I did not fall off the planet. I've been reading a lot about gravity and I have it on very good authority that falling off the planet would be, in fact, impossible. I've just been procrastinating. I've historically been a poor correspondent, and this is, after all, sort of like a long letter to myself and anyone else who might wander in. I had to stop in and post this story though. I thought about this the other day for the first time in a long time and wanted to share it.
About four years ago, when I was living with Kallie and her rotten children, and not long after I'd started my current job, Nate had to bring a batch of cookies to school. He was in sixth grade. I am not the most Betty-Crockerish of moms, so Kallie was kind enough to bake the cookies. I had the important task of putting them on a plate, covering them with tin foil and remembering to give them to Nate when he left to catch the bus in the morning.
Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.
As the bus was pulling away, I realized that the cookies were still sitting on the counter. I was seized with a sharp pang of mother guilt. I'd failed my son. He was going to school with no cookies. No...I resolved...not MY son. I was almost ready to go to work anyway, so I threw my shoes on, grabbed my "purse", picked up the plate of cookies and ran to my car, determined to catch the bus before it got more than a few stops away.
I need to take a moment here to explain about the "purse" because it will become important to the story later. I do not carry a purse. I have never carried a purse. When I was a kid, my mom was always telling me I needed to start carrying one because she was afraid that when I was grown, I wouldn't be used to carrying one and I'd lose it or just walk off and leave it. She needn't have worried since I still don't want to have anything to do with a purse. I carry a wallet in my back pocket and that's pretty much all I need. My reluctance to join the ranks of the "pursed" should have been my mother's first clue that I was a budding lesbian. However...Kallie had given me a fanny pack as a gift. It seemed sufficiently un-purselike to her and she thought it would be helpful for me to haul things around in. Which it was. And I did use it, although I was always a little uncomfortable with it. I never quite made peace with the fanny pack. I couldn't help thinking of it as a "purse". Not a purse, but a "purse". I'm sure you can see the difference. On with the story.
I took a shortcut to a place where I knew the bus stopped and waited there for it to arrive, which it did shortly. I leapt from the car with the cookies, ran over to the bus, and handed the cookies through the window to the driver, instructing her to give them to my son. The whole exchange went smoothly, and I was on the road towards work in just a few minutes. I drive almost an hour to get to work every day, and I spent the drive feeling very proud of myself for taking such good care of my boy. It would not have been unlike me to not remember about the cookies until mid-afternoon when it was too late. I have very good intentions, but sometimes my mind is like a sieve.
When I got to work, I parked the car and happened to glance over to the passenger seat...and there sat the plate of cookies.
The sun glinted off the tinfoil.
I had a moment of utter confusion. I very clearly remembered getting out of my car and taking those cookies over to the bus and giving them to the driver...so how could they be in the car still? And very slowly...I began to wonder...what...exactly...did I hand to the bus driver? And equally slowly it dawned on me what was missing. The "purse" was gone. It should have been in the passenger seat. When I realized finally that I had given my purse to the bus driver to give to Nate, I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I knew I was going to have to drive all the way back out to the school at that point, so went into the building to explain that I was going to be very late that morning.
I was laughing so hard I could barely explain myself, and my co-workers weren't faring much better. My son had called home from school to ask Kallie why I'd given him my "purse" and she in turn had called work hoping to catch me and couldn't resist telling my co-workers what had happened. Evidently the poor kid didn't realize I meant to be giving him cookies. He thought there must be some reason I was giving him the purse. He found it so confusing and upsetting that he cried. Of course that didn't stop him from taking all the cash out of the purse before he gave it back to me (we had a little exchange in the hallway at school -- he gave me the "purse" and I handed off the cookies).
All of which goes to show that my mother was right. I can't be trusted with a purse, and I haven't carried one since.
I love hearing or telling a good story. So I plan to tell stories here. Some of them will be my stories, some of them will be stories that others have told me, and probably I'll end up telling stories that I heard somewhere out in the world. Some stuff might be humorous or uplifting. But I doubt it. Basic facts: I'm 53, a lesbian/mom/artist type person living in a large Midwestern city & generally feeling finer than frog hair.
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Sunday, October 20, 2002
Then there was the Time I Got Caught In Quicksand While Trying To Escape From A Spider.
I was 24, Nate was around 2, it was a summer day and we were visiting the farm that my family owned in Indiana. (The same one I lived on when I was a kid). The farm is about 600 acres. There's a cabin and a small house on the front few acres that face the main highway. Deeper into the property there's a creek (which is a small river, really, or a really big stream), and across the creek are lots of woods and some cultivated areas as well as the remains of the house we'd lived in. When I visit the farm, I always like to go down to the creek and have a look around to see how it's changed course since I was last there. To me, it's the heart of the farm and I feel a strong connection to that place.
My father was living in the cabin on the farm at this particular time, and several of my aunts and uncles were visiting as well. They were all sitting outside the cabin on the porch and were probably either cooking or eating. In my family, that's just what we do. I decided to take Nate for a little walk down to the creek. To get there, you had to walk about half a mile, between a big cornfield on one side and a fenced pasture on the other, then there was a little wooded area right before you got down to the creek. At the wooded area, the path forked -- go left to the 'crossing' or right to the 'swimming hole'. Usually, I go to the crossing. I'm not sure how they did it -- probably involved tractors -- but my dad and my uncles kept the crossing shallow enough to drive across (hence it's name). Maybe they were dumping gravel in. I don't know. On this day, instead of heading to the crossing, I decided to walk down to the swimming hole.
To get to there, I followed the path until I came to a steep drop off, which was about three feet high. Or low. Depending on whether you were on the top or the bottom of it, I guess. Anyway, this bank was covered in tall grass and although it was steepish, Nate and I were able to climb down without much difficulty. At the bottom of the bank, there's an area about fifteen feet wide of sand and rocks, then the creek. The creek had changed course quite a bit since the last time I'd been there. I didn't really recognize which part exactly had been our old swimming hole. Immediately on the other side of the creek was another steep bank, this one about five feet tall and covered in mud.
Nate and I passed a pleasant ten or fifteen minutes looking for flat rocks and skipping them across the creek. (Well, I was skipping them and Nate was flinging them in and giggling joyfully). This might sound hokey, but it really does something good for my soul to be down there. It's beautiful. It's isolated -- I was far enough away from the cabin that I couldn't hear my rowdy relatives at all. All you can hear is the wind in the trees and the sound of the water running and various insects buzzing. Beyond the mud bank on the other side of the creek is another big cornfield, and I could see the tassels on the corn, and huge hills and trees behind that. It smells good there too.
After soaking up the experience for a bit, I decided we should walk down to the crossing and see how that was looking. I took Nate's hand and started to climb back up the grassy bank where we'd come down. I was only a step or two up the bank when I saw the biggest spider I'd ever seen sitting on a weed right directly in the middle of the path where I was climbing up. It's butt was as big as a large grape. A very large grape. I'm an arachneaphobiac from way back and I knew as soon as I saw it that 600 acres was not big enough for me and that spider. Any thought of me climbing up that bank at that point was totally out of the question. The bank to either side of the spider was not climbable. There were bushes and various other obstacles that made it impassable. The only alternative I could come up with was to go across the creek, walk down to the crossing from that side, and then wade back across and go back to the cabin.
I looked at the mud bank. It was steep, but I didn't think I'd have any trouble climbing it. In fact, I thought it might be fun in a G.I. Joe sort of way. I looked at the creek itself. At it's narrowest point, it was about four feet across; a little too wide to leap across with a two year old in my arms. I thought about wading down the creek to the crossing...I could see sand bars that I could walk on that stretched out a long way in that direction. I actually went a long way in that direction until I came to a place where there were no more sand bars and I wasn't sure how deep the water was. I knew from swimming in the creek all my life that in certain places it was very deep. I also was aware that the sand bars weren't safe because there were patches of quicksand. Of course that was something I'd heard and never actually believed -- still, I was very careful.
Eventually I found myself back where I started. My only choices were to cross the creek where it was only four feet across or to climb up the grassy bank and hope I didn't run into the spider. I didn't even really consider the second option. I was mostly thinking, 'it's only about four feet wide, it can't possibly be that deep right here.' The problem was that I couldn't actually see the bottom.
So I picked up Nate and took a step into the water. It wasn't quite up to my knee. I took another step. And another. And then I sank to my knees in quicksand, which meant the water was up past my waist at that point. It was all I could do for the next few seconds to just avoid panicking. I could barely move my legs, but I slogged forward a bit and managed to sink to my thighs. I was holding Nate above the water and trying not to scare him while I stood there and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn't move forwards or backwards. I was afraid that I was going to be sucked down and die a horrible death. We were only a couple of feet away from the muddy bank at that point and I gave some serious thought to flinging Nate to the other side, but I was afraid that he'd slide down the bank and end up drowning. I stood there long enough, panicking and trying to figure out how to avoid taking Nate with me, that I slowly realized that I wasn't sinking anymore. I'm sure I was in quicksand, but I think there must have been something more solid under it. Once I realized that I probably wasn't going to be sucked down to my death, I calmed down and started leaning forwards and slowly managed to work my way the last foot or two to the mud bank, climbed up with no trouble, and ended up safe, wet and sandy on the other side. I walked down to the crossing, waded across, and headed back up to join my family.
I have rarely felt so foolish in my life as I did after that. To avoid a creature that was smaller than my little finger, I waded into dangerous waters with my two year old in my arms. Because the spider might possibly have touched me. I wasn't even afraid of it biting me. And I'm not allergic. I just felt like I would rather die than have it touch me. I stopped feeling that way at about the same moment I thought I actually might possibly die in a patch of quicksand.
I think there's probably something profound to be gotten out of this regarding irrational fears and the unknown, but I'm just not feeling philosphical enough to write it. For now I'm just thinking that if I see another big ass spider, I might give some thought to chasing it away before I go charging into the deep waters.
