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