By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

You’d think a survivor of an abusive relationship would lend one of the most empathic of ears to women incarcerated for charges related to domestic violence. Women who committed crimes because their abusers forced them to. Women who, without the resources to buy a get-out-of-jail-free card, were caught up when the men who terrorized them broke the law. Women who ultimately erupted in one excruciating moment of self-preservation, one violent demand for freedom, and killed their abusers. Yes, you’d think someone who came close, but managed to avoid that final step, would be exquisitely understanding.

But I’m not. Or, to cut myself some slack, I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all understanding. I once condemned women who failed to protect their children from abusive partners. I had conveniently forgotten how grateful I was that I’d had no offspring with my abuser, how uncertain I was of what I might have done had I borne a baby into a violent family, how terrified I was that I might have taught a child how to submit, how to disappear into the background, how to cry silently, how to duck.

I, however, had gotten away, rescued by a woman who didn’t even know me — “I know what’s going on. Come home with me,” she said. Despite her generous gift of freedom, though, I grew stingy with those who had none, who were paralyzed by the fear of the next assault, who could do no more than cower among smaller victims. Instead of generosity, I offered criticism — perhaps to distance myself from the woman I once was, to deny I had ever been a victim “like that,” to refuse to acknowledge we are one.

Then in 1988, I looked into the disfigured face of Hedda Nussbaum, read the evidence of her 12 years of horrifying abuse and degradation, listened to the testimony of her sitting on the bathroom floor with the dying child her partner had beaten, and I realized what an unconscionable act it was to blame her. To blame a brutalized victim for failing to behave like a good girl, like a good mother — as though no fist had ever silenced her, no fear had ever paralyzed her, no foot had ever kicked her, no words had ever cut her, no weapon had ever shattered her.

Then in 2011, I watched a new documentary called Sin By Silence, the story of the creation of Convicted Women Against Abuse — an organization formed inside the California Institute for Women to help educate the system about domestic violence (click here to find screenings). And I read a new book, Razor Wire Women, edited by Jodie Michelle Lawston and Ashley E. Lucas, a collection of stories, essays, poetry and art by abused, incarcerated women and those concerned for them. And then I knew at once that even though I was free, I was only one kind stranger away from the other side of the wire. There or in my grave.

And in that knowledge grows empathy.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I vaguely recall the first time someone asked me what it means to be a feminist. I was still a kid, freshly baptized in the blaze of radical feminism. Or so it seemed, as our consciousness-raising group met in Anita’s living room. She was into her middle years, a professional woman returned to college, and the group was a school project. Its existence in our small town was a damn miracle for us and a disturbing mystery for the men, who didn’t understand why a gaggle of gals would get together for no better purpose than to talk — just talk — to each other! — what the hell? — and we weren’t too sure ourselves, at first, although their reactions were reason enough, and enlightenment shortly followed.

Ensconced in pastoral adornment — brocade throw pillows, hand-tatted antimacassars, ceramic tchotchkes — we spoke of goddesses and orgasms, of Shulamith Firestone and her Dialectic of Sex. We gasped and caressed the images of female genitalia in Our Bodies, Ourselves. We dreamt of Feminist Revolution amid fiery Redstockings. And we strode boldly forth to spread the good word of equality of the sexes.

That’s when one of the boys on the farm asked me about feminism (yes, there literally was a dairy farm, with a lot of eager boys on it). But the acrid sarcasm in his inflection neutralized the need for a serious response, along with his chances. Were it not for my oh-so proper upbringing — the gendered training that turns Southern females into well-coiffed boot scrapers and males, into manure-crusted boots — I’d have asked him what it means to be a teeny sexist turd.

Of course, I didn’t. As one of the elite white males who has claimed the exclusive U.S. leadership mantle said years later, “Wouldn’t be prudent”[1] — no matter that belittling my passions annoyed me. But, alas, back then I still clasped the remnants of ladylikeness as a virgin bride clutches the coverlet to her chin on her wedding night.

Hmmm, that image might be a tad sexist. Blame it on the South, the South and the more generic sublimation of female anger. We were not allowed to be angry; it would interfere with our being gracious, accommodating, acquiescent — boot scrapers.

But I changed — with the seasons, with the years, with the geography — and by the 1990s I took to slinging the Oxford English Dictionary definition of feminism at California’s political candidates, who proudly proclaimed their befuddled disaffection for the moniker by answering “No” to the question “Are you a feminist?” and “Yes” to the question “Do you support granting women the same rights as men?”

