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.

Buryats Rock

Video Find of the Day

Buryats are the ethnic Mongolians who form a large part of the population of the Buryat Republic. The Buryat Republic is part of the Russian Federation. It's in Siberia north of Mongolia. I suppose that's where these people come from, but I don't know! I don't know what they're singing about! It's wonderful!

Nongjiya Group - Buryat folk song

Oh Please

Video Find of the Day

If Mike Myers had introduced Chess Boxing for one of his Sprockets skits on Saturday Night Live I would have thought it was too silly. Today we find out it's real and they've already had a European championship.

I don't take much interest in sports, but I usually respect the interests of others. However, in this case I can't do it. No respect. This is the stupidest sport ever invented. It rates nothing less than constant, merciless, ridicule.

Chess Boxing

-- Wow, that video became unavailable within two hours after I posted it! OK, here's one that's even better:

Chessboxing in Nantes

Cowardice Rules

Regarding the last post:

Ironically, just yesterday afternoon Anitra, who owes me big time, gifted me with a joint membership in the Madison Market Co-op. So I have a place to buy yeast at a monthly discount. All I have to do is plan ahead, so as not to run out of anything before dark.

I'd sue SaveWay if I could prove they were encouraging vigilantism with favors. But I doubt I could prove that on my own. I need other people who have had something like this happen to them to tell about it, to me or to Real Change.

We live in a police state. When oppression is routine, some cowardly people who don't want to be on the oppressed side are always going to be ready to join the oppressors. When the police rule, everyone is going to want to be the police, including the very street thugs that the citizenry has feared so much as to have let the police state happen in the first place.

What happened to me last night is just exactly what you'd expect to happen in a city that willingly allows downtown businesses to operate their own corp of bicycle cops unaccountable to citizens.

Seattle is a city, by and large, of cowards. Cowards who are afraid of even the sight of poor people in their midst. I've seen middle class Seattleites cross the street wide-eyed with fear, to avoid passing people on the sidewalks who look homeless. The city is now engaged in a war on the visible homeless, taking the war even to the places where they try to hide out of sight. It's appropriate that Greg Nickels is our Mayor. You want a coward to be a mayor of cowards.

Another irony is that over the last ten years that I've shopped at SaveWay I've caught them many times giving me the wrong change, and half those times were in my favor. The money I returned to them, because I didn't want what wasn't owed me, if totaled up, could have bought a couple of cases of honey jars.

I don't want what isn't owed me. I just want the America I was promised.

Land of the Free my ass. More like Land of the Cowards.

Vigilante, Or What?

I got home tonight after 7 PM, and got ready to make a loaf of bread. I've been making a small loaf of bread every day lately, and remembered I was out of yeast. I thought of trying to use the sourdough starter again, but I didn't want to do that much work. So the next option was to go look for yeast in a neighborhood market. I decided to give SaveWay a shot.

SaveWay (not Safeway, the "v" isn't a typo) is technically a Mom & Pop store in Pioneer Square, but it's twice as big as the average Mom & Pop store, so I thought there was a chance yeast could be found there. I'd found flour and cornmeal and baking powder there before. Why not yeast?

It was already dark when I went out. It was close to 8. I don't like going to SaveWay at dark. In spite of its reputation Pioneer Square is not as dangerous after dark as Belltown or Capitol Hill, but I don't like to take chances. I was nervous and keeping an eye out for trouble.

The store is about two and a half blocks from my building. I went in and went straight for the aisle I'd seen the flour in. No yeast. I looked around in all the other aisles. No yeast. I thought maybe I could buy something else I need, so this won't be a totally wasted trip. I saw a huge 7 dollar jar of parmesan cheese that would be a good bargain. I started to take it to the counter, then I thought, I can't really spend $7 right now. I'd need to go to the bank first. So I put the parmesan back. Then I went to the aisle that had the bread. I didn't want any of their horrible bread (there's one reason I want to make my own) but my eye caught the honey. I didn't need any honey but I picked up a jar to see the price, to see if it was cheaper what I'd just seen at Bartell's. It wasn't. I put the honey back.

I wanted to ask the cashier, who happened to the "Mom" of the Mom & Pop, who would have recognized me as a regular, if she had any yeast in the store. But there was a long line, and I didn't want to risk starting an argument with the other customers by appearing to butt in with a question. I decided to just write off the whole trip as a dud. I'd go home, forget about making bread tonight, cook a couple of potatoes instead, and make a note to myself to never go looking for yeast at SaveWay again.

I walked out the door and got about 5 steps away when I heard someone behind me shout, "Hey, you! Come here! I want to talk to you!" It was a guy I'd never seen before. I've been going to SaveWay once or twice a week for ten years, ever since I moved into the Union in November 1997. This guy didn't look like any of the many employees. He wasn't wearing a security guard's uniform.

So I thought I was about to be robbed. I backed away and he moved toward me. I wanted to run back into the store, but he was in the way, so I screamed, "NO!" and ran toward Washington Street, hoping that there'd be witnesses there who would help or call for help. As I ran, I screamed, "LEAVE ME ALONE." I tried to make as much noise as possible, hoping that the people in the store would come out to see what was happening.

