things, forgotten them, and learned them again. Paid dearly for my mistakes and poor judgement and I have lost wonderful friends.
To All News Outlets
And, humbly, I ask to be taken for who and what I am. If you use the noun “blogger” on us all and lump us together as amateurish hacks, then you have missed the entire amateur writer population sight unseen. If you, (like the Morning Joe crew), lump us all together and use the name in a tone that insinuates your desire to spit, shame on you. There’s a pool of talent out in the blogosphere that you and your colleagues could benefit from. And it isn’t just about talent. They have access to sources that I know you don’t. I know it. I’ve heard things well before TV or websites “broke” stories.
The simple fact that cable TV news like MSNBC hasn’t taken down the BREAKING NEWS banner from their screen speaks to how they have dulled people to the impact of current events.
Pardons talked about since last evening are still “Breaking”. No, they’re not. They were breaking last night.
That expression used to mean something. It used to grab attention. The bottom of the screen banner rarely goes away now. And you wonder why people are numbing to the dangers of the coronavirus? How foolish can you be? You are the ones partly, perhaps mostly responsible, for covid-fatigue, a real and deadly situation caused by isolation, fear, anger and the resultant indifference to all of that because they’ve been overwhelmed. Overloaded. By you.
That’s why otherwise responsible people are seeing family this Christmas. It’s why New Year’s Eve parties will be attended. And it’s why people who don’t have to die will die.
Why We Write
There are, of course, professional bloggers. They have outstanding commitment, inexhaustible sources, and they can’t imagine doing anything else.
Most of us don’t even own our domain. We are the true amateurs, doing something out of a pure love not affected by money and views and followers. There’s such a vast array of subjects to address, but a lot of the best reads are very personal. Someone sharing a lesson they learned from great trials. With more courage than any White House reporter, they open their hearts, tell you their past, share the things they have learned. These stories are precious, and yes, they absolutely do help others, because those stories end with hope and all the positive things you can find.
Yesterday after five years on WordPress, I got an achievement notice. It was for most “likes” in one day. Five to be exact, surpassing my previous high of four. I rarely look at my statistics unless I get a notice that someone new has followed me.
I didn’t start this for likes and views. I am doing this for myself, but also for you. You are the one person reading this right now. That makes you very important to me. Because you might be the one person I can help by sharing my past and my present. Because maybe something I’ve written will make sense to you, and maybe the words will help you to know that you are not alone. That you are precious and have a lot of potential that maybe you haven’t believed you had. You may be the one person I came here for because I knew you would come, but never knew who you would be.
Are you that person? Can you see my changes as you read through my archived stories? Can you see me letting go of my bitterness?
What are the things that have hurt you? What might have made you feel bitter or angry? Who could have put you through enough pain to make you so angry?
Perhaps something in my archives can help. Perhaps we have something in common in our past. And you might decide that you like the idea of dealing with your past because you can feel how much it affects your present. I hope it’s possible that you will find things to think about here. I hope this holiday season is the first one of many as you begin to like yourself for you instead of hating yourself for what others think you are or convinced you that you were a long time ago, starting you on a journey that changed you forever. I hope you begin a new relationship with yourself that isn’t so toxic. One in which you see yourself as I know I would see you: special, unique, gifted with your own strengths yet able to learn from mistakes.
And don’t worry about it when people lump you together with others; those people speak from their own bitterness and quite a lot of ignorance. Don’t let them pull you down, don’t be hurt by the words of others. Ignore or forgive them, you have the power to do both. You have something to offer this world, something no one else can offer. Soon it will be the right time for you to go out and do it.
God bless all my readers, all who visit and again, my deepest thanks for sticking with me or just stopping by. Unlike statistics, you mean much to me. From the bottom of my heart, happy holidays, and be safe.
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 CURSE
Not only that, but two weeks had barely passed that spring before my ex had her previously secret boyfriend move in. The kids were already calling him “daddy” and it was killing me.
I went to Bayview Hospital in Baltimore after treating my growling stomach to a Wendy’s triple. Which emptied my wallet of my tips. At 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 should have been more sensitive to kids sitting in an ER waiting room on Christmas Eve but I was wrapped up in my own heartache and stress.
I checked in at reception and went back outside to smoke. I knew I’d be there for a while. I walked to the darkest part of the parking lot and lit a smoke. I jumped when a voice behind me asked, “Can I get a light?”
I turned. There stood a black man whose face, in the flare of the Bic lighter, showed age, not chronological, but hard mileage, a difficult life behind him. Life had kicked his ass.
And I will always wonder why he opened up to me: he took a long drag, and as he exhaled he said, “I’m here to get myself committed. I’m tired. I’m tired of being homeless. Tired of the drinking. I want to die but I want to live.”
He held my attention and I was doomed to hear his story. It was more horrible than I wanted to hear.
“I used to have a good job. I liked my work. I made money. I had a family. Two kids. A beautiful wife. We had a house, two cars and a boat.”
He smoked, and in the dark I saw his eyes begin to reflect any ambient light there was: he was crying. “She was coming home one day with the kids. They got hit by a drunk driver. They died.”
Holy shit. I wondered how any man could live after that but I guess I already had my answer. He couldn’t live with it; that’s what had brought him here.
The story continued. “I went in the bottle after that. I ain’t never come out. I lost my job for showing up drunk. Then they came for my boat. I didn’t care. Then they came and popped my car. I still couldn’t care. When the sheriff came to take the house I swung on him. I wound up doing time. Then I had to live on the street.”
As time goes by, I remember fewer details. So it is with old age; time steals from us. But I’ll never forget when he said, his voice so full of pain that I welled up with tears,
“I just want my kids back.”
I wanted to hug him, but it wasn’t done back then. And I’ve always regretted not hugging him. I’d never seen a man so beaten in his face and heart by a life and a loss that I could not imagine.
If you’re guessing that I had a change of heart, you’re correct. I thought hard about the last thing he said to me before a security guard yelled at him to get back inside; as a potential suicide, he was supposed to be supervised. The guard was white. He verbally abused this poor man. It made me sick.
Next morning, I called my ex and asked if I could still visit. I said I shouldn’t because I had no gifts. My daughter, aged 11, was handed the phone. “That’s okay, Daddy. Your present can be that you love us.”
With that and the terrible, heart-rending story I’d heard the night before, I decided to go. I don’t remember much. I just know that it was a good day.
Over the years there were many good days. More birthdays and Christmas days would come and go.
Then, in 2012, at a 4th of July pool party, my daughter drowned. She was officially certified dead when the ventilator was pulled the next day. My last words with her were not the greatest. She’d hung up on me. Now I could never make up for it; she passed and I left so many things unsaid. And she left behind three young children of her own. I was there when they removed her from life support. It was an empty, heartbreaking moment.
I couldn’t stay in that room. I left with my son and outside we just cried and clung to each other. I have never been able to put that feeling into words.
After that, the whole family went on what was essentially a nose dive. No one could get past the grief. Nobody was going to recover.
Her brother took it hard. His drug addiction grew steadily worse. He couldn’t function without a stack of percocet. But we did grow closer.
Then came the Christmas Curse. December 25, 2017 was the last time I saw him alive. We visited and played video games and talked, but he didn’t visit again. On February 14th of 2018, having been cut off from percocet by his doctor, he died after taking street-grade fentanyl.
And since then, the Christmas Curse has passed to me. Now I’m the one telling people “I just want my kids back”, and I tell it every December. To anyone I can hold in my grip, like the Ancient Mariner, dooming one more person to hear my story.
I never found out what happened to the man who passed the curse to me to carry every day for the rest of my life. I hope he found help. I hope he was saved.
I rather doubt it.
And that cold night when we smoked in the dark, I never dreamed I too would lose my children. Had I known…
What the Christmas Curse compels me to do is speak directly to you: if you are estranged from your children or parents, you can’t leave it alone. You’re blessed because they’re still alive. Work things out.
2020 has taken too much from too many people; don’t make it worse. Apologize, make amends. Call them. It’s not the time for visits and parties, but you can see their faces and hear their voices on tons of apps, and send a gift. Or just a card. I’m begging you, don’t let another day go by without at least trying to reconcile. Because nothing is worse than losing your child or parent, especially with things left unsaid. That’s a curse in itself and I don’t want that for you.
