Someone must, at last, tell an inconvenient truth

I wonder if Holofernes would have forgiven her...

The truth is about domestic violence. It is not The Usual. The Usual should be sufficiently reprehensible and vile. The perpetrators of said man-on-woman violence ought to be locked in a cell which is then thrown away.

I am talking about the dirty little secret: domestic violence committed against men by their wives, partners, girlfriends, or whatever is the “correct” term du jour.

The dirty little secret lives miles down the shaft at the bottom of a mine. It looks like the muck-pit Daniel Day-Lewis slogs through in There Will Be Blood. You can’t see the truth for the grease on the floor. Nobody wants to “go there.” The context gets lost. Even in man-on-woman violence the context gets lost. Sean Hannity plays Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” as his opening theme. He pretends it’s a song about revenge for 9/11. It’s a song about a woman avenging herself on her abusive husband by burning their house down over him. Aha! Not so much fun now, is it?

The most famous case of a woman avenging herself on a man is the case of Lorena Bobbitt, who endured her husband’s violence (including marital rape) and infidelities until the famous amputation incident.

What if a man avenged himself on an abusive woman? What do you suppose would happen?

What happens when a man goes to the police in some towns and reports that he’s been subjected to domestic violence or a continuing pattern of domestic abuse?

If you’re me, nothing happens. The cops shuffle their feet and giggle.

Right, this is about me. It’s the secret that will not stay a secret anymore because I’ve had enough lies.

I have been in a relationship with a woman since late 1995. Yes, yawn, it was illicit from the get-go.

My life turned into a country & western song.

Somewhere in the second chorus my Significant Other punched me in the face. It was on May 4, 2007.

I forgave her because somewhere I am enjoined to forgive. But I made a sad mistake. I also chose to forget. Nobody who has been assaulted can forget what happened. That almost guarantees it will happen again.

And it did, in October. Again the blaming me for everything that is wrong. Captiousness, fault finding, character readings without the tea leaves, and then burst into the bathroom while I’m sitting on the can, bellowing “You have no rights of privacy in this house.”

I tried to have her arrested. The cops thought it was funny. “Oh, the most you can get for that is harassment.” Proving to me that the real first name of all police officers is Dumb, as in Dumb Cop.

I talked to a priest at my church about what happened. He said it is almost impossible to develop a group made up of men who have been assaulted in their homes.  Nobody wants to come forward and tell about it. We’ve all fallen victim to The Ethic.

The Ethic states you do not hit a woman. Ever. It is the woman’s insurance policy and guarantee that she can do the most reprehensible things and be immune to physical retaliation. Like a burning bed. We–men–are taught to turn the other cheek so she can get a better shot at it.

Something is way the hell wrong when a woman garners sympathy and the man is treated like a pussy because he would not–in self-defense–punch out the lights of the woman who attacked him. Hey, what’s a big guy doing getting walked on by a “mere woman”?

So I would love to hear from men out there who have been similarly mistreated by women they loved. We need to go public, gentlemen. We need to make our voices heard. Or do we really like being victims and pussies?

By the way…I’m hunting for another place to live. As I said, I can forgive. But forget? Are you kidding me? Those who forget the past are condemned to find another woman who will beat the fuck out of them.

The joy of Barbara Ehrenreich + The Secret + The racist attack on Obama

And I thought this was going to be short…

First, I’m on Barbara Ehrenreich’s mailing list, so I got a notice about her (relatively) new book. I will let you look at the cover and title for yourselves:

I love it when people see a social trend that shares my own non-sweetness & light disposition, i.e., a problem is not an opportunity except for more catastrophe. As the recession has propelled us into double digit unemployment, the relentlessly spewed trash about how you can wind up in a better situation than the one you lost simply reeks of week-old kitty litter. You are being told a lie. The only opportunity is to face the situation head-on, do what you must, and rail. The current situation of economic disaster generates a series of lies about attitude adjustments and horse-cock slogans like “I’m not unemployed, I’m between jobs.” Right. When people who made $90,000 a year are fighting for 30-day contract jobs for $15 an hour, this country is so over….

Second, and related: the epitome of the age of positive delusion is the irredeemably meretricious book and DVD calling itself The Secret. I watched a pirated version of the DVD. It was mind-boggling. I was being told I can wish my way into riches, happiness, and damage-proof relationships. The flip side is I can wish death and ruin on people who have hurt me, and I will have my revenge?. That hardly fits the happy-happy joy-joy message, does it?

