That One Track

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My subject is: How would you rewrite one chapter of your childhood? Not your whole childhood - just one chapter.

It was submitted by: http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

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I’ve never really thought of my life in divided chapters. I’m more the kind of person who has a chronological life soundtrack—a list of songs meant to be played back to back preferably on vinyl or cassette tape that tell, at least to me, my life story. Said soundtrack would mostly certainly be the score to a film about my life and definitely has a few songs I am completely embarrassed to admit ever listening to. What life would be complete without a few *ahem* or maybe a multitude of embarrassments, guilty pleasures, bad choices, and lessons learned?

After so long thinking about life in the songs that accompany the times, it’s really rather difficult to consider my childhood or my life at all as chapters in a larger story, and it becomes more difficult still to divide my childhood up at all. It’s a blur of mostly negative flashbacks, fuzzy images that really fail to tell the entire story because, for complex reasons, my brain felt it best to forget most of it. Can that sort of memory-blur be divided into distinctive patches that combine to make the whole quilt? It seems impossible.

But can I pick out a moment, a song perhaps, to cut away, to delete, or rewrite without disrupting the flow of the soundtrack itself? Can I remove a moment, an event, or make a change without altering who I am? For the longest time, I would have said it’s impossible to take away anything I’ve gone through and still end up with the me that I know today as the final product, and as someone who is pretty fucking ecstatic about who I am, the idea that I wouldn’t be me at all anymore has always given me pause about making a change. I realize we aren’t defined by what has happened to us, but those events alter how we see the world, how we cope, our reactions and politics. So much of who we are depends on how we perceive and deal with what we have gone through and how we eventually cope or don’t with those things.

But…

In the last few years, I have really started to wonder when posed this sort of question how I might fare without ever having been raped at 13. I have written about my thoughts on rape and rape culture extensively, and I know that, for the most part, I have dealt with the whole of it really well, but who would I be if I could just take that one thing back? My virginity was literally stolen from me by someone I called a friend. I lost my innocence on the dingy carpet in my own house. My own fucking house. The person I would have been without that betrayal died that night, and I can’t help wondering who that girl would have been. Could she have been better at relationships? Could she trust people? Let the walls down? Could she be anxiety free? Would she be able to answer the door when she’s home alone without having a panic attack? Would she be more social and able to leave home without feeling overwhelmed, clammy, and on edge?

I have never been able to know what it’s like to love innocently, to be able to be with another human being without the shadow of knowing what it’s like to have my own body stolen from me. For all of my teens and entire adulthood, I’ve lived with the weight of guilt and shame, with the anger and anxiety that comes from being a rape victim. So much of my time and energy has been spent on battling those demons, on coping and dealing and overcoming. Such a huge part of who I am has been molded by that one night, by just a few unforgettable, life-changing moments.

So, yeah, I love the person I am now even with the baggage, the scars, and the anxiety, but if I could reach into the past and just rip that night right out like so much garbage, like a bonus track that never really fit into the soundtrack anyway, I think I might like to know the woman who would have lived without it, the version of me that wasn’t killed that night. I’m sure she’d be pretty damn rad.  

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Here are the links to the other contributions this month:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/08/secret-subject-swap-no-glinda-here.html

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2016/08/location-location-location.html
Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/08/august-secret-subject-swap-pets.html
Sparkly Poetic Weirdo http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

When I Grow Up http://kimberlyyavorski.com/whenigrowup/working-on-the-bucket-list/

Evil Joy Speaks http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com

Closing Arguments

“Morality isn’t an absolute, you see. For me, having premarital sex at any age is immoral, but I realize not everyone sees it that way…”

Jenna watches the rotund attorney pacing before the jury while his hands gesture wildly in the air. She knows without a doubt that she is watching a performance piece. This man with his baritone voice drilling into the minds of the mostly white, mostly male jury was an actor delivering his final monologue in an incredibly dark play about what happens when women say no.

She has yet to figure out if she, the victim, is the hero in this for having the bravery to prosecute this thing, to take it all the way, or if the man sitting at the defendant’s table, a friend of a friend she met at a frat party, would come out the lovable antihero. It seems that if the bigmouthed dick of an attorney has his way, it will be the latter.

“Was it moral for Ms. Banks to flirt like a dog in heat with my client the night the two of them met as witnesses here today have testified to?”

Did he really just fucking say that? Surely she is in some nightmare universe? Did she time travel back to the 50s unawares?

“Was it moral for her to send him gratuitous pictures of her person via Facebook which we have in evidence if you recall?”

She feels a confusing mix of rage and hate rising up in her chest like black, tarry poison. The adrenaline rushes her system like a sumo wrestler threatening to bounce her out of her seat screaming unintelligible obscenities that juxtapose her smart gray pinstriped suit and sleek, conservative blonde bun.

