I could write all that and did .(the below rests between these two points, But none of what I wrote in between these two points was/is the point/the core/crux of the matter/what‘s important/ the kernel of truth/The central truth.
INSTRUCTIONS:
If u decide 2 read u have many "how 2 read options": mix and match or -read it straight - the other how of how you read it well that's a whole thing.
1)You can read scroll through the entire white space and stop and read only the summation in the red,
2) the green and highlighted :from a technical standpoint it is my favorite sentence
3) you can read everything inbetween the bold and underlined titles nothing at all or whatever you like everythuing and nothing.
(though that ONE sentence in the middle of all those words does really rock).
Truth (unedited):
I dated a guy during my junior year of high school. Some might even say I dated a guy for my junior and senior year of high school and though that would be accurate it wouldn’t be entirely true.
Truth Abridged (unedited)
I don’t know that (he/you)’ll ever read this and even if you do I doubt you’ll ever see it but one thing - one truth you should know about me is: I had a crush and lust for you for a few weeks and was never in love with you. Never once in over 25 years have I missed you/him, ever. I have never shed a tear of want from your absence. You wake up from slumber with the thought or remembrance of me and call it a dream. When I wake up from slumber with thought or remembrance of you I call it a nightmare.
Truth Abridged- The Expanded Content Version -(unedited)
I dated a guy in my junior year of high school. I quickly had doubts. The doubts worsened, however A) the guy visibly scared my father; in the context of my home life this could only be considered a good thing. B)He was nice to my mother who C) visibly relaxed when he was around, she wasn’t so tense. Probably because D)the big, scary, asshole hid himself in his office whenever this guy I was dating was in the house.
E) I was grounded less.
Why?
Because big, scary, asshole psycho’s wife had decided that the guy I was dating was allowed to come over and stay over for groundings.
That’s right: just because I was grounded didn’t mean Mr. Bit-o-sky couldn’t come over; this was a new rule apparently made up specifically for Mr. Bit-O-Sky If I was grounded we couldn’t go anywhere but the guy I was dating could come over, have a sandwich or two, maybe some ratatouille, watch some TV.
That’s right if the big scary asshole grounded me or demanded a random irrational grounding he (big,scary,psycho asshole aka my father) wound up locked in his office hiding from the guy I was dating. Once big scary asshole spent (I swear) an entire weekend locked in a room because he’d grounded me.
I know, that last sentence sounds counter intuitive doesn’t it?
But that is and was the point at the time: the balance of the entire equation had changed.
My mother actually cooked meals and made sandwiches for the guy I was dating while I was grounded. All whilst her husband hid, it was all in the body language- big scary asshole was hiding in his office whilst the daughter he was normally leering at sat on the couch with the guy she was dating. The guy who threatened him if-
It was nice- big scary asshole just generally stayed away, my mother was happier, the degrees of shit being dished out lessened. My sister hated the guy I was dating but she‘d been angry ever since alcoholism as a vocabulary word had entered my mother‘s lexicon.
The guy was never threatening to big scary asshole or rude, the guy’s manners were superficially perfect.
Just like big scary asshole.
Big scary asshole’s wife would encourage the guy her daughter was dating to talk about the people he beat up. Apparently big scary asshole hadn’t forgotten that the guy had told the big scary asshole that if he “ever touched any of the women in this house again you’ll be eating out of a tube for the rest of your life”.
Being a glutton, a drunk gone sober and an ex-smoker- food was really all the big scary asshole had left. That and he was a major coward, big scary assholes usually are.
Me circa 16:- so I date this and guy my mom’s happier, my father’s off letch patrol, I’m grounded less, I was allowed to get my driver’s license-a year late but-. Things were still bad my junior year in high school but not as bad in many areas. They’d gotten worse where my sister was concerned what with full out war not being declared on me by both parents my sister picked up the cause.
My sister hated the guy. But then again my sister rejected the idea that the big scary asshole was an alcoholic. Other than with my sister things were better dating the guy. Only problem was I didn’t want to be with him. I didn’t want to date him and by the end of my junior year not even I could argue against that highly relevant point anymore.
My first major boyfriend and I remained friends- he still dropped by sometimes. Totally had a girlfriend and it sounded more and more like he/they might be marrying very young- but so be it.
I figured Mr. Bit-oSky and I would still be friends. Nothing bad had happened- nobody had cheated on anyone or wronged the other person- we just weren’t right for each other. That was pretty visible from the start to everyone but the relationship had had benefits for both us. Truth was we had both really needed a friend to help us in areas we needed help with.
His father was not a father and my mom seemed his source of actual mothering. His father never went to any of his games or meets. His father was a dry drunk rage-aholic screamer. His mother hid in Catholicism whereas my mother hid in Lutheranism and later Episcopalism.
First time I met the guy’s father I told his father off.
Actually Mr. Bit-O-Sky and I did that for each other- we each had a lead asshole in charge and we told the other‘s lead asshole in charge: I see/hear what you‘re doing here and I‘m not going to stand here and pretend like its okay because its not.
In my case that involved the guy physically threatening my father the first time they met, though mostly he just made him a promise he‘d keep if my father insisted on having him keep it. In his case I taught him how to dress for social acceptance and told the guy’s father off the first time I met him by announcing that I would not be staying at the lake house. We would be leaving right now because I was not going to stand there while he screamed at his son all day (as the guy’s mother had for last 25 years and all of her children)
Teenagers do stuff like this and when they do - each and everyone of them is each other’s super hero.
It was quite a moment in the Bit-O-Sky household.
So we stuck up for each other and that’s not nothing.
