drunk idiots

Cops have tough time finding sober driver for boy
Associated Press, November 10, 2008
SCHERERVILLE, Ind. – Indiana state police said that after a mother was arrested for drunken driving, the three relatives who came to pick up her 1-year-old son also had all been drinking.
...
The boy's father arrived later to pick him up, but officers determined he was intoxicated and also arrested him on a drunken driving charge.

Police said the boy's grandparents then arrived. Both of them also had been drinking, state police said, but the grandmother who was driving was not over the legal limit, so officers escorted them home with the child.

Time

This was about a month ago now, but I was thinking about it since one of my aunts called recently. The polite one. I still haven't heard from the other one, my aunt Maria. She's told my sister she'll call me but I think perhaps she is putting this off.

Aunt Maria called me while I was walking to the parking garage on a December afternoon. As the crowded old buildings along my path opened onto the sweeping vista of the business school diag, I could see the entrance to the garage. It hadn't been a long day, not in hours at work, but I was wiped out. If I remember right, I had been meeting with students. The garage was like a beacon - nearly there! - in what looked like almost enough light to make it home before dark. My night vision sucks, and it sucks more in CT, a state where darkness apparently lends a rustic charm to the already deadly winding and narrow country roads. I calculated that I could make the haul down one such charming road and at least onto and off of the unlit highway, if not all the way home, before it got completely dark. I could make it if I didn't break my stride and if I wasn't tied up in campus area traffic for some esoteric sporting event.

That's when my father's sister Maria called.

Maria is the second youngest in the family and the one closest to us by virtue of youth and a strong relationship she and her not yet dead husband had fostered with my brother when we kids were little. Maria was widowed young, well young-ish. Certainly prematurely. When she calls, I can hear the ice tinkling in her glass. Probably a high ball. Maria is from a generation where is was important to masquerade one's vulgar habits with posh names. Highball, martini, gimlet - drinks just this side of a double boozey, neat. Or in layman's terms, a whole lot of booze with nothing between the drinker and it but a small amount of glass and the moment of inertia of the drinker's forearm.

Maria has impeccable timing, in the inverse sense. She tends to call just as you're going out, as you put the rice into the pot of boiling water, or were thinking of turning in early. It's usually a lengthy call. I had called her the day before when I had a spare hour. I'd recently heard from my brother that another family member was ill. The ailing relative was our aunt Keiko, one of Maria and my dad's sisters in law. Keiko was the wife of Frank, one of my father and Maria's older brothers. Frank and Keiko lived in Nevada my whole life. I visited them once. They have no kids and I was engaged to a doctor at the time. Being with Keiko and Frank for a day was like having my own private pep squad. Everything I did or said was just awesome, great, excellent. My uncle seemed to approve that I had struck out on my own for Michigan. In his generation, which I think I am to assume is something like the average of Hemmingway and Kerouac, the striking out on one's own ungodly young and entering the workforce without a college degree in hand was something to be proud of. A sign of character, assuming of course you aren't lead away from the real work-a-day world and back into the academy for a decade of futile student-hood, and your too young marriage doesn't end in a whimpering divorce.

I remember my aunt less clearly and specifically from that trip than from the visit she and my uncle made back east years later. At that point, I had moved back to New England and was up visiting from CT. My dad's oldest brother Freddy had hosted "a time" (my family's word for any get together involving second cousins) and everyone was there. Everyone but my brother and possibly my mother. My sister and I were there. My dad and Maria. Keiko and Frank. Aunt Clara and her husband, still alive then. Clara was heard to remark numerous times "Oooh my whole family is here! All my family!" throughout the day, picking up in frequency as we gathered in the family room for a big group picture. Clara had hired a photographer. The thing is, the whole family wasn't there. Who wasn't there was my brother, the only boy in the generation in a family of Irish and Italian catholics. My brother who the Italian relations at least used to give money to simply for existing, who was named while my sister and I were universally referred to as "the girls" or more directly, "you girls". The only relative to mention my brother at "the time" was Aunt Maria, who did so surreptitiously over a back door cigarette and a gimlet.

To make matters worse, the hostess, Ilene (the Irish-American Freddy had married) had invited a good number of the Irish side of the family, most her relations and some relatives of Ilene's mother in law, the Irish American mother of the lot of them....Freddy, Frank, my dad and the three "Aunties" Clara, Maria, and Pauline. These people, the extended Irish side of the families, were not close family. These were people who had never been at "times" for this side of the family before and thus they were folks I didn't know. They acted like they owned the place - hogging the pool table and the television. They seemed to interact only with certain other people I knew by sight alone, if at all.

Aunt Keiko was among the people not spoken to. She spent the day cleaning up after everyone, and I spent a good amount of the day trying to talk her out of that. It seemed every time I saw her, she had a stack of paper plates in one hand and a pile of crumbs or bottle caps in another and was slowly making her way to a garbage pail.

When Maria called this December afternoon, she was returning my request for information on Keiko which I’d left on Maria’s answering machine. I'd heard Keiko was seriously ill and I wasn't sure when I'd get a chance to talk to any of the family if not now, so I took the call. I tried to walk fast and talk while the garage got darker.

Maria told me Keiko had multiple myeloma. I told Maria I had had no idea. Maria dug in with more details. I listened and felt sort of like a heel for not knowing. Keiko was now in the hospital for the second or third time in recent months and the verdict was that she was likely going to die soon. Maria filled me in on all this as I sat in the garage and watched my options for a not nerve wracking drive home dwindle. Maria mentioned that my aunt Clara was with her. Clara's husband had died a few months before, in August. Since then, Clara had kept herself quite busy with visits to out of state friends and nights with more local family.

The holidays were coming up. How was Clara going to handle this first Christmas without her husband? I remembered visiting Clara and her husband at christmas time. They lived downstairs from my grandparents, Clara's parents. They had a tree with candy on it. No kids, but candy on the tree. While I do recall the candy, I don't remember how it tasted. I mention this because what taste memory I retain from Aunt Clara's house was in fact the strangely bitter taste of the corner of one of her lacquered, inlay topped coffee tables. I assume this is a very old memory. But it is part of the package. Candy on a fake christmas tree and the taste of expensive, shiny wood.

That flash of considering Clara alone for the holiday made me think of my aunt Maria's recent wedding, which had happened sometime after the funeral of Clara's husband and before the most recent hospitalization of Keiko. I hadn't seen Maria since Clara's husband's funeral, and then not more than a few glimpses across the overwarm church during the Mass. However, I had spoken to Maria on the phone around the funeral. She had told me that she was getting remarried. Ice tinkled. "Can you believe it? Me at my time of life!" she'd said, laughing, giddy. Whether her upcoming wedding or her husband to be was the proper source of this moment of effervescence or if Aunt Maria's emotions were simply being jerked around by one of those relieved-to-be-talking-about-something-nice-and-not-a-funeral was hard to tell. It also was not my place to ask. She had been so in love with her first husband, I couldn't imagine her remarrying. I was happy for her though. I congratulated her then, intending to speak to her at the funeral and to meet the man who would be my new uncle, but by the time the Mass was over and family was gathering for coffee and snacks in the lunch room of the tiny saint something or another's school just behind the church, Maria had been engulfed in a crowd of family, unknown Irish and Italian relations, associates of Clara and her now dead husband, and worst of all, my parents. I made minimal appearances at the post funeral snack time, then left in what I hoped was a discreet if hurried exit.

I had felt a little bad about leaving without speaking to Maria so when our phone conversation about Keiko was wrapping up and the light was gone anyhow, I said "Hey, by the way, I didn't get a chance to say congratulations on your wedding." She said thank you haltingly, then explained in a rush that she was sorry she hadn't invited me and my sister but that she had wanted to. "It's ok," I said. I knew that this side of the family sometimes has a crude way of dealing with limited funds or space. Lines will be drawn along something more like political alliances than blood relation and my having been fixed in the minds of most of the family as a child since I had little to do with them as an adult made me expendable. I understood this. I had planned a small wedding myself and knew that sometimes awkward choices were made.

Maria went on. "It's just that your father said if I invited you girls, that if I invited you then your mother wouldn't be able to come. And that if she couldn't, then he wouldn't come." I didn't even try to hide the disgust in my voice when I told her how tacky I thought it was for my father to have put her in that position. She went on for a while, saying something about how my father had said my mother was so upset at Clara's husband's funeral, how my sister and I ("you girls") hadn't spoken to my mother and this had apparently made our mother even more upset. I clarified "Maria, I did speak to my mother. I saw her sitting at the table with (my cousins) and I said hi." Maria told me that my father hadn't mentioned that. This pissed me off because it was a pretty massive concession on my part to even speak to my mother. Had there been no family there, I would certainly not have bothered.

