[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring of 1956, when I was 6 "going on 7". The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
It might be a good idea to stop a moment and summarize the dramatic chain of events of this period so far.
It started with me in first grade telling the class what menstrual huts were. That confirmed my memory of early childhood for my Mother, causing her to ramp up her abuse of me. That motivated me to call my Aunt Alta in DC to beg her help. Aunt Alta snitched, resulting in me being tortured severely by Mom. The torture brought my two personalities into cooperation with each other, causing what psychoanalyst might have called an ego-inflation, and set me up for an outstanding messiah complex episode. Said episode consisted of leading a peace party to the Fort Devens Hispanic neighborhood, which would fail in negotiating for peace only to win the peace after all by me punching the chief war-monger in the nose, but not before he'd done far worse damage to me. The peace was then marked by a march through the Hispanic neighborhood that was not in my personal best interest, and which concluded with three days of unconsciousness at the Post Infirmary.
After a day in bed I was allowed to move around the infirmary pulling an IV stand with me. I could hang out with other kids who were there for whatever reason. Some of them had come in after I did. So I was able to get news from outside. The news was great: the peace was in effect.
So, aside from my misgivings that it took violence, I was pretty happy when I was released to my parents about a week after admission.
Back in school, by then it was probably April, my exuberance expressed itself in a funny way. I remembered I had a plan to try to kiss all the girls in my first grade class before the year was out, and it occurred to me that time was running out. So when the teacher had to leave the class unattended for a while I made the announcement to all the girls in the class that I would kiss all of them that wanted me to.
I'm not making this up: They lined up. All the girls. Well, maybe one didn't. As I recall one didn't get kissed the first time through.
That's right. I kissed all the girls in line and then they got all back in line for a second pass at me, and the holdouts from the first time joined in the second.
I look back on that and I think, what a great lesson to learn! f you're wanting something, try asking!
So there I was kissing the girls for the second time and wondering how many times I could get all the girls to come back around, when the teacher popped back in and caught us all.
Within the hour I was in the principal's office with my parents. My parents had to explain to the principal how they were going to break me of being a monstrous pervert. Over and over again I was told, "Don't you know kissing spreads germs?" I had heard of cooties but I honestly thought they were just some BS that was made up by unpopular people to explain why they were lucky nobody wanted to kiss them.
Turns out, cooties are real! The very next week all the girls and I were out sick and miserable, with an ugly gastro-intestinal disease, with all the vomiting and diarrhea you could ask for.
Right about the end of that week of illness, I recovered, and I was heading outside to play when I met Aunt Alta at the door. She was carrying suitcases and "so happy" to see me and "so worried " about me ever since she'd got my phone call. I asked her why she told my Mother what I told her and she said, "I knew I couldn't be here for you right away, so I had to tell your Mother you needed help until I could get here."
The sheer absurdity of that explanation, given that what I needed help with was escaping my Mother, completely sucked the wind out of me. It brought up all the feelings of anger I had when I had asked for help previously and been betrayed or told to shut up.
The Alex/Alaka'i side of me decided at that moment that Aunt Alta was just a representative haole, that the problem was that I was surrounded by haole, rather than real human beings, and it was time to renew the quest to return to Hawaii. But by now I knew there was no way to get there by ordinary travel. So something extraordinary was called for.
Showing posts with label alta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alta. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
Torture and Retaliation
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring of 1956, when I was 6 "going on 7". The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
After my first phone call, the long-distance collect call for help to my Aunt Alta, 400 miles away in Washington DC, I felt wonderful. I had done what needed to be done. Help was on its way. In two weeks Alta would be there and, maybe with the help of the police, I'd be taken away to safety. I played happily on the play deck off my bedroom.
In the late afternoon my Father left for some reason. He may have had extra work at the office, or he may have had a night out with the guys. In those days he still played poker or bridge occasionally while my Mother stayed home. I don't remember the reason, I just know he took off for several hours.
When he was gone my Mother found me and cheerfully told me she had a special treat for me. She led me to the bathroom between the Sun Porch and her bedroom, the Master Bathroom. I happened to note the time on a wall clock just before we entered. I also saw the clock on the way out. The special treat lasted an hour and a half.
