How To Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

May 2009 updates:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/DC-moves-to-shutter-alleged-brothels-46024197.html

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An article on so-called "Asian massage parlors" can be found here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/06/MNGR1LGUQ41.DTL

-A female friend I greatly cared for once told me that she felt under constant siege by a world intent on violence towards women. She felt the worst violence was the most subtle: the constant gaze of men. Intellectually, I think I understood at the time what she was saying (I was passionate about many female punk bands like Bikini Kill and Tribe 8, and in that regard I became well-versed in post-feminist theory). But, it wasn't until her breakdown (due in no small part towards the effects of child sex abuse on her psyche) that I began to emotionally process and understand her fears and pain.

This photo montage evolved out of this emotional understanding. It is supposed to signify a reversal of the gaze. This montage is inspired by Andy Warhol's photographic work; Warhol's work emphasized repetition, such as the repetition of these prints. His work had the subtext of the interplay between sexuality and violence.

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Jasmine Therapy is located in downtown Washington DC. An internet search shows it to be listed and reviewd in detail on sites that promote the sexual abuse of women. The vast majority of women (and men) who work as prostitutes have been victims of sex abuse as children (as I detail in earlier posts) and are in situations that include severe addictions, depression and economic exploitation.

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As an abuse survivor myself, this art project is a way I can feel some closure by perhaps raising some awareness in my community (Washington DC) by being an advocate for sex abuse survivors.

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Over the course of a few hours on a Saturday a steady stream of men, and only men, went to and from Jasmine. Given the internet reviews, this raises obvious questions, but I make no allegations. Because of the serious nature of this matter I have forwarded these photos and related information onto the DC police; however, I have no evidence that Jasmine or the men depicted in these photos in any way engaged in illegal activity. If they wish to leave a comment, or request removal of their photo, they may do so.

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additional reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/opinion/01kristof.html?_r=1&hp

Hope Faith Thanks Happiness Redemption

"When will the world be ready for its saints?" asked Saint Joan.

In memory of Saint Leslie Ann; her light still shines.

Cold Cases in Washington D.C.

If you have any information on these cases,

PLEASE

call the

Washington DC Police at

202-727-9099

Cold Cases around Washington DC

If you have any information on these cases

PLEASE

call

the Washington DC Police at:

202-727-9099

DC Sketchbook -The Freeway Phantom Murders

Carol Spinks, Darlena Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Brenda Woodard, Diane Williams and Nenomoisha Yates, were all victims of DC's "Freeway Phantom", a serial killer in Washington DC in the 1970s..

The Freeway Phantom has never been caught.

If ever there was an example of institutional racism, this is it. Not that in any way the individuals working the case were racist - in fact by all accounts the individual police were determined and committed to solving this horrendous crime.

Yet, the resources were never devoted to solving it. The FBI was instructed to divert its attention to Watergate. The police department was overwhelmingly white and DC at the time was 70% black; I find it hard to believe that at the top levels there was much motivation to pursue this matter because most evidence has been lost or thrown out.

It is inconceivable that if eight white girls were abducted off a city street, raped and murdered, that the case would be put into the dustbin of history as was done in this instance.

I've asked people who lived in DC at the time and none of them had ever heard of this case. Where was the media at the time? They too are culpable of institutionalized racism for not sticking with this.

There was an article in 2006 in the Washington Post which can be found here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/AR2006062501086.html

It is a shocking and discouraging story.

Tips can be sent via text to 50411 or call 202-727-9099. There is a reward up to $150,000 leading to an arrest and conviction.

DC Sketchbook - Gini Orange

Gini Orange, based on her Facebook photos.

The Washington Post has the latest update on her murder:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100903099.html

DC Sketchbook - Everyday I Sketch People On The DC Metro....

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

If asked, based on my experience I would give a survivor of sex abuse three simple pieces of advice:
-
First, contact the local rape crisis center. The centers provide counseling, which is critical, or can help the victim find an experienced counselor.

Second, contact the local law enforcement authorities. Even if the abuse happened years earlier and the statute of limitations has long passed, there may be (and likely are) other victims out there.

Third, contact a lawyer to pursue a civil action. In terms of finding a lawyer, I suggest googling the topic "sex abuse" and other relevant terms along with your state (or country). Look for news articles about recent sex abuse cases and they will invariably cite the names of attorneys who are representing plaintiffs. It is critical to find an attorney who specializes in the area of sex abuse crimes because the case law is complex. The following article, for example, cites Carmen Durso, a well-regarded lawyer in Massachusetts.
--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06pediatrician.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

How To Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

When I was a preteen, I was the victim of a violent, day-long sexual assault. The Pope’s recent praying with sex abuse victims caused me to reflect on how sex abuse has impacted my life.
My parents were going through a bitter divorce. My father was an acute alcoholic and my mother a victim of horrific domestic violence. In this chaotic atmosphere I was sent to live away from home for a time and instantly, I became the perfect target for sexual predators: an emotionally deprived and needy child with no parental supervision. Adults at the institution were given free reign with the children in their care. In what was a classic case of grooming by a sexual predator, an adult took specific interest in me, calling me his favorite and taking me out on numerous trips.
One day, as autumn approached, the adult asked me to join him for a ride in the country. As we walked through a deserted field, surrounded by trees and electric power towers, he asked me: “why do you spend time with me when I could easily kill you?” With that, he began to strangle me. I know that I momentarily blacked out and went into a state of shock. He began to undo my pants and sexually assaulted me.
My next memory is being back in his apartment where over a number of hours he sexually molested me. At the time he did this, he kept repeating to me: “I love you, I love you.” The only emotion I recall is being frozen with fear. When he asked me to masturbate him and take a shower with him, I refused and told him I wanted to leave. He kept trying to convince me to stay but eventually relented.
I still recall in slow motion his unlocking the multiple locks on his door, my long walk down his hallway and across the street. It was dinnertime and I headed to the cafeteria. However, feeling sick I excused myself and went to the infirmary instead.
That evening, while I was at the infirmary word (possibly through the nurse) got to the heads of the institution of what has happened to me. They told me it was my fault and threatened against revealing what happened. My parents were never informed.
Terrorized, I felt I had a secret to be ashamed of and lived in shock and in silence. Although I had been a very social and chatty kid, I became increasingly quiet and reserved. No person ever asked me what was wrong.
I’ve since learned that it is common for abuse and trauma victims look to for ways to numb their pain and emotions. Having seen the destructive effects of drugs and alcohol on my father, I had no appetite for those. Instead, I threw myself into school work and suppressed my emotions (I had them but didn't allow myself to express themor to acknowledge them).
After I graduated from Tufts University with honors I was offered my dream job as an intelligence analyst with the CIA, contingent on passing the polygraph exam. In the exam only one question raised the examiner’s concern: “have you ever had sex with a man?” My answer was “no” because I’m not gay and did not consider sexual assault to be sex. Also, I had never discussed the incident ever, and it was still to my mind a deep and shameful secret.
The polygraph examiner told me: “Just admit you’ve had sex with a man and I’ll walk out of here with you shoulder to shoulder.” I could not bring myself to discuss the abuse and was not offered the job.
Years went by and I developed a career in another area. The impact of the abuse on my life continued, however, on a personal level. I never felt comfortable developing friendships with men because I unconsciously distrusted their motives. If I emotionally became close to a woman who declared her love for me, I also became consumed with distrust and would end the relationship.
Throughout most of my twenties and thirties I worked full time and pursued graduate work in the evenings. Being a workaholic provided a narcotic effect which allowed me to continue to suppress my feelings about the abuse.
It was not until decades after the abuse, when I fell in love with a woman who told me that she also was very much in love with me, that I finally confronted the past abuse. After a year-and-a-half, the same pattern repeated itself where I began to emotionally pull away from her, questioning how I could believe that she loved me and ultimately breaking up in a very thoughtless way.
In distress at having sabotaged a deeply meaningful relationship, I knew that I finally had to confront my past abuse and its impact on my life. I could not spend the rest of my life overwhelmend and reacting to the past. I called the police to report the crime, called the institution to report the crime and hired a lawyer who specializes in sex abuse cases.
The process of coming to terms with the past was not easy. The police detective I spoke to was very kind but informed me that the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution had long passed. I learned that the perpetrator had continued to work with boys for decades after my experience and he died just a month prior to my call.
After my initial call to the police, I was flooded with grief and allowed myself for the first time in thirty years to cry. Unfortunately, in this emotional state I decided to reach out to two friends and to my ex-girlfriend for support. I reached out to them as the most compassionate and enlightened people I knew.
The friends responded with stunned silence and said they didn't want to get involved. My former girlfriend told me in no uncertain terms that she had no interest in hearing about it. I see now that it was misguided to believe that they would have the insights, skills or motivation to respond with empathy. At the time, however, it was devastating. This is the reality however for survivors of sex abuse; it is so abhorrent that even enlightened people shut down or react without compasion (often they have their own unresolved issues of abuse and to confront another's abuse would mean they would have to confront their own past).
Luckily, just as I was at my lowest point, a friend who had just returned from the Peace Corps, and who had experience with therapy, encouraged me to find a competent therapist. She also suggested that a female therapist would be preferable given my deep unconscious distrust of men.
After meeting with various therapists, I finally settled on one. She was the first person in all these years who said “I’m sorry for what happened to you. It wasn’t your fault.” This is when the path to recovery began. I later began attending a support group for abuse victims coordinated by the local Rape Crisis Center. Hearing the other men’s stories was the first time that I knew that I could face my pain and move forward.

