he is a movie

and i have just unabashedly flirted with him.

but he is Deaf so he will find his way here, maybe, because someone will alert him

to the dangers of being friendly with me

and maybe he will think this is all lies, too

that i am just setting him up, trying to fuck with him

but he makes all parts of me go SQUEE and of course

i have gotten "all the details" pertinent to someone who thought it pertinent

to me. "heartbroken" and i don't really give a fuck

"warning he will tease you and leave you hanging, he knows everyone wants him"

and i really don't give a fuck

because all it is is a little flirtation with a friendship request and

a little friendship requested can become anything

flirtations melt away and solid friendships remain

or he will just read this and think

i am nothing but a stack, a bunch, a wad of lies

and that i deserve nothing and that is all

that would matter

but  he is a movie

and i love his movies and i want them to never-endingly reel

i want to knit and knit and ravel his ravel

and sometimes i think he would be hot wrapped around me

but that is just a movie

he is a movie, and i think

he is stellar

(and for once i am not trying to just get into a 25-year-old's pants and scream laughter pummeling his thighs with my feet over a blaze)

for mike keathley

i'm punishing myself for you. you blocked me but i just can't imagine that it's safe for me to have a sexual relationship with a deaf man...i just can't imagine that you wouldn't beat me up, call me names, or tell other men things i don't want them to know.

so don't worry. this is a pretty abusive relationship and i'm letting jeff get what he wants. all the rest of my money. all of it. in a week i'll be living on the street with a shopping cart or two. that's where all my stuff is gonna be. i thought maybe michael could help, but he can't. so my punishment will be carried out, meted in exacting terms.

i will probably die in a few days. and that is what you want. my poem made you so mad you blocked me. my jocund video about the lighter made you so mad you blocked me. i see no sense in it, i have tried and i still see no sense in it, and this is my punishment: to die, hopefully raped by another homeless person, so you can see: i am nothing.

i am nothing so bad i must be blocked. and when i am dead my poem will die so you will never have to be angry. i don't understand this, but i really am tired of being raped and fucked with so my choices are to kill myself or give more money to a man i don't even recognize. i never expected jeff to do what my other boyfriends have: study me, then use my fears to force meltdowns and extract money.

but i wanted to trust you. and i will just kill myself. it's no big deal. it will be me on the street and my shopping cart, and then it will just be my shopping cart.

broken everything

all broken

but that's fine for me

all i want is to be homeless and dying

so finally i'm going

the old man with the mustache

is the old man with the mustache

is making me scream

so i don't have to remember

the old man in the mustache

ny eyes are going weird again

its like burning yellow

and swirling parabolas abd vbkbuk

indicators and sonic orgasms

he says

have sex

not

fuck

a cut-up clit

isn't very comfortable to play with.

but we just had a pretty wild conversation, and i am--

i am just--stupid easy to trigger, and gallaudet has gotten my panties in a twist

so i named all my rapists from gallaudet and started feeling cutty, got a knife

and was just hanging out with it...

and whatever we talked about, that's private

but

in my unleashed flurry of scared

i let loose some very sexual things

and he said it was actually hot that i'd masturbated to how sexily he turns a phrase

how sweet and nice, and communicative

which got me horny too

so now

a cut-up clit is painful to play with

but we have no kids coming to the house for halloween

so i might as well make my own fun

**
it's very frightening to meet someone new

i scared him right back

but i think he understands that as upsetting as tonight was for him

as weird as my worry that he hates me

it's tenfold

in my terror

**
he's so nice

gyrating on the gyroscope of gyro shavings

i really wish i weren't this way

but i think he might be giving me a second chance

i think he's really sexy

i get so hot when i read his e-mails

do i or what i

do i 

what i want

is to think

he won't mind

that he'll understand

the mind is a big place

full of closets

full of lockets

full of laughter and tears

and that life is bigger

but that i want to make my life bigger

by making this a lesser epidemic

and that

people enjoy triggering me

and that

i'm really still me, because that's all people see

when we hang out, me, not this

that knitting is a new expression of my art

but that i really need to fix what came raveled

(ravel means to do up and to undo, whichever is your tangle)

and that's why i'm here, to make sure

it's all gone--

when i was younger i didn't know that hiding the deepest shames

would later hinder everything that was healed, that he

would come back

and try

or do i just

not try for a little romance?

(love is too strong a word; we've only just begun chatting, and love is a goal

but love isn't on the table just yet

he's agreeable, and i find that when he's rushed his grammar becomes clipped

and it's adorable

but so is he)

gallaudet is not the world

gallaudet cannot eat my life

maybe this is. maybe it isn't.

but for now

we are golden

he's a baby, just 25

but he likes my pictures just fine

he's brilliant, brillianter than moizies

much more brilliant

and i told him yesterday, i told him

i've got an anti-rape persona online, and it's not gonna be apologized for or changed

and he was all, you know, i just have to turn off my phone when things get hectic at work

i'm curious to meet him, i really am dying to meet him--just because--it's curiosity!

but i'm glad he hasn't sent pictures...

if he's not quite cute, i won't notice in a month or two! he'll look like moritz bleibtreau

marlon brando

brian floyd!

he'll be too sexy for me to handle even if he's chris farley's nephew doubly sized!

i love them sexy, i love them cute, but i love them fun and smart so much more

and

he knows i was interviewed about gallaudet's rape epidemic

he's actually

cool

with it

**
joe would have killed me over it

i hate to admit it; i love him and i want him to be free

to stop his abusers and end the abuse

to love himself

but the truth does not stop for fear

**
i may have seen this guy around washington heights when he was 17, 18

imagine

gallaudet's facebook page

has my love bites all over it.

oh, baby.

i think he found this

he hasn't written since he got off work

and we were really hitting it off.

that's all right. it makes me sad to think about everything

that he's one of maybe six guys who haven't already gotten creepy

he's said one thing i think is a little off, but that's really not an "off" comment

it's just that more than half the guys who say that they're real feminists

are not

but the rest really are--

and the ones who aren't can be sly:

it's the internet, motherfucker

**
i think he found my twitter feed

and i linked to this

and said i wanted to kill myself

and it's all actually true anyway

it's just that sometimes

he's waiting for me, that one

and sometimes

there are others, like the guy who lunged at me, halfway out of his car

but the sharp dressers, the Black men in their early 20s who have decided not to be wary of me

just that there is a bubble dividing them from me, and i get curiosity and sizing up, and reluctant props

and that's okay for now, i daren't smile at them just yet, they're not ready to let it off without a snarl, not them

they're too cool, too good pretending

cool

for each other

they looked at him like he was an embarrassment, soiled white tee

bashed-in car

fat flapping out his rolled-down window

tee tucked in but starting to fold over the glass

so he slunk back in after

UNINTELLIGIBLE WHITE! BITCH! UNINTELLIGIBLE BITCH! WHITE! BITCH!