After stuff like that you figure you’ll always be tight with that person- you’ve stood up for them, you’ve cared about them through the awfulness that is their home and they’ve done the same for you. I didn’t see let’s be friends as a kiss off or anything but meant it. I thought we were friends- I was of course entirely mistaken.
The reply I got then and for the next 14 months: I’m not your friend. You are my piece of meat, I love my piece of meat and you will stay that until you go to college. You can’t break up with me- you break up with me and you won’t ever see me again. Code: that nice protective shield you (and your mother and your sister) have been living under I will take it away. You and I both know there is no telling how bad your life will get under those circumstances and how fast.
I got so physically ill the next year I almost died.
And no that is not an exaggeration.
Chronic hospitalization level mono, blood infection, liver infection, something they could never figure out - the surgeon’s best estimation as to why I’d be bruised from the inside out was an ovarian tumor had ruptured but so many of my other systems were collapsing or had collapsed it was hard to know for sure. The people in my life who alleged to “love” me were killing me.
I met you that last year, that’s when I really met you and not that night at the party.
Or maybe I met the person you would be becoming? The person you really were all along? For the last 14` months I lived in Louisville before college I was with someone I didn’t want to be with. Someone who made jokes about people - guys he’d gleened I liked or had a crushes on, making fun of them and me and the situation I was in and he was enjoying.
Bit-o-bogus-sky would make jokes about the guys I couldn’t date because he knew-you knew - what I knew: If I broke up with you ..
And I remember how he/you said it, like the threat it was so there’d be no mistaking what you meant.
“If you break up with me then-”
If you break with me then-
If you break up with me then- what I still can’t fathom is actually using that against someone and then calling it love? Trapped = love. From what you said about you and your ex-wife back in 1999: that’s still your definition.
So for a little over a year you got to make jokes about the guys I couldn’t date because I couldn’t break up with you because of “my family”- but of course we both know who and what you were really talking about.
In retrospect I do wish the girl I was had invited Bill over for the last night I was in Louisville. Maybe had him over dinner. Me, my “family”, Bill and you. Maybe then you’d have seen the last 14 months from an improved perspective; not that I ever thought of it.
For the girl I was - I wish I had.
For a little over a year the smell of you occasionally made me feel as if I was going to vomit. Once at your house I almost did, the bile had actually started rising in my throat- at the smell of you.
“Date” me or lose my protective services; that’s extortion and to call it dating much less love is and was so far` past sick. And no I don’t think it goes too far to call it downright evil.
Along with the ‘jokes’ about who I couldn’t date- how funny you found that - that I couldn’t date guys I actually liked,or found interesting or smart , along with those ‘jokes’ was that song you used to sing to me.
You remember, you called it “our song” - the George Michaels song. I wish for the girl I was that I had been bitch enough to sing “ Marry Me Bill” to you over and over again changing words from “wedding veil” to tuxedo every time you started singing that shit.
1999. Hurricane Floyd. I’d been sitting in the car for hours. Everyone had been trapped, if it had hit we’d have all drowned and that, that had been the least of my problems lately. And who should call just then at such an opportune time for an attack- oh no an offer - again of protection, this time of the economic variety.
Even then I didn’t and couldn’t face it, what you and I had been- become after that day at Oxmoor Mall, after that day you made me the offer I couldn’t refuse. And 1999 just as I was working up the guts to contact my biggest regret and tell him so- who should call but you.
I still remember what you said about your ex-wife- how she’d never make more than“x” amount of money per year. Like the very thing between you and I - that you were still doing. Be with me or else; I have one up on you/her. What I don’t get is why not go for a mail order bride? I mean that is what you’re looking for - someone who can’t leave right? Someone disadvantaged enough that you can own them.
I remember you Mr. Bit-O-Sky and for over a year now I’ve remembered all of you.
Mom said you cried all the way back to Louisville after you all dropped me off for college in Charleston.
You will never know the absolute loveliness it was the day you and my two fracked up parents got into that moving van and left. By that time - I mean you do understand that after someone has had their attentions extorted whilst under duress they can only find it sick and distasteful that such a person would declare such the circumstances as the love of his life? Love isn’t stay with me or else.
If you were to find any girl and lock her up in a room that would fit your definition of love. If you had given a shit about me you would have sucked it up, been my friend and protection whether there was a piece of ass in it for you or not.
But of course it wasn’t over even after I went to college, you and my mother. Couldn’t get a ride home from the airport, there I was freshman year pleading with my Mom to “please pick me up at the airport” but no- no “----- wants to pick you up”.. I could either “Let ----- pick you up or pay for a cab to take you home- its your decision,” my own mother
Yeah you two would have had it all worked out, at least each of your ends- what you‘d each be gaining from this little arrangement- a re-institution of the old one. I wonder were you the first one she told about the upcoming divorce. Neither my sister or I was told until he moved out. She later admitted that that Christmas both parents had agreed there’d be a filing of papers after so- when did you find out?
I “hurt” your feelings that Christmas with what I said about Max and myself!?
Good, what exactly do you think the last 20 months of my life had beenlike? Topped off by my own mother refusing to drive me home from the airport.
Hmmmm- What do you think that felt like?
Do you have any idea how isolating it was to be in a situation like this at 16-19? I couldn’t tell me friends- I had no idea how, not in high school, not in college. They couldn’t seem to understand what was saying before you entered the picture much less after. And man it was embarrassing, embarrassing at the time and even once I’d left that I’d participated in this little arrangement. I couldn’t verbalize the extent of what had was going on and was going on to anyone; I could barely wrap my around it and didn’t entirely, (w/c)ouldn’t.
But you - man this was the greatest thing ever as far as you were concerned: a girl who can’t safely break up with you and when she does whose mother…personally I think you two should have gotten together and left me alone.