Finally, there is this:

Barack Hussein Obama, mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm.

I hear this most often, being in the New York area, from Rush Limbaugh, and from the despicable King of the Court Jews, Steve Malzberg. Malzberg in particular, going back to his days as the gofer for Art Rust, Jr. (a black man!), is a somewhat soberer and more pointed version of Glenn Beck. He has fangs like a black mamba and they drip poison.

Barack Hussein Obama, mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm.

The Hussein part is easy because Malzberg is really a Birther who seems to endorse the theory that Obama was born a Muslim in The Land of Booga-Booga and actually has a bone through his nose.

The mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm stuff is even worse. The last time I heard that was the last time I saw Gone with the Wind. The sound belonged to Hattie McDaniel, the black woman who played Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy. Whether Malzberg came up with it or Limbaugh, who is much more intelligent, the fact remains it is the most blatant expression of racism against the President yet. And it’s only the start. Right: Obama is making more mistakes than a blind tailor or seamstress. He’s proven his maladroitness and spastically bad timing one time after another. But to make him sound like a Civil War mammy…well, the only people that’s not beneath are Limbaugh and The Court Jew. It’s perfectly incredible but in America circa 2009, what’s incredible anymore?

On Hiatus

I’m going to be out of commission for awhile (short, I hope) while I hunt down another place to live and then figure out how I’m going to pay for it. I’ve had a life change in the last few weeks that makes moving a necessity. What I dread is having to go into one of those “Senior communities” where the only people I see under 55 are in the supermarket. Right, I am 65–but most days I feel either like 100 or 19, depending on whether the Wellbutrin has kicked in yet.

So the marching orders:

1. Find a place that’s affordable

2. Figure out what’s disposable and throw it out

3. Move

4. Become so busy that I don’t have time to grieve.

And please spare me the happy horseshit of “It is what it is.” Sometimes it is precisely what it should not be because at this age I don’t deserve it.

Ceci n’est pas une vacances

No, this is not a vacation I’ve been on. It’s not even a declared rest period after we drank our milk, ate our cookies, and took our afternoon nap.

It’s the fun of having real life going like a jackhammer up your butt. It is:

1. The pending severance of a 14-year-long relationship with my Other. She is planning to sell the house and buy an apartment in Manhattan. Whether this is a pipe dream (see famous Magritte image not included here) or reality, I am on notice, and am seeking to leave this place where I have dwelt sometimes happily, sometimes in misery, for over nine years. The End of the Affair my ass. This is more like the sacking of Rome by the Goths.

2. The search for an apartment I can afford in an unaffordable state. Did I mention I despise New Jersey?

3. The hustle-hustle to keep the adjunct teaching work that makes the rent possible.

4. The adjunct work that is sapping my strength and contributing to the stress that is blowing my glucose numbers through the ceiling.

5. Did I mention that the apartments I’ve seen thus far within my price range either have plumbing that is somewhat out of commission or are in buildings that will not accept animals? Love me, love my cat. So far the neighborhoods for that kind of apartment remind me of places I used to visit when I worked for the Welfare Department in New York.

6. I paid about $900 yesterday for a new timing belt and water pump  after my car quit in the speed lane of the Garden State Parkway. How I got across five lanes of hostile drivers is beyond my knowledge, but God must have something real special planned for me. Maybe I’ll star in the remake of Snakes on a Plane, only it will be a real plane with real snakes.

6. And I’m still trying to write.

But…

I saw something humbling while waiting for my car. A woman came in leading a young boy of about 12. His head was clean shaven. Clearly this was the result of chemotherapy for a childhood cancer. And without hair it was hard to tell his sex. I did not stare, but thought: this child may not make it another year and his mother will grieve him more than I have ever had to grieve anyone. So my car is laid up. That nightmare I have been spared.

All the same…in the aggregate…Father, if it is your will, let this cup pass from me. But if not, then your will, not mine, be done. And the mercy I ask for myself I ask also for that nameless child. May he live to manhood so he can have a car kack out on him.

Pietà, Signor, pietà.  Amen.

September 11

Right. How many of these will there be today?

This is my memory, this is what I choose to remember, a photograph taken in October 1986 from the escalator leading up from the PATH station to the Trade Center.

I think of the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, specifically the words “Who shall live and who shall die.” And I know that some of these people passing through or into the WTC never made it out alive several years later.