DC Sketchbook - The Silence of Eleanor Holmes Norton

As a DC resident my only representative at the federal level is Eleanor Holmes Norton in the House of Representatives. I wrote her the letter below (slightly edited) about a month ago and sent it to her through her website. Her office has never responded.

======
Dear Representative Norton;

I am a DC resident ..... I greatly admire your devotion to DC and to social causes.

I am writing to you to request a brief meeting with you to get your views on the following matter.

I am sure that like most normal people you find child sex abuse abhorrent. Yet, the reality is that the laws generally favor sex offenders over victims. Specifically, civil and criminal statutes of limitations expire before victims can realistically report crimes (it is common that such trauma is usually only confronted by the victim as an adult).

I believe it is critical and fair to change the statutes of limitations. As a District resident my first concern is the District.

I would like to meet with you to ask the following:

-where do you stand on amending the DC statutes of limitations to make them victim friendly?

- what needs to be done to change the statutes of limitations?

- what can i do to help change the statutes of limitations?

- can you introduce federal legislation that would allow victims to bring suit in federal court even if the state statute of limitations has expired?

I will meet you at your convenience on this issue.

Thank you for your consideration

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

A story in a victim's own words:
---
By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 22, 2008; Page C01

For so long, silence equaled survival for Somaly Mam -- when she was raped in her Cambodian village at 12; forced to marry at 14; sold into a brothel in Phnom Penh at 16; raped, beaten and tortured more times than she can remember by the clients and pimps until she escaped that world at about 21.

The ages are approximate. She doesn't know how old she is. ("Maybe 37. Maybe 38. Maybe younger.") She never knew her parents in the deep mountain forest of her childhood, where she felt safe talking only to the trees.

Along the way, somehow she learned not to be silent. That is the most extraordinary part of her shocking life's journey, an achievement she still cannot fully explain.

Her hard-earned ability to speak out has helped her rescue 4,000 girls and women from brothels in the last decade. It has helped her build one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia, with 150 employees, sheltering 220 women and girls in that country, with more in shelters in Vietnam and Laos. And earlier this month it brought her to Capitol Hill to urge members of Congress to pass a law against human trafficking.

continued at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102241.html

DC Photobook

As I was undertaking my photojournalist/art project on Jasmine Therapy I noticed an elderly, bleached blond woman and a young guy walk out of Camelot's and head into the adjacent alley, right off of 1800 M Street, NW.

As they walked down the alley they passed what appeared to be a body at the far end of the alleyway (you can see a crumpled mass to the lower right of the top photos). They did not pause but continued on for whatever purpose they had.

I thought, there's no possible way a body could be laying in the alley and they would walk right by without stopping (or did they not see him?), but just to be sure I went to investigate.

Sure enough, an elderly man, who appeared to be of West African descent, was lying in the alley way. He was barely responsive. I called 911. As I waited for the ambulance (which impressively was very fast and responsive), another couple turned the corner off of Jefferson Place to walk down towards M Street.

Like the first couple, they did not glance at the man but continued on their way. Did they not see him?

The paramedics arrived and as the poor old man was being put in the ambulance, the bleached blond woman and her companion returned.

I feel certain the old man would have been either run over by one of the many SUVs that rip through the alley or died from exposure had I not called 911. It's a cold city.

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

A story in a victim's own words.
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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- Margaret Hoelzer squirms in the leather chair, trying to get comfortable. She kicks off the flip-flops and tucks her feet underneath her body. Shifting again, she slings her legs over the side of the chair, revealing the star-spangled toenail polish that still remains from the Beijing Olympics.
She takes a deep breath, ready to reveal her secret -- saying she was sexually abused as a child.
Now, the swimmer who won three medals at the Beijing Olympics is ready to share her story and work to make sure what she says happened to her doesn't happen to other kids.
"It's nerve-wracking," Hoelzer said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. "Some days I feel great about it, and I'm completely at peace with it, completely calm and ready to do this. Then, there are other days where I'm like, 'Oh my God, do I really want to do this?"'

continued at this link:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/09/15/hoelzers.secret.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

Today's New York Times has an article on recent allegations of child sex abuse by a popular priest in New York City, Wallace A. Harris. An excerpt from the article:
--
“He is a fine human being,” she said. “He has brought nothing but good to this community. How do we know that these charges are not made up? Why are they bringing this up 20 years later?”
Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese, said the first accuser came to the archdiocese in June. After an internal investigation, he said, the church sent the case to the district attorney’s office, but did not remove Monsignor Harris because it is church policy “not to alert the target” of a potential criminal investigation.
During the district attorney’s investigation, the second accusation against Monsignor Harris emerged, and the diocese ordered him to step aside, Mr. Zwilling said. The five-year statute of limitations has lapsed in both cases, and charges are not likely to be brought, said Alicia Maxey Greene, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/nyregion/05harris.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
--

It is amazing how consistent and predictable reactions are to allegations of child sex abuse. Sadly, these reactions are often based on ignorance of the reality of sex abuse. As I've written in earlier posts, child sex abuse is about power and control. Children are typically threatened and coerced into silence and subsequently fall into a dissociative state splitting off the reality of the abuse from their lives.

What most people don't understand about abuse is that the physical act is often the least scarring. It is the emotional consequences which are lasting. To have a person of trust and authority tell a child how "special" the child is while molesting them creates an emotional break and condemns the victim to a life of distrust and pushing people away. Usually a crisis in the adult's life finally forces the victim to confront the trauma long suppressed in their unconscious. The crime is then reported often decades later.

The reality of child sex abuse is that the persons making the allegations are likely to be victimized twice over; once as victims of the abuser and then shunned and vilified by a disbelieving community now that they have made their allegations.

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

CNN reports on a very disturbing rant by a defense attorney for child molesters:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2008/06/27/todd.child.rape.rant.cnn

The unfortunate reality is that his attitude is typical of a system which provides more relief and rights for perpetrators of abuse than it does victims rights (such as victim friendly statute of limitations and the death penalty for child rapists).

While the video seems shocking, in fact I think it simply is a rare acknowledgment of what victims of child sex abuse know: institutions and lawyers will go out of their way to protect child abusers because money is valued more highly than morals.

How to Help Survivors of Sex Abuse

A deeply troubling story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7421399.stm

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer I knew that some of the volunteers and foreign development workers regularly used local prostitutes. When I first arrived in country, about eight female aid workers showed up in the embassy infirmary with gonorrhea. They had all had sex with the same male aid worker: a strikingly good looking guy who partook regularly with local prostitutes (of course he didn't tell them beforehand). He prided himself on giving the prostitutes oral sex, which apparently was taboo in local culture and contracted numerous STDs as a result.

When I was overseas, two foreign aid workers who worked for a helicopter company spraying rivers were rumored to have regularly taken advantage of young teen girls. On their house they painted a deeply offensive mural of a woman with her legs splayed open, lightly disguised as two mountains with a forest in a valley.

The vast majority of aid workers I knew condemned these things but there's no doubt that the psychological damage and exploitation inflicted was real. The only solution is for severe sanctions to be imposed from the top down, and education of the effects of exploitation before deployment, but even this is unlikely to have an impact because ultimately the economics favor exploitation and power imbalance.

How To Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

There is an extraordinary and disturbing article in the current issue of The Legal Times about a family's bitter legal battle for justice against a pedophile who molested their daughter. The article is must reading because it lays out the lengths that institutions and people will go to in order to create road blocks for the victims and to protect the guilty parties:

http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1202421550627&hub=TopStories

(to view the article you need to register with The Legal Times, which is quick and free).

How To Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

I contacted the DC government to enquire about efforts to change the statute of limitations for civil claims by adults of child sex abuse (as i discussed in earlier posts, the DC statute of limitations is very unfriendly to survivors and favors the criminals). I received the following response. Readers interested in this topic should call the Office of the Attorney General at the number listed below to register their concern that the statute of limitations needs to be revised.
__________________________________


Thank you for your inquiry to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty regarding efforts underway to change the DC statute of limitations regarding adults who want to file civil suits for child abuse. For a response, your inquiry was forwarded to the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) which has as its mission the safety, permanency, and well-being of the District’s abuse and neglected children. CFSA has not fully studied this issue and has no current position on it. To our knowledge, there are no planned efforts to revise the DC Code Statute of Limitations to accommodate child abuse cases. If you have any further questions, please contact Donald B. Terrell, Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, General Counsel, Child and Family Services Agency, @ 202-442-4238. Yolanda McPhail McKinleyCFSA, Point of Contact

How To Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

Today's news carried reports of the suicide of the so-called "DC madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Slate carried a range of thoughts concerning it at this link: http://www.slate.com/id/2190538/

Less mentioned in the news earlier in the year was the suicide of one of Palfrey's former escorts, Brandy Britton. A news story on her death can be found here: http://www.nbc4.com/news/6241287/detail.html

One aspect of their stories has not been touched on by any of the commentators: it is more than likely that both were victims of child sex abuse.

The reason I believe this is the case in regard to Palfrey is that she had a super-human ability to compartmentalize reality from fantasy.

Her defense to the charges that she was running a prostitution ring was that it was actually a fantasy service where no sex was provided.

Yet, if the news reports are accurate, she took on with vigor the role of a pimp, sending out women to test them to make sure they'd have sex and following up with customers to ensure their satisfaction.