It consisted of repeated enemas. After each one I had to hold it in or be beaten. I'd get beaten after awhile, because I couldn't hold it in forever. Or I could, so there'd be another. Either way, there'd be another, with the same rules.
[Right: Torturers and child molesters look like this.]
After the fourth or fifth time, I was screaming for her to please stop. She said, "I'll stop when you tell me why I'm doing it. You know why I'm doing this. I want you to tell me why."
It was an hour and a half of torture in every sense of the word. I had to confess a "crime". I wasn't told what the crime was that I was supposed to have committed. In the meantime the torture continued.
I never knew what to confess until my Mother let it be known that she had gotten "a very interesting phone call from Aunt Alta."
While I'd been playing by myself on the play deck, my Mother had received a call from Alta. "WHO DO YOU THINK SHE SAID CALLED HER THIS MORNING?"
I confessed that I called her. That didn't help. There was a long round of screaming and more enemas and beatings. "SHE TOLD ME WHAT YOU SAID TO HER! NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SAY IT TO ME!"
I tried to tell her what I said to Alta. I just wanted it to be over. I don't know what I admitted. I don't think it really mattered. I think she stopped when she did just because she tired of it.
During the torture Kona became aware of the watching of Alex. After she let me go and I crawled into bed, we felt reunited. United against my Mother, and against Alta.
After my first phone call, the long-distance collect call for help to my Aunt Alta, 400 miles away in Washington DC, I felt wonderful. I had done what needed to be done. Help was on its way. In two weeks Alta would be there and, maybe with the help of the police, I'd be taken away to safety. I played happily on the play deck off my bedroom.
In the late afternoon my Father left for some reason. He may have had extra work at the office, or he may have had a night out with the guys. In those days he still played poker or bridge occasionally while my Mother stayed home. I don't remember the reason, I just know he took off for several hours.
When he was gone my Mother found me and cheerfully told me she had a special treat for me. She led me to the bathroom between the Sun Porch and her bedroom, the Master Bathroom. I happened to note the time on a wall clock just before we entered. I also saw the clock on the way out. The special treat lasted an hour and a half.
It consisted of repeated enemas. After each one I had to hold it in or be beaten. I'd get beaten after awhile, because I couldn't hold it in forever. Or I could, so there'd be another. Either way, there'd be another, with the same rules.[Right: Torturers and child molesters look like this.]
After the fourth or fifth time, I was screaming for her to please stop. She said, "I'll stop when you tell me why I'm doing it. You know why I'm doing this. I want you to tell me why."
It was an hour and a half of torture in every sense of the word. I had to confess a "crime". I wasn't told what the crime was that I was supposed to have committed. In the meantime the torture continued.
I never knew what to confess until my Mother let it be known that she had gotten "a very interesting phone call from Aunt Alta."
While I'd been playing by myself on the play deck, my Mother had received a call from Alta. "WHO DO YOU THINK SHE SAID CALLED HER THIS MORNING?"
I confessed that I called her. That didn't help. There was a long round of screaming and more enemas and beatings. "SHE TOLD ME WHAT YOU SAID TO HER! NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SAY IT TO ME!"
I tried to tell her what I said to Alta. I just wanted it to be over. I don't know what I admitted. I don't think it really mattered. I think she stopped when she did just because she tired of it.
During the torture Kona became aware of the watching of Alex. After she let me go and I crawled into bed, we felt reunited. United against my Mother, and against Alta.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
My First Phone Call
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring of 1956, when I was 6 "going on 7". The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
My clever plan worked. I started writing about the very bad chain of events, and the sheer act of writing about it broke the stupidity-lock that was preventing me from recalling the timing of the events.
I forgot about Spring vacations. My 1st grade school broke for Spring vacation. The next event in the chain happened around the third week of March.
My Mother was being especially sadistic because I had demonstrated an ability to recall things that happened to me even before I was one year old. Rape/tortures increased in frequency and severity. I was ready to do something desperate to get out of the situation.
I got the idea to try and get help from Aunt Alta.
Looking back on my childhood I am often pleased at how stupid the ideas I had then were. It would really annoy me now were I to have had amazingly brilliant ideas all the time as a kid. No one wants to be one-upped by their own 6-year old self. I'm glad that I was so ignorant when I was 6. It's because of that I've been able to show so much improvement over time.
