Very Bad Night, Part I

[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened the night of my Mother's birthday in February, 1958. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]

During most of the six weeks my Father was at the Mountain my Mother subjected me to moderate but almost daily sexual abuse. It subsided as she began her preparations for the romantic evening to celebrate his return.

In spite of all the sexual abuse I knew next to nothing about sex, really. In fact I wouldn't have called anything my Mother did to me sexual at the time. Sex was something else. It was what Mommies and Daddies did in their bedrooms at night. I didn't know what that was, but I was sure my Mother missed it and that what she did to me was at least partly an inadequate substitute. It wasn't the real thing, it was a poor imitation.

My theory was that when people get to be really, really, grownup, like 13 or 14, they start to need this sex thing and have to have partners to help them with it (touching yourself makes you sick, Mommy said) and if the partners they get aren't around or they spend all their time being mad then they start hurting. And to fix the hurt they need to do things to their kids that are icky. But it's not their fault, it's nature's fault. Nature makes grownups sick.

[Below: The same person, before and after puberty. Note the "bedroom eyes" on the right.]

So I felt sorry for my Mother, and I was really hoping that when my Father came home and saw how pretty she was in that dress and saw what a great dinner she made for him and how nice she smelled, and how I said I loved him and then excused myself and didn't cause any trouble for the rest of the night, that he wouldn't shout or anything, and they'd end up in bed and have sex, whatever that is, and Mommy would be all better.

He was supposed to get home at 6 PM. He actually called at 6:30 or so to tell us he got delayed and wouldn't make it until 8 PM. So that was nice.

But after 8 he wasn't there, and he also wasn't there at 9, 10, and 11 PM. There were no more calls to apologize for being late.

I stayed up late with my Mother. It was a Friday so I didn't have to get up early the next morning. She cried off and on for hours. I said, maybe something bad happened to him. She said, "Sure." But she didn't bother making any emergency phone calls.

He came to the front gate at about Midnight. After my Mother unlocked the gate a couple of other officers walked him to the door of the house and put him in a chair. He was only able to stand with support.

He was supposed to come straight home after getting back to Taipei, but instead he spent 6 hours in bars with his buddies.

As he was brought in the door I said, "I love you Daddy," just like we rehearsed it. Then my Mother gave me a sign to get the hell up to my room. I listened from the top of the stairs.

The dinner had already been done away with. My Mother started out explaining that. Dad muttered something like, "That's nice." She then tried, "Do you want to go upstairs or do you want to have fun down here?"

He said, "Why don't you get me a beer?" About then, my Mother started screaming. I don't remember a lot of what she screamed. Then she broke out into sobbing, and she said, "You don't love me anymore." Then she screamed at him some more. Then there was more sobbing.

It went on for about an hour. There were sounds of dishes being smashed. By the time it was over I had retreated to my room for real and was trying to deny that anything important was happening.

Party Incident

[Left: My first red wagon.]

There were occasional parties at the house. There had to be parties among the Army officers. It was a rule. One happened after Christmas '51, maybe in the following January. The house was packed. My parents showed off one of their Christmas presents to each other, a boxed set of Bing Crosby classics. I remember a lot of smoking. By my bedtime my parents were getting fairly drunk. The smoke cloud, which hung over the good air, had descended to my level. I had to stoop to get under it.

My Mother called me over to her to tell me to go to bed. She was drunk enough to show her viciousness in front of all the party-goers. She smiled and said, "Go to bed now, you know Mommy loves you don't you?" When I smiled back she leaned forward and deliberately blew smoke in my face, still smiling.

So I slapped her. She grabbed my wrist and put her cigarette out in my hand, while everyone watched. Someone said it was wrong, and she snapped, "Don't tell me how to handle my own kid." And that was the end of that. Nobody else defended me.

Rare Serious Poem

[Real Change published this poem soon after I decided I had finished it in 1995. It was illustrated on my Speakeasy website until I cleaned that up recently, along with a Part II, which I might post here later on.]

My Childhood Study of Christianity
OR Gloria in Excelsis Deo Part I:
Why I'll Be a Pagan 'Til Kingdom Come

I'll begin with a little pre-history -
My mother called me wild sometimes, sometimes a freak.
She often raped and beat and tortured me.
While my father just got drunk and shrieked.

At six I came to understand
that my parents were Christian
and that Good Christians are persecuted, not persecuting.
I further learned at seven
that Christ would bless Good Christians
and support them in their suffering,
buffering them, so to speak,
presumably from the
persecutions of the BAD Christians.

I had questions to ask of suitable authority.
Christianity itself was promising.
Somewhere in Christ and Christianity
there should be answers! (There'd better be.)

I learned to read, to speed my way to the grace
by which I would escape my tormenters,
or at least to face their torment.

Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph.
Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Josiah.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
666, Whore of Babylon
Paul aka Saul and all and all...
Shadrach Meschach Abednego
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Plain of desolation
Mustard seed, Transfiguration
Michael, you row your boat ashore
Now Noah got no shore to row to.
Adam and Eve and Lilith makes three
days and three nights and the
burning lake was three times around
the walls of Jericho burning
incense, the Temple WAS rent
body and bread, blood and wine
Daniel in the den of lions
A generation of vipers
that gets only one sign
Captivity, Ecclesiastes
King Cyrus, Maccabes
Peter, get thee behind me
For it is right and meet
with all the angels to sing
Eli, Eli, lama Sabachtani
Melchizedek, priest-king
Kiss the ring! Kiss the ring!