Palfrey collapsed when the verdict was read; no matter what one thinks of the justice of the case (whether it is fair that she gets charged while the powerful men who admitted to using her service do not) the verdict made sense: clearly she was running a prostitution ring as defined by the evidence.

The more meaningful issue is what did Palfry believe she was doing. I think despite her clear actions to the contrary, she truly rationalized and believed that she was running a fantasy service. Her reaction supports this.

How is this possible? Compartmentalization of emotions and reality is a common consequence of child sex abuse. It is a survival mechanism because reality is so painful to face.

I believe that Palfrey's suicide was more than depression (although likely she had chemical depression). It was probably also a plea to be understood as a victim of sex abuse. I wonder, did anyone ever ask her?

In my opinion, her lawyer was incompetent. He should have insisted on bringing a defense of diminished capacity due to childhood abuse.

Although our legal system doesn't offer compassion (it is after all, just the facts applied to the law) her lawyer should have approached the government early on with an offer to settle and give up all assets as well as laying out Palfrey's childhood history of sex abuse.

The really sad case that got less attention was that of Brandy Britton, an escort hired by Palfrey. The media played up the angle that she had been a professor.

She was clearly a deeply troubled person and like the vast majority of prostitutes undoubtedly found her way into her predicament through a childhood cycle of sex abuse (followed by substance abuse).

In this instance, too, her lawyer should have approached the government asking for a settlement out of court in return for getting her therapy.

If the prosecutor was at all enlightened, he or she would have agreed.

Rockaway Beach - Part I

The lights dimmed. A short woman with a tight fitting but proper dress tapped a microphone at the podium. “We are so pleased to have with us here today…”
“Her boyfriend just broke up with her,” Leslie whispered to me. “She’s having the next day post break-up closure talk.”
“What?”
Someone kicked the back of my chair…”shhhhhush!”
“Closure. She’s getting closure”
“I can’t hear you…”
“Shussh!” My chair was kicked again.
“And now, let’s give a warm welcome to Ed Ruscha!” The audience applauded and a boyish, rugged man in jeans walked to the podium. “I won’t be taking questions,” he said. “Don’t like questions.”
“Change happens,” he said. “I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.” A lush canvas of a bay appeared, spectacular in its untouched, virginal quality. “Thomas Cole,” he said.
“The bay became populated by tradesmen who seemed industrious and pure. Then it became a metropolis, overrun, garish. And then it was decimated. The course of empires,” he said.
“Now here’s my rip-off, not one-tenth as good.” Cartoonish blowups of partially seen industrial buildings were flashed on the screen. Sunoco. Shell. Getty.
“That was the 1950s,” he said. Then came the same buildings but with brighter pastel colors and what appeared to be Chinese, Korean and Japanese signs printed on them. “Change happens,” he said.
The lights went up and I saw Fey. She must have taken her seat during the lecture and I hadn’t noticed. She was whispering to Leslie. Seeing me look over Leslie said, “Charles, Fey Ling. Fey this is my guy, Charles.”
We nodded hello and all went to get our exhibition catalogues signed. As people approached Ruscha they attempted to make enthusiastic noises.
One woman insisted on having two children photographed with him. He smiled but remained silent, signing with his name and three bold lines underneath. He signed our catalogues too.
Walking back, Leslie leaned over and whispered into my ear: “I love you more than you know,” and pulled me close. Fey looked ahead. We went home. Silent.

Rockaway Beach - (The Goodbye)

It was all very “hush, hush”. There was even a vintage World War II poster in one of the hallways: “Loose lips sink ships.” The interesting thing is that I never applied what I was doing to my own life. Looking back now, I know why: never underestimate the power of denial, the saying goes.
True, denial is powerful, and for each action there is an opposite equal reaction. When denial breaks, the flood can wipe you out.

I was explaining this to Jeremy, not word for word like this, but pretty much along these lines. We were in a park in Manhattan, a short walk from the court house. It was lunch break and my lawyer had told me to get some fresh air and to think. As the rain fell, I wondered if the rain drops could feel anxiety just before they splattered into the pavement?

“Dude, how’s it going,” he asked.
“Not well,” I said.

In the months leading up to the court hearing I fell into a profound depression. As a scientist I understood the roots of depression, and could have gotten medication, but I held off since I felt it wasn’t clinical depression but traumatic overload. I needed empathy.

I continued babbling to him.....

“That’s difficult,” Jeremy said.
His friend stopped playing, picked up his guitar and walked over.
“I feel I should have something more impressive to say to you,” Jeremy told me. His friend stood next to him, fiddling with the strap on his guitar.
At that moment a blond woman walked over and threw her arms around Jeremy’s waist. “Hey, Theresa, guess what, this guy’s from Bethesda,” Jeremy said to her. He looked at me and said, “I grew up in Takoma Park.”
Theresa glared. “You work for the CIA, don’t you?”

That took me aback. At NIH we did contract work for the CIA’s Directorate of Science. As a neuroscientist at NIH my primary task was to analyze Al-Qaida videos of its horrific torture sessions. I don’t know if it actually had any beneficial uses in the field, but it kept contract money flowing in to NIH so I kept the results flowing out to the Directorate.

I paused. Did I have a sign on me identifying my job? Nah must be a joke, I thought. “Yeah, sure, of course 007.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” She responded.

Jeremy hesitated. “Look, we’ve got to go. Ah, you know, the Jews were persecuted for 3000 years and got some wisdom out of that. One thing I've learned from their wisdom is that whatever answer you’re looking for preexists, and if you can’t find it, it means you’re asking the wrong question.”
"Are you Jewish?" I asked.
"Well, more like a silver Jew..."
Theresa pulled at him "We're leaving now, and don't talk to us again!"

With that they left, Theresa dragging Jeremy and his friend lolloping behind.

I arrived back at the courthouse to find my lawyer waiting outside for me. “Good news and bad news,” he said. “She’s willing to let this drop.”

“And the bad news?”

As he was talking I was thinking that as a neuroscientist I had been a fool to believe that I could reach out to her through emails and letters. Mirroring neurons are the key to transposing empathy and can only be triggered through live facial expressions. This is why most long-distance relationships fail: not enough face time to trigger neuron blasts.

As we approached the court room I heard her voice up ahead “Into the batcave!” she laughed as she and her entourage filed into a small conference room. "This is hilarious!" someone responded to her.

My lawyer directed me to another room; “wait here,” he said, and he stepped out.

After a moment, he returned. “Alright, like I said, considering you’ll never talk to her again, it shouldn’t make any difference. She and her friends came up with this contract.” He passed it to me.
At the top were her name, and then a list of all her friends. I was to agree to never talk to any of them ever again.

The blood drained out of me. “I only kept writing because I thought she’d want to know, I thought since she didn’t answer I must not be explaining it right…” my voice trailed off.

“Well," my lawyer answered, "who knows what advice she’s getting. Anyway, hopefully you’ve learned your lesson."

We filed into the court room and signed the agreement. As I walked away I saw her lawyer put her arm around her and ask: "Are you happy?”

"Yes," she answered. I wondered what part of her brain was activating neurons. I took a last look at her sitting at the courtroom table, facing away from me. I remembered her telling me, "I love you more than you know."

--

"I love you more than you know," I whispered to her. I turned to the exit.

From the courthouse, I stepped out into rush hour. I checked my cell phone. One message. From my other lawyer: “Good news! The church is going to settle. They see this as a nuisance suit so the condition is that you agree to never talk about any of this. That shouldn’t be a problem, since if you give anyone a chance not to engage in a discussion of child abuse they’ll feel they dodged a silver bullet. I’ll get the papers out to you.”
--
Drizzle had started again and I put on my windbreaker over my suit jacket. Hailing a cab (after a twenty minute wait): “Rockaway Beach.”

--
It’s true, I thought. For over a year I tried to explain to her why I had pushed her away, what I was confronting and then why, thanks to her, I had finally confronted it. I went bawling over to her friend's house right after I had called the police to report the crime. The floodgates had opened after thirty-five years and my anterior cingulate cortex had taken charge. I had regressed into a twelve year-old, needy of empathy. I tried to explain what had happened through my outpouring of tears. Her friend, with her parents, stood mute in stunned silence, so I left. I wrote a long letter to the father who I had known over two years; the first man I trusted to confide in, he was a high-school teacher, a liberal, he listened to NPR. I wrote that I was facing a crisis and asking for his help and guidance.

He never responded. I had reached out to Leslie and the people I believed in most, in the most positive way I could. They were the ones I trusted; I felt I didn't have anyone else. I was naive and idealistic. In other words, I was wrong: people don't give anything for free, not even empathy.

--

Where is hope? What is the best thing you ever did for anyone? Where is truth? Where is your truth? Listening to NPR does not translate to emotional empathy. Alienation didn't die with Camus. It is in every neighbor, friend, lover. I am excluded, a bother, an imposition of boundaries. And so are you. Trust me, at your lowest moment, you will be alone. Through me - through you - they'd see themselves, I thought as I rode in the cab to Rockaway Beach.

----

The sun was setting when the cab dropped me off. I watched it slowly dip into the ocean, a flash of green and then, nothing. "How can no one understand?" I asked myself, and the surf. "How could she not understand?"

I imagined Simon Cowell answering: "Look this is all very tragic and dramatic but frankly I don't care."