Even into my sophomore year of college you and my mother still met and talked. At the time I was dumb or naïve enough to be glad for you that you and she still had that relationship; but then again maybe those were just platitudes I said to myself so as to hide from what was really going on.
You’ll be glad to know she was still trying to get me to get back together with you. That little intrigue she had going on, that little hidden agenda actually affected a relationship I was in - trying to be in with someone who I did miss so much it hurt. I don’t know that he ever loved me but unlike you I did love him, I adored him.
And knowing you would and could have inferred with that most certainly couldn’t cause you anything but pleasure. Pleased that Martha was working to keep that relationship from having a chance in hell?
Did she tell you about it?
The question of course is rhetorical but you’ d have dug that: oh she loves someone else? Hmm - how can we make that more difficult.
I’m not saying you did -only that you would, that is well within your character.
She did for sure, and self admittedly. And during that time you and she were still, and strangely, in contact. To me she did actually start pleading your case- three years after I‘d left Louisville. Just like you -it didn’t matter to my mother either whether I wanted to be with you or not, even into what should have been my junior year in college she was still so into the idea of you and I getting back together again. At which time I understand you were engaged or about to be and yet I received a letter from you wherein “sweet“ replaced the word “suite“. More like saccharine.
You said/wrote once that the guy- the face the only memory I had after the accident that he was to me what I was to you; an identical and comparable like and as.
When I read that, those words it is impossible to explain. Because even though I didn’t remember the details of you- all of it, hardly any- but reading that I knew the like or as- the simile was inherently off/incorrect/a teacher would put a red x over that. I felt that viscerally.
Except that maybe you are entirely correct? except that neither one of us ever sought to make the other hostage or do something they didn’t want to do or be somewhere they didn’t want to be. That in and of itself is rather a substantial difference in terms of your simile. But of course that’s because I never saw him as a piece of meat- a thing to keep much like livestock, property, “mine”.
Last but not least: In 1999 I asked you whatever happened between you and your eldest brother. Your reply was “We still don’t speak” and this is an exact quote “because of you”.
No asshole you two speak because of you.
Let’s see your very religious older brother and his wife come to visit and house sit and what did you arrange? A nice evening bowling? All attending a Baptist service together? Or perhaps simply an ice cream somewhere having asked that I be conservatively dressed.
Naw- that’s not what you set up .
The truth of why you and your brother don’t speak is because you got a rush out of telling the girl you were dating that your brother and his wife were “cool” and tricking her (me that is), telling her (again me) that your brother and his wife wouldn’t be bothered by him having a girl the house. You lied. I remember feeling completely confused because you were panicked that they were home and we were in your bedroom. I was totally confused. Shocked to suddenly learn they were religious zealots! - something you chose to disclose then AND the exact opposite of what you had told me which meant you’d lied- big time- why?
You set the whole thing up and actually made sure I’d be there in your bedroom when two people with very narrow opinions about male-female interaction and contact rules for unmarrieds arrived. You lied, set the whole thing up and ten years later when I asked if that rift between you and your brother was better what did you say?
That it was my fault!? Damn - now you, you really were just like family.
I wonder do you still tell yourself that- about your brother that it was because of me?
Totally against premarital sex or premarital sexual contact of any kind and so what did you do? Invited a girl up to your bedroom knowing they’ll be coming back to the house, knowing that they will not approve to say the least.
That ended you and your brothers relationship, what had been good and close (according to you) and whose fault was that?
…her fault, her fault, her fault
No asshole- that rift is because knowing he and his wife had the opinions they did you brought a girl over to your house while your parents were out of town- having lied to the girl so as to apparently insult your brother and his wife by putting them in the position of whether or not to tell your parents. And ten years later you had the audacity to say, whilst actually believing “my brother and I don’t speak because of you - girl”.
No that’d be because of you.
Don’t lie to a girl, insult your brother and then blame it all on her. Oh but that’s right- you were brought up Catholic.
Say Hello to Bill
Truth: Unabridged:
What’s more dangerous a sober psychopath or a drunk psychopath?
It may depend on the psychopath.
In my father’s case he was proving far more dangerous sober. He didn’t pass out anymore. The passing out had overall been a good thing because it gave everyone a break. Sober, he was clearer. Better at doing what he did which was gaming. The only thing that seemed to keep him in line - from crossing particular lines and keeping his social mask somewhat in place was this guy, this guy who now said: I don’t care if you don’t want to be with me, I want…
Thereby making me his bitch because this was my life: jail. Wherein my boyfriend actually became one of my jailors.
Last night I had a nightmare wherein that old jailor appeared again; he’s been appearing - been making regular appearances for quite some time now. So maybe it’s time to set the record straight on Mr.-Bit-O-Sky. I’ve had my entire memory back where he/you’re concerned for over a year and thus have retitled you: Bit-O-Bogus-Sky (click 4/for link)
I read recently via the book of faces that when I appear during your slumber you can and do refer to it as a “dream“; whereas when you appear during my sleep cycle I refer to it as a nightmare.
A former reader, or the party himself, might say “nightmare! Mr. Bit-o-sky Don’t you mean dream?”
No, no I mean nightmare.
He always was a nightmare?
No, he became a nightmare at the end of my junior year in high school- prior to that he had been helpful.
Helpful but we had nothing in common.
Helpful but I didn’t find him between the ears attractive.
Helpful but I didn’t like how he enjoyed beating guys up, ”guys only guys - never women or children”. Helpful because his tales of such kept my father hiding in his office for over a solid year. Helpful
but to see blood on someone’s boots and the Bit-o’s face alight with having picked someone’s tooth out of the suede; awash in the glow of sending someone to the hospital.
