seeing the light: of day

rustling a shroud (working title)

for joe

you make love to me like you've never heard a sound

you (shocking sound!)
ride (shocking sound!)
me (shocking sound!)
all (shocking sound!)
the way underground (shocking sound!)
where you feel (shocking sound!)
the dead scrabble around

to get to space
but you (shocking sound!)
can't (shocking sound!)
fly (shocking sound!)
into place

you wear your life
like a shroud
into a tomb of verisimilitude
so no one
can pin it on you
in time

in the catacombs you can't hear a sound

splitting hairs for continuity

doonesbury

i never read the funnies

but on an abandoned seat so i grabbed

for fun

and doonesbury is about exactly what i was saying

only i didn't have the energy to finish that they only talk to the babies semi-normally

by reading to them but always so dumbing-down

OVER

UNDER

RED

GREEN

it drove me mad because though they were delighted some nights

new material, please

and in doonesbury one brunette and one blond twin and

they need a new book so the words come

i wonder if they threw out all my gifts

the clothes

the books

all the rest

but the babies are always

babies to me

and they're walking and talking beyond me

reasons to live

i know there are two

but sometimes i make the mistake of thinking

and i can't help crying. jeff thinks

i have time and the determination to get custody

but i worry it will be too late or that the agency doesn't see deaf people as viable adoptive parents

much less foster parents

and sometimes i think it hurts too much to keep trying...

that living just exhausts me because so many people want me to forget them

and i know i don't miss joe, i wish he were someone else

someone safe to be a parent with

i miss them and the way they talked to me

i was struck by how grown-up n was with me and no one else

trying to tell me with his imperfect vocal cords

pointing at the white medical tape squeezing his legs too tight in two places

complaining, oh, either that they were too tight and painful

or just that he didn't like them and wanted them gone, off--

he just wasn't like that with joe or nancy

he knew i knew there was more going on in that head--they just screamed at each other and treated n&e like young, young babies. not being able to talk yet doesn't mean not being able to process information

words

have coherent thoughts

i was signing by 9 months so

i always talked to them in real sentences, real ideas, real questions, admissions that i didn't understand what they wanted, stuff

like that

so n was babbling very seriously about the bandages and i explained

(they understood my deaf voice very well, as evidenced by n's first real word, daredevil)

that i knew he didn't like it, that i was sorry if they hurt, that he'd been picking at mosquito bites and causing bigger and bigger scabs, so we'd had to find a way to heal them instead, and that they'd come off within a few weeks, maybe two weeks. i said to just hang in there.

and i knew he really understood some of that, and loved being respected enough to be talked to and have things explained

because

every time i came over after that before it ended

he crawled/toddled over as soon as i walked in

pointed at his bandages with me sitting there

and went into long, serious diatribes--monologues--about how unhappy he was with them

and not one word made sense or was a word

but

he appreciated my honesty and explanation and treatment of him as someone

who could listen and make sense of what i was saying...

no one else ever talked to them in a normal way

and of course i engaged in baby talk and silliness

but sometimes you have to explain things to babies

why they have to eat this and not that

why the train isn't at the crossing yet

that daddy's mad at me and not playing fair as a result.

they don't remember me. they won't. they may be in danger

sexual abuse or beatings may be their reality now or in the future

and i am just

helpless right now

and this is why i wonder--because i have been fine all these years, since dad died

if it is worth

living

memorization, time immortal

and i've of course won a place in a local poetry contest.

i just did it to show: deaf ain't slouchy.

i've got to get signing it down in just a week and a half, and i wish i knew the crop of interpreters from which to choose. after all, if there's gonna be anyone Deaf in the audience, we gotta stay hip. 'sides, i gotta know my poem is gonna be read right.

it's kinda fun turning an event into a Deaf-oriented thing. and they seem thrilled. they're sure i can filter the terp options. i really want jeff johnson or a steele. but: where are they?

i love this town sometimes.

wondering at wonder

i wonder at the wonder in her eyes when i told her

i worry about joe every day.

the surprise surprises me. i need to ask why. some days are free

but the mornings catch up

smack that bitch up, gotta quit her

david started hitting me to stop having feelings for me.

joe started hitting me because he was terrified i would leave.

this time, well, i'm a little sinister. *

the ministrations are a lot less striated; my bulletproof vest is on half the time, and his is half-off.

it's a little bit of a light fandango, all mine to sing...

and he knows just where he's stuck.

on me.

