I’ve had plenty on my mind since I last blogged an entry here but have busied myself with other things, physical work and continued artistic pursuits mixed in with smoking some mellow grass in the evenings gifted to me and reminding me of the old days, to avoid writing about any of it. However, a tweet authored by @fugioutliberem regarding the ghastly and newly enacted surgical castration law in Louisiana stirred a certain sort of emotion within me this morning related to an incident from my adolescence I have been thinking about recently-
Her phrasing of “cowards and reality deniers who isolate truth tellers” resonated with me so much I finally cried about this memory this morning. It’s been a long time coming and it felt necessary. Isolated as I may be for taking on many challenges in my life in pursuit of justice, I count my blessings, and always think forward to the next I can affect in some way. My little-big cat, the innocent little soul she is, huddled close as I shed some tears, then she relaxed on one of her many loungers as I read some more chapters of 2666 aloud to her. (Though after reading one sentence that spanned four pages, I now recall why I failed to finish it the last two times I cracked it open. I tried to move on to some of Chekhov’s short stories, but she is not interested. I really think she likes epically long stories better. But anyway.)
Over 30 years ago, I entered into junior high along with my classmates I had learned to read, write, and curse with since we were very young, housed in the same old two-story red brick building as the high schoolers. It was coming up on 100 years of age at that time and has since been torn down, but it lives on in my mind. Despite its age, it was the most modern building I had spent a majority of my time in until that point in my life, and maybe since. A leafy outdoor campus to the north exit of the school guided us to the separate building housing the art studio, mechanics and wood shop, and gymnasium. I have fond memories of it. The interior hallway floors were shellacked in baby blue epoxy finish and the stone-solid textured walls were painted to match, surrounding the rows of lockers installed as needed. The classroom walls were sturdy, and each room was furnished with a radiator and eventually some type of AC unit, largely unique to each style of classroom but in a way that didn’t seem cheap or hastily installed.
The first floor consisted of the large home economics classroom, administrative offices, the auditorium regularly used for choir and vocal classes, a presentation room with graduated flooring usually reserved for literary readings and discussion or smaller band ensemble rehearsals, a small practice gymnasium, and the guidance counselor’s office. The lattermost was thoughtfully put together and comforting in its institutional way. There was a small entrance the counselor would greet visitors in that led to the counseling room with plenty of comfortable seating and lamps that casted softer light upon the counseled and our patient counselor, Mr. S, than the buzzing, blinding florescent lights above. Beyond that, he had a small office to himself with a door he usually kept open which he didn’t mind leaving if someone walked into the main room without an appointment or an official greeting. It’s not that I regularly visited his office, but I had an urgent need to speak with him as a newly minted junior-higher and the softness and welcoming atmosphere certainly left an impression on me when I approached him with a sensitive subject my best friend told me about the night before.
My bff at the time, M, had shown me a lot throughout our childhood though she may have been thought of as provincial. Her father was a successful generational farmer and rancher, mostly keeping to himself, reserved, but good natured and concerned with her upbringing in a way most fathers I knew were not with their daughters. He taught her to braid her long sandy blond hair, particularly the “French braid” and its variants, so that she could do it on her own, and in turn she taught me her methods that I still use to this day on occasion. Her parents were divorced, her mother living with her new husband only miles away but with whom M didn’t have much interest in at all, and she didn’t speak to that interest or disinterest that I can recall. We roamed her property and surrounding creeks and sandy dunes one might not think of even existing in our area of the great plains by way of ATVs, and rode our bikes so, so many miles up and down dirt roads in search of new-to-us natural formations we had not happened upon before.
Her father eventually married again as we approached puberty, and both of us were frankly quite shocked at his choice of partner. He had a rugged and handsome dark complexion, tall and lean as farmers come, and J, his new love interest, could be described as a sort of toasty marshmallow of a person who didn’t seem to “match” him too much, in our adolescent minds. Her lack of a chin that gave her sort of a slack jawed look immediately annoyed me, surrounded by her permed chin-length mousy brown hair, and she seemed to only be able to voice communication by slurring her speech, as if you could visualize a rough, tumbling formation of her words as she spoke them, though she was as sober as a deacon. She did her best to involve herself in M’s extracurricular activities with measured resistance from M. She tolerated her because she loved her dad so much, but that was as far as her affection went for her new step mother as things got off to a somewhat rocky start.
Houses were more communal back then. Neighbors and friends, neighbor-friends, family immediate and distant, came and went to borrow this or that or simply share the latest news, big and small. Local, national, world-scale. So it was not out of the ordinary to have a blend of several folks over on any given night, ambling about the farmhouses as if they regularly lived there too. This environment made it easy for J’s father to slip into M’s room at night and begin to molest her. He felt down her legs and buttocks and tried to touch her genitals, with M freezing and trying to “play dead” or at least seem sound asleep so he would leave. M did not allow this to go on for long; I truly believe it was only after his second groping session that she told me what happened. Alarmed and scared for my friend, I went to Mr. S on my own before consulting anyone else.
I admired Mr. S very much. He was a slender man, not slight, with sunken, searching eyes that surely had seen a lot and that contributed to a melancholy presence yet it was obvious he was knowing and curious, and in spite of how he could be stereotyped, he was approachable and very kind. He was an attentive listener, careful to fully take in what you said and the air around you before offering an answer or suggestion, and as much as the jockish boys our age would make fun of him for being a “pussy” or whatever, I’m glad he was our counselor. If he was standing outside his offices during breaks between classes, he would approach students in an individualized, gentle manner maintaining stealthily guarded privacy despite the surrounding clamor and mad dashing to inquire about the little things other educators might have overlooked.