Helpful on the home front
but I didn’t like him;
I liked him less
and less? No, that’s not true
I felt horrified and regularly disgusted. I was with someone I could wind up hating and in that I was becoming my mother.
A horror which began at the hotel prior to junior homecoming wherein I found I couldn’t take him anywhere because the guy I was dating, though helpful, was a human pit bull.
At the hotel before the dance he defended a few guys who some bigger guys were going to beat up just because they could, for fun.
So the story went-
So they story goes “And then“- Mr. Bit-o-Sky “stripped off his shirt” like a super hero “and …”
I don’t know that any blows were ever traded but the phrase was probably “Buddy I’m gonna kick your ass”. The guys whose asses were about to be kicked for amusement- their asses didn’t get kicked and thereby were not completely humiliated before a major social function. To those guys, one of them almost ten years later, Mr. Bit-o-sky was/is a hero and if Mr. Bit-o-sky ever needs a legal eagle super hero he might want to give the guy with a Cross in his name a call. I suspect he’d go to the mattresses for you.
Anyway that night Mr. Bit-o-Sky was a hero to some but not to me.
I felt embarrassed because he couldn’t calm down. Wherever we went it was the same thing: he couldn’t chill out, he couldn’t unwind he was always “on”. That and he seemed to like nothing more than…now I’m picking on him.
Fact is he was into violence. I was a peacenik liberal. He liked country. I liked anything but. He was entertained by things I found to be absolutely abhorrent.
A case of opposites attract?
No, a case of psycho-social economics.
A case of supply and need.
I know the phrase is supply and demand but economics and mathematics majors excel at missing the point while having and reading all the numbers, knowing everything and seeing nothing which is the only way a phrase like “supply and demand“ could still be in use.
“Demand”.
Does a starving person have a demand for food?
No they need food so as not to starve.
Whether or not they can or do demand depends on conditions on the ground.
A non-starving person, even a rotund to obese to morbidly obese person can demand a hamburger but to say the starving man and the rotund man both represent demand for the same supply? One has a need of base survival, the other a want, a comfort- a luxury and those are not the same- yet are treated as such.
Want and need are not the same; a hard reality which the phrase “supply and demand” and the entire philosophy it represents ignores and ever attempts to negate. One can not ethically connote the supply as being universally held , understood and on par with every source of “demand” because to do so ignores the reality of the human condition.
“Supply and demand”, a lie that has been repeated over and over, just “trickle down economics” which disavows the existence of bothe greed and the abuse of power. Each used again and again, the excuses employed as a counter against the Nash style economic choices . That Mr. Bit-O-Bogus_Sky has made those scoundrel arguments his professional domain = not surprising.
Gore Vidal said “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels”. True, and I’d add “supply and demand” is how they equip their bunkers.
Mr. Bit-o-Sky was a lesson in supply and demand, a scoundrel whose relationship with the word “Love” is like the Toni Morrison novel; which is to say: far from it. “Because I love you ,” his last refuge so much like the patriotism of which Vidal spoke so eloquently.
It didn’t start out that way. We didn’t start out that way but once he applied supply and demand on personal level he became a scoundrel on par with those who say life and mean death, or freedom and mean slavery or patriotism while negating The Bill of (human) Rights.
When I remembered the entire landscape and not just a few quaint details I really saw the totality of him and he and I for the first time. Problem was I couldn’t frame it the way I used to - I tried but it was like trying to make an eighty-five degree angle work when nothing but 90 degrees will do.
Thanks again Cat.
It was like having all the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. Seeing them, knowing exactly where they went, and they all still fit together but the picture is different even though what is on all the pieces remains the same.
All the pieces fit together but I couldn’t understand the picture- because that‘s not the picture I’d told myself I had seen, was seeing, had lived. Seeing that would have been too awful because seeing it would have meant really seeing me at that time and where I was, the choices I made from the option sets I had been afforded.
I used to, when I was a child count how many more years I had to live at home. First I had to live at home for “13 more years”, then it was 12, and 10 and then it went into single digit years. Though even then I didn’t include the months. I’d have been better off counting down the months.
So how many more months after Oxmoor mall? How many months different could I have made it if I’d just known that one thing? Accepted who you really were - found someone, somewhere who’d let me do the rest of high school not living at home.14 or 15 months would have been completely different, they might have even been something like mine.
I’m not 100% per the timing but it was late Spring and before I went to Hollins?
I suppose it could have been after.
In a lot of ways it would have made a lot more sense that I’d do it after but the weather was so mild, I feel pretty sure it was spring.
Let’s see it was spring, I think shortly after Spring formal. It was a beautiful day, sunset. It had to have been a weekend. Mr. Bit-O-Bogus-Sky had picked me up after work? Or maybe we’d just gone to the mall?
In his car?
Yes- his car had the sun roof and there was a lot of light -…f I’d only known what M(om/artha) had decided, maybe I could have told him to go straight to hell and hoped for the best.
Mr. Bit-o-Sky told me once I smile/d in my sleep. Not anymore, now I wake up with my fists clenched after some nightmare in which he appears. Nearly twenty five years later and he’s become a recent regular in my nightmares.
But before all that it was 1986.
The scene: A tame high school party in daylight hours, no alcohol, parent chaperoned and I panicked.
That’s how Mr. Bit-O-(Bogus)-Sky and I came to ‘date’ for most of high school: I was terrified.
Word had spread that they guy I’d dated for a good chuck of the previous year was on his way to the birthday party of a girl one day older, possibly an elder. Mr. Eleven I’ll call the ex-boyfriend, Mr. Eleven was on his way over to that perhaps sassy girl‘s b-day party, he and the Man of Beers.