“Ahem, sir,” I’d say, “that is feminism.” And the hapless hucksters would stumble over their reassurances that they both advocated for women’s equality and abjured feminism.

Go figure.

Now, thirty-five years removed from my feminist birthing, I am asked yet again what it means to be a feminist, a feminist in an anti-feminist culture, a culture as far removed from the feminism of the 1960s and 70s as we were then from the suffragists of the previous century’s turning. But there is a difference. This time, the query is posed without sarcasm. It comes from a women’s studies professor, a smart woman with wild hair and more books than her institution deems seemly. She’s been plunked into a new office with shelves enough for half her books. When I saw this, I couldn’t help but imagine the architect wondering how many words women really need to pack into their pretty little heads. Idiot.

Do I seem angry? I’m not supposed to be. But after thirty-five years of surveilling our patriarchal system, I am.

Or no, I’m not angry. I’m thinking, thinking of that classic Southern aphorism — that horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow. I recall telling Mother, once, that I was sweating like a stuck pig. I don’t recall that she laughed, but I hope she would laugh at my suggestion now — that ladies clench their sphincters and remain silent, women become understandably yet politely angry, and feminists get mad. Because I am mad. I am a mad feminist. And I get mad better than most. Because mad is a tool for change. Silent acquiescence and clenched sphincters, polite anger, they are not tools for change — not at the turn of the century, not in the 60s and 70s, and not today.

What does it mean to be a feminist today, a mad feminist? I think it means a lot of things, some I’m still learning.

But I do know it means seeing people roll their eyes at the mention of consciousness-raising groups, those silly little things that turned on our voices, that aroused our sexuality, that confirmed our personhood.

It means a persistent gendered wage gap that in 2009 paid women a median wage equating to about 80¢ to each $1.00 men earned.[2]

It means fuming as women’s bodies serve as capitalism’s primary tools, our breasts selling beer, our genitalia pitching the latest fashions, our undeveloped hands assembling the endless stream of consumer goods from Third World countries that keep the elite in power around the globe.

It means mourning the loss of Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s trailblazing path to the United State’s lackluster ranking of 70^th of 186 nations in the percentage of females in national legislatures[3] — behind such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

It means gasping as young women succumb to the fallacy that fellatio is not sex and their bodies, themselves are not worthy of respect — their own or their partner’s.

It means flinching as nearly one in every four women in the United States reports experiencing violence at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.[4]

It means wailing as each of more than 500 women per day reports being raped or sexually assaulted.[5]

And still — still! — we blame them for their abuse. Perhaps this is why experts suggest the actual numbers for domestic violence, rape and sexual assault are double or triple what is reported — or more.

It means that the U.S. government has barely begun to collect comparable data for lesbians and bisexual and transgender women.

It means — all of this means — that we need to do something about it, something to declare that this is how it is and that how it is, is not right, is not sane, cannot continue.

And that means we need to be activists for equality all the time, everywhere we go, always insisting on having difficult conversations we might rather avoid, the kind we would have shied from before our do-it-yourself-home-inspection-speculum days, when it was easier to fake an orgasm than to talk about it, to explore what it would take to achieve it, to tell a partner to try this instead of that. It’s not that different from equality. Seriously. Female orgasms and equality require the recognition that they are absent when they shouldn’t be, the desire for them, and the commitment to talk about them for the purpose of obtaining them. Orgasms are just a lot easier.

Equality, equality is a toughy. Which brings me back to the question of what it means to be a feminist today. Although I’m still working on the answer, I’m certain it means I have to be mad. I’ll let you know what else I figure out. And then I’ll call Anita, to thank her.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag, The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Jon Ronson, British journalist extraordinaire and best-selling author, has a new book out, The Psychopath Test. If Ronson’s name doesn’t ring a bell, think goats — or, more specifically, The Men Who Stare at Goats, which became an oddly fascinating film in 2009. The Psychopath Test recently hit the publicity circuit with a bang and, in the process, the book is popularizing the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The PCL-R is a tool developed by Dr. Robert Hare, a criminal psychology researcher, to diagnose a subject’s psychopathic or antisocial tendencies and to predict the likelihood a subject will engage in violent behavior.