Why did it matter? It wasn't that I felt I'd done "the right thing" in saying hello to my mother. I had said hello to her because I had found myself at the same table as her. Looking up there seeing her a soft booze puffy tear streaked lump had made me feel ill. If I felt sick looking at her, I reasoned, my aunt Ilene and her kids (whose table my mother had improbably stuck herself at) must have felt overwhelmingly uncomfortable. They certainly looked that way. Ilene had glanced up at the end of the table while she and I were speaking and it was in following her gaze that I even noticed my mother in the first place.

Also, I'm pretty acutely aware of the social mores governing things like mother-daughter relations. They are codified in and informed by the hallmark movie of the week kind of reconciliation which people expect is always possible even in the most fractured family scenarios. I knew instinctively was that if I said nothing to my mother, as would have been my better personal judgment to do, it would have lead to poor assessments of not just me but my brother and sister as well by the entire family. I knew it would be communicated, Ilene and her daughter's less than charitable discomfort at hosting my quietly weepy mother at their table would have been channeled into some chastisement of all of us for having left her there for the rest of the family to deal with. Essentially, we would have suffered ill repute for the sobby mess of a show our mother was forcing her inlaws to put up with.

It also, I think, arose out of a guilty need for a kind of restitution, not to my mother but to the extended family - Aunts Ilene and Clara especially since on the day of the "time" many years ago, when Keiko was playing Geisha and the Irish relatives were busily snubbing the rest of us, when everyone pretended my brother didn't exist, I had been a rotten kid. I had gotten mouthy, loudly referred to one of Ilene's daughters as ugly, and had intentionally rammed my pool cue into the guts and groins of distant relatives who couldn't be bothered to move away from my hard won shot. I topped it all off by flipping off the camera in one of the "whole" family portraits. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that it turned out the one photo where I had discretely rearranged my hands (which I had been instructed to fold demurely on my husband's shoulder as I stood behind him) was the only picture where no one was closing their eyes. In the context of my aunt Clara's excitement and subsequent severe disappointment (which was conveyed to me in a late night tinkling phone call from Aunt Maria), and with Clara's current grief as the backdrop to my mess of a mother peering soggily at me from the end of Ilene's table, I felt snubbing my mother would have been a little bit of discord which they deserved not to witness. I'd never stage a reconciliation for the Aunts' benefit, but it seemed I could at least muster up a little polite appearance for their sake.

And still, this. "And then that turned out to be the weekend your brother was in the hospital and your mother didn't end up coming anyhow!" Aunt Maria had concluded with a shorter version of her characteristic whiskey voiced laugh. I apologized for my father's thoughtlessness again, then spoke briefly with my aunt Clara. She was her usual proper self. Sympathetic to her brother as his wife was dying. Recalling her husband's long battle with cancer and time in hospice. The topic turned to the issue of the culture of medicine in general, which touched too close to politics and drove the always polite Clara from the phone with sweetly said "Good bye, dear." I thought of saying "I love you" but it always feels wrong. I said it one time while talking to Clara the week after her husband had died and she seemed very thrown by it. Northern Italians, they are not warm people.

As I was getting off the phone as unawkwardly as possible with Aunt Clara, I imagined Maria waving in the background. I heard some talking and thought for a moment that I could hear the tinkling of ice in her hands as she returned her attention to the nonspecified old man she had married, who was probably watching golf on TV and feeling thankful that he hadn't yet been exposed to this fucked up side of his new bride's family.

It was very dark by the time I left the garage. It's just as well as it kept my mind more or less on the road instead of indulging the thoughts of my father's voice in the familiar clipped meter it takes on when he imagines he's righteously laying down the law. Dirty Harry Dad saying to his older sister things like "The girls...they didn't talk to their mother. She was upset. They're selfish." I wondered if he used the phrase he had often called us at home, "selfish little shits" Trying to pick out the road from the ditches helped me drive off the thought of my father saying smugly "She doesn't need that. Their mother and I have more than paid..." It helped me not dwell on wondering if he'd add "...for what we did" or if he'd leave it hanging, agency unstated.

By the time I got home that night, I had nearly put it out of my conscious mind. I remembered a while later and mentioned it to my sister when we talked. She was horrified. She told our brother, who then railed against our mother for it. I've since learned that our mother wrote some one of her soppy letters to Aunt Maria. That our mother had told my brother she was "shamed in front of my god and my family!" Her family? They never even fucking liked her. Her god? Well, catholic church isn't exactly the fare she was raised on but in her magical world any judeo-christian god will fit the bill for the big male cheerleader in the sky she has fabricated for herself out of popular religion.

My sense is that this is a good thing, or at least a just thing, her shame and all. That she wrote to Aunt Maria is, well, that's questionable. That my aunt mentioned it to my sister, closing the topic with what I imagine was a huskily spoken plea "Can't you just put your anger behind you?" is cause for my great annoyance. This certainly isn't shit any of us need. I plan on sharing that sentiment with my aunt Maria the next time she calls. She's gonna need a lot of ice for that call.

Loathing examined

I was re-reading this post and thinking it's this kind of negative attitude that makes it hard to fit in at the various support lists and communities.

I remember I was once on a Lyme Disease list. Some good info on there, some bad, and people at all stages of dealing with the acute illness or its sometimes long lasting effects. There were many of the latter, I think because they would be most likely to be looking for explanations and answers and advocacy tools - thus they'd be likely to find such lists and groups.

I did not fit in. I did not sign my emails with e-hugs and angel kisses. I didn't offer prayers or express my belief in a higher power. I did connect with some people though, usually over the difficulty of dealing with the healthy people around you who don't understand what this disease can do and how long it can do it for. In one such an exchange, my sarcastic humor so angered one of the angel-fluffybunny-ehuggers that she flamed the shit out of me both off and on list. Definitely an authority issue at heart, but played out in the arena of my "negativity".

I was just trying to make some other poor guy smile and nothing I had suggested was that off color. Just, er, some light comic aggressive steam blowing.

Then there's the issue of my family history. I was thinking that probably this blog is not readily identified as a survivor's blog, I mean not if you aren't into reading and such. (oh hell, more fucking negativity). But I don't have buttons and banners and sexual and physical abuse survivor blogrolls, links to Tory Amos pictures, inspirational finger paintings by abused children, sometimes cryptic water color images of hearts, teddy bears, angels, and hands. This is the type of thing I've seen which immediately mark a blog as being in the hinterlands of survivorhood*.

But I do freely disclose this aspect of my history. Sometimes it's important for someone I'm close to or becoming close to to know about. Sometimes it's political. Sometimes I've just had it with someone's ignorant idiot rambling on the subjects and I need to weigh in with some expertise behind the words to give it that extra punch I want. Ah, more negativity. Sometimes I truly think "Aha, a chance to inform and educate" although that one has fallen a bit into disuse after I realized it can be traumatic for me to open my experiences up to someone who is uninformed. They don't usually mean anything bad, but they do sometimes not understand that when, where, and how I talk about things (as well as which things) is entirely and necessarily at my discretion. E.g., my friend who continued a conversation about a topic involving my mom into a stairwell at school. It had started quietly in a room, just him, me, and another close friend. Then we went to get lunch. I recall trying to put it off when we were in the hall. Once we had gotten into the stair well though, he yelled some very detailed comment, not lacking a bit of judgment, which bounced and echoed off the bare concrete.

So what is my problem? What's with all the loathing? I guess I'd wonder more specifically what's with all the stigma against it? And what is with it coming from the survivors themselves even? My sister had some experience with that in a group.

On the general topic of stigma about survivor anger, I think it's fair to say what happened in my family is FUCKED up. And I think that a normal reaction to something that fucked up is to have negative feelings about it. I'm not a perpetrator, my attitudes and outbursts are not of that nature at all. When I do pick fights with people, it's usually someone I think is picking on someone else (or me) or has violated some kind of very important trust. Often a person in a position of some authority and who is using it either maliciously or so selfishly and for such limited ego gratification goals that they are exploiting others or putting them at risk of emotional harm or even more overt, socially acceptable damage.