Mr. Eleven had been my middle school secret crush (which of course mean(t/s) everyone knew. And then we dated for about six months or so sophomore year. Why we broke up is why I panicked, why I wanted to flee the party.
Mr. Eleven, his attraction and therefore implied approval had been my refuge that year- a declaration that maybe I wasn’t as bad as my parents said.? That maybe my peer group had and did accept and really like me? I don’t know, but something that felt like I was being told I was an okay girl.
And Mr. Eleven was on the football team which meant possible protection. I’d always hoped to date a football player in high school because they were big, some of them could and did really hurt people and I needed that in my corner.
Months before the party I’d flee and after having dated Eleven …Mr. Eleven had reassured while in the act of driving me to an interview at a drug and alcohol treatment center.
He said “you have to have a drug or alcohol problem for them to admit you- you don’t- they won’t take you”.
But my parents were adamant: I was the problem - all they had to do was find a nice cage to put me and AA was simply something my father did because- because even if that was true I was worse, I was the problem.
But Mr. Eleven kept saying “This won’t happen - you have nothing to worry about”.
Nothing to worry about except that ever since my father had been tagged as an alcoholic by a family counselor my parents kept trying to get me locked in a facility. My parents kept doing this and wouldn’t stop. Once my father went so far as to demand I go in the kitchen, get out a Tupperware, take a knife, cut myself and put the blood in the Tupperware and put the Tupperware in the refrigerator “So I can have you tested for drugs on Monday when all the labs are open”.
See, when I was 8 or 10 I had stated, matter-of-factly, to my mother, who of course went straight to my father :“He’s an alcoholic”. And the big scary psycho asshole was an alcoholic, even then but he‘d never forgive me saying he was.
About six years later everything got bad enough that he finally relented in counseling and went to AA. But never to a treatment facility probably because a) they have something called family week wherein uncomfortable truths can and do get aired and b) it was now really my job to go to a treatment facility for drugs (which of course are worse than alcohol because they‘re illegal) thereby maintaining my parents line which they had been discussing nightly since I was five: there was nothing wrong with them, whatever problems existed in the family were their daughter’s fault. Unfortunately I was that daughter.
As long as a treatment facility would accept me they could continue the rouse: I was the cause of any and all problems, difficulties, etc.. They just needed for something worse than the alcoholism to be hung on me and all would be well and right in their world. Therefore I was doing drugs, a drug addict…“and probably an alcoholic too”.
Problem was I’d never done drugs.
Not so much as a single toke of dope. I rarely drank, first simply because I knew my parents. Later pure and justified paranoia because genetically if you ’do’ anything and are from either side of my family line you can count on one thing: becoming an addict.
But it wasn’t just the alcoholism both my parents - though they could present a sane public exterior on the inside they were both certifiably mad.
For example before Mr. Eleven got his driver’s license his Dad drove a whole station wagon full of kids home one night, taking me home first because I was completely anxious about curfews.
Sadly enough Mr. Eleven’s dad was over ten minutes late getting me home which meant I’d missed curfew and would be grounded. I was always playing beat the clock because 1 minute late, even if a parent was driving I was grounded for a week or two (or more) -whatever amount of time and conditions the parentals were in the mood for.
Friends and parents would look regularly puzzled as to why I would be so agitated “ so you’ll be a few minutes late its no big deal”. Mr. Eleven’s Dad getting me home late created a lot of anxiety for me and frustration.
“I’ll be grounded for the next few weeks”
“No you won’t”
Adults do this sort of thing a lot in my experience: tell a kid that what is happening or will be happening at home isn’t happening or won‘t. My biggest left over impression of being a teenager in the suburbs is what you can count on is nearly any and every adult denying your reality- just plain not being able to deal with it. Too intense.
So after Mr. Eleven’s and my first group date I was grounded. Though Mr. Eleven’s father had declared this outcome impossible. Mr. Eleven’s parents were even nice enough to call and attempt to discuss that with my parents because punishing a child for a grown-up’s behavior is kind of weird to most people. They probably expected a qausi sane person to pick up the phone; they no idea what they were in for.
“It was Maren’s responsibility get home on time,” I seem to recall that repeated phrase “it was her responsibility to get home on time” “it’s her responsibility” .
My mother would get this utterly implacable expression on her face when she was being irrational. She’d be extremely calm - not reply to what was being said or what argument made and just keep repeating the same phrase or a variation of that same phrase over and over again. A tactic in/from “conflict resolution”: when your position is immovable and the end position has been pre-determined and therefore no resolution based on communication will take place just do the dance of stalemating.
I didn’t hear the other end of the conversation but I can empathize. For Mr. Eleven’s parent- s/he figures other parents aren’t crazy- his kid likes this girl who says her parents are nuts enough to punish her for an adult being tardy but he or she’s gotta figure there was probably something else going on and this incident just got loped in.
If you’re Mr. Eleven’s parents you don’t really believe the girl but like I said your kid likes her, wants to date her and you don’t want to blow this for your son which is why you took the girl home first, even though that made everyone else a bit later than everyone had to and the drive bit longer be but she’d looked like she could cry or go hysterical so it was best to get her out of the station wagon asap.
(truth in disclosure: it could have Bill’s parent but sticking with Eleveen - it works better, feels truer and certainly writes better)
Worse though- your son is visibly ticked at you the next day.
Why?!
“She’s grounded…thanks a lot Dad”
You as a parent a) don’t want to let your kid down b) don’t want to let your kid down c) didn’t want to let your kid down and you now know moping and general sullenness will ensue because d) your son can’t ask this girl out on a date until she’s not grounded- oh and why is she grounded?