I was 24, Nate was around 2, it was a summer day and we were visiting the farm that my family owned in Indiana. (The same one I lived on when I was a kid). The farm is about 600 acres. There's a cabin and a small house on the front few acres that face the main highway. Deeper into the property there's a creek (which is a small river, really, or a really big stream), and across the creek are lots of woods and some cultivated areas as well as the remains of the house we'd lived in. When I visit the farm, I always like to go down to the creek and have a look around to see how it's changed course since I was last there. To me, it's the heart of the farm and I feel a strong connection to that place.
My father was living in the cabin on the farm at this particular time, and several of my aunts and uncles were visiting as well. They were all sitting outside the cabin on the porch and were probably either cooking or eating. In my family, that's just what we do. I decided to take Nate for a little walk down to the creek. To get there, you had to walk about half a mile, between a big cornfield on one side and a fenced pasture on the other, then there was a little wooded area right before you got down to the creek. At the wooded area, the path forked -- go left to the 'crossing' or right to the 'swimming hole'. Usually, I go to the crossing. I'm not sure how they did it -- probably involved tractors -- but my dad and my uncles kept the crossing shallow enough to drive across (hence it's name). Maybe they were dumping gravel in. I don't know. On this day, instead of heading to the crossing, I decided to walk down to the swimming hole.
To get to there, I followed the path until I came to a steep drop off, which was about three feet high. Or low. Depending on whether you were on the top or the bottom of it, I guess. Anyway, this bank was covered in tall grass and although it was steepish, Nate and I were able to climb down without much difficulty. At the bottom of the bank, there's an area about fifteen feet wide of sand and rocks, then the creek. The creek had changed course quite a bit since the last time I'd been there. I didn't really recognize which part exactly had been our old swimming hole. Immediately on the other side of the creek was another steep bank, this one about five feet tall and covered in mud.
Nate and I passed a pleasant ten or fifteen minutes looking for flat rocks and skipping them across the creek. (Well, I was skipping them and Nate was flinging them in and giggling joyfully). This might sound hokey, but it really does something good for my soul to be down there. It's beautiful. It's isolated -- I was far enough away from the cabin that I couldn't hear my rowdy relatives at all. All you can hear is the wind in the trees and the sound of the water running and various insects buzzing. Beyond the mud bank on the other side of the creek is another big cornfield, and I could see the tassels on the corn, and huge hills and trees behind that. It smells good there too.
After soaking up the experience for a bit, I decided we should walk down to the crossing and see how that was looking. I took Nate's hand and started to climb back up the grassy bank where we'd come down. I was only a step or two up the bank when I saw the biggest spider I'd ever seen sitting on a weed right directly in the middle of the path where I was climbing up. It's butt was as big as a large grape. A very large grape. I'm an arachneaphobiac from way back and I knew as soon as I saw it that 600 acres was not big enough for me and that spider. Any thought of me climbing up that bank at that point was totally out of the question. The bank to either side of the spider was not climbable. There were bushes and various other obstacles that made it impassable. The only alternative I could come up with was to go across the creek, walk down to the crossing from that side, and then wade back across and go back to the cabin.
I looked at the mud bank. It was steep, but I didn't think I'd have any trouble climbing it. In fact, I thought it might be fun in a G.I. Joe sort of way. I looked at the creek itself. At it's narrowest point, it was about four feet across; a little too wide to leap across with a two year old in my arms. I thought about wading down the creek to the crossing...I could see sand bars that I could walk on that stretched out a long way in that direction. I actually went a long way in that direction until I came to a place where there were no more sand bars and I wasn't sure how deep the water was. I knew from swimming in the creek all my life that in certain places it was very deep. I also was aware that the sand bars weren't safe because there were patches of quicksand. Of course that was something I'd heard and never actually believed -- still, I was very careful.
Eventually I found myself back where I started. My only choices were to cross the creek where it was only four feet across or to climb up the grassy bank and hope I didn't run into the spider. I didn't even really consider the second option. I was mostly thinking, 'it's only about four feet wide, it can't possibly be that deep right here.' The problem was that I couldn't actually see the bottom.
So I picked up Nate and took a step into the water. It wasn't quite up to my knee. I took another step. And another. And then I sank to my knees in quicksand, which meant the water was up past my waist at that point. It was all I could do for the next few seconds to just avoid panicking. I could barely move my legs, but I slogged forward a bit and managed to sink to my thighs. I was holding Nate above the water and trying not to scare him while I stood there and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn't move forwards or backwards. I was afraid that I was going to be sucked down and die a horrible death. We were only a couple of feet away from the muddy bank at that point and I gave some serious thought to flinging Nate to the other side, but I was afraid that he'd slide down the bank and end up drowning. I stood there long enough, panicking and trying to figure out how to avoid taking Nate with me, that I slowly realized that I wasn't sinking anymore. I'm sure I was in quicksand, but I think there must have been something more solid under it. Once I realized that I probably wasn't going to be sucked down to my death, I calmed down and started leaning forwards and slowly managed to work my way the last foot or two to the mud bank, climbed up with no trouble, and ended up safe, wet and sandy on the other side. I walked down to the crossing, waded across, and headed back up to join my family.
I have rarely felt so foolish in my life as I did after that. To avoid a creature that was smaller than my little finger, I waded into dangerous waters with my two year old in my arms. Because the spider might possibly have touched me. I wasn't even afraid of it biting me. And I'm not allergic. I just felt like I would rather die than have it touch me. I stopped feeling that way at about the same moment I thought I actually might possibly die in a patch of quicksand.
I think there's probably something profound to be gotten out of this regarding irrational fears and the unknown, but I'm just not feeling philosphical enough to write it. For now I'm just thinking that if I see another big ass spider, I might give some thought to chasing it away before I go charging into the deep waters.
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Being a bridesmaid is an exercise in strange tortures for me. For one thing, there's 'wedding hair.' I vastly prefer my regular hair, which is extremely low maintenance. Two minutes with a blow dryer in the morning and I'm done. Sometimes not even that. Wedding hair, on the other hand, is something that is done to you by a hairdresser. It involves various gels and sprays and bobby pins. You end up with this hard crusty shell on top of your head which basically moves as a unit or not at all. And it inevitably involves long curly things down by your face. I'm sure there's an official term for this which most women know, but I am not in on the secrets of this particular sisterhood. Suffice it to say, I am un-fond of wedding hair.
And then there's 'wedding face.' I am also not a wearer of makeup. I don't own any cosmetics. Well...that's not strictly true. I think I have a tube of lipstick in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn since 1987. (I used to wear it when I was in college. I was making a statement. Someone asked me what the statement was and I said 'the statement is that I'm wearing bright red lipstick.' Duh.) But I haven't worn it in years so that doesn't even count. But if you're a bridesmaid, you MUST wear it. You don't want to be homely in the photos after all. When my sister got married, not wanting to trust to my own severely underdeveloped skills at applying makeup, I presented myself at the Lancome counter at the mall to get a 'MAKE-OVER.' Oh sure, there's something to be said for having an attractive woman leaning all over you, touching your face and telling you you're pretty...but really, it's not worth it. I won't say that I looked just like Tammy Faye Baker, but I will say that I looked like a relative of hers. Besides which, I don't really know how to wear make-up anymore. It may not sound like there's any skill involved in this, but there is. You have to remember not to rub your eyes. Or blow your nose. Or scratch any part of your face which might itch. And your face will itch when there are six pounds of make-up on it and you are not used to that. Trust me.
And then there are high heels. I don't think I'm as ungainly in high heels as your average linebacker...actually, I'm probably more ungainly. Some of those guys are pretty graceful. But not only do I wobble a bit in high heels, but I feel a lot of stress about the possibility of actually falling off them. And stress leads to sweating. And guess what sweating does to your make-up. See above.
But the worst bit for me, at my sister's wedding in particular, was the dress - the wearing of which involved purchasing complicated underwear - mysterious items which would lift and support and yet not leave a hint of a line under your clothing. I had to take a guide with me to help me navigate the strange terrain in the lingerie department. Even buying the dress itself was traumatic. It was a long, sleeveless, dark green velvet number. Any drag queen would have been proud of it. It was shimmery. I, in fact, would have admired it on any drag queen. Unfortunately, when I went to purchase this dress (300 smackeroos, thanks a bunch), there was only one left in the correct color and style. And it was almost my size -- by which I mean that I was a little bigger than the dress. The helpful saleswoman helped me lever and stuff all my various parts into the dress and between the two of us, we did manage to get it zipped. I felt like a sausage in a tight casing. I came out of the dressing room to have a look in the mirrors and asked Nate what he thought. He was about eight at the time. He was thoughtful for a moment. "It's nice, but it looks like all the fat in your body has been squeezed into your arms."
So. The wedding went well. The happy couple is divorced now. Serves them right for forcing me to be a bridesmaid. I mean, what did I ever do to my sister to deserve that??
And then there's 'wedding face.' I am also not a wearer of makeup. I don't own any cosmetics. Well...that's not strictly true. I think I have a tube of lipstick in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn since 1987. (I used to wear it when I was in college. I was making a statement. Someone asked me what the statement was and I said 'the statement is that I'm wearing bright red lipstick.' Duh.) But I haven't worn it in years so that doesn't even count. But if you're a bridesmaid, you MUST wear it. You don't want to be homely in the photos after all. When my sister got married, not wanting to trust to my own severely underdeveloped skills at applying makeup, I presented myself at the Lancome counter at the mall to get a 'MAKE-OVER.' Oh sure, there's something to be said for having an attractive woman leaning all over you, touching your face and telling you you're pretty...but really, it's not worth it. I won't say that I looked just like Tammy Faye Baker, but I will say that I looked like a relative of hers. Besides which, I don't really know how to wear make-up anymore. It may not sound like there's any skill involved in this, but there is. You have to remember not to rub your eyes. Or blow your nose. Or scratch any part of your face which might itch. And your face will itch when there are six pounds of make-up on it and you are not used to that. Trust me.
