The Woman of My Dreams?

So Hot… So Talented…

So Patriotic?

I want ice water.

Tolerance... Not! Prostitution

Prostitution. It’s not called "the world’s oldest profession" for nothing. I think it’s safe to say that as long as there have been people desiring sex without entanglements there have been prostitutes to meet the demand. And it’s no doubt equally safe to say that prostitutes have always been reviled by those who think that sex without entanglements is wrong. Few societies have seen fit to allow the free practice of prostitution, and yet I can think of no society in which it did not flourish in one form or another. In fact, while there will always those who condemn the prostitute, there are also those who think that society couldn’t function without them.

Prostitution thrives in many forms in America today, from the illegal street hustlers and high-end call girls (and boys), to the legalized form practiced in Nevada. Services are advertised in every form of media from the classifieds in your local paper to the Internet. Prostitutes work as independent contractors and as associates in varying sized organizations. Indeed, they come in all flavors and promise to fulfill any desire. So where is the harm? Why hasn’t this profession been given the respect that other professions get? Just what is the public outcry all about? Man! That’s a tall order. Where do I begin?

First there are the religious objections. Sex outside of marriage has always been wrong to those who practice the most popular religions. So sex-for-pay, to them, is an outright outrage! Next there are the criminal and public nuisance objections. Those who take this stand argue about the added crime that comes with the sex-for-pay trade, such as robbery, drug abuse, and abuse from pimps and johns. They also argue about the nuisance caused by prostitutes plying their trade in areas that should be kept clear for ’decent’ purposes. And then there are the public health concerns. Those who argue from this position point out how prostitution spreads sexually transmitted diseases, some of which are potentially fatal.

So in light of all this evidence against prostitution, and considering that none of it has helped to eradicate the practice, what would a more reasoned approach entail? Perhaps an attempt to untangle some of the imagery and confusion associated with the issue would be a good place to start. I’ll try to do so by listing a few facts.

1. Sex outside marriage is a fact of life. Deal with it.

2. We will never eliminate prostitution. Deal with it.

3. There are legal arrangements that work.

4. Expanded legalization can also work because:

a. Licensed professionals earn a decent wage and don’t need to commit robbery.

b. Licensed professionals don’t need a pimp’s protection because they have recourse to the law.

c. Licensed professionals don’t need to walk the streets because they can advertise their services and/or join organized businesses.

d. Licensed professionals can be routinely tested for sexually transmitted diseases and drugs.

I think this shows that finding a rational way of dealing with the ’problem’ of prostitution isn’t so complicated after all.

I have known quite a few prostitutes during my life. Both from my childhood when my father was a pimp with his own brothel, and from my adult experiences living in the underground ’drug’ culture. I don’t think that anyone, other than the prostitutes themselves, can truly understand why they choose to be prostitutes knowing the contempt and abuse that comes with that lifestyle. But it’s a fact that their profession is not alone in having to deal with such questions.

Because of my ’vast experience’ with prostitutes, I have never been comfortable using their services because I feared being seen as just another aggressive, and potentially abusive, man they’d have to deal with. And the fact that both sides of that equation has been forced on us by the arrogant and irrational manner in which society has dealt with the issue thus far only serves to enhance my discomfort.

I’m not saying that society will become ’Heaven on Earth’ if we choose another way of dealing with prostitution, or that it will ever become a comfortable topic to discuss at social gatherings. But it is clear that the approach we have taken has not led to our society being lifted to a higher moral plane. If anything, the inhumanity of the current approach has pushed us all in the other direction.

Perhaps, if we are sincere when we proclaim our intent to rise above the example of Mankind’s history, all we really need is the courage to get real and the compassion to care more about actual people than we do about being politically correct.

And don’t we have enough real criminals to deal with?

I want ice water.

My International Incident

This article is about an incident I was involved in during the winter of ’75 and ’76, while I was still in the Air Force and stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. I had arrived there during the most significant ’break’ in my marriage and had spent the time since that break, both before and after moving to Panama, smoking as much marijuana as I could tolerate. And considering that, in Panama at that time, the stuff cost only $10 an ounce and $90 a pound, spending as much of my time as I could get away with stoned out of my mind was pretty easy.

You must understand that I joined the Air Force and got married when I was only seventeen years old. So while I was excited to visit what to me seemed a far off and exotic land, I was still little more than a child who felt trapped and isolated thousands of miles from anything that felt like home. As a matter of fact I had already gotten myself into trouble, only months after my arrival, by being caught in possession of marijuana in my barracks room with a couple of boys my age. Because one of the boys was only seventeen and both were civilian dependents of senior Air Force personnel, I was lucky that I was only fined, given a six month suspension of promotion, and forced to attend drug rehab classes. But despite this very clear warning, I still allowed my desire for companionship and my drug induced blindness to lead me even further down the path towards disaster.