Ibid on the health stuff. I do wonder if that will fade somewhat in time. I think some of it has already, although it's difficult in the context of academia, where pain and fatigue are practices to be engaged in for social and sometimes professional reward, always done and interpreted with the implicit understanding that the level of energy is more or less renewable. It isn't for me. It can mean I will not be able to get up the next day. It can mean a fever for weeks, a leg that hurts so much I can't sleep (adding to the exhaustion).

I'm watching another student who was diagnosed with a growth on his pituitary gland a few years back go through this shit too. He was sick. He's still not well, but he's better than he was. His dad had endocrine problems too which resulted in a line of troubling related health issues which this kid grew up watching. Being diagnosed with something like what Dad had was scary. And now this kid is being told he's progressing too slowly. The worst part about it is that the telling is usually not direct, and so he attributes his feelings of guilt, low self efficacy, and low self worth to himself. "It's not like anyone is saying it" he told me a week ago. I told him that in my experience, that sinking feeling that you're going to be judged as insufficient due to medical problems is not all "in your head" and is based on some signals you are picking up from the people around you.

Again, more of my negativity. Spreading the loathing, it would seem. If you're a fluffybunny-ehugger at least.



* There's a request not to copy or link to a site I found recently for incest survivors, so I can't give you a full description of the steps that particular site gave for the survivor recovery process. I found them bothersome in a way which touches on some of what I've mentioned above. If you're curious and you look up incest + survivors you'll probably find some of what I'm talking about. You'll also find some which isn't pro-anger denial, I did. But I've learned my lesson to stay away from any support communities or group since I know my "negativity" can always be waved about as a reason to invalidate what I feel, think, or say. And I could do without that.

there ought to be a law...

What kind of adult intentionally deceives a kid into believing that the adult is a peer so that the adult can coax the kid to let down his or her guard, share secrets, and form attachments with the persona the adult has created? One answer which springs to mind readily is "the creepy kind who has to register with police."

So why is it that the case of Lori Drew participating in the creation of an online identity for exactly the purpose of deceiving 13 year old Megan Meier into believing this identity belonged to a same aged peer isn't being discussed in that light?

Over and above, or perhaps under and throughout, the more widely discussed themes of internet bullying, there is the characterization of Drew's behavior as a deliberate pattern of kid stalking.

While internet bullying is troubling (absence of certain channels in the interaction leads to a reduced immediate accountability load), I can't help feeling there's something about the term which implies some level of equality among the players and which, moreover, seems to invite a sort of "kids will be kids/people can be cruel but is it right to try to legislate good manners?" argument. Perhaps for those reasons I bristle at the treatment Drew's behavior has gotten, the bullying "issues" it has apparently raised, again.

This was more than bullying. Lori Drew engaged in a deliberate process of intentionally deceiving a minor into believing she was communicating with a peer, a peer the minor clearly had romantic interest in. It's not like Drew created a profile and Megan stumbled upon it, or Drew was pretending to be a kid for some reason independent of luring in a minor, or Drew created a female profile. No. Drew put out bait for Megan. Drew used the profile of a cute boy who said nice things to an insecure 13 year old presumably (because face it, big main stream presumptions of het until proven otherwise) straight girl. Lori Drew carried on this behavior, communicating with Megan, pretending to be a 13 year old the whole time. Lori Drew was part of making the Megan bait profile available and letting others use it to communicate with Megan. She pretty much pimped the profile.

Such deliberate deception of a minor, with such striking predatory overtones seems like it is something law enforcement should consider illegal or at least suspicious behavior. What I've seen in the news reports on Lori Drew's victimizing of Megan Meier is that there are no laws which apply here.

Should there be a law?

Arguably in many situations there is an assumed right to engage in pretense, online and in general. All of us engage in some level of it, to greater and lesser degrees and for better or worse reasons. And yes, some people will want to pretend to be younger than they are and while I personally think that sort of thing is deceptive and, well, lame, it doesn't take a degrees in legal ethics or criminal law to see that a 50 year old woman fudging facts by 5 or so years on her (adult) singles dating profile is a universe away from a 30-something year old woman pretending to be a minor for the purposes of initiating contact and carrying on a damaging relationship with a minor.

Is it just me or doesn't it seem like that sort of intentional, deliberate deception of a child should be, if not illegal, then at least cause for the FBI to seize your shit and comb through it looking for kiddie porn and the like. To me, it's the equivalent of hanging around the edge of the school yard luring kids over with candy and the like.

When a Bear Isn't

Let's try an experiment. Take a moment to imagine a big white bear. Got it? Ok, now that you've got it, I need to ask that while you are reading the following post, you try not to think of the white bear. Any time you do think about it, you should tap your left index finger.





Where to start. My weekend was not good. My fella's family doing an early thanksgiving because fella's sister and brother in law and new their new baby were in town. It's the first time I've met this sister and her husband, who are very important to my fella. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to like them. I wanted them to like me.

Maybe I should start with the The Card Game Which Wouldn't End on Friday night. That was most of the family, minus more local brother and his wife. Father was drinking. He gets a little competitive when playing games. He has made the now wife of my fella's brother cry. Me? He pissed me off. And I don't have a poker face, voice, brain, or mouth.

Saturday brought something like an apology from him. "Will you forgive me for being belligerent?" my fella's dad said to me with a pouty face and in what I was a little aghast to realize was slightly baby-voiced speech. I wanted to say "If you're apologizing for acting like a child, it'd help me feel a whole lot better about it if you said it like an adult." But while this was honest, it felt shitty. Instead I hemmed and hawed a bit and finally I settled on "I just thought you were drunk," which in retrospect was probably not exactly polite but I respected the guy too much to try to hand him some insincere bullshit. The apology came in front of several other family members so I couldn't have the open discussion with him which I'd like to have had. The one which would have started with me saying "Yeah that was a little weird..." and which would have hopefully ended with us agreeing amicably just not to play cards again so no one's style has be to seriously crimped. Or to have a safety word or something.

Fella's father went to bed early that night.

And then came Sunday.

Sunday I had what I am recognizing as a "pfg's greatest hits" fight. I've had it now with at least one social group at each stage of my life. This fight has happened with my family, friends, lovers, friends of lovers, and family of friends. It's the "I don't want to watch Freddy Krueger/Hannibal Lecter/most of the Quentin Tarantino collection" fight. Why a fight? Fuck if I know. It always starts out simply and I'd guess innocently enough. Someone suggests, shows up with, or goes out and rents a movie for a group which includes me. Since it's meant to be for group viewing, and making my usual assumptions that group members have a say about what the group's going to do during group decision time, I say something like "I really can't watch movies with over the top violence..." I often say it with some degree of self recrimination or chagrin, a tone of apology because I know that people don't like to have their video recommendations dissed.

Aside from the largely unavoidable tone, I have tried different ways of saying it. I've tried different word choices in expressing this. The repeat nature of the arguments my sentiment provokes has taught me what apparently doesn't work. I'm still looking for what does.
Here's what doesn't:
"No no, it's me. I mean, I don't think that (insert title of movie, e.g. Pulp Fiction) is a bad movie. I know it got good reviews, and if it's not death, dismemberment, rape, torture, and the like from start to finish and if you've seen it and can let me know when not to watch, I'm ok with watching it because I have heard it's good"
"Does anyone get a finger cut off?"
"A lot?"
"Does anyone eat a body part?"
"A lot?"
"Hey I'm not saying you guys can't watch it."
"If it's open for discussion, I mean, if it has to be something we'll all watch, can I just vote we not get it, at least not tonight?"
"Look, can we just not make a big deal about this?"
" Can we not have a fight over this? If you really want to see that tonight, I can do something else for a while..."

When dealing with this topic, I've even gone so far as to explain (to people I have some established reason to believe I am close to and who therefore should give a shit) what watching such movies does to me. As a matter of fact, I had had this conversation with my fella's dad on Wednesday night (we were over there a lot this week on account of the family thing). The topic happened to come up totally out of the blue and I thought "Aha, this is a good time to let him know I can't watch that sort of thing". I see it as like letting someone know you're allergic to peanuts. You might not tell them right away, but if the topic of peanuts or food or allergies comes up at some point and if you happen to have this allergy, you'd be stupid to not mention it then.