And then there are high heels. I don't think I'm as ungainly in high heels as your average linebacker...actually, I'm probably more ungainly. Some of those guys are pretty graceful. But not only do I wobble a bit in high heels, but I feel a lot of stress about the possibility of actually falling off them. And stress leads to sweating. And guess what sweating does to your make-up. See above.
But the worst bit for me, at my sister's wedding in particular, was the dress - the wearing of which involved purchasing complicated underwear - mysterious items which would lift and support and yet not leave a hint of a line under your clothing. I had to take a guide with me to help me navigate the strange terrain in the lingerie department. Even buying the dress itself was traumatic. It was a long, sleeveless, dark green velvet number. Any drag queen would have been proud of it. It was shimmery. I, in fact, would have admired it on any drag queen. Unfortunately, when I went to purchase this dress (300 smackeroos, thanks a bunch), there was only one left in the correct color and style. And it was almost my size -- by which I mean that I was a little bigger than the dress. The helpful saleswoman helped me lever and stuff all my various parts into the dress and between the two of us, we did manage to get it zipped. I felt like a sausage in a tight casing. I came out of the dressing room to have a look in the mirrors and asked Nate what he thought. He was about eight at the time. He was thoughtful for a moment. "It's nice, but it looks like all the fat in your body has been squeezed into your arms."
So. The wedding went well. The happy couple is divorced now. Serves them right for forcing me to be a bridesmaid. I mean, what did I ever do to my sister to deserve that??
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Nate's a smart kid. Not a smooth criminal by any stretch, but a smart kid. When he was somewhere between two and three (somewhere around the time of the hopping vibrator incident), he escaped from the apartment in the very early morning. I say 'very early' meaning 'sometime before noonish'.
We lived in a third floor apartment that looked down onto the playground. Nate was always wanting to go there -- any kid wants to go to a playground, you know. There was a big slide and swings and teeter totters, but there was also a lot of broken glass out there. It just wasn't a really nice place and I wouldn't take him there very often.
So this particular morning I was sleeping in. My bedroom door was just a foot or two from Nate's bedroom door and we slept with both doors open so I could hear him when he got up. Usually. This time he was unusually quiet. I don't know how long he was up before I started coming around to realize he was in my doorway saying, "Don't get up, I'm just changing my socks." 'Okay,' I thought. I turned over. I shut my eyes again. I realized I felt a cold breeze in my bedroom. That didn't make any sense unless the front door was open -- it was February, after all. And then I really heard what he'd said. "Don't get up...I'm just changing my socks." Huh? What the heck was he changing his socks for? And why didn't he want me to get up? For crying out loud...usually he couldn't wait to get me out of bed. I was just sitting up when I saw him go running past my door wearing nothing but a diaper and a pair of socks. By that time I was fully awake and I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late. I went into the living room at a full run just in time to see him disappearing out the door.
Granted, I was an adult and he was a little kid, but he had an advantage over me in the speed department. I, being in a huge great hurry, had left my glasses laying beside my bed and could barely see. I ran out of the house in a loose gown - no shoes, no bra, and no glasses. And a ferocious case of bed head. By the time I got down the stairs, all I could see of Nate was just a little bit of tannish skin and a bright white dot of diaper bouncing along through the parking lot. It was a big parking lot and I was terrified he was going to get run over. I chased him probably about 150 yards, weaving through parked cars, before I caught up with him.
All that happened so fast that I didn't really figure out until I was on the way back to the apartment with Nate tucked firmly under my arm why exactly he was changing his socks. He'd gone out to the playground before I woke up wearing just his diaper and socks and the cold, damp ground got his socks all muddy. He was coming in for a fresh pair. It was the middle of February, probably 34 degrees outside. He didn't bother to find a shirt or pants, but he wanted to have clean dry socks for playing outside. Like I said, he's a smart kid.
I had to leave the couch pushed in front of the living room door at night for the next two weeks or so because Nate kept waking before me and trying to get out again. There's no coming between a boy and the playground sometimes.
We lived in a third floor apartment that looked down onto the playground. Nate was always wanting to go there -- any kid wants to go to a playground, you know. There was a big slide and swings and teeter totters, but there was also a lot of broken glass out there. It just wasn't a really nice place and I wouldn't take him there very often.
So this particular morning I was sleeping in. My bedroom door was just a foot or two from Nate's bedroom door and we slept with both doors open so I could hear him when he got up. Usually. This time he was unusually quiet. I don't know how long he was up before I started coming around to realize he was in my doorway saying, "Don't get up, I'm just changing my socks." 'Okay,' I thought. I turned over. I shut my eyes again. I realized I felt a cold breeze in my bedroom. That didn't make any sense unless the front door was open -- it was February, after all. And then I really heard what he'd said. "Don't get up...I'm just changing my socks." Huh? What the heck was he changing his socks for? And why didn't he want me to get up? For crying out loud...usually he couldn't wait to get me out of bed. I was just sitting up when I saw him go running past my door wearing nothing but a diaper and a pair of socks. By that time I was fully awake and I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late. I went into the living room at a full run just in time to see him disappearing out the door.
Granted, I was an adult and he was a little kid, but he had an advantage over me in the speed department. I, being in a huge great hurry, had left my glasses laying beside my bed and could barely see. I ran out of the house in a loose gown - no shoes, no bra, and no glasses. And a ferocious case of bed head. By the time I got down the stairs, all I could see of Nate was just a little bit of tannish skin and a bright white dot of diaper bouncing along through the parking lot. It was a big parking lot and I was terrified he was going to get run over. I chased him probably about 150 yards, weaving through parked cars, before I caught up with him.
All that happened so fast that I didn't really figure out until I was on the way back to the apartment with Nate tucked firmly under my arm why exactly he was changing his socks. He'd gone out to the playground before I woke up wearing just his diaper and socks and the cold, damp ground got his socks all muddy. He was coming in for a fresh pair. It was the middle of February, probably 34 degrees outside. He didn't bother to find a shirt or pants, but he wanted to have clean dry socks for playing outside. Like I said, he's a smart kid.
I had to leave the couch pushed in front of the living room door at night for the next two weeks or so because Nate kept waking before me and trying to get out again. There's no coming between a boy and the playground sometimes.
Monday, October 07, 2002
I have known an unusual number of people who've been murdered. I didn't know any of them very well, or intimately, but nine still seems kind of a high number for a middle class white girl. Ok, lower middle class -- but still, that's a bunch. This only has a minor bearing on the story I'm about to tell, which I'll explain momentarily.
I was eighteen, still living with my mother, still in church. A friend of mine from church, Deidre, was living with us. My cousin Bill, Uncle Linc's son, was her boyfriend. The three of us spent a lot of time at the church and with the church crowd because Deidre and I were still very much in church, and Bill lived in the parsonage with his dad, although he was an unrepentant wildass. One of Bill's buddies from church was this guy named Greg who lived in the basement of the church and worked as the church handyman. Greg was a good bit older than we were...somewhere in his forties. He was a big, heavy man with greasy dark hair and thick dark-rimmed glasses that always settled down on the end of his nose. He was missing half of his right hand, something which had happened as a result of an industrial accident. He gave me the creeps from the moment I met him, but Bill was convinced he was harmless. Greg was also a big drinker. I don't know how he ended up working for the church, but it wasn't because he was interested in serving any god other than the bottle.
One night, Bill brought Greg to my house. My mother was gone (probably at Denzel's, since this happened around the time they were starting to hook up). I don't remember exactly how much beer Bill and Greg put away, but it was a lot. Bill was nearly out on his feet. It fell to me to drive Greg back to the church. I didn't want to. I wasn't comfortable around him at all, but I didn't much like the idea of him staying all night in our house either. I tried to get Deidre or Bill to ride along, but they both refused. So it was just me and Greg.
I hadn't driven more than half a mile when Greg started talking to me about 'the evil'. He didn't want to do the evil, he said, but he had to. He hoped I'd understand that he had to do the evil. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but it was freaking me out. When I go to the church, he wouldn't get out of the car. Just kept going on about doing the evil. Again, I didn't know what 'the evil' was, but I knew I didn't want any part of it, and I was afraid his plans included me. I finally gave up on getting him to get out of the car at the church and drove him to a local bar instead, where he did get out.
I was relieved to get rid of him, but I didn't think too much about how he'd freaked me out until a few months later. I figured he'd just been drunk. And maybe he was. And maybe Bill was right and he was completely harmless. But there was a girl, Cindy, who used to hang around the church. She was about my age, and very pretty, but she was so messed up on drugs and so deeply disturbed and crazy. It was sad to be around her. I don't know what exactly her relationship with Greg was, but they spent a lot of time together. A few months after my run-in with Greg, Cindy turned up dead - one of the unusual number of murdered people I've met. She'd been beaten severely and left outside to die of exposure. A man from Michigan was arrested and convicted of the crime. He looked just like Greg. And I've never been confident that the police got the right guy. I mean, what kind of person goes around talking about doing 'the evil'? Maybe not necessarily a serial killer. I don't know. But it sure freaked me out.
I was so sad when Cindy was killed. I hadn't known her well, but something about her touched me. I had painted murals in the church basement and she used to come around and sit and talk with me while I painted. She was so earnest and seemed so hungry for someone to just be kind to her. She'd had a horrific nightmare of a life. I wish things had been different for her.
I was eighteen, still living with my mother, still in church. A friend of mine from church, Deidre, was living with us. My cousin Bill, Uncle Linc's son, was her boyfriend. The three of us spent a lot of time at the church and with the church crowd because Deidre and I were still very much in church, and Bill lived in the parsonage with his dad, although he was an unrepentant wildass. One of Bill's buddies from church was this guy named Greg who lived in the basement of the church and worked as the church handyman. Greg was a good bit older than we were...somewhere in his forties. He was a big, heavy man with greasy dark hair and thick dark-rimmed glasses that always settled down on the end of his nose. He was missing half of his right hand, something which had happened as a result of an industrial accident. He gave me the creeps from the moment I met him, but Bill was convinced he was harmless. Greg was also a big drinker. I don't know how he ended up working for the church, but it wasn't because he was interested in serving any god other than the bottle.