I’ve not yet read Ronson’s book, although I probably will, but it’s the checklist that caught my attention. Reading through it is akin to surfing the net for explanations of one’s medical symptoms. You know: “Oh ye gads, I have that symptom and that one! How many of these must one have to be the lucky recipient of this crummy diagnosis? Am I gonna die?!” Well, yes, but probably not from some dread disease that Google managed to find for you.

In the case of the PCL-R, however, the winning diagnosis is not deadly; it just means you are a psychopath (a subset of the antisocial personality disorder diagnosis). Indeed, if you rank high enough on the scale — 0 point (doesn’t apply) to 3 points (really, really applies) for each of the 20 qualifiers — you win the title. In lay term this means that, while you can be charming on the outside, on the inside you enjoy doing things you know you shouldn’t, you feel no guilt or shame for what you do, it’s always someone else’s fault, and you don’t care a whit about anyone to the point of feeling contemptuous toward the rest of the world. In other words, you are a creepy, nasty person with a whopping sense of superiority and you can look someone straight in the eye and lie like the dickens.

Hmmm, sounds like many of the politicians I know. County Supervisor Bill Horn comes first to mind. Sounds like most hate-mongering activists. Brian Brown of National Organization for Marriage comes to mind.  Sounds like many of the heteronormative men behind The Koala — grandiose sense of self-worth, conning and manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt or empathy, pathological lying, parasitic lifestyle… Yep, they all come to mind. Take a look at the checklist for yourself. Sound like anyone you know?

1.   Glibness, superficial charm
2.   Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.   Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom
4.   Pathological lying
5.   Conning, manipulative
6.   Lack of remorse or guilt
7.   Shallow affect
8.   Callous, lack of empathy
9.   Parasitic lifestyle
10. Poor behavioral control
11.  Promiscuous sexual behavior
12. Early behavior problems
13. Lack of realistic long-term goals
14. Impulsivity
15. Irresponsibility
16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17. Many short-term marital relationships
18. Juvenile delinquency
19. Revocation of conditional release
20. Criminal versatility

Of course, Ronson and Hare both warn that misuse of the checklist is dangerous. Hare says it should only be employed by clinicians with “advanced degree[s] in the social, medical, or behavioral sciences, such as a Ph.D., D.Ed. or M.D.” and who have experience with criminal populations. So, forget everything I just wrote. And, unless you are qualified, don’t ever, ever compare the list to any of the glibly nasty people you know. No, never.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

UPATE: Two more Koalans’ identities confirmed (see below). I suspect their mamas will not be proud.

We were sitting at the old soda fountain counter at the newish cafe in downtown Fallbrook, which is actually a small town, but everything is relative, I suppose. We were there, my daughter and I, because the café is where we go to escape other things — too much noise or not enough, the ennui of college homework, boorish thugs, the like.

We were also there because it’s entertaining, hanging out with the fellows who gather to shoot the shit with the owner, Michael.

Michael is from Brooklyn. And Italian. One of my favorite combinations.

The other fellows are all sorts of things, mostly seasoned things. Hence, the schmoozing is rich with masculine experience, varying sources of wisdom and lack thereof, all of which makes for a hearty dose of bawdy humor.

They let us join them because we laugh in the right places and we challenge them without being boorish thugs, and because I’m “pretty nice for a feminist,” or so I’m told.

So, we were sitting there with the guys, and we started talking about trust and mistrust, fear and hate, and their origins.

Doc said trust comes from fear. We drew a diagram, with trust building strategies in the middle.

Michael let out a Brooklyn snort of disagreement. “Nah. That’s not East Coast. On the East Coast, we trust everyone — until someone screws you.”

Then I got a call back from the FBI. Because I’m from the East Coast. Because I trusted boorish thugs to behave within the law.

And now it’s probably time for a recap:

The boorish thugs are the folks who publish The Koala (or the “Koala Klan,” as a North County Times reader so aptly dubbed them). The supposed student tabloid is actually a for-profit business that, according to San Diego County records, is owned by George Lee Liddle III and Sammy Elhag.

Starting back about 2001, Liddle was the student editor-in-chief of The Koala at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). At that time, The Koala appears to have been a student-run tabloid: just juvenile prattle attempting to pass for shock humor, but instead, tripping into bigotry and hate.

Sammy Elhag is a bit more difficult than Liddle to pin down. There is a Sammy Elhag who lives in San Diego. There’s also a Sammy Elhag who co-owns some Internet properties.

Whoever he is, in 2005 Sammy Elhag and George Lee Liddle III filed a fictitious name statement for The Koala with the County. Do you suppose they hoped that hate would be profitable?