I do sometimes find people who don't take deep personal offense when I express my desire not to expose myself to this stuff. Being agreeable about it is different from "taking my side" - which in fact I find I genuinely don't like. "Taking my side" only perpetuates any possible (and likely) contention the whole issue is causing. My statement and the "side takers" who chimed in after created a terrible fight at a friend's place many years ago. That episode ended by me giving in because I wrongly accepted responsibility for making a scene, harshing a scene, or otherwise fucking up everyone's plans. I think I felt that continuing to try to negotiate a reasonable activity which did not include this movie would have necessarily meant continuing the extremely unpleasant argument about banning all things nasty and violent, ever, for everyone. I'm older now and I make a point of not letting that happen anymore. That is, I try to own my shit but not anyone else's. And I'd rather leave and create a social tear than stay and fill my head up with that fucked up shit which will bother me for YEARS.

This weekend the topic of one of Tarantino's latest projects came up - as raised by my fella's brother and brother in law, who had come back to the 'rents' house with the movie Saturday night. I was not quiet or demure about my feelings and intentions for MYSELF on the movie that evening. I was clear and upfront about it. And I thought "hey I talked to my fella's dad about it and he seemed to get it", which gave me some reassurance that I could at least assume he wouldn't get on my (or someone else's) case about it.

The movie was not watched Saturday night, rather, when my fella and I got to the 'rents' house Sunday afternoon, father, brother, and brother in law told us they had watched it that morning. Then began the retellings. My not watching this shit ban (for me, personally) extends to not wanting to hear retellings. If I am going to go through all that social fuckery to AVOID seeing this shit, why the hell would I want to hear about it second hand? If I could deal, I'd just watch the damned thing and not risk what is seen as a totally unacceptable fuss in expressing my desire not to see it in the first place.

I have come to totally dread this discussion. It touches on issues of my own abuse implicitly, whether or not I choose to explicitly involve them. Needless to say, I find it extremely difficult to navigate a tricky social interaction when a good chunk of my brain is trying very hard to suppress some quite unpleasant thoughts.

So the retellings..."It was totally disgusting," fella's dad declared. Ok. I'm with ya. Totally disgusting. Sure. I had just taken off my shoes in the other room, put down my purse, hung up my coat. Brother chimed in with "No way, it was awesome!" he went on saying something unintelligible or possibly just unmemorable because around that same time, just after brother in law also started talking about the movie, I turned to my fella and said "I really don't want to hear this, I'm going outside," and started putting my shoes back on.

My fella spoke to them while I was putting on my shoes. I heard him say something like "She really doesn't like those movies guys...can you not talk about it?" and then heard him say "Ok well we're going outside, you can talk about it while we're out." When we came back in, we played a game of cards with one of fella's sisters. The other men watched various football games in the living room. Topics like Hustler and Ann Coulter came up. I mention this I suppose because I think the lack of disagreement as a result of these topics demonstrates that I wasn't just looking for a fight. I just wanted to get through family time, enjoy what was enjoyable and not get ruffled or ruffle anyone over the rest.

Then Pulp Fiction came up. "Lollipop. That's what Bruce Willis' character called his girlfriend in Pulp Fiction" my fella's sister said. We were playing cards at the dining room table while father and brother sat swallowed up by sofas in the living room when she said it to the group as a whole. Fella's brother in law was sitting at the end of the dining room table where sister, fella and I were playing cards. Brother in law was dividing his attention between looking up scores for other football games on a laptop and watching the TV which brother and father of fella had begun switching between several games.

At the Pulp Fiction reference, I shifted a bit. Shit. More Tarantino movies, I thought with some concern. I didn't say anything then though because sometimes it doesn't go there and why preemptively go there anyhow? I wanted to avoid coming across as unreasonable.
"I didn't see it..." I offered conversationally.
"Yeah, I took my mom to see it" sister said, most of her attention still on the card game.
"You took your mom?" we heard father's voice chuckling from the sofa (her mom is his first wife)
"I've never seen it because I didn't want to see it." I said.
"She didn't like it" sister said and went on a bit about what her mother couldn't watch. Now details of the movie were starting to come out. And now the details of the conversation for me become less specific*.

Brother or father or brother in law said something about "...that scene where they inject the...into the heart...."
And I said "You know guys, I didn't see it for a reason."
The conversation continued, but without graphic details for a few turns.
Then sister said "She got up and left after..."
"Hey, guys. If I'd wanted to know about it, I'd have seen the movie" I said, slightly louder.
Father and sister had some conversation about the first wife's reaction. Everyone's attention was divided, except mine. I had my cards in front of me but they were little better than polite props.
And then someone said something about "the rape scene"
It may have been brother in law. Or it may have been someone else and then brother in law was expanding on that. Regardless, it was soon after "rape scene" and to the brother in law that I said, loudly "I say for a THIRD TIME, IF I HAD WANTED TO KNOW I'D HAVE WATCHED IT."

Brother in law looked up, searching my face for the sarcasm cue my tone hadn't held. I felt hot and I know I was flushed. I have some idea what I look like when I'm feeling that pissed off. In turn, he looked the way someone would look if the refrigerator suddenly started doing The Chicken Polka, just totally caught off guard. I felt bad for that.

Then father said "So I can't talk about movies in my own house?"
Shit. Maybe I needed an analogy I thought. "No, but it's like, how about if I came into your house and lit up a cigarette**? You wouldn't like it, right?"
"Right, so if I'm in YOUR house, I won't talk about this."

A moment later I was putting on my shoes. I was thinking maybe I'd go outside for a smoke, walk it off...but I was also thinking "this just isn't getting any better. This is bullshit. I don't need this. Not again." and I was thinking "This is worse than the booze fueled Card Game Which Wouldn't End but now, unlike then, it's still light out. I can get in that car and drive home.."
And the keys were in my hand as I walked out the door. Brother called after me "Are you going out?"
"No, how about I'm just going?" I said.
And I left.

For which I now suck the most of anyone ever in my fella's family. Which really is nothing compared to how I feel about myself for so many things.

* There are actual terms for this shit. "Intrusive thoughts" being a good one if you want to look it up on Google Scholar or some such.
** Since it was lost on most of my fella's family, I feel the need to expand on the analogy. My smoking is to his house as his descriptions of violent imagery is to my head.

How's that not thinking of the bear thing going for you? Did you forget about it? If you're like most people, you didn't (unless my story of family drama was that compelling). Try going back and re-read the post, but this time know that it's ok if the white bear prowls through your head while you're reading. No biggie. Just a bear. It's not like a graphic rape scene.

my own personal douchebag

"Do me a favor," my father said to me after the funeral mass. "Say hello to your mother."
"I'll say hello if I see her" I said, meaning "no I won't seek her out just to make you feel better or some such shit, and if I can avoid her I will. I'm only talking to you because your poor sister who is standing right there saw us run into each other and I couldn't take the look of fear that crossed her face - only for a moment before she forced her features back into the careful mask she's been fighting to keep up all damned day, hell probably all week" I didn't say this because my aunt was right there and I am not a douchebag.

My dad replied "Bury it". He said it in his pissy voice. As a child, I would have described it as his growly voice, the one which was a yell without the volume. As an adult, I see it as an attempt to intimidate from someone who is in no position to do so. Someone who in fact should be groveling and averting his eyes when I pass, hoping I take no notice of him lest I choose to repay even one small sliver of what he dished out when we were kids.

I answered him in a low and sarcastic tone "Hey, maybe I'll kick a little dirt over it."
He half turned away from me then said loudly"No, I mean it." He hefted up the tote bag he'd been holding. "Literally bury it. I've got your uncle right here," he said, swinging the bag for emphasis.

His birthday's coming up in a couple of weeks - he'll be sixty six. Now I forget. Is sixty six Massengill or Summer's Eve?

funeral, take 2

Another funeral this weekend. Certainly not close enough to the last one this April to readily count as a member of a group however prior to April I think the last funeral I went to was in the early 90s.

All of the grandparents died off when I was still relatively young. The last was my mother's adopted mother who died while I was in my mid twenties and living in MI. My mother's mom, otherwise known as "Nanna", always struck me as incredibly frail. She was quite skinny, had pure white hair which she had set and styled at least once a week so it constantly fluffed out around her head, creating a brilliant, glowing poof. Her hands were exceptionally thin. They looked like bone with the thinnest layer of skin spread unevenly onto it, slipping off the more peaked parts into the wells between knuckles and ropey blue veins.

She had looked like this for as long as I remember her.

