She Fell in Love. Can’t be help responsible!

Back in 1974,  I was a kid,   only 18 years and probably was witness in some way to a date rape.   It sure felt like it because as I was leaving out the dorm that night,  guys were pulling a train on a teen girl and some guy asked me if I wanted to have ‘some.’   I said, “no.”   And besides,  the choice of words haunts me too as well as the whimpering that went along with her disorientation.

I was so naive but a part of my soul has been tortured to this very day.   If I knew then what I know now,   I might have gone postal because I cannot imagine a crime worse than that.     You see,   she was drunk and whimpering.   Damnit.   That really pisses me off.  No girl asks for ‘it.’   Not for that.

 

But date rape characterizations are nothing new and for the longest time just generally accepted.   In the movie ‘Animal House’  the guy was contemplating having sex with a passed out underage girl.    Did she ask for it?  NO! Does it happen?   Hell ya!   Is it any wonder so many women want to spread the pain around.

Going a few years into my adult life,   I had a girl friend and she was given a roofie.    The net effect according to her,  was she never felt the same about anything!    Date-raped by her boss at the mall.   She and I went through hell afterwards and my anger @ jerkoffs intensifies.    My girlfriend was only pieces of ceramic,   like Humpty-Dumpty,  those pieces can’t always be fixed.

I suffer too,  knowing that seedy men with seditious desires lay in wait,   like Jack The Ripper or the Boston Strangler.   In these instances the pain is far worse than death.    It is a slow blood-letting of one’s spirit and sense of control.    We had great times and every once in awhile we would talk.

From her bosses abuse of her,  of us really,   she went on a self-destructive binge with an older guy who was a criminal.   Arrested for a crack ball and spending time in prison,   he seemed to like finding young victims.   Her sister said he liked to read magazines like ‘Barely Legal’ and ’18’.      Yeah one of those!    One day her sister gave me a journal she had written and she had talked to her sister about the parasite she was with and how she missed me and my steady decisions and what would I do in a particular situation.   She said I am the guy that returns the shopping cart.    For awhile I was miffed by that but then got the gist of what she was trying to express.     She also got a disease from this miscreant,   Herpes!

(She fell in love in the first place)))

For some reason these words tick me off.    An otherwise innocent girl and not perfect by any  means,   paid the price for both of you and you both should be ashamed.     And I harbor guilt for not being able to protect her from the smarmy underbelly of the beast that lurks with a touch of wind and a wiff of illicit drugs.

If her mom had not been a prostitute and subjected her to so much,   she might have been able to cry on her shoulders.    She could have  told her Mom what he said and did  and your Mom would turn away.   Flushed with anger and disappointment,  words she heard once upon a time. Now reverberating like a song that plays over and over on a music box.   The ballerina fell suddenly and her porcelain dreams laid like a million shards of what ifs.

So let’s examine some of the dubious comments made by men and boys and mostly they are one and the same.     Your high school heroes and high society icons flickered as capriciously as the stories of high school football players and date rapes.   The bottom-line being the reputation of the boys and a girl who was allegedly asking for it.    She was collateral damage in the game of cat and mouse.

He gave you wine or drugs and told you it was okay.    He promised you everything to dance in the sheets and tomorrow he denies that he even knew you or the things you said,  you couldn’t have meant,  if you did say them….

Their friends and influences probably had mixed emotions about the destruction,   from the boss to the drug abusing narcissist whose real romance is a synthetic cesspool of misery.   Both now share in a common malady with excuses and no care for the damage they were doing.

What once was a fairy tale happiness transmogrified into a hellish world of missed chances.   Where lightning does strike over and over again(in the same place) and the pain still flows,  if even now to more or less a trickle.     In the video above  Boy Meets Girl they dance and sing with a love that we all want and yet finally,  even they play a requiem to a love gone strange.     To me,   as I worked in the media in Tampa,   the song was a fresh time.   A promise.   Together with Paula Abdul’s ‘Straight up’,  it seemed life had spectacular promise,  even after a lost preemie and the mother who ran off for a decade and a half with our daughter.

But life has second chances even if those chances require some modifications to retrofit them to make them work.    I do remember what my daughter said about her 16th birthday and how much she loved me.   That that was her best birthday ever.   This after being lost to me from her early post natal days to about fifteen years later.    Still,   I would NOT change things too much because what if we never rediscovered that and that is why the blog about ‘Ten Years a Single Mother’  and her kids love for her touches my heart.   Kids get the connections and their love is pure if they are loved.

The theme of this entire post is what are we going to do.    Rather than just complain about the pain,  how can we fix a thing?   You,   I and many others have lived on both sides of the track and nothing……  nothing gets fixed by complaining.    We need to put people first because a warm place and a hot dinner matters.

To the abuse of women,  children and the vulnerable,   you and I can change the world.    I have a few things going now.    One is to get Emotional Support Animals and Service Pets for people who need them.    Let’s teach men and society in general how to treat a lady and your kids.    We need to focus on identifying potential abuse and treat the family not a case number but take care of it as a village.  With compassion.    No tolerance policies does not heal a family.    Making rules is what politicians do.   Why do we punish people like Aileen Wuornos the way we do?   Why not find out where at-risk people are and help?   That gives us all a better chance of surviving the obstacles in life.