*another song. belle and sebastian--

in charity, in the chair, i see

i tell marci

how i stopped

stopped living in 2010

zeus/resin/david

smacking me in the mouth

not beating me

but slapping me so hard that sometimes

my lips bled cut on my teeth.

that after marisol toolworks was just more abuse

threatening me for reporting sexual, physical and mental abuse of clients

threatening me 

those poor defenseless, frightened, lashing-out geriatrics who can't see a leading to b

i'm their one line to defense but ambushed in meeting after meeting

threatened

for protecting even those i despise, knowing their first and last line of defense lies within me--

then cutting my teeth on real beatings

joe. like that fat kid at MSSD. the fatso everyone loved so blue and catatonic--

the blue eyes so many years apart--

and jeff, i can't trust, i shouldn't--trust--

david/zeus/resin so terrible at sex, but my first loving experience...my first happiness--

and jeff so wonderfully

there.

i'm going to stop giving so much

and keep taking it all--

he expects as much

but truly

anything goes if it makes me come.

it's like he would miss me

but i would chirp

c'est la vie

antithetical but balanced. still--

"supposively"--

in the throes

from my fearless throne i plead

"i love you"

but who?

field of dreams

the wreckage of yesterday's has me laid up today, and i've spent three days at home since december. fuck.

and he's pledged to call and wedge in an appointment for me but i'm declining, reclining in the only hot bath i've got. i've switched from cranberry juice to quench the blood to cranberry liquor:  malbec. we braised a pound of boneless ribs in the stuff yesterday, and the depth--oh, the rest we did in beer, and not a nuance can be traced!

this is wreckage from front to back, hips to toes. and i realize

marinating

not in the throng i was getting dressed to swallow into

i really started this to forget joe, but the more "you know how them are"

"her and me" but worst! oh, duds: "supposively"

then, a gasp of a glance at me, and, trying, trying: "supposibly"--

and i am just shuttered.

then

he tells me a dream: it's me laughing as he beats others after a clear walking dead heroism.

and i hate it; i think it's because i was snide about his wife's aversion to certain foodstuffs.

but

i can't handle

i miss

joe. not the stinky deaf one, mind.

i worry

but the safety

is in the distance

accoutrements of the lashed tongue: tongue-lashings

it can't matter now; i'm hundreds of miles away. thousands of smiles dead aweigh, and silent space.

when bianca messaged me about ty's wedding a friend whipped me senseful: "can't you tell, she did this to hurt you? never mind that you don't even give a fuck, think: what happened between you, and thonk!--why now, why is this her one attempt to contact you?"

i'm no longer her dead weight; she's deaf to me anyway. why i hate my vacation to her and perils, hehe, is the difference it all made. but, like:

she's old enough to hold her own without a set of balls. and anyway, she's such a good liar and perils such a selective liver that it won't matter, i'll just be labeled a bitter old liar, and they can walk their forked tongues a path.

we were working on reconciliation. but anyway, one night i'd said, sitting at the table, my back to the living room, to her TV in his entertainment center: "you know, one of the reasons i don't want to be friends with jenny is because one day she tried to drop this bomb: 'delusional, &c, not raped, &c, unable to face reality, &c, i'm your friend and will force you to, &c! we're close but you're not my best friend! bianca is! and i'm hers! not you! we've known each other longer! we've been through more together! &c! DEAL WITH THE TRUTH! you don't matter as much to us as we do to each other, so just move on!"

which was funny; it had been us three until i started to really think floyd had been integral to my life but was being raped a lot trying to date and be friends with guys. perils was all, "but i hang out with guys i've just met! they don't try to fuck me! THEREFORE YOU ARE LYING. bianca doesn't get assaulted either; THEREFORE YOU'RE LYING BECAUSE SINCE WE BOTH TEACH ASL YOU FEEL LEFT OUT. you want attention, but here's the truth: bianca and i are closer to each other. Deal with it!"

and bianca was always like, "GOD, would jenny just leave it alone? you know i trust you more, tell you more, am closer to you. ignore it; it fucks us up! ILYILYILYILY!" a few someone elses were like, "you know why jenny doesn't get hit on. don't EVEN go there!" which was really kinda unnecessary, but necessary because it's true--i have something guys see and want right off the bat, different things in different situations, and she has her own set of attributes. as for bianca, well, she has an elegant serenity that's a façade but makes guys just see her as "future breeder; treat her right until she agrees to marry me!"