BITCH! WHITE! BITCH!

i have to choose

do i go where they prowl and eye me, and wonder what the fuck i'm doing there

and i'm just like, dudes, no, please, just, hi back?

the kids are unpredictable but most are sweeter than anything

even the preteen boys show me the most courteous of manners

their faces twisted with distrust

sometimes a smile

to get my groceries

and get home without dying

or

do i risk being pulled down a 30-foot-deep staircase in a quarter-mile expanse of woods by

shifty-eyed "tom"

caterpillar eyebrows and neanderthal face

red sweater

with three hiding places for me now, and a friend on speed dial

for dragging me through the woods

at the bus stop

to get my groceries

and get home without dying

**
no one will ever love me again, not with this

not if i explain about the men on the bus who explode and want to hit me

when i say no

you may not have my number

who look at me like i have just strangled them and they need to throttle me back

who make me furious, a white-hot fury, but the white

is fear

but funny

i like the art i make now

if no rape i no art now

the double-back, and not the double-backed beast--

but the feast, down to the gore.

the core said, it's enough

and i said, i will meet you there,

so i brought tit for tat, and everything, to cincinnati.

and in the rocking chair, it's a rocking chair now, oversized

so comfortable

so comforting for those who need the rocking

i like the choice of chairs

not so much her choice of words

she signs realize

means reality

and i mean to bring it up soon because it's just not time yet

for us to argue

i don't let her see me cry anymore, and i would spend two or three days crying and screaming

the first year

just crying and screaming

she'd make me three appointments and usually i'd miss one or two

come in crying and screaming and floating, dissociating

forgetting everything i meant to say, a cloud of dissonance, dissolution

suicide to keep my rapists' secrets

and now it's back--not all

but enough, and worse

so she says

you just never got over that abuser, the one from MSSD and gallaudet

and now she knows that he tried to come back in 2010

that i stuck with david

that david started hitting me the same way that fucker did

fatso is mean, and it's insulting to anyone who feels or is called fat, so...

woodpaneling

that's the car he picked me up in when it all went back to it, and i was fat, i was so fat, i just wanted to eat and eat and eat what happened with him into fake, into not real, into not me, into not him, into not us when we're alone and his eyes go so big and so blue and so blank, like he's calling the stars home, calling heaven home, calling himself back into heaven, calling himself an angel home, calling himself the beginning of the universe, calling the universe meaningless and nonexistent, the way he did

and they'd bang the table and call him back

and he'd close his gaping mouth and wipe away the drool

and he'd do it in class facing me...

just because...

he wanted me to remember...i couldn't get away, and because...

...it was the kind of class that triggered both of us back to our abuse, our deepest shames, that we repeated the class together, that we repeated it because i tried to kill myself to make it all stop, that he didn't really love me when he kissed me, that he started beating me up and laughing at me for crying, that he started to look for ways to make me cry and tell me that that was love, and just fall into trances, trances that would last for three hours when he'd rape me in my room at cogswell.

and i didn't want anybody to know, but everyone thought they knew.

so i stayed with david because the more i told him i loved him and the more i told him what woodpaneling did...

and i was really thin then, a lot of things that are stretched out from the last two years started out so baggy they needed a belt to define my waist, and i looked hotter than hell. i mean, i'm 37 and my rosacea destroys the texture of my skin so when i have a good day i'm amazed that i actually have elasticity and a smooth face, but even when it's terrible, when it's aging me and so bumpy my makeup  does little to fix it, i get hit on by people in their early 20s, and people think i look around 28 or 32. it's fucking funny, like, all this time i've hated myself for being ugly when all i needed was to stay thin both times, stop eating because of the abuse--

--david, oh, what a silly boy, thinking he had me fooled, then beating me up because every step of the way i was like, dude...let me tell you what you do when you're with your friends, with other women. i was like, dude, listen, that doesn't give you any reason to beat me up for telling you i want to buy you a $7 milkshake that melts you into orgasm and gets you talking about how life is nothing like it is for me where you're concerned. it just doesn't. it doesn't, and it never will, and i won't fucking stop giving you presents and buying you shoes because yours have holes in the soles and you get brusque and almost dislocate my shoulder when you realize after you've run all around the mall in the FiDi really getting into hamlet, getting lost, me staying lost...because when we're together you're hitting me and yelling about what a shitty time you're having, how i'm a snobby white girl, but when you don't know where i am you're rapt, running as fast as you can to keep up with everyone else, edging ever closer and closer to the action, to the stages...

...when it's over and you're glowing, telling me how much you love me, that it's really true, you just didn't know life could be like this...and the white guy with the hat comes around for tips, and you have no money to give because you live with 300 flies, a mattress on the floor, rotting food, rotting dishes, rotting clothes, a couch of iron with padding that hurts (i found it a year later in a store downtown, ever the sleuth, and it's a $50 couch new)...you do not

have the right

to get so angry you jolt upward and out the door and yank me so hard

i've had my shoulder nearly dislocated by two assholes in 14 months

you don't get to tell me to give you $150 to fake it to your mom that you're making a salary raising a baby but coming to have an affair with me when you know my roommate has tried to kill me because i wouldn't let her rape me...an affair you give my roommate the blow-by-blow of because i'm deaf...and don't know you're doing it, and she tries to stab me to death a week later, screaming that i let you have all this fun, that instead of having the volume on the TV up all the way you've turned the TV and the cable box down to 0 and put them on mute...and all weekend you stand there laughing, laughing, laughing, and i'm like, what did you do, i don't get it, i know you're up to something, but what...you just waited for me to turn my back to do that after showing me you had them all the way up...i mean, david, i told you, all this time, i know that this is what you do now...since that night, since Hamlet...i know, i saw the change, i felt it in my shoulder, in my arm, my elbow, in that i couldn't wrest myself away, that you got more violent when i tried to give him a fiver...

...i saw it all, and the point isn't that you get to rape and beat me and cheat on me and tell me to die, and tell me i have to let other men rape me to make you happy that i'm not only with you, all because i'm a white woman in love with a mexican man...

...you don't get to do all this and demand $150 for your mom after you've told me you know she told me to kill myself and that i had to die to make everything better, and then twist my arm...

and this is what i've told marci

so i can feel the bone just barely bend to break

so this is the saga of how people give my abuser renewed access to me

and how i just want it to stop, but how

what david did to me as a direct result of my first real abuser doing as a direct result of hearing about my first rape and getting excited about it, getting horny over it, finally acting on the crush he'd had on me since before we ever exchanged words except "ugly polack" and "asshole motherfucker"--

--is really, really scaring me

and how joe

just started hitting and raping and trying to control me for the same reason those two did

he felt it was unfair that i have such a good grasp on life, art and on a lot of matters, just sizing things up in a flash. understanding almost anything immediately. he got so angry that day

and snarled

and ended with a fist and a sharp inhaled flair of his neck, boomerang

then a cold, smoldering, blue-flamed glare, and his nostrils

and that was

the break

it's always

the break

and it scares me

why was it always

the break

in gallaudet bathrooms

dorms

hallways

libraries

/my tomb?

i don't want to stop this flash that makes guys like this fucker in the red sweatshirt

the neanderthal face, the blunt nose, the heavy brow with bushy caterpillar eyebrows

start stalking me where the woods

(disappear the city)

dudes...

marci and i are on the same page but she just wouldn't believe that they keep calling the police. she's like, no, you must have it wrong.

I TELL YOU IT IS THE POLICE CUZ I CAN READ THE BODY LANGUAGE AND THE LUNGING. they have people coming after me when i'm crying and scared because they say i'm aggressive when i say i'm really too scared because i can't understand what i'm reading to function, and that i feel like i have to kill myself. my professor wants this one assignment due that's a journal and i can't figure out what it is. i think i've read every page of the syllabus but i can't remember because when i get to a glitch and a page won't display i get really suicidal and have to stop, just stop, just watch some copper or red dwarf and fall in love with men who don't exist, and then feel so sad that despite donal logue choosing characters who are just so feminist he plays a complete asshole who will cut a woman while she's down and leave her fetus bleeding out....

anyway, so i have to do that or all the flashbacks will unlock...because...if i can't read...then how do i exist? if i can't read how is it possible that anything in my life has ever been real? i have this deaf friend who gets really pissed off when i correct her in the store looking for baby stuff, and i said to her that "priced as marked" means no discount, so don't expect one, but maybe you'll get lucky--and because she did get a discount she keeps telling me i'm not as smart as i think i am and that my english is far from good.

but i just turned to her in the checkout lane and said, "i'm fucking right...don't you ever, ever doubt my ability to read and understand english...you got lucky, i said you might, and it's not worth fighting over, so drop it--but i'm telling you, i understand grammar just fine." she did...after a while. and i am just not the type--it's just that she had a budget, and then in line she was like, "here, you pay for these two things; i can only spend $20."

i was this far from telling her to stuff it. but the baby is just too cute, and too sweet, and she's increasingly rough. i keep telling her that i understand it's frustrating raising a baby by yourself, but you can't jerk a baby around and slap him for sliding down in an ill-fitting wooden high chair, you tell me to watch your baby while you enjoy being at a restaurant...or let him slouch because he's happy with peas all over his face. cutest little bundle!...