From murderers to offenders of all kinds,   punishment is the easy part,   preventing tragedies can happen and should happen.    That takes  more than a Breathalyzer and seeing if you can walk a straight line.    How much better will this world be with solutions and not grandstanding politicians and other nabobs using the moment for  personal gain.

Education is the key to everything.   Not just laws but helping people be better people.    Not projecting how good we are,  but how good we can all be,  if we just try.   Ghettos are going nowhere and neither are the homeless,  the drug users and other kinds of abusers.   Let’s get this done and stop maligning others.    The old speck and the log thing.

 

 

Stormy Heart Serenade – Damages

My dream –  25 January 2015

The day was one of those humid but unremarkable days with the exception of a forecast that included inclement weather.

I was standing outside a warehouse with three friends and we were discussing the forecast with the sunny blue skies and a light wind.  I gave my take on the situation being a Meteorologist.   In effect saying,  You cannot tell by the clear skies what’s going to happen during the afternoon and early evening”.

Sure to form by late morning the first little towers of cotton seemed to gather as the heat poured energy from below.  Like a pot of boiling water the change became more noticeable as the air liquefied into mad rivulets of upward vertical motion.

Marci told me that she needed to get out of the bamy skies as the humidity hung like a soggy blanket,  making the hot more miserable.

We found our way into an empty warehouse,  where we found a fairly sturdy set of walls and a heavy steel door.   Apparently,  we weren’t the only ones with that idea.   The fact it was ventilated made it a prime place to hide.

The room was not really that spacious so one got the feeling of being like an animal caught in a snare.  Claustrophobia seemed to seize us both at the same time and we left the relative safety for the open air and a less confined place.

The wind began to swirl with a passion as the heat climbed up towards the fast growing clouds.  In the distance were lines of Cumulonimbus Clouds.   Like a gathering army of angry and mischievous Gremlins. By late afternoon,  the ominous looking clouds fattened with sharp spikes of light shooting out in all directions with the accompanying claps of thunder and their reverberations.  The party was getting into full swing.

From an office you could see lines of storms systems.  These Mesoscale systems snarled and marched onward with high winds and low pressure that popped your ears and engendered a primal fear.  Soon sirens blared as the culmination of physics manifested in an eerie calm.     Bluish black clouds ragged with pent up rage acquiesced to nothing.

Buildings shook as they do when heavy ordnance releases it’s fury.   With the rise in air currents came the chattering of old roof tops that graced structures with uncertainty,  threatened to be peeled back or just collapsing with fatigue.  We saw a woman on a phone as the curtain of night started to drape itself about and the luminous light and sound show intensified bringing an increased sense of dread.

We wandered about and around the phone lady and soon she feel self aware and struck out to find another place. Marci and I,  decided to hole up in this semi-private space,  waiting for the current round of chaos to abate.         The last round of storms left us shaking.   To the left of us was a window which was heavily armored and I assured my consort that we were safe.   Suddenly like a bomb exploding,  a wash of red covered the window,  a human stain with no doubt,  all was not well.

As we found another spot that seemed safe,  a room that looked like a classroom and filled with people, I had some bad feelings here,  even more than any that I had spent time in and my suspicions were born out.   With another lull in this never-ending parade of severe weather and the threatening sounds of crashing glass and gales of wind unseating rooftops we found an office across the street.

 

This one office struck my fancy as I saw a bay window front to a store and office warehouse.   Me and my friend sat in two of the chairs practically inert and watch debris flash by in an instant.   Only slightly more safe was this place and keeping that in mind,  I went into the warehouse with Marci in toe.  There were a lot of beautiful furnishings all handmade with the middle of the room sporting a table with chesire-acting cat sitting quietly in a chair next to that table.   She knowingly acknowledged me in this strange sanctuary conspicuously absent of people.

Walking back outside the carnage was obvious.   The scenery changes were not limited to buildings as dumpsters of debris,  seemingly human powdered the landscape and the aftermath of solitary suffering.

 

A stick of gum and a wad of paper.

I often dreamed of moments like these,  the innocent refrain of hearing my name called out affectionately and the peace that I knew that would be waiting home for me.   The hearth was warm,  the gentle flicker of flames danced hypnotically and assuringly.   What was there to mourn?  Right?

But life has a cunning way about it.    It marches to it’s own cadence, summarily deciding on a whim whether a fall or fortune would be good or bad.   In that case the seeming tranquility was cloaked in an aether of steadiness.   Nothing to worry about or so it seemed.

However the pernicious dark clouds were soon gathering and my foothold upon a fissure.   The subtle security in that moment vaporized and I fell like a rock feeling the passing of time into a new setting.   It was like heaven without any of the soft nurturing clouds.

Settings once familiar had a certain oldness to them with mostly the same structure but without any soul.    I looked upon the doorway to my mystery and the door was tightly locked.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my key,  surely things were okay.  But now even that didn’t fit.   Why?   Were the people that I saw across the street look-a-likes?  Replicas with stone hearts?   Did they conspire?  Was I a stranger?

The windows outside were frosted over and the place looked abandoned,  the leaves unraked and the smell of disuse permeated the surroundings.    Even the birds looked like holograms in a 3-D movie.

Walking away from my moorings,  I drifted like a lovelorn log out to sea.