Think about people who can’t see a family member in the hospital, dying of covid, and saying the final goodbye on a laptop.
Finally, avoid family gatherings. Parties. Stay home. Wear your mask when you go out. Because dying or watching someone die when a mask might have stopped it is even more tragic that a drowning or a drug overdose. Those things happen in the blink of an eye. You can’t stop all the death and misery, but a mask and hand sanitizer can help save you from something that need not happen.
I’d like to wish you all Season’s Greetings, and hope your holiday finds you well and without a broken heart or soul.
But this is a bad time for me. Christmas will always be the last day I was with my son, and he was all I had left. I’ll never heal and I’ll never get past it; and every year about this time, I’m cursed to repeat my story and warn you not to let a day go by without telling your children that you love them, that they’re priceless, and you’ll be ever waiting should they need your help. Build their confidence, self esteem, and tell them that they can do anything they want to do in life. That the sky’s the limit.
Never fail to use and treasure every minute with them that you can.
But it wasn’t alone. There were more. In the case of the first game, public outrage was swift and not the least bit subtle. Courts in New York and Maryland, along with NOW and the NAACP managed to get it pulled from shelves. The creator planned to market it and a game called “Capital Punishment” a decade later because he was hoping that the political “climate” had changed. It must not have been changed enough because a copy sells on Amazon for about 300 bucks. That means it’s a classic collector’s game, and it never went into production on a larger scale. After 1980.
I had a girlfriend whose parents had “Public Assistance” and I actually played it. Don’t come down too hard on me: this was a brick in the road of my journey to escape the racism and bigotry that was ingrained in my heart from a very young age. It was eye opening for me. It was outlandish to throw dice and hope to get on welfare. Why the fuck would anyone do that?
Plus the extra money you collected for each illegitimate child. How is that a fucking game?
As my eyes began to open, I’d meet people who suffered. From different things. Alcoholism, drugs, spousal abuse or other domestic abuse, mental illnesses, and more. I grew up working with a lot of truckers and most were angry white men. Intolerant, opinionated, bigoted, bitter. Some were Vietnam veterans and some Korean war veterans. They were damaged but didn’t know it. Back then such things were not spoken of out loud. Racial hatred especially toward Asians was a shared trait.
Ralph and Betty Smith
My parents were astoundingly bigoted to the point of phobic hatred.
They were wrong.
I can’t say how I began my learning about what was right and what was wrong, or when certain realizations hit me, but I never liked the way us kids were treated. Everything was wrong and I just knew it by the way I felt when being yelled at, told I was stupid, slow, retarded, or faced accusations that were so utterly ridiculous that not only had I not done them, I never would have. I was accused of doing things I didn’t even know were possible. Grilled for hours on end, like torture to a POW under interrogation. The whippings that left either scarlet stripes or open and bleeding lashes. Punched, sexually abused, forced to eat food that invariably made me vomit on my plate or later, both of which were equally horrible.
I knew it was wrong. All wrong, and I couldn’t stop it. I was a kid.
But there were times…
Some times, like Christmas. We were similar for a day to a normal family. There were real Christmas trees, beautiful old ornaments they don’t make anymore, lights they don’t make anymore and records played on the huge console stereo.
One year (records for Baltimore indicate the biggest Christmas storm in my lifetime was in 1966, but there were others, with lesser amounts, in 1969 and 1970, yet this doesn’t mean greater amounts didn’t fall South in Pasadena) we had a white Christmas I’ll never forget. A Christmas Eve and day that were magic. Nice toys, no beatings and no yelling. That was such a contrast and contradictory situation that I learned from it. The year? It does not matter, but I remember ’66 and ’69 and ’70.
Years of abuse and having a fear of black people and a hatred for Jews instilled in me took a toll. I lived a life that made me old before I was 21.
But I couldn’t live in hate. I couldn’t live with it. It was killing me. Hatred is something I’m not hardwired for. It goes against my soul. It’s poison. And so, gradually, over time, I unlearned what I had been taught. I forced myself to do things that frightened me. I wasn’t always good at it and certainly wasn’t consistent, but I was at war for my soul.
I revolted. The jokes I’d once laughed at and told weren’t funny any longer. I always had empathy, but as I let go of my learned hatred, it grew. I’ve reached a point where even on psychotropic medications, I cannot stop being an empath. If I see someone suffering, I suffer too. I can even feel pain. I feel their loss, heartbreak and fear. I don’t like it much, but it helps me temper my words at times.
My humor is sometimes offputting to others, but I don’t mean it to be. I’ve come to understand that humor is often at the expense of others, and what one person laughs at will deeply hurt another.
I like fair play. Truthfulness. Mercy. Forgiveness. And love. Hatred and anger take away those things. Hate has enabled our president to divide this country. To tear families apart. To cause violence and rioting as peaceful demonstrations take place. Our dialogue has become poisoned and deadly. Threats of violence are so common on social media that I fear everything has gone too far. I get anxious that perhaps there’s no coming out of this.
Former RNC chairman Steele, a staunch conservative, has just endorsed Biden. That should tell you something. Even Republicans are tired of the chaos and divisiveness and they know we can’t survive like this.
But Trump has made racism worse, brought it into the open and validated it.
Those board games could come back now, and video games could eventually trend to themes like race wars. There are already games with themes and characters that capitalize on stereotypes. We’re going the wrong way. I don’t want to see it go further.
My parents were, as you know if you’ve followed my blog, Christians. The kind that make the name a bad word. Racists. Child abusers. Cheats and crooks. A pastor visited once and told a racist joke with the N-word. He laughed like hell. Coming from him I saw how truly ugly that joke was (I had laughed at it in the 4th grade).
The fight never ends, though. What is taught from an early age and constantly reinforced is a stubborn enemy. One of my father’s favorite ways to prevent me from getting a beer with my friends was the warning that I’d wind up in prison with blacks who would rape me. Yes, it scared me and made my progress into a problem.
People are not born with racial hatred. They’re not born assholes or Christians or murderers. Plenty of people are sociopaths and never become serial killers. Plenty of people have careers that see them to retirement despite severe depression and other forms of mental and physical illnesses.
I see what the human spirit is capable of surviving. I see also how a poisoned one can reach out and cause great agony and destruction. I know some fight their demons while others feed them. Certainly I’m not above feeding my own demons, because like most people I get weak and give in.
That’s not the end. After decades of self-hatred and guilt, I know that the path to redemption begins with giving that guilt to Abba, the Holy Father. Guilt is always partnered with regret, and those are burdens too heavy to bear. I have had terrible difficulty with that fight.
George Floyd would never have understood my fight. Probably would not have cared how much heat I took during the long trip to escape from madness and hate.
What went through his mind while he was being murdered?
What is it like and what does it mean to be a person of color in this country?
I can’t tell you that and I’ll never be able to. I have listened for hours as I engaged others in my search to know the truth. I had one friend who I could freely ask questions of, and who was patient with me and who encouraged me and once said, “I like what I’m hearing from you.”
One more step. One more lesson. This time, in the form of an unforgettable friend and teacher.
I had other teachers. Some had to put me in line. Others invited me to their homes to hang out and watch sports and drink beer.
I could not go because I was socially dysfunctional and had anxiety attacks before I went to a 7-eleven, so you can imagine my inability to socialize. Those who did invite me took my excuses hard.
I wish there was no racism in this world. It isn’t funny and it isn’t a game. And Public Assistance was a game that never should have been conceived at all.
I knew poor white people who were on government help and some were so mentally ill that they were monsters. One woman was such a hardcore alcoholic and drug addict that she had a baby with serious birth defects. It was a boy.
And from his birth, he had to be fed with a tube that was stuck down his throat and into his intestinal tract. The county caught her drunk during a welfare check and the baby was being neglected. She lost custody that very day. Then she got pregnant again and the baby was deaf. He was born with a crack cocaine addiction. I’m not really sure if he survived. She was sick, and it was so sad what she did to those kids. But the stereotypical welfare recipient is false. He or she isn’t always mentally ill and not always addicted to a drug or alcohol.
I’ve seen my share of evil. I’ve lost friends and I lost my own children. Some things teach lessons more mercilessly than others. And there was a time when such bitter losses as having my kids die would have driven me to death, suicide and as much more destruction before I made it that far. Life ain’t fair. It just never was.