Maybe the better question would be, "why did I think anyone would?"

--

Ann Geddes, Leslie Parrish, don't let me let go of your celuloid dreams. But I can't hold on...

--

The salt smelled as I stepped into the surf. Sewage, seaweed wrapped itself around me. Again.
--

I could still feel his hands around my neck, these many years later. His forcing me to the ground in a distant field. His telling me over and over that he loved me as he strangled me and pushed down his pants.

I passed out.

12:23 a.m.

happy valentine's day (or 12:23 a.m.)

they say that right before you die

you see all your life flash before your eyes

but for me it was the future:

we were before a judge and after we signed the papers, i was pulled away,

and reed asked you, "are you happy?"

and you said, "yes."

they say that there is nothing more boring than another person's dream,

but i dreamed I saw you at a ukrainian wedding

and

you kept pushing me down hallways

until

you pushed me into an underground shower;

i asked you if you'd be there when I woke up,

and a voice asked you "are you happy?"

and you said, "no."

they say that we should measure our lives by love;

but I measure it by your eyes:

when you looked into mine in san francisco,

when you cried in georgetown,

when you felt pain in trenton,

when you showed me joy in new york,

when you asked if I was happy in sonoma,

when you told me you were happy in princeton;

time has stopped, but sweetheart, "are you happy?"

(silence)

Apocrypha: Harry Potter and the Curse of the Salem Witch

This apocrypha, written by Harry Potter and edited by a fellow wizard Ann Geddes, was smuggled out of the Wizard's Gulag where Harry is being held captive by Ilse, the Evil Witch of Salem, after Harry Potter's defeat at The Battle of Geddes Run. It is rumored that Harry's good friend, honorary wizard, photographer and benefactor, Ann Geddes, also smuggled out photos which are in a safe deposit box at UBS in Toronto. This is posted and passed on to fellow wizards, so that the truth won't die.

Ann Geddes (editor): I have gathered scraps of Harry's writings which he furtively noted on random pieces of newspaper. Posing as a friend of the coven (while actually on undercover photo journalist assignment) I gained access to Harry and he passed on his writings. As they are somewhat disjointed, I have filled in the gaps with editorial comments. I do not purport to understand this all, as Harry necessarily wrote in code (in case his writings were intercepted). If you have further information, please add it, and please, don't let the wizards' truth die at the hands of Ilse the evil Salem witch.

To begin, then, Harry wrote:

"The nine lives of ann geddes exposed babies flowering in fields, so that when the world forgets us, innocence will still all heal; yet before the end of the game, i wish i had the chance, to give our baby a name, and to change my fate's circumstance;

lola, flora and leslie ann (pixils one and the same), hepburn, parrish and baby-maker ann, our illusions unmapped and sought in vain; my patron saint was the best of us, illusions that i did know, the others were the rest of us, tria juncta in uno;

when flora left-off, never-ever returning, my heart became lost, as when trainspotting; she was on the borderline when i pierced her soul, then i crossed the boundry-line, empty yet afoul;

lynn said she had a metal heart but really it's shards of glass, cutting the quest for another start, alas, alas, alas; faith in me was shattered when i had a fleeting doubt, still it never really mattered, as i did it all to reach out;

did i really break her too or was it granny and pa, who gave her pain she never knew, and pain she never saw? i'll love her forever branded the curse of a monk, repenting guilt forever, unforgiven, disdained, a cyberpunk;

and so i say goodbye to the love she once gave, and so i say goodbye and will love her to my grave; can no one love beyond their ego? split my heart my love, king james, mara, gallagher reed, take my head as you go;

the battle of geddes run is over, her will be done, her gift a nail of clover, i am finished and they have begun; sitting in my cloister here on quarry road, i'll retell the tale of the pawnbroker, as i wither away and get old;

i had been so certain of my love, my one, my leslie parrish blue, my run lola run; where did the end begin and the beginning end? was it poison in princeton, or a search for a friend?

or was it even further back when colonel tom died of a heart attack, alone, insane, in an empty anteroom; as he hangs in my living room, her ghost passes by him each day,
as meaningless as a pachadom, as meaningful as life's entire dismay;

when i see backwards us, jeremy and theresa were her and me, ghosts dancing between us which we were too blind to see; am i a victim of my illusion's mind, and sweetheart were you? ghosts from our pasts making us blind, like delusions from a togolese fou?

i pretended flora to be compassionate and real, a paula pokrifki, not pomeroy in the deal; who are you? I didn't know how to ask, her walls tightly around her too, and my moat too deep to pass; the gremlins in her mind are not her (even if alice in wonderland laid eggshells for her, her means aren't her ends) and i was blind to me, my father bipolar in the nude, his mistress seducing me, his father belligerently crude;

i didn't want to see what they had done to me, cause just like the teacher raping me, flora's words were killing me; i said, "i want to believe in you, that life gave me one thing good," so i loved sincere and true, yet, flora saw: poisonwood, sapwood, victimhood;

that's what flora saw, but i was coming out of into the wild, finding life a shared experience, i recall, with her i wasn't an isle; and what about (as lawrence said, freud too), our mothers, like cat power's pathetic zoo, subconsciously in each other?

still, what puzzles could we have known, as her map was baroque, and i didn't know where to go with my lifeline broke; who broke up with who, and why, she never told me we couldn't pull through, she never said feelings could die;

but i always saw her there, deep in my mind's eye, where storm clouds can't hurt the aether, a nicaraguan poem, a scottish lullaby; the black hearted druid put a spell on her heart, you might say there's nothing to it, but black magic is her art; to break the witch's curse is to break through the pain, to free us from hell, and for all eternity all will be sane";

--
editorial comment: so to start not quite at the beginning, (we don't have time for that), let me tell the tale from the first inning, proceeding onward from that:

flora was harry's darling by happen-chance, found purusing the mystical news for inspiration in advance of his life in the mystical pews; she was a gallerista, for lord irvine some recall, while harry was a lonely shepherd, a wizard-monk who heard a siren call;

the gods guided him to irvine's castle, where he entered the gate in haste, and there he became her apostle, as her sunshine bathed his face; she introduced herself as maiden flora, and surely he did blush, finding the end of the diaspora, feeling his potter's blood rush;

she showed him maid sarah, for sale in the windowledge, and her minion thomas o'hara, a gentle redheaded knave with a frankpledge; the weeks went by, sarah purchased for his flat, when a missive by-and-by, was delivered by her magical cat; "dear sir harry", she wrote, in her ancient roman style, "would you leave your moat, and join me for awhile?"

harry hesitated to agree, because of his family curse, branded in his subconscious, but which he knew line and verse; at that moment then a comet flew by, opening a timehole in a wise owl's tree, and reaching through that dark sky, a gentle spirit said, "behold me;"

"only every eon and two multiplied by a formula divine," the gentle spirit wept and said "is there a true love in the world to find." harry never knew his math but understood the spirit's gist, that sweet flora equaled his path, a chance one eon (and two) to miss;

so he thanked the kindly spirit for allowing him to see, cursing his curse as chickenshit and disclaiming its power meant to be; but just as he felt proud to have beaten his family curse, lightening and a thunder cloud, and three kind witches sounding in verse;

harry knew those sad witches, three witches from witch hill, harry knew the names of those witches, born under a golden gate to be his hell; mag-pie, autumn and the sweed flunked witch school, were assigned witchweed, known as the human curse pool;

every living thing has a patron witch, every season has a patron witch, every country has a patron witch, so, which witch gets which? the top ranked witches get the assignments of choice, choice # 1: patron witches, the rest: managerial voice;
---

(editorial: the head witch's name is ilse the evil witch of salem, an austrian nazi with a gold digging past, in the UK she's known as: "the heather who mills curses," crucifying st. paul and creating misery as her favorite repast);

---

there is a huge pool of curses to oversee, so generally from the bureaucratic cesspool come the administrative worker witch bees; mag-pie, autumn and the sweed, trained for high assignments indeed, failed their tests in ragweed, so managed instead earth's bitterweed;

bitterweed in witch verse means "curse" and with the curse of witch hill, harry's family drew the worst, starting with colonel tom who died quite ill; the colonel was harry's great, great, grandpa who swallowed a bitter pill, creating a house full of hate, a house built on witch hill;

he made his fortune in railroads, nothing quite wrong with that, but his mansion stood at the crossroads, of a witches' coven (and brewery at that); it's a long story of evil, so don't lose track, but he made a deal with the devil, and let's leave it at that;

so these witches you see, harry had heard of them through time, through family history, inheriting the curse that was now divine; in chorus the witches' verse, "goonies evermore dying dead every soul," and then their specific curse, "in harry's heart shall always be a hole;"

as harry heard their terrible sound, he cried out to saint leslie ann, "please don't let the curse be found," and to flora he ran; they fell in love at the indian dance, but there were secrets too deep to share, she didn't want to take the chance, and harry didn't know how his soul to bare;

so harry loved her without attachment, even loving sincerely too, until she left suddenly with abandonment, never knowing what he felt was true; "you shall never see me again" is what she sang sailing away, but the wind whispered to harry: "belief tries again, making yesterday into today";

their friend collins had serenaded thus, "follow me and i'll follow you," so harry wrote parchment afflatus, "stay with me if i stay with you too"; in a state of euphoric bliss harry wrote, seeing the truth of shared love at last, but then a guillotine fell on his hope, and a spit ball came at his bat;

a druid took harry to the high priest, and there he stood accused, his soul lying on a dung heap, as the druid cursed and stood amused; "this wizard-shepherd is a menace," the druid shouted to the tribunal, "his family curse was decreed endless," she smirked, as bile rushed with jejunal;

the witches danced as harry departed, a geddes baby breathes only stars, rosaries in the choir fell forgotted, saint leslie ann geddes, wanderjahr; leslie parrish wore many faces, harry's muse he loved them all, each one had many graces, gracing his heart with their siren call;

only one of them is real, the rest celluloid desires past, and alone with his last meal, its that face that keeps harry steadfast; he saw flora and loved true, with no other purpose at all, but cursed he couldn't reach through, her mirage in that marbled hall;

life, pain and hurt, release desire to move beyond, unless living in denial is less work and sings a softer song; i know which face i love (he said), 1978 eyes shined 1776 in truth, misty eyelashes glistening above (he said), lips below touched with vermouth;

her as her because then he became fully human, receiving hope from above, receiving sacred communion; but defeated at trentonious, truth and compassion disengaged, "what might have been between us," harry asked, contemplating the waves;