Still, she lived past cancer and even into several levels of heart failure. She had the first heart attack while out on her daily walk - far more than I manage to do these days even so go Nanna. I didn't hear the news that she had died until many days and many subsequent heart attacks and resuscitations later. My mother told me she hadn't wanted to disrupt my studies with the news. This was, like so many other things out of my mother's mouth, a load of crap. My mother had issues with her mother, to the point where she took her mother's death just one of the many inconveniences she felt the woman had thrust upon her.

The family mythology was that either my mother reported her father's was sexual abuse to Nanna or that Nanna had caught him in the act. In either version, according to my mother, Nanna had told the bastard (in front of our mother) if she ever caught him doing that again, she'd send the children back to the orphanage.

Being a sophisticated enough audience, it only took the one time for her to explicitly point out to my sister, brother, and me that this had meant Nanna had essentially sealed my mother's fate. Keep silent if it happened again or get sent back to the orphanage.

Bad Nanna!

Many years later I heard a different version of this story. This version is not nearly as cut and dry and involves my grandmother moving with the children out into the chicken coop rather than let them continue to be around the monster she had married. Mind you this was like early 1950s rural New England. There were no fucking shelters.

Nanna's funeral was the last in the family before this week's but due to my mother's machinations I didn't go to it. This week's was my uncle, my godfather in fact. We weren't close but his wife (my father's sister) and he had no children. In fact, none of the women on that side of the family had kids. I don't know for sure since I'm not at the stage of my life where my age group peers are dying off but I suspect that knowing you have family, and specifically knowing there is another generation coming up after you may be in some ways comforting or at least a little reassuring.

I may be wrong. I'm basing it on implicit impressions of older relatives speaking of death and on numerous pop-cultural reference. The aunties do like to talk about their nieces and nephew (just the one...my dear brother) .

So A____ and I went up Boston-way for a smoldering hot Saturday morning funeral mass in the "Immaculate Contraption" church (as my brother is fond of calling it). A_____ had never seen a catholic mass before - this was the real deal complete with drunk clergy.

My aunt seemed genuinely happy to see that all of us "kids" were there. We first saw her on our way into the mass. I hugged her, possibly for the first time in my life. She felt small and full of an uncomfortable energy. In our phone calls over the week between when her husband died and the funeral, I noticed she moved with little transition between speaking casually of life and its minor details to choking up on a sob when the topic touched too close to certain aspects of the notion of her very recently deceased husband. The energy I felt when I held her was both the strain of holding this in and some seepage of the very stuff which was being held in.

She had arranged for coffee and refreshments to be served after the mass at the church school, which was behind the church. I walked out after the mass was over to the front entrance of the massive, circular church (yeah J, it's like one of those conan churches!) and I realized I was on exactly the opposite side from the school. There was no shade en route. I had already been feeling unwell soon after arriving over an hour earlier. The had been church was cooler than a late morning August parking lot, but not quite cool enough to refresh me after walking to and from the car to the church entrance twice - one trip there had turned into two after we realized Hey you probably can't walk into a church with a huge cup of dunkin donuts iced coffee and they had no trash cans about. I'm sure my feeling a bit, well, swoony for lack of a better word, during the service was not helped by the usual up down up down up down of a catholic mass. After the mass concluded, my sister helped me get to a bathroom where I threw water on my face, arms, and neck. (Oh fyi, apparently the Boston area catholics save all that christlike asceticism for the restrooms.)

The water helped but I still felt drained. Seeking to avoid the rather lengthy shadeless walk to the school hall, I made my way over by walking through the outer church corridor which ran the circumference of the big round building. Every now and then there was a break in the corridor. We'd go through a door to the outside, and then a few steps later go through a door back into the indoors corridor. Hot as it was in the church, it felt positively cool compared to the oven of the nearly afternoon parking lot.

I say "we" because my aunt made this whole strange trip with me. See, just before embarking on this procession, I had taken my aunt's hand. She had started crying when saying how happy she was that we could all come up, so I held her hand and said how wonderful it was to see her. Someone mentioned we should get over to the reception, and so my aunt and I began walking. She had continued to hold onto my hand although I had somewhat loosened my grip when I realized I was planning on making such an oddly interrupted and circuitous path out of the building. She fussed about my staying indoors, commenting that this path (i.e. not so much through but around the inner part of the church) would be best. Saying "I'll walk with you dear..." and holding my hand up in hers.

So we walked together, in and out, blinding and blazing then cool and dim. Others from my family - people I know mostly by face and not name, and my sister and A___ walked behind us, A____ coming up ahead sometimes to open a stuck door for us. At some point I noticed that this promenade was like some kind of closing ritual. A counterclockwise circle made slowly and deliberately by the mourners. Not fully closed until A____ and my sister and I piled back into the hot car and drove the rest of the way around the church and out onto the street.

bad parenting to go

You mean those shoes with rollers in them are dangerous? OMG, who'd have thought.

1,600 roller-shoe injuries reported
Accidents from trendy roller shoes are far more numerous than previously thought, contributing to roughly 1,600 emergency room visits last year, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Wednesday.

Those injuries were mostly in children, the target market for the wheeled shoes that send kids cruising down sidewalks, across playgrounds and through shopping mall crowds.
...
On Monday, a report in June's Pediatrics said 67 children were treated for roller-shoe injuries at a Dublin, Ireland hospital during a 10-week period last summer.

Heelys, the most popular brand, are sold in 70 countries. They're made by Carrollton, Texas-based Heelys Inc., which maintains that the shoes have a safer injury rate than skateboarding, inline skating and even swimming.

I wonder if anyone's counted up the injuries to adults who were trying to avoid injuring or being injured by a child in these shoes.

The popularity of these shoes is evidence of some seriously questionable parenting. When I see a kid on these things, it evokes in me a similar reaction as when I see a parent in the supermarket check out line letting his kid use an empty grocery cart for a death-(or at least serious injury)defying gymnastics routine. I am horrified, worried, and angry. With roller shoes in the mix, the stunt inclined child can cover more ground faster than ever before which means that, depending on the child's trajectory, coordination abilities, and general motor skill, I and other horrified bystanders can now easily become part of the neglected child's hijinx.

Movie

Hard Candy

I passed it over in the video store several times but finally rented it tonight.

Wow.

Life...

...What a beautiful choice?

Police on Friday brought Kentucky charges against a man who pleaded guilty to murdering his 3-year-old foster son who died while left bound in a closet, and against a woman Ohio prosecutors gave immunity to testify in the murder case.
....
Carroll and his wife, Liz, left Marcus Fiesel wrapped in blanket and packing tape at their home in Batavia, Ohio, while they went to family reunion in Kentucky.

David Carroll, 29, was sentenced in February in Clermont County, Ohio, to 15 years to life in prison for the developmentally disabled boy's death. Liz Carroll was sentenced to 54 years to life in prison for murder and other charges.

much badness

My brother called me tonight.
"I just had a very emotionally draining dinner with mom" he began.
I assumed it was more of her usual shenaniganery. No. It was this. My mother treated this man. Although I keep my name (and hers) off this blog, since it's a criminal investigation I'm guessing I'm probably not supposed to say more than that about the details on that end which my brother related to me after hearing about it from our mother - so I won't.

However, I am concerned for my brother, who lives with her. Our mother's been through bad stuff in the ER berfore but it used to be if something horrific like this happened, she would deal with it through her counselor Dr. Jim Beam or his associate Mr. Jack Daniels. Our mother quit drinking, wow something like 9 years ago. Sometime between February of 1997 and Spring of 1998. It's hard to pin down because it was after I moved out and since quitting has been what is sometimes called a "dry drunk". She did not do rehab, counseling, or therapy in her divorce from the bottle. Her last patient who rattled her on this level was a very determined suicidal, psychotic young man. That was when she was still drinking. And boy did she drink. And boy did she not get any help to work through dealing with the trauma of the event. And boy did we all pay for that.

malnutrition

Childhood Obesity Campaign Launched

Shouldn't it be "anti-obesity"? To me, an obesity campaign sounds sort of like it's pro-obesity.

I'm wondering also, since care givers in the US can be judged negligent or abusive for malnourishing a child to the point of starvation, can severe childhood malnutrition in general (and including malnutrition which leads to childhood obesity and early onset of diet/exercise related diseases) be seen as a form of neglect or abuse? Can it be and should it be? Is it equitable, socio-economically, to frame abuse and neglect definitions so underweight children will be seen as a sign of possible abuse/neglect but children who already have signs of type two diabetes, and whose parents won't adjust the family's or child's diet or lifestyle have no such association? I had a friend whose daughter was in joint custody. Step mom and dad fed the family shit. Mom was into organic foods and home cooking. Moreover, mom included her daughter in meal planning and preparation. Dad and step mom made 100% parent based decisions about what the entire family would eat at mealtime.

