NO MORE MR. NICE GUY: The Return of the American Asshole

Maybe I still believe in being kind. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t make exceptions on occasion. This is one occasion where I deem it necessary to be an asshole by telling the rest of the story behind a recent post.

It was about being on social media and feeling betrayed and deleting my account on an app.

Here’s how it went down.

I had posted about liking where I lived. Folks liked the post. One woman named Jennifer in particular. She really liked it.

But I did not like what followed. I held back to protect other’s feelings, and it was dishonest. Because I don’t give a half-fuck about her feelings. She triggered me and freaked me out. Saying anything less was misleading, and my code does not distinguish that from telling an outright lie. I apologize.

This woman DMd me several days in a row, twice a day.

She said that she was touched by my post. I mentioned that I had this site, but didn’t give the web address. I was not plugging it, and besides, even when I do plug this site, nothing happens. My year-end stats would depress any other blogger. Me, I just don’t have much to say about it.

She found it.

First red flag.

In a DM she said she had driven through the supermarket parking lot to meet me and see if I wanted some beef stew.

Wait, what?

Look folks, supermarkets are busy places, and to go looking for someone you’ve never met in person in one drive through a parking lot is weird. Known also as: stalking. Second red flag.

The beef stew? I’ve had 5 stalkers, and they never offer shit. Beef stew? What the fuck is that?

It’s the third red flag.

There came another day not long after where, in another direct message, she said she had driven through the supermarket lot again searching for me. Do you have any idea what the odds are that a predatory stalker would find someone they’ve never met in two swipes past a market? The most jaded odds makers in Vegas would run for the hills. They’d also throw up along the way. Them hills’d be running with brooks of bile. Rivers of regurgitation. Ponds of puke, valleys full of vomit.

So, stalking it was. Fourth red flag.

“Just to introduce myself and show support”, came the message. When someone expresses the need to explain why they just did something, it demonstrates that they are aware of how wrong their behavior is and how you might react. Fifth red flag.

So I messaged that if she really wanted to meet, she could call my phone and we could set up a public meeting. I encourage women to never meet a stranger outside of public view.

I added, though, that she should make sure that her husband was cool with it. I’ve been in that situation before, and I have nothing good to say about it.

Came the response, “I will never ever call you but I’ll text you here from time to time.”

Bitch, you were looking for me, and texting me twice a day. Now it’s “from time to time”?

Red flags and alarms everywhere.

Why?

Either she was married and didn’t like what I said, or she wasn’t and didn’t care for what she perceived as presumption on my part. Now her furious quest to meet me was over? Ha!

I’ve been here before. It ain’t no place to be.

I’m not a better man. I never did a heroic, honorable thing in my life.

Oh, and did I mention that she subscribed to a Baltimore newspaper just so she could access articles about the prosecution of my parents, which happened 33 years ago?

That’s not being inquisitive.

Since only a few articles were written, it’s just plain demented.

I’m no better man. I won’t try to be, either. I cannot rise above the sum of my fragmented parts.

I’m just an asshole. So lady, if you’re still reading, I suggest you get less interested in me with all possible speed. There’s nothing for you here.

And I don’t want anyone to love me. Fuck it. Don’t mean nothing.

An American Asshole

I may be a decent person. I’m not sure. I think I’m just an asshole.

I may be a decent writer. I’m not sure of that, either. I don’t get very widely read, so I doubt it. More likely is the possibility that a few posts are interesting to a few readers, and that’s fine. Mostly, though, people don’t care about what assholes say.

I’ve had to revert to the original title of this site, Memoirs of an American Asshole because the American Observer seemed a bit pretentious to me. And no matter what one other person (just one) says, I am an asshole. I can’t change that by obeying one person’s protests.

But there’s a lot to this claim that I’m an asshole, mostly, I believe, things which are not my fault, but which made me what I am. I cannot lie about what I am. And I have no idea who I am.

Memory lapses, notable ones, indicate more than simple PTSD by itself. And that condition is every bit the hell I’ve been trying to describe, but there’s a worse kind.

Sometimes called by the clinical name complex post traumatic stress disorder, there is a whole different list of symptoms of the illness. The usual victims are children. The causes are “imprisonment”; or being in a situation of danger which is prevalent and from which there is no escape; being subjected to slavery; sexual abuse for an extended period of time; being in a solitary confinement situation; being denied healthcare; proper parenting and guidance, constructive growth reinforcement and encouragement, replaced by strict reinforcement of fear conditioning to prevent certain behaviors outside of the home base environment.

There’s more to it. I’ve been, along with my siblings, compared by a professional on the Donahue Show (1992) to a concentration camp survivor. I never felt that was a fair comparison since real survivors of the Holocaust went through a literal hell on earth. Who was I to claim what they had endured?

By 1992, I was, for all intents and purposes, already gravitating to the liberal view of politics and social and societal ideology and dynamics, respectively. I held interest in studying war and the horrors it never failed to create, so Europe in World War Two was an area of study I found as fascinating as I did disgusting.