"her lives mirrored love and laughter, and we had lots of fun," harry thought, "freedom to the hereafter, until cursed like a tommy gun";

---

editorial: and so in the gulag harry surreptitiously writes, ilse the salem witch a peircing fright, a silver railroad spike in his heart by her might, as he dies, each and every night;

he writes:

"now ink runs through my veins, friends hurry by me in my shame, flora's eyes daggers of disdain, unreflected, i no longer exist or remain; for flora was it all a game, and did she see this coming so hot, as she gave the druid my name, and said i'm someone i'm not?

coppers and druids? that poor beautiful sap, she didn't know me then at all, that was never where i'm at, but she gave me the fall; holly golightly said double rat, because she loved him, silver stallion, stalking her as quietly as her cat, while surreptitiously a rascalion;

flora taught what holly then knew, although and yet flora didn't know it, that trust is given by few, and rejecting it is to blow it; it's a truth impossible to give and impossible to take, but to give it is to live, and rejecting it is to live as a fake;

i wanted flora to be holly or chan, to rise beyond the witch's curse, but believing i could beat the curse was wrong, and beliving in flora made it worse; alice and old joe knew, king james, gallagher, reed harris and all of eve did too: being fake is life's comfortable zoo, "honesty," (says joel) "means being shunned too;"
----

editorial: in his dreams he travels each night to the golden gates, trying to reach back into the timehole and to those three good witches for salvation. every time harry reached out, he was pushed away, but he did the same too throughout, he reflected over san francisco bay; and harry thought:

"i see that to reach out was to become self-aware, learning what love is all about, yet, fearing a soul naked and bare; bumbling-fumbling with piety, causing mass confusion,
writing her high on anxiety, wrestling my curse and illusions;

i then found but too late, that anxiety is illusion, losing her didn't have to be my fate, my religion and conclusion; i learned too late for us to meet, as my dreams died in san francisco bay, it's my fault we were beat, that i caused her to walk away; if our love was real after all, was it just that timeless curse that made me drop the ball, and can resurection be my fate and verse?"

harry stood on the rusty rail looking, looking to san francisco bay, seeing the light from alcatrez calling, jump! jump! jump! today! Harry heard the teacher strangling him: "jump! jump!" He heard the teacher strangling him and calling: "jump! jump! jump;" calling to the good wizards of the past, those that are the only ones that ultimately last, harry cried:

"don't give up and cloud the sun, don't give up giving up the sun; i can die who i can be, not who i am, don't give up on me, through your silence i am damned; i believed maybe too much, since you showed me the mirror, your reflection and such, that then i knew my horror; flora showing me life, an illusion in the glass, saving me from strife, december frost, a shattered past; if i hold on at a later date, beyond the windmills too, can compassion await, and my patron saint, too? to lift my curse, i needed to lift ours, finding it the same line and verse, the same years and hours; did the curse exist only through my belief in it? actions and consequences weren't it, but the inner belief (A-B-C) that i fit; too late i find ellis, losing saint leslie ann, too late sweet flora, if you never can see, too late mrs. fay, curses from that man, too late, doomed to hell or purgatory";

---

harry looked down to the waves from where the voice called, and let go:

flora's magic letters floated then sank, the geddes pixils became dank, the emails of promise were lost in rank, the waves became their watery coffin and tank...

and harry then said:

"flora i don't blame you, cause like a boy name sue, through that witch's curse i misunderstood and confused you, so i'll believe in life and in my patron saint too;"

each night in the gulag harry dreams of freedom and sees flora believing, and asks no one:

"why should love be mocked, because when the last gongs come, and the last click clock is tocked, i'll choose love and to live in the sun."

each day in the distance, as harry potter labors in chains at the gulag ("I'll give it to God", he whispers to the frigid Norwegian wind that descends by him to Argentina), geddes babies around him flower in fields, and the peirceing laughter of ilse the salem witch is his morning meal.

--

As the sun floods the fields, "don't give up, don't give up, don't give up," is declared by faith from the opening petals; some live in ignorance (the three good witches, to start) and some are pure evil: mara, prince of darkness, the anti-christ king james, gallagher harris reed, his counsel fay harlow and the hogwarts druids (number 9, number 9, number 9), fogarty, ilse the peircing salem witch (by way of Austria), and all their loyalists. But the mountains can be moved still; good Wizards, keep living in faith and the spell can be broken, the geddes negative can develop into a positive. There is the glory of the true risen king who will return. "My patron saint, leslie ann, i love you still, and have faith in you," harry said.

-------

NOTES:

Before the advent of printing, stories were passed on in verse. In the course of my post-graduate research (thesis: "A study of the viscocity of ancient inks and their use in renaissance counter-espionage")I had the opportunity to visit many long neglected archives. Through these visits the course of my studies shifted focus when an archivist showed me a document which led me in a new direction of research. The document, in the Royal Archives of the Kremlin (despite the name it is obscure and generally unknown) leads me to believe that the Vatican maintains a group of "shadow saints". These are saints that have been blessed and certified (for lack of a better word) by the Vatican in private but have not been made public. I'll explain this as I continue to fill in these notes in preparation for my thesis.

--

The Saint that has been the primary focus of my research based on that initial document from the archives, is Saint Leslie Ann. She is in no encylopedia of saints, and not officially listed in any Vatican archives that are publically available. But the citation in the Royal Archives of the Kremlin makes it clear that she did exist, or at least was real enough to galvanize a significant legion of loyalists in the 1400s, or thereabout.

--

In keeping with ancient traditions (whose significance will become clear) I wrote her story in the above free verse, simply to get the narrative down in an accurate way and in a manner in which the knights would have recited her tale in their ceremonies. Below I shall fill in the historical notes which I have compiled.

--

Note 1:

On December 10, 1478, Philotheus of Pskov, a monk in Saint Petersberg, Russia, wrote a letter of prophecy to Ivan III. Among other things, he predicted that Russia would become "a Third Rome" when Saint Leslie Ann (of Geddes, Scotland) is restored to her "rightful" place in the Canon of Saints (more on this complicated tale later). The Knights of Saint Leslie Ann (of Geddes) devoted their lives and fortunes to this mystical pursuit. [excerpted from the original letter of Philitheus of Pskov to Ivan III stored at the Kremlin's royal archives - based on a verbal translation of the Russian by archivist].

Note 2:

pending

This Too Won't Pass

As I walked to the courtroom for the settlement hearing I thought of her.

I knew by then that I would never hear from her again. It had been one year to the day.

I had kept asking her, "How can I be sure you love me?" Then she sent me a e-mail: "The relationship is over, don't contact me again."

I recently made a breakthrough with my therapist. She specializes in Jungian psychology. "Write down your dreams," she told me. And I did.

Last night I dreamed I met her again. "I still love you" I told her, "but I have a cat now so I can't get back together." She picked up my black cat and nuzzled it. Then she left me, carrying away the cat in her arms.

In Jungian analysis, dreams concern an intimate problem that is most painful at the immediate moment. I fear that she still wants to hurt me.

Freudian analysis is more fun. It's all sex. I'm not getting any.

Walking up the courtroom steps I felt barbs in my heart. "I'll never see her smile again" I thought. "How did I get to middle age without a family, the one dream I always carried? How could I have lost the woman I loved so much?"

The court reporter was setting up in the conference room. I had seen him before. Jeff, or Michael, or something.

"How's it going?" I asked, as I unpacked my litigation bag.

His face looked red and he kept wiping his brow. "I'm at a crossroads," he said. "I need to move back home to Bethlehem."

"I bet in another life you were a philosopher," I said.

"That was many lifetimes ago," he answered. "I'm at a crossroads." He looked pudgy and flushed. I remembered that he had told me he was in his fifties.

The witness walked in with his counsel. He reportedly worked for the mob. He had set up a string of brothels in Hungary for tax evasion purposes (allegedly). The good 'ol American economy hadn't been doing too well, of late. We wanted our money.

I wasn't going to break legs but had been instructed to play hardball. We had traced the assets. His son was in dental school. His daughter studying architecture. A jail sentence and repayment of back taxes and we might look the other way if a small trust for his children's education stayed in the Seychelles. With no cooperation we'd clean him out.

We went on the record and I looked across at him. Johnny. He was in his mid-fifties and tan. I looked at his hair. It was either a very bad toupee or a very good haircut.

