"Villain"

I watched Dr. Phil yesterday.  I’m not recommending it.  My mind rebels when I see how some people treat each other.  Yesterday he talked to people who say Bill Cosby drugged and raped them.  I don't want to believe it, but I think it's true.  The man who made me laugh as a child is a sociopath.  He got away with criminal behavior for decades.

Tom went out with my friend in college.  He asked me out after they quit dating.  I asked if she minded.  She said, "Uh, well..."  "I don't need to go out with him.  I'll just say 'no'."  "It's okay."  "No, really..."  "It's fine.  Go out with him."

So I went out, but I told him I had a lot of homework and needed to be home by 10:00.  He was handsome and charming.  He had lots of money and spent close to $300 on dinner.  Considering this was back in the 80s, that really was a lot of money.

I enjoyed the evening.  Let's do it again -- but he pulled up to his house instead of mine.  Touch, grab, slap, "Take me home!"  "Do you realize how much I spent on you tonight?!"  "I'm not a prostitute!"  Wrestling match, aided on my side by his seat belt.  I escaped and slammed the car door -- as luck would have it, on his hand.  The door mechanism went around the bone in the back of his hand and effectively immobilized him.

Through his open sunroof I could hear him yelling, screaming, and threatening for a few blocks as I raged through the worst section of town in 4" heels and my best dress.  A group of very rough men stood outside a bar and watched me storm past.  An older man stifled a smirk and I almost smiled in return.  Ah, sometimes I miss my younger self.

I told my friend about my misadventure and she said, "Yeah, he did that to me too."  What??!!!  "How could you let me go out with him?"  "We--elll, I didn't think he'd do it to you too."  Thanks one hell of a lot.

Tom was at a party a couple months later with an industrial-looking sling.  Mutual friends told me he'd had to have surgery on his hand.  No regrets on my end.  He confronted me and I said if he didn't vamoose I'd tell everyone exactly how his hand got damaged.  Maybe someone would like to damage your left hand too?  I spoke loudly enough to kill his social life.  I'm not absolutely sure, but I heard he got beat up that night.

Tom was handsome, smart, charming, and wealthy.  Why did he think he could buy me, and failing that, rape me?  I'm thankful I got away.  I wish Bill Cosby's victims had gotten away too.  Sadly, I believe them.  There are villains in the world.  Sometimes the villains are handsome, charming, wealthy, and famous.  I wish the victims had felt safe enough to speak up sooner so there would be fewer women hurt.

Salamanders aren't villains.  They won't hurt anyone.  This one's for Sue who had a spotted salamander in a terrarium on the dresser when we were kids :)

"Smooth"

“Smooth” makes me think about cheeks: an old woman’s paper thin skin, a man after shaving, a baby’s softness.  I keep trying to think of other stuff, but I keep thinking about skin and touching, maybe because I don’t do enough of it.

My uncle has joked many times about my touchiness as a child.  He says if he sat down and made a lap, I was on it.  True, and I liked stroking his crew cut and holding his hand while sitting on his lap too.

I’ve told my dog that she fails me because she won’t cuddle.  She looks at me and thumps her tail while I’m talking and then goes back to protecting me from squirrels.  While I’m happy to be squirrel-free, I’d also like a dog that cuddles.

There are touchers and non-touchers in the world.  There are mates that sleep in the same bed, and mates that would rather sleep in different houses.  The separate bedroom people often say their mate snores, but I’ve also heard them admit they don’t want to touch, or even that they can’t stand someone else breathing their air.  I’m not quite sure how these people procreate.

My family isn’t very physically demonstrative, but when we went to Grandma’s house we lined up at the door when we came in and gave both Grandma and Grandpa a kiss on the cheek.  One day I decided that I was too old for this kind of thing and Grandma let it pass.  It’s one of my regrets.  I should’ve kept kissing her as long as she offered her cheek, but she let me think myself more grown and I didn’t kiss her again.  Sometimes the price of autonomy is too high.

We need to be touched.  Wolves rubbing noses and monkeys grooming each other aren’t that different from people.  Touch is part of our socialization.  Our skin needs it as much as our minds and souls.  Or maybe it’s empathetic people that need touch?

My early training means that I often sit with my hands in my lap like a “proper” female.  My Italian friend loosened me up enough that I sometimes use a hand to express a point, but I very rarely reach across the invisible personal borders to touch a friend’s arm while empathizing with them.  It’s so wrong, and it’s wrong that I fight my startle response when someone does it to me. 

Part of it can also be that not all touch is good.  I got swatted in school for laughing in the library.  Mr. Delzoppo made me bend in front of the corner of his desk and I pointed out that he was going to crack my head open.  He hit me with everything he had, and I pointed out that the only reason my head wasn’t bleeding is because I caught the desk in my hands before that could happen.  More swats with a heavy stick for insubordination.  Jerk.  Can’t really see how corporal punishment altered my behavior in any positive way so I’m against it.

I abused my computer this week.  I also had problems with 2 printers at work, broke the camera, and spilled a box of macaroni on the floor... so I'm going with old art.  Touching a salamander seems smooth.  They have very delicate skin.  I’m just not safe to exist in the world this week so for all this talk of touching, I think I’ll stay curl up with my non-cuddly dog an old-fashioned book this weekend.

"Beneath"

When I was a teenager, I got a job as a lifeguard at a summer camp. When the counselors learned I liked art, my duties got expanded to teaching crafts to the "slow" kids. I guess it's all how you look at things, but I didn't think the kids were all that slow, but that was before half the kids were diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin. Maybe they weren't the best at school, but part of the problem was they really didn't like sitting still very long. They'd slap their projects together quickly, then look for trouble until I thought about the salamanders. After all, we were doing crafts at a picnic table in the woods.

I showed them how to look beneath rocks and rotten logs and sort through the leaves to find the squiggly little things, and taught them to hold the salamanders gently because they have delicate skin. The kids happily looked for bugs and grubs to feed them while the kids who liked doing crafts finished their projects. My class became their favorite, and the counselors ended up giving them to me through most of the summer. They were sweethearts.

There was more to the job because we were also trying to get "retarded" adults out of an institution and into group homes by teaching them basic skills. I was to teach them water safety. That's a story in itself because they really didn't get the concept. Also, about half of them weighed about half a ton each, and if they decided to walk on the bottom of the pool in the deep end, I was the one who had to get them out. But even with the scares they gave me, the adults were sweethearts too. I racked up a lot of love that summer!

The picture is wax pencil on coquille board. And yes, I know the terms I used aren't PC any more. I wrote this in context of the times and say "developmentally delayed" now.