But if I can battle, every day, and in single combat vanquish the enemies I was conditioned to embrace, such as sexism and racism, then anyone can. One merely needs to have the desire for it. The longing to learn, and the thirst for what’s right.
I only know this: I will not die a wastrel, a bigot and full of hatred. I’ll have it known that I fought back. That the fight never ended.
I just wish more people could try to fight back, just a little, because the world would be so much better off.
Warning: this post contains triggers and graphic content that some will find disturbing. Please read carefully and feel free to stop any time.
I grew up with heroes, favorite celebrities and popular culture icons. Like you, I had my own favourites, and, like you, my own secret ones, the ones I couldn’t talk to anyone about.
I could talk about General George Patton. When the film came out, I had a lifelong hero and an interest in history.
George S. Patton was a true soldier, leader and a strict adherent to discipline and lots of cussing. He did not like his voice. His way of compensating was to swear his goddamn ass off. It worked. He was all but worshipped by his men, some of whom hated him but yet respected him above all leaders in World War Two. What happened during the battle of the Ardennes is the stuff of legend, but it is all true. Patton really did attack with three divisions after a forced march, adding critical pressure on the Germans. He really did order a chaplain to write a prayer for the weather to clear so fighter and reconnaissance aircraft could fly, and the prayer was passed out to the troops who followed orders and read it aloud. And yes, the fighters were up and flying in short order. The battle is still the single biggest and costliest ever fought by the United States of America and when it was over, the march to the Rhine was on while Soviet troops were attacking from the east. George Patton really did fulfill a promise to “piss in the Rhine” and cameras recorded the victorious show of superiority. He secretly admired the tenacity of the fighting men of Nazi Germany but couldn’t say it. He did say that they were fanatics.
Patton survived the war and died in the hospital after a traffic accident some say was suspicious. The man who believed he’d lived past lives was just gone after outliving his one true reason for being. Has he ever returned?
I don’t think much about reincarnation, but I can’t explain a little girl sitting at play while her parents watched a 15th anniversary special on the September 11th attacks, who looked up at the TV and said, “I died that day”, or why she later reacted to a video on the same subject by saying, “I don’t want to see this.”
And I can’t explain a little boy who watched the same thing with his parents and said he was there that day, he was a firefighter who tried to help people but was buried when the towers fell and that he was still buried beneath Ground Zero. Nor, more importantly, can I explain how that same boy, at about 6-years-old, was taken to a firehouse by his parents and was able to identify every single piece of equipment and in which compartments a fire engine carried them.
Perhaps George Patton will ride again. Who can say?
I have had lots of heroes. Tonight, we mourn the loss of Australian-American singer and actor Helen Reddy, who was born before Halloween of 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Before both countries she would claim were at war. To me, a guy growing up at a time when women were supposed to have dinner on the table at five or six and were also expected to be pregnant nine months out of every year, a time when men ruled America, Helen’s music and her fight for equality was unsettling. On the one hand it all made me insecure. Boys were just raised that way. But then again, I found her beautiful and sexy, alluring in ways I could not understand or shake. She made the braless formal evening gown look good. Acceptable, and a demonstration of feminine power and empowerment, and it was actually a thing back in ’71 and ’72, which to be honest was just one small step in our long fight for equality, a fight that isn’t even close to being over.
Helen sang wonderfully and was part of our history, and not only in the music world. Around the time she sang and charted Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone, a cretin named Bobby Riggs either challenged or accepted a challenge from Billie Jean King. It was a tennis match billed as “The Battle of the Sexes” and Bobby Riggs lost it. You have no idea how hostile men were to both of them. They had to hear shit from wives and daughters for months. Girls had posters on their walls of King that said “Billie Jean Power” or something to that effect. That’s exactly what I heard from Laurie Lawrence as I walked ahead of her from the bus stop. God I hated her. She used to call me “Bambi” and yelling past me to a girl up the street was meant to insult me.
But it did not insult me at all, and I thought the attempt was kind of neat. Laurie was always reminding me of a goddamn Gemini, but after that, I really liked her. I took her insults as compliments. Whether she hated me, I can’t say. But she paid attention to me. Not a lot of people did. As for Helen Reddy, I couldn’t tell my buds I loved her.
I couldn’t say a lot of things. Like Gloria Steinem was not just beautiful but strong, and damned smart. I couldn’t say that women were generally smarter than men, which was what I had come to believe with the help of Robert Palmer.
Raised to be a racist and sexist, the abuse naturally made me question the righteousness of it all, and I found nothing righteous in any of it. The more I learned, the more I secretly loved people of color like singers and actors. I wasn’t–it wasn’t–typical in our house to have the TV tuned to Sanford and Son or Flip Wilson, who was genuinely funny, and whose time slot was taken over by, coincidentally, the Helen Reddy show.
My feelings caused confusion and conflict in me. But I was still young. Unable to work things out.
My father liked watching the title fights with Muhammad Ali. Why, I don’t know. In 1968, his racist phobia prompted him to clean and oil his piece of shit .22 revolver and declare that if any n***** stepped foot on his lawn, he would shoot the son of a bitch. The ’68 Baltimore riot never spilled into the suburbs. His fear was irrational based on his ignorance of the situation and my mother’s experience when he sent her into the city. I was with her and she told me to get down on the floorboard when some people shoved crates in front of the car to stop her. It scared her, but hearing abot it scared him more. He was irrational and hysterical. So naturally, I was too.
There was only one black girl in our school. We all gave her more than her share of hatred. I layed off but wasn’t above a cruel word or two. Years went by. Same girl pops out at me. I’m reading a local newspaper and her name is right there in one of the most graphic and terrible articles I’ve ever read. The following is disturbing.
She was babysitting. The baby would not stop crying. She prepared a bath for it. The water caused first degree burns. She sought to hide the burns with fingernail polish. The baby still cried. So she began putting out cigarettes on it. Realizing that those burns showed more than the scalding burns; more fingernail polish covered them, and the baby was rushed to the hospital as soon as her mother came home. But the baby would not survive and the sitter went to prison.
I thought back to second grade, on through sixth grade, and I knew that the hatred and abuse had taken a terrible, horrifying toll on the girl. I have never been able to forgive myself. Maybe, my quietness and gentle nature made the things I said more hurtful than those of the other kids who tormented her no end. That happens, you know? Hurtful things said by the people you’d least expect them from, they wound far more deeply than do those said by the ones you know to be assholes.
But I felt bad about long before I read that article. I always did, right after I had said them. It just wasn’t me. I was damaged and an asshole, but I couldn’t bear being a monster. Truth is, I never forgot her. She was on my conscience. Later I learned how much the words I’d said had mattered.
So black lives matter to me. Words matter. Black leaders are critical and always were. Always will be, because racism won’t go away. And that’s the ugly truth.
And those leaders are heroes, a blessing, and a treasure. Just this evening Trump refused to denounce white supremacists. This is the second election he’s failed to do that, and this time what he said was to call for them to get ready. That one moment did more damage than he’s capable of knowing. In the end, no matter how the election turns out, a monster such as he will reap the whirlwind. His entire family will as well.
The Years Go By So Fast
Over the years, I had lots of other people I admired. Vietnam veterans who came home scary as all hell. I began to learn what they had been through. My god, the evening news could not even touch what they endured. I asked questions. Some found me easy to talk to. I missed that war; to this day I feel guilty about it. To this day I wish I had been there, yet feel blessed that I was not.
Soldiers and marines and others were heroes to me. Still are. I met a man who was at Con Thien and whereas some rare sources do indicate that on patrols, an extensive network of bunkers and tunnels were found, all of them presumably NVA because the Vietcong were thought to be further south at the time, nothing is ever said about anything done to deal with the network. Well, the marine I met told me they brought in water trucks and attempted to flood the tunnels. He claimed that when it was over, the tunnel rats dragged a thousand bodies out.