Liddle and Elhag now have three editions of The Koala, the original at UCSD, where it is a university sanctioned student organization and receives Associate Student (AS) funding; one at San Diego State University (SDSU), also a sanctioned student organization, but not currently receiving AS funds according to that university; and the newest, at Cal State San Marcos (CSUSM). According to CSUSM staff, the Koalans at CSUSM withdrew their application to become a recognized student organization and since then have steadfastly attempted to remain anonymous to the campus community, with some but not complete success (see staff roster below).

There is also one lonely fellow who says his name is Jeff Weaver. He posts narcissistic videos on behalf of a Cal State Long Beach Koala (which appears otherwise nonexistent), and is listed on the CSUSM edition’s staff roster.

An effort to launch at UC Irvine, may have withered on the vine, with it’s last posted issue dated January 2006.

Recent efforts to expose the identities of Koalans have made them very unhappy. Those who hide under hoods, literal or figurative, don’t function so boldly in the light of day.

And the latest from the Koalans? Well, having an incomplete understanding of the First Amendment, they reacted quite strongly to criticism of their tabloid’s content and their anonymity, and as primitive natures might, they went on the attack, one front of which is best described in their own words, with full names added where known. Warning: profanity ahead.

SDSU

this dumb bitch [who would be me] seems to be the ONLY person “outraged” over you guys

http://obrag.org/?p=32362

that same cunt has posted the same article in three different places WOW

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kit-Bacon … 1228966521

this is her fb page as well, shes fucking retarded she uses her full name as a handle on every website. If she ever gives you guys real problems it wont be hard to hack her email and turn up some dirt on her

She seems to think you guys should feel ‘shameful’ for your content. I say, get some koala shirts and wear ‘em loud and proud. Worst case scenario you’ll get laid. If any more ‘paparazzi-esque’ attempts are made by her to get photos of you I say take advantage of you, she’s treating you like rock stars so go with it.

SDSU

this is her cell phone number 1 760.522.1064

this is her email kbgressitt@gmail.com

step 1 is to sign her up for all sorts of shit so her phone doesnt stop ringning (preferably for lesbian dating sites)

step 2 is me finding someone that knows what to do in order to get her password

ill let you know if i come up with anything

MattW

How would we ever get her password

Aaron Jaffe

Lets just go ahead and delete all the shit about hacking. Take that stuff to PMs or phone messages/calls.

George Liddle

I’ve got a better idea. Don’t worry so much about this chick. She’s a fucking nobody. Focus on getting straight with your advertisers and then you’ll be in the clear. As long as you’re solid with your advertisers, let the haters hate. We can choose to have some fun with this lady or not, but signing her up for spam is lame. If you’re going to go after someone, at least do something interesting.

Now, back at the café, we folks don’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes we really infuriate each other. On occasion, one of us might actually storm out, for instance the morning after President Obama was elected. One poor man left his coffee and scone sitting on the soda fountain counter. But he returned the next day and jumped right back into the repartee. He trusted us not to attack him. And we all still love each other, despite our many differences. It’s the feminist way: Embracing diversity, striving for equality; they are darn fun, much more fun than fear and hate.

But what do you do with a group of men who haven’t learned to challenge others without being boorish thugs, who cannot overcome their fear?

My brother thought a visit from a special ops team in the dark of night might give them adequately extreme wedgies to keep them on the straight and narrow for the rest of their lives. Ah, that visceral fight response.

My husband, the Marine, just called his law enforcement buddies. “Networking, Honey. Networking is everything.” Spoken like a leader who wears his Blackberry on his belt.

My kiddo just shook her head and laughed. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

Apropos of a writer, I figured I would stick with words. Although the Koalans deny it, language is powerful enough to cause love or hate, to create community or harm it, to reveal truths or deceive in the guise of comedy.

And because I’m a feminist and I know those who embrace thuggery most often do so out of fear, I feel some sympathy for the Koalans. They broadcast their fearful hate of women, of homosexuals and ethnicities, of nonwhite races and people with disabilities. Perhaps Doc will explain to them some of his trust-building strategies.

However, because I’m also a pragmatist, I’ll accept whatever assistance law enforcement might give me. Because conspiring to hack into my systems and usurp my online identity, and scamming my family’s credit card are not comedy; they’re a bounty of bad behavior. And that’s not relative; it is absolute.