At that time Panama was a virtual police state, which was plainly evident by the many national guardsmen in full military uniform and assault weapons positioned throughout the areas I visited. The people there were so poor and the slums were so heart breaking that the sights rivaled almost any shown in those commercials asking for help for the poor starving children of the world. It seemed that what little economic activity there was was focused almost entirely on catering to the U. S. personnel stationed in the canal zone. And when you consider the stereotypical wants of military men, it’s not surprising that much of that activity was frowned upon.

In addition to the abundance of marijuana and other plant-based drugs, Panama had a burgeoning population of prostitutes. While prostitution was strictly forbidden for Panamanian women it was, oddly enough, openly allowed for the thousands of women from other countries who had come there specifically for that reason. Apparently, these other countries where in such bad economic shape that it had become customary for some of their women to spend time as prostitutes in Panama while sending money back to their families at home. Of course, with the local women having such a hard time, the laws against prostitution did little to deter them from joining in the game.

Now every incoming soldier was warned of the potential danger of being caught up in trouble that might land them in a local jail. Because of the political problems between the U. S. and the government of Panama, American military personnel had been known to disappear into local incarceration with no one bothering to inform anyone of their situation. So it’s should come as no surprise that, despite the flagrant violation of military rules, GI’s preferred to do their ’partying’ on base where they felt a little more safe to enjoy themselves. I know for a fact that, in my barracks at least, hardly a night went by that somebody didn’t have one or more prostitutes in their room.

If you’ve read any of my other articles, you’ve probably already guessed at the kind of nightmare I was walking right into. But there’s no way you would be able to guess at the actual enormity of that nightmare. It all started so innocently, you see. Because I found trips into Panama City to be such sad and nerve wracking events, it was only rarely that I allowed someone to talk me into going with them. And it was on one of these ’adventures’ that an associate of mine approached two girls about getting together at some point to party. Being the extremely shy person that I was, I was just glad when he had finished telling them how to find us on base and we could move on. And I had completely forgotten about it when they actually came looking for us a few nights later.

By the time that night rolled around I had a room to myself, which I made my very own by placing the mattresses for two beds together in a big square on the floor and decorating the walls in a checkerboard pattern of photos and articles from Playboy and Penthouse magazines. I have no idea how I was able to get away with having a room in a military barracks look that way, considering the frowns of disapproval I got whenever inspections came around. But nevertheless it made the perfect spot for my friends to want to party in, so that’s where the four of us spent the evening.

I must make it very clear that this party was not planned by me in any way. In fact, I made it clear at the start that it had to end rather early because I was due to work a midnight to 8 am shift. Also, there was no sexual activity whatsoever, not because I didn’t want to, but because one of the girls was feeling sick and the other was concerned about her friend. So we spent the time we had talking and listening to music. Unfortunately, as the time for me to go to work came closer, the one girl became more and more sick. So sick in fact that by the time I had to go to work I simply didn’t have the heart to send her on the long bus ride back to wherever she lived. As idiotic as it may seem now, I decided to let her stay in my room overnight while I went to work.

What a bad decision that turned out to be! Again, you must understand that I left her in my room because I was trying to do the right thing. But I also acknowledge that I was fully aware of the risk that I was taking by doing so. I even chose leaving her in the room alone instead of seeking medical help for her because I wanted to avoid the trouble I would undoubtedly get into for having her there in the first place. All this I acknowledge without hesitation. Nevertheless, I was still shocked when, five minutes before my shift ended, I was contacted by the base’s chief of security.

I tried to pretend that I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but my denials simply flew out the window when he told me what the housekeeping staff had found when they came in my barracks. Like imagery form some TV crime scene, the chief described how they had found a trail of blood leading from a very large pool on my bed to another very large pool originating from the girl’s vagina while she lay half-dead on the bathroom floor. As you might expect, I was in big trouble and my protestations of innocence fell on somewhat deaf ears.

Quite rapidly, this turned into an extremely embarrassing international incident with Panamanian officials accusing me of attempted murder and with the U. S government wanting to simply throw me to the wolves to make it all go away. The commander of the base had quite predictably, considering my record, filed the necessary paperwork to push for immediate court-martial proceedings. It seemed that everyone had turned their backs on me, including my ’friend’ that had been at the party that night. As for the other guys I lived and worked with, all I got from them were sick jokes about how large my penis had to be to cause so much damage.