“Thanks Dad.”
I’m genuinely grateful I got to have the experience of watching this phone call, to see one of my parents being called on their choices by another parent and the implementation of the word “parenting” . But of course I would be because I lived under the microscope whilst no parenting was going on.
I do and did empathize with what a confusing a conversation it would havebeen for Mr. Eleven’s parent/s.
Did I really empathize? I was a teenager after all. So maybe not, I just knew what was going on on the other end, how that would go, what that would be like -having been in the position so many times myself: My mother’s dialogue is all I can be certain of and can and could only imagine the other end.
“she/ your child can not drive, none of the peers in this group function drove, there was and is no bus or public transportation wherein the girl could have gotten herself home, I the adult take responsibility. I the adult was late in delivering your child home- therefore she shouldn‘t be punished for my behavior”
“It was Maren’s responsibility to get home on time”
“Yes but she wasn’t driving I was”
“and it was her responsibility to get home on time”
“Yes she was very concerned about being late and I took her home first. I‘m sorry I was late getting her home. It was my responsibility to get your daughter home on time”
“No its her responsibility to get home on time”
“But she can’t and doesn’t drive- she wasn’t driving nor was my son- you do understand that don‘t you?’
“yes I‘m aware you were driving“
“And I was late- she wasn‘t late I was late picking them up“
“Maren was home fifteen minutes after her curfew”
“Yes and her curfew is an hour earlier than all the other kids”
“Yes and its her responsibility to get home on time“
“How was she supposed to get home on time when we the grown ups are the only ones that drive!? How is it her fault a grown up is late picking her up? I’m asking you one parent to another not to ground your kid because I was late dropping her off. It won‘t happen again”
“Maren has broken curfew in the past - I’m sure it’ll happen again”
“She didn’t break curfew- I was her ride home and I was tardy”
“Whether or not you were late picking them up isn’t the issue - it was Maren’s responsibility to get home on time. She is grounded for the next two weeks.” (though it just as easily could have been a month)
(Pause)
Then there was something on the other end of the phone about parenting, followed by some retort followed by
“Thank you for concern. Goodbye.”
I know how one end of the conversation went- and can only imagine the other end.
That last part she said just like her husband would have, like she’d picked up that trait of saying the socially acceptable thing but with this edge so you knew s/he was only joking, s/he thinks you’re shit and is more than happy to say “eat shit” and “have a nice day” at the same time. The lead asshole in charge (aka big,scary,asshole) was a pro at that.
Poor Mr. Eleven’s dad must have felt like he’d been hit with a 2 by 4 of contained irrationality.
I knew the sensation, being on the receiving end of someone saying something totally insane whilst minding their p‘s and q‘s. That was probably one of the more disturbing aspects of my home life- when my parents were at their outward calmest is when they were often at their most certifiable.
My father was tested for and actually bragged about it later because to him the word made him extra special, unusual, like a rare bird: psychopath.
That was the thing about dating me that I know sucked for every guy I ever dated: whether you wanted it or not- you got my family in the bargain- and that can and could nothing but suck.
But Mr. Bit-oSky found a way to make that work for him and so did Mr. Port of Shreve for that matter. Those guys were the worst -the ones who actually used a disadvantage against someone you “love”…Its incomprehensible to me, still.
A few months after Mr. Eleven’s parents attempted to get my mother to stop “parenting” like a crazy person Mr. Eleven , now a driver, was driving me to Charterton and telling me I had nothing to worry about.
While driving me to the interview and what I felt was my certain confinement in a treatment facility (later my mother would look at having my sister kept at a convent after I went to college. (To quote Oliver Stone: I shit you not.))
Mr` Eleven kept saying “They won’t take you- you’re not the one with the problem”. I didn’t believe Mr. Eleven though and was crying intermittently but really trying to hold it together and not devolve into hysterical unstoppable crying.
“You actually have to have a drug or alcohol problem- you would actually have to do drugs for a drug treatment center to take you.”
“I’ve drank before and they know it”
“That’s not enough to get you locked in a treatment facility”
“you don’t know that -they just have to find the right facility”
“just tell them the truth and everything will be okay”
That last part I don’t know that Mr. Eleven said- but it is what I did all while believing I wouldn’t be seeing Mr. Eleveen or anyone until and if I was allowed to have visitors.
I mean its not like my parents would have been paying a big bill for a treatment center because my father’s insurance was ridiculous. They paid for anything and everything. If you’re high up enough the ladder at Fortune 500 that level of health insurance pays for anything short of mowing your lawn. Never once in a healthcare debate have I ever heard anyone mention that little class reality.
Treatment facilities are expensive and what they were going to send someone away?
I figured I was about to be pulled from high school, lose my job and be locked up. My parents had tried twice with other ‘lesser programs’ before and had a plan in waiting because “if they don’t take you here there are plenty of facilities in Ohio.”
For me the other fear was college.
What if I didn’t graduate from high school but a treatment facility? what would that do my high school transcript?
Our high school counselors never discussed that just SATs, letters of recommendation, essays but never once did anyone mention what happens to your transcript if you’re sent away by your parents to a drug and alcohol treatment center. Some kids were/are there for years; during the 1980’s they kinda’ became the new boarding school.
Boarding school, which I had been requesting for years. But they’d never let me out their clutches, not even summer camp - if I was going somewhere it had to be more jail like.
I was in one of the top 100 high schools in the country. I had scored in the top 2 percent on my PSATs- and this- this could screw up college. College was all that had kept me from running away and here I was two years or so away from my release date, my college options were narrowing and I’d even had a secret plan.