One night, Bill brought Greg to my house. My mother was gone (probably at Denzel's, since this happened around the time they were starting to hook up). I don't remember exactly how much beer Bill and Greg put away, but it was a lot. Bill was nearly out on his feet. It fell to me to drive Greg back to the church. I didn't want to. I wasn't comfortable around him at all, but I didn't much like the idea of him staying all night in our house either. I tried to get Deidre or Bill to ride along, but they both refused. So it was just me and Greg.
I hadn't driven more than half a mile when Greg started talking to me about 'the evil'. He didn't want to do the evil, he said, but he had to. He hoped I'd understand that he had to do the evil. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but it was freaking me out. When I go to the church, he wouldn't get out of the car. Just kept going on about doing the evil. Again, I didn't know what 'the evil' was, but I knew I didn't want any part of it, and I was afraid his plans included me. I finally gave up on getting him to get out of the car at the church and drove him to a local bar instead, where he did get out.
I was relieved to get rid of him, but I didn't think too much about how he'd freaked me out until a few months later. I figured he'd just been drunk. And maybe he was. And maybe Bill was right and he was completely harmless. But there was a girl, Cindy, who used to hang around the church. She was about my age, and very pretty, but she was so messed up on drugs and so deeply disturbed and crazy. It was sad to be around her. I don't know what exactly her relationship with Greg was, but they spent a lot of time together. A few months after my run-in with Greg, Cindy turned up dead - one of the unusual number of murdered people I've met. She'd been beaten severely and left outside to die of exposure. A man from Michigan was arrested and convicted of the crime. He looked just like Greg. And I've never been confident that the police got the right guy. I mean, what kind of person goes around talking about doing 'the evil'? Maybe not necessarily a serial killer. I don't know. But it sure freaked me out.
I was so sad when Cindy was killed. I hadn't known her well, but something about her touched me. I had painted murals in the church basement and she used to come around and sit and talk with me while I painted. She was so earnest and seemed so hungry for someone to just be kind to her. She'd had a horrific nightmare of a life. I wish things had been different for her.
Sunday, October 06, 2002
A few years ago, when I still lived with my ex girlfriend, Kallie (not her real name -- I am having a ball changing the names to protect the innocent), I was upstairs doing something on the computer. Kallie was lying in the bed reading a book. It was late in the evening and the house was peaceful and quiet. I don't remember where Kallie's rowdy boychildren were (possibly at their father's house), but mine was quietly playing Nintento downstairs and just being angelic in general. I thought.
When I heard Nate knock on the door, I didn't even turn to look, just said 'come in,' and kept on typing. He quietly crossed the room and stood beside me. When I glanced over, it took me a few seconds to realize exactly what I was seeing. There stood Nate, stark naked except for a pair of shorts he'd made out of shaving cream. When the three of us stopped laughing (Kallie had looked up at about the same time I did), I asked him what the heck he was thinking. His response was that he'd gone into the bathroom and noticed a can of shaving cream in there, and then he thought to himself, 'Live a little.'
Sometimes I wish I was more like Nate.
Live a little. I'm tellin' ya.
When I heard Nate knock on the door, I didn't even turn to look, just said 'come in,' and kept on typing. He quietly crossed the room and stood beside me. When I glanced over, it took me a few seconds to realize exactly what I was seeing. There stood Nate, stark naked except for a pair of shorts he'd made out of shaving cream. When the three of us stopped laughing (Kallie had looked up at about the same time I did), I asked him what the heck he was thinking. His response was that he'd gone into the bathroom and noticed a can of shaving cream in there, and then he thought to himself, 'Live a little.'
Sometimes I wish I was more like Nate.
Live a little. I'm tellin' ya.
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
When I was ten, we lived in Virginia. I don't think I've mentioned this, but my father built roller coasters while I was growing up. We started out in Ohio, but we moved around a lot. All of our assorted aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins still lived in Ohio.
My Dad's youngest brother (he had seven siblings) had a severe drug problem. I don't really know for sure what he was on, because I was pretty young, and I can only remember the adults whispering that Linc was "ON DRUGS". I did hear when I was grown that he had been shooting up speed, and I have it on good authority that that will make you crazy.
My Dad loved Linc. He wanted nothing more than to see him off drugs, so he invited him to live with us. He thought if he could get him away from his drug suppliers, he might have a chance of staying off them. Uncle Linc stayed with us for a few months. It was weird having him around. He had long hair and a beard and was generally a wild looking character. He read the Bible a lot and spent a lot of time explaining to my mom what it all meant. He's always been a very outgoing and likeable guy, even when he was a nut. Uncle Linc is the kind of guy that people want to follow. He was sort of a like a mini-Charles Manson, only nicer and without the murders. My dad was a different kind of man altogether. He was charming and extremely handsome, but basically a traditional kind of guy. He believed in (still believes in) hard work and being independent.
The few months Uncle Linc was around went smoothly. As far as I know -- and again, I was just a kid at the time -- he stayed off drugs for the duration. After he'd been with us for a while, though, we all traveled to Ohio for a visit with the rest of the family.
When we went to Ohio, my family would stay with my grandparents, and I'm not sure where Linc went. One night, we'd been visiting one of my Aunts until the wee hours of the morning, and were driving home from there. My grandparents had asked us to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home, so we stopped by King Kwik, which was a convenience store near my Aunt's house. Dad went into the store while the rest of us waited in the car. Mom was in the front seat, and I was in the back with my two sisters.
When Dad came out of the store, Mom gasped, and I looked up. His face was completely bloody. He was pulling his shirt off over his head as he walked towards the car. Mom jumped out of the car and said to me, "Charlotte, keep the kids in the car!" and ran towards Dad. Casey, my middle sister was out of the car before I could grab her, but I grabbed on to Gwen, my little sister, and kept her in the car. Casey ran to Dad and threw her arms around him as he staggered towards the car with Mom guiding him. Casey pulled her arms from around Dad and looked at her hand and screamed -- it was covered with blood.
By this time, Dad had his shirt off and had wadded it up and pressed it to his face to stop the bleeding. Casey was back in the car, and Mom was getting ready to pull out. I looked up and saw Uncle Linc come out of the store. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and looked all wild-eyed. He was shaking his fist and shouting something that I couldn't understand.
Mom pulled away and started speeding towards the hospital. I had no idea really what had happened. I was terrified. I thought someone had shot my father in the face. I was praying that he wouldn't die. Mom was terrified too. She was driving like a maniac. Dad kept saying, "Iris, the kids...slow down," and then we'd come to a red light and he'd say, "run it!" It seemed like a very long drive, but it probably only took a few minutes before we got to the hospital.
Dad was admitted and spent several days in the hospital. It turned out that my uncle had broken a wine bottle across his face, which nearly cut his nose off and split his upper lip entirely apart, as well as smaller cuts all over his face. The blow must have been utterly unexpected because Dad never even raised a hand to block it. Then when he turned to run out, Linc stabbed him in the back with the neck of the broken bottle. Fortunately the glass went in beside his spine, below his lung, and above his kidney. It could have been much worse.
I don't think he's ever forgiven his brother for trying to kill him. I don't think he's forgiven him for maiming his face. My dad is still a handsome man, although he's getting older and starting to look his age, but his face was never perfect in its beauty again. His nose still has a deep line running diagonally across it, and he has to wear a moustache to hide the scar in his lip.
Uncle Linc says he's apologized every way he knows how, but Dad says he's never heard an apology. I don't know who to believe. I think maybe Dad just can't hear him. Linc's a preacher now. Still has lots of followers, but he did get completely off the drugs a couple of years after he tried to kill my dad. And we never really found out what happened, except that Linc was in the store when Dad went in to buy milk. I don't know what he said to Linc to provoke him, or if he said anything. We'll probably never know because neither of them likes to talk about it -- although I did hear Uncle Linc tell the story during a revival meeting once and he blamed it on the devil.
On an odd side note, Dad managed to bleed all over a candy rack inside the King Kwik, and they made him pay for the candy. We ate Dentyne out of bloody wrappers all the way back to Virginia.
My Dad's youngest brother (he had seven siblings) had a severe drug problem. I don't really know for sure what he was on, because I was pretty young, and I can only remember the adults whispering that Linc was "ON DRUGS". I did hear when I was grown that he had been shooting up speed, and I have it on good authority that that will make you crazy.
My Dad loved Linc. He wanted nothing more than to see him off drugs, so he invited him to live with us. He thought if he could get him away from his drug suppliers, he might have a chance of staying off them. Uncle Linc stayed with us for a few months. It was weird having him around. He had long hair and a beard and was generally a wild looking character. He read the Bible a lot and spent a lot of time explaining to my mom what it all meant. He's always been a very outgoing and likeable guy, even when he was a nut. Uncle Linc is the kind of guy that people want to follow. He was sort of a like a mini-Charles Manson, only nicer and without the murders. My dad was a different kind of man altogether. He was charming and extremely handsome, but basically a traditional kind of guy. He believed in (still believes in) hard work and being independent.
The few months Uncle Linc was around went smoothly. As far as I know -- and again, I was just a kid at the time -- he stayed off drugs for the duration. After he'd been with us for a while, though, we all traveled to Ohio for a visit with the rest of the family.
When we went to Ohio, my family would stay with my grandparents, and I'm not sure where Linc went. One night, we'd been visiting one of my Aunts until the wee hours of the morning, and were driving home from there. My grandparents had asked us to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home, so we stopped by King Kwik, which was a convenience store near my Aunt's house. Dad went into the store while the rest of us waited in the car. Mom was in the front seat, and I was in the back with my two sisters.
When Dad came out of the store, Mom gasped, and I looked up. His face was completely bloody. He was pulling his shirt off over his head as he walked towards the car. Mom jumped out of the car and said to me, "Charlotte, keep the kids in the car!" and ran towards Dad. Casey, my middle sister was out of the car before I could grab her, but I grabbed on to Gwen, my little sister, and kept her in the car. Casey ran to Dad and threw her arms around him as he staggered towards the car with Mom guiding him. Casey pulled her arms from around Dad and looked at her hand and screamed -- it was covered with blood.