The world has never been the same since that morning eight years ago. I think of the lives shattered irreparably as “collateral damage” on and by that morning and I truly believe there are moments when the living envy the dead. The future rolled into the present as dark, uncertain, delusional, and tragic. We grieved for the employees of Cantor Fitzgerald who died that day. They were replaced by Jon Corzine and Bernard Madoff as images of the investment banking business.

Less than three weeks after the attacks, people were selling Ground Zero memorabilia off trestle stands on the street and in subway stations. The miracle is nobody killed them. The entrepreneurial spirit of America was polluted well before that day but it flowered after it.

We have descended from a flawed government to a Parliament of Fools.

Happy Remembrance Day.

Radio lies and panic-driven bullshit: Random thoughts

Panic is the current lingua franca of anyone still respirating in the current economy. The economic difficulties of the country have created a world of radio-based vulgarities summed up in catchwords and phrases that are pounded into us in more times per hour than anyone can count.

1. Powerful Free Tape. Tell me: what is a powerful tape? Does it lift your car so you can change the tire? Is the tape empowering? I’m sure it purports to be, but only if you send in the required funds to purchase the entire program. Powerful free tape is big at the Midwest Center For Stress and Anxiety, whose founder and president, Lucinda Bassett, is a total hottie. Before someone accuses me of sexism…first, they’d be absolutely correct. Lucinda looks like a MILF, and her pose and clothing do little to heighten her credibility as a person of high seriousness. But she’s on the radio offering to give me, you, anyone a Powerful Free Tape that will get me to invest an uncertain amount of money in a set of modules that will relieve me of stress, depression, anxiety, panic attacks…in other words, everything I’ve lived with for most of my life. So why am I cynical about a cure contained on a few CDs? I’m sure Ms. Bassett is absolutely sincere and that whatever she learned about herself back in the 1980s will work for others. It’s just that it seems a bit too formulaic and pain-free. You don’t grow unless you run into a few walls.

The same three magic words (Powerful Free Tape) turn up in ads for a program called Transforming Debt Into Wealth. Its founder, John Cummuta, claims you can become debt free on the money you already make. No credit cards, no car, no house. That’s payments, not the actual things. How does that work? Do I stop eating?

2. Repetitive phone numbers. The magic number is three. Give that 800 number three times. If you realize what the formula is, you will wait for the numbers, then either dash your brains against a wall or pick up the phone. Sometimes they even say it four times. Waiting for the numbers is a bit like watching Hawaii 5-0 years back and waiting for Jack Lord to say IT: “Book him, Dano, Murder One!”

3. Settle/Remove Your Debts. Every second ad on the radio is built around (1) getting the IRS out of your ass and (2) stopping the collection calls without going bankrupt. This is related to the Cummuta program above but has some of its own oddities, like offering to represent you in front of the IRS if you owe at least $15,000 in back taxes or haven’t filed in years. In which case the first question to be asked is “What kind of schmuck are you anyway?”

I note that these have really taken off since the economy tanked. Even WQXR-FM, the “Classical Station of the New Yor Times” (soon to be owned by WNYC and Univision), runs credit card and IRS debt ads, along with the staples of economic terrorism, preventing foreclosure and countries without extradition treaties if you’ve been involved in money laundering and insider trading.

The Newark Star-Ledger this morning ran a story about how more and more people are being stressed out by the economy and  job losses, real or impending, and how this is leading to temperamental explosions that are taking a toll on marriages, sleep, and other signs of a normal life.

I love newspapers. They’re so With It. On the Health page there’s a story entitled “Great Sickness said to wipe out half of European population by 1350.” The story was just filed.

I don’t do public service announcements but…

…this is exceptional. It’s four minutes built about the perils of “texting” while driving a car. I believe it’s from Wales, and aimed at teenage drivers. No other comment necessary, except it is so emotionally devastating that I had to force myself to watch the entire thing.

http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/youtube/cow_taster_001?id=8I54mlK0kVw

We are becoming a vicious, ugly nation

Is the title any hint of what’s coming? Should it be? The topic’s been around the block more than a…oh, let’s not go there.

It’s about health insurance. Or call that health coverage, because while I might like a dirty joke now and again, I don’t like health insurance because the insurance business is just a bit too dirty even for me. Ask me: I used to work in it.