My plan had been to emancipate mid way through my senior year. I never told anyone. If I had my parents might have found out and they‘d have worked double time to make sure I couldn‘t but unfortunately I dated a guy who seemed to give every girl he dated mono and that, that had devolved my plan.
See I’d gone over my requirements and planned my schedule for the entire four years of high school with the idea of getting away from my parents as soon as possible. I didn’t take a single class that I didn’t have to, newspaper was good for college apps and the way English was every semester all four years there was no getting out any earlier than one semester. Unless of course I went GED and the high school counselor counseled that a GED would kill my college options and I‘d wind up lucky to get into even a junior college. So instead I planned on a last semester of my senior year having only one requirement to take, English. I could take it in the morning and work full time.
That was my early release date escape plan.
It wasn’t a bad plan and once I’d have been emancipated I would have had access, possibly to people who would have told me valuable bits of information like: no one can force either of your parents to give over their tax information. I f either of them won’t give you that you can’t get financial aid until you‘re 23- though emancipation might have assisted with what became that higher education glitch .
If I ever enter a time machine I would tell myself not to go to college but trade school. I never should have gone to college but learned a trade. I’d had a small trust fund, enough to see me through a year of fees and training . Given all the information and not getting deathly ill - that’s in all liklihood what I would have done?
I don’t know though. Those college brochures are seductive and I really liked learning, school the discipline of it. And perhaps too, like everyone else, I was under a lot of social pressure to get into a good school and go to college because the societal lie I‘d been raised on was that education was the best way to job and financial security.
Actually a well paying trade is best. Then if you can afford it an education without incurring debt- that’s the safest route- at least in America. Once education started becoming capitalized education as means to social mobility started becoming not entirely true.
But nobody told me that and as smart as I was, or wasn‘t, I wasn’t smart enough to figure that out. And would I really have been willing to do what would have come next?
I like to think I’d have had the guts to say: the money’s there but I don’t come from that kind of family- going to college is not a good idea for someone like me. I never did accept that last part not even when anything and everything should have convinced me of that seemingly pre-destined fact.
The military of course wasn’t an option because even then it was widely known that they were raping females in their own ranks- and I didn’t need that shit. Nothing’s worth that.
But once I got physically ill emancipation wasn’t an option anymore, worse just being able to leave that house was going to be a challenge- college became the escape hatch.
Mr. Eleven was correct and my parents’ attempts to turn me into an Edwin McCain song were never successful.
Weren’t successful?
I don’t know - I think the Tupperware incident may have occurred after Charterton rejected my parents application. In which case I wish I‘d called the woman I’d met that day at Charterton. I wish there’d really been anyone to call- or that I felt like I could.
But for a moment that day I had the idea that I had an adult I could call if I needed help or as she precisely and exactly put it “If they try something like this again“.
I guess that could have covered a lot of things, maybe even the Tupperware incident. Even as an adult, quasi-adult, I never was/am sure what and when and under what circumstances I was or am allowed to ask for help. Mr. Bit -o- bogus -sky was my first hard lesson in what can happen if you do.
Mr. Eleven was right and Light Bless that woman whoever she was because for few brief moments I saw the parental units afraid, afraid like I was most of the time because:
Mr. and Mrs. Alford formerly of Lavalette yacht club, the Freehold Women’s Club, various church and social groups, volunteers and a Toastmaster had been threatened, and promised, that if they tried this again with any facility in any state social services would be so far up their asses it would feel like a prostate exam.
Those last few words are me taking artistic license for it was not at all a quote: the point being she scared them because she talked about having them investigated and possibly brought up on abuse charges. In other words: scandal, adult world sized.
So Mr. Eleven had been right and I don’t know if he or my parents drove me home though it may have been to a friend’s house. I had been living at name-like-a-tennis-ball‘s family for a few weeks that year. With the short leash the parental units had me on someone else, just like Mr. Eleven drove me to Charterton - someone else surely drove me to the mall a few weeks later when Name-Like-Tennis -Ball and Dreams-of-Store-Bought-Clothes and I went out for lunch? Ice cream Sundays? -to have a little talk.
“Everybody knows,” said the-girl-who-dreamed-of-store-bought-clothing.
Everybody knew but me.
It was and had apparently been the talk of the school. I just sat there wide-eyed in an ice cream parlor probably eating a salad and about to feel like my whole world had been upended. My two friends asked me what I thought of a particular girl, a senior. I had said my true feelings: I didn’t know her but admired her. Accomplished, well liked, nice, smart, pretty …
“The kind of person I’d like to be more like,” I had said and was about to continue about her better attributes that I’d really like to go about building in myself when I was interrupted. The-Girl-Who-Dreamed-of-Store-Bought-Clothing had heard enough- cut me off in frustration and then she, probably one of only two actual friends I had at the time of Mr. Eleven, said:
“He drops her off at class and picks you up- and vice versa, its been going on ever since the weekend the Choir-”all whilst telling some gigantically tall tales in the locker room. Mr. Eleven.
(out of this entire writing the following is my favorite sentence because it conveys pace, circumstance and tone)
Several weeks after the sit down with my gal pals which took place just after the sit down at Charterton and somewhere within the vicinity of my father telling me to go in the kitchen, cut on myself with a knife and put the blood in a Tupperware I was at a birthday party on Saturday afternoon.
Two guys none of us knew were the first male joiners of what had been an all girl birthday party. One of the unknowns was apparently a friend of the family; both played football at one of the two Catholic high schools and in came news : Mr. Eleven who had humiliated me in front of the entire school while holding my hand at the same time- Mr. Eleven was on his way over to join the birthday party.
I panicked, freaked out and felt that inch just before you’re going to start crying, hard. I did not want to cry in front these people, too much of the school had seen that. I did not want to give everyone there including Mr. Eleven:
how did she react?