Fortunately, military law requires that even naive fools like me get legal representation when stuck in such situations. And even more fortunately, I had a very good military lawyer assigned to my case. But even with all the phone calls he made and all the letters he sent out on my behalf, Captain Hood had a very steep hill to climb in order to save my hide. It helped some that it had been a pet peeve of his that enlisted men had these restrictions on who they could have in their barracks while officers could have pretty much any visitors they wanted, but the fact that the girl was in no condition to help with the remainder of the charges still left me with my butt very exposed.

I was all but court-martialed and on my way to prison when one of those amazing ’hallelujah’ things happened to save my ass. The girl came out of her coma and was decent enough to tell what actually happened that night - and what led up to it. As it turned out, she had had one of those back-alley type abortions only hours before she and her friend had come out to the base. I’m pretty sure that the Panamanian government wasn’t pleased at being denied the opportunity to stick it to the Americans more than they already had, and I know for a fact that my commanders were still quite pissed at my having made them look so bad, but in the end they were left with only the charge of having unauthorized personnel in my barracks to hold against me. And the fact that Capt. Hood had been campaigning against that rule as being discriminatory left them in a bad position even when it came down to that.

So to everyone’s great relief, they offered, and I accepted, an honorable discharge a full year before I would have been otherwise eligible. Provided, of course, that I was on a flight back home within a week. Naturally I was happy at the prospect of getting off so easy. I was also looking forward to going home to attempt the reunification of my marriage. But I was not happy that my Air Force career was coming to such a bad ending. You see, despite all of the trouble and my disillusionment with the military, I still had those naive and idealistic hopes that my service would end up being something I could be proud of. I really was quite ashamed that things ended up the way they did.

Well, to wrap up this sad and sordid tale, I spent the next week packing and shipping my stuff home, while at the same time taking all five of the G.E.D. tests in just two sessions with almost no preparation whatsoever. Amazingly, after arriving home from the tropics in the dead of winter, I later received the results from those tests along with a letter from Captain Hood praising me for having gotten above average scores under such difficult circumstances. I was very happy with the results, and with the praise he though that I deserved, but both things were also painful reminders of how little I had done with the potential I had.

This sense of failure stayed with me through all of the years I spent struggling to get a degree while still getting stoned to alleviate some of the pain. It bothered me so much that as soon as I got my Associates Degree, I headed out to try and re-enlist. That’s when I discovered that the Air Force hadn’t let me off so easily after all. While it didn’t matter much in my civilian life according to the recruiter, a re-enlistment rating of 5 was the worst that it got for a anyone hoping to return to the military. According to him, this rating was so bad that he had thought it was reserved only for traitors and such. You know, the ’Benedict Arnold’ types.

After I explained to the recruiter what had happened in Panama, he agreed that a rating of 5 was a bit extreme. He even explained the process through which the rating could be appealed. But he made it clear that such an appeal was long, costly and rarely successful. In the end he advised that, considering that those records were off limits to civilian employers and were automatically erased after a few years anyway, I should just move on with my life away from the military.

So much for working for a happy ending by trying to make things right.

I want ice water.

Love, Loss, Anger, and Faith

Now that My Terrible Ordeal is over, I can get on with trying to salvage the rest of my life. In addition to all of this writing, being sober and temporarily without the distractions of telephone, cable TV and Internet has allowed me to take a more clear headed look at my life up to now. These circumstances have also allowed me, with some difficulty, to resume my love of reading and listening to music. This is difficult because those things are clear evidence of the state of my psyche at the time I chose them. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with some of my history and of my tendency for idealistic thinking. Well all those books, records, and memories are painful reminders of the choices that tendency has led me to make. Choices like who and what I loved, what I did and did not give up to pursue those loves, and what I did in response to their loss.

I must say that my definition of what ’love’ is has evolved to be quite different from what other people say it is. I now believe that a person can truly love only the people and the things that represent that person’s ideals brought to life. Unfortunately, my definition was nowhere near complete enough to be a proper guide for some very critical choices I made in that area. So although my current beliefs did exist in infant form, they were of little help in preventing me from becoming locked into what later became very painful relationships with women and things. Of the two women important enough to write about, the first was my early childhood sweetheart and the other is the mother of my five children. The things are too numerous to mention other than to say that they were the typical kind that we waste so much time, energy, and money pursuing.