An extraordinary claim, perhaps. But I’m inclined to believe it. The men and women who served in Vietnam never got their due. In fact we have never treated our veterans with anything near the respect or given them the help they have earned. Barack Obama’s another hero of mine. He used to meet the planes coming in bearing the bodies of our fallen. He saw it as a duty and a responsibility. He often made notable efforts to right the wrongs done to veterans and was most proud of decorating veterans with medals in touching ceremonies. After Sandy Hook, he flew up to the town with no press, no fanfare. He was there all night meeting separately with parents and the siblings of the victims. He was determined that, as president, it was his job to help, to offer support, to give heartfelt hugs, to help in any way he could. You won’t get that from Donald Trump, who allowed a non-response to the shocking news that Russia had put a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan and that killings had been done and money paid. Obama would have Putin too pissy-ass scared to do that. He loved our country and its soldiers, and those who didn’t listen to the lies about him loved him back.
Who we call heroes can tell a lot about us. I always loved our Apollo astronauts. In July 1969, wow. I consider that time a proud and exciting moment in history and despise the conspiracy theories that Stanley Kubric filmed it on a soundstage.
I loved the Beatles, the Stones, Melanie, Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, Peter, Paul and Mary, but anyone who could move me with music I was always going to love. One hit wonders to Three Dog Night to McCartney and Wings to the Carpenters, I don’t care. I’ll always love them. During terrible times, music has given us salve for our wounds and allowed us to grieve, to dream, to spend a few minutes in our own cocoon to heal, escape.
As I grew older I found I had fewer heroes. Fewer people to idolize or even to love. I became bitter, stopped listening to music, lost interest in movies and went dark. I hated and was hated. I wounded and was wounded. I withdrew and people didn’t mind. I don’t know how long that was.
I met Jane, her mother Margaret and Pelauria, Kate, Lisa and so many other great women on MySpace in 2008. They changed me. I gained an interest in and an understanding of politics that have made me more open to learning and to the feelings and the plight of other people. Overcoming terrible losses and horrific ordeals, these extraordinary women taught me lessons in life, are still teaching me. They are my heroes.
They have also reinforced one thing I already knew. That the human spirit is resistant, resilient and indomitable. That the beauty of one’s soul can shine through anything. That trauma can be lived with and however difficult, can be a source of great strength, of growing wiser and accepting that life is a gift, but never very fair. That to live with one’s demons and to accept that death is inevitable is to truly become free. To begin to really live.
That kind of freedom doesn’t come cheap. You pay for it in blood and heartbreak. You have to learn to let go of the fear of being hurt, and love freely. Life means nothing without love. It’s empty and sad. It’s not really life at all.
On social media I’ve unfriended or blocked lots of people. Some because they were unreasonable. Some because I misunderstood some comment that was really a reflex to my fear of being hurt. I therefore am not, never have been and never will be a hero. I’m not particularly bothered by that; I accept it. I have regrets but not being a man of note isn’t one of them. At age 60, I’ll settle for just being a man. A survivor who has been saved from death dozens of times by something I can’t explain unless I include God.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a hero. A woman who could be a role model for anyone. We lost her this month. Growing old isn’t fun for me. My heroes are leaving us. People who shaped the nation which Donald Trump hates so much are all people we could not afford to lose. Without them, we lose part of ourselves. RBG, as she was affectionately called, leaves us all a bit sadder, weaker and yet she leaves behind a legacy, a life well lived, a path for us to follow.
Losing a very personal hero hurts. Last year we said goodbye to Elijah Cummings. Of all my heroes, nobody’s passing hurts so much as his. I can scarce believe it has been a year. I loved that man. His shouts of “We’re better than this!” made me proud that Maryland had such a man. He was speaking to the whole country when he said this several times. He reminded us that we were watching great injustice and not doing anything to stop it. You can’t ask a man to be more honest or patriotic than that.
Goodbye, Helen. How I loved you so. Rest in peace.
May your day be peaceful and see you in good health. Thanks for reading.
Warning: This post contains graphic language and situations including sex, drug abuse, child abuse and violence. I urge discretion.
WINTER
That winter, like the one before it, was bitter in the mid-Atlantic. The one that followed wouldn’t be any better.
I drove a 1971 Mercury Montego. I got it in lousy shape as it was one of my father’s company cars. The paint was blue but looked white until I had to prove it by holding a sheet of paper or a buffing cloth up to it. The vinyl top was dark blue. I spent the summer of ’77 polishing, washing and pin striping it. I used Raindance polish until the paint gleamed. For an ugly model, mine looked nice.
A blue 1971 Mercury Montego like mine but not not as pretty.
On a bitter night after I had been invited to a party by my ex-girlfriend, I anxiously went. It was at her friend Julia’s house, and I was to follow my ex and some upperclassman. I don’t remember where we met up as she was coming from Millersville and I from North Shore in Pasadena. It was probably on Maryland Route 2, Ritchie Highway. It went from the Baltimore City line through Glen Burnie, Pasadena, Severna Park and Arnold, toward Annapolis.
What nobody knew was that I was a user and I took seconal, known on the street as “reds”, and I did it because they calmed me down, and on an empty stomach made me sleepy or left me moving in slow motion. My connection was a dealer in a neighborhood where all the pretty homes and manicured lawns denied any possibility of such things going on. I didn’t know what seconal was for, but my guy knew me, was older by a few years and seemed rather wise. He picked the reds because he thought grass wasn’t enough and I’d get caught anyway, whereas a small film bottle or two of capsules were easy to stash and left no odor.
This was my first party. I can’t count that awful night in a Benfield park when I was so cold, scared and anxiety filled that I really wouldn’t go to someone’s place for a small gathering, and hell no for a party.
It was threatening snow. Back then we had no internet or smartphones. I got the weather from WCAO pop radio; the car had a standard AM only radio. I learned to love the top 40 singles along with that station’s mix of oldies from Sinatra to Bill Haley. Rod Stewart always had a single on the charts, so I listened and hey, good stuff, you know?
The weather forecast was for snow. I was not keen driving in it, but on reds, there were times I could have done lots of things that would otherwise be impossible. I followed them through Severna Park, heading somewhere in Annapolis. Actually it turned out to be Eastport, across Spa Creek from the old town section.
Once inside, Julie showed us down to a finished basement where, like a teen with conservative parents, she had sodas and snacks and a nice turntable spinning Jethro Tull, Rod Stewart and David Bowie. Going inside…wow. I’d skipped supper. Popped a red, driven impaired and stepped out into frigid, moist air with a raw wind, and that wasn’t really too pleasant. My head spun, but I kept it together until we got inside. Julie was in one of my classes but I’d never taken notice of her. Not on my radar at all.
She was blonde, with Barbie doll hair, thin build, and yet during this party, I began noticing something uncomfortable. At first my ex hovered near me and I was still on a bashful footing, so I didn’t mind. She had asked me to come because it was neutral ground, and I didn’t get what that meant. I thought she and Gary were dating. They were not, but they were good friends, and much, much later I realized it. Gary was a great guy, and I wasn’t so jealous because he liked me and no matter how dark my mood was at school, the gallows humor and sarcasm I’d spit out made him laugh. This was a private and elite school, a prep school, and a lot of people I knew were shocked by some of my twisted comments and evil humor. He would often laugh out loud, a genuine laugh, the kind that knots your stomach, and I secretly admired that and appreciated it. Somehow, there were moments when he made my hell a bit easier to take. I wasn’t well liked anyway. Nobody knew I was a head and I wasn’t a jock. I wasn’t anything at all. If someone said “good morning” my response was often “fuck off” or a middle finger. Where did they get off, greeting me after two years of ignoring me? Fuck them.
The worst was when the painted girls sucked up when trying for homecoming queen. Girls who looked right through me suddenly said “hi” and smiled at me. Fake faces. Fake words. Fake smiles. I hated them.
THE CODE OF SILENCE
My ex had shown me nothing but affection the year before and yet couldn’t understand me. I was insecure, and didn’t want to be. I forced her away without intending to.
I wanted to be like everyone else. Worse, I didn’t understand why I felt the things I did and that meant my impulsive behavior and depression couldn’t be countered or compensated for. I’d turned clingy, and no woman of any age and most men can’t handle that. It wears them down and soon they’re bound to skip on you. That’s what my ex had done. I agreed to go to the party because part of me wanted to show her I wasn’t weak like she thought. She’d noticed other things than my insecurities and fear of doing new things. Even if I did think she was dating Gary, I had to go. I’m not really sure if I was positive enough to think I could win her back, and I’m sure I didn’t really intend to. But I had to go.