By this time, Dad had his shirt off and had wadded it up and pressed it to his face to stop the bleeding. Casey was back in the car, and Mom was getting ready to pull out. I looked up and saw Uncle Linc come out of the store. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and looked all wild-eyed. He was shaking his fist and shouting something that I couldn't understand.
Mom pulled away and started speeding towards the hospital. I had no idea really what had happened. I was terrified. I thought someone had shot my father in the face. I was praying that he wouldn't die. Mom was terrified too. She was driving like a maniac. Dad kept saying, "Iris, the kids...slow down," and then we'd come to a red light and he'd say, "run it!" It seemed like a very long drive, but it probably only took a few minutes before we got to the hospital.
Dad was admitted and spent several days in the hospital. It turned out that my uncle had broken a wine bottle across his face, which nearly cut his nose off and split his upper lip entirely apart, as well as smaller cuts all over his face. The blow must have been utterly unexpected because Dad never even raised a hand to block it. Then when he turned to run out, Linc stabbed him in the back with the neck of the broken bottle. Fortunately the glass went in beside his spine, below his lung, and above his kidney. It could have been much worse.
I don't think he's ever forgiven his brother for trying to kill him. I don't think he's forgiven him for maiming his face. My dad is still a handsome man, although he's getting older and starting to look his age, but his face was never perfect in its beauty again. His nose still has a deep line running diagonally across it, and he has to wear a moustache to hide the scar in his lip.
Uncle Linc says he's apologized every way he knows how, but Dad says he's never heard an apology. I don't know who to believe. I think maybe Dad just can't hear him. Linc's a preacher now. Still has lots of followers, but he did get completely off the drugs a couple of years after he tried to kill my dad. And we never really found out what happened, except that Linc was in the store when Dad went in to buy milk. I don't know what he said to Linc to provoke him, or if he said anything. We'll probably never know because neither of them likes to talk about it -- although I did hear Uncle Linc tell the story during a revival meeting once and he blamed it on the devil.
On an odd side note, Dad managed to bleed all over a candy rack inside the King Kwik, and they made him pay for the candy. We ate Dentyne out of bloody wrappers all the way back to Virginia.
Monday, September 30, 2002
Kids will try to kill you. You can die from sheer embarassment from just being around them sometimes because you just don't know what they are going to say or do.
Once I was babysitting my niece, Whiskey (not her name) when she and Nate were both about two and a half years old. I was living in my nice apartment in the project at the time and was busy working on a drawing at my drawing table in the living room.
Let me interject that it's a bad idea to ever leave two children under the age of three unattended for any length of time.
The apartment wasn't that big and the door to Nate's room was open, so I was pretty sure I would hear if anything untoward happened. The kids were being unusually quiet and well behaved that day, and as any parent knows, that's probably a bad sign. I mean, these kids were generally at one another's throats. I'd seen them come to blows over imaginary cookies. ("You ate my cookie! Waaah!!" -- only there were no cookies).
So basically, I was enjoying the peace and quiet and getting some good work done on my drawing. Then all of a sudden, I heard this horrible buzzing clattering coming from the hallway and at about the same time, both the kids started giggling wildly and shrieking with laughter. What the fu...? I jumped up from the table and rushed to the hallway. There stood both the kids pointing at a beige colored plastic thing that was jumping up and down in the linoleum floor. Buzzzzz, bang, clatter, buzzz. I realized with horror that it was my vibrator, which had evidently been purloined from beneath my bed. It only took me a couple of tries to catch it, because that little sucker was movin'...but I grabbed it as quickly as I could and switched it off. Trying to maintain as much dignity as possible under the circumstances, I looked sternly at both children. I was going to give them a lecture about being in my room, but when they started asking, "what is it? can we play with it?" and I realized I was standing there holding it still, I finally had to give up and just stomp out of the room.
But you know, it really did look pretty funny jumping up and down in the floor. I've gotta say, I totally understand why they were so amused.
Once I was babysitting my niece, Whiskey (not her name) when she and Nate were both about two and a half years old. I was living in my nice apartment in the project at the time and was busy working on a drawing at my drawing table in the living room.
Let me interject that it's a bad idea to ever leave two children under the age of three unattended for any length of time.
The apartment wasn't that big and the door to Nate's room was open, so I was pretty sure I would hear if anything untoward happened. The kids were being unusually quiet and well behaved that day, and as any parent knows, that's probably a bad sign. I mean, these kids were generally at one another's throats. I'd seen them come to blows over imaginary cookies. ("You ate my cookie! Waaah!!" -- only there were no cookies).
So basically, I was enjoying the peace and quiet and getting some good work done on my drawing. Then all of a sudden, I heard this horrible buzzing clattering coming from the hallway and at about the same time, both the kids started giggling wildly and shrieking with laughter. What the fu...? I jumped up from the table and rushed to the hallway. There stood both the kids pointing at a beige colored plastic thing that was jumping up and down in the linoleum floor. Buzzzzz, bang, clatter, buzzz. I realized with horror that it was my vibrator, which had evidently been purloined from beneath my bed. It only took me a couple of tries to catch it, because that little sucker was movin'...but I grabbed it as quickly as I could and switched it off. Trying to maintain as much dignity as possible under the circumstances, I looked sternly at both children. I was going to give them a lecture about being in my room, but when they started asking, "what is it? can we play with it?" and I realized I was standing there holding it still, I finally had to give up and just stomp out of the room.
But you know, it really did look pretty funny jumping up and down in the floor. I've gotta say, I totally understand why they were so amused.
Saturday, September 28, 2002
When my son...I think I'll call him Nate, was about seven, bees had it in for him. On his seventh birthday, a bee stung him right in the face at his birthday party. Then a few months later, I took him fishing at a pay lake and a bee caused him to completely lose his dignity. Except that it wasn't really a bee. It was a fly. He only thought it was a bee. But technically since he thought it was a bee, and since he feared them due to the birthday party incident, you could say that bees were at fault for the loss of dignity also.
A pay lake is one of those places where the trailer park crowd is likely to hang out. I hadn't realized that until I actually went to one. I just wanted my son to have the experience of catching a fish and wasn't sure where to take him. A pay lake, which is just what it sounds like...you pay a certain amount of money and you get to fish all day, seemed like a good idea because I assumed it would be well stocked with fish. There may have been a lot of fish there, but there were also a lot of rednecks there, and a lot of trash, and very little in the way of grass.
I think it's generally true that where you have a lot of rednecks, you're likely to find port-a-pottys.
So Nate's in this port-a-potty doing whatever it is he went in there for, and I'm waiting for him outside (on account of I'm his mom and didn't want any rednecks to kidnap him and sell him into white slavery on his way back to where we were fishing). Then BOOM, the door to the port-a-potty flies open, and out comes Nate, butt-first, shrieking, with his pants around his ankles. Every head turned. Of course he bit the dust immediately because it's really difficult to move fast backwards when your pants are around your ankles. I know this because I've tried it.
It was when I was helping him cover his...dignity...that he explained about the bee. Which turned out to be a fly. A little one.
A pay lake is one of those places where the trailer park crowd is likely to hang out. I hadn't realized that until I actually went to one. I just wanted my son to have the experience of catching a fish and wasn't sure where to take him. A pay lake, which is just what it sounds like...you pay a certain amount of money and you get to fish all day, seemed like a good idea because I assumed it would be well stocked with fish. There may have been a lot of fish there, but there were also a lot of rednecks there, and a lot of trash, and very little in the way of grass.
I think it's generally true that where you have a lot of rednecks, you're likely to find port-a-pottys.
So Nate's in this port-a-potty doing whatever it is he went in there for, and I'm waiting for him outside (on account of I'm his mom and didn't want any rednecks to kidnap him and sell him into white slavery on his way back to where we were fishing). Then BOOM, the door to the port-a-potty flies open, and out comes Nate, butt-first, shrieking, with his pants around his ankles. Every head turned. Of course he bit the dust immediately because it's really difficult to move fast backwards when your pants are around your ankles. I know this because I've tried it.
It was when I was helping him cover his...dignity...that he explained about the bee. Which turned out to be a fly. A little one.
Thursday, September 26, 2002
When my son was a toddler, I was in college and on welfare. I did that for three years or so, not quite long enough to get a degree, but close. We lived in subsidized housing -- basically the project. My rent was $67 a month for a not particularly glamorous apartment with no carpet and all the roaches I could want. My welfare check was for $300 month, and I got $90 a month in food stamps. The spare $200 plus a month went for gasoline, diapers, art supplies, clothes for a growing baby, soap, toilet paper, stamps, and whatever other household goods I couldn't buy with food stamps. On the rare occasions that I went out for fun, my friends paid my way. I had no telephone, no cable tv. On the upside, no utility bill, no medical expenses, and no car payment (my grandmother bought the car for me). I don't know how I would have managed if I'd had a car payment to make. I couldn't afford car insurance either, so I just didn't carry it.
I did this (this being the welfare/school thing) because I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to take care of my son. I was a single parent and it seemed a reasonable thing to do. My family had been paying taxes for years, it seemed fair to take some back long enough to get through school.
The bad thing though is that people have a real bias against the poor, especially the poor who are on welfare. Everybody gets lumped in with the generational abusers of the systems that we've all heard about. I wish I could remember the exact statistic, or find some current ones, but I remember reading back then that over 80% of welfare recipients were single mothers, and the vast majority of them were on welfare for two years or so -- just long enough to get on their feet and find a good job and child care after having a baby. There's this idea that everyone on welfare is living high on the hog. Unless the benefit systems were vastly different elsewhere from where I lived, in Ohio, I don't see how that's possible. Even with lots of kids, you weren't going to be living like Donald Trump. I told you how much I was getting and what I was spending it on...you do the math.
