Conversing with Readers About Bestialistic Behaviors and Child Sexual Abuse

In response to a previous post, Anne said the following by e-mail (reprinted with her permission) and my response is below:

Great post, Francis. Once again, there's so much to think
about. Im happy for you that you can talk to your wife about what bothers
you, and also have some supportive friends. I suspect it means more to
your wife than you realize, that you are able to confide in her, and
she is able to get to know the inner you. Your story sounds like the
loss (or at least partial loss) of childhood innocence - not the making
love part, but how you were made to feel about it afterward.

As a parent, I can understand your childhood friends mother wanting to keep them away
from sexual activity at that age, but its a shame that she handled the
situation so badly. It reminds me of when I was 7 or 8 years old and liked
a little boy in my class. Turns out he didnt feel the same way. I
handed him a love note, expecting him to respond in a positive way.
Instead, he took it directly to a teacher (a nun, since it was a catholic
school). I felt betrayed by the boy. The nun called my parents in for a
conference and she proceeded to tell me how much she disapproved of my
note.

I was so embarrassed and humiliated. I dont think adults often
realize it, or maybe they dont care, but that sort of shame is a rude
awakening that can break something inside a child. We dont understand until
much later, if we ever do, that those parents/teachers reactions were
over-the-top and uncalled-for.

We take to heart their every word and action. They lead us to believe, or maybe it is in
our young human nature to believe, that adults are nearly
omnipotent/omniscient; therefore, if they say we are horrible human beings, or we
deserve outrageous treatment, they must be right. Its very difficult to
undo that sort of mental programming.

One question, if you dont mind my asking: what exactly did you mean by hidden consort with the family dogs and cats?

Anne

* * * * * * *

In response to Anne, I said,

Dear Anne:

I used to rub myself against the dogs and cats to
ejaculate, when I was a teenager.  You might say that I had become
dehumanized, almost utterly out of touch with mywith my every intimate and
sexual expression hidden, disgraceful and shameful. Once I had learned
that it wasn't safe to consort with, girls and it wasn't safe to
consort with boys, the family pets were my best friends and my only
consolation.

Anne responded, asking,

Hi, Francis. I'm starting to wonder how you're feeling, opening up in a way
that seems intense, at least from here. I want to be sure that you're
o.k. and not putting yourself through too much stress all at once.

About the pets, I was concerned that you might have unintentionally hurt them,
but it doesnt seem that what you described would hurt an animal. It sounds more like YOU
were hurting emotionally.

Often when we are hurting, we do things we think will ease the pain,
but it ends up making us feel worse in the long run. I know there are
several reasons a persons sexuality can become
unhealthy, including abuse and needing love/confusing sex with love. The
thing that surprises me is how young you were when you started wanting
sex. I had no real concept of what sex was until my teens. It sounds like
maybe you were touched inappropriately by someone when you were very
young? (Some estimates say that about 1 in 7 men were.) 

Anne was very perceptive with this comment, which prompted more self-revelation on my part.


I said,


Dear Anne:

You're right on the money about being touched and stimulated inappropriately when I was young, so I'd like to this there and then comment upon it prominently.
I've been feeling a lighter mood the last couple of days,

almost euphoric about having unburdened myself publicly. I've always
wanted to publish an unvarnished autobiography, with Manchild in the
Promised Land (reviewed here) as my model. And that's what I'm doing here, one topic and
incident at a time.

Francis

On Sexual Differentiation

It is a very confusing time for me, as most of life has been. But, I'm talking about the confusion openly and finding that many people who read my blog have experienced similar things and found relative peace with them.

I know I'm strongly attracted to women, because I'm terribly bad at pretending to like things that I don't. And I really, really like women. But I feel a lot of desire for intimacy with men, as well. I don't know if it's principally a physical desire, although I have a lot of curiosity and sometimes feel physical desire, particularly when I am in a strong emotionally intimate relationship with a young man. Deep friendship and intimacy often turns me on, whether it's with a woman or a man.

When I was seven, I learned to long.

I have begun taking my wife further into my confidences than ever before, in quite conversations under the covers in in bed, in the early morning and late at night. I have confided my attraction to a male friend, my childhood desire for intimacy with my childhood peers, which remained unsatisfied . . . my mortal inhibition that I experience even into the present.