AND THOSE ASSESSMENTS ARE EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE OF ME BY SAID GUYS! fuck-all to do with who we are, what we want, even our physical traits above the neckline.

but i dealt...until bianca finally got me to talk with perils. then THAT. AGAIN. and anyway, i had made the decision that perils wasn't my friend or anyone in my grand scheme of the 30s or beyond. so asserting me as second best was really just an abuser tactic. always had been.

and bianca at the table said "...you KNOW why i won't tell her! you really are my best friend, you know it in your heart. you know i fight with you less, you don't judge me, you don't get pissed like she does! overboard. i'm afraid of jenny! she's SCARY. she scares EVERYBODY. you know!"

"yes, and that's why i had to put things straight. that's why nobody's friends with her. that's why it's important for you to be the one to tell her--as her best friend. as someone who won't let jenny control her anymore. you're the only one she has left, and she clings to you because you won't tell her what she doesn't want to hear. lemme tell you: coming from you--you're the only one she can handle it from. besides, you get to choose your hierarchy of friends, not her, not me. why are you so scared to do what i have? my life is still here."

"yes, but you know i hate confrontation!"

"it's not confrontation to tell her who you really are, or to save her from herself. her future is miserable if she doesn't listen to the truth now."

and then. the FIGHTS. and admittances: "i'm not mad at you."

"jenny really pisses me off! she's always trying to control me, judge me!"

i'm not next in that food chain. i love them but i love fulfilling my goals instead of filling with fear and doubt.

so. anchors aweigh, then

as it is missaid but

so

apt today

anchors away!

laced-over loose tongues

so ty was wrong. marci and i had the conversation about borderline personality disorder she wasn't willing to have a decade ago. the diagnosis makes sense, it really does, but what ty used to frighten and intimidate me isn't. "i hate you--don't leave me!" and all the manipulation people associated with erin had nothing to do with me. have.

ty wanted me to say i was like that, but when someone's only got sexual abuse in his or her life, it seems like rejecting everyone who's a rapist or emotionally abusive is terminal. when almost everyone in an abused person's life is advocating sexual abusers and not the devastated person, it's harder to know emotionally and logically that walking away is the only thing to do.

marci and ilene said that i have a very mature, thoughtful approach to conflict, and a really intuitive, logical dissection of problems at hand, what's really going on. i told marci how perlis would constantly try to destroy my identity and negate my rape experiences by saying, "your therapists know it's all fantasies--you wish you commanded such attention. they cater to you, they tell you they know you're being raped by such&such, by so&so, but they're just trying to soothe you and keep you calm until they can get to the real work: destroying your illusions. they lie to you. you've never been raped by these guys. your therapists are just trying to work with your delicate state and then they'll bring you back to reality."

perlis, remember, majored in psychology, and still studies it. she's not a safe therapist! thankfully she doesn't want to be one.

marci's reaction was different from ilene's, who was like, "listen, fuck her. FUCK everyone's opinion. don't let her get to you; you know i say she's a dangerous friend, and anyone who lets her boyfriend abuse her and hurt her friends is a bad person. why you don't just leave i don't know!" marci just froze mid-sign, laughed with disbelief, and said, "oh, sure, let me just say...that's not how therapy works! we don't lie, let me tell you that! ridiculous!"

i couldn't really imagine that perlis (autocorrecting to perils each time is the smartest thing my phone has ever done!) meant it, was all; now i know, the night we last talked as one true friend--me--to a callous, destructive antithetical pal...she said i hadn't been telling the truth about any of my NYC attackers.

and that was that for me. keri was another person ilene really wanted me to stop talking to; she was the most vindictive, soulless person in my life. both women were wheedling because they were scared that ilene wanted their punching bag to walk away and open her own gym.