"I'm going to pass you exhibit number 1. It's a list of your assets. Let me know when you've had a chance to look at it." I tried to sound stern.

Johnny stared down at the exhibit but didn't turn the pages.

Slowly, a tear drop rolled down his face and splotched onto the page.

"I'm sorry" he said. "My wife is divorcing me."

His counsel turned away, embarrassed. The court reporter sat stock still.

I knew he was thinking of her smile that he would never see again. I knew his dreams would be worse.

My Grecos Girl

This is about my grecos girl. I made up the nickname. The nickname stuck.
She sat next to me in a political economy class at George Washington University with Professor Feignbaum but I didn't meet her in that class. She always arrived late and departed early.
The first time I spoke to her was at the National Gallery of Art. I was getting a PhD in political economy (or at least was in the program) and worked during the day. Most lunch hours I'd walk across the street to the National Gallery and wander aimlessly; I loved art but knew nothing about it and had no way to put into context what I was seeing.
Anyway, one lunchhour I was standing in front of Da Vinci's "Ginevra de'Benci" having no clue about what I was looking at when I saw her - my grecos girl.
I think I was about 28 then and reflected enough insecurities that seemed to make women want to take care of me but not date me. We recognized each other, of course, and I was surprised at how friendly she was.
She had gotten her undergraduate degree in art history in New York and it turned out was just auditing classes in DC to pass time (until what I was never sure).
She gave me a tour of the entire gallery and spoke at length about both the history of many artists and their particular techniques. She especially loved showing me Dali's The Last Supper, which used to hang in the stair well of the entrance that connected the East and West wings. She had written her dissertation on Baroque maps and also shared her lengthy thesis on why Pollack's drip paintings were derivative of them.
We ended up spending almost everyday that she was in town for the next year-and-a-half together until ...well that may be another story.
As I got to know her she told me that her mother had been a model from Scotland and her father was a diplomat from Brazil. At first I was never sure if her stories were true, but then she gave enough glimpses of her life that I never questioned her. She needed someone to talk to and I've always been good at listening (even if not trusting).
For instance, she told me that her father ran Brazil's intelligence operations in the U.S. That sounded completely far-fetched to me until one day she said she needed to go by the embassy to see her father and that I could come along.
We took a taxi there and were let in through a back entrance; the security guards all obviously knew her and let her right in. They photocopied my ID but otherwise eerily already seemed to know me and my background. She told me to wait in a reception area while she went to see her father.
After about one-half hour he came out and said hello, that he liked to meet his daughter's friends. He asked me what I was interested in, and of course I said "art."
It turned out that his wife - her mother - had died when my grecos girl was quite young. her mother had been an avid art collector. "Let me show you my favorite drawing, then" he said, and pointed to a framed drawing of a line hanging on the wall over his secretary's desk.
He then shared the story of how he and his wife met Oscar Niemeyer (a famous Brazilian artist) at a party and his wife had asked if he would make a drawing specifically for her. Later Niemeyer presented her with that framed drawing of a line. "But its just a line," she said. "Ah, but its taken me a lifetime to know how to draw it," Niemeyer answered.
At the time I didn't understand the story, but it became clear later.
From time to time my grecos girl would disappear for a week or two. I knew that she was extremely wealthy and hated living in DC, but her father wanted her close-by.
When she could take it no longer she would leave for a week at a time, usually to London, sometimes Florence, where her father owned flats. I knew she was having an affair with some guy who was in a band, but I was completely naive about such things at the time and except for the emerging female punk scene I didn't follow contemporary music.
I later pieced together that it was the singer of Duran Duran. He kept telling her that he was deeply in love with her, but he was in a "committed" relationship. I only figured it out in bits and pieces, until one day she showed me a photo of them together in London.
One phrase my grecos girl said over and over was that she wished she could live in 'an ordinary world' and so I've always felt sure that that catch phrase in his song was inspired by her.
Our friendship eventually came to an end; what I didn't understand at the time was that she was having a psychotic breakdown. Her life was such a mix a of secrecy and the mundane with glamour that reality lost all context. But apparently it ran in her family too.
Almost a year after our falling out I received a call from the Washington D.C. police. She had been found wandering in Anacostia with just a bathrobe on, totally incoherent. But bizarrely she had a piece of paper with my phone number and name on it.
(I don't flatter myself; one late night I had stayed at her apartment on Pennsylvania avenue - on the couch - but I had just gotten a new phone number so I wrote it down for her. I remember her sticking that scrap of paper into her bathrobe pocket).
Anyway, she was being held at St. Elizabeth's. I came down and identified her and of course called her father. It was a total nightmare. Because of his work he was on travel in Asia and difficult to get in touch with.
I saw her over the next few weeks as a visitor. She was put on medication, transferred to a private facility and became her former self.
She was also profusely apologetic over our falling out, saying her medications had gotten out of balance (I hadn't even known she was taking them at the time).
But, after that, I never saw her again. She went to London and committed suicide there. I never knew the exact circumstances, but this time it was her father who called me.
He flew me over to attend her funeral. We were the only two people there besides the Minister, the chauffer and two people I assumed were bodyguards.
As it turned out, her brother had killed himself as a teenager. Her father told me that over dinner as he reminisced. She had never even told me that she had a brother.
The whole experience was so painful to me (in truth, now I know that I had been in love with her all long) that I kept all the photos of her in a box pushed under a bookcase.
But I recently learned that her father died. After the funeral I lost touch with him. Apparently a lot of his wealth was based on illicit arms dealing, and the politics of Brazil turned against him. He died mentally and financially broken.
With his death I pulled out the photos of my grecos girl, and remembered.

The Things I Keep

The fog was rolling into San Francisco Bay.
I looked into her brown eyes.
"I want to live life without illusions," I told her.
"Without hope, there's heartbreak," she said.
"All my friends are getting divorced," I said.
"The women wised up," she said.
"What are you feeling?" I asked.
Her mouth moved but I heard seagulls mocking me
as the lighthouse on Alcatraz Island winked.
--

After she left me two years ago I started sleeping on the couch in my living room, leaving the television on.
She had told me that she was going to teach art history at Stanford. But, I heard that instead she was in a short-lived punk band called the Stool Pigeons.
They had one big hit in Japan.
Every so often, the phone rings and the number reads "restricted" or "unknown". I never answer to maintain the illusion that its her calling.
She hasn't left a message yet.
--

Her art books are still in a plastic container in my closet.
I've held off on selling her oversize monograph on Pintorrichio by Ricci and her collection of first edition Araki. Her Ann Geddes photo books are tucked away too, babies pending birth.
Since she's left I've gone back to eating ravioli out of a can.
I left her photo up in my kitchen, but behind the cereal boxes.
I wonder if someday she'll knock on my door.
I imagine that I'd casually say, "hey, how's it going?"
I see the monograph sells for upward of $700 on Amazon.
Her smile is still worth more.

How to Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

As I've written in earlier posts on this topic, the greatest challenge facing the adult survivor of child sex abuse is receiving empathy from others. Untrained people to whom the survivor reaches out will most definitely respond in the least helpful ways imaginable, throwing the survivor into tremendous despair.

Indeed, the survivor needs to be prepared to be mocked, ridiculed and even spurned by people they trust if they open up to them about their past abuse. In the best case scenario, the survivor will be given platitudes. This is not because these people are heartless (although it feels like it to the survivor) but because, as explained in earlier posts, there is an appalling ignorance about the reality of the impact of abuse.

There are numerous books dealing with abuse and its impact on the survivor. Most are psychological studies. Some are quite good. However, to truly understand the impact of abuse, it is necessary to understand that it is trauma. Often the adult survivor is experiencing the trauma as they finally come to terms with the long repressed feelings and memories.

If you are a survivor, or if you wish to understand the impact of trauma on a survivor, a book I highly recommend is Healing Trauma, edited by Marion Solomon and Daniel Siegel. Excerpts of the book are at this link:

http://books.google.com/books?id=kTrd29tfupIC&pg=PA282&lpg=PA282&dq=daniel+j+siegel+healing+trauma&source=web&ots=YM6fxfQ4le&sig=8q1tLkKnN6RUfoCqP_TSmvl_3bw&hl=en#PPP1,M1



The importance of this book is that it explains how trauma impacts a survivor's brain. In other words, the difficulties that survivors face with attachment and trust as a consequence of the trauma are physically manifested in the survivor's brain (there is much research that suggests that the brain can be properly rewired with the correct cognitive therapy).

The most cruel thing a person can do to a survivor who reaches out for empathy is to cut off all contact with them - yet this is often what happens because the survivor has lost all sense of boundaries and in reaching out, grasping for empathy they essentially overstay their emotional welcome.

While cognitive therapy is important to teach the survivor about appropriate boundaries, other therapeutic techniques, such as visualization, can be critical to rewire the brain. This is important so that the survivor begins to process his/her experience in a balanced way. Just as many survivors are abandoned by those they reach out to with trust, often the survivor withdraws into a pattern of isolation which is a familiar defense to dealing with trauma.

It greatly pains me to think of people I knew who told me that they had suffered child sex abuse and I had no sensitivity as to their plight ("oh, I'm sorry", I might have said, and left it at that. To have said anymore would have meant facing my own buried experiences of abuse. My response, however, was undoubtedly deeply painful and definitely unhelpful to the survivor who had briefly opened up the door of trust to me).