Not only did I not know Aunt Alta very well, having only met her a few times when she came to visit during holidays, but she was my Aunt because she was the sister of the woman abusing me. So she was emotionally involved, and altogether the wrong person to seek out if the goal was sanctuary. Of course, the goal WAS sanctuary. I was not looking for her to use her influence to change my Mother's behavior. A plan like that wouldn't have occurred to me at 6 going-on 7. I didn't get that sophisticated until I was 9 or 10.
To ask her for help was a trick, because we lived in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and she lived at the time in Washington, DC. Her phone number was in a flip-up record book on the table where the phone sat, but it wasn't a direct-dial number. Direct Distance Dialing, using area codes to call without the use of operators, began earlier than 1956, but people weren't using it much by then. If my parents knew the area code for Washington DC, they didn't bother with it, being satisfied to do things the way they always had. My Father actually would say Direct Dialing was "idiotic" -- there's no reason anyone should have to use numbers that long.
["1-206-725-5555" -- idiotic. "PA5-5555" -- silly. "Parkway 5, 5555" -- too many numbers. "Myrtle, could you connect me to Gertrude, please? You, know, Gertrude across the street from me? Thanks." -- genius.]
Fortunately my parents had taught me how to use a phone in case there was ever an emergency. There was one emergency number in those days. You dialed "0". An "operator" answered. She took care of it.
So one Saturday morning while my parents were out shopping I called the operator and told her I needed to talk to my Aunt Alta in Washington DC. It was my first phone call, ever.
I didn't know what a collect call was. I just gave the operator Alta's local number and said I wanted to talk to her. The operator asked how old I was, and I said 6 going-on 7. She said, "Do you have permission from your parents to make this call?" I said no. She said, "Well, then I shouldn't let you put the call through, until you get permission."
I wasn't prepared for that. I thought the operator was just supposed to put the call through. I thought phones were entirely a prepaid service. I didn't know each long distance call added to the bill. I broke down in tears and told her I couldn't get permission from my parents, that's why I had to make the call. I had to get away from my parents.
The operator said, "Why do you have to get away from your parents?" So I started to tell her. I told her my parents had wanted to kill me. I told her that my Mother had tried to smother me with a pillow two years earlier. The operator was concerned but said, "But that was a long time ago, right?" They're not hurting you now, are they?"
So I was forced to try to describe the recent abuse, which was mostly rape and verbal abuse.
No matter how severe verbal abuse is, no one thinks much of it until you act it out for them. Over the years I got really good at acting out my Father's verbal abuse, and I can now do it pretty well. When I do it now, it scares people, and they get it. But as a 6 year-old I didn't have the skill, the voice, and the sheer size to pull off an impression of my Father's abusive verbal attacks.
So that left the rapes. I was forced to find words to describe anal rape, over the phone, to a complete stranger, when the only vocabulary I had consisted of words that were forbidden to me.
As luck would have it the operator was well-suited for her line of work. She was a good listener. Through the tears and my casting around for safe words she finally said, "Oh my God, I'll put you through collect right away."
Alta was reached and she accepted the charges. Now that I was finally talking to her I had to do it all over again. I had to tell her what was wrong and why she should come and take me away from my parents. She wasn't a total stranger, but, really, I knew her mainly as the Aunt who gave me shirts five times a year. I thought she would help because she was said to be a "Good Christian."
[Left: I had seen the family album many times by then, and had often seen this picture of Alta holding me in 1949. She looks happy to have me.]
I went through pretty much the same ordeal I went through with the operator. Like the operator she wanted to discount old news. Maybe neither of them believed I could have reliable memories that old. So I had to describe the rapes. Alta wasn't as good a listener as the operator, and I ended up spelling it out more. I told her my Mother was feeling inside me and making me hurt.
Finally, she said she was planning to come to visit soon anyway, she could just move her trip up. She asked me if I could manage for the two weeks it would take her to get there. I said yes, and she said, "Then it's settled. I'll come in two weeks, and I'll take care of everything. You don't have to worry about a thing."
Yep, she'd take care of everything. I was pretty psyched. Everything was going to be Hunky-Frikkin'-Dory.
My clever plan worked. I started writing about the very bad chain of events, and the sheer act of writing about it broke the stupidity-lock that was preventing me from recalling the timing of the events.