My dealer was more like a suburban garden shed doctor than the guys in the city. I’d heard about them and my father had used that to manipulate a fear of drugs in me. But I found Dealer by accident. And for a long time I was scared of him. He was older, built for action, and I thought he had a gang. He may have, because back then in suburban and peaceful Pasadena, closer to the upper income neighborhoods, if a teen wanted to go into business, he needed an answer for any challenge. He also needed backup protection from big suppliers who would try to take over the distribution he got, and they wanted him to sell H and PCP, and he refused. He once warned me that he had ears all over the place, and that if he ever heard of me using shit like psychedelics or smack, he’d never help me again. He spoke very little. He didn’t get personal but he had rules. Heavy shit brought heavy attention from the law, but that seemed to coincide with the desire not to lose a customer to what he sold.
He could get you all the grass you wanted, good stuff, too. But in large quantities, he had to know certain things, and if you lied to him, which he warned me up front never to do, he’d send you packing and God help you if you tried approaching him again.
One rule was that you could only call him from a pay phone. If he couldn’t hear the sounds of a mall or highway in the background, he would hang up. Then, and this happened to me, you had a certain amount of time to get to a noisier position and call. Ground rules.
I never saw him or met him in the same place. He would assign you a place and time. If you didn’t show up in a certain time, he’d be gone. It was clever in a time when dealers were getting people killed. Getting busted, doing time or flipping on a distributor to keep out of prison.
Dealer had to meet you on a friend’s or customer’s word of honor that you were for real. Our first meeting was like me seeing a doctor. Oh, he would be okay if you wanted to buzz, get stoned or party with friends. That’s what he did. And he could get anything. He knew what everything was, what it did to a customer and how much money he could reasonably charge without pissing anyone off, and for that reason, I knew he had access to a nurse or doctor, like his mother or father, and he could read up on things.
He asked me, “What’s your deal?” And that meant what was going on in your life. Was I depressed, suicidal, a jagoff? Was I legit? That was what he did. Based on whatever he thought, he’d recommend something and name a price. For example I was insecure and a coward and he saw that. He heard that in my voice. He asked specific questions like was I nervous a lot. In physical pain. If my sleep was off. Any weird shit going on. And that’s when we ran into the Code of Silence.
I was still being abused, although in 1976 I was allowed to “opt out” of the sexual abuse. But I was lost even so; most of the damage was done. I answered that “I can’t tell you” when he asked certain questions. At first he got kind of mad, but he stayed patient enough. “You’re at home?” Meaning with parents.
It was dark. Always, a dark place. I rarely met him after that because he used drops, after I left cash in another drop then called him. But it began to sink in. His face, there in the dark, surrounded by woods and some distant houses, revealed something I never knew the meaning of until years later. I think he guessed it. No, that’s not exactly it. I think he knew. He knew the deal: trouble at home. I was pretty beat up on the inside. Later he learned to tell it in my voice in just a “hey, it’s me” on the phone. He knew my voice, my name, my mood. He knew I had a past and present I couldn’t talk about. He obviously had me followed and asked around about me.
The Code of Silence refers not to some Mafia rule of the Sicilian Omerta, but the one all victims of domestic and sexual abuse are threatened to observe. You tell anyone, and you’ll pay for it.
“I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll kill your family.”
“I’ll send you to Crownsville (insert the name of your nearest mental institution here)”.
And so on.
I had not told my ex. Nobody knew. Dealer knew the nature of my hell. He recommended reds and a few other things for “emergencies”. He told me how to take them and what would be too much. “You ever OD on me, and I hear it, you and I are through. I deal, I ain’t no killer. You die, good luck in Hell.”
Holy shit, I thought later. Dealer had scruples, even religious ones. I can’t remember the street names of the other tablets and capsules I got, but he always asked at intervals how I was doing and what’s happening in my life. By January of ’78, he knew where I worked and lived and even what school I went to. I heard a name once. A bodyguard slipped and said it. I looked in a George Fox yearbook from 1975, the last year I went. Going by upperclassmen and the name, I thought I found him. He would have been familiar to my sister, who was a gossip and knew everyone. I asked if she knew him one night and she gave me this weird look. She never said anything except “Stay away from him” and to this day I wonder about it. Did I really have the right guy? Yearbook pictures in teenage years are deceptive. I wasn’t sure. I’d changed a lot in 3 years. And I don’t know if he was the Dealer, or exactly what way she’d known or heard of him. Then again, I never knew if that one sister out of all the others (4 in all) was ever abused. I never did, but I was of the mind that with her mean Scorpio nature likely with Gemini rising, maybe she’d been abused to some extent but quickly shown resistance and defiance that scared our father. I likened her to the queen of the hive. She got away with anything she wanted.
Dealer came to know everything a dealer could know or figure out. From summer, 1977 on. He became invested and I knew it. But I never did break the Code of Silence. That would come later.
JULIE
The party was okay. I requested a song and my ex told Julie to play it. It was a song I liked, but I didn’t know what Julie was going to take from it, and never thought about that. I was drugged and it was an impulse. But she knew my ex and I had long since broken up. So I think she may have inferred something from the song.
It was on the radio so much that I’d gotten to like the bittersweet lyrics. Julie knew them well. You’ll see what I mean.
Written by Cat Stevens with lead guitar by Joe Walsh, no one ever covered this song with more emotion than Stewart. I don’t know for certain that Julie took it to mean I was still messed up over my ex, who had come with someone else, but that maybe I liked her. But that it meant something to me was obvious.
Someone said the snow was getting worse and Gary, whose car was not built for slippery roads (I think it was a Pinto), wanted to leave. Not remembering how the hell we got there, I had to follow them, so the night was over. On the way back up Ritchie Highway I had to pull over and throw up. The soda, the reds and the fear of the snow because I hadn’t had snow tires put on yet, were all too much for me. I just wanted to go home and sleep. I realized I’d mixed drugs. I wasn’t even fit to drive on a summer day.
Monday morning at school, I walked the plowed asphalt and crunchy snow from the student parking lot through the arch of the century-old building, and waiting at the door of that building which was called “the Great Hall” but was likened to Frankenstein’s castle by someone I knew, Julie opened the door, waved and said, “Hey Mike!”
She had me come up the steps and she said that she really liked me and had asked her father if she could go out with me. I was shocked and wondered if I’d said anything to her, and if she’d taken that song to be for her, but it didn’t matter. My heart was falling already. This beautiful girl wanted me? Hell, I couldn’t remember much more about the party than I just wrote. Except that I was sick and had to work on Sunday. I don’t remember actually working.
I spent a week feeling so good I didn’t need to take anything. Shit, I even had a liking for instant coffee at night. Homework was out of the question. If I did it, which I hardly ever took seriously, and in Algebra wrote numbers at random anyway, I can’t say. All I know is I felt happy. Happier than I had been in a very long time, and in my house, any joy was short-lived as my father slapped it out of us as quickly as he spotted it. Being in a good mood made him suspicious. But that week, I was in a place I never wanted to leave. She told me that her father had to meet me first and then he would give her his answer. That was set for the following Saturday night. I was getting seriously nervous by quitting time on Saturday, but I showered and dressed and took two reds. That was a big mistake. They’d kick in before I arrived and I thought it was okay. But it wasn’t okay. Her dad sat me down at his kitchen table and in a friendly manner asked questions. It was very traditional and I was a wreck but I respected him. I really started getting sleepy. But I was zoning out more by the second and that was wrong. It didn’t work like that. Well, mostly not, and I did everything wrong. I saw a rough chunk of red crystal as a decoration on a lower shelf of an island counter, picked it up, and it was beautiful. Rough cut but polished. I put it to my eye and looked through it. That should have been it right there. He should have thought anything except what he did: “Hey, I never thought of that.” And he looked through it too. How he couldn’t tell I was drugged (“on something”) I’ll never know, but he liked me. He found me respectful and amusing.
Outside it was snowing again. I had parallel parked out front. He heard my wheels spinning uselessly and came out to help. I felt bad about that but on Monday, Julie was waiting inside the Great Hall and came out to tell me her dad liked me and said we could go out. Here was another week of heaven, but this time the infatuation had me sleepless.