I have explained to her precisely how, in my childhood, I became literally frightfully inhibited with both boys and girls, unable to express myself with either and engaging in hidden consort with the family's dogs and cats. My shame was immense. My every avenue for natural expression seemed blocked, as by tanks position in the streets to stop the advance of a nascent demonstration.

When I was in second grade, my best two friends were Adam and Holly, who were brother and sister. A year before, the Black Panther Party had left a Volkswagen van in our driveway, and Adam, Holly and we "traveled" cross-country in the the Volkswagen van. Holly was "mother"; I, the "father"; and Adam was our child. When not driving somewhere, Holly and I kissed, embraced and fondled lovingly. When our "child" misbehaved, I "put him over me knee" and lovingly patted his bottom. These were the best moments of playing house. We played house on weekdays after school and on Saturdays and Sundays as well.

When we "arrived home", Holly and I went into the garage in my yard, took off each others clothes and made love, as much as a seven year old is physically able to make love. In these ways, felt my first erections. We lived an idyllic life in our Volkswagen van and in my garage, but our felicity didn't last long.

Adam and Holly's house and mine had adjoining backyards, so my driveway was visible from their back door. One sunny spring afternoon, on a Friday after school, when Adam, Holly and I had just arrived from a trip in the Volkswagen van, had made love in the garage and were coming out, adjusting our clothes, Cindy (Holly's older and disciplinarian sister) saw us emerge from the garage in a state of "just afterness." She screamed to Adam and Holly to "come home right now" and then I did not see them again for the rest of the weekend.

I strongly suspected what had happened next. Adam and Holly's mother, a strict corporal disciplinarian, had beaten them both - on their bare bottoms - and strictly told them never, ever, to go over to that garage again, never to engage in that behavior, and to have nothing to do with that boy next door.

Just as I suspected, when I saw Adam and Holly after school the following Monday, and invited them to play house as we always had, Adam whispered to me that his mother had forbidden them to, and that was, effectively, the end of my intimacy with Adam and Holly. I was seven and Holly was a year or so younger than I, but in the eyes of my friend's parents (and perhaps even Adam and Holly), I had become a dirty, dangerous pedophile. Holly, Adam and I were obliged to forget what had existed between us, and never to attempt to reconstruct it. We couldn't even talk to one another.

I noticed during that period that all love on the television soap operas "One Life to Live" and "All My Children" was unrequited, unconsummated, longing love, and not the kind of love that Adam and Holly and I shared in the garage. Soap operas, and perhaps life itself, I though, were about longing for love and being too inhibited, afraid, or troubled to realize one's desires. I certainly was learning to live as if in one of those soap operas.

As I told my wife, this morning, I subsequently felt too afraid to be with girls, and too afraid to express erotic passion for boys. So, I began to stay in the house and avoid all interaction with children entirely. All of life was longing, until I forgot that I was longing at all.

Today, my wife accepts my increasing self-awareness and my confidences with surprising equanimity. She's a deeply understanding woman who loves me, even as she and I discover much more deeply whom I really am. The more I learn about my wife, the more it confirms the good sense I had to marry her in the first place.

I Love My Dog, You Know?

I love my dog. Among the worst time of day for me is that moment when I get into bed and my head is about to hit the pillow. That is when I know I will have time to contemplate all of the things that went wrong during the day, during my life, and meditate upon . . . suicide. How to commit suicide.

It is at these times, particularly Lana is an indispensable friend to me. I call her, 'Dog!, and she lays down beside the head of my bed, licking my ear first. , I tussle her hair, playing with her feet, sometimes prying her mouth open and pulling on her tongue, and in this way I fall asleep without thinking first about how dire my condition is.

"Lay My Burden Down,"

A few days ago, while researching and writing a blog post on suicide, I came across a book called "Lay My Burden Down," by Amy Alexander and Harvard's Dr. Alvin Pouissant, available for four dollars at Amazon.com. In this book, Alexander, who lost a brother to suicide, teams up with Alvin Pouissant to explore the phenomenon of suicide among Blacks. Although the book says that Black suicide has doubled, it has probably increased many times more than that if you include cases of intentionally destroying oneself with drugs and, equally important, Black on Black suicide that Field Negro decries constantly in "Killadelphia".

Anyway, I hope this book will be a personal account of a struggle with the suicide of another and a very personal attempt to assimilate information in order to make sense of that family member's suicide.