I experienced first hand some of the resentment and bias that people on welfare run into. When my son was an infant, before I lived in the housing project, I rented the basement in a house owned by a young preacher and his family. They lived upstairs. I was paying them $375 a month rent to live in a basement and had to go upstairs to use the bathroom because they never put one in, although they'd agreed to do so. I was able to afford to live in this palatial splendor because my father was sending me a couple hundred dollars a month at the time -- which I appreciated and which he did not continue to do. The preacher's wife, who had three kids of her own, had to get up before dawn every morning and go to work. She confronted me after I'd lived there a few weeks to tell me that as she walked to her car in the mornings, she could see a small light shining in my bedroom and that she deeply resented that I, who was on welfare, felt entitled to have a light on in my room when she, who had to work for a living, was paying the electric bill.
I was going to school full time at the time. My son was only a few months old and very tiny (he was a preemie and didn't even weigh six pounds when I moved into the basement). He slept in a crib in my bedroom. I left a small lamp on at night so that when he cried, I could see him immediately and make sure he was alright. The preacher's wife did work for a living, but she also had a husband to help her, and her husband's family and the church secretary to watch her kids while she worked. And I had assumed that by paying rent, I was contributing to the electric bill. She hated that her taxes were going to to me. It seemed a terribly unfair and pretty direct kind of deal to her. She worked, I didn't, I got her money.
I've had cashiers in grocery stores take books of food stamps out of my hands and count them for me because they apparently assumed I was too stupid to know how to do that for myself. I've been talked to like I was very, very slow witted by social workers who I know were not as smart as me. And then there were the mandatory six month reviews. Every six months, I'd have to get all my paperwork together and go sit in the welfare office for several hours until my social worker was available to review my case. I found these reviews to be horribly demoralizing.
Finally, I couldn't make myself go to another one. I was a year short of graduating from college. I dropped out and got a job at Dominos delivering pizza. Since I wasn't on welfare anymore, my rent shot up to nearly $400 a month -- retroactively for three months. I had to move in with my grandmother for a while.
My self respect was in better shape after I got off welfare, but I still look back and think my timing sucked. I wish I'd stuck it out for another year. I've never seemed to be able to get the logistics in order to go back and finish my degree, but I still think about it.
I did this (this being the welfare/school thing) because I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to take care of my son. I was a single parent and it seemed a reasonable thing to do. My family had been paying taxes for years, it seemed fair to take some back long enough to get through school.
The bad thing though is that people have a real bias against the poor, especially the poor who are on welfare. Everybody gets lumped in with the generational abusers of the systems that we've all heard about. I wish I could remember the exact statistic, or find some current ones, but I remember reading back then that over 80% of welfare recipients were single mothers, and the vast majority of them were on welfare for two years or so -- just long enough to get on their feet and find a good job and child care after having a baby. There's this idea that everyone on welfare is living high on the hog. Unless the benefit systems were vastly different elsewhere from where I lived, in Ohio, I don't see how that's possible. Even with lots of kids, you weren't going to be living like Donald Trump. I told you how much I was getting and what I was spending it on...you do the math.
I experienced first hand some of the resentment and bias that people on welfare run into. When my son was an infant, before I lived in the housing project, I rented the basement in a house owned by a young preacher and his family. They lived upstairs. I was paying them $375 a month rent to live in a basement and had to go upstairs to use the bathroom because they never put one in, although they'd agreed to do so. I was able to afford to live in this palatial splendor because my father was sending me a couple hundred dollars a month at the time -- which I appreciated and which he did not continue to do. The preacher's wife, who had three kids of her own, had to get up before dawn every morning and go to work. She confronted me after I'd lived there a few weeks to tell me that as she walked to her car in the mornings, she could see a small light shining in my bedroom and that she deeply resented that I, who was on welfare, felt entitled to have a light on in my room when she, who had to work for a living, was paying the electric bill.
I was going to school full time at the time. My son was only a few months old and very tiny (he was a preemie and didn't even weigh six pounds when I moved into the basement). He slept in a crib in my bedroom. I left a small lamp on at night so that when he cried, I could see him immediately and make sure he was alright. The preacher's wife did work for a living, but she also had a husband to help her, and her husband's family and the church secretary to watch her kids while she worked. And I had assumed that by paying rent, I was contributing to the electric bill. She hated that her taxes were going to to me. It seemed a terribly unfair and pretty direct kind of deal to her. She worked, I didn't, I got her money.
I've had cashiers in grocery stores take books of food stamps out of my hands and count them for me because they apparently assumed I was too stupid to know how to do that for myself. I've been talked to like I was very, very slow witted by social workers who I know were not as smart as me. And then there were the mandatory six month reviews. Every six months, I'd have to get all my paperwork together and go sit in the welfare office for several hours until my social worker was available to review my case. I found these reviews to be horribly demoralizing.
Finally, I couldn't make myself go to another one. I was a year short of graduating from college. I dropped out and got a job at Dominos delivering pizza. Since I wasn't on welfare anymore, my rent shot up to nearly $400 a month -- retroactively for three months. I had to move in with my grandmother for a while.
My self respect was in better shape after I got off welfare, but I still look back and think my timing sucked. I wish I'd stuck it out for another year. I've never seemed to be able to get the logistics in order to go back and finish my degree, but I still think about it.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
After I started hanging around with Bee and before I visited the Exorcist, I went to see a "Christian Counselor". I was struggling with the idea that I might be a lesbian and I wanted to get some help. I was very involved in a fundamentalist church at the time, so a christian counselor seemed like the way to go, so I carried my twenty year old self in for a visit with Marsha Hoppy.
Marsha was probably in her late forties and looked like your basic country club gal. Very tidy. Thin. And like the exorcist, she apparently thought she needed a little back-up. There was another woman there whose name was Jill, I think. The interesting thing about Jill was that as soon as I looked at her, I thought she looked like a lesbian -- kind of the preppy golfer type. Maybe she was one of those ex-queers.
I began by explaining to Marsha that I'd always formed very close attachments to my female friends. When I was in my early teens, I'd heard someone say that one in ten people were gay. I used to pray at night, "dear god, please don't let me be one in ten." I strongly suspected that I was, but I was horrified by the idea. My mother evidently had the same concerns because she was always explaining to me that I wasn't to hug my girl friends, I wasn't to tell them I loved them -- that behavior was "funny". I knew there must be something wrong with me, because I really loved to hug my girl friends.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, Mom and I were sitting on the couch having a conversation when she asked me to stand up and turn around. I did, and asked why. She said, "I wanted to see if you look like a dyke. I thought you might. But you don't look like a dyke."
Then when I was nineteen, I started having sex with Bee and was pretty sure that wasn't something I wanted to stop doing. But I still didn't want to be a lesbian.
When I'd finished my tale, Marsha said we should all join hands and I should follow her in prayer, meaning she would pray and I would repeat after her. So she started, "Dear God, we come to you in Jesus' name...." and I repeated, "to help Charlotte know that you love her," and I repeated...and I repeated various other things, until she said, "and help Charlotte to know that she is not a deek." I can only assume she meant to say "dyke." But at that point, the repeating after her was pretty well over for me. At first I was in a quandary trying to decide whether to say "deek", which would've just cracked me up, or "dyke", which would've cracked me up too. So I didn't say anything. I knew that if I uttered so much as a syllable, I was going to begin laughing hysterically. In fact, although I was as still and quiet as I could be, my body was already shaking with periodic wild giggles.
So there was this long silence while she waited for me to repeat after her. Finally, since I clearly wasn't going to, she got around to the "amen." She didn't have much to say after that. She probably thought that I was completely unrepentant, since I'd been unwilling to pray along. The meeting didn't last much longer, and I was dying to get out of there anyway so I could laugh out loud. I never went back.
I got a real therapist about a year and a half later (sometime after the Exorcism), and started dealing with coming out to myself. All that's another story, but I will say that it was a huge relief to me to finally admit to myself that I was a lesbian. I've never been sorry, or wished for anything else since then. Leaving church was hard too, but I've never regretted that either.
Marsha was probably in her late forties and looked like your basic country club gal. Very tidy. Thin. And like the exorcist, she apparently thought she needed a little back-up. There was another woman there whose name was Jill, I think. The interesting thing about Jill was that as soon as I looked at her, I thought she looked like a lesbian -- kind of the preppy golfer type. Maybe she was one of those ex-queers.
I began by explaining to Marsha that I'd always formed very close attachments to my female friends. When I was in my early teens, I'd heard someone say that one in ten people were gay. I used to pray at night, "dear god, please don't let me be one in ten." I strongly suspected that I was, but I was horrified by the idea. My mother evidently had the same concerns because she was always explaining to me that I wasn't to hug my girl friends, I wasn't to tell them I loved them -- that behavior was "funny". I knew there must be something wrong with me, because I really loved to hug my girl friends.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, Mom and I were sitting on the couch having a conversation when she asked me to stand up and turn around. I did, and asked why. She said, "I wanted to see if you look like a dyke. I thought you might. But you don't look like a dyke."
Then when I was nineteen, I started having sex with Bee and was pretty sure that wasn't something I wanted to stop doing. But I still didn't want to be a lesbian.
When I'd finished my tale, Marsha said we should all join hands and I should follow her in prayer, meaning she would pray and I would repeat after her. So she started, "Dear God, we come to you in Jesus' name...." and I repeated, "to help Charlotte know that you love her," and I repeated...and I repeated various other things, until she said, "and help Charlotte to know that she is not a deek." I can only assume she meant to say "dyke." But at that point, the repeating after her was pretty well over for me. At first I was in a quandary trying to decide whether to say "deek", which would've just cracked me up, or "dyke", which would've cracked me up too. So I didn't say anything. I knew that if I uttered so much as a syllable, I was going to begin laughing hysterically. In fact, although I was as still and quiet as I could be, my body was already shaking with periodic wild giggles.
So there was this long silence while she waited for me to repeat after her. Finally, since I clearly wasn't going to, she got around to the "amen." She didn't have much to say after that. She probably thought that I was completely unrepentant, since I'd been unwilling to pray along. The meeting didn't last much longer, and I was dying to get out of there anyway so I could laugh out loud. I never went back.