My heart pounded. It ached. I dreamed while lying awake. I worried and I called Dealer. Somehow, he knew who I was seeing and where she lived, and that scared me. He could tell and he said he needed to see me before we could do business. This one time he met me in a public area. The parking lot of Gino’s on Mountain Road. He said, “Fuck, kid, you look like shit. What the hell you doing to yourself? You’re gonna call down heat on me lookin like this. You better get yer shit together!” He asked me about the girl. I said I think I’m in love and he says love ain’t supposed to make you sick, asshole. He had just the thing, though, and he gave me a couple of samples. A one time deal on something he said he’d never offer me again. He said, “Now go home and get in the sack and if you gotta stay home tomorrow and sleep, do it. Don’t you never let me catch you lookin this shitty again.”
I don’t remember if I stayed home the next day. I slept like a baby and I don’t know for how long. It’s possible I did miss a day and don’t remember. But that was the best drug high and then drop I had until I got a mixture of morphine and valium. That was heavy. The universe made perfect sense for two hours. The comedown was gentle, slow. I knew why people liked the needle. That didn’t come from my dealer; he never mentioned it. He wasn’t everywhere.
Dating Julie is a haze. I remember the night I told her I loved her. She said, “The crazy thing is, I think I’m starting to love you too.” It was snowing and as we made out, this obscure song was playing. It only fit because I only heard the words I wanted to.
Then came sex. In the car. Parked in the darkest corner of a parking lot where nobody ever parked. It got heavy and it happened fast.
PSYCHO
Want to know what happens when a 17-year-old high school junior has PTSD, a drug abuse problem, a beautiful girl, is getting laid, and should be enjoying life?
Well I’ll tell you.
Bad things happen and it’s like a cartoon snowball rolling down a mountain. It gets faster and more dangerous with each hundredth of a second.
Insecurities about our relationship, about myself, began to haunt me. You know what that’s like? It’s like you’re gonna die. Your whole world is gonna end any minute. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It never even crossed my mind that I was right or wrong. It was always in my mind that I was different. That I had something wrong with me. And the more I felt for Julie the less secure I was.
I began to badger her over it. She was a bit bothered at first but it got old and I could tell. It was going south.
SPRING
In the same month I was grounded, Julie was grounded and my dealer wouldn’t answer my calls. He had a guy screening them. I went through agony withdrawing. I was dependent. My insides shook. On weekends I had to clean the offices at my father’s warehouse. It was an all day job. Not because I was slow or withdrawing but I was never dismissed until it was fucking dark.
Unknown to me, because Julie and I had broken curfew one night, her father had called mine. Julie had a decent guy for a father. I didn’t. The night we were late, he called looking for his daughter. My father hated him or his children being called out. Getting any negative attention. Appearances were everything to him, always is to a monster who leads a double life. Control and dominance are integral to child abuse. I got home that night, the lights were out, and usually that meant everyone was sleeping. Not this night.
My father was behind the front door, in the dark. As soon as I closed it my head exploded. I was knocked loopy and had moved a few feet to the top of the stairs leading down to the den and my room. He clocked me again, knocking me unconscious. I don’t remember how I got up the steps, or him knocking me out again and back down the stairs. One of my sisters told me later that she was up, saw it, and was yelling to dad that he was killing me. And then I got grounded.
I already hated my life. I hated myself way more after that night than ever before. And I hated everyone in the world for what was being, what had already been done, to me. Hate and anger filled my soul, my head, and every cell in my body.
Well. My older sister, the one who I thought knew about Dealer, was away at her first year of college. I hated her, too. But for Spring Break, we went and picked her up and went to Myrtle Beach. It seemed pretty far from Buies Creek to me, but I didn’t know fuck all what was going on. I was miserable. I didn’t fucking care about any of them. I hated them. My insides crawled and twisted. I had spent one afternoon throwing up. I was dizzy but had a constant headache and I shook like a leaf all the time. Sometimes so badly that everyone saw it. Good thing my parents knew jack shit about withdrawal. They never knew –suspected, but never knew –that I was hardcore. Thinking back now, I abused the reds to the point where I was lucky to have lived through the use and the withdrawal. Either could have killed me.
THE COP
After a miserable rainy week in South Carolina, or was it just a weekend? I went one morning, a saturday, to work. My father reminded me to call Master Alarm Company and tell them I was going to open up. There were no keypads back then. I was so sick I forgot to call. Next thing I knew, Anne Arundel County police officers were running into the building with shotguns or with police specials drawn. I told them what happened with my heart pounding in terror, but one of them was an asshole. He threatened to arrest me for a false alarm next time. And that was the beginning of something I should never have been put through.
I knew his name because another officer who knew my father later told me. He made no bones about telling me everyone hated the guy. Al knew who I was talking about because this cop had the first Ford with a big light bar across the roof; the rest of the cruisers were bigger, Pontiacs with a single blue dome light on the roof. Truckers called them “bubble gum machines”. The cop was known as a dick who would not hesitate to write tickets to old ladies who couldn’t afford repair orders. In fact, I saw him doing that on Crain Highway. I had a focus for my hate. It was him.
Then he began to show up in my rearview mirror. He’d come out of nowhere like some fucking demon and ride my bumper to intimidate me and probably to get me to make a mistake so he could write a ticket or handcuff me. I didn’t know how he was in so many different beats all the time. How did he explain that to superiors? I’d see him in northern Glen Burnie, Southdale, Pasadena, Lake Shore, Riviera Beach, Millersville (police department headquarters was there), Severna Park and everywhere in between. My nerves were wrecked.
I only got to see Dealer once after that. He’d heard I had the fuzz on my ass and told me never to look for or call him again. It was some cold shit so I hated him, too. Another name on the hate list. I actually never ratted on him even though I considered it. My anger, insecurities and anxiety just kept swelling up in my heart and in my head. He didn’t know how close I had already come to dying from his reds. One night I couldn’t breathe. It was terrifying and I got up and forced myself to go for a walk. All I knew was that I had to get my heart rate up or I was a goner. It was dark and nobody was out. No cars passed me. I walked Dutch Ship Road down to Edgewater and then did it again, never realizing I was so fucked up that I was walking kind of like you see on Walking Dead, or Sean Of The Dead, but like a drunk zombie. Yeah, a guy I knew saw me. Where he saw me isn’t clear but he said he laughed his ass off. I otherwise probably wouldn’t remember it. I do know he thought I was drunk because he saw me puking in the middle of the road. It seems I had no trouble puking in the middle or the shoulders of roadways.
Julie put up with me the best she could, but when it came time for the junior prom, I could not and would not go. I was drug free, and that wasn’t any good for me. I was back to panic attacks and sleepless nights and I was permanently depressed and exhausted. I was too scared to go. Crowds, a tux, oh hell no.
Besides, one night I almost told her about the cop. But I stopped short because he had never followed me when she (or anyone else) was with me. Evidently he was senior enough to be daylight shift, the dickhead. But I knew she would tell her father, and if he did anything, anything at all, I knew I alone would pay for it. If he told my father, well, my old man would have gone through his cop friend, and I knew where that would lead.
So I changed my mind and made it a stalker who drove a green import. I acted up and I acted out. I was scared enough to need to get it off my chest but too scared to tell the truth. Her father knew there was no green import, but by the time came for the prom and I refused to go, I knew it was over. He hated me, and she did, too. She had to have felt betrayed and insulted. The school year ended with my teachers all ganging together and complaining about me to the headmaster. I wound up in his office way too many times and he started calling my mother, who immediately called my father at work, daily. And no matter how high the tuition was, the truth was that they decided some students were not worth the trouble. One administrator said I was the worst student the school ever had. I had six credits. I wouldn’t graduate until I was thirty, she said. The headmaster, a shithead who liked touching female students, concurred. He was Navy reserve, but he was a douche. I heard the news from my father after the last day of school: neither I nor my sister would be enrolled for the following year. I said, “Dad, that’s not fair. Lisa ain’t done anything wrong! She’s a model student.” He said, “Michael, you’re too dumb even to go to public school. Lisa will, but you won’t. You’re going to drop out and come to work for me full time.” He told me I was retarded, stupid, called me everything in the book. I believed him.
I wouldn’t know until the following summer that my father knew things I never thought anyone knew. Julie and I had been seen having sex on campus. Holy shit.