I forgot about Spring vacations. My 1st grade school broke for Spring vacation. The next event in the chain happened around the third week of March.
My Mother was being especially sadistic because I had demonstrated an ability to recall things that happened to me even before I was one year old. Rape/tortures increased in frequency and severity. I was ready to do something desperate to get out of the situation.
I got the idea to try and get help from Aunt Alta.
Looking back on my childhood I am often pleased at how stupid the ideas I had then were. It would really annoy me now were I to have had amazingly brilliant ideas all the time as a kid. No one wants to be one-upped by their own 6-year old self. I'm glad that I was so ignorant when I was 6. It's because of that I've been able to show so much improvement over time.
Not only did I not know Aunt Alta very well, having only met her a few times when she came to visit during holidays, but she was my Aunt because she was the sister of the woman abusing me. So she was emotionally involved, and altogether the wrong person to seek out if the goal was sanctuary. Of course, the goal WAS sanctuary. I was not looking for her to use her influence to change my Mother's behavior. A plan like that wouldn't have occurred to me at 6 going-on 7. I didn't get that sophisticated until I was 9 or 10.
To ask her for help was a trick, because we lived in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and she lived at the time in Washington, DC. Her phone number was in a flip-up record book on the table where the phone sat, but it wasn't a direct-dial number. Direct Distance Dialing, using area codes to call without the use of operators, began earlier than 1956, but people weren't using it much by then. If my parents knew the area code for Washington DC, they didn't bother with it, being satisfied to do things the way they always had. My Father actually would say Direct Dialing was "idiotic" -- there's no reason anyone should have to use numbers that long.["1-206-725-5555" -- idiotic. "PA5-5555" -- silly. "Parkway 5, 5555" -- too many numbers. "Myrtle, could you connect me to Gertrude, please? You, know, Gertrude across the street from me? Thanks." -- genius.]
Fortunately my parents had taught me how to use a phone in case there was ever an emergency. There was one emergency number in those days. You dialed "0". An "operator" answered. She took care of it.
So one Saturday morning while my parents were out shopping I called the operator and told her I needed to talk to my Aunt Alta in Washington DC. It was my first phone call, ever.
I didn't know what a collect call was. I just gave the operator Alta's local number and said I wanted to talk to her. The operator asked how old I was, and I said 6 going-on 7. She said, "Do you have permission from your parents to make this call?" I said no. She said, "Well, then I shouldn't let you put the call through, until you get permission."
I wasn't prepared for that. I thought the operator was just supposed to put the call through. I thought phones were entirely a prepaid service. I didn't know each long distance call added to the bill. I broke down in tears and told her I couldn't get permission from my parents, that's why I had to make the call. I had to get away from my parents.
The operator said, "Why do you have to get away from your parents?" So I started to tell her. I told her my parents had wanted to kill me. I told her that my Mother had tried to smother me with a pillow two years earlier. The operator was concerned but said, "But that was a long time ago, right?" They're not hurting you now, are they?"
So I was forced to try to describe the recent abuse, which was mostly rape and verbal abuse.
No matter how severe verbal abuse is, no one thinks much of it until you act it out for them. Over the years I got really good at acting out my Father's verbal abuse, and I can now do it pretty well. When I do it now, it scares people, and they get it. But as a 6 year-old I didn't have the skill, the voice, and the sheer size to pull off an impression of my Father's abusive verbal attacks.
So that left the rapes. I was forced to find words to describe anal rape, over the phone, to a complete stranger, when the only vocabulary I had consisted of words that were forbidden to me.
As luck would have it the operator was well-suited for her line of work. She was a good listener. Through the tears and my casting around for safe words she finally said, "Oh my God, I'll put you through collect right away."
Alta was reached and she accepted the charges. Now that I was finally talking to her I had to do it all over again. I had to tell her what was wrong and why she should come and take me away from my parents. She wasn't a total stranger, but, really, I knew her mainly as the Aunt who gave me shirts five times a year. I thought she would help because she was said to be a "Good Christian."[Left: I had seen the family album many times by then, and had often seen this picture of Alta holding me in 1949. She looks happy to have me.]