As I’ve written before, what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet. And one day the Koalans will be looking for jobs in competitive marketplaces where respect for diversity and clean criminal records will be deciding factors.

Or they can try making a living off George and Sammy.

Love,
K-B
(*With an appreciative nod to John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces)

The Koala Owners: George Lee Liddle III and Sammy Elhag

The Koala at San Marcos Staff: Jeff Allen, Garret Crispi, Shane K. Walsh, Jeff Weaver and…

Crossposted at:

OB Rag

Progressive Post

San Diego Gay and Lesbian News

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“My son was murdered.
He was murdered.
He was murdered.
He was murdered.
My son was murdered!”

– Wanda Johnson, mother of Oscar J. Grant III, shooting victim

I thought it was my Taser, not my gun
not my gun
not my gun
not my gun
I thought it was my Taser, not my gun!

– A confused rapid transit police officer

We’d have decided the same for a black officer
a black officer
a black officer
a black officer
We’d have decided the same for a black officer!

– A jury with no blacks

It was just a mistake, but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
It was just a mistake, but we’ll pay!

– A public agency facing a wrongful death suit

Oakland mayor asked the people for calm in the streets
calm in the streets
calm in the streets
calm in the streets
Oakland mayor asked the people for calm in the streets!

– A black man who knows the outrage of police behaving stupidly

“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”

– Oscar J. Grant III

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

This piece is crossposted at The Progressive Post.

An Evening With Bestselling Author T. Jefferson Parker

Thursday 11 February, 5:30 p.m.

Café des Artistes
103 S. Main Street, Fallbrook, CA

5:30 Doors open, supper menu available
6:00 to 7:30 T. Jefferson Parker reading, Q&A and book signing

In T. Jefferson Parker’s new novel, Iron River, detective Charlie Hood is running the California-Mexico border with the ATF, searching for the iron river — the massive and illegal flow of handguns and automatic weapons that fuels the bloody cartel wars south of the border. Gunrunners by nature aren’t exactly ethical, but the lengths they’ll go to, and the innocent lives they’ll risk, are shocking even to Hood. Most shocking of all is the close personal connection Hood finds wrapped up in events south of the border — a connection that shakes him to his core!

Parker immerses Hood in the very real, dangerous and lawless place along the U.S.-Mexican border, giving us a window into the current problems law enforcement from San Diego to Corpus Christi face everyday.

Join Parker and his Southern California fans for an evening of reading and discussion with the author. Iron River will be available for purchase and signing.

For more information, contact Kit-Bacon at kb@kbgressitt.com or 760-522-1064.

Our special thanks to Mysterious Galaxy Books for providing T. Jefferson Parker’s books for sale and signing at the reading — or order your copies in advance for delivery at the reading. Click here to order in advance and be sure to order only those books identified as ON OUR SHELVES NOW. You can reach Mysterious Galaxy at 858-268-4747.

At Fallbrook’s Writers Read

Bestselling author Jan Burke, describing her heritage: I’m half German and half Irish. As my cousin says, we want to rule the world so everyone can drink.

Ms. Burke, illustrating the joys of being able to revise a draft manuscript: If you’re piloting a jet plane, you don’t get a lousy first draft.

At Major Market

Checker, after scanning champagne, caviar, cheese and bread: Having a party?
Customer: Nope. Having a moment.

A week’s worth of Sheriff’s log for Fallbrook

20 Nov.

S. Mission Rd.   Comm’l burglary
Porter St.   Death/suicide
W. Clemmens Ln.   Stolen vehicle
Rainbow Glen Rd.   Grand theft
E. Alvarado St.   Fraud/ID theft

21 Nov.

Potter St.   Spousal abuse
Felicidad   Spousal abuse
De Luz/Murrieta Rd.   Grand theft
Ammunition Rd.   Vehicle burglary
S. Main Ave.   Shoplifting
Via Casitas   Death
E. Alvarado St.   Possession of marijuana
S. Main Ave.   Arrest/receiving stolen prop.