I got a real therapist about a year and a half later (sometime after the Exorcism), and started dealing with coming out to myself. All that's another story, but I will say that it was a huge relief to me to finally admit to myself that I was a lesbian. I've never been sorry, or wished for anything else since then. Leaving church was hard too, but I've never regretted that either.
Monday, September 23, 2002
The first woman I ever slept with was someone I met at church. She was 31; I was 19. I'd never met anyone like her. She was big and beautiful and so smart and wordly. She expanded my view of the world in so many ways. Introduced me to feminism, modern art, politics, literature. Oh, and did I say that she slept with me? I was so deeply smitten by her that I followed her around for the next three or four years, believing that every word she spoke was sacred. Her name wasn't Bee, but that's what I'm going to call her. It fits, as she saw herself very much as the Queen Bee.
At some point a couple of years after I met her, Bee got involved with a church that held some fairly extreme views. They, and she, believed that there were evil spirits lurking about in homes and on inanimate objects which could threaten a good christian's relationship with god. Bee was a smart woman, but when she decided to embrace a belief, she'd embrace it wholeheartedly and hold to it in the face of all logic until she moved on to the next thing. The first casualty of this plague of evil spirts was a series of drawings I'd done of her. They were some of my best work at that time and they'd hung as a group in her living room. They were a gift from me. She threw them all in the dumpster one day when she found herself staring at them. Obviously they had a 'spirit of seduction' on them.
Shortly after that, she refused to let me into her apartment because I was carrying around a 'spirit of lesbianism'. Even though she'd seduced me and slept with me on several occasions, she didn't consider herself a lesbian. She was aware of my feelings for her and I was aware that she didn't return them; nevertheless, I spent lots of time at her apartment and enjoyed her company very much (and I always figured there was a chance she'd take me to bed again), so I was fairly upset when she wouldn't let me in anymore. I asked what I could do to fix things, and she told me I'd have to go and see an exorcist to get the spirit cast out before I'd be allowed back in.
Conveniently, there happened to be an exorcist passing through town the following week. This wasn't a Catholic priest type exorcist, this was some kind of weird hybrid between an evangelist and well...I don't know. A snake handler or something. He was one of those guys who you see on television grabbing people and screaming "come out of her!" He was having a service in Bee's church where he would preach and then cast out demons. I resolved to go see him.
Bee went to the service too, but she wouldn't let me ride with her. I had to go by myself, sit by myself, and not so much as speak to her until I was fresh out of demons. I sat through the preaching part of the service basically feeling bored and fantasizing about how great it was going to be to be allowed back in Bee's house.
I'd like to take a moment here to interject that I did get some therapy later and resolve some of my self-esteem issues.
After the preaching, everyone who wanted a demon cast out was instructed to make a line in front of the door to a church office. I was the first in line. When I went into the office, the Exorcist was in there with an assistant (presumably for those hard-to-remove demons). He asked what I needed cast out and I told him, "a spirit of lesbianism." I said this quietly because I was somewhat ashamed of it. I didn't mention to him that the reason I needed it cast out was so that I would be free to enter the home of the only female lover I'd ever had. Somehow I think he might have doubted my sincerity.
The exorcist grabbed my head, and his assistant put a hand on my shoulder, and they began praying loudly, some in English and some in tongues. Then he started calling for the demon to come out of me. "Come out of her, you filthy spirit of lesbianism! Leave her! In the name of Jesus, come out!" and then "Come out, you spirit of masturbation!" 'Oh my god,' I thought, 'how did they know??' After they got tired of shouting, they'd ask, "Do you feel lighter now?" Twice I shook my head no, and both times they resumed praying and shouting. Finally I realized that if I didn't say "Yes, I feel lighter, praise God," we were going to be there all night. So I professed a lightness I didn't feel and we all praised god and I got the hell out of there.
And I resolved never to value myself so little that I'd put myself through something like that. I did go back in Bee's house after that, but I didn't feel good about what I did to get there. It was also the beginning of the end of my time in church. I started seeing that for me, lesbianism and fundamentalism were mutually exclusive. Maybe some folks can do it, but I can't. And besides, those evil spirits just didn't stay gone long.
At some point a couple of years after I met her, Bee got involved with a church that held some fairly extreme views. They, and she, believed that there were evil spirits lurking about in homes and on inanimate objects which could threaten a good christian's relationship with god. Bee was a smart woman, but when she decided to embrace a belief, she'd embrace it wholeheartedly and hold to it in the face of all logic until she moved on to the next thing. The first casualty of this plague of evil spirts was a series of drawings I'd done of her. They were some of my best work at that time and they'd hung as a group in her living room. They were a gift from me. She threw them all in the dumpster one day when she found herself staring at them. Obviously they had a 'spirit of seduction' on them.
Shortly after that, she refused to let me into her apartment because I was carrying around a 'spirit of lesbianism'. Even though she'd seduced me and slept with me on several occasions, she didn't consider herself a lesbian. She was aware of my feelings for her and I was aware that she didn't return them; nevertheless, I spent lots of time at her apartment and enjoyed her company very much (and I always figured there was a chance she'd take me to bed again), so I was fairly upset when she wouldn't let me in anymore. I asked what I could do to fix things, and she told me I'd have to go and see an exorcist to get the spirit cast out before I'd be allowed back in.
Conveniently, there happened to be an exorcist passing through town the following week. This wasn't a Catholic priest type exorcist, this was some kind of weird hybrid between an evangelist and well...I don't know. A snake handler or something. He was one of those guys who you see on television grabbing people and screaming "come out of her!" He was having a service in Bee's church where he would preach and then cast out demons. I resolved to go see him.
Bee went to the service too, but she wouldn't let me ride with her. I had to go by myself, sit by myself, and not so much as speak to her until I was fresh out of demons. I sat through the preaching part of the service basically feeling bored and fantasizing about how great it was going to be to be allowed back in Bee's house.
I'd like to take a moment here to interject that I did get some therapy later and resolve some of my self-esteem issues.
After the preaching, everyone who wanted a demon cast out was instructed to make a line in front of the door to a church office. I was the first in line. When I went into the office, the Exorcist was in there with an assistant (presumably for those hard-to-remove demons). He asked what I needed cast out and I told him, "a spirit of lesbianism." I said this quietly because I was somewhat ashamed of it. I didn't mention to him that the reason I needed it cast out was so that I would be free to enter the home of the only female lover I'd ever had. Somehow I think he might have doubted my sincerity.
The exorcist grabbed my head, and his assistant put a hand on my shoulder, and they began praying loudly, some in English and some in tongues. Then he started calling for the demon to come out of me. "Come out of her, you filthy spirit of lesbianism! Leave her! In the name of Jesus, come out!" and then "Come out, you spirit of masturbation!" 'Oh my god,' I thought, 'how did they know??' After they got tired of shouting, they'd ask, "Do you feel lighter now?" Twice I shook my head no, and both times they resumed praying and shouting. Finally I realized that if I didn't say "Yes, I feel lighter, praise God," we were going to be there all night. So I professed a lightness I didn't feel and we all praised god and I got the hell out of there.
And I resolved never to value myself so little that I'd put myself through something like that. I did go back in Bee's house after that, but I didn't feel good about what I did to get there. It was also the beginning of the end of my time in church. I started seeing that for me, lesbianism and fundamentalism were mutually exclusive. Maybe some folks can do it, but I can't. And besides, those evil spirits just didn't stay gone long.
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Here's another story from when we lived on the farm. I think about this every time I hear the phrase "adding insult to injury."
One of the many pets we had on the farm was this black dog that just wandered up and decided to hang around. We called him Dog to distinguish him from the dogs we'd acquired on purpose -- our 'official' dogs, Smokey, Spot and Fifi. Of course we did call him Black Dog on formal occasions. He was a friendly dog and we liked him.
One day I was outside eating a Brown Cow. Or a Black Cow. I don't remember exactly what they were called, but it was some kind of chocolate or caramel on a stick that was really chewy and quite tasty. Sort of like a Sugar Daddy. All of which is beside the point. The point is that I was enjoying this candy to the fullest. I was probably moaning in rapture as I ate it.
And Dog was keeping me company, which I also appreciated. He was just sitting by my feet, wagging his tail, being all friendly and doggish. I couldn't have been happier overall. Pretty much all the ingredients that a six year old needs for a happy life had come together. It was a beautiful day, I was outside, I had candy, and Dog was keeping me company.
Then without warning, Dog jumped up and grabbed the candy out of my hand. I was stunned. I was shocked. I was heartbroken. I opened my mouth to cry out at the horror of it all and Dog jumped right back up and licked the very last taste of candy off my tongue.
He licked my tongue. A dog. Not even an 'official' dog. A volunteer dog stole my candy and licked my tongue.
I'm still not over it.
One of the many pets we had on the farm was this black dog that just wandered up and decided to hang around. We called him Dog to distinguish him from the dogs we'd acquired on purpose -- our 'official' dogs, Smokey, Spot and Fifi. Of course we did call him Black Dog on formal occasions. He was a friendly dog and we liked him.
One day I was outside eating a Brown Cow. Or a Black Cow. I don't remember exactly what they were called, but it was some kind of chocolate or caramel on a stick that was really chewy and quite tasty. Sort of like a Sugar Daddy. All of which is beside the point. The point is that I was enjoying this candy to the fullest. I was probably moaning in rapture as I ate it.
And Dog was keeping me company, which I also appreciated. He was just sitting by my feet, wagging his tail, being all friendly and doggish. I couldn't have been happier overall. Pretty much all the ingredients that a six year old needs for a happy life had come together. It was a beautiful day, I was outside, I had candy, and Dog was keeping me company.
Then without warning, Dog jumped up and grabbed the candy out of my hand. I was stunned. I was shocked. I was heartbroken. I opened my mouth to cry out at the horror of it all and Dog jumped right back up and licked the very last taste of candy off my tongue.
He licked my tongue. A dog. Not even an 'official' dog. A volunteer dog stole my candy and licked my tongue.