The kid was overweight, I wouldn't have said severely but she was overweight. Moreover the kid was aware of this and distraught. See, she was right at the edge of this whole "fat kid" trend (perspective or reality) in the US and she was getting noise from all sides. Surprisingly not silent was stepmom, who told her repeatedly she was fat and needed to lose weight. Then she'd serve up some McDonalds.

So is that abuse?

According to the state of Connecticut, abuse is "a non-accidental injury to a child which, regardless of motive, is inflicted or allowed to be inflicted by the person responsible for the child's care" and includes "any injury which is at variance with the history given" and "maltreatment such as, but not limited to, malnutrition, sexual molestation, deprivation of necessities, emotional maltreatment or cruel punishment."

And neglect is "the failure, whether intentional or not, of the person responsible for the child's care to provide and maintain adequate food, clothing, medical care, supervision, and/or education."

more more more

...more moronicity from the headlines (excerpted from AP):
Authorities won't say how Devlin kept the boys confined in his home or what they believe to be his motive. Shawn seemed to have had every chance to escape during his captivity. He was left alone for hours to ride his bike, play video games and walk past missing-child posters showing his own age-progressed image.
This kinda makes me want to slap someone.

Cost

"I think your mother and I have more than paid for what we did when you kids were younger"

That is the latest from my dad, said to little brother T on the heels of T's latest meth mess. Of course, the latest meth mess was very near to the previous meth mess. I sometimes feel like I should be counting in between to know when the storm will be above me.

During the meth messes, there's a sliver of semi-lucid but totally dysphoric thinking before a descent into full psychosis. That sliver tends to involve excruciatingly critical thought where T focuses on whatever he's done which he thinks might have made his life right now wrong or bad enough that it is so impossible for him to live without meth. He doesn't put it like that but this seems to be what is going on. This time, his demon driven inner critic picked living with parents as "what needs to change".

My sister and I couldn't agree more that living with them is horrible. But this is not because of the unseemliness of a 34 year old living with mom (and dad). I think some slack could be cut for someone who turned HIV positive when he was only 24 and supposed to be starting out feeling fearless over confidence in his own ability. I'd argue that this kind of arrogance is common in 24 year olds and is necessary to get us through the transition from adolescence to adulthood. To be given what at the time was a certain death sentence, and one with still quite large stigma in the larger social context, has got to take some of the wind out of that sail.

My sister and I don't like the living with mom and dad thing because mom and dad are abusive fucked up people and like many abusive parents, they continue inappropriate, hurtful behavior even with their grown children. Although the hitting stopped as soon as we were old enough to potentially hit back (with my dad, with my mom it's a different story), they have no regard for boundaries and continue a pattern of emotionally abusive behavior. One example of their continuing and intolerable behavior is the chronic attempts to exonerate themselves for what they did when we were kids. This is a large part of why my sister and I won't have dealings with them. It is dangerous to our health. Personally I feel it risks my freedom as well since my interactions with them in my late twenties often ended with nearly violent fights. I decided it was better for me to stay away from them after hearing my father snarling at my 30 year old sister and then kicking the dogs. I was angered to a frighteningly severe point and it was all I could do not come after him with whatever was around. My mother was intentionally antagonistic, setting up times for us to have mother daughter moments together then sabotaging them, then using the failed "moment" to have a tantrum where she would say things like "you're dead to me!"

My sister made the same kind of decision a short time after I did. My brother noticed my parents' continuing horrible behavior, how it stifled our adult identities in very damaging ways. He talked about it, had nightmares about it, and then lost himself in meth and k.

My mother's a pro at the exoneration game. She can work in a plea for extenuating circumstances or co-victim status masterfully as if she were expressing guilt or remorse for her failings as a parent, prompting you to say things like "it's ok" when you know it's really not. My father is either less skilled at or less comfortable with the subtle approach. He chooses a more direct tactic, like the example at the start of this post. This is odd because he was the more physically abusive one. You'd think it would be harder for him to reconcile a desire to believe he did nothing wrong with years of memories of assaulting his own children. However, it seems he has convinced himself that we owe him some sort of absolution.

Even if he had spent the last 15 years being the best dad ever, what he wants is not an option. It is just not possible in this case. The guilt he feels he has paid off was not placed on him by a court. His (and my mother's) "guilt" is a natural guilt. It is a simple and direct consequence of repeatedly harming children who were in their care and who therefore had no hope of avoiding them, no other recourse, no one else to tell them they did not suck or did not deserve to be ground down emotionally and physically. The guilt they have is a consequence of destroying lives they charged themselves to foster. And because the guilt here is not an artifact of a legal system, it is not debatable. It is consequence. Hurt someone over and over and you are guilty of hurting someone over and over. They might move past it, replace it with something good later, but the history is still there. Hurt someone over and over as they are becoming a person and you will have written the act and your part in it into their existence completely and inextricably.

If we keep up with the analogy, it is fair to say my father admits some guilt but believes he has paid his debt and is arguing that he has served his time in guilt prison. See, he thinks the sentence and the guilt are separate things. He's wrong. The guilt is the sentence. There's not a debt, there's a mark, an unhealing wound that each of his children can at best bandage and treat gently. For my father, the sentence is what he created - hate, distrust, anxiety, pain, damaged people who will measure their success not in terms of living a good rewarding life but in terms of not harming others as they were harmed and not letting fear of being harmed again limit and color every aspect of their existence.

My point is that no matter what my parents may have convinced themselves of, there's no getting off the hook on this one. There's only pretense and denial, and that seems to be exactly what my father is pleading right now. Because my sister and I won't speak to our parents, and because our brother lives with them, my father is making his case to my brother. You'd think if he were convinced that such a wrong thing to do were somehow a legitimate and plausible option, he'd have tried to make the plea to me. I'm the one he didn't hit much. I'm the one who inherited his temper. I'm the one who is most like him. I'm also the one who most recently and directly called him on his shit, reminding him that if you intimidate and push people they just might push back, and that bullies who live in old man bodies shouldn't antagonize the very people they damaged. Could be this is why dad's not asking me, that and convenience. My brother is conveniently located, right there in the same house. So dad is pimping his "debt paid" shit to my brother.

Even if my brother were inclined to accept my father's logic, my brother cannot choose to ignore the damage done by what we were raised in. As with all of us, it is part of him. He can choose to find ways to channel it, to address and express it in safe areas and with safe people. He can try to find the social equivalent of a bomb squad to help him defuse the explosive devices his trauma will occasionally build in his soul. He can choose to subject it to attempts at emotional alchemy. He can do any number of things, but he cannot refuse that it is there, which is essentially what my father is asking. To attempt to do that risks my brother's soundness of mind, and that is already something in short supply these days.

Which brings me to the next point. Whether my father consciously intends it or not, this strategy of his can only serve to further the abuse. It is abusive to try to coerce my brother into declaring my father's time served. There is no way my brother can do that without assuming some of the guilt himself.