22 Nov.

W. Aviation Rd.   Trespassing, poss. drug paraphernalia
Retreat Ct.   Missing juvenile
Calle Caralene   Stolen vehicle
Alturas Rd.   Spousal abuse
S. Vine St.   Possession of stolen property
Cookie Ln.   Vehicle burglary
Willow Glen Rd.   Vehicle burglary

23 Nov.

El Caminito   Assault with attempt to rape
De Luz Rd.   Possession of marijuana
Reche Rd.   Curfew violation/juvenile
E. Alvarado St.   Petty theft
Gum Tree Ln.   Annoying phone calls
E. Fallbrook St.   Residential burglary
E. Fallbrook St.   Residential burglary
S. Wisconsin Ave.   Death
De Luz Rd.   Vandalism
De Luz Rd.   Possession of marijuana
Sweetgrass Ln.   Family disturbance
Pala Lake Dr.   Spousal abuse
Potter St.   Under influence drugs/alcohol
De Luz Rd.   Vehicle burglary
Alturas Rd.   Vehicle vandalism

24 Nov.

Lake Circle Dr.   Fraud/ID theft
Old River Rd.   Fraud, grand theft
Gird Rd.   Burglary in progress
N. Vine   Under influence drugs/alcohol
Ridge Pl.   Residential burglary
El Caminito   Residential burglary
S. Mission Rd.   Petty theft
E. Alvarado St.   Armed robbery, kidnapping

25 Nov.

Ammunition Rd.   Residential burglary
Ammunition Rd.   Residential burglary
Wrightwood Rd.   Recover stolen vehicle
Del Cielo Este   Violation of restraining order
N. Main Ave.   Under influence drugs/alcohol

26 Nov.

Felicidad Dr.   Weapons surrendered
Amigos Way   Grand theft
E. Alvarado St.   Petty theft
W. Mission Rd.   DUI, evading officer

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

He left through the side door of the court building and started across the street mid-block, leaning with years, awkward but sturdy, the sun igniting his silver hair. His blue overalls were hitched up at the waist with a workman’s belt, a trick of the shrinking elderly.

I slowed down, not annoyed by his jaywalking, but certainly noting it. Then his pace got the better of me and I enjoyed the moment it allowed to watch the sun find its way through the wind and the trees to drop blind spots on my windshield. The city isn’t so terrible when there are trees, and I imagined the old man, pruning his own.

He would trim them with care, cutting only the weak, the unnecessary. Strong arms shaping strong arms. And tending a small urban garden, perhaps. Tomatoes, certainly, some peppers, maybe snap beans. He’d bring his grandchildren to the plot to teach them the miracle of planting and nurturing food from the earth. For them, only the crisp sweetness of beans fresh from the vine, the warm joy of afternoon tomatoes, blood red as God meant them to be.

The old man stumbled, hesitated for a moment and hopped a step or two. I pulled up, not too close, and waited for him to finish crossing, hoping for his parking place. He was not, after all, so old, maybe a middle-aged man, Latino perhaps. The thick, purple-black hair of his ancestors remained with him still, shielding him from eons of heat and rain. Its sheen must have reflected the sun’s rays. That’s what I had seen, not the halo of a silver-haired old man.

And what had seemed the stoop of age, was, more likely, the twisted result of bending over to pick the produce of another man’s vines. Bending and reaching, bending and reaching, but never tasting the fruit. Maybe he left a family in his homeland, as eager for the spare words he scribbled to them each month as for the currency he sent, while he risked his dignity to a hostile nation. Cowering in a canyon at night, among his compadres, they would seek flickering warmth from their shared misery, feed one another on the constant desire for something better.

In the center of the road, he stopped and looked toward me, so I waved him on. He raised his hands slightly, oddly, gesturing something, I wasn’t sure what. I smiled and nodded to reassure him he was safe, I would not hit him, and I waved him on again.

He turned back to his destination as an animated branch blocked the sun from my windshield, and I saw his workman’s belt become straps and steel, and the chain forcing his slight stoop, thick enough to keep a bull in tow, shackled his limbs to the impenetrable leather at his waist. Then the sun meandered through some shifting leaves and found the man’s hands, only to be frightened off by the muzzle of the flat-black gun he clasped.

He stumbled again, and the chain snaring his legs clanged against the ground before him. He squinted at me once more over his shoulder.

Looking around the sun’s rays, I caught his eyes, dark and frightened. He was eighteen at most, and sad, fearfully sad — a lost soul loved only by a mother fettered to her child’s failure. A mother hoping to save her boy who was hopeless. She would kneel every night and pray to the Madre de Dios for his salvation, for him to know some peace, for him to escape his anguish. Then she would sob, not trusting God to give her weak one this miracle.

Did his mother know, deep in her heart, his only escape would be found the next day in the angry aim of a policeman’s gun, in the speckled shade of a backyard garden, his crimson fluid seeping into the earth, feeding the tidy rows of tomatoes and snap beans?