so if i'm scared i'm not real and that all this is a just a creepy nightmare and i can't actually read or write, and i'm having flashbacks of being raped by a lot of guys who are really intimidated by my writing--my talent--hearing men are just as bad as deaf men, but not all hearing guys--they're just already married!

and mike made me promise not to marry anyone who won't have my back and do all the housework because holding down a job outside the home and all the artistic jobs i have at home are much more important than vacuuming. that i can't let myself get trapped with someone who won't support my talent in that way. and i just get discouraged when i remember all the ones who tried to beat me up or kill me. it's really scary because when they try to kill me usually it's a spur-of-the-moment anger that just aliens forth in a bloody fury they didn't expect to have to employ. because i'm like, "no, no, no sex." mostly no kissing either. i had to physically eject this nasty bastard who made out with me as we were waving goodbye on a dark street, his hand down my pants--and, thank god, it was the bronx, so a bus flew by and he disengaged.

he was thin and peruvian, but he didn't mention that half his nose cartilage was missing, so he had a really flat nose. it actually wasn't unattractive but i kept wanting to vomit throughout the date and refused to let him draw it out. i asked him to leave early. he was so pissed off and i had to literally push him all the way to the door. he looked just like a peruvian fatso because of the nose--it was kind of a cute, wide, smushed button nose--it just kept my body ringing NO NO NO NO NO NO.

it's rare that someone actually looks like him, but i've met at least four in the last four years. i think six but for sure four.

david was the first, and i told david he was so my favorite man ever, the way he looked just like fatso until he started signing, moving just like joeray and the eyebrows and elbows, but suave, and with ty's facial expressions and eyes, chocolatey warm but on alert...and that it was amazing because he didn't hit me or threaten to destroy my life because i can really write but it's not fair that i can write because they want to write.

then he hit me. right away. to tell me he wasn't like them. and he tore my head off.

and i just kept going back to see why he'd hit me. but he just kept getting angrier and angrier. he almost dislocated my shoulder the next time i saw him, our fourth date, because he was so ashamed that he couldn't donate any money to the wall street play we saw, a really fun one he fell in love with, just could not stop beaming through, chasing hamlet all through the mall, then abruptly yanking me when i started to pull out a few bills...down the stairs...almost dislocating my shoulder, snarling, furious, stalking in the rain, not quite stalking off but boiling with shame and anger, hatred...of me.

then i slipped into his arm with the umbrella and gave him the lighter. when i tried to ask a few blocks down why he was so angry that i was paying for something i asked him to do, nice and dreamy, he just pushed me away and disappeared. i took the D alone, and he rode the D one stop further than i did.

this is what i don't like about people who try to grab me or keep me from getting out of the room, or break my arm. or strangle me. they're all about telling me i've got to become someone else to live, and i won't.

curried favor

when someone remarks that the board his noose was tied to broke, it sends all sorts of shocks through your body. when it's someone you love it's worse.

he is one of the most handsome men i've ever met, and i know he's sorry for the life he led when he was young and afraid, but--i can't imagine i'd be happy.

and i worry. i know he'll have a fantastic string of women who marvel that he likes us plain and juicy, but that's beside the point of life. i worry, and what the fuck is the idiot thinking, leaving me like this? i told him outright that he's an idiot and has the most annoying habit of ignoring what women are actually upset about and saying, and that he was absolutely required to make it the longest goodbye.

he's out there thinking i've cut him off and he knows from experience that when i disappear it's because i'm unable to text. what the fuck did he think i'd marry that for, then, but--he's so lonely. i worry; he's nowhere, and he's lonely, and i'll find out someday somehow that long ago he was washed up on some riverbank, and i'll wonder if he ever felt happy again.

fucking god, why are men so fucked up?

why love doesn't a marriage make

well, maybe not why. i feel wretched. i want to say yes but there are too many risks.

plus my phone's not working, and he took that as a sign to drop off the face of the earth, not come see me--i'd said no, but i'd said yes to a long, long goodbye.

i don't want it to end like this, but i'm not dealing with this idiot anymore. what idiot would assume after being told two dozen times in no uncertain terms that he's to come anytime and that if i'm not home he's to wait in our private alcove, luxuriate in the beauty of the air in this part of town?

ah, i hate that i said no, i really wish i could have said yes, and i would have taken the chance--after all, when the sex takes up ten hours a week or more, what is there to say no to, especially if you can actually work together on two of your dream careers--two talents are better than one?

a lot, i guess. a lot.

i also know what "you're the smart one, you come up with that" means. it means a lifetime of grueling work and scrambling to keep the ship together while someone's draining the budget and lounging about. i'm not doing that again, and since there are very few other legal options for this guy--

--no, that was the first no, just.

how can he just leave like this? i know he thinks i decided to kick him out of my life, because he kept saying to stop texting if i didn't want him around--

--but now...he's cut off all his phones, his e-mail addresses, and this random number tied to a stupid new--

--god, fuck, god, of course i want to see someone i really love who's tried to kill himself in the most grotesque ways over the summer, and who really doesn't deserve anything bad, just--it's not  my future.

it's not my future and, yeah, i want to see someone i really love. i kept blaming him for my fear and panic after i left joe, but he never let me do it. he'd fire right back that if he'd let me stay with joe i could be dead, or at least destroyed.

he's such a fucking idiot. always has been, always, a fucking idiot, and i am just so fucking sick of worrying because when someone you love despite all his faults tells you he's tried to kill himself more ways than you can ever imagine, surviving a river and more--

i just shut down when he said "start a family." totally stopped texting anything but Okay and Yeah. i miss him...i really do...but my morals just can't bend that far. i'd never sacrifice my life for a man, and i was more than willing to do it for the babies. i still would. not for their father, for them. it's hard bending my mind and life around a felon...i can't do it for anyone but the two little sweeties.

why is this fucker putting miles between us that were supposed to disappear?

two of these things are exactly the same

so my psychiatrist asked the other day

who reacts like that, hearing people or deaf people?

so my social worker jumped a bit at my answer

oh, hearing people

when i showed how terrified and afraid i am...

but the thing is, no, deaf people really don't react in the way hearing people do

first of all, i can hold my own, and second of all

somebody already "warned" them

i mean, come on... jeff johnson got terrified as shit

when i asked who told him i was back in cincinnati

and he was all no no no no no no no nobody told  me

and i'm like, seriously, jeff, we were like brother and sister before this shit got to you

just tell me who...i wonder how long it's been going around--

people act like it's a huge fucking secret

but why would i keep the amazing interpreters who graduate from cincinnati state as long as dawn keeps the ITP alive? tony couldn't do it. he's a pushover and he won't go out of his way to circulate on the scene, be the queen with his own terp-a-long, na'mean? i could do it; i'm exceedingly fair, and i can read a scene

but being all "hello, my name is anti-rape beth, and hello, because if you haven't heard of me, once you say my last name someone somewhere might get back to you on that within a fortnight"

is kinda bad for biz

so i gotta take it, what it is

that's what's up and i decided this

thing one

when i was 16 still, i think, maybe just seventeen, but going on, it must have been

because that's when lt and ryco sat next to each other, rekindling a romantic platonic friendship i liked

and i decided it was time to announce that, no, i do not just talk about sex, that i can be taken seriously on other topics, that i had just dispensed a fact--and lt looked at me, besotted with ryco, wanting to be queen of zingers, me being defined for the rest of my life in the Deaf community

no you can't talk about anything but sex, that's who you've always been and who you'll always be

and i thought i was stuck because everyone thought she was queen, period

there were always references to nefertiti, isis too i'm sure

so whenever i tried to be assertive and got raped it got me down

(i know i have to talk about lt and lr this time around...what she did killed me more than clint

she took the knowledge and just crushed, crushed, crushed me and still sees the real me--but won't help me survive, so i have nowhere to go but the hearing world until i can stop folding when someone tries to tear my heart out like my liver--