A Pile of Mattresses

As I awaken to let the cat in, I am disoriented. I feel like I'm shopping I just know that I have left one of my bags behind, because my hand is suddenly empty. There is something missing. Ah, yes, I was tormented with thoughts as I went to sleep, wishing I was dead and fantasizing about ways to kill myself. Once having remembered what was missing, it all comes flooding back to me.

I dreamed that I was with my second wife, and my late brother Dannie, moving once again from one apartment to another. When we moved to this apartment it was full of other people's old stuff, piled high with hold mattresses and other detritus that we have to remove. Now, the apartment was piled high with our crap and we would have to move it to another apartment.

Suddenly, it was my mother's house, the house we grew up in, and it was on fire. The fire department arrived, put a ladder heavily against the outside wall of the kitchen, where the two windows were, causing a cup to fall off a shelf onto the floor. A white woman exclaimed, "The house is on fire! It's burning from the inside!" So, everyone ran out the front door and into the street, with my niece afraid to get "decompression." I told her hurriedly that no one gets "decompression" from going outside.

Then we were back to moving again, out of an apartment owned by a white man. We were pushing a queen size mattress down the street, along the curb, when a parked car forced us out into a lane of oncoming traffic. Back to the curb, I ran back to the apartment for some reason, maybe to get some help, leaving my wife to watch the mattress. When I came back, she had found her own solution. Some white men in a pick-up truck would drag the mattress along the street until the got it where it was going.

I was furious and angry at my then wife as I saw our mattress being destroyed, ripped apart by this brutal process, but she was proud of herself for arranging a mode of transportation. Once at our new apartment, as I began to reprove her, she cut me off and began to explain the overall benefits of being in this new apartment: It would be considerably less expensive . . .

* * * * * *

Now, we were in still another apartment and we were being pursued. Someone gave me the key and I hurriedly shut and locked the door. Someone very dangerous was after us and they were coming! I was in the middle of a war between hostile forces, the police and someone else. They adviced me to duck and stay in my car, so I did, then hiding from bullets above under a piece of plywood below. We were surrounded by "terrorists" in various stages of apprehension.

I went after an old white man with a big head. He was laying down and I punched him and battered him in the head over and over again, trying to kill him. But, he wouldn't die.

The Trouble With Being Homoerotically Troubled

When I confided to a Brazilian friend who is gay that I had always had attractions to and sexual feelings about males as well as females, he suggested that I read a book called "The Third Pillow", (O Terceiro Travesseiro) by Nelson Luiz de Carvalho. The Third Pillow is a book about the tremendous stigma and discrimination associated with being a teen and becoming aware that you are a homosexual. Without recounting too much of the plot, two teen boys who are dating decide to tell their parents about their relationship and their sexual orientation. One boy's father punches him in the mouth seems angry enough to kill him, while the other teen's father stabs him in the belly with a knife. That's just the beginning of their journey.

No wonder, then, that an article in Psychiatric Times says,

In the developmental histories of gay men and women, periods of difficulty in acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others, are often reported. Children who grow up to be gay rarely receive family support in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. On the contrary, beginning in childhood--and distinguishing them from racial and ethnic minorities--gay people are often subjected to the antihomosexual attitudes of their own families and communities (Drescher et al., 2004). Antihomosexual attitudes include homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay violence (Herek and Berrill, 1992). Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into young adulthood, middle age and even senescence, leading many gay people to conceal important aspects of themselves.

Closeted individuals frequently cannot acknowledge to themselves, let alone to others, their homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies. Their homosexuality is so unacceptable that it must be kept out of conscious awareness and cannot be integrated into their public persona. Consequently, these feelings must be dissociated from the self and hidden from others. Psychiatric Times

Well, that's me right there. After experiences in childhood that made it clear that homosexuality was socially unacceptable and severely socially sanctioned, I decided to simply put out of my mind the idea ever of acting on homosexual feelings, even though the feelings themselves didn't diminish. I certainly have never integrated the awareness of these feelings into my public persona, even though I know a lot of people who have done so.

If and when same-sex feelings and attractions can no longer be kept out of consciousness, the individual becomes homosexually self-aware. Individuals to whom this happens can acknowledge some aspect of their homosexuality to themselves. While homosexually self-aware people might consider accepting and integrating these feelings into their public persona, acceptance is not a pre-determined outcome. For example, a religious, homosexually self-aware man may choose a celibate life to avoid what, for him, would be the problematic integration of his religious and sexual identities.