A person who has suffered trauma processes information (absent therapy) differently from how a person does who has not experienced trauma. I look back to the extraordinary insensitivity of my words and actions (perhaps minimizing the survivor's experience), completely ignorant that what impact they might have on a survivor.

When I finally came to terms with my own trauma, the shoe was reversed as people responded in ways they may have thought normal but which i found deeply cruel and insensitive. My processing of information was as a trauma victim which was based on the wiring of my mind. I continued to reach out to friends for empathy and for many this was to their continued annoyance and exasperation ("get over it!").

For full healing the survivor definitely needs professional guidance because untrained persons simply aren't capable of giving empathy. However, most professionals are lopsided in their training, emphasizing one approach at the expense of others. I believe a survivor should consult with a therapist experienced in neuroscience and learn how their brain has been impacted by the trauma.

This understanding is the first step towards rewiring the brain, a critical part of healing trauma. For a person who knows a survivor and who wants to understand them, this is the book to start with. Healing the experience of child abuse means healing trauma.

DC Photobook

I Love To Sketch In MoleSkin Sketchbooks

A Poem

I Went to Church by Thomas Circle

The groundhog runs around the tree...

Have faith, the minister says,
Tithe,
Have faith, the minister says,

The groundhog runs into the hole...

There's Alan; hi Alan
How many wives have you beaten?
Did you beat your wife today, Alan?

The groundhog runs out the other side...

Godisnowhere? the minister asks,
Give,
Godisnowhere, the minister says,

The groundhog runs around the tree...

There's John; hi John
How many boys have you raped?
Did you rape a boy today, John?

It is finished.

A Poem

Single To Date

heading home on the number 42

the seat is free

next to the mod chick,

yellow gogo boots and a

star wrist tattoo,

chirping on her cellphone 'cause

i guess that's what the kids do

on the number 42.

"he said he really messed up and wants

another chance,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"but I'm waiting for my results.....std,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"so, I'm going to wait because its

too weird to talk about in an email,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"i told him,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"I'm not sure I'm ready for a relationship,

and didn't you figure that out when I was drunk

and yelling at you?"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"I'd like to get together,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

"except that I can never trust him again,"

she told her cellphone

and me,

and then getting up

she said

(to her cellphone

and me),

"I just wanted your read

because I think I've been pretty messed up,"

and she left,

and she never looked at me;

she just told me,

and you,

and the number 42

DC Photobook

How to Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

Despite the pervasiveness of child sex abuse in the world it is essentially a taboo topic. Why?

I have two theories. First, people find it too painful to look into their own lives which are blindly complicit in the abuse. Second, this complicity rewires brains to reinforce this deliberate blindness.

____________

To begin with, who is the pedophile? There is an excellent book I think every person should read called The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, which holds at least part of the answer. The conventional wisdom is that a sociopath is an extreme case that we read about in the news when a serial killer strikes. According to Stout, however, these are simply the extremes on the scale in terms of sociopaths. In fact, about 35% of society is comprised of sociopaths to varying degrees who express themselves in a range of ways.

The basic definition of a sociopath is someone without conscience. I believe that it stands to reason that sex offenders are all sociopaths. The sociopath can't be rehabilitated and forgiveness is irrelevant: this is their personal makeup (this is why our justice system is so ineffective since it is by and large premised on the concept of rehabilitation of criminals).

Considering my first theory (that "normal" people are blindly complicit in the abuse of the sex offender making the topic taboo) I think we need to start by recognizing that it is generally taboo to discuss the sociopath as sex offender while society seems to have little problem discussing other sociopaths (thieves, serial killers, conartists, for example).

_____________________

The reason for this dichotomy is institutional complicity which leads to personal complicity (this institutional complicity, for example, does not exist in connection with the acts of other sociopaths at institutions. Note for instance that VA Tech has been quick to offer a settlement to families of victims of that insane sociopath student. Most claims of victims of sex abuse, on the other hand, come years after the fact and our legal system favors abusers over victims through unfavorable statutes of limitations and case law).

_____________________________________

Theory 1: Normal People Are Complicit in the Abuse, Making the Topic Taboo

It makes sense that so many child sex abusers are found in institutions such as schools and churches: the sociopath as sex offender is looking for crimes of opportunity and where children are, opportunities present themselves. Although these institutions have been legally motivated in the last couple of decades (in the US, at least) to report instances of child sex abuse, when it comes to civil claims by the victims, the institutions generally fight viciously against the victims. Here the law is often on their side, since statutes of limitations favor abusers over victims.

Since presumably the heads of schools and institutions are not all sociopaths themselves (statistically only a third of them are) why would they place a cold hearted defense of their institutions above accepting a minimal responsibility for the victims in their midst (victims who exist often due to the institutions' own negligence in supervision)?

The answer, I think, is that as much as people like to believe they are free agents when it comes to morality, they are essentially moral cowards reacting to their institutional mandates. Therefore, the head of a church would take, for instance, a fiduciary duty (a legal duty) to protect the assets of the church over a common sense (but moral) duty of compensating a victim.

Defense lawyers, of course, are the worst in this area of blind complicity. In relentlessly defending child sex abusers and the institutions that were negligent, the defense lawyer rationalizes that he/she is simply giving the best defense possible, which is how our legal system works.

Unless the defense lawyer is a sociopath, I find it hard to believe that internally they can accept this logic. Still, they live with this rationalization because it pays very well. In other words, they too are blindly complicit in the child sex abuse.

These acts of both deliberate and blind complicity ripple through society, reinforcing the taboo nature of child sex abuse. If heads of institutions and their defense lawyers stripped away their rationalizations for reality, their complicity would likely result in nervous breakdowns ... and a loss in income.

________________________________________________________

Theory 2: This Complicity is reinforced by Rewiring of Our Brains

Jeffrey Schwartz, a neuroscientist at UCLA, has written a hugely important book on the neoplasticity of the mind. Essentially, his research indicates that our thoughts have the impact of rewiring our brain. This rewiring reinforces the thoughts. His main work has been with obsessive-compulsives and his treatment is for them to use visualization to rewire their minds.

Consider, if heads of institutions and defense lawyers are all rationalizing their behavior in fighting adult survivors of child sex abuse, they are not just thinking a certain way but are in fact rewiring their minds into an entrenched position. In effect, they can't see the forest from the trees and the more they stay in their rationalizations the less likely they will ever emerge.

This reality of the brain-mind makes it all the more difficult to break the taboo against child sex abuse, because blind complicity becomes hardwired.

Consider this article in the Washington Post about the efforts to rewrite the DC statute of limitations on civil recovery from child sex abuse:

___________________

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102320.html

_________________

The article quotes Kevin T. Baine, a lawyer apparently opposed to survivor rights (he thinks them to be unreasonable). I know nothing about Mr. Baine and assume that he is a good person but like so many defense lawyers I think he is taking a position based not on what is morally right; this is no different from many lawyers and is the reality of our adversarial legal system.

______________

In my opinion, his position goes against all common morality and a basic understanding of the horrible reality of child sex abuse, yet he defends child sex abusers seemingly without concern about the moral implications of his arguments (and his apparent success in presenting them). I suspect if he were to look at the moral truth of his actions he would have a breakdown. I have nothing against Mr. Baine but simply use him as an example: he imay very well be a good person but is, in my opinion, simply like the thousands of others who are blindly complicit in child sex abuse by defending a system that puts victims second to abusers and the institutions that protect them. The result is that the real tragedy of child sex abuse is perpetuated as a taboo topic because it becomes entrenched in litigation and adversary. The legal system victimizes victims once more.

A Poem

consumer and consumed,

andy was your father and baby;

glamour and shit nourished you,

as you starved,

a black hole,

and dylan crushed your soul;

you were all of us

but better.

DC Photobook

How to Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

This article is in no way intended to offer legal advice and I am not qualified to do so - contact a lawyer in your jurisdiction for guidance.

If you follow the news even casually, you've probably noticed from time to time reports of adults, often in their late thirties or early forties, claiming abuse that happened decades earlier when they were children. Often the news article indicates that the survivor has taken legal action against the person or institution they hold responsible. This has raised two questions in my mind: 1) why did it take so long for the survivor to come forward and 2) what are the odds of success that the survivor will receive justice?

_________________

1. Why did it take the survivor so long to come forward? I will answer this question from my own perspective based on my own experiences. The reason child sex abuse is such an insidious crime is that the perpetrator has so much emotional leverage over the victim.

Frequently, (although obviously not always) the abuser is an esteemed member of the community: a minister, priest, coach, or teacher. As a result, if the victim publicly exposes the abuser the victim exposes him/herself to disbelief. The fear of the victim is that they will be left in an even more vulnerable position afterwards, where the abuser then seeks to take out revenge (for instance, I was threatened with being killed by my abuser).

Also, the victim is very often a child who comes from a dysfunctional family (leaving them unsupervised and exposed to predators); because of this, the victim, often placed in a perverse position of protecting the fragile emotions of the adults around them, fears exposure would cause undue emotional distress to his/her family and so endures the abuse.

Related to this, the victim often is from a family with such emotional turmoil that they have no reason to believe that they have someone they can reach out to. In fact the abuser more often than not is some sort of substitute family figure; to turn that person in would mean losing the one person who has been perceived as a caretaker.

In addition, the victim may feel a great deal of shame at the violation and their powerlessness, keeping them from coming forward.