--truly one of the very best friends i ever had, until that night)

thing two

when i was 29, yea, 29 i say, and this the hallowe'en

idle jak stumbled upon a dog pile of steamin' jealousy

glared across from the kitchen sink a redhead

to my merlot wig, yea, drunker than i, engag'd

in cigar-wilting conversation 

with her blue-eyed boyfriend

who, doubled over with laughter, justly knew 

all i said was monica lewinsky-positive hullabaloo

and yet, yet i was arrest'd by the monstrous visage

of someone who forgives bb the mirror of uncle fester

an oozing sore of anger at his own party arresting

all his words mincing a rasp like a zester gone mad

you are a disgrace to yourself you're insulting this man

you're a mean person, i was warned and now i see

bill clinton couldn't have looked more nonplussed

than the man wearing a black wig claiming to be his twin

and if he couldn't at least have taken one thing from jade

(and, yes, i mean the flour in people's hair in slo-mo)

it was a tower of blue-eyed similarity i could see taking on

but i took off with the big blue eagle from the muppets, our bale

eyed eagle jak, who sat me on the stairs stop crying! that shaking's fake!

i know! (just what ty said to send me into a world of despair)

you can't be part of the deaf elite in this city of new york, if you dasn't

just let us tell you you're lying, just admit you're a terrible person

who just makes fun--i know what you did to ty! (i called him the dumbest

meanest names you can think of, the worst things, because he was an actor

and it was a big joke to say things that made people stare

because he knew i loved the stuffing out of him and the harm

was in judgement, it was our private joke, and of course jak was the jam

in th' the sandwich) you'll never get away with saying 

any of these things you're saying just get steve, get him, he'll explain

he's bill clinton, he doesn't look like him in all that black hair, but he sure does

and he's just (sorry my nose is just dribbling all over my dress i'm

so fucking scared why won't you get jason) having so much fun laughing

what's the problem i'm making fun of bill clinton from monica's POV

can't you tell that that's all a joke and we're

oh, she's jealous and you're her best friend, oh

why won't you just let me have fun too, nobody really thinks--

stop it we love jason thanks for bringing him he's one of us 

i won't let you sully his reputation, he's a boon to the Deaf community

we gotta do something about the way he signs but he is uh-maaazing

thanks for bringing him now you go home or sit here but

you gotta stop screaming it doesn't make us believe you any more

buh-bye, you pathological liar

and i sat there for four hours, screaming with snot coming

tears flowing everything on full stop broke all over my cleavage

ck, jak, i think someone else came out to check on me

every fucking 45 minutes and i was still there shaking mad with flashbacks

to ty that night and begging for jason

but they said to go home but i was his home for the night 

the keys were at my place

and when he came out his knees buckled

this is how i will remember him forever, isn't it dumb, all those moments

and this one i'll keep too, all of them, his eyes wide with horror

he stumbled down to the steps and sank what happened to you 

what did they do to you oh, shit, i didn't know, they said you got mad

and left

remember we had that one line of argument before, when i said you broke your promise

to avoid talking misogynistic bullshit tonight, that you're not being you?

yeah, and i apologized, i really did mean it, i was being an ass

well...and i'm fast-forwarding for poetry's sake now

...they're using that against me to discredit me, that harvard gal

she got jealous of me cracking her boyfriend up, but he's not even interested 

so it's a party, it's a party, i'm themein' it up, it's a party, be funny

isn't that what i do at a party, if i do it everywhere i go? so they said

i'm not allowed to come to any more parties and that you're the best

and they're gonna keep you from me for the rest of my life

but your keys are at my apartment so if i go home how do you get in?

i love you, you know; you're one of my best friends. i'm sorry i stayed--

i wouldn't have if i'd known you were out here all this time. 

here's a few hugs, here's a helping hand, here's me not caring about your slimy face

this was really shitty, this was a real attack, this was just what i mean

i'm so fucking wary of the goddamn Deaf scene

this just seemed so swell, and i should've known you wouldn't dis me

so come on, let's get something to eat, let's party! let's have our own party

just you and me.

gallows humor

(dad hanged himself, and i have to guilt-trip for a minute, so, ha?)

anti-anxiety meds, and a psychiatrist who can totally see why anxiety could be what's left, not depression, so i am over the moon! very fun, intelligent woman, and able to see people for who we are. that's a sweet, sweet spot! people are all so different, i never know when i'll find someone i trust as a psychiatrist or therapist.

so, yeah, this is gonna rock the breakdown.

but i'm writing about fatso because i know i was too ashamed to talk about the beatings much, and the rapes, just what he said to me about being ugly...when we were making out, that he loved me and couldn't bear to have this between us, but then somewhere down the road "you're ugly" and then kissing all my friends and gloating, gloating, gloating

and they didn't realize how horribly he abused them behind their backs

and all i know, it could be that they're hiding things from me too because who wants to say "hey, he called you fart breath" or "you're frigid, he says"? i wanted them to get away from him but it was constantly spun as jealousy...but who enjoys being told week after week about how her friends performed, underperformed, or over performed sexually that week?

he didn't harm them physically. i tried to get someone to understand i really needed help

but i guess i was already programmed to be afraid of violence

and he had visited many daytime abuses upon my body, battered and bruised

until he was satisfied

i was utterly broken, really, truly

but i had josh, i always

kept

josh, and he couldn't follow me there

but what's special about this rendition?

fatso is the root of all (my) self-evil

dad may have given him a hand, clif may have given him a hand--

clif and that zonbie at gally gave me lessons in self-harm, banging their heads bloody and hands the same on any surface that looked like a wall, and even mirrors and wood, and glass--

but the heart of the ugliness of the fear of the sweats and the shakes

takes me right back to MSSD under the night sky dodging security sweeping above the library, the hole sucking the life right out of the room, the glass, the eyes he'd make me stare into before

and i didn't want

anything else then, truly, those eyes

and i knew those nights i would give anything to have a magic carpet

but i just slipped into slack detachment, not even feeling

nothing but reeling, reeling, a crushing heartbreak, nothing but physics

i knew those nights

i would never consider it love

quietude of the disquietude

this is fabulous. i have two blogs nobody reads.

i can finally write down the pain and not cut myself because it's in a journal

and do it right because it's typed

my brain moves differently in a way with the keys so flow

o serenade! a love among unrequited desire

i tried to tell jason about that rape. but he couldn't be there. the one i wrote about over on thebarmansfund.blogspot.com.

and that's my last post there. i don't need to hide anymore. no more trying to kill myself.

the truth is out there, the truth i tried to kill myself over so many times for so long after getting my life together. it's here and there, on both blogs, it's coming together in marci's office, it really isn't a bad thing about myself that caused me to try to kill myself.

it's wanting to go on a date, and not with vincent, but with someone i really, really, really trust. someone i don't think will rape me or hit me, or try to kill me, because i won't put out on day one, and

all the fear

because i thought he cared about me

and dominic insisted that i was crazy if i thought i'd convince him to ask greg for his contact information

it seems so stupid 

but i want to know what he was smiling about

(and people were already berating me and ending friendships for loving david, so i just told everyone it was david--no new thing to be made fun of for, no new rumors that might make it to greg, about how i'm "destroying" the deaf community by saying the rape has got to stop

he must be a father by now...but that doesn't take away that night

marci's helping me understand that it can still be right, and good, and the start of something beautiful

no matter what happened when i got home

open letter to the splendiferous asha wilkens

dear asha ricci,

i knew you and jason must be married by now--but your wedding pic as your profile pic speaks to a more recent ceremony than anticipated--did you make your gown? gorgeous. you should be my designer, heh; i'd split the profits fairly.

i'm beyond thrilled for you and jase. i'm writing notes for my autobio based on my old notes and lost manuscript, and a guide for my therapist because we're looking at what made me break down in 2010. my loss--your husband and my then best friend--has a lot to do with it but i choose not to feel or think about jason because it would get in the way. knowing that he doesn't trust that i was raped because people got to him destroyed me but i put it all on David to keep from being weighted by floyd and jason.

here's my proposal. if you can accept, now that you're mrs. ricci, that you've never been in danger of losing jason or in any creepy bullshit from me, because all we ever were was BFF...and i can't bear to remember how close we were...maybe someday you'll let me congratulate you two and introduce me to your family.