While I have little ambition for things these days, the women have been nowhere near as easy to dismiss. Regardless of how I feel about love and philosophy now, the feelings I have for these two women are still so strong that I literally get a psychic shock whenever either of them cross my mind. I try very hard to tell myself that my feelings aren’t rational because I shouldn’t feel this strongly for anyone not ’qualified’ for my love, but I might as well be spitting into a fan for all the good that does me. And there’s simply no possibility that I can prevent the thoughts altogether, especially when it comes to the mother of my children. So I guess that the only thing left to do is to face those memories and feelings head-on like all the head-shrinkers advise.

Before I can begin to describe either of those relationships, I must delve a little into the circumstances - and my thoughts about them - that surrounded them. I was born into a time of great turmoil and anticipation. If you know anything about the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, you’ll understand why this was so. And I’m not sure whether it was arrogance or naivete on my part, but somehow I came to believe that I had a special talent for judging right from wrong and for finding the good in anyone. My faith in my abilities gave me the confidence to take on many challenges that I might not otherwise have taken on.

But the belief that I was somehow ’special’ also left me feeling that I had a bit of an unfair advantage over other people. This feeling was reinforced by their apparent lack of faith in their own abilities and by the ’protected’ state I lived in due to having such a dangerous father. In turn, this led me to never want to appear ’superior’ to anyone and to never tell anyone of my fear for them should they be seen by my father as a threat. So I adopted the persona of a non-confrontational person who gave everyone the benefit of doubt, while I secretly strived to keep my true perceptions to myself.

But also behind the mask I wore raged the heart of a romantic idealist who believed himself capable of perceiving both the true pains of the world and the answers needed to alleviate that pain. Thus began the log lasting conflict between the person I let people see and the desire to be recognized as the ’answer’ I wanted to be. I became a person who denied the possibility of finding a ’perfect’ mate for himself while always campaigning to bring everyone to a state of ’perfection.’ As anyone in my family will eagerly tell you, that was not the way to begin a long and healthy life. But that’s how I ended up choosing women for mates not because of who they were but rather who I thought they could be. That’s not to say, despite the opinions of others, that just anyone would do.

My first ’love’ was a little girl that lived next door to me at the time of my earliest memories, when I still thought of myself as Bobby Hart. From then until I was ten years old, we spent practically all of our time together. She seemed so perfect to me. In fact, her family seemed more like my true family than the one I was born to. They even looked like me, which was kind of unusual in those days. My attachment to her was so strong that it inspired the first obsession I had with a song - The Monkees' I'm A Believer. But when I was ten we began to drift apart. I think this was mainly because she was a grade higher than I was in school, and had developed a circle of friends who couldn’t understand why she would spend so much time with a ’lesser’ being.

She had also developed an interest in other boys. The only fight I was ever in that I actually started, was with one of my perceived rivals. As I remember it, the fight pretty much ended in a draw. But I remember quite clearly how embarrassed I was at my behavior and the struggle I had to regain her respect. To me, those results felt like a terrible loss. I kept on trying to keep that relationship alive however, right up to my twelfth birthday when my mom shipped me off to live with my sister in L.A. I’ve seen her only twice since then.

The first time was after I was discharged from the Air Force over eight years later, during a drug-induced search for lost love after my wife revealed that she was pregnant by another man and had refused to resume our broken marriage. She was still just as beautiful as I remembered her, and still cared enough to welcome my visit in spite of the circumstances. But the fairy tale reunion came crashing down when should told me that she was in love with the guy I had started the fight with. The last time was during a road trip for my job. That’s when I found out that she had married that same guy and had a couple of pretty little girls by him. Since he really was a decent guy, and I was back with my wife at the time anyway, I did the best I could to hide my pain. Whether she bought my act or not is anyone’s guess.

I met my now ex-wife right after I moved to Ohio from L.A. in 1970, when I was fourteen and just getting used to being teased about that damned Janis Joplin song. She didn’t look like me the way my first ’love’ did, but I found her athletic grace and stature to be irresistible. Her family lived across the street in the housing project my sister lived in, and when I finally got up the nerve to talk to her, I found that she was a very bright fifteen year old who was very active in track and girl’s basketball. I myself have never been much into sports, but I had a pretty good hook shot and was fast enough to outrun her. And amazingly enough, she was a year ahead of me in school and was born in February - just like the first girl I fell in love with.

Over time I also discovered that, until I actually introduced myself, everyone she knew had wondered why ’a White kid like me’ was such a frequent visitor at my sister’s house. And even after I thought I had made it clear that my interest was in her, she and her sister still tried to fix me up with the White girl down the street. From the perspective of a horny teen-aged boy, it seemed to take forever to convince her that I was worth spending time with. Looking back on it now however, I have to wonder just how convinced she really was. You see, except for my intense attraction to her, we had almost nothing in common. All of our interests in music, in books, and in how we spent our time apart were completely different.