“Did Ms. Banks show any shred of morality when my client took her out to dinner, and she, as she testified here today herself, had sex with him in the restaurant bathroom?!”

Rage gives way to absolute disbelief. The last few days have been stressful, anxious but still so busy she hadn’t had time to listen to everyone and everthing. It had been like a pin pong match with so many back and forths and this and that and arguing, but now this man, this wretched, portly demon with fangs dripping acid, was all she could hear. This. She hangs her head at the realization that this is what she has fought so hard for—to be on trial herself for her own assault.

“Was it morality that drove Ms. Banks to meet up with my client in his room, HIS ROOM, to Neflix and chill as the kids say? Or was it her insatiable sex drive, that unrepentant lack of morality, that same void that led her into that grimy restaurant bathroom to commit an act that should only happen between husband and wife?”

Tears roll down her cheeks, a product of anger and shame, but the verbal onslaught continues even as her ears darken to a deeper shade of red. Several members of the jury look her way, women shaking their heads and men with a smugness that makes her skin crawl.

“I think we can all agree that it wasn’t morality that drove my client to have sexual intercourse with Ms. Banks in that restaurant bathroom. Morality wasn’t what drove my client to invite her back to his residence even after that bathroom incident. In fact, I think you’ll agree that Ms. Banks’ lack of morality spoke to that lascivious part of my client forcing him to abandon any morality he might have had himself.”

Numb. That’s how she feels. Numb, void, nothing. Everyone told her to just forget it. That it wasn’t worth this. 2 of her friends had been assaulted themselves and never did anything about it, and she had thought they were just too weak, too soft to handle it, but now she knows… Now she knows they were just avoiding the obliteration of any faith in humanity they had left.

“But does abandoning morality to be with an equally moral person make my client a rapist? It seems to me, and I hope you will agree, that at no time did Ms. Banks every refuse any of his advances and, in fact, as testimony has shown, she was quite forward from the start. What I need you all to ask yourselves today is why on Earth would my client have to take anything from Ms. Banks when she had so readily and eagerly offered it to him previously?”

With that, he closed and marched his considerable girth back to his corner of the metaphorical ring. With that, the weight of his words hammered down on her heart one more final time, and she weeped unable to even face the jury again knowing justice would very likely never be hers, not this way.

Jenna tucks her dirty blonde hair behind her ears as the judge explains to the jury what their next steps are. The sounds buzz incomprehensibly in her ears as she fights to get her tears under control. Once the courtroom is dismissed, she steps out the old brick courthouse downtown into a vibrant afternoon. She stares into the sky above her watching clouds change shapes and letting the heat warm her face. Part of her wants to run as fast as she can and never look back. She could move. She could hide from this torment and never have to face the resolution or lack thereof in this case.

But she won’t.

Because fuck running and fuck giving up.

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This was hard to write as a victim myself. I never took my case to court for reasons out of my control, but so many women never prosecute. 68% of assault victims never report their attacks. This might be fictional, but it certainly explains a lot of things... 

Sunday confessions. The topic is Morality. Thanks for reading. 

 

An InLinkz Link-up

Beat It. Or Her. Or Those Guys.

This year has been filled with news stories to read about celebrities that have made mistakes, grievous ones.

War Machine’s domestic assault/attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend

Resurfaced accusations against Woody Allen for molesting of Dylan Farrow

Alleged sexual assaults, so many assaults, by Bill Cosby dating back decades

Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges

Ray Rice knocking his then fiancé out cold

AC/DC’s drummer arrested for some kind of murder plot

The former drummer of Cake sentenced for child molestation

You can hardly go through a week without reading a story about a celebrity or politician who has or has potentially hurt others in some unimaginable way. But what do we do with this information once the heat has died and the sensationalism has passed on to the next story?

Not much, it seems.

Mark Wahlberg is one perfect example of our lack of concern for what celebrities have done in their pasts (and often in their presents). In his early life, he was in legal trouble at least 20-25 times. At 15 he was committing hate crimes against minority children including throwing rocks at kids on a field trip and calling them racial epithets. By 16 he graduated to attempted murder. In one day he beat a Vietnamese man with a wooden stick while yelling slurs at him then blinded another later that afternoon. For those two crimes, he served all of 45 days in prison despite the attempted murder charge. And that wasn’t the end of it. He got in trouble again years later for another unprovoked attack only this one wasn’t racially motivated like the others. In 2006 when these issues came to light, he stated publicly that he has done his time and has no guilt for his crimes. Even though he never even so much as apologized to the man he blinded for life, he recently applied for a full pardon for his crimes… A full pardon. Just let that sink in. In this country there are men serving life in prison for possession of marijuana in 3 strikes states, but Marky Mark wants his record to be wiped clean after serving basically no time in prison for a hate-driven, attempted murder, and let’s face it, it’ll happen because he has money and this country is addicted to celebrity-worship. He has acted in 44 roles and has been a producer 22 times since he nearly killed two men for being different. Currently, Wahlberg is worth approximately $200 million.