my secrets are right here now. i know you mocked me at several deaf events and in front of floyd for not being pretty enough to attract guys you think are sexy...and that you were paranoid you'd lose me to jason and cost me my equally awesome friendship with floyd. but I know you understood what was so similar about our appearance that would make you hesitate. you felt lucky to have a hottie. you were young and the deaf community some years later informed me that you had been very badly hurt. so it's just part of the process called life, you know?

jason is fabulous. i sure have been with a few married guys, but i consider you a friend, no matter what, even if i saw that you were not someone i could trust with my sexual abuse history. so...your jealousy and my defense mounted in tandem. quid pro quo is more appropriate, yeah?

anyway, because i lost that friendship i have had no rock while I wade the jagged rocks of the freezing banks of despair. i'm totally tired of bein raped by all these people, people who say i'm just too cool and brilliant to ignore or let go without having my pussy first.

jase knows. that's in my notes, that you call him "jase," and i figured that even though the things you did pissed me the fuck off for years, you're probably not the same person you were then. it's terrifying the first few years on your own. that's cool. i get it. he knows i don't say yes, and he knows i'm getting beaten by a lot of them, and sometimes almost killed.

that was the secret. you wouldn't have wanted to know.

i know he loves you and i never asked him to leave you for any reason, or planted any doubt about you. i knew we had our issues and that never has anything to do with relationships with other people. i find that a moral failing and don't subscribe to it...unless someone is being abused and i know about it.

seriously, you know, we're both pretty good at landing hot guys. i have no idea what people told you but i realized as i wrote my notes that deaf women in DC and NYC were always jealous of the attention I effortlessly got from guys they felt were too good-looking for me and would threaten me and tell me to back off because they were pretty and deserved cute partners. i bet someone told you i was putting the moves on your man. girl...never. you are my best friend by extension no matter how infuriating you were in your mid-twenties. know that.

damn. conFABulations! jason and asha have always been real fucking troopers. they really communicate, whatever the flaws therein, and that should keep them fueling. man, jason is grown up! aww! my baby bro BFF is a family man! what!

notes to ryan commerson

i don't plan on changing your name. commie butt is where it's at. wazzup! ya dig!? cuz, like, if all you did was act like a fucking asshole a few times and have a lot going on with me most of the rest of the time, and if you were one of the people who got me so set on leaving clif no matter what that i have done most of my shit morally correct--

--then i figure you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself or what you've done. i will know, though, if you think y/our friends are worth demanding that i not draw my story BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE HAVE STORIES and i know i'm not the only one guys smack down and get it up for...and whose family says she better stay right where she is because she's already ruined at 16.

life is big and the Deaf world needs to accommodate that. we can only have pride in ourselves if we become the best we have room for or die trying. right? audism is our common enemy and can fracture healthy self-images...the Deaf and deaf worlds carry the weight of everything the hearing culture does on a more concentrated scale.

anyway, right, my approach has been interesting. the assholes who don't even acknowledge my rape when they are notorious for 13, 30, 300--so big with all the stories wrapped papier mâché around their cocks--oh, they walked it all right--and blame me after apologizing for being bad to me cuz i really am marriageable and a catch, right, and want me as a friend--they don't get their names used but their reputations and my time at gally will weed out the usual suspects.

because i may not want to forgive someone but life has its time and mistakes. so it's the best thing to do if someone really has stopped being a shit directly to me and agrees that other women need better. but, really, who WILLINGLY wakes up during sex with the guy who's now Indian Corn Teeth of Quasimodo? and goes OMFG YES I MASTURBATE TO THAT EVERY TIME I SEE A PROACTIV AD TOO THANK U MMMMMMMMMM CUTE BABY

anyway. note two is simply that I really do like audism. it just  isn't that ugly anymore. i also see that no one is going to combine the forces of audism and racism even though it would make a bigger, stronger one for everyone...be an awesome national party...so i have worked on myself and my view of history and what people want and why, and why audism and racism really have to be separate causes despite causing the same hurt and classlessness, hehe, and etc et al eg ie and all

note "reason i'm blogging in the tub and wasting my morning before fucking classes AUGH"...

rimshot

not pancakes yet. 4 stretch marks per up from 1. over the shoulder view still fantastic. head on the 99% of guys who don't hit me for having the stretch marks talk about them a lot. my last FWB decided to marry me over them (and my brain)...but i turned him down twice.

he's almost the right guy--the sex and cooking were incessant and so yummy--the last two months i'd have to tell him it was great that he was still fucking me for an hour after he got too tired to keep it hard but after 100 more orgasms i knew it was a little selfish of me to keep going. i'd lamented that we no longer had as much sex because of his new schedule so i was not having as many intense, releasing orgasms and was getting short with people because of how irritable i was. masturbation doesn't give me the same kind of orgasms.

like, almost perfect. who doesn't want a good 20 hours of great sex a week? but i burned that bridge to hell. i'm not dealing with his wife ever again, and leaving her for me is lacing my coffee with arsenic. if i don't like your orgasm faces now that you've decided to show me how much you CARE ABOUT ME and would marry me but haven't turned down any sex you better quit while you're head, boyo!

man, i deliberately and cruelly burned that bridge. i may miss him but now he'll really live in a prison or learn how to rely on himself.  but, you remember, rycola, i never let a guy tell me what to do. except in dark sad corners, after they had to hurt me to get me scared. fuck that noise, you audist!

squabbling with scrabble

so, heh, true story.

i told therapist lady about a third of what happened with floyd and it's not so bad to live. i'm still dealing ugh a few really bad anniversaries this summer and right now it's all the break-ups with joe last august. all the violence and me just sighing and trying to pry his hands off, then remarking occasionally that loving him was really the reason i had to be so rational and detached: if anything got to me he'd use it for more violence and oppression. not my bag.

never been my bag. since i was young i've been observant and knew from a single-digit age that girls look like fodder and that girls wear pants, and that my pants only get paid for with a sassy mouth. employing it is, she has said, which is what i've been saying is true, and everyone's been assuring me is a stack of lies i need for manipulation--

--why all this rape and beating has been going down. and that since it's what i've chosen, to face the onslaught and stand strong...all that's left is figuring out ways to stand strong no matter how many people turn against me and break my heart.

and she understood why i found the whole thing with floyd funny, why i think it's hilarious, why it really did go down the way i say it did. being new to me again and kinda freaked out and scared and still tachy from being raped and all--and being told by my therapist that i couldn't choose the healthier option because it wasn't good for him...

she knows he's not seeing it how my past led up to it and that it's still okay that i did what i did.

so everything's calming down. he's not on my mind at all, until just now, as i was processing the last month of sessions. i'm glad we're untangled enough for her to put together all the pieces.

she's saying everything i thought was true and people were trying to threaten and push and beat and rape me out of my convictions about. so it's okay--

--and we have to go back to fatso. i hate calling him that but the years i spent cutting--some of the cuts were his name, to forget it for weeks on end, to see it in my mind as a slur of sljnkied coils. what he did to me was torture and make me eat and eat and eat myself fat. so what do i have to sling back? his reason when he started abusing me back when we were teens...he was sad that he'd been picked on: "fat!"

and that isn't really the reason you beat and yank and push and lob heavy objects at and steal from and make fun of and rape and enjoy raping, enjoy it with a drooling smile, your "first love."

toothpick thorns: soothsayer swarms

finally we have a good tempo, finally i'm remembering enough that i jot down to mention it in sessions. finally i'm starting to feel like myself, and marci is a little like me, not wanting to believe people can say and do such shitty things.

it's the only way to become a good psychiatrist, anyway--but now nurses need a PhD to practice psychiatry...and nursing has so many other options i'm curious! still...marci agrees that what is key is to focus on my ultimate goals, and she doesn't want me committing to nursing until we know it's the best way to do what i'm passionate about. she isn't seeing the passion and isn't keen on me doing something that really could take time away from my art.