I knew I couldn't outrun him. I'm 58. This guy looked to me in his 30s. He caught me just before I got to Washington and swung me down into the street. He pushed me down onto my knees in the gutter in front of a car. He pinned me down and said, "What did you take?! Show me what you took!"

So I thought now he was a thief who thought he saw me take something so he figured could steal from me what I took and be sure I wouldn't report it. That was a terrifying thought because I hadn't stolen anything. I didn't have anything in my pockets from SaveWay. If he went through all my pockets and found nothing worth taking what would he do? He was in a perfect position to slit my throat. I told him he could have anything he wanted.

I heard a noise behind me. I thought someone was approaching. So I started screaming, "HELP! SOMEONE HELP! CALL THE POLICE! HELP!"

A guy came up along-side on a bicycle. The guy pinning me down told the guy on the bicycle I was a shoplifter he'd caught. So I said, "I'm not a shoplifter! Take me back to the store, I'll prove it!" He said, "If you're not a shoplifter, why did you run away?" I said I thought he was going to rob me.

I still think he was going to rob me. He fell back on the "I caught a shoplifter" line because he had a witness now.

He said he would call the police if I didn't show him what I took. I called his bluff and said "PLEASE call the police! That's exactly what I want." So then he said he'd take me back to the store and I'd have to empty my pockets there.

I went back to the SaveWay, with him holding my arms the whole way. When I got to the counter I emptied all my pockets for Mom to see. Mom recognized me, but she didn't want to give me the benefit of the doubt. She told the guy things like, "here's another pocket, look in that one. Maybe the back pockets." There was nothing from the store, of course.

When nothing was found Mom was all smiles. All of the sudden it was no big deal and she was acting like it was all a minor misunderstanding. I asked her if the guy worked for her. She said no.

Now I'm thinking, what the fuck, if he doesn't work for her, why was she treating him like the store security? One of the other customers suggested a possibility: They're paying paying people like this off with 6-packs if they catch someone stealing.

Even after I emptied my pockets and they had nothing the guy wouldn't let up with the accusations. He showed me where he had seen me pocket something. it was where I had priced the honey. The fucking moron had assaulted me for pricing a jar of honey.

I went back to the front and worried about how I was going to get home now. The guy was right there, Mom was acting like it was no big deal, and I had to think this asshole would follow me home and this time haul me into an alley and slit my throat. I was not convinced that he never intended to mug me.

I started getting angry and I raised my voice. "How do I get home when this guy could follow me?" I was about to demand that the police be called when my assailant left. I talked to Mom a little more but now I was pumped up with adrenaline and in no mood to talk softly. I was demanding answers and Mom was just smiling.

After two minutes of that the guy came back to tell Mom that he found a witness who had seen me throw something away that was picked up by an accomplice.

That cinched it. This man himself had his eyes on me from the time I walked out of the store until he caught me and threw me down just short of Washington Street. He would have seen me throw something down. He knew he didn't see me do any such thing. He was lying, trying to back up his claim that I stole to Mom with an "independent source." I told him his friend down the street who fed him that story was full of shit and he knew it and he was full of shit, too, because he knew it, and I said it all in such a tone of voice that Mom asked me to leave. Which I did, without saying another word.

I think the customer was dead on right. I think Mom is paying drunks off with beer to be vigilantes for her store.

Even if I'm wrong, I know this: she didn't give a shit when I protested being assaulted. All she cared about was getting back some item that she thought I might have took off her shelf.

I'm not taking my business to her anymore.

I called the police and made a report. An officer saw me at my apartment, and said he'd go look for a guy fitting my description. If he found him they'd call me and have me go over and ID. If it was the guy I remembered, he'd be arrested for assault. If they didn't find him the officer said at least they'd question Mom.

That was an hour and a half ago. I don't hold up much hope for getting this jerk in jail. The only thing I hope for now is that being questioned by the police about this kind of shit might wake Mom up to the seriousness of it.

Addendum: I just remembered that at one point while initially in the store, I took my wallet out to see how much money I really had. It didn't put it back right away, but had it in my hand just before I priced the honey. To pick the honey up, I first put my own wallet away.

So maybe the moron didn't assault me for pricing a jar of honey. maybe he assaulted me for putting my own wallet in my pocket.

Baby Got Book

Video Find of the Day

So, just 20 minutes ago I was reading about GodTube.com, the Christian imitation of YouTube where Christians can hang out and never face a threatening non-Christian idea, because proselytizing is strictly forbidden when non-Christians do it. (You Christians go ahead, that's what it's there for. Like you need to proselytize so badly you have to set up places where you can even proselytize each other.)

From my perspective GodTube is another video resource. Let's say I'm looking for something with a Christian flavor. Especially a Protestant, Fundamentalist, non-Mormon flavor. Am I going to look for it on YouTube by using a keyword search on "christian" and spend an hour wading through all the other crapola that might be good but isn't what I'm aiming for, or do I let GodTube narrow the search for me?

Well, that's what I did this time.

Baby Got Book

Mujra Seconds

Video Find of the Day

We saw Nida Chaudhry back in May when I discovered mujra for the first time in Sex, Art, Sex. Here she is again, not quite so scary, because you get to see a hint of the stage comedy that frames these performances.

pakistani mujra

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.