form

What do you do when you're going to (voluntarily) visit your primary abuser?
The person who shaped the things you hate about yourself and the fact that you hate yourself (though of course you're supposed to be over this because you are an adult and you've had oodles of therapy). How do you prepare? Maybe you'll spend the plane ride sniffling back tears and repeating your mantra "it's not your fault." You might feel nothing, as you've prepared for this in therapy for weeks ahead...you're nothing if not a good student, a good study, and you've been through this countless times before. And experience should count for something, right? You should have grown layers and layers of tough overskin, an exoskeleton and force field, but you never did--some missing gene, perhaps--and you're secretly glad of this because at least you still have your feelings, roller coaster often, sad and depressed, certainly, but joy, and love and love of color and depth--song and rhythm--he couldn't take that away, could he and there is comfort in that. Maybe you think of the recent conversations where you've had the strength to stave off the harshest barbs, to parry them, to say "I'm not going to discuss that with you," or 'NO!" without having to shout or curse. Progress. Baby steps. The best progress is that you don't really, deep down, believe that he could ever change, even though age and pain and loneliness have softened his rhetoric somewhat.

But the real kicker is, now that he is old, alone and sick, perhaps preparing to die, he EXPECTS your compassion, is desperate for any little drop of attention though he would never ever admit it. Once in a blue moon, he's rueful. It'd be easier, of course, if he was just hard, hard, hard all the time, but he's a master abuser so he has a sense of when to pull back from the edge, at least with you. For some reason, maybe because you are female, maybe because he recognizes your efforts to connect, or maybe because he's terrified that you'll cut him off completely, but you are the one person he doesn't cut off altogether. Or maybe he enjoys seeing your pain because it's almost impossible for you to hide it for long, especially the pain of him having abused others you love and feel protective of. They don't really need your protection, because they don't engage with the abuser anymore and have grown the exoskeleton that you lack. You can see the scars in their hearts, but they are close to healing and that is a thrilling thought. And you suspect that you'll only fully heal when he's dead because then maybe he'll be at peace. And you hate and love that part of you that wishes him peace.

You've been educated, so you plan as little time with him as possible, and set up an agenda of what to discuss in your mind. It's important this time, because he is slowly failing, and you want to scrupulously follow his wishes as to his care, you want to let him know that you care, and can be trusted to do what he wants. You also want to see beneath the drama and lies he creates because he's been dying for 35 years though maybe it's getting closer to being the truth. Above all, you want to be the person you know you should be, no matter what he says or does or lies about. You don't want to ever hurt anyone or anything the way you've been hurt, you don't want to lie to the people you love or push them away, you don't want to abuse anyone, and you value the time and effort it has taken to teach yourself how to live a healthy life. You try not to think about the family you could have built or the career you could have had, or the impact you could have made in some way if you hadn't had to work so hard to get to normal. You try to turn the bitterness and anger into fuel for the creative fire and you let the tears fall when and where they may.


What you really really really really hate is that in some ways, still, you are his victim. You want to stab him in his soul for this, but he doesn't have one.

hope

some folks say this country is too racist to elect a black president
someone told me that the reason I support Obama is because he's black and so am I
someone opined that he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience, not enough governing experience period
the Clintons even had to get nasty about it, but that's no surprise
I realized today looking at the convention coverage
that the reason I support Obama
is the same reason I support Ted Kennedy
and the same reason I support Barney Frank
and the same reason I get up in the morning
it's hope

something brighter, something better
treating people with dignity and respect even if you disagree with them
and believing in the American dream
the real dream
where everybody gets ahead

We are products of this dream
our parents, or grandparents, or great great greats got here
and found a way out of no way
in a place where that is possible
not easy
but possible

Jesse Jackson, Jr. said that we can see Dr. King's mountaintop tonight.
We need vision to make things possible, to make change happen.

a marriage

so there was this dude that I dated for about three minutes back in the late '80's I think...doomed form the start because a.) he lived in a state other than Massachusetts b.) I was an emotional horror show c.) he wore moon boots, danced like Michael Jackson and had the laugh of a hunting hyena d.) I thought sex could solve everything e.) he thought meatloaf was a gourmet meal f.) I thought his meatloaf would serve better as a door stop, etc. So we kept in touch via Christmas cards and other things you do with people you feel vaguely uncomfortable about losing touch with or people who keep sending you fucking christmas cards so you feel compelled to respond. So acres of time go by and he tells me that he is getting married. Wonderful! I am so happy for you, say I, hoping she digs meatloaf. Tell me about your bride. Here, a poignant pause from him over the email. And then he asks if I'm upset that he's getting married. No, I say, what in the world would make him think that? And then silence. No more cards, no more emails. in it goes to my oddity pile--but, given family history, and having a modicum more sense than i used to, why would I be upset about someone I had a brief fling with back when Clinton was president, where we couldn't be more ill-suited? And why would he want me to be upset? And why would I begrudge anyone who still wears moon boots the chance to be happy with a woman who digs that kind of footwear.

Another one for the WTF page...

$14 million for a picture of some white babies. And they aren't past that plucked chicken stage where all babies look exactly the same. What is the fascination? They ain't my babies and they ain't yours. They belong to a crazy, rich couple who think that dragging a pack of kids around the world along with bodyguards and the kind of attention accorded to royalty and sports stars will result in emotionally healthy adults. Lets instead pay $14 million to the couple in the midwest who have raised 14 disabled foster children. Let's put it up against the national debt. Better still it might go in a fund for the therapy of the adult children of this union for when they have to come to terms with their very ordinariness.