but, ha, today she said something that i've been waiting to hear from another flesh&blooder: it's probably because my memory is so exacting and so long, just so fucking good, that i'm so easily retraumatized. i told her that i had to do whatever it took to forget after floyd and i had our song&dancd of dissonance, forget forget forget, but that it's all muddled and stuck in my body instead.

so i like my original idea of being a radiology technician. no need to worry about not getting a well-paying job because nurses need to communicate with their patients, and i see myself working a normal, integrated job. BECAUSE ALL I GOTTA DO IS POINT&SHOOT

which is not true

because i see details so quickly and so clearly when other people say AIN'T NOTHIN' THAR

but i don't see why i shouldn't do what feels best

we are, after all, possibly no longer cocooned by glitz. we might get some fucking action like every lost soul--gaza isn't the only warrior in town--across the sea.

and i really wish my pussy rings would sell

and

and

and

but i really like living a quarter of a block

from one of the most beautiful parks and

i even think i don't just have an amazing idea for a novel

i have more than just a few fleshed-out characters and a plotline

i have a better knowledge of the history surrounding this thing

the other idea is so badass but it eludes me, the setting, so I can research--

--NYC, huh? it does seem the only city in this country willing to overlook a deaf person working a normal job prior to the last half-century. *cough*chicago*cough

and whatever clint does in life

hopefully in mine

i'm on a bookshelf.

Everybody's Love, Love, Love

Everybody's Love

When a pair of lips murders

Some old song

On its way out, the handle

Laden in your hand out of politeness

And you police your thoughts

Lest they become haughty

Or haunted with the harsh light 

In the corner dim

Every nanosecond, like a cockroach

It just keeps twitching 

The eternal dying, like a champ...

...it is then, you find, that compassion

Has a reel: the way it unwinds

Each cool weight drags

Out a bicycle chain without a pocket.

Concerts roil in you

Despite not wearing sunglasses

On your way

Into the slippery grip

Of this white tile linoleum 

(To buy a pop.)

Manufactured to endure billions of toddlers

The scrape is shallow.

the serenade in the soliloquy

i have to talk about floyd.

we made it through to the meat.

marci's been talking about how all the weird shit people pulled

just got to me. she's finally starting to agree that i clearly reached a stage in my life when none of it got to me; i'm all: lalala, yep, but what nobody really knows is how much i love floyd. and i won't let myself touch it. i can't think, work, function; i'm trying to be me without allowing myself to be me. my most authentic self was while we were pals. he didn't treat the blonde pink-tufted fauxhawk like i was being fake. or like i'm not pretty enough to pull it off. what i did for myself like losing a little weight, eating more healthily again...that was well-received. actually, actually wearing makeup--he was all, that's for me? sorry, girl, i ain't into you like that.

which was what i needed. wanted. he's the left half of the rorschach. none of the mr. rights line up exactly, but they have lined up in one way. with him and the others. greg is so cute i could have fallen for him but i'm ugly right now! anyway, greg, the monster. i was petrified for months.

then jenny was sage. floyd was sweet.

and greg was awesome. i thought he seemed stable. not prone to violence. after. after everything. it's like a poem. he peels away. he's beautiful when it shines.

the diamond.

so floyd was amazing but everyone who raped me about the autobiography said they were doing it to save floyd from the autobiography.

so if i die he's fine. if not, she hates me, she ruined my life, is what they say they need to rape me to teach me--to save him. to teach me that men will stop women from ruining other men.

and they don't even rate the book. hah.

one of them was really mean afterward about how fat i was, which i laughed off because we had met several times over the weekend, and he was the one who was cool about it until he could text how fat i was. they always say they can't believe how incredible the sex was or how i was fuming the whole time and that me spitting hateful attacks to try to get out of having sex didn't make it fun at all. kind of the point. ruin my night, yours is just as ruined. so it is always guys who really like the sex and the conversation but hate that i won't do everything they demand. they kick me out and wait until i'm too far away to text me that i'm fat and a pity fuck. i had a pretty great body when i saw greg but his number got blown away and i was too drunk with my camera in my hands at 3:30 in the morning.

and the kid was all, no, don't, leave it! don't you like me? he was taller and lithe, and could have grabbed the paper.

instead, the kid, only 23, someone I was fine sleeping in my jammies with talking up a storm with at 32, got ultra-jealous, and i was like, it would be gross so no, and greg was cute and normal. he had been kind of angry when we 'd first met. my burning quest wasn't for a kiddie set of loins. over it!

it was to ask "what's changed in your life to make you so happy?"

and that's when I start fluttering. his eyes are--

--but the fucking kid. and after 15 minutes of elbowing him in the ribs and not wanting to kick out some stupid nerd at 4:30a...

it's all ruined again.

fucking blind tiger! every time i have a nice encounter there some jerk fucking rapes me. 

i do not need 23-year-olds who know nothing about life. Insecurity isn't good for sex. i wanted to give greg the magic 8 ball book.

it's about him being my magic 8 ball.

and the outcome rocked.

the strangle squad

so i was putting on eyeliner and mascara for my 92 of shame back to adams morgan, since jon b.&john-boy usually escorted me to parties. i felt pretty so experimentation with contact lenses led to prettier eyes. anyway. we had a weekend routine. party together and separately friday, crash, meet saturday night, party together and separately, split up sunday until monday for partying and crashing.

so i was applying purple eyeliner. and they slammed in. stormed in. I ignored them because jon was always like, they are just bitches, skanky asshole fuckers, let me call them whatever i want!

and i draw the line at sluts but whatever. i just stopped him at that line. we maneuvered it icily.

so they came up to me in his communal bathroom and one grabbed me by the neck. slammed me against the body-length mirror by the exit as someone kept an ear. and three were threatening me, really making me laugh inside with their mean comments about how i'm too ugly to deserve him. which is why my best friend is keeping an ear out, pretending she doesn't see. she's cracking up inside too.

if you don't keep laughing at the absurdity of a meat face your best friend is always saying he has to push out of his and find time to bitch to me about over a pizza...you'll freak out that she has a hand around your neck.

when you tell him he flips the fuck out. when you tell him not to do anything he fucks the pretty one win the two first names. she looks at you like "i stole your man." this is the last day. i meet his parents  half an hour later.

he looks at me sheepishly and then we realize he was hoping for one last good time. but he's out of time and admits as much. he blinks too much when he's ashamed of himself and you almost appreciate that more than anything he's said all year, all the sexism and all the times you smirk that you're not the one he's with when he's particularly rude about some poor girl, a girl you love and respect, a girl you're glad he's telling you about because his secrets are theirs to keep. so you do.

and you're glad there's nothing to wring out of. no end-of-year kisses to make up for a romance you both hated for its tie to this glamorous blonde he thinks has an inner bitch lurking in me. so there, your eyes dance all lit like sun-glazed rosettes when he comes out in tears: "she stole my brotherhood jersey!"

and that is when he nods. he knows his friend has raped me and that he waited a scholastic year per some agreement. that he hit me for being afraid after his friend tried to fuck me and i flipped out for three nights crying as much as seven tiers of bridal chocolate fountain. he knows everything has been a charade, that we talked when alison said i looked at him so disdainfully it was like i hated him. that we talked about being in love with each other but having a friendship. it stayed that way and i didn't want to be bitter. before the internet there were perfect endings.

so he was like, yeah, i thought i'd get revenge on you. fuck you, you only get 30 minutes of my time. but looking at you, i have so much to say and there's never going to be time to fill that gap.

and then at the end he ran out crying, right, at me, and stopped short. by his shithead expectations he was stopped shorter than a bus.

he never was the right choice, but he really knew what he was losing then.

flank by flank

floyd is nothing but a gentleman. i can't just pretend he wasn't someone essential because when i do i forget what's most essential.

and it is quintessential.

but john-boy and jon b. were my best friends.

and john-boy was honestly hotter up close. i was freaking out thinking he would try and i knew i'd be exposed as someone totally heartbroken over it--jon b. hit me once and said really mean things about my looks, and i remember the girls choking me in the bathroom once. one of my best girl friends just pretended she didn't see. thanks, girl.

ain't you got my back.

and thankfully it was the boys' bathroom. they didn't know he'd left for practice. i left before he got back to go home and shower and change and eat and give him time for nookie with a new cookie, since we just slept in the same bed so we could be a bitter married couple early on.

so years later:

"you know, that was the first time had orgasms from sex, almost."