In the winters the prisoners in forced labor camps froze solid. Before that, toes fell off. Fingers turned black, wooden in sensation, then disarticulated the same way toes did.

Lice, human fleas, worms and disease were constant. Lashes with whips and beatings with every object possible; there was rape, child abuse both sexual and other kinds, and the slaughter was staggering. Anyone who survived was going to be forever scarred. Who had any right but they in claiming they had experienced a literal hell while still alive?

But as I approach another birthday, I realize that there have been scores of people from every civilization in human history who have experienced hell.

I seek not to compare myself nor my pain with any other, but I know in my heart that victims are victims, no matter where they come from, no matter what’s been done to them. The end results are always the same: broken people who have known evil and savagery. Fucked-up people.

And so, I’ve grown old despite the odds. The price for this is too high. Never-ending pain, loneliness, longing, and mental illness that drugs can moderate but never cure. A gently shifting personality that seems to cause memory problems and even accent and writing-style changes. Mood changes that must be mysterious to others, but never to me. Sleeping and eating disorders, compulsive behavior, long periods of depression and consequent inaction. Memories I can’t get out of my head.

I remember better times. I really do. But the horrible things always come creeping back, and I can’t stop them.

Friends have told me, “Don’t think about it!” but they haven’t been through what I have. Or what you have. We can’t say a prayer or wave a magic wand and stop anything. And we were made this way for a reason, and we evolved this way for a reason.

Only God knows the whole picture, but in the years when I believed in God but thought he had turned his head away, I had to keep from wondering how much of a reason he really had. For anything.

God was so far away then. And I was so very alone.

I looked for him. I begged for help and I cried. But the pain went on, the torture went on.

I became mean, bitter. It took years, decades. I became an asshole. I did things nobody will ever know about. Things so shameful they’ve never made it to a post on this site, and they never will. Things I must take with me to the grave until the time comes to account for myself to God.

I fear that day.

I fear very little here on this earth. What can be done to me that has not already been done? Not much.

My family does not understand, but they do try, and I love them all the more for it.

My lady friend knows more about me than anyone else has ever known. She is the one who hates this blog title. But I can’t believe that she knows everything I’ve told her and thinks I’m any better than what I say.

I need to talk to my doctor about my diagnosis. Because things just get worse, and I would normally say at this point, it’s not fair, but of course it isn’t, and everyone who shares my experiences knows that. But God gave us the ability, if we’re willing to use it, to sustain grievous damage, learn from the pain, and adapt, learn and search for more clues that, in the end, might help another in our position. I believe that is why we’re here, able to communicate, reach out, and grab that hand reaching down to pull us up.

Because one day, we’ll be the ones reaching down to pull someone else up. We may never know it if that happens. Sometimes people in trouble don’t have anyone to talk to. Sometimes they come across a blog while looking for something to grab onto. It could be yours. Could be mine.

They may never leave a comment, but perhaps in your words, they’ve gained the strength to get through one more night of loneliness, one more day of pain. Maybe, just maybe, God speaks through you once in a while. Didn’t you ever write something, come back later and not remember writing it, yet you find the words to be moving? Who knows what that’s about?

Sometimes, God might whisper in your ear so that you can help someone. Maybe he even whispers to an asshole like me. I’d like to believe that. Such a thing would make my hell a bit less unbearable. Would make the pain and the memories mean something.

Share what you know. Tell people what you have endured, only to live to tell the tale. You might save a life. That’s why we’re here. Not to kill, make war, or work every day like a robot. I believe that. I believe it in my heart.

The Supernatural Is Real and it’s Damn Scary

The following post is a compilation of my most memorable clashes with the supernatural. They really happened, but I honestly wish they hadn’t. While I continue my vacation, take a look. Be warned, these posts are disturbing in places and do contain some triggers.

In my first post, the story of abuse and a demonic entity in my bedroom is told. The House of Pain is still the setting for some of my nightmares, and what happened there led to an infamous criminal trial.

Did you ever wonder if the Angel of Death is real? I don’t. Not anymore.

But I’ll never ghost hunt again because if you go looking for something, you might just find it.

But experiences like visions of the past, those can be argued over, but has not something like that happened also to you?

Then there was the cat who knew too much . It provided a story that to this day I cannot remember without getting chills. Animals certainly know spirits, and sometimes they seem to want to introduce you to them.

In Bolero Hats and Thunder and Nightmares That Come True, the story is told of a woman most unusual, who affected me profoundly and is impossible to forget, but the contents of a precognitive nightmare and what happened next is extraordinary and left me chilled to the bone. Pay attention to dreams. They might just come true.

In Attacked! I paid a price for involving myself in a demon’s affairs. I may never sleep again.

The supernatural is real. Be careful with it. As it is a part of the natural world but a part we understand very little, be very careful. Pray before attempting spiritual warfare. Don’t use ouija boards. Don’t do seances. Leave the dead be. Don’t ghost hunt, go to flea markets or garage sales and leave antiques alone. Much better to stay in and have a cup of tea by the fire and curl up with a good book than courting disaster.

Thanks for reading and for letting me be a part of your day.

Be well.

“…bloggers…”

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.