I went through pretty much the same ordeal I went through with the operator. Like the operator she wanted to discount old news. Maybe neither of them believed I could have reliable memories that old. So I had to describe the rapes. Alta wasn't as good a listener as the operator, and I ended up spelling it out more. I told her my Mother was feeling inside me and making me hurt.
Finally, she said she was planning to come to visit soon anyway, she could just move her trip up. She asked me if I could manage for the two weeks it would take her to get there. I said yes, and she said, "Then it's settled. I'll come in two weeks, and I'll take care of everything. You don't have to worry about a thing."
Yep, she'd take care of everything. I was pretty psyched. Everything was going to be Hunky-Frikkin'-Dory.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Technorati Sucks, Week 11
Subtitle: I Was A Teenage Arrow Man
This is Aunt Snitch, from the Rare Serious Poem. It is also my second favorite photo taken by my Father. It shows her "loving" some kittens against their wills. Her name was Aunt Alta. The picture nails her chief trait, her certainty that whatever she's doing for you is for your own good, because she loves you so fucking much.
One of the things Aunt Snitch did to me, besides betray me to my Mother and get me tortured, was buy me Arrow shirts for every birthday, Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, & Epiphany. I think she gave me shirts on United Nations Day once (October 24, if you want to celebrate it next time around). She gave me shirts for my parents' birthdays, for finishing school years, for starting school years, and sometimes for existing.
I was required to thank Alta for each Arrow shirt, thus encouraging her to give me more. She wanted me to know that she was my best Aunt ever. My Mother wanted me to know that Alta surely had a hundred thou' squirreled away somewhere, because the only thing she ever spent money on was my shirts. Therefore it was my job to inherit it and use it to keep Mommy happy in her autumn years. I played along until I hit 21 and could legally drink.
OK, so I had hundreds of Arrow shirts. I didn't have to wear them did I?
Yes! I had to! On no account was any money going to be spent in my parents' household for any more shirts for me. "You have shirts" "But I don't like them." "Shut up."
I wanted to get a paper route to buy my own damn shirts. They said no! It would take away from time I spent doing chores for them! It would take away from homework time! "You'll be happy with the shirts you have and the money we dole out to you."
Don't let the ad from the 70s fool you. Arrow shirts were NEVER extroverted except for the one hour in the 70s it took the photographer to create the photo of the guy on the left.
This collage shows you all the other Arrow Men from 1900 to the current millennium. It's painful for me to look at this collage and relive those memories. The horror of it all. So many sucky shirts, for so long.
Will Technorati suck as long? We'll see.
This is Aunt Snitch, from the Rare Serious Poem. It is also my second favorite photo taken by my Father. It shows her "loving" some kittens against their wills. Her name was Aunt Alta. The picture nails her chief trait, her certainty that whatever she's doing for you is for your own good, because she loves you so fucking much.One of the things Aunt Snitch did to me, besides betray me to my Mother and get me tortured, was buy me Arrow shirts for every birthday, Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, & Epiphany. I think she gave me shirts on United Nations Day once (October 24, if you want to celebrate it next time around). She gave me shirts for my parents' birthdays, for finishing school years, for starting school years, and sometimes for existing.
I was required to thank Alta for each Arrow shirt, thus encouraging her to give me more. She wanted me to know that she was my best Aunt ever. My Mother wanted me to know that Alta surely had a hundred thou' squirreled away somewhere, because the only thing she ever spent money on was my shirts. Therefore it was my job to inherit it and use it to keep Mommy happy in her autumn years. I played along until I hit 21 and could legally drink.
OK, so I had hundreds of Arrow shirts. I didn't have to wear them did I?
Yes! I had to! On no account was any money going to be spent in my parents' household for any more shirts for me. "You have shirts" "But I don't like them." "Shut up."
I wanted to get a paper route to buy my own damn shirts. They said no! It would take away from time I spent doing chores for them! It would take away from homework time! "You'll be happy with the shirts you have and the money we dole out to you."
Don't let the ad from the 70s fool you. Arrow shirts were NEVER extroverted except for the one hour in the 70s it took the photographer to create the photo of the guy on the left.
This collage shows you all the other Arrow Men from 1900 to the current millennium. It's painful for me to look at this collage and relive those memories. The horror of it all. So many sucky shirts, for so long.
Will Technorati suck as long? We'll see.
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