Perhaps the most ironic example comes from an expected place but not for the reason you’d guess. Audiophiles like myself can hardly conduct an internet search without seeing an ad for Beats

headphones by Dr. Dre. Did he pick this name because he beats women? I suppose Dee Barnes would agree with that statement. Barnes was a rapper in the hip-hop group Body & Soul going by the stage name D Zire. She also hosted a hip-hop themed show on Fox called Pump It Up! It was this hosting role that got her into hot water with the good Dr. She interviewed Ice Cube during the pinnacle of the financial issues between him and the other members of N.W.A. drawing Dre’s ire for making the group “look bad.” I suppose he didn’t understand they’d already made themselves look bad enough with no one’s help and decided the thing that would fix it all is to beat the ever-loving-fuck out of the woman while his bodyguard threatened anyone who tried to help her with his gun. I don’t mean that he simply punched her and was done not that it would make it any more excusable in if that were the case. He did, though, slam her head and body into a brick wall, attempt to throw her down a flight of stairs, kick her repeatedly in the ribs, then chase her down when she managed to run from him and proceed to punch her in the back of the head. His response and those of other N.W.A members was “bitch had it coming.” The court wasn’t too concerned either considering Dre spent no time in jail and had a petty fine and some probation time. Barnes sued but the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. I can’t look at a pair of Beats headphones the same. $169 a pair at the cheapest to line a man’s pockets who “beats” women when he doesn’t like what they say. Since selling Beats to Apple, Dre will be pretty close to billionaire territory with many pegging his net worth at nearly 800 million. He’s the richest man in the hip hop industry which is already rife with misogyny and violence much the way the film industry is and any other music genre and television and apparently the NFL as well.

I get that people aren’t their pasts. If that were true, I’d still be an angsty weirdo with a penchant for black lipstick and mainstream metal. Instead I’m just a weirdo. But the thing is…neither of these men feel any remorse for what they did. Dre nor Wahlberg ever really apologized to the people they hurt and instead feel like the world fucking owes them just because they had tough lives as kids. And we continue to fall for that shit. It’s not like Jay-Z stabbing a record executive for bootlegging his albums. Because apologized and wrote candidly in his memoirs about never wanting to get back to that place, to be the kind of person who would do such a thing. That, I can get. But why do we still continue to laud people like Marky Mark and Dr. Dre? Why do people continue to defend Cosby no matter how many women come forward? Why is that when someone we’ve watched in movies that we don’t know personally, that we’ve never met outside watching the characters they play does or has done something heinous, we’re far more forgiving that we are for people in real fucking life? Where’s the logic?

I’m sick of seeing Ray Rice apologists claiming that everything is fine now that he told his wife he’s sorry. All abusers say they’re sorry. It’s part of the cycle. Would you say that if it was a stranger who punched your sister, your mom, your daughter, your niece? Would you accept that apology as the truth every time right up until he kills her in a murder-suicide like many of these relationships end? I’m sick of people thinking that just because a woman didn’t step forward when she was raped, that she is no longer credible. I’ve been there. It’s hard to admit, to talk about… It’s even harder when every single person who hears your story picks it apart and finds a way to put the blame on you instead of where it belongs. I don’t want to hear that leaving lashes on a child’s leg is just punishment for being a child. If your son or daughter came home with those marks on their legs given by a parent that no longer lives with you, I doubt it’d be so fucking kosher as it is when a coveted football player has done it. I don’t want to hear reasons why Mark Wahlberg is different. I want to see him apologize. I want to see Dre fucking crawl on his hands and knees and beg forgiveness from that woman for being such a cowardly piece of shit. Where’s the fucking accountability with these people? Why the hell are we so worried about violence on tv and film and in songs when real violence is being perpetrated by the players themselves while we continue to worship them like patron saints of misogyny, entitlement, greed, and criminality?

If we’re going to read these stories about celebrities and get caught up in the drama of it all and get angry over their bad behaviors, we need to stop sweeping them under the rug when it’s no longer an interest piece on Huffpo or in Rolling Stone or on Slate. When the story isn’t top news on CNN, it’s quickly forgotten while these assholes are left to make millions, to become beloved icons, to be memorialized and idolized…while we’re left wondering why our culture is so often depraved, greedy,and violent. At least part of the answer is right there in the "news" stories we read.

As always, thanks for reading another edition of Sunday Confessions with More Than Cheese and Beer. Be sure to check out the other contributions. And a special thinks to a very talented friend of mine who recommended I tackle the Dr. Dre issue in writing. When I really started thinking about this week's prompt, I knew this was the right time to put my thoughts about that situation in print.