Job was promising - you know the guy:

"Sorry Life! Woe and Strife! Teeth do Gnash!
Ain't got no Wife! Ain't got no Cash!
The Lord gave Ear
To Satan I Fear
So here I Stand, all covered in Rash."

But THEN God the Old-Testament-Lout steps out.
"I made Heaven and Earth," he says, "what are YOU worth?"
And Job shakes and quakes and begs for mercy, and just happens to get it.

None of which did anything for me, or managed to answer my questions -
- namely -
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH THEM?

Then there were Psalms.
Psalms, Canaanite Songs
in the Court of King David

"O sing praise to the almighty deity
Who makes sky, pie, and hairy flies alike..."
No, they don't say He makes pie
Mother makes pie and I don't care
Mother makes me cry and I don't care
Mother wants me to die and I don't care
The Psalms say God made the sky so I should shout Hallelujah.
How about I fart at His sky and cry out what's it to ya?
He who hath created me hath in addition created TOO MUCH SHIT!

But THEN, Psalm 23 was promising.
"Verily, though I walk blah blah blah
I shall fear no evil".
How's that work?
"The Lord is my shepherd?"
Framed on my Aunt's dresser.
The Sunday School Teacher Aunt.
HEY, maybe SHE'S the GOOD CHRISTIAN.
An operator lets me make the long distance call.
And I beg her to take me away from them all.

Four hours later I'm tortured by mother more than ever before -
raped by enema and beat an hour and a half and "Clean up the mess,
YOU made it" and HOW could I have made anything I'm not the same person I
was two hours ago. THEN there were two of me now there's one, twice.
"One against you, one against Aunt Snitch."
The Aunt who would have been a Good German in '41,
the one who verily fears no evil because
she hands over to it whatever it wants.
She DOES need a shepherd for a Lord.

So I quit Psalms until the age of ten.
Then one Sunday almost asleep in my pew,
Ready to give up entirely on Christianity,
The Psalm reader began Psalm 22:
"Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Like it's a question? So I grabbed my Psalm book?
So I could look for myself and read along?
It's no question he read it wrong.
It's: LORD!
LORD!
WHY hast THOU FORSAKEN me?!
It's an accusation, backed up by the facts.
And it demands that THE Lord act NOW!

Why the reader couldn't read it right,
Why the Chaplain couldn't give it light,
No matter I knew it meant something
I'd find out for sure
I'd ask the Chaplain
on my way out the church -

Tell me what it means I said
It prefigures Christ he said
His words on the cross he said
The casting of lots he said
No,
Tell me what it means.
It's not just about
Christ,
It's about ALL people
What-does-it-mean!

After a wary glance at my parents
He bent down to whisper in my ear
"I believe you know too well what it means.
May God help you and forgive us all."

Yes, I did know what it meant -
I just wanted to know I wasn't alone
before my gods called me home
and stood the world upright again.

The Dirt on the Underground

[The subsidized apartment building I live in is called The Union Hotel. It's run by DESC, Seattle's Downtown Emergency Service Center. All the residents have been homeless. I write a column for the monthly building newsletter. The column is called Out of My Mind. I'm posting them here, properly dated, because I can. -- wes]

Forty years ago I heard there was a writer guy who wanted high school kids to help excavate something called the Seattle Underground – except that in those days nobody capitalized it.

The writer was Bill Speidel, a Times columnist and Seattle history buff. He wrote about Doc Maynard, famous Seattle founder and drunk. Some people blame Maynard for the weird streets in the Pioneer Square area, which supposedly got that way because he was drunk when he planned them. Actually his plan was neat and simple. It was his sober neighbors north of Yesler who created the mess. Doc Maynard was a drunk, but he had lucid moments.

Anyway, I volunteered to help. A bunch of us volunteers all reported to Speidel’s Pioneer Square office one day and crammed inside for a chat with the author.

Ever notice how offices in Pioneer Square all have bare brick walls inside? That was Speidel’s idea -- to create a look of history. In the 1890s the walls were covered with wood or with plaster and wallpaper. He didn’t care. He was after the LOOK of history.

In those days Pioneer Square was a pit. A lot of it was boarded up. Nobody lived here but homeless people. There were no art galleries, no fancy restaurants. There was no nightlife. By dressing the area up to LOOK historic and showing it off, and by making the Underground famous, Speidel saved the district from the wrecking ball. And he was the first to make a mint off tourists from it.

After our chat we all went down into the Underground as it was then: dark tunnel after dark tunnel of dusty dry dirt. We shoveled dirt into wheelbarrows for hours. We got no hard hats and no dust masks. Our lungs must have filled with the stuff.

I told my Father about all this after the second day. He hit the ceiling. “This guy’s getting you to do this and you get no protection AND he doesn’t pay you? He should have to pay minimum wage! At least, if he’s not going to pay you, he should take care that you don’t get sick or injured! I suppose he didn’t insure himself for liability either, did he?”

My Dad, like Maynard, was kind of a drunk and he could be a real pain, but now and then he had his lucid moments.