SUMMER
The summer began with me working at a satellite warehouse my father owned. One day, an overhead door was off the rollers on two panels. My oldest brother and a truck driver stayed late to fix it and therefore, I had to stay. My brother handed me something that came to the house in the mail that day. My mother had taken it to the main office, given it to my father, and he had my brother bring it to me when he came in the late afternoon that day. It was July 4th, 1978. The item was a postcard from Ocean City, New Jersey. Fuckin Jersey shore. It was a “Dear John” letter on a fucking postcard. I deserved it and I knew it but couldn’t face it. My heart was broken. I wanted to die but was too cowardly for suicide. I just suffered. Acted out. Used only when a driver was able to give me a few pills.
I had behaved like a fool. I was embarrassed, felt guilty for hurting Julie, and yet hated and loved her at the same time. It hurt. Always, with no relief. I was running on empty. I listened to that song a lot. But Clapton had this song charting earlier and it was getting typical overplay on AM radio and it haunted me to death.
Even the fuckin radio was my enemy, a tormentor I hated but couldn’t turn off. That song reminded me of a party we had gone to.
So many times I wanted to die. If not for my best friend, I would not be here. Eventually I’d have done something like hang myself. So we caroused a bit (Heineken) and cruised, but mostly we talked. I was smoking by my 18th birthday but had to hide it from may father. He knew better. When he got mad enough, he’d have his reckoning. He always did.
I didn’t try to contact Julie again. It was the most mature thing I’d ever done for her.
The heartache wouldn’t stop. She’d left a hole in me. A terrible thing I couldn’t patch up or medicate. Dealer was a no go. I sure wanted his doctoring, though. Some pill to raise me up out of this mess I had in my heart.
FAll
School started. My sister went to Chesapeake and I kept putting on a work uniform at 6 every morning. 15 hour days weren’t unusual.
One night I was supposed to go with my friend for pizza. It was really early but because of the time chage, very dark. I got to my car and didn’t have my keys. I had to go back to my room. So I went downstairs through the den and into my room.
I knew my keys were on my desk straight ahead across the room. It was very dark but I didn’t need to see to get them so I left the light off. Halfway across the room I stopped dead. Frozen with the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. The air felt weird, as if it were charged with something.
It was pure evil. Like what I felt years earlier when I was in an upstairs room and that tiny shadow was on the walls by the ceiling. Only this was much worse. Far more powerful. I remained still. I couldn’t have moved if I had the runs; I’d have made a mess.
Everything was quiet. Deathly quiet in a house full of people. I was not aware of time passing. I just stood there.
When the energy around me seemed to vanish, from behind me and to the right of the door, from inside my closet, I heard my father say, “Yeah, I’m in here.”
What the fuck!
All these years, I’ve thought that night I sensed my father’s true self. But what I felt was something around me. He wasn’t alone. A younger sister later told me she saw a shadow, much bigger than the one I had seen all those years ago. Maybe that’s what I felt. The demon who urged him to give in to his sick tendencies. He’d raised us with his fucked-up “wisdom” and twisted “insight” about Old Testament laws. He never lived by them. He fucked up our heads, and perhaps I got the worst of it because I’m in an ongoing treatment and rehabilitation program and the rest of my siblings still have spouses, and children, and only one gets counseling, or was, last time I talked to her.
But a real Christian doesn’t beat and rape his children. Real Christians get help or find some way to resist. Besides, he wasn’t penitent and my mother was even worse. Losing your cherry to your own mother fucks your head up for life.
I never forgot that night. I never will unless I go into dementia. And I wonder: did I really sense demon, or man?
He was in the closet looking for hidden drugs and Playboy magazines. He fucked his own daughters but hated porn. He would always find it and trash it, but rape and incest? Those were backed up by scripture. He was a fucking animal.
WINTER
The year’s end I don’t remember. On December 7, I wrecked the car. Rear-ended someone on mountain road and my father was merciless. I don’t remember Christmas. I don’t remember much of anything except the constant pain I felt over Julie. I bottomed out. I just bottomed out.
EPILOGUE
It’s only one year out of the sixty I’ve lived, yet so traumatic and so painful. Yeah. Even now. I knew this day would come, when I had to write about this whole year. I dreaded it but now that it’s done, I’m going to be okay. This story was necessary to show you how indecent I was, the result of ongoing violence and abuse. To tell you what happened when my life was so hard to live, the dysfunctional relationship I had, what it did to me and what I can only guess it did to Julie.
I had to include every ingredient, my job, drug abuse, the rogue police officer, my intense fears and inability to go to the prom, my deceit, the failure to be brave enough to tell the truth, what my teachers thought of me and how that unfairly affected my sister, and that it was no small miracle that I survived that year.
Today, reds are impossible to get on the street without big dollars. Most dealers never even heard of them. There’s plenty of stepped-on coke, skunk weed, crack, crank, fentanyl, scramble, percocet, benzos and a few others. Fentanyl (street name “fettie” or “fenny”) is instant death, or a visit to intensive care, and a ticket to an NDE. If you survive, you’re not going to be the same. Heroin is major league trouble. You’ll never find anything pure. You dont know what’s mixed in, or if it will kill you. ODs are still common.
If you’re on a drug or drugs, my suggestion is to stop. You can’t just do it yourself, though; you could die. You need help, detox, and that requires things most aren’t willing to go through.
As for the cop, he fucked with me straight through to 1980. I got back together with my first ex, and told her. She accused me of lying. I couldn’t win. I was always a fuckin loser.
But my best friend. He believed me. Want to know what he told me? Because he knew the guys this happened to.
The guys were horsing around on the parking lot of the White Coffee Pot Jr. on Ritchie Highway one night, but someone called it in as a fight. Guess who the first cop on the scene was. Oh, yeah, and he roughed the teens up, seriously beating one of them.
That boy’s father was a man with a rep, the kind you wanted as a friend, or else went out of your way to avoid. They called him “Big Joe.”
Well, Big Joe wasn’t the kind of man who could see his son in the hospital and not do anything about it. He called in a massive order, about a two hundred dollar tab, to Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips. When he got there, he refused to pay. The manager threatened to call the police and Big Joe encouraged him to go ahead. He further told the manager to request a certain officer and promised the guy that this particular cop would definitely see to it that justice was done. The manager did so. When the officer arrived, Big Joe proceeded to hand him a beating the man would never forget. He left before backup came but it wasn’t clear whether they ever arrested him. I dont know. But in a way, justice was served.
When the cop got back to work, a few years went by and one day I read about him in the paper. He had been disciplined for sexual harassment and was riding a desk. Yes, there are bad cops. There always were. But most I’ve ever met were eager to help and didn’t like injustice.
I was messed up. But Julie? Lee Ann never left my heart but I was never involved with her. I have loved every single woman I was ever with. There was never anyone I wasn’t serious about. Julie keeps a secret place in my heart. I’m grateful I knew her.
AFTERWORD
You have to measure this story against yourself, and if you’ve survived sexual abuse, physical abuse, or sexual assault, domestic abuse of any kind, then perhaps you see something of yourself in this story. PTSD has different symptoms and no two victims are the same. If you’re in a situation or just got out of one, you’ll need help. My treatment includes drug and other therapy. That’s a good mix once you get the right meds dialed in. Talk therapy is hard work. You relive everything, and the next day you may feel exhausted. But the truth is, you’ve had a part of yourself torn away and replaced with an insidious and crippling affliction. You do not deserve to live that kind of life. I survived decades with it, but those years were full of torment, nightmares, dysfunctional relationships and guilt.
Of all these, the worst is guilt. I’ve carried guilt over how I treated Julie for years. I looked for her on Facebook. I just wanted to apologize. Same with my other exes.
But I had to come to grips with one sad, ultimate truth.
I did the best I could.
And none of it was my fault. I was hurt. I didn’t know about PTSD or the price of drug use.
I didn’t know.
Do you? Do you feel guilt from something that wasn’t your fault? Because you need to see that you were a victim, damaged by heinous acts, and that guilt is a toxin.
I was young. A boy. Maybe eight. My older brothers and I had gone with our father to a gravel and asphalt lot. Seems like it was a truck stop. You never forget your first sight of death, or the knowledge that someone has died, and you didn’t see it, but you’re staring at the evidence of it. My oldest brother was always impatient. I think he nudged some gravel sideways with a foot. A diesel whine, low and working hard as it pulled weight uphill came to the ears, then my brother with his foot in the gravel said, “This must be it.”