The boy ran a hobbled race the final yards, his prison blues marked with the sweat of his effort. A passenger door swung open, an engine revved. He looked back toward me one last time, and I waved him on again.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by Vicky Sedgewick via a Creative Commons license.)

A Story by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Through heavy brown air, the sun is hot enough to stew the tar, bubbling from a terminally neglected street. Mingled with impotent wafts of twice-smoked cigarettes and desiccated human excrement, the sizzling urban exhaust sticks in my throat, leaving me gasping for breath. So I pause, as usual, to yearn for the cool mist that hovers just above the waterfalls in the torn cigarette poster taped to the back of the cash register.

Here, each morning, the besotted buy their 99-proof and I, in my tidy little pumps and ambitious suit, buy my unbranded bottle of water. But the falls are only paper, and the stagnant stench of the city invariably jerks my violated senses back to rank reality and the daily rhythm.

“Hola, chica. Seventy-nine cents. ¿Hace calor, eh?”

“Si, Señor, really hot. Muchas gracias. Bye-bye.”

“De nada, Señorita. Hasta mañana.”

Still, the street offers an odd and occasional respite from the snot-green walls of the snake pit I call work, one of the many private hostelries crafted decades ago by Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial cost-cutting and civil rights for the tormented gone awry.

Inside, the howls of the chronically terrified and forgotten echo through the veins of sixty-seven clients, ages twenty-two to a shrunken unknown. Their shrieks bounce off the frames of denuded sofas and urine-sopped cushions littering the hallways. Their fears bind them to horrid things others cannot see. And their lucidity, resurrected with decreasing frequency, is inevitably felled by the ferocious thwacks life deals them.

Once a month, they are lined up for their hallucinations to bounce off the chill steel wall of the visiting Medi-Cal shrink. Their torments dribble into puddles of quivering pleas for help on the institutional-linoleum floor, while he preens over his designer prescription pad and coffee.

Today, the good doctor is too busy flirting with his new answering service operator to approve hospitalizing the suicidal Chinese empress for a medication adjustment. The teeth marks with which she has tattooed her arms are not enough to get his attention; neither are the razor blades we’ve indelicately manhandled from her. Not even my suggestion that he stick his Moroccan leather pad someplace scatological elicits anything more than a snickering invitation to join him for an adult beverage after work and help him perform that enticing activity.

So I take an angry hike for the great outdoors to vent my self-righteous rage.

With my tasteful pumps, I stomp over the bodies of addicts, stoned near to death by failed choices. I storm around the cardboard condominiums filled with humans as hungry and parasite-wracked as their dogs. I fling myself away from it all into a futile rant.

Halfway around the decomposing block I’m stopped by a sweaty, unwashed kid with a knife.

“Whaddaya got, lady?” he snarls, oblivious to my good intentions, my hopeful aspirations.

Confronted by this little shit blocking my path and threatening me with a sharp object, I wish for a split second that I have a gun.

Now, it isn’t as though I would propel society’s paranoia into the chest of a beloved security guard at a museum intent on just saying no to hate. It is nowhere near the realm of the playful five year old who crashes her own birthday party with the disregard of her grandfather’s unsecured .22. And it’s a far cry from the family whose domesticity is discharged with abusive daddy’s death by gunshot.

Nonetheless, if I had a gun, I would aim it right at the kid’s pubescent face, the pimple on his nose for a target. I would pump him full of seething rage at a system that rejects the humanity of the recipients of its stingy offerings. In the stormy flush of utter frustration, I’d splatter his youthful flesh across a cityscape that would simply add his shredded carrion to its endless pit of stinking detritus. I would blow away that scrawny sack of symptoms of poverty, inequity and corruption. Yes, I would do to him what the psycho Med-Cal prick does to my clients.

If I had a gun.

But I don’t.

And I am too busy picking at my fiery ire to respond to the boy’s unseemly overture with appropriate fear. Instead, I hiss at him through gnashing teeth to get the hell out of my way or I’ll hurt him — fuck him up, in fact.

“OK, lady, OK, lady,” he backs away, pocketing his weapon.

I watch him retreat.

Distracted by a neglected adolescent with a rusty, broken steak knife, I head back toward the mayhem of a system that has abandoned its victims to hell, and I wonder, “Hmm, who in her right mind would wear pumps on this street?”

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by John Anderson via a Creative Commons License.)