Although she was obviously just as bright as I was, the things she chose to focus her intelligence on made no sense to me whatsoever. I’m sure that she too wondered at the oddity of our relationship, because she introduced me one day to a potential suitor who just had to see it for himself. That really hurt. But I was relieved nonetheless when she chose me over him. And even after I joined the Air Force just to be financially ready to do so, I was still amazed when she agreed to marry me just three years after we met. If you consider the fact that we had to fake a pregnancy in front of a judge because I was only seventeen at the time, you can perhaps empathize a little with how I felt.

Have you ever heard the song I Hope You Dance by Leann Womack? It’s probably a fair bet that my ex-wife hasn’t, but if she had it could have given her some insights into the way I feel about my life today. You see when I was very young, I was so naive and uninhibited that I actually loved to dance all by myself in the bootleg joints frequented by my mother. As long as people kept giving me dimes to put in the jukebox, I danced like I was alone and happy on the moon. Unfortunately for our marriage, I had become increasingly extremely shy and introverted by the time we met. I had also discovered what actually motivated all those gyrations at the parties and nightclubs she wanted us to go to. So when I needed to the most, I just couldn’t bring myself to dance with her in public.

When you add to that the fact that my mental state also denied me the ambition needed to properly provide for our family, the fact that she remained married to me for almost thirty-three years is kind of hard to believe. And through all of those years, through all the highs of our reunions after the lows of our separations, through the successful births of our children and the frequent miscarriages, through all the stupid things I did that should have driven her away, she stuck with me. And the intensity of my feelings for her never diminished one little bit. Even after my spirit-liberating discovery of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, during the months of separation surrounding my military discharge, I was still unable to give her the life I wanted for us after we got back together - although for an entirely different reason at that point.

And for that same reason, the conflict between the person I showed to the world and the person I actually was became so great that it led to a psychotic breakdown. But she still kept me in her life, even through hospitalizations for mental health, drug abuse, and pancreatitis. However, I knew it was finally over when I awoke from a medically-induced coma, after an almost fatal resurgence of the pancreatitis, to see that she had brought her new man with her to visit me. Ironically, it was the guy she was with when I got out of the Air Force. You know, the guy she chose to be with instead of resuming our marriage. The one who actually fathered my first child - the son who still considers me to be his dad even though he knows otherwise.

But maybe the true irony lies in the fact that, in spite of all the drama, I still miss my ex-wife with an intensity I couldn’t begin to explain. Just hearing her voice on the phone can bring on one of those crying jags I struggle so hard to avoid. If there were no more evidence than that of just how badly twisted my mind has become, I think that should still be quite enough. But her new man is actually a very nice guy despite the animosity between him and our son. She certainly seems to be living a far more comfortable life than the one she had with me. And I truly don’t want to cause them any pain. So I try my best not to let my feelings show. But I’ve always been a very poor liar and I have my doubts about how successful my efforts have been.

Now that I’m nearing end of this article, an amazing thought has occurred to me. While watching the Presidential inauguration earlier, I was once again impressed by the imposing stature of Michelle Obama. If I had to guess, I would lean towards her being the physically stronger of the two. And that’s when it hit me. Do you recall my earlier statement that I believe you can truly love only that which represents your ideals brought to life? Well I realize now that the irresistible attraction I have always felt for my ex-wife derives it’s power from the strength that I first saw in her from across the street when we were kids. And it has been reinforced time and again by the courage and confidence she has demonstrated throughout the years.

Despite all my rationalizations to the contrary, telling myself that it didn’t make sense for me to love her because she didn’t look the way I wanted my woman to look and didn’t have the same goals that I did, I realize now that I did indeed love her. Not because she fit some magazine definition of beauty. Not because we wanted to do the same things and pursue the same goals. Not even because she truly was the best sexual partner I’ve ever had and of all the wonderful children that having sex with her produced. I loved her because she completed me by possessing the courage, confidence, and strength that I have always lacked and was willing to put up with me anyway. I’ve heard it said that, "There’s no fool like an old fool," While I don’t know if such an imbalanced love can ever actually work, knowing the true nature of my love for her might have helped.