So what is it that dad thinks he and my mother paid for?
Let's make a list.
For inviting my mother's adopted father who was an unconvicted, untreated pedophile to live with us when we were 3, 4, and 5.
For using my mother's father as a babysitter, thus giving him access to us and putting us into a position where we were expected to recognize him as an authority.
For failing to respond appropriately when my sister informed them (hey big surprise) that he was sexually abusing her.
My father: For letting my mother "handle it"
My mother: For "handling it" by alerting her father to the accusation, the result of which was that her father stopped trying for my sister and redoubled his efforts with me and my brother.
My father: For beating the shit out of my brother and sister over and over and over and over and over......
For making me a witness to it.
For abusing my brother and sister in violent but not battery ways, like locking my brother in a small laundry hamper in the basement, then leaving him down there in the dark for what seemed like hours.
For force feeding my sister a piece of cheese that she tried to feed the dog. The dog licked it a few times, decided she didn't want it, then walked away and left it on the floor. My father grabbed it, grabbed my sister with his fist balled up in her hair, pulled her head back and literally stuffed it down her throat. She gagged and cried and choked on it. How many years of guilt do you serve for that? How fucking many?
For behaving in every interaction with us as if we were the most loathsome and criminally reprehensible of beings because we did things like NOT PICK UP ALL OUR TOYS or DIDN'T IMMEDIATELY STOP LAUGHING AT SOMETHING or WATCHED A TV SHOW THAT STUPID PEOPLE LIKE or WANTED TO DRINK TANG AND EAT WONDER BREAD or ACTED "CUTE" or any number of things kids just do.
For more often than not storming into a room and when he wasn't hurting people breaking stuff like the tv (kicked, thrown out window) and the phone (ripped out of the wall).
For calling my sister stupid, retarded, moron, ditzy, empty headed, a space cadet, dipshit, maggot, little bitch, ungrateful little shit, selfish pieceof shit....
For mocking my brother when he cried after being beaten.
For becoming enraged at hearing any of us cry when he scared us.
My mother: For letting it happen even though she knew (and I knew she knew because I wrote her notes telling her).
For letting it happen.
For letting it happen.
For letting it happen.
For facilitating it.
For being drunk and inappropriate (she once open mouth kissed my brother then laughed about it, made jokes about masturbation a lot).
For leaving.
For systematically invalidating my anger at my parents' horrible behavior.
For confiding in my sister with her personal marital problems with my dad, thus robbing my sister of a genuine mother figure.
For acting as if our love was never good enough.
For flipping out and beating the shit out of at least my sister and me in public places.
For writing stories where characters which strongly resemble her own children fantasize about having sex with their parents...and asking us to read them.
For getting drunk at parties and sobbing to strangers that she shouldn't have ever had children because we were so horrible.
For gettting drunk at home and sobbing to her mother that she shouldn't have ever had children because we were so horrible.
For violating each and every boundary we so desperately needed in that house.
For threatening us with foster homes when DSS came in (finally) to investigate the claims about her father's sexual abuse of us.
For lying at family therapy.
For attacking me, occasionally physically and always with unwarranted spite, repeatedly the summer before I started college and was out of the house more than I was in (but never in any trouble).
For her tantrums at christmas, birthdays, and many other holidays which usually involved booze and were often in public.

I know there's more but these are the ones that occur off the top of my head. If I were to count each and every instance of only the most horrible and concrete of this list, their guilt is worth at least three lifetimes of regret, one for each of their children. Neither of them has the right to ask for absolution from any of us for their acts or for the outcome of their acts. To speak of having "paid for" any of this is absurd, and I'm pissed off enough that I'm thinking of finding a public and punitive way of telling them so. If only I had free time and some money...I'd sue their asses. Not because I'm a fan of litigious solutions but since my father has chosen to wrap his inappropriate desire in that framework, it strikes me as just to consider a very public accounting of the crime and the cost.

Addendum: I just found this. So it seems my parents are in fact still open for a lawsuit, at least civil if not also criminal. I just might look into this, seriously. I don't have a lot of free time and I have even less money, but maybe the inquiry will make me feel better.

I'm so confused

Did Mark Foley want to fuck little boys because he was molested or because he is gay? The most recent "break" in this story really leaves that issue up to the reader.

Attorney David Roth said Foley was molested between ages 13 and 15...He also acknowledged for the first time that the former congressman is gay, saying the disclosure was part of his client's "recovery."

I can't help noticing that it seems the former representative is being portrayed a strong gay child sexual abuse survivor, maybe one we should find some small sliver of admiration for because, according to his attorney, "As is so often the case with victims of abuse, Mark advises that he kept his shame to himself for almost 40 years."

As another survivor (who once tried to make out with a fourteen year old boy when I was fifteen but got completely turned off by the fact that, despite his being a cute funny smart little bad ass skate rat, I probably could have tossed him over my shoulder and run a 50 yard dash without breaking a sweat), I have to admire the former congressman's ability to have kept his SHAME to himself for so long. I am not even close to as strong as that, choosing instead to express my SHAME all the time and in numerous different ways.

Hey now, here's a thought. Maybe what former Congressman Boyfucker was ashamed of wasn't that he was abused. Maybe it was that he himself had some pedophile tendencies.

I guess we should all be thankful he didn't shoot a schoolroom full of little boys to take revenge for it.

Honestly, I am so sick of the media perpetuated ignorance when it comes to this shit. "The shame!" Fuck their shame. The only shame is the shame that is laid on us by a continuous flow of shit like this. Foley disclosing now that he was molested, what the fuck is that? A defense? The number of people who have been sexually abused as children far outweighs the projected numbers of pedophiles. Look it up, I'm busy and can't get you the references right now (I'm writing a lecture, presumably). But it's a convenient myth for Foley and his lawyer to use at the moment. Something to explain it, to make it all part of a larger crime in which Foley is the victim and not the nasty old fuck that he seems. And the media is happy, oh more than happy, to perpetuate this shit.

It's not just the mainstream media who are pushing my buttons these days though. A quick review of current news at some of the more prominent feminist resources (NOW and Feminist Majority Foundation) shows a complete and utter lack of awareness about the recent gendercide school shootings. Not even a friggin' mention on their news pages.

For example, at feminist.org you can find a link to The feminist perspective on U.S., global and campus news stories this week. In this page, they're on the Foley story too, just like the mainstream media. They have breaking reports about bride kidnapping and domestic abuse in Kyrgyzstan and underrepresentation of women writers at Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. But there is not even ONE single sentence of "feminist perspective" on the recent gender based attacks on girls in two different US schools this week. Nothing on how prior school shootings have had a tendency to have been boys hunting girls and women. Where's the feminist perspective? Or is two men planning to rape and kill little girls in one week not enough of a feminist issue for them? I'm guessing the PACs don't give much of a shit, because the elected officials that be (and that might be) don't give much of a shit. And major mainstream feminist groups are, these days, just packaging for their political fundraising committees. I get the need for them, I do. I worked for one briefly one summer. But what the fuck is the point in electing "pro feminist" officials if the feminism exists only in terms of token gestures, bumper stickers, and dangerous daily instances of misogyny represented only as a mythically far away and foreign event?

I know there's not much I can do alone. I'm working with my campus women's center to try to do something local in the next week. I also know that a candle light vigil or cleverly composed quarter sheet fliers will not change the world. However I simply refuse to be a part of the masses of people doing and saying absolutely NOTHING other than reading the dwindling mainstream media news reports of official handwringing over how to classify the apparently brand spanking new criminal concept of males violently attacking females.

Better free your mind instead

In another "Look a pterodactyl" move, president Bush used his weekly radio address for some quality gay bashing.

"Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society."

Actually, ages of experience have taught us that straight marriages and breeding result in divorce and abandonment of partners and children. Straight marriages frequently involve physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by the spouses on each other and on the children. This abuse takes the form of sexual assault and enslavement, severe physical trauma, neglect, starvation, torture, and sometimes even death.

How's that for using convention and fallacy to make nifty generalizations?

So Bush supports amending the US Constitution to make discrimination legal. If we were going to get all excited about an amendment, here's one that's been kicking around for over 80 years which seems like a much more noble and civilized modification of the Constitution.
That's right. It's the Equal Rights Amendment.

Here's the text of the highly controversial ERA:
from equalrightsamendment.org
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

More about the ERA:
from equalrightsamendment.org
...By June 30, 1982, the ERA had been ratified by 35 states, leaving it three states short of the 38 required for ratification. It has been reintroduced into every Congress since that time.

Who hasn't ratified it? Big surprise, states which are part of what I refer to as "the cracker barrel" (for several (1, 2) reasons).

Map 1 - States which haven't ratified the ERA:


I thought this was an interesting comparison. Map 2 is of free states vs. slave states.


Map 3 would be the states which would support an amendment to the US Constitution banning gay marriage. Presumably, that could be derived by looking at which states ban gay marriage right now. But state level bans and rights are not at all easy to track because this issue is in a high level of flux in the states right now. A run down in 2004 reported that 39 states had some sort of prohibition of gay marriage, a spread that is all over the damned place. It seems allowing everyone the opportunity to fuck up and get married is a really scarey concept for a whole lot of people. Some of these state level bans have been challenged, some states not in that original 39 are dealing with court challenges and proposed legislation prohibiting or allowing gay marriage. In keeping with the Map 1 and Map 2 set, of the 11 states which passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in 2004, many came out of the cracker barrel. A couple that didn't had far narrower margins in the votes. But this is pretty discouraging nonetheless.