if keri is still mocking and devastating women who have been victims of SV/DV, it's time to put her in her place. she told me about her own rape just before loch was born. she needs to stand back. i also know that if she really had been asked to step down as a volunteer working with DV survivors&victims and refused, as the story goes, there were legal options to keep her away. if no one had the guts, well, that's actually a testament to her powerfully destructive abuse. she's not a safe person toward other adults.

now, joe...i wonder. what if he has BPD too? he seems to have been diagnosed as bipolar but his abuse and anger--maybe it all overlaps. still, what if instead of talking about how sad he is about all the abuse he's endured, and how hard it is to cope with mounting abuse, and being pushed away and manipulated...he's just mostly silent until the anger turns into the red tide?

that would make perfect, awful sense. he can't handle his abuse enough to talk about it, and his world as a convicted ?felon or ?justplainconvict and father without custody of his children, he is constantly thrust into his memories and forced to face and kowtow to his abusers. he's got no choice but to position himself as the deferential child, and his abusers get to lord everything over him.

because, marci just alluded, anger is apparently a common way to deal with BPD.

i wish he would listen to me. i wish he would just let go. I wish he could stop being afraid of showing the world the only thing i see: someone who can't handle his abuse except in anger and bursts of abusive violence. i never want to lose him to it, and i'm so afraid the world will.

he's so talented...he just can't find his center.

and I think i'm done with jeff. he's just as immature as joe, and the more i hear from him, the less i like and respect him. the way he deals with shit he brought upon himself is ridiculous, and i think he shouldn't get to have me in his life.

besides, i miss joe more now, thinking about how all the abuse must be pain turned into anger and impulses he can't apologize for without feeling embarrassed, so that recycles itself as more explosive anger. i'm not ready to give up on him, and the protection order is one of the reasons i'm feeling so suicidal.

slants and slates, rosetta in the air

i cried into his chest hair today

last night the 43 took me past super laundry

and i remembered joe flipping out one night at city limits laundromat&tanning

driving away at 2a

because i was still in too much pain

to have sex

and insisting that blowjobs really were acts of love and all i could manage

anal sex with him--his girth--no, never again

the once...i spent three days crying and mostly abed

and he said

THEN PROVE YOU LOVE ME AND FUCK ME HERE IN THE PARKING LOT WHILE OUR CLOTHES DRY

he came back

not so apologetic but calm enough, steaming

but always with the FUCK ME IN THIS PUBLIC PLACE OR I WILL ROB YOU

LEAVE YOU STRANDED FOR SOMEONE TO RAPE OR KILL

and

streaming onto his ribcage both eyes discharged

but he insisted on hugging me so sobs broke the rivulets into waves

and i told him

and about, also

the sex with joe: i always loved him, every second

but i was never a participant

it was always too

the pain, so i could never move, he drove into me like tiger woods drove into two spectators rivulets of blood

painful

fluff and not the stuff of dreams

 i'm not a bachelor fan

i just can't sleep so i read the dailymail article about juan pablo

he's a shit, to be sure, a cheater and a liar; his own parents want to warn all women off--his poor daughter! he probably disgusts his parents as a parent! but then i read: "don't get cranky, don't get cranky, don't get cranky"--

to someone who has been led on and can't even begin to see that he's used her from the start and probably hasn't been persuaded to have sex with him yet (haven't seen the show...but given what he said to poor clare, he must be trying to figure out a way to fuck nikki and cut her off)--someone who desperately wants to believe he loves her, someone he is hellbent on deceiving--

SO NOW I WANNA KNOW

will she be allowed to sue if they continue a romance/get married? cuz SURE AS SHIT..."don't get cranky"--is a precursor to rape and violence if this guy gambles with the diamond ring

to slip himself

into her diamond ring

and sure as shit...she better sue for every last dollar she can wring

they knew, and they didn't think it would be a big thing...but pushing an abuser, someone who will take a swing...

well, I guess it's all comic timing.

the henry ford museum of triggering trains

read

Men's Health Magazine tip

lick a woman's palm at a bar to see if she's into you

FLASHING

back

and this just after a happy relationship with a piece about women and orgasms

such a happy new start, with ben, steelbike1979

my first enjoyable sexual experience since 1997, back when jon b. seemed feminist and sweet

my first happy and actual blowjob since pricky (josh was just gargantuan, and so tender; that was that...clint was never anything i wanted)...and joe, he just never understood how special he was, how much love was lavished upon that cock, screaming: if you really loved me you wouldn't be giving me blowjobs, you'd be fucking me, when i was just too torn up to handle that dick with no time to heal because he kept raping me to test whether the screams were real...and falling all over himself in apologia