To be clear, I have had other, shorter term, relationships with girls and women, all with equally disastrous results. I have not had even a one night stand since the end of my marriage in 2002. That is, other than those of the infrequent and always disappointing pay-to-play variety. The loneliness has gotten to be almost more than I can bear. But I’m so full of unresolved anger at myself and my circumstances that I simply haven’t had the confidence or the courage needed to approach a prospective mate while dragging such a mountain of pain and confusion behind me. Considering my history, I fear that starting a new relationship before dumping some of this baggage will only lead to more disaster.

My regular readers know how I like to include lyrics from my favorite songs in these articles. And when it comes to the subject of love, I’ve certainly had a wide array to choose from. I’ve looked into the soulful sounds of The Temptations, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Sly and the Family Stone, Lionel Richie, Hall and Oates, Grand Funk Railroad, Larry Graham, and Whitney Houston. I’ve surfed the melodic waves of The Beatles, The Carpenters, Elton John, Billy Joel, The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, U2, Heart, and REO Speedwagon. I’ve even churned through the dark and angry waters of The Police, John Waite, Def Leppard, The Who, The Eurhythmics and Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut is an excellent reflection of my love life:

"Through the fish-eye lens of tear stained eyes
I can barely discern the shape of this moment in time.
And far from flying high in clear blue skies
I’m spiraling down to the hole in the ground where I hide.

If you negotiate the minefields in the drive
And beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes.
And if you make it past the shotgun in the hall.
Dial the combination. Open the priest hole.
And if I’m in I’ll tell you what’s behind the wall.

There’s a kid who had a big hallucination
Of making live to girls in magazines.
He wonders if you’re sleeping with your new found faith?
Could anybody love him? Or is it just a crazy dream?

And if I show you my dark side, will you still hold me tonight?
And if I open my heart to you, show my weak side,
What would you do?
Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?
Would you take the children away and leave me alone?
And smile in reassurance as you whisper down the phone?
Would you send me packing?
Or would you take me home?

Thought I ought to bare my naked feelings.
Thought I ought to tear the curtain down.
I held the blade in trembling hands, prepared to make it but
Just then the phone rang.
I never had the nerve to make the final cut."

The only significant difference between that story and my actual life is, ironically, the fact that the ringing I heard before attempting suicide was the call of crack cocaine.

Considering the state of my recent ’love’ life, maybe I’d be better off these days looking to groups like The Tube’s when they sang:

"You can step outside your little world.
You can talk to a pretty girl.
She’s everything you dream about...
But don’t fall in love!"

But for the future I’m still hoping for, perhaps the best advice came from the group Toto when they sang:

"Hold the line. Love isn’t always on time."

I have no idea if writing about these things will truly have the exorcising effect I hope for, but I do know that having copies of them outside of my head seems to somehow diminish the power of the ones still inside my head. I’m holding on very tightly to the hope that it’ll all work out in the end. I guess that would be the ’faith’ part of this whole thing. And in the real world, that may just be the best that I can hope for.

I want ice water.

More Environmental Impact

This is another article that I'm beginning in mid-December and, of course, I'll probably still be tweaking it right up to the moment it's posted. Here, I want to take another 'walk down memory lane' in an effort to both exorcise some demons and gain some insight into how I came to be the person that I am.

I have been told that I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped so tightly around my neck that my head was a deep purple in color, and that I had to be suspended upside down for quite a while. While I don't know for sure, I assume other measures had to be taken as well. It have also been told that my lazy left eye was likely caused by the forceps used to assist in my delivery. I myself wonder if some of my other issues could also be linked to my distressed birth.

Issues like poor balance, severe motion sickness, and the inability to tolerate anything that would make me dizzy - such as cars, most playground equipment, carnival rides, alcohol, depressant drugs, and even marijuana. And it's certainly not for lack of trying. It's difficult to fit in when you're afraid to try the things other kids do to have fun. It's downright traumatic to try anyway and then end up puking in front of them.

But as far as the alcohol and drugs are concerned, I must consider that my problems with them could have 'other' roots. My mother was a very sweet and caring woman when she was sober, but was in fact a raging alcoholic during all of my childhood memories. While I don't know if that were the case while she was carrying me, I must consider the possibility that it may be a contributing factor. If nothing else, the constant exposure to the damage caused by alcoholism almost certainly affected my psychological makeup.

And then there was the violence. While I don't know much about my parents' background, I do know that they were both capable of extreme acts of violence. On my mother's side, I have to believe that living in poverty with four kids while being legally blind had something to do with her behavior. On my father's side, the fact that he was a pimp, a gambler, and a loan shark (amongst other things) who also happened to have severe diabetes and chronic arthritis, probably helped to fuel his anger.