Then it came into view, a huge towing rig, one not meant for a car. Trucks have changed so much since the 1960s that I can’t really see the make. Couldn’t tell you if it was a Mack, International or Brockway. But I clearly remember what it was towing. You never forget that first time you look at something and realize it killed someone.
***
It was terrible, because I’d had toy trucks. One was a wired remote control semi with a flatbed. Topper Toys’ JohnnyExpress. Funny enough, I found it frustrating. Of course my father had to show me how to back it up, like to a dock. Even with toys, he was a bastard. He’d yell at me for not catching on fast enough to suit him. I never liked it, though. At night, it looked like the driver moved. And that thing in my room probably enjoyed that.
The toy broke. It was so cheap that its front spindles broke. There was no way to fix them so it got trashed. I just didn’t think much of trucks after that, but my young brain couldn’t comprehend the idea that they were lethal. Until, that is, two years after JohnnyExpress crapped out on me.
***
The tow truck was pulling a whole rig, an eighteen wheeler. And it was so mangled that I knew the tractor was there, but it didn’t look like one. I’ve seen a shitload of wrecked eighteen wheelers in my time, some of which were serious, and some that didn’t look that bad but someone, usually the driver or a car driver, was killed. I’ve never seen anything as bad as what I saw that day.
I don’t remember what the weather was like. I don’t know exactly where we were, but it wasn’t dad’s terminal in Frederick. I believe it was some kind of repair and storage facility for trucks. It was probably the closest place to the accident scene to tow the mangled lumps of steel to.
The story was horrible and unforgettable; the driver had been going down a mountain, a somewhat steep grade, not the worst, say nine percent. But the trip down lasted for five miles. That is a long time to hold back a trailer loaded with freight. And in the mid-60s, that was a serious issue.
Back then, the super rigs of today weren’t even dreams yet. If you were around back then and traveled the highways between states, you’ll remember the strong smell of diesel fumes belched from stacks with telltale black smoke trailing the rig. There were no emissions regulations. And it was rare to see a van (box) trailer or any other with a length in excess of 35-40 feet. That was a restriction; strict total rig weight and length guidelines were enforced by the Department of Transportation (DOT) at roadside weigh stations.
The problem with steep grades wasn’t so much the ascent, unless a driver missed a gear and couldn’t find another to match his speed and RPMs fast enough, and I’ve seen the end result of that situation myself. Coming down a mountain backwards has always had a bad ending.
The descent from a mountain or “hill” was a bitch. There were limitations to the equipment of the day. Mainly, there’s what we call “pancake brakes”. There was nothing else. It was a small brake chamber, one for each side of each axle, both tractor and trailer. The problem was, they were operated by compressed air, as are all truck and trailer brakes, to this day. Every truck had an air compressor, and heavy duty hoses between the tractor and the trailer would send that air to the chambers. If anything went wrong, it meant no brakes. There was a rubber diaphragm in the brake chambers that could easily be blown out. Loss of air pressure then affected the entire braking system and going downhill meant a rig became a runaway. There was nothing to stop it.
Here is a link to Michigan Truck Spring Company with an excellent 5 minute video explaining and demonstrating the differences between air brake types. The larger chambers are typically referred to as “maxi brakes” or chambers. They last longer, and if air pressure drops, it engages. All brakes engage, or lock up, which can stop the truck. Usually.
BACKBONE
It sits in two states, West Virginia and Maryland. In Maryland it holds the highest peak in the state, over 3,000 feet. Not huge, but a problem for truckers. Although the mountain might be high on the other side of the state line, it makes little difference.
Backbone is said to be haunted by ghosts of people who died suddenly there, but I’ve found no specific anecdotal information of such. Yet I find no reason not to believe they’re out there.
Because people do die there. At the peak on the Maryland side, one can see the North Branch Potomac River, “Potowmack” to settlers, and its history goes much further back than those.
While some deaths were caused by violence, some more recent ones were accidents. Maryland state route 135 is a long, usually two-lane, two-way-traffic rural route that kills people.
I’ve never known why a trucker would choose this route to come out of West Virginia into Maryland. In the 1960s, there may have been no choice, or little in the way of options; however, my father forbade his drivers from using that route. He expected them to properly distribute net weight by moving or adjusting the bogie, the name for the suspension and dual wheels on a trailer. It’s guesswork, but a seasoned trucker can put it right where he or she needs it to be to weigh legal at a weigh station. So long as the rest of the rig is in order, no air leaks, no safety problems, the scales on main routes let you go on your way.
You see, one reason for traveling north and east on 135 is to avoid the scales. They used to be along US routes 40 and 48, which is now Interstate 68, even though the old routes still have parts in use beside it. For the former Luke Paper Mill, which shipped huge rolls of paper and required a rig to haul them, there was no alternative. Otherwise it was prudent to avoid that section of the road.
As a northeastern route, just past the Bloomington Cemetery, it had the 9 percent grade turn sharply to the right at the bottom of the descent. At speed, this was impossible for a rig, and even some cars. Back then a trucker had only a sheet map to guide him, and those gave no topographic information nor warning of any feature that posed a danger. At the top of the steep descent, they were ignorant of what they were about to go through, and I’m sure they geared down, but it wasn’t enough for five miles of 9 percent. They would realize halfway down, but by then it was too late. They’d fan the brakes, engaging the brake pedal and releasing it to prevent the brake shoes from catching fire, which they often did anyway despite containing asbestos.
What they found out was that at the bottom of the grade, where 135 made an impossible right turn, there was an old retaining wall. It was built to hold back erosion from the land beyond it, but the truckers often hit it. Usually they were killed. One truck struck the wall at 75 miles per hour, and the responders knew this because that’s where the speedometer was stuck. That guy was killed on impact.
Over the years, someone, no one knows who, started painting white crosses on the wall for each dead trucker. There were fewer the day I saw the tow truck pull in with a mangled chunk of steel and a twisted flatbed trailer behind it. There are more now, but inadequate for the real number of men who met their end there.
***
It was raining on 135 the day it happened, and descending, the driver was unfortunate enough to lose traction on his trailer tires by means of using the trailer’s brakes, excessive speed and, of course, the wet road. Trailers that lose traction slide, picking up speed, which sends the trailer sideways in a deadly dance called a jackknife. Once, decades later, I had a rig do this to me in the snow, but I recovered, straightened out, but still shook for a week. It’s a damned scary thing.
My father’s driver could not recover and the flatbed slid into a full sideways jackknife and a woman driving a car in the oncoming lane was decapitated. Her son, in the passenger seat, suffered a broken arm. But it wasn’t over yet. Now in runaway mode, the rig struck the wall cab-first and turned everything into scrap metal. It’s odd that I can’t remember if he died, but I want to say he survived. Because I’m thinking he was in a hospital for a while, and was never the same again. Damn, his name is on the tip of my tongue and yet evades me. Not that I would use it anyway.
Since then the Maryland highway administration put up warning signs. They made brake-check stops along the side of the road and later, an escape ramp filled with pea gravel to slow a runaway rig down and stop it. Over 20 white crosses were on the wall, decades on, when the state installed flashing lights, warning signs and a computerized speed sensor that will warn a trucker a mile ahead of time that the escape ramp is a mile ahead and his or her speed requires its use.
All good things, to be sure, but the lives already lost combine to put the wall into American legend. One time, a tanker filled with hydrochloric acid came down too fast. Another trucker had pulled over beside the wall to sleep. Neither survived.
In 1986, I dispatched a driver from Glen Burnie, Maryland to Parsons, West Virginia for a load of charcoal on an overseas container destined for the Dundalk Marine Terminal and some European port. The guy was green, and he used this route, and my father tore his ass for it. But the greenhorn made it back in one piece. From that day on, another driver named Buck refused to use his name, calling him “Ol’ 135”.
Every year the crosses on the wall are painted afresh on Memorial Day. In the center is a blue cross which bears the saying, “Jesus Saves.”
A rig that failed to negotiate the right angle turn, and hit the wall.The Wall of CrossesLocation of The Wall of Martyrs, those who gave their lives to supply America.View of The Wall from the cemetery. The grade is easily seen here.
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.”
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.
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!
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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. ❤️☮️
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 