FLASHING BACK

to when i was on my way to stay with the tibbits in virginia

when the military fucking dude in the seat next to me (he was 26 and I just 16)

grabbed my head and forced me to give him head on a greyhound and my first blowjob done

clint knew

he said always, always said

"the only way to end the pain! is to keep doing what hurt! in the first place"

there was one boy at MSSD who got a scared blowjob from me...i felt so trapped...I had never given one apart from that bus-rape one and the forced dead-weights....

and i didn't know if he was going to rape me if i said no

i couldn't handle the semenn, the FLASHING BACK, so i vomited over the balcony

i tried to hate him. i didn't want a toothless lunkhead in my memorepertoire. i never went down on anyone again apart from pricky until 2010...

but it was not his fault, i don't think, and i never let on

that he had trapped me and maybe would have forced me into it because

he's kinda

dumb

and p.s. i forgave you

such a long time ago

cradling the robbed

he was

not

he had never been

but when he said the stimulant had made him sick (! just monday he said it had taken a week to stop feeling it, a week to quit the near-permanent priapism, stop vomiting, be clear of headaches! what a 21-year-old idiot!)

i didn't have to explain that despite liking the 20-30-year-olds, he wasn't my type. instead i explained that he was just too young. a kid.

and i find it odd

jeff is 35 and a month yesterday...and his nose is growing. he suddenly went from looking 30 to 37, 40...and i still think

the sex is amazing. we've just started holding hands most of the time

and i forget the NOSE the OLD FACE but then i snicker to myself because it LOOMS

and

we had a huge blowout because he'd raped me "i can't, i really miss joe" "i really don't feel comfortable" "i don't like this" "don't worry; once we get started you'll feel good"

so for weeks i was mean and refused to touch him

but now we interlace our fingers almost every time no matter where our hands end up

and he is married

and i fuck him because it's just like being with joe minus

the violence

joseph and elizabeth streets intersect with reading road

mere blocks apart. joseph is where i'm waiting right now.

joe lives on reading in reading; he's apparently unable to land a job like the one he had in music production because of his felony or felonies. he has a drug charge in kentucky that apparently carries a felony conviction,  according to jeff. i worry about him driving past when i wait for the 43.

after we broke up some stupid weird shit went down on his part, and

one

was (he was trying to tantalize me into getting back together, all the stupid weirdness was was)

"i got a ford...nah, never mind."

me, trying to be his text friend, afraid he'd OD or kill himself or worse if i left him altogether: "well, what kind of ford?"

"you don't deserve to know." and that was how he ended it. i didn't even care. whether he had a new car or truck didn't make a difference. his truck had broken down, i had paid the second tow truck fee i had ever covered for him because all my shit was in the truck and Ii couldn't risk losing everything over his insolvency...and i didn't even want to be in a car with him behind the wheel anymore.

not only does having a car not impact how i feel about him--or whether i want him back--he never could stop trying to tempt me with his TV, car, laptop, but he's the one who's materialistic, not me--he had gotten into an accident with me in the truck because at a red light he had the genius idea of turning to try to lipread a word he couldn't understand. i was like, DUDE. no deaf person would do that in a line of cars ready to stop at a red light. STOP trying to please me in the most arbitrary, senseless ways, and use your common sense. I love you, but was this worth trying to lipread me instead of saying, "hang on," or "what!? repeat that in a minute?" he was scared, getting red and sweaty, and it sank. that stomach of mine was always sinking around that boy. stealing my liquid painkiller, reading my e-mail, even texting jeff to try to catch me cheating with him--i'd caught him redhanded typing that nearly completed text just hours before that tow truck came to haul all my stuff and his truck--he was like, "i'm gonna lose my license. i don't have insurance."

his mom does this yo him. she makes him buy cars as a father and drive a baby to the ER--knowing he can't afford car insurance. so, no, a ford isn't making me want anything but yo strangle the living day lights into his common sense.