From my perspective my father was a very old (fifty-seven when I was born) and very cold man who seemed to think of little other than business. That's not to say that he didn't care about me, as the only signs that he had feelings at all, other than rage, were reflected in the 'love' he exhibited towards me. In fact, It seemed as if I spent far more time with him that I did with my mother, even though I lived with her and not with him. The two were never married.

Adding fuel to the fire, and perhaps giving him a reason to keep me with him as much as he could, was the fact that my mother would use me as an excuse to extort money from him after she had blown all of hers on her boyfriend and drinking. Now to be clear, I don't recall my father ever getting violent with my mother. The violence I witnessed was between my mother and her boyfriend, as well as between them and anyone who attempted to interfere with the way the ran their lives.

But there was always the threat of violence from my father. Not only had I personally witnessed examples of it, he was renowned in the community for his willingness to hurt people when he thought the situation required it. Success in his line of 'work' demanded it I guess. I was well aware of this, and the fear of what he could do in the name of protecting his son affected me more and more as I went through those early years. Imagine being afraid of reporting those who abuse you for fear that you might get them killed. This, I believe, is the root from which my sense of living in a global madhouse has grown.

The weird thing is that except for one very surprising (and somewhat deserved) slap to the face from my father, I don't recall any of their violence ever being directed at me personally. I canrecall even a single spanking. Of course I don't recall many hugs and kisses either. But I had three siblings and various nieces and nephews who didn't have it nearly as as I did. I was the baby of my mother's bunch, and both my much older sisters left to escape the craziness so early that I barely remember them living with us at all. That left me, my brother and my oldest sister's daughter and son.

Since he was only five years my senior, my brother couldn't escape like my sisters did, but he managed to limit the abuse he took by gradually moving into the more 'pleasant' environs of the thug life. While I can't blame him for finding any way out that he could, the sad and violent end that he eventually came to seems almost pre-destined. My niece and nephew were then the ones left to helplessly endure the thrashings while I watched in that deer-in-the-headlights kind of shock. That is until I exploded in my own violent outrage to put an end to it. That got the three of us sent to live with their mother in Los Angeles on my twelfth birthday, two weeks before Christmas in 1967.

But I've skipped over the juicy humiliation events that also helped to shape my adolescent mind. It was already bad enough that I looked White with a Black family and people were always whispering about what that meant, but how about starting school a year late only to have them inform me that the name I had gone by for almost seven years wasn't really my name after all. I became aware of this when my teacher corrected me after I had proudly demonstrated how I could already write my own name - Bobby Hart.

Thus ensued my very first verbal rampage. I was so convinced that they were trying to pull a fast one that I attempted to storm out of the school. That, of course, got me forcibly held in the office until my mother could arrive to both shock the school officials by being Black and to reveal the awful truth with a copy of my birth certificate - the truth that my actual name is more like the title of a '70's Janis Joplin song. It was an innocent mistake I guess. With my father being who he was, everyone had just added his last name to my nickname and no one had ever bothered corrected the error. It would have been nice if someone had informed me however.

Oddly enough, I didn't lose my love of writing. In fact, by the fourth grade I had become a very prolific, if somewhat secretive, journalist. I carried around my latest hand-made journal everywhere I went, using every spare moment to jot down my thoughts on everything from my dreams of space travel to my deepest feelings about those around me. Please note that I have always had a very vivid imagination. Which is why, in hindsight, I now realize that it was a bad idea to be carrying such a personal and private document around with me on the school playground.

But how was a ten year old to anticipate what happened when I unknowingly lost it during recess. Finding who it belonged to was easy of course, since my name was proudly emblazoned across the front. Even with all that given, not even the most cynical could have expected that my teacher would force me to stand in front of the class while she read aloud some of my most private thoughts and yearnings. I could handle the laughter at my spacehead ideas well enough, but the revelation of my feelings towards others in the school - and even in the classroom at the time - amounts to one of the most humiliating events of my life.

Finally, since it's December 21st as I wrap this up, it seems appropriate to mention something about my early experiences with Christmas. What little I can remember of them can be boiled down into three words: anticipation, disappointment, and envy. While my mother was a vocal proponent of religion, her father being a Baptist minister and all, her lifestyle didn't exactly leave much room for handing out gifts. My father, on the other hand, was more of the Bah! Humbug! type. And while I'm sure he would have used any excuse to dress me in the Stetson's, Stacy Adam's and suits he loved so much (other than when he was in pajamas, I literally can't remember him dressed in any other way), that wasn't exactly high on my wish list.