The "Eeek Gays!" strategy worked so well in the 2004 presidential election that Bush, as GOP cheerleader, is using it again to play to "his people" - the crackers - in the lead up to the congressional elections. I really hope sanity and reason can prevail in the upcoming legislative elections, but considering the quite mild ERA couldn't get 38 states in 80 years, I feel a little uneasy believing the average US citizen will be immune to this current policy of pandering to prejudice.

Mothers to me

I was thinking that there are several women I have known in my lifetime who have, even in small ways, been like a mother to me. Which is a good thing because if that job had been lfet entirely to my actual mother, I would have turned out pretty scary (er?).

Since it was mother's day recently, I figured I'd recognize these women and my gratitude for what they contributed to my life. There are some women who I have left off the list because they were more professional/mentor type people, although they certainly have helped me as well.

Various childhood friends' mothers - notably Carolyn's mother (Mrs. Rossi) and Liz's mother (Mrs. Kurpeski). No, not a cozy and squishy happy mommy type thing, but they were mother models that were in many ways superior to my own. They also provided safe homes for their daughters and by proxy, if nothing else, provided a place for me to stay (sometimes for days on end it seemed) when I was a kid without making me feel like an interloper.

My friend cjblue's mother, Rena. Again, not someone I have a lovey mother-daughtery relationship with but someone who always treated me kindly and respectfully, who made me feel welcome in her home, who hosts a great brunch, and who is poised, considerate, and an excellent mom.

My friend Marion Aitches. She was a professor in my undergraduate program in Michigan. I had her for a literature course, but I became friends with her first through interactions as her student and then after completing her course and graduating. I visited her on a few occasions and her house always felt homey to me. She's elegant and articulate, intelligent, and quick to laugh. Her life has been very rich, providing ample topics for stories of growth and the difficult processes of becoming a self possessed person, always told with a great sense of humor.

My friend Beverley Goodman. She is amazing. Beverley was my undergraduate advisor. She started working in the department towards the end of my time at college but quickly became one of my favorite teachers ever. She's candid, honest, outspoken, insightful, very funny, considerate, and full of some great contradictions (idealism and cynnicism, informality and diligence, pacificism and rowdiness). Also, her advice and support for me has always been so unbelievably well timed and appropriately irreverent. She's one of those quiet rebel types. I admire Beverley immensely for all of her personal and professional acheivements that she shared with me, but also more recently because she was able to take on a bum of a husband and a life threatening, life changing illness. Even superhuman strength won't help make that kind of combo anything less than torture. Beverley was honest about how much it sucked and I was so relieved she didn't bullshit me. Getting through something like this takes incredible strength and she did it, honestly and as always, on her own terms.

But Mom! All the other kids are sleeping in cages!

This makes me fucking sick.
Ohio Woman Says Kids Requested Cages

Before I get to my reaction, I want to address my reaction to talking about my reaction. I feel very real trepidation about expressing myself here because I was abused. I even cringe writing that, not because I am ashamed of myself but because I know there is a very strong and negative stigma associated with people who disclose this. This is not pretense folks. There are numerous social punishments for expressing an honest and personal reaction to anything bad. It's just not polite. Heard any of these lately?
"Too much information!"
"You need to learn to let go of your anger"
"Ok, now tell me how you REALLY feel (hahaha)"
"You can't spend your life as a perpetual victim"

There are so many explicit ways we censure disclosure and implicit ways we threaten it. I usually assume those who do this to abuse survivors were not abused themselves, although the numbers suggest that some of them were. We tend to default to the false assumption that everyone has no history of abuse, which is ridiculous. Based on the stats of just the reported cases, each of us knows and is probably even close to an abuse survivor. The worst part is, we all are at least marginally aware of the high incidence of child abuse. And still we assume "everyone" or "everyone else" never suffered in this way. I blame that on the silence.

"Silence? What silence? This stuff is all over the news," you might be thinking. But the news is not real. It is a report of real. Real is the your coworker whose office is next to yours who you avoid because she's such a downer. Real is that your wife can't have an orgasm unless she knows you can't see her face. Real is the kid you wish your kid wouldn't hang out with. Real is a husband's distress when his inlaws casually chat about the sensationalized abuse story in the news and he knows he can't voice his honest reaction without risking the nearly physical pain of the family's most likely ignorant reactions to his explicit or implicit disclosure.

Hearing reports about abuse can elicit all sorts of negative emotions - disgust, revulsion, anger, sorrow, fear. We do not deal with those feelings well. We do not express them well. And I think we know this. So these feelings are more readily expressed as reactions to a remote situation. Utlimately, I think this is because the emotional impact of these feelings is easier to avoid if the issue is kept remote. We will acknowledge it in a public sphere - abuse is an ok topic for tasteless jokes, state and municipal budget battles, TV melodrama ("reality" or not), and controversial social-behavioral research. But it remains not an ok topic for the abused. Allowing that there is a large scale social ill of abuse but no real in the flesh abused people is more comfortable for most people, but it perpetuates a climate of dangerous silence. That silence keeps kids quiet while it is happening and sends survivors a message to "get over it" even before anyone has even had time to acknowledge an "it" to get over.

The stigma is there and felt quite directly at the personal level. There are countless mechanisms to keep it in place, to maintain the social silence. Today I'm chewing through the gag because I am just revolted at how the silence allows ignorance to guide personal decisions and public policy, thus putting and keeping children in high risk situations.

So, let me tell you how I REALLY feel about this fucked up situation and this fucked up couple.
What the fuck was this woman thinking? Not the locking her kids in cages part. I mean, I do think I follow her screwy reasoning for that. It went something like: The kids are getting up at night and causing 'problems'. I'll just put them in cages!" A normal person might have responded to the apparently overwhelming behavior problems these kids have by thinking "I'll not adopt 11 emotionally disturbed children whom I do not have the skills or resources to adequately care for." But she and her husband are clearly not normal.

What I want to know is what the fuck she was thinking when she declared in court that the kids wanted this treatment. She portrays the cages as cheerful little playpens. They were not. According to a local paper's Sept. 15, 2006 article about this family, the average dimensions of the cages were 4 feet long, 3.3 feet high, and 2.5 feet wide. Local police who entered the home also reported:
- "The insides of the cages were lined with "hardware cloth" - criss-crossed sections of what (a local police officer) called 'heavy-gauge wire'"
- "One of the bedrooms contained six cages, stacked two high upon each other against one wall"
- "In one of the cages, the wire lining had been partially ripped open from the inside"

I can't fathom that these people were allowed to adopt not one but 11 special needs kids. Today's news report says the mother claimed to have "sought help from...county social workers and received none". I have no way of knowing if that is true or not, I sincerely hope the state can check to see if she did. If she did and none was given, that would strongly suggest there is a massive problem in the state's child services program.

Clearly Ohio should re-examine it's adoption process since there is obviously something seriously wrong. Further, the state legislators in Ohio who recently proposed a gay couple adoption ban should be slapped, hard. Their ignorance, bigotry, and utter lack of genuine concern for child welfare is grossly apparent if despite the caged children story making national news, they are wasting time and tax payer money exploiting the issue of child endangerment as yet another means of criminalizing homosexuality.

The blame does not belong solely to the state. Support for adoptive parents of troubled kids would be a more tractable issue if our country had less fucked up attitudes about children and child rearing. The prevalent mainstream attitude of "breed til it hurts" is promoted although it is obviously destructive on so many levels. I see attitudes like this as strong contributing factors in the Ohio situation. According to the local report, a neighbor said "she thought it was unusual for them to have so many children but never noticed anything amiss at the home. 'Like anybody, you'd think that house wasn't big enough for 11 children,'" Indeed, you'd think. I don't blame the neighbor for not calling social services if all she saw were happy well fed kids playing outside. I don't even blame her for not thinking collecting 11 kids in a house that is too small to accomodate them is by definition a neglect situation. It probably was just something she saw as evidence of "low class", like having 11 cars up on blocks in the front yard. I mention her quote to illustrate that what can only be described as child hoarding is not seen as dangerously pathological in our culture.

Unless we tacitly agree that some kids are just made to be used, harmed, or destroyed, then we must assume responsibility for creating a social climate where child abuse is intolerable. Currently, social intolerance is skewed towards the victims, a sort of mean spirited "kill the messenger" attitude. Our intolerance should be directed at the beliefs and values that allow abusive situations to arise and persist in our communities. It should held for perpetrators who continue to breed, adopt, or be employed in jobs with child contact. It should be applied to government policies which promote pregnancy, child birth, and child rearing without concomitant programs to eliminate socio-economic injustice.