Mr. S took my concerns seriously and asked me to bring in M to speak with her alone. I had not told her I was going to him, worried that her somewhat stubborn individualist nature would try to keep me from reporting on what I saw as her step-grandfather’s increasingly sexually violent behavior. But she did meet with him without protest. I think she was relieved and knew that I was going to fight for her regardless of own feelings about herself. After their consultation, Mr. S set up a time to speak with her father, J, and M. M wanted me along for support and Mr. S thought that would be helpful. So we five sat in the comfy seating surrounded by the glow of the lamps, and Mr. S somberly looked on as he encouraged M to tell her parents everything that happened. Her father’s head sunk into his shoulders then tilted down, and he grimaced as he silently wept a little and attempted to hide his tears. J on the other hand scoffed in seeming disbelief as her nearly nonexistent chin recessed further into her neck, as if she was surprised the grocery clerk had rejected an expired coupon.
The good thing is that the consensus in the room forced J to take some amount of accountability for bringing a man into M’s life who had harmed her. Perhaps his abuse of M then was indicative of some of J’s past that caused parts of her to fold into herself and robbed her of the natural confidence others normally carry in their voices. I don’t know. But through her disbelief, feigned or just simply caused by denial that he would try such things on M, she agreed to end her father’s visits to their home. It took a little time, and M went to stay with her mother for a while until the matter was settled. That chapter was closed for me at that point, what else was there for a worried 12 year old to do? and as far as I knew, things improved for M on the newly-expanded family front. She started to accompany J to more social gatherings and such and developed a better relationship with her as time went on. J soon gave birth to a daughter, and M loved being involved with the baby. I didn’t hear of any further offenses, but it’s doubtful that law enforcement was involved in a way that meant anything materially.
So that story was reality realized, to a degree. But what breaks my heart about it is how M handled her feelings and trauma in social settings with her peers as we moved on to high school and adulthood. With that in her bag of experiences we all have along with the constant pressure from above to shape us into things we don’t want to be, maybe she had no choice. Being sort of a late bloomer myself, at least physically, I found it easy to fall into fashion trends that accentuated my development. M was not a fan and called me a slut to my face- she was angry with me. We drifted to different friend groups, and I was pretty saddened by her accusations and gossip so I mostly severed the relationship after being called names. However, she married one of her high school sweethearts not long after we graduated and expected me to be her maid of honor which I agreed to, but I was unable to do much in the pre-ceremony celebrations as I was away at college, having to be transported hours back and forth to essentially make an appearance. It made me feel somewhat objectified with regard to our history as she quickly rushed off with her new husband after the reception without much catching up happening between us. Regardless, she counted on me again and I was there. Of course I knew she had more pressing issues and didn’t mean to dominate her time, but it still strikes me as kind of odd.
We haven’t really kept up since then. We had that CIA-sponsored digital connection for a while, but after seeking me out and “friending” me, she would not engage with me as an old friend, someone I once thought I knew, and I gave up after a while. I do know that she divorced the sweetheart after several years of marriage but then remarried him, and that she is in pretty deep with vet charitable acts in part due to her embrace of a weird jingoistic patriotism that wasn’t really impressed upon on our generation in the masscult. That’s not to say there isn’t a kneejerk reaction to the more finely ingrained tenets of american nationalism among my graduating class, but flags and anthems are tacky and “boomer”ish – it’s a little easier to hide now, just say you want to bomb Syria because of what the VOA said Assad is doing to children and it’s as good as chanting “USA, USA”. For M’s part, she may have adopted that MAGA-Ron Paul sort of libertarianism that tells us it’s “against national interests” to have men stationed overseas fighting “forever wars”. I’m not really sure, but I have a feeling the names she would lodge against me will have moved on from adolescent sexual shaming to something something bolshevik if we had a real discussion about our political development.
Oh, but I should give her some credit for organizing a class reunion I had no real intention on ever going to where we were invited to meet and throw axes at a bar. Even if I had been in a radius of 1000 miles, I would not have gone. I do not want to meet the majority of my former classmates where real, sharp axes are thrown for entertainment. No thank you.
The avid defense of vets because they are vets is an unfortunate development for M, in my opinion. Every other case involving sexual assault and murderous violence I look into has at its root an american military veteran offender or suspect. I don’t know if there is a tabulation of all the vet offenders in the US, but I’m guessing it’s a lot. I wouldn’t say the majority, but the worst facts come from cases with military veteran offenders. Rape and murder are the goals of empire and a soldier can never “go home” – home is where the violence is bred. In a world working toward justice, american soldiers who saw action would be remanded to the courts of the countries they previously occupied to face the music. Here, they can wander around wherever they want basically, often supported by a massive welfare state within the state. There is something that should be done to protect society, and maybe cutting their nuts off is a step toward that – only kinda kidding. At any rate, any solution proposed by the bourgeois state to protect children will only harm those who were added to registries and exploited for slave labor due to the impoverishment programs that prevented them from ever dreaming or seeing beyond their circumstances. The fascistically state-trained predators skate on by and wreak havoc on generations.
kariflack 