Finally, as with me, many victims do try to reach out to adults who then take no action to address the traumatic impact of the abuse. There may be many reasons for this which I will explore in a future article.

The end result is that under any of these scenarios (and there are likely many more) the victim lives on in silence, suppressing the abuse and unaware of the debilitating impact it has had in his/her life, until.....

adulthood.
_____________
Why is the trauma finally confronted? Again, I can only relate to personal experiences here.

The most consistent and predictable impact of child sex abuse on an adult is difficulty in trusting others to develop meaningful relationships. I look back at my abuse now and see the clear impact. But it wasn't clear throughout my twenties and thirties. Because I had to figure it all out on my own and was dealing with horrible and long suppressed, painful memories, the moment of recognition took time. For me, it was the end of a particularly meaningful relationship, one which I ended for no reason at all with someone I was deeply in love with; I say "no reason at all" but now I know there was a reason. I associated love with pain. While I was being violently assaulted against my will the abuser kept repeating how much he loved me.

The great horror of realization was to see that the impact of that person decades earlier was still an overwhelming influence in my life. That compelled me to take action and finally confront the past and to deal with it. I was in my early forties.
_____________
2) My understanding is that recourse in child sex abuse cases is governed by state statutes. This web site lists a number of states and gives the statutes for each:

http://www.smith-lawfirm.com/statutestable.html

As an example, I have cut and pasted the statute from Washington DC below:

The D.C. statute of limitations for personal injury actions provides that an action must be brought within three years "from the time the right to maintain the action accrues." D.C. Code § 12-301 (1995). If the victim is a minor when the injury occurs, he or she may bring the action within three years of his/her eighteenth birthday. D.C. Code § 12-302 (a)(1) (1995).

As you can see from the statute, by a strict reading of it, any adult over 21 years old would be out of luck in seeking redress for sex abuse that happened while a child. Case law in the District (as cited to in the link above) may offer some distinctions. However, the statute is certainly not friendly (in my opinion) to adult survivors of child sex abuse. Because our legal system is adversarial, I think it likely that this statute gives defense lawyers a strong hook to battle survivors of child sex abuse in favor of the abusers.

My understanding is that one reason many of the Catholic Archdioceses settled lawsuits wasn't because they felt they had to in any legal sense; rather the suits were seen as bad public relations and settling them was viewed as the best public relations policy.

Given the reality of the adult survivor of child sex abuse - that they often don't confront it or know how to deal with it (to reclaim power in their lives) until they are adults - it seems to me that state statutes like the one for Washington DC are both unfriendly to survivors and unrealistic social policy.

I propose the DC statue be modified, a tall order but one I plan to explore further.

DC Photobook

How to Help Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

For adult survivors of child abuse there is a paradox: any normal person opposes child abuse and yet normal people don't want to hear about it either. As a child, when I tried to report sex abuse I was, in my mind, treated by the adults like a criminal (blamed and not helped). Thirty-odd years later I finally confronted the past and reached out to people who I most believed in, but the result was anything but supportive.

As it turns out, there is nothing surprising about this. In fact, the adult experiences of survivors of child abuse are remarkably similar. Luckily, I eventually discovered, as an adult, the DC Rape Crisis Center, which likely saved both my sanity and my life. The truth is, only trained professionals can offer empathy, and I was fortunate to discover that the center offers both counseling and a support group for adult survivors (for both males and for females).

Typically, if an adult survivor confides in someone that they have been sexually abused as a child, and asks for guidance and compassion in confronting the past, the response will be an awkward acknowledgment and a quick shifting of the subject. If the survivor is re-experiencing the trauma (as happens when it is finally confronted as an adult) the survivor may persist in trying to get empathy. Most likely, this will be a fruitless effort because as with other deeply personal and taboo topics, generally, only a person who has had professional counseling experience can offer empathy. It is confusing to finally reach out and trust another person only to find they don't understand (nor perhaps care) and the survivor, who has had all sense of boundaries destroyed by the abuse, can't see that by persisting in trying to gain empathy they are violating conventional boundaries of social interaction. The consequences can be disastrous.

If an adult survivor tells you that they are confronting childhood abuse, you don't need to treat them as crazy, as a pariah, as a social misfit (a common reaction); you can help the person very easily by referring them to the DC Rape Crisis Center (or the rape crisis center in your area). It never occurred to me that they offer counseling to support victims of past sex abuse but they do (I found them through CraigsList).

Before I received help from the DC Rape Crisis Center my life was one of near total social isolation and sabotaged relationships (I didn't think I deserved to be happy). This is typical of survivors, but to the "normal" person, their perception is that the survivor is simply antisocial. In fact, more often than not, the exact opposite is true, but the survivor doesn't know how to reach out because the reactions of adults and friends is to essentially shame the survivor.

The greatest tragedy for me is to look back on relationships that were valuable to me and to see that I undermined them by creating emotional distance because of feeling that I didn't deserve happiness and because of a distrust of emotions. It is a terrible remorse to carry, to realize that my life has had so many lost connections. As a result of the trauma of having been an abuse victim I became increasingly introverted, when I was simply waiting for one person to ask me why I was so quiet. Not one person ever did.

When, as an adult many years later, I finally reached out to people I believed in, their responses were completely unsupportive. As I was finally confronting the long suppressed abuse thirty-odd years after it occurred, I decided I needed to trust (a huge step for an abuse victim to take) and reached out (very emotionally) to three people who I emotionally believed in and who I greatly respected because of their progressive values (which I share). I asked them for their help in confronting this terrible past. Their responses ranged from mocking disdain to total indifference.

I've since learned from other survivors that this reaction is not only typical but predictable. The biggest mistake an abuse survivor can make is to reach out to untrained people for support and guidance because more often than not they are emotionally unable to respond constructively or compassionately.

I realize now it is not because they aren't kind people; it is because in general people can't handle the horrible reality of abuse and have no idea how to respond when a survivor asks for their help. In my neediness for support I totally ignored that they too may have their own abuse issues they have never confronted, and it may be too emotionally stressful for them to confront their own memories by acknowledging the survivor's story.

There may also be cultural issues involved as well. For instance, I was told - by Hispanics - that child abuse is very repressed and under-reported in Hispanic culture due to the overwhelming influence of the church, making dealing with it and confronting it particularly problematic. Thrusting my own trauma on someone in that context was simply unfair to them.

A support group and counseling are critical for the survivor to process the trauma and move forward. If an adult survivor asks to confide in you about their past child sex abuse, rather than pushing them away you can offer help simply by giving them this number: 202-333-RAPE.

http://www.dcrcc.org/home.htm

A Poem

soulmate

Royal Palace, nor Cheetah’s too, have nothing on you, George. They can call you anything they want: Mr. Ed, Mary Anne, and Magnificently Ugly; but you helped heal my scars from my sweetie's blade, from my mockingbird cloaked in illusion and Hogwarts ivy.

When she carved up my heart and ate it in a stew I was, like you, in total shock too (since she had told me she was a vegetarian). So, George, thanks for sharing your story too (how Spencer raped your soul and you became unglued but still you kept writing him because you believed, even after he was mocking, telling his friends that your pussy smelled, you believed) because you saw something he couldn’t (a heroic possibility). And like you, I believed in her too, even while she chewed and carved, entertaining the gallery. So, beautiful George Elliot (Mary Anne), I’ll keep believing, even as her cuts and stabs run deep, because I know what they don’t: that the Diamond Cabaret and Tabu have nothing on you.

(copyright w)

A Poem

thank you


I got on the bus
/ at Quarry Road / my mind entrenched in the misery / in this senseless existence/ days, weeks, months, silently asking (again and again, over and over): how could it have happened, no one caring when they knew? How could they have turned away when I reached out, a criminal for reporting a crime? Is the interval between two notes/ always to be/ anxiety?

A mile from my stop/ an overburdened mother snapped awake/ baby in one arm/ bag in another/ Smurfette and Spiderman (or two tots)/ half-asleep on either side/ “Hurry! Hurry!” /a crowd boarded/ she tried, she pushed, she wished, struggling to exit against the tide of flesh/ when crayons of every color spilled out from the Smurfette/ large eyes, long hair, brown skin, panic/ crayons rolling under seats/ under shoes/ mother rolling away, in a tide of flesh/ the crowd gingerly stepping over and around/ pastel colors on the sticky floor/ lost not found/ as the Smurfette made her choice/ to follow the safety net/ tears welling up in her eyes/ colors left to die;

The circumstances of my world hadn’t changed; my sweetie the baroness detested me/ my banker broke me/ my broker robbed me/ my lender foreclosed me/ Old Joe betrayed me/ my boss demoted me/ my religion left me/ Reed crucified me/ my teacher raped me/ my dog bit me/ my song died on me/ my children never met me/ my hair abandoned me/ my ideas sabotaged me/ my love sunk me/ my fear cowed me/ my disease disfigured me/ my lawyer subpoenaed me/ my step-mother spiked me/ my grandfather disowned me/ my father derailed me/ my tears dried up on me;

Jumping up/ gathering up/ crayons, crayons, crayons, eraser/ crawling, reaching, beseeching: driver wait!/ pushing/ excusing/ moving through/ and offering the pile of colors to the Smurfette/ knowing then what I hadn’t: even if they can’t understand/ still I can be free/
I had gotten off the bus.

(copyright w)

*partially inspired by the great R. S. Gwynn