I'm still not over it.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
When I was a kid, my family lived on a big farm in Indiana. We didn't stay more than a couple of years, but if I had to pick a place in the universe that felt like 'home' to me, it would be that farm. Of course part of the reason for that is that even though we moved off the farm, my father's family still owned it and we visited it frequently over the years. But I digress.
When we first moved out to the farm, there was no electricity, no mechanical heat (we used a coal stove), and no indoor plumbing (I know what you're thinking, but we didn't even have an outhouse - we had a POT). Dad was, and still is, a very handy kind of guy so he got all that remedied pretty quickly...although now that I think of it, I'm not sure if he ever installed central heating. I remember very clearly that in the winter, we all moved out of our bedrooms and slept in the living room to be near the coal stove.
We were smack in the middle of six hundred acres of farm and woods, and over an hour away from any of our relatives or friends. I had to either hike a mile uphill to catch the school bus or Mom had to drive me across a creek (sort of a smallish river) on the tractor to catch the bus at another location. We were very isolated and I'm sure it was hard on my mother. But we had all the pets we could have wanted--lots of dogs and cats and horses and ponies and pigs and cows and chickens and a duck. Just the one duck. It was also the first and only time I can ever remember feeling particularly close to my father.
Maybe it was because we were so far away from other human beings and because he was lacking his other activities (which largely consisted of womanizing), that he seemed to have time to spend talking to me. I was about six years old. He'd go for a walk in the yard, or hang out on the big porch that went all the way around the house and just talk to me. He'd say things to me like, "Girl," (I think he knew my name, but I'm not sure), "if you keep your ears open and your mouth shut, you'll learn something new every day." He was right, and that little gem has stuck with me ever since then.
It was during one such conversation while we were strolling through the yard together that I made a grievous error. I was feeling particularly close to him and I threw my arm around his waist and said affectionately, "Dad, you old son of a bitch." See...I knew there were two "sons of" that you could call somebody. I'd heard Dad and his brothers saying things like that to each other. I just didn't realize that while "son of a gun" was basically harmless and might be used affectionately, "son of a bitch" was another thing altogether.
Needless to say, the whipping I got with a switch pretty well broke the affectionate mood I'd been in. Afterwards, Mom (realizing that I was just not the kind of kid that went around cussing at her parents) asked me when I knew I'd said a bad word. I told her, "When he said 'What'd you say, girl?!?'" In retrospect, I think it was probably at the moment when I saw his head come swiveling around at a high rate of speed. But you live and learn, right? I haven't called him a son of a bitch since then.
Not to his face, anyhow.
When we first moved out to the farm, there was no electricity, no mechanical heat (we used a coal stove), and no indoor plumbing (I know what you're thinking, but we didn't even have an outhouse - we had a POT). Dad was, and still is, a very handy kind of guy so he got all that remedied pretty quickly...although now that I think of it, I'm not sure if he ever installed central heating. I remember very clearly that in the winter, we all moved out of our bedrooms and slept in the living room to be near the coal stove.
We were smack in the middle of six hundred acres of farm and woods, and over an hour away from any of our relatives or friends. I had to either hike a mile uphill to catch the school bus or Mom had to drive me across a creek (sort of a smallish river) on the tractor to catch the bus at another location. We were very isolated and I'm sure it was hard on my mother. But we had all the pets we could have wanted--lots of dogs and cats and horses and ponies and pigs and cows and chickens and a duck. Just the one duck. It was also the first and only time I can ever remember feeling particularly close to my father.
Maybe it was because we were so far away from other human beings and because he was lacking his other activities (which largely consisted of womanizing), that he seemed to have time to spend talking to me. I was about six years old. He'd go for a walk in the yard, or hang out on the big porch that went all the way around the house and just talk to me. He'd say things to me like, "Girl," (I think he knew my name, but I'm not sure), "if you keep your ears open and your mouth shut, you'll learn something new every day." He was right, and that little gem has stuck with me ever since then.
It was during one such conversation while we were strolling through the yard together that I made a grievous error. I was feeling particularly close to him and I threw my arm around his waist and said affectionately, "Dad, you old son of a bitch." See...I knew there were two "sons of" that you could call somebody. I'd heard Dad and his brothers saying things like that to each other. I just didn't realize that while "son of a gun" was basically harmless and might be used affectionately, "son of a bitch" was another thing altogether.
Needless to say, the whipping I got with a switch pretty well broke the affectionate mood I'd been in. Afterwards, Mom (realizing that I was just not the kind of kid that went around cussing at her parents) asked me when I knew I'd said a bad word. I told her, "When he said 'What'd you say, girl?!?'" In retrospect, I think it was probably at the moment when I saw his head come swiveling around at a high rate of speed. But you live and learn, right? I haven't called him a son of a bitch since then.
Not to his face, anyhow.
Friday, September 20, 2002
All the best stories have titles. All the worst holidays end up with titles. When I get together with my family for a holiday, I am always hoping not to end up with one that we'll have given a title to a few years down the road. For example: "The Thanksgiving Denzel Brought Home an Armload of Guns." There have been a handful of times in my life when I've been really afraid, and this time had to be somewhere in the top five at least.
Denzel (not his real name, but it's equally ridiculous) was my mother's husband from the time I was about 17 until I was 31 or so. He was one of those really awful controlling alcoholic violent people that are just not a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
James Ruppert was this guy who murdered 11 of his family members on Easter Sunday in 1975 in Hamilton, Ohio. This may seem irrelevent, but it isn't.
During my mom's marriage to Denzel, every time we went to her house for a holiday dinner, events would follow pretty much the same pattern: Denzel would head for the bar and start drinking, my mother and my sisters and I would have dinner and enjoy one another's company, then Denzel would come home drunk and start some obnoxious huge fight with my mother that sometimes ended in violence. I had started to worry that one of these days, he was going to come home drunk and just shoot us all, a la James Ruppert. Every holiday that went by, I was more convinced that we were all goners. I started to refer to our eventual murders as Denzel 'pulling a Ruppert'.
So on this one Thanksgiving when I was in my very early twenties, we'd followed the usual pattern. Denzel had gone to get drunk, we'd had dinner, and I was sitting around afterwards feeling nervous and uneasy. We heard a car pull into the driveway and my sister went to look out. My mother asked, "who is it?" and my sister replied, without the slightest trace of alarm, "It's Denzel and he's carrying a bunch of guns." I was immediately on my feet and on the way out the sliding glass back door until I realized that no one else was running. So I stopped. And Denzel came in with his guns, went to his room, and didn't come out for the rest of the evening while we carried on visiting with each other.
So I guess what I learned was that my intuition wasn't all that great, because I sincerely thought we were all going to be shot, and it turned out to be the most peaceful holiday we'd had in years. And I also learned that even I didn't trust my own intuition. I stopped moving out the door when I realized no one else was coming, despite my entire being telling me to run. If he'd come out shooting, I would have ended up dead from the peer pressure to not run away. That would've pissed me right off too.
Denzel (not his real name, but it's equally ridiculous) was my mother's husband from the time I was about 17 until I was 31 or so. He was one of those really awful controlling alcoholic violent people that are just not a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
James Ruppert was this guy who murdered 11 of his family members on Easter Sunday in 1975 in Hamilton, Ohio. This may seem irrelevent, but it isn't.
During my mom's marriage to Denzel, every time we went to her house for a holiday dinner, events would follow pretty much the same pattern: Denzel would head for the bar and start drinking, my mother and my sisters and I would have dinner and enjoy one another's company, then Denzel would come home drunk and start some obnoxious huge fight with my mother that sometimes ended in violence. I had started to worry that one of these days, he was going to come home drunk and just shoot us all, a la James Ruppert. Every holiday that went by, I was more convinced that we were all goners. I started to refer to our eventual murders as Denzel 'pulling a Ruppert'.
So on this one Thanksgiving when I was in my very early twenties, we'd followed the usual pattern. Denzel had gone to get drunk, we'd had dinner, and I was sitting around afterwards feeling nervous and uneasy. We heard a car pull into the driveway and my sister went to look out. My mother asked, "who is it?" and my sister replied, without the slightest trace of alarm, "It's Denzel and he's carrying a bunch of guns." I was immediately on my feet and on the way out the sliding glass back door until I realized that no one else was running. So I stopped. And Denzel came in with his guns, went to his room, and didn't come out for the rest of the evening while we carried on visiting with each other.
So I guess what I learned was that my intuition wasn't all that great, because I sincerely thought we were all going to be shot, and it turned out to be the most peaceful holiday we'd had in years. And I also learned that even I didn't trust my own intuition. I stopped moving out the door when I realized no one else was coming, despite my entire being telling me to run. If he'd come out shooting, I would have ended up dead from the peer pressure to not run away. That would've pissed me right off too.
I love a good story. I love hearing them and I love telling them. Sometimes I think going through unpleasant experiences is almost worthwhile if you come out of it with a good story to tell. So I plan to tell stories here. Some of them will be my stories -- things which I've seen or experienced, some of them will be stories that others have told me, and probably I'll end up telling stories that I heard somewhere out in the world and which I thought were cool. This isn't going to be all uplifting or humorous stuff, although probably some of it will be. At least some of it will be humorous -- uplifting I'm not so sure about.
Basic facts about me just to give some background: I'm 38, a lesbian/mom/artist type person living in the deep south amongst the Baptists and Republicans. I come from people who if they aren't exactly poor white trash, aren't too far removed from that. I was freakishly smart as a kid and somehow grew into something of an underachiever as an adult. So that's who I am. More or less. I left out a lot of traits -- a lot of good ones, but I don't think all that's really necessary anyway.
Basic facts about me just to give some background: I'm 38, a lesbian/mom/artist type person living in the deep south amongst the Baptists and Republicans. I come from people who if they aren't exactly poor white trash, aren't too far removed from that. I was freakishly smart as a kid and somehow grew into something of an underachiever as an adult. So that's who I am. More or less. I left out a lot of traits -- a lot of good ones, but I don't think all that's really necessary anyway.
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