And since that talented friend is an artist, please check out some of his work here: http://instagram.com/santosian  He's amazing at what he does and one of the coolest dudes I know. 

The Side Effects of Stolen Innocence

I never had the opportunity to have a true, innocent, uncomplicated-by-baggage first love.

That’s just the way the cards were dealt to me this hand, and it’s something that I’ve tried not to dwell on too much, but the facts are that being raped at 13, losing my virginity that way, changed everything. I have no idea what pre-rape sex is like. I don’t know what it’s like to fall hard for someone and make the decision about whether or not to go ALL THE WAY for the first time. That innocence was stolen from me long before I had that opportunity to desperately dwell and overthink that decision and relish in the specialness that comes from sharing that moment with someone in all its imperfect perfectness.

With that loss of innocence comes a lot of bullshit. A lot of emotional issues and physical reactions that affect me as an adult even 20 years later. I’ve loved, surely. I can recall the people in my life that I’ve loved so strongly I thought I would never be able to eat or sleep again when the relationship was over. I can relive with fondness some of the better times we shared and feel a momentary swirl of butterflies when I see them somewhere unexpectedly. I’ve not been in many relationships, and not even all of those were really great, but I know in my lifetime I truly loved and was loved just as fiercely in return. The stark, laid-bare truth for me, though, is that it was never the kind of love that wasn’t tethered by the understanding of what a man could do when “no” wasn’t enough and the primal, unrelenting fear and pain that comes with that knowledge. I have never had the kind of love that is free of that robbery, free of the haunting of an assault that I didn’t deserve.

What I imagine first love to be is sort of like purring bunnies in a field of gummy bear flowers pooping rainbow cupcakes under a radiant boombox sun raining down tasty jams and pulsing glitter all over the place every time the bass hits.

Okay, so maybe I owned too much Lisa Frank shit when I was kid, but either way that image is total

innocent perfection in my mind. Maybe I’m completely off base but that first attempted relationship seems to be more pure than everything that comes after the first gut-wrenching heartache that always follows when you end something with a person you absolutely fall no-holds-barred head over heels for… (and what's more pure than rabbits that eat gummy bear flowers and shit out cupcakes? nothing. not a fucking thing). That’s not to say I think that first love is the best—better than any other relationship you experience in your lifetime, but it’s the only time you start with a clean slate, the only time you don’t bring the good, the bad, and the ugly of every other relationship with you. It’s less weighed down by everything that came before it. In a lot of ways, it’s a fantasy world at least to begin with…people have yet to turn out to be the exact opposite of what you have imagined them to be or break your heart or cheat or lie or fuck with your head. And then when the other shoe drops, it’s perhaps one of the biggest reality checks you face in life.

My shoe dropped before I had a chance to experience the naivety of it all.

I rail on so often about rape culture on social media, in person, on the phone….anytime and anywhere the conversation is appropriate and even when it’s not. The fact that rape goes largely unpunished in our society and that the blame is often laid upon the shoulders of the victim to carry as if she (or he) was not already carrying a heavy load just by way of being victimized means that the big picture of what a person loses and the insecurities a person gains after being raped is ignored. I didn’t suffer a momentary, fleeting fear that resolved itself after the event was over. My entire being was violated and my existence was forever changed while the perpetrator of that death—the murder of my innocence—has gone on to have a life completely unaffected by the fear, the pain, the anger, the shame, and the guilt that has so often peppered the very essence of my being. It has been 20 years since that night, and I still can’t answer the door when I’m home alone without panicking. I never had my innocent, vibrant, Lisa Frank-esque love. I have never been able to set foot in my father’s house without reliving it. And, that will never change… None of it. It’s with me for as long as I live and breathe. We, as a people, have to stop and consider the toll that this takes on 1 out of 5 women (sometimes multiple times) in our lives. Think of all the women you know and how many might have been victims. How many have to live with that memory and all the side effects that come with it? Until we start recognizing how serious the act itself is, how damaging in all manners of life for the length of time the victim lives rape is, it’s always going to be about changing the behavior of the victim because that seems easier…because the act itself seems horrible to the imagination but so few people seem to consider just how depraved and far-reaching it is. Here’s your chance through my words, as vulnerable as they make me here today, to see just one of the many things my rapist robbed me of…. It’s not just a horrible act that can be prevented through modifying potential victims; it’s essentially a murder. The person who existed before the rape is lost and someone almost completely different rises from the ashes of the former self. Like a phoenix with an anxiety disorder and a guilt-complex that keeps it from soaring as high and freely as it could otherwise.

97% of rapists never spend time in prison according to RAINN. Isn’t it time we change that?

And, as always, this is me taking a seemingly light hearted Sunday Confessions prompt and being all preachy about it. That's what I do. But, please check out the rest of the contributions at More Than Cheese and Beer and the always interesting anonymous confessions on the MTCAB Facebook page.