"what!? you never told me!"

"why? i was 19! no way was i gonna tell you you were going to be my first yummy he's favoritest sex! you already were! i was just getting my g-spot stroked at the perfect angle--"

"but i thought i wasn't getting through! it'd been two and a half hours, four if you count everything!"

"oh, another thirty seconds--trust me, i know now--"

"you never told me! i thought i just sucked for you!"

"so i ruined everything?"

"yeah."

twice. the second time was really fun and i so, so close.

but he was all, never mind, i can't fall in love again, this is going to turn out worse than bad; i need to party hard and forget someone, not do this, you know? i've been dying to do this the second you left and now you're back, but i've just gotten used to fucking around--

--and being with you

i would never forget.

but let's have a date.

so he hit me to make me remember one night, and that night

i knew i should have taken a chance on john-boy.

listen.

sometimes the whisper pierces deepest.

but that night it was just me, the b

and my complete innocence when he said we should make tacos.

he has never liked my face.

scum and ditties

scum versus ditties

is

a pictograph

a poem

zesty breathing

i got so busy i never blogged this two weeks ago

fatso did a lot of bad shit

and something i caught wind of reminded me that i'd forgotten to

so

i had this roommate freshman year and a few months junior year

but one reason it didn't work out junior year

at MSSD

was because fatso was cheating on this other gal with me, raping me

and i didn't even know at first that they were an item

and then anytime i consented to going up the concrete steps to the isolated moonlight

sometimes going so far we'd have to suck security roaming the balls

hee, duck and halls

i would just sob and plead to be friends and just friends and just besties and ask why it was happening that my hands would be pinned and my mouth opened with his and just disappear into my dissociation

but he was so gossipy

he told me he didn't want to keep dating my roommate junior year

and i have known her since intake

because she had bad breath, and asked me ME me

to tell her

but fuck no it ain't my place and it ain't my kissing

and i was splintering and she couldn't figure out why

but how can someone mess with someone he supposedly loves

and someone else he supposedly loves

and then cruelly

someone he has told he loves

just to mess

with the other two

sometimes when your eyes are blue

they're what people use to fool

themselves

the butterfly effect

joe loves the krohn more than anything in cincinnati

my new roomie and her boyfriend, who now rents the apartment upstairs, are in their mid-twenties and a total smash

they're artistic and fascinating, and so much like my old group of cincinnati friends it's delightful

i think they will make me go kayaking

and learn magic: the gathering

they think n&e are the cutest and i wish joe could meet them

and the krohn with its butterfly show is basically

around the corner

there's this bloodbath carrie

who bought plane tickets to cincinnati

and was like, i'm flying out! i didn't know how to say FUCK

NO

FUCK NO

I CAN'T STAND YOU ONLINE SO HOW CAN I STAND YOU FACE

TO FACE

so she met mike and he couldn't stand her either

and she was worse than annoying, she was pushy and verbally abusive

and would push me physically when no one else was around

push and pinch and jab

i heard years later that that was when her abusive fiancé left her

so i forgive some of that but

she kept telling me to feed mike peanut butter and kill him cuz she did not like

what she saw in him, the abuser bits

but i can choose my friends, okay

and when to leave them and i can decide

who to pity (like carrie)

so  mike comes home from the pacific northwest a year later, is it

after i dropped carrie off at the airport with cwome, was it

with a "never speak to me again, this was hell and you are hellacious

and i don't appreciate your physical fucking abuse and dependence on me for money

WTF crazy"

she'd spread this ludicrous story that I was plotting to kill mike

and he was like WTF CRAZY and i about killed myself with fear but he's like

we've been TIGHT we talk for hours every day for how long now

you woke me up for my seminars in seattle

told you that carrie wasn't just unstable

she's a bitch

that's a dangerous lie to spread so best cut that loss

anyway

she flew out here because she was crazy jealous and obsessed

cuz when i said josh chose me as his first she spent months asking what date

cuz she says she was his first

but here

see

fatso started beating me up and making me let boys rape me days after he said he loved me

because i'm ugly

josh chose me because he was in love with me and hurt me because

he said

i had to know he couldn't be in love with me because love destroys happiness

and

always told me

i was ugly

david started raping and hitting me in the mouth, and saying cruel things...

after he said he was falling in love with me

and the second time i met him was at his apartment crawling with flies and nothing but a mattress and their clothes all over the floor

and a $50 NYC couch, all metal with one PVC seat

NYC furniture for the impoverished, i swear

and he cried and cried and held me and said

she was beautiful on the outside and i was tripping him up

because he was falling in love with me because i'm beautiful on the inside

that i was the first girl he'd ever known who didn't make fun

of him for being mexican and who treated him well

and didn't make him feel poor

and then he made me cry by shoving her picture in m face

demanding that i tell him how beautiful on the outside

but all i saw was cold, murderous eyes and makeup hiding the cuts

on her face

ooooo gangsta

and then when weeks later i decided to let him kiss me so i could say

see

there's nothing there

the next night

the spanish

and the hitting

and eventually the i need her back because she's beautiful and you're not

joe never said i was ugly and

he hit me anyway

what makes the gloves

i've been trying to remember

did i delete donald's facebook message

saying that my very first rape, his fifth or something

now i know he was kicked out of clarke for raping young girls

was nothing, that i'm lucky i'm not iraqi

in the midst of

and i wonder why josh got so petulant as a 30-year-old mormon

so of course his morals apply only to his many baby sisters

and said that because he couldn't remember throwing me against the wall

over his shame that his first sex

me

was so exciting and nerve-wracking he lost his erection on the first thrust

even though it's probably why i destroyed myself

i was so

he wouldn't apologize for it

and jenny was all, that's bullshit

that's not even in the realm of an excuse

and i miss joe

so i was thinking of david because part of what made joe snap

was that i sent david e-mails but the more joe assaulted me the more

i tried to disappear into e-mails to david

i say i love abusers to try to erase the abuse and make things stop

so i was saying it to david but

it was so strange

david started abusing me because

he said something quickly and with his head downturned

on our seaport bench

before our fort greene bench

and asked, "what'd i just say?"

"i don't know, i can't figure it out...you went too fast"

"i was speaking spanish, stupid! you couldn't tell? stupid!"

but he had never

and it was the night

he said he was falling in love

psychiatry and its druthers

that is why i have decided

when the world is against you and the people who have all the strings

know

it becomes their power

your play

is taken from you floorboard by spotlight

and the disenfranchised

we are no longer committed to physical institutions

but the psychic lock and key

especially in the Deaf-world, so tiny

with ridor lightning-quick dispensing rules from "hey, tell..."

to "okay, tell..."

suffocates and the lights

go

--

(so there must be someone Deaf to sit there and agree

it is true)

...

i remember dorm b staff before i graduated

"we thought you lesbian what-up"

"why?"

"first night before freshman year we caught you in the tub with another girl"

oh, but that girl had a ferocious bite on her

already sent someone to have one treated

who says no when a threat is a bite after you've witnessed three assaults

and  two years later it turns out

she was sexually abused by both parents and their friends

"hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha so anyway i'm sorry but hey

it heartened back to innocent days, back to when we could just take baths with friends

right?"