This dichotomy--I speak with some of the wealthiest humans on earth in the course of my job and often can't afford fresh produce. Yet I can afford a lot more, like the ability to live alone, which my neighbors can't as they come from places where only the wealthiest people live alone, and they are better off than the folks they left behind because they got to come here. And there are those kids in that neighborhood close to work who could change their lives for the better with just 1/10th of 1 percent of $14 million by being given the hope of higher education.


WTF--screamin' in a vacuum.

Shhhh

The quiet
between the storms
barometric pressure headaches
and paternal ass-pains
thunder without lightening
bellowing without substance or truth
stress and fear of roofless existence
in a never ending field where low lying angry clouds unleash wrath against unprotected skin
[the rhythm and drama so beautiful through the windows of a warm hearth]
senseless hail stone bruises
I don't need the rain.

candy

a small square white one so I don't wake up with baboon lips
an enormous white, smelling slightly of sulfur, to metabolize livah sugah
an oblong white one that may or may not keep T & K cells from killing other tissues-the one that gives me technicolor dreams
two suspicious and expensive capsules, one burgundy and one pink, that regulate synapse juice and perhaps keep me from committing homicidal acts while riding public transportation
old big blue that keeps the leaky ticker tickin'
tiny pink fucker that blocks this and promotes that
the amusingly cherry flavored baby aspirin that may prevent years of bad chocolate from imploding
big ole blobs of goo filled with the oils of alaskan cod--perhaps making me a better swimmer or growin' gills
two hard speckled brown oblong honkers with "valerian" and some poor animal's brain in powder form which lull me gently to sleep
three round honkeys that slam me into slumber
and wee willie winkie for the pain in my neck which, like all sneaky fucks, is deceptively strong and keeps me in fog well past it's "effective half-life"
horrid
candy
not
so
sweet

Cape Crack

I'm on Cape Cod but don't go robbing my house as there ain't a thing in there but dirty dishes and a plus size wardrobe in three sizes. I took a bus down here on Friday night with various grads and dads and single middle aged women in new age jewellery going to a Martha's Vineyard "How to Reclaim Your Womb" retreat. Who wants it back, I asks ya?

The Cape is another country in that the vegetation grows differently in the sandy soil and the air is clearer somehow as the land juts out between the Nantucket Sound and the Ocean, and the culture is at times tourista central, often kitsch, and in many instances quaint and slow paced. I met a couple from Croatia at the tiny Falmouth bus station who are staying here for the summer and working at a local B&B to improve their English, and, I'm sure, slightly martyr themselves in the wake of snobby tourists and juicy honeymooners who's sheet leavings they will have to deal with, but hey, when I spoke to them, their faces aglow, I was freezing my nuts off in my light summer dress which was perfect for the slow build of Boston humidity seeping in through the midwest, but quite inadequate on the Cape where the weather is perenially 20 degrees cooler. I asked the Croatian boy to turn round while I pulled on my pajama bottoms so he wouldn't be blinded by unsightly thigh flab. They skipped off happily, hand in hand, as I wished fervantly for some socks.

On the bus there were a couple of guys who'd graduated from Harvard the day before. When they first got on, I thought I'd be treated to some Beavis and Butthead like conversation about boobs and booze, but they had a thoughtful and lively conversation about working in the public sector, how much they appreciated their parents, and how they wished they could express more emotion like their girlfriends were able to. They also discussed Carmen Electra's relative hotness, but by that time, as I shamelessly eavesdropped, I was ready to forgive them anything.

I'm staying at a friend's parents condo. We stayed here last year, too, and the nosy neighbor informed my friend's parents that "a black girl" had been in their house. I am currently devising some overtly stereotypically colored ways to behave--maybe I'll case her house--so that her belief system will remain intact. Later I plan to put on my bathing suit, break out the boombox and play and dance to some early Parliament Funkadelic, specifically the tracks that are designed to scare the Ignays.

Oooga Boooga, fashizzle my nizzles.

And so, you can see, I'm in an optimistic and un-cynical frame of mind. It seems to take several days to unwind from the tight muscles and brain busy-ness of the city, the frantic pace of the people stomping up escalators and running for trains, the banality of concrete and body odor, that slightly uncomfortable feeling of melding into a mass and becoming formless like a wheel of brie on a hot beach.

ooooooo. beach....

dr. crack

So I'm going to prescribe some new medication for you that should ease your symptoms. Maybe. It will cause nausea and dizziness upon standing, may cause excessively oily stool for the first 48 days, and will cause any jewellery that you wear that's less than 24 carat to turn your skin green. Long term use definitely causes bone loss, but you probably will be dead long before this happens from the drug's toxic effects having committed suicide because you can't get an erection when taking this medication unless you experience the rare side effect of having a 14 hour erection--if this occurs get to an emergency room and make my girlfriend a video of the event.

Don't take this drug with celery or bacon or bacon wrapped celery or while at high altitudes--there is a slight risk of spontaneous combustion. Be sure to drink plenty of water before taking this medication unless you're not thirsty. Taking this medication and applying lipstick in the subsequent 15 minutes can cause catastrophic lip swelling, making you look like an orangutan's ass. If this occurs and the wind is blowing over 15 miles an hour, you may become airborne. Don't touch cacti while taking this medication to avoid a rare side effect.

Don't take this medication if you are taking the following (and don't expect me to know what you are taking as that would require me to read your medical record which everyone knows is just a file full of empty paper and blank x-rays): boxing lessons, Cialis, intravenous Ovaltine, alpine flower extract with sheep dip, raw cookie dough, toe jam fungicide, a haiku class, the "how to become a god-fearin' republican" workshop at the Columbus Center for Adult Education, methamphetamine, Beano, or eye of newt extract. Don't eat turducken while taking this drug as turducken is gross.

Any questions? Too bad, we're out of time. Be sure to read the minuscule fine print document included with the medication for a list of the really serious side effects.

You're gonna be just fine.