I want to tell myself I’m not particularly angry. That of course is a lie. I’m enraged and ashamed. But what I also feel is detachment from my own country and what the rants about health care have surfaced.  My detachment–call it alienation if you like–has become so pronounced that I might just as well be living in one of those Socialist paradises overseas. France looks real good right about now. And in England they speak English even if the food reputedly sucks.

So we have this ongoing attempt at a health care initiative, a set of motions that lead me to fear is happening here. It is about what I would really like to see happen here, knowing full well that it won’t.

Increasingly, people are showing up in the vicinity of Barack Obama discussions of the health care reform, and they are packing “heat.” Automatic pistols, assault rifles. Oh, says the argument, I’m just exercising my 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

My first response is what I’ve said before: the Second Amendment is the greatest mistake in the Constitution. It’s a horrible idea. The so-called “founders” couldn’t see past an agrarian nation and into the un-urbane urban monstrosities. The only people who ought to carry firearms are members of the military and law enforcement. If them. So can that bullshit about regulated militia because your firearms maniacs don’t really believe it. Like that Kostric asshole, you just want to strap on a piece because you’re out to intimidate the rest of us. A 9mm, woo woo woo…. Redneck bastard, you showed up to prove you could shoot the President of the United States. You showed up to go nigger-hunting.

Right, so let’s get to the point: what would these McVeigh clones do if Obama was white? Because that really is the heart issue here, the reductio ad nauseum. Obama surely knows it but seems blissfully ignorant of the danger he and his family live in.

The whole discussion is one-sided. Or the Democrats are starting to yield ground the way they always do. “Let’s take the public option out of the bill to shut up the Republicans, included Hannity and Get a Rush Limbo.” It doesn’t work, does it? So the Republican/Conservatives or whatever they are this week push harder. They enlist the support of a population of the disgruntled and enraged, and prey again on their fear that they are losing “their” America, an America that actually never existed unless you want to return to Jim Crow and Emmett Till. Which I am sure some of them do.

Listen to the subtext. Learn about the nation you live in, the real nation, bathing in unhealed wounds and endless and groundless hatreds. Learn the depths to which it has descended–mob control via talk radio–and prepare for even worse, because I’m not sure we’ve hit bottom yet. “The worst is not when we can say ‘This is the worst’.”

That’s King Lear. Can anyone read that anymore? Or are the esteemed rioters of the Republic(an) so-called Town Meetings all too busy having Nascar programs read to them?

It becomes a big bit of news when Barney Frank stands up to some foul-mouthed confrontationalist and snaps back with appropriate sarcasm. “Oooooo, gasp, the homo got way out of line!” Out of line? Are you kidding? And the closet queen Limbaugh keeps making comments about Frank’s favorite planet being Uranus. Oh, ha-ha-ha.

Okay, enough about them. Here is what I would love to see:

Public option be damned. I want Government-run health care. Not insurance, health care. The full Monty. All of it. Drugs, surgery, routine visits, obstetrics, etc., etc. Single-payer health care. No more garbage about a “public option.” You think anyone wants to see Oxford, United Healthcare, or Kaiser Temperamente stay in business–aside from its managers and stockholders? No, get rid of them. Subsume them in a public system in which the consumer is the first priority. A world in which there is no such animal as “charity care” or a “pre-existing condition.” Turn their buildings into condos for low-income residents.

What is this, then? It’s socialized medicine. Duh. It’s what we need here to remove the profit motive from pharma, from hospitals, and from doctors.

It’s French medicine, English medicine, Canadian medicine. Yes, I know it is imperfect. So what? If Stephen Hawking says the NHS saved his life, then I hope someone puts Limbaugh and Hannity in the hospital. Payback is good.

We have it now. I have it now. I don’t really have a stake on the table because I’m over 65, I’m in the Medicare structure, and it’s socialized medicine for which I pay only about $159 a month for supplements. I can afford to be sick. I don’t have to have Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, NJ lie me into admission to the psycho ward in 2006, after I told them I had no insurance or money, telling me I would get charity care, and then sock me with a $20,600 bill. Because American medicine as it’s now constituted is technically brilliant and filled with used car salesmen wearing iridescent sharkskin suits.

So what do we have now? Foaming-at-the-mouth rabid citizens. A collection of Gold Star retards who stand up on their hind legs, bark for a bone, and then go to town meetings so they can shitkick. Government by Redneck and by their abetters. I wonder it anyone ever told the talk radio crowd that they could be indicted for conspiracy, insurrection, and incitement to riot.