Individuals who are either consciously prepared to act on their homoerotic feelings or to reveal a homosexual identity to others usually define themselves as gay or lesbian. To be gay, in contrast to being homosexually self-aware, is to claim a normative identity. In other words, defining oneself as gay usually requires some measure of self-acceptance. A gay person may choose to come out to family or intimate acquaintances. Others may come out to people they have met in the gay community while keeping their gay identity separate from the rest of their lives. Psychiatric Times

According to the above, I would be "homosexually aware." Actually I think I'm homoerotically aware as well as hetero-erotically aware. I acknowledge my feelings to myself, but I have not, at all, integrated the homo-erotic feelings with my public persona. I only told my own wife about them a couple of days ago.

Does the fact that I love making love to my wife and would not willingly trade women for men prevent me from being a homosexual? I certainly hope so, because I wouldn't willingly trade women for men.

Would I have had more homosexual experiences if there was no one to tell me not to? I certainly believe that I would have. This is what psychiatric professionals call "fucking well confused".

It can be painful to keep significant aspects of the self hidden or to vigilantly separate aspects of the self from each other. Constant hiding creates difficulties in accurately assessing other people's perceptions of oneself, as well as recognizing one's own strengths. Dissociation's impact on self-esteem can also make it difficult to feel one's actual accomplishments as reflections of one's own abilities. Transparency, invisibility, losing one's voice, and being stuck behind walls or other barriers are some of the terms used to describe the subjective experience of dissociative detachment (Drescher, 1998) Psychiatric Times

Maybe this is why I so often feel like killing myself? Probably not, but I've tried a lot of other things to rid myself of the constantly recurring depressions, and publicly acknowledging homoerotic feelings is just another of literally hundreds of efforts at greater "self-integration."

Over the last couple of days, I have acknowledged publicly for the first time that I have homo-erotic feelings and thoughts sometimes. My brother would be scandalized, mortified, shocked and disgraced. Oh, well. I've spent my whole life caught between what I feel and my brother's onetime reactions (now over thirty years old) to what I feel.

Should "Private Thoughts" Be Kept Private?

Should I be saying the things that I do at this blog? Can I, will I, someday be prosecuted or persecuted for spilling my once-private and often-reprehensible thoughts into the public arena? What about my confessions?

Are there some things that should only be spoken about in a psychiatrist's office, or never spoken about at all? Why, exactly, shouldn't those things be talked about in public? Because it will embarrass me? Because it will make others feel angry or queasy or disgusted?

Is there anyone who can be helped by discussion suicidal ideation in public? Is there anyone who can be helped by discussing teenage sexual orientation confusion in public. Is there anyone who can be helped by discussing incestuous ideation in public, rather than keeping it quiet?

I've made, perhaps, a fateful decision, and I've caucused it with my wife: I'm going to talk about all of these things and more at my blog, because I can. As many of you know, I often think about suicide. If my time ever comes, I don't want people to wonder why. Why should they, when blogs are free and when I have fingers to type and time on my hands?

I want and need to write autobiographically. Either I will write honestly and fully about the conflicts of which I am aware, or I will write sugar-coated crap - or die without communicating at all.

Should people who have mental illnesses blog? Should they blog about what they think? What is what they think deals in issues the mere mention of which is socially unacceptable? For example, should a wife-beater write a public journal about his efforts to reform, or should he keep those efforts private, where other wife beaters can't see them?

Should a person who is suicidal write a blog? Or should he keep these "private thoughts" private, even knowing that some people WILL commit suicide and all record of what they thought will be lost - to their families and to society?

At worst, blogging is a social experiment and this blog is on the repugnant fringe of that social experiment. If so, it's a written record of the repugnant fringe.

You Can Disciplne Children Without Punching and Kicking Them.

Today, I read a post at the Minorities Interests Blog that comes down in favor of corporal discipline, offering a variety of arguments, the least convincing to me of which is the list of citations in the Bible that favor "the rod." (Nowhere does anyone advocate punching and kicking children, but too many people do it anyway.)

But corporal punishment is not an option for me, because I am a step-father (of two adolescent girls). Although their mother yells at them and even shrieks at them when she feels angry and loses patience, if I do them same she tells me that my voice is terribly scary and she doesn't want me to do it anymore.