"yeah, you didn't do anything weird, so

yeah"

sometimes

looking in is nonsense

and looking out is a trap

the bond severed, the bond oh-oh-seven

so mom is all

"your accusations are false and"

and i will not even! so we agreed no more mother and daughter

but i see someone must have told her something

she has backtracked a little on something

so even people who don't talk to her are talking to her and it gives her space

to change her stories

or she read the one thing i blogged and changed that story

but even

at ben's wedding i lamented to my second cousin faye

that we had become so distant i wasn't invited to her wedding

mom had been all GUESS WHAT TERRY AND BEN WERE INVITED TO FAYE'S WEDDING

YOU WEREN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and faye, perplexed

she said you didn't want to come

didn't want a direct invitation

and i was in the bathroom sobbing because of course

mom was all OH NOES YOUR BROTHERS ARE DRUNK OH NOES

and i went and got drunk and couldn't walk cuz my ankle was so swollen

so max carried me back to my hotel room

and max is one reason i keep living

he tells me everything that goes on in 13-people christmas restaurants and rooms

but now he won't be marrying mem

so i

am a szymanski whole

not half a ward

but how can i lie about not lying

just to save nothing me

just to save a reputation and keep being drained

how could she tell faye

and laugh at me

how can she constantly

but joe

not santini

is getting varnished photos of the twins

and two of himself with messages from me on those backs

not on the twins' except "of all that we share/the nos delicious/the most cozy/the most wonderful/is our DADDY!" and the like

as postcards

his birthday is a week from now

i want to buy him a $50 gift certificate for plaza art

but if he or his mom would just throw it away

then $5

is okay to toss

i cannot leave him to feel unloved

so i think

i will ask tres belles to take my card number and ask

just down the street

if he would like to order himself a cake

(i think otherwise he will not get a cake

isn't that a whopping heartbreak)

i want to make these adorable monster scarves

for joe and the babies

and mail them for his birthday to play with now and use in earnest this winter

i have no way of knowing

they won't be thrown away

whether he has faced himself

whether he'll be single and normal in four years

i worry

the drones aren't being employed now, when the world needs them most

that four years will be a death sentence

i read the news every morning

and i blog only what hurts me personally

but the months have flown by with too many terrible precursors

not to wonder whether "see you in new york" predicts

the destruction is horrific, the carnage

we did this, we allowed this cultivation of evil

and we aren't stopping it--

for the love of humanity, the children

send in the drones

ain't nobody gon' be decrying the damn things now

all over the world and we can't realistically expect

to stay safe much longer

the heartbreak mounts

jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene

well

we just canceled each other out

i have been trying to get out for so long but i'm so sad

about joe

my body memory of joe went away with the coercion

and i have mostly been miserable but

not always

and i think we have canceled each other out with relief

so we can both leave

**
he got weird after i told him last month i do not want him romantically

and he's been weirdly manipulative about so much

i look at him incredulously when he tries to stick me with 100% of the work creating this business he wants to have

and he says "yer so smart you should do these bits, see"

but he is slowly relinquishing every bit of control and responsibility

and my body misses its memory of joe

**
doink, this was posted friday night but apparently not

i had to have this talk with you

jolene is a song

and now the wife and i have moved past

self-defense and accusation

she seems to believe he coerced me

but anyway

now i know what i've been suspecting

he's been using sweetheart tactics to steal

based on what he knows about david, hugo and joe

threatening to break my arm or kill me or my client

for money

he gets really angry and threatening when i say no and then pretends he didn't

and for reasons a bit complicated to blog

this is now about my mother, not the wife, mind

except that a mother is supposed to be able to help a fractured child figure out what's normal

and guide her (or him) away from abusive relationships

not push her toward them and say it's nothing to do

with mommy dearest

but she has been pushing me toward abusive men and destruction

since she laid eyes on clint

so i really won't be talking to her ever again

this is not the kind of mother who can ever help

the kind of mother who would force her daughter into a place

where either she is in danger of being raped or killed every day

or has to try to love a man

so she feels just that much safer every day

me: a supernova

two, maybe

every week or two i start packing for NYC

then it hits me 

the babies, so i have to stay

next week i start again in earnest to try 

joe might have to give permission but i can't not try

he doesn't have custody so he may not have that much authority

and if their mother approves, i think she trusts me, well, then!

i spend each morning and evening, at least, missing the babies

and joe

several times a week i cry once or twice a day 

down from a minimum of twice a day seven days a week

and most days i still cry

i miss them like they're mine

i love them like they're mine 

recognition software: retinal scans

i was a pushover

docile

reasonable in assessing personality flaws within each relationship

offering solutions

making leeway for insecurities on both sides and

implementing

respect

is my thing everywhere i talk

but he's been quiet for nearly a week (we text daily)

she's said i probably wasn't coerced and that i need therapy for still being friends if i truly believe it

because no way could someone sane

but keri had babies with hers

and that is a barometer not of crazy but of balance

and marci is fully aware and never liked mosi, never fucking trusted him

but this she has no real issue with

and this

too

but i was crying as i put down the jeans

(calvin kleins are so cheap today, not quality, and the spandex

makes them fit almost as badly as style&co, which creates

camel toe

and looks great high across the ass cheeks by pushing them down (my ass is curvy!) but makes an ass droop and

the denim bags underneath the cheeks)

so i e-mailed her the worst and i am not the type

i told her that if her husband can tell me time and again that her pussy tastes bitter and is not a high ranker, it's so rank

then he is perfectly capable of coercion

that if for six weeks he could text me all the time saying "trust me

i will break her

i will make her agree to an open marriage

we never have sex anymore anyway so it's only fair

oh, i've been at it, i will make it happen, just you watch"

then yes, when i say that that's not how i like my men

he is capable of coercion

but

who

is this petty tattletale

it is 29 years of being told i'm ugly

20 of being raped and fighting off rapists

and one

of knowing that the guy i would marry and raise kids with

is too dangerous

home is where the heart sinks

so when jeff raped me it was coercion

and he was holding me tightly but anyway

i was weeping and telling him again and again that i was not ready

that i still loved and cherished joe and the imprint in and on my body

see, david erased all the bad somehow with his body:

fingers, lips, tongue

his penis, never...he was terrible at sex and his penis was too soft to feel

except during the thre rapes

so

joe too imprinted me (they both kiss so nicely--)

and though he raped me the love seared only the good into lasting memory

and i kissed jeff, who is pretty good at it except for that damn habit lately of smashing teeth

but i did not want anything else and he dragged me into the bedroom

and as i reiterated half a dozen times that i was not ready and did not want to desecrate my body memory

he assured me that once we were having sex i would be ready

and because joe would strangle me into sex i was not quite sure

i could walk away without being hurt (now i'm sure)

i just cried and cried and tried to push his hands away but they are strong, i have screamed because of the pain and had my hip wrenched out of its socket twice as well as a bone bruise, and cussed him out several other times

and the last time, when he started yelling at me for screaming because of his death grip

i countered that the only reason he won prison fights

was his grip and that he would get kicked in the face the next time he tried that shit because

he does not stop hurting me

and he was the one taking off my clothes and gripping me too tightly to feel safe

but

though i've been crying about it for a week or so

about his surprising denial and refusal to discuss it

though after three days i told him it was enough and that he had raped me and that i was not willing to have sex again

though the reason we do now is sometimes because i fear what would happen if i just

not always, mind...it is just so confusing since i met david

because now i want to be kind, because i learned with david (with floyd and vincent in mind)

that being kind feels lovely because it is love

that rejecting someone before i can get hurt is not always necessary

that being kind when someone is threatening me, hitting me, raping me out of fear

is not weakness but strength: it is a moral code

like hitting and raping represent the opposite moral code

i understand that if we hadn't started having sex

i could have spent the next five years waiting for joe so devotedly

it would have turned out to be a waste

but i have run cold against jeff with certain observations

but worse

he knows joe admitted to raping me and then suddenly said that since everyone else was on his side

this was at the motel minutes before he threatened to leave me stranded and for dead if i didn't agree to everything he said

he would categorically deny the rapes and pretend he never had

(how stupid that he read all this aloud to the magistrate and then told her it was true! thrice she asked and thrice he asserted that that is how it went down in the motel room)

and this is how he is choosing to erase part of who i am

erase his maturity

erase the connection we forged and the trust i developed

why would his wife tell me he didn't really rape me when she has admitted that he spent years crazymaking

cheating

making her cry and doubt herself

isn't that the same package

and i am so over it

she is a total misogynist except where her own pussy is concerned