Long live the Democratic Socialist Republic of the United States. Tell me when to wake up.

In very few words….

God bless Barney Frank, the liberal who finally stepped over the line and counterpunched an imbecile. About. Effing. Time.

Goodbye, Cid, February 2000-August 4, 2009

Cid, our dog, died last Tuesday, at approximately 5:45 p.m. in a private family visiting room at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in New Jersey. He died of an increasingly prevalent form of cancer called splenic hemangiosarcoma. Splenic because his spleen ruptured and was pouring blood into his abdomen, which was distended noticeably by the time he died. We were assured he was not in pain, just terribly weak.

Now I’m sitting here wondering how the hell to say anything intelligent about the difference this wonderful dog made in my life. About how funny he could be. About his moments of distress, sympathy, and compassion. About his joie de vivre. And about (again) the lessons he taught me that one day I may actually learn.

I loved him. I didn’t always but I came to. He taught me a lot about love. And at the end I was sobbing while I stroked him, and then after his warrior’s heart and breathing stopped. Wednesday morning and the days since felt like a vast and empty space, some sort of emotional Red Square. I live in a house of both grief and gratitude for the loss of a creature who made me glad I knew him for over nine years.

A few months ago I fell in the house, and landed on my right kneecap. It was terribly painful. I screamed, felt I was going to get sick, and then crawled into the bedroom. Cid, who usually withdrew from loud noises, came over to me and licked my face. He didn’t fix my knee but he helped fix my head and my soul.

Why Cid, by the way. My Companion adopted him from the local SPCA and gave him the name of the great Spanish hero. Granted, Cid looked like neither Charlton Heston nor Placido Domingo. He looked like his handsome and extremely mixed lineage, as nearly as we could tell German Shepherd and American Rottweiler plus God knows what else was in the gene pool. While we were waiting for Cid’s inked paw-print after he died, we saw a beautiful American Rottie in the hospital waiting area, and she had Cid’s face. It was uncanny and yet comforting.

I suspect Cid wasn’t that far removed from his wolf ancestry. I missed one display because I slept through it, but there was an afternoon several months ago when I was working in my home office and Cid was napping on the bed. Suddenly I heard these incredible howls that sounded like we had a werewolf in the next room. I ran into the bedroom. “Cid???” He was a bit groggy but awake. He’d been dreaming, and somewhere in his dream he’d gone back into his ancestry and located his “inner wolf.”

After you say “wow,” what’s left?

Just these disconnected thoughts:

I have lost two cats in my life, and both times the deaths were painful experiences. With Cid, I hardly know how to describe the awful feeling of free-fall while wearing lead shoes. Dogs tend to be more emotionally demonstrative than cats. They are not smarter but seem to be more human-readable, i.e., they can read us as well as we can read them. Maybe better.

Cid taught me about life in the moment. No yesterday, no tomorrow, just now. He taught me that there is no reason to carry a grudge. He embodied unconditional love and absolute forgiveness. Human beings should be that lucky.

Dogs know what we try to do for them. Cid awakened last Tuesday morning unable to walk without extreme effort. He had no appetite and was incontinent in the kitchen. He was content to just lay on the bedroom floor. Which is where, early in the afternoon, I said to him what was inside me, feeling that he would understand.

“Cid, we love you. We want you to stay with us. But if it’s time for you to leave, then we will help you to die.” Must I underscore this by saying I was barely able to get out the last words? You may assume it. I suppose it was a form of giving Cid permission to do what his body was asking him to do.

He could not walk well but he managed to walk out of the house and down the steps (with much help), where he helped us get him into the back of my car for the ride to the vet, and then to the animal medical center where he would be evaluated and then released.

Did he know what was coming? He looked at my companion Marie, she whom he placed at the top of his “chain of being,” and he licked her face. Was it a way to acknowledge the gift of release, or a way to kiss her goodbye? Or was it both?

So the smoke has cleared a bit. It’s late Saturday night as I write this. Marie brought home Cid’s ashes yesterday in a cherrywood box. We may or may not take him down to the beach after Labor Day, invite some of Cid’s friends–including my older son, who adored him (it was mutual)–and scatter his ashes over the ocean. He ran the beach often, without a leash, and it was then that I believe he felt free.

If we send him into the air over the water, we will free him yet again.

Goodbye, adored friend. I loved you and love you still.