Although my wife slaps the children when she thinks they have been particularly disobedient or disrespectful (which stimulates me sexually for some crooked reason, even when I only hear it and don't see it occur), yet my wife could never bear to see me physically inflict pain on one of her girls, even though she does a few times a weak. I'm not their father and I have no right, even though I pay the bills and provide the instruction during the 84 hours a week that my wife is at work.

To avoid becoming a doormat in my own home, I have learned some tools of discipline that are clearly within my authority (I say so at least) and that are just as effective as slapping, or more so. Here's a list of alternatives that don't involve corporal punishment but may have even more power to change children's behavior:

- Turn off the television. When my children are watching television and ignore what I'm saying, I immediately turn off the television. I ignore their shrieks that I have turned off the television (of course I have) and I proceed to tell them what my grievance with them is. If we are able to resolve the grievance to my reasonable satisfaction, then I turn the television back on. If not, then it stays off for the rest of the day or for a week, depending upon the severity of the misbehavior and the importance of my grievance.

Fact is, I'm much more interested in changing their future behavior than in punishing them for what they have done in the past. But, punishing present misbehavior is often crucial to establishing limits for future behavior.

For example, although my children would like to disrespect me, they nonetheless want all of my attention for themselves and so they once treated my friends like shit, trying to convince them not to visit me at all. I cannot live without friends, so I cannot permit my children to drive all of my friends away. When they disrespect my friends, I turn off the television for a day and for so long as it takes for them to apologize to the friends whom they have disrespected. When they apologize and when I believe that the apology truly reflects a willingness to change their behavior, then I turn the television back on again.

When I first employed this manner of discipline, they disobedient children turned the television back on themselves, to test me, to test my patience and to see what I would do. So, I cut off the electrical cord to the television and installed an extension cord to which only I have access, and which must be installed in a particular way that only I know how to do.

Once, my youngest daughter tried to install the cord herself and shorted out the cable box. Fine, they spent two weeks without television, during which they were able to reflect upon the importance of making peace with their step-father, through mutual respect, negotiation and accomodation.

The advantage of this punishment is that it saves electricity and obliges the children to do something more useful and less destructive than watching television. (Virtually everything that children can do in our house is more useful and less destructive than watching television.)

Television makes kids fight more and that makes the house unpleasant for adults. When children have a television, they inevitably fight to see who will watch what television show. Since their attention is strictly on the television, they even scream at each other for trying to talk while the television is on. The television has become the master of the home.

When I turn off the television, the children unite in anger and frustration with me, but they suddenly discover that each other's company is their only entertainment. So, they fight less and value each other more. Turn off the television when your children misbehave. It has a world of benefits for you and for them.

- Turn off the lights. Children are typically afraid of the dark. Even if they are not afraid of the dark, they don't want to spend all night in a dark house that has no sounds except the sound of their own breathing, and no activities that cannot be done in near-total darkness.

My children insist on sleeping with the lights on every night, in spite of the added cost (to me) in electricity. I willingly pay this added cost when they respect me and are reasonably obedient. But if they defy me and treat me as though it my obligation to provide them electricity regardless of their behavior, then they re-discover that I have choices, too.

If they don't at least respect my role as the financial provider in the house - the one whose name is on the electricity bill - than I am under no obligation to provide electricity for their night-light. In fact, if they really disobey me, I'll turn off every light in the house until they learn to respect my role in their life. You might say that I leverage my role as the provider of electricity to bootstrap myself up into a role as the provider of discipline.

This works. If I turn off the lights, then first they shriek in fear and indignation, they cry, and then they slowly begin to wonder what it's going to take to make me turn the lights back on again. When I first implemented this discipline, it took a week for this process to occur and for the negotiations to reach fruition. But now that they know that they really do depend upon me for that night-light, the bounds of their misbehavior and insolence have shrunken considerably. Dramatically.

Again, this punishment has the advantage that, without television, the children go to bed earlier and their noise and arguments stop sooner. The house becomes quieter and the electrical bill is less. They rely upon each other for emotional support in the darkness and so they appreciate each other more, which diminishes their arguments.

If you implement this strategy, don't allow any candles. It would be a terrible irony if your attempt to punish your children causes them to accidentally burn your house down. And, if that happens, they will laugh at you and say it was all your fault. If you turn off the electricity, then hide the candles beforehand, as well.

- Don't be afraid to be hated. Children hate anyone (at least sometimes and for a while) who doesn't let them do as they please, for example watching television all night, eating only ice cream for dinner and going into the deep water at the beach before they learn to swim. Unless parents are willing to be disliked by their children, at least sometimes, then the children will lack discipline and maybe even end up killing themselves, because they don't believe you when you tell them of even physical dangers in their surroundings, like the danger of leaving a lit candle on their pillows.

It is much better to have children's respect than to have their approval. If you have their respect, then even when they hate you, you can live in peace and go on with your life. But if you don't have their respect, then you will NEVER live in peace, even in your own home. They will taunt you because is is fun, and they will taunt you to discover the limits of your patience. Only when you earn your children's respect through firm limits and discipline can begin to live in peace with them and with yourself. That's my experience, anyway.

- Turn off the television, not the computer. Each of my children has a computer to use. No matter how angry I am at the children, I don't turn off their computers, as long as they are using the computer safely. The computer is the school where they learn typing, HTML coding, PhotoShop, Voice-Over-Internet (VoIp) communication and many other skills that are essential to their success in school and in future vocations. So, no matter how angry I am at them, turning off their computers for a day or a week is a counter-productive exercise, worse than keeping them home from school.

Trying to limit what children do on computers (like limiting the programs they use) is unlikely to be successful, because children know more about computers than adults do. The best we can hope for is to offer them advice about how to use computers safely and hope they follow our advice, just as we do when we dress them and send them off to school.

The best way to keep your children from using violent video games on the computer is simply not to buy those games in the first place, and to forbid your children to install the games themselves. If you hear them saying, "I shot him with a M22" or "I killed him with a knife", there's a good chance that there are some violent video games that need to be un-installed from their computers. Demand it, as the price of the electricity they use.

If they are playing these games at a video parlor, then they obviously have too much money. Instead of giving this money to them, put it in the bank for their college educations.

- Let your wife address some issues. Because I'm a step-father, there are some times when my daughters are much more likely to willingly respect my wife's wishes and judgments than my own. Quietly asking my wife to intervene while remaining silent myself often resolves conflicts before they occur and denies my step-children an opportunity to argue with me, letting my wife demand a measure of respect for me that the children might deem unnecessary and outrageous if I demanded it by myself. Of course, this only works in cases where my wife agrees with me about what I'm requesting.

- Buy pizza. It's important to have positive reinforcements for good behavior as well as negative reinforcements for bad ones. In fact, in healthy home, positive reinforcements like hugs and encouragement, compliments and time taken to model positive behavior should all outnumber punishments by an order of twenty or thirty to one, once boundaries have been established.

If your children do what you want them to do, then give them permission to order a pizza and pay for the pizza when it arrives. If they don't do as you ask, then when they ask if they can order a pizza you can save money by reminding them of the misbehavior that made ordering pizza impossible. If you order pizza for your children all of the time, regardless of what they do, then you become a patsy and a slave.

We mustn't punch, kick or otherwise abuse our children, no matter what color they are. I obviously believe that we can, indeed, discipline children (all children) without punching and kicking them. In fact, we must, because if we can't live without physical fights then we shouldn't be living in the same home with those children in the first place. And if we as parents can't see that then the child welfare authorities certainly will. If it gets to the point of physical battles then send them to live with an aunt (like we did with my wife's oldest boy), or enroll them in college early.

Although Black children and others are alike in terms discipline, the risks of lack of discipline in Black children are greater because our society is so anxious to put them in jail for any infraction or for no infraction at all, and because Black children and adults typically have to work much harder in order to have a even a hope of achieving what others may receive as their grandfathered birthright.

Precisely because corporal discipline is not an option for me as a step-father, I have learned that there are other kinds of discipline that are more effective at changing disobedient, insolent or dangerous behavior into a home with cooperation, bargaining, and mutual respect.

Is Suicidality My Private Penance?

Must I constantly feel suicidal as a private penance, a perpetual atonement for all the bad that I think, all the bad that I am, and all of the bad that I do? What kind of person could bear to be me and not even want to kill himself to spare the world of such evil?

'I am terrible! But don't hate me. I know I deserve to die. I would kill myself today, if I only had a two guns and two bullets, to shoot myself through the left temple and the right at once.

Each of my successive suicide plans, even unimplemented, is like a bead prayed on the Rosary, atoning through the grace of death beseeched for my perpetual sin.'

Many times I have forgiven myself in the night, commuting my own suicide sentence, only to awaken in the morning, once again on death row. I'm tired. Can anyone blame me if I sleep and don't wake up?

Each day I will swim toward the horizon on the waves of eternity, offering my life to God - that FUCKER - and and feeling both grateful and resentful when I make it back to shore.

Take me if you want, but stop torturing me, you FUCKER! You dirty Holy FUCKER!

Chaos and Despair

Exhaustion eventually comes, offering respite from wakefulness, in the terminals of chaos and despair.

I forgot them in the day, but they caught me in the night!

Winter is here.

Perhaps because it is Christmas, I dream of every member of my family - the ones I would like to see again and the ones whom I would just as soon forget entirely. In my dreams, they come back to me and we re-fight the same battles from which was born my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Winter is here. The snow is deeper with each passing hour, and twice as deep for those of us with half as much shelter. I have seen this snow before, confronting it with wings and not pelts.

Tradewinds are fickle as the human constitution. What goes up does come down . . . somewhere.

Death is Just a Thing

Regardless of how I spend my time, there is danger. I think often recently of the danger of cross the street, swimming at the beach . . . even repairing electrical wires. I might not do anything at all if I let the concern with death hold me back.

When I am swimming in waters that are thirty meters deep, in waves that I have to overcome by heaving myself into the above the water to get each breath of air, I have to remind myself that death is just a thing. It comes to all of us sooner or later, and when it does it resolves all of our earthly concerns at once. So eager are we to resolve even one problem each day that we should be grateful to know that there is one even that can resolve all of our problems at once, conclusively.

When I swim in the deep waters, thinking that even one bit of water in my nose could begin a fatal death spiral of waterborn asphyxiation, I am becalmed to remember that death is just a thing. It's just a thing. Death is just a thing.

I Hate Myself When I Remember

I hate myself when I remember . . . virtually everything. When I think about the utter failures of my life. And when I am reminded of the events that constituted incredible victories, I can only remember incidental failures that make me remember . . . that I hate myself. I hate myself no matter what I do.

Sometimes I think that my mind is a terrible mechanism of torture. It is a jailer who beats me brutally when I have been bad and when I have been good. And so it is miraculous that I continue to try at all.

The Black One Was Prettier

I dreamt that I met two young women on the street of my hometown, in front of the jail, one Black and one white. The Black one prettier. I wanted her.

So, I asked for their phone number, which I assumed was one. They were on bicycles and I on foot. The Black one rode on the sidewalk and I steered for her, which was effectively an opportunity to feel and massage her leg. (I guess I'm not very gay in my dreams.)

I could hardly hear and clearly write their phone number, but I managed. I remembered I couldn't meet them immediately because my best friend of old (now severed cold) was waiting for me. So, we parted, but I still hoped to sex with the Black one.

For some reason neither of them could take very well.

My Broken Glasses

I dreamt that I found both my prescription swimming goggles and my eye glasses, which for some reason were attached one behind the other. How wonderful it was to find my lost beach goggles, and how terrible it was to find that one of the earpieces of my primary glasses was broken beyond repair. I found them in a box of hardware at my (ten-years-deceased) mothers house.

The Holey Bubble

I dreamt that I was at my mother's house (the one who died ten years ago, this season) when I saw some children playing with a beach ball. A dirty, black beach ball. I noticed that the beach ball had three holes, but air was only escaping from one of them. What a mystery!

When my brother and I emerged the beach ball in a tub of water we saw that actually it had more than forty holes from which air was rapidly escaping, and this holey black beach ball was no good at all.

"How Do I Know I'm Not Really Gay?"

I have a new theory: people always kill themselves because something is bothering them. That might not sound novel, but it is. When people are depressed they have thoughts that are painful. The thought, "I wish I were dead" is painful, particularly when it occurs over and over again.

One of the most fundamental [disturbing, intrusive thoughts] is a type in which an obsessive individual begins to have doubts about his or her own sexual identity. This is not the same as the ordinary doubts people sometimes have about themselves and eventually answer in their own minds. With obsessions, questions are constantly repeated in a sufferer's mind, and they refuse to quit. Those with obsessions recognize that these doubtful thoughts are not their own, and try to resist them. "Could I be gay?" is a common question they ask themselves . . "How Do I Know I'm Not Really Gay?"

The things that trouble me.

I hope that if I just write about the things that trouble me, then everyone who reads them will be equally troubled.

Sick Thoughts on Pedophilia

Every time I see my step-daughter, my breath stops. And then I become aware that I'm not breathing, and I consciously start breathing again. One ought not hold one's breath before the beauty of one's own step-daughter. She's only twelve years old!

Her beauty is that of a child only barely starting to become an adult physically. She still has the lithe movements and quick smile of a child, and she loves her "daddy" dearly. And I love her as well.

So, why do I feel so guilty? When she walks into a room, I look at her budding breasts, barely intelligible. If she sits with her legs uncrossed (as children often do), I am tempted to look up her dress, like a schoolboy, and I feel so embarrassed. I must be very sick, very twisted.

As she walks out of a room, I follow her behind with my eyes, looking at her buttocks, and I again I feel deeply ashamed.

When we walk together along the streets, she takes my hand, rests her head on my shoulder, or I take her hand or thrown my arm around her. Are we father and step-daughter or romantic lovers? I know what we are and yet my body and my emotions and my desires get confused.

When she comes of age, will my step-daughter give me the child that I have always wanted? And have I entirely lost my mind?

I love my daughter's long and curly black hair just as it is, as I often reassure her.

I care like a father, I discipline like a father, I provide like a father and I love like a father. But in my mind, where no one can look but where my consciousness lives, I desire her like a suitor, even though she is only twelve years old and her mother is my wife.

Sometimes I'm Attracted to Men

Sometimes I'm attracted to other men. I look at their penises and their buttocks, their shoulders and their eyes. I think sometimes I even look into their faces with longing. And then I feel terribly ashamed of myself, confused and inhibited.

Is there something that I want to do? Of course there is! I would like to start a conversation with them in the same way that I would with a woman who catches my eye, to see if they're interested in me too. But I never do. I don't want anyone to know that I am bisexual, that I feel a sexual attraction to men as well as to women.

It's socially acceptable to be good friends with men, to share intimacies, to hug and even to kiss on the cheek. I've done everything with men that I've done with women, except French kiss with them and have sex with them.

Well, there have been a few exceptions. The first time I ejaculated, I was dry humping my best friend, a boy, when we were about twelve years old. It felt so good! It was exactly what I wanted to be doing at that moment, and it really was an intimacy that we shared.

Except that when I ejaculated (something he hadn't experienced yet), he said, "What was that?" A moment later when I still hadn't released him, when I was drawing out that moment of physical ecstasy, he said, "You can get off me, now."

Maybe it really wasn't an intimacy. Maybe neither of us knew exactly what we were doing and what would come of it. He didn't seek me out for more afterward.

But I continued to seek out other boys for a while. Sometimes, my brother and I would camp out in the back yard with our friends. I looked forward to this, because I wanted to engage in some sex acts with my best friend, who would be among us. But, he refused, everyone found out, and I was embarrassed and ashamed.

When I told my brother that another boy had sucked my dick during a sleep-over, he was aghast, nearly speechless, and he ridiculed me. He thought he was better than me because I liked other boys and he didn't.

I also liked girls. Even before I ejaculated with my best boy friend, I had engaged in other sex with my best girl friend, inviting her into my garage, holding her close to me, grinding and rubbing her ass. Again it felt SO good.

But, I also liked to rub her brother's ass almost as much, and have him rub mine. I invented games in which all of this would occur, until their mother found out and forbade them absolutely to have any further contact with me at all. I was a pervert. "Pervert" is a word we don't use as often now. But back then everyone knew what a "pervert" was, including me. I wasn't supposed to be doing what I was doing, and I wasn't supposed to want to be doing what I was doing.

Once, my best friend's father caught my friend and me in bed, naked, "fooling around." "You pig," he said to my best friend, and then my friend went crying to his mother and said, "Daddy called me a pig!" He didn't understand, but I did. By his father's inference, I was a "pig" in his eyes, too.

So, when another little friend, old enough to want to experiment, asked to engage in child sex play with him, I gently refused. I had decided that there was just too much repression of homosexuality for it to be worth choosing to express physically my attraction to boys. I went underground, and I have been underground ever since. What was pleasurable once is now forbidden.

But, I still look at men's buttocks and their penises, their hair and cheeks thighs. I look into their eyes and I wonder about the sexual intimacy I've missed over the last decades, since repression and expediency drove my desires into hiding.