Pretty much the only memory I have from my very early childhood is of toy blocks (the ones with letters and numbers) and of this beautiful miniature car with opening doors and hoods and a steering wheel that actually worked. Other than that, the only 'toy' I remember having been given was a Mattel Power Shop that I got after my failed attempt to build a rocket was discovered. I can clearly remember my fierce campaigning, to my father's girlfriend, on how the balsa wood and lathe would be a much better way to go (along with the model rocket engines I planned to campaign for later) than metal pipes and gun powder. To be clear, my plans were known only to my father's girlfriend. From my father's perspective, the Power Shop was strictly 'education' and 'work' related.

To be honest, I don't remember if the Power Shop or the blocks or the car had anything to do with Christmas. And to the best of my memory, every other play toy I had resulted from my own efforts to either bargain for them or to build them myself. I made my own superhero costumes and pretend weapons from scraps of cloth donated by my father's 'girl friends' and other stuff I found. I built my own pretend spaceships from cardboard boxes, scraps of plastic and tubing, crayons and paint. I was never able to finish my soapbox derby racer because this required materials and expertise beyond my (or my benefactors) means.

Yes, I was very envious of the gifts bestowed upon others. Envious of the remote-controlled tractor-trailer sent by my oldest sister to her son, and of the tricycle my other sister's son had when they still lived with us. I don't remember how I got the only bicycle I had during those times - I must have bargained for it somehow. I know it didn't come from my family because of their complaints about having that nasty, rusty old thing around. I do remember the humiliation of having to get rid of it, as well as the humiliation of having to feign indifference to explain, to other kids, my poverty of playthings despite having a 'wealthy' father.

I'd love to be able to say that I've now described all, or even most, of the violence and humiliation from my childhood. But the truth is that I've barely scratched the surface. There was so much more that I'm too tired and much to embarrassed to go into. But at least what I have written here now exists outside my head as well as within, and maybe the memories will lose some of their power to cause me pain. Maybe next time I'll talk a little about things that happened after I turned twelve.

I want ice water.

Tolerance... Not! Gays and Marriage

This, I think, is the easiest of these issues to deal with. Really folks, aren't 'gays' human too? Aren't they just as deserving of 'human rights' as anyone else? And none of that 'but it's not natural' crap. As any self-respecting scientist will tell you, 'unnatural acts' are impossible by definition. Now walking through the air from rooftop to rooftop would be an unnatural act! Are you, whom I assume want to be considered rational, really willing to admit that that you've gotten all bent out of shape over things that don't even exist? Perhaps you think that 'science is just another tool of Satan being used to trick us into doing evil.' Well something is doing the trick alright, but perhaps we should look a little closer to home in our search for the villain. The fact is that homosexuals, bisexuals, and gender bending have always existed, and not just amongst us humans. Get over it!

The big noise these days is over 'Gay Marriage.' Would someone please tell me why Gays should be protected from making the same stupid mistakes as the rest of us! Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to be legally bound to another person anyway. That smacks of slavery to me, but humans do have a long history of choosing bondage over freedom - no pun intended. I'd rather know that the person I'm with is free to leave at any time - that he or she doesn't really need to be with me at all - because that's the only way I can really know that they're with me because they want to be. That's the kind of 'security' I want. The kind that truly frees me from those psychotic urges to control my mate's activities and associations.

Perhaps you're are now thinking: 'Now wait just a darn minute there. What about the kids?' Well, if you think that the true purpose of marriage to ensure that our kids are properly cared for, then I submit that what's commonly considered 'a proper marriage' has a miserable track record. Let's face it, unless you have the resources available to the rich and powerful, you don't have much hope of providing all that your children need, or of protecting them from the ravages of living in an irrational society. And as we all know, even the rich and powerful can't get it right if they don't know what they're doing. While I don't claim to have any perfect answers, I am sure that kids need be be raised in an environment that encourages free thought and provides examples of rational behavior.

At the risk of inspiring another of those 'pitchforks and torches' moments, may I offer the concept of the Group Family. No, I am not advocating the lifestyles of polygamous cults or kings with harems, although most would consider my thoughts just as radical. I'm referring to a voluntary adult enterprise, with each member investing his or her own set of resources, towards the goal of caring and working for each other and their children. Imagine that, a more highly evolved 'sacred institution' dedicated to the happiness and prosperity of it's members. It's like Freedom breeding freedom! What a concept!

I was first introduced to this idea through the works of author Robert A. Heinlein, and most particularly from his book Time Enough For Love. I urge anyone looking to expand their horizons a bit, or who just simply want a damn good reading experience, to give it a go.

I want ice water.