Did she cry?
What did she say?
What she do?
What did he do?
What did he say?
Etc,
etc.
The socials vipers weren’t going to be getting any of that.
Thus, I made my own scene before Mr. Eleven got there. The social vipers were undoubtedly happy - they got something to feed on.
I of course couldn’t call home for help because home wasn’t into helping. Though who knows I may have called home. What would have been typical for that time would have been me getting chewed out on the phone for not knowing in advance that I’d need a ride at an undesignated time and a) not getting picked up or b) if getting picked up being grounded for having to be picked up at undesignated time.
I was pretty much damned no matter what I did.
I write this and say that knowing that somewhere and throughout America (and the world) there are legions of kids in this and these same and similar b(I/o)nds…back to Mr. Eleveen and dawn of bit of bogus sky.
I didn’t want to and didn’t have to be there when Mr. Eleven arrived. I caused a scene so as not to be. The quiet kid and his friend - they had a car and would drive me anywhere I wanted to go.
…now if you’re a reader, a real reader, the little hairs on your arm (if only inwardly) have gone up because you know what I eventually knew: there is nothing more dangerous than being female other than being female and in need of help.
Maybe, but then again maybe there’s just plain nothing as dangerous as needing help, being vulnerable, being smaller, being poor or being uneducated. There are a lot of things that can be attached to that phrase but the one thing everyone can agree upon is: being born female in this world is inherently dangerous.
But back to Mr. Bit-o-Bogus -Sky “we’ll take you anywhere you want to go”. I of course did not want to go home as there’d just be questions as I liked to be there as little possible. Plus there‘d be questions: “Why was I home early?” “What did you do” “What’s wrong?” No, before I entered the lair of the hell mouths- I needed to chill out and not feel trapped.
We went where kids used to go in Louisville, and may still, River Road. Sometimes just riding around River Road looking at the mansions of the so rich we have a house on the hill rich as opposed to rest of us who were just suburban rich.
East end Louisville was all about wealth classification though as a girl from Connecticut rightfully said “these people don’t even know what real money is.“ A Yankee, I nodded my head knowing just what she meant but not knowing how she‘d frame it “Real money is nobody has to work and nobody has had to work for at least three generations”.
Yep that’s real money and if you aspire to such and live in Louisville you live off of River Road, or so it was.
Sometimes too River Road was simply a great place to go parking. Sometimes too River road was a good meet up place between parties or when there were no parties…usually when there were no parties. Sometimes too a good place to go after a movie so you could feel a bit like a rebel on Monday saying “We all went to River Road after the movie”.
The quiet one who drove from the birthday that had saved me from having to be in same space for a Mr. Eleven encounter, the quiet football player and I talked that night while sitting on the river’s bank? More like the river‘s edge- I was living close to the edge all the time and not because I partied but because “home” was breaking me. I just needed to last until college, then I‘d be free or so I’d always told myself.
I told him, Mr. Bit-o-sky (who later became Mr. Bogus-Sky) about my home life. He told me about his home life. Our hells had some similarities. We each grasped/understood just where the other was living.
His mother for instance would never tell me my parents wouldn’t do something insane. The quiet one’s mother worked for a local Catholic rehab and was well acquainted with the reality that many kids are living with one, or more, completely insane to the point of certifiable adults but in a capitalistic tribe structure wherein as long as you can keep a job, pay your bills and visibly follow the law you can get away with just about anything.
I could write all that and did. I could write more but won’t because none of that is the point, none of it is the kernel of truth (though that one sentence still does rock- here it is again if you missed it (or for me to simply revel in:
“Several weeks after the sit down with the gal pals which took place just after the sit down at Charterton and somewhere within the vicinity of my father telling me to go in the kitchen, cut on myself with a knife and put the blood in a Tupperware I was at a birthday party on a Saturday afternoon. “
Now that is an action summary.
EX) Book-end Literary structure:
Truth:
I dated a guy during my junior year of high school.
Truth Abridged:
Never once in over 25 years have I missed anything about him, ever.
I read via face book that he wakes up from slumber with the thought or remembrance of me and can call it “a dream“. When I wake from slumber with thought or remembrance of him I can only call it a nightmare.
Truth Abridged- The Expanded Content Version edited)
I dated a guy in my junior year of high school. I quickly had doubts. The doubts worsened, however A) the guy visibly scared my father B)He was nice to my mother who C) visibly relaxed when he was around probably because D)the big, scary, psycho asshole hid himself in his office whenever this guy I was dating was in the house.
E) I was grounded less.
Why?
Because big, scary, asshole’s wife had decided that the guy I was dating was allowed to come over and stay over for groundings. That’s right: just because I was grounded didn’t mean Mr. Bit-o-sky couldn’t come over.
This new rule did not apply to my friends, only the guy that scared big scary asshole.
The big scary asshole once spent an entire weekend locked in a room because I was grounded. Who knows maybe that‘s part of the why and how I wound up grounded in the first place, surely improved my mother‘s weekend.
Big scary asshole’s wife would encourage the guy her daughter was dating to talk about the people he beat up- she seemed to enjoy and encourage these tales. I didn’t like hearing about it but my mother seemed to revel in it. At the time I classified ,or she classified this behavior for me, as being “supportive“.
Me circa age16 and 17:- “so I date this guy and things are still bad at home but not as bad . Only problem is” I didn’t want to date him and by the end of my junior year not even I could argue against that anymore. I never thought, it never occurred to me that you or anyone would do something like what you did, what you’d do for the next year.
I thought we were friends- I was of course entirely mistaken.
3.14.2012/march 4teenth two thousand and twelve:
