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Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) is written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England and Italy. Monthly features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published monthly by Scars Publications and Design, 2543 North Kimball, Chicago, Illinois 60647; Janet Kuypers, president. Permanent address: 8830 West 120th Place, Palos Park, Illinois 60464. Subscription price: $36 per year in the United States.
To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through email given special attention. Previously published work accepted. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission of the publisher is forbidden. Copyright © 1995 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches & Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights of pieces remain with their authors.



editorial

The Illness of Volunteerism

When I opened up my copy of USA Toady this morning (April 22, 1997) I saw a chart as the illustration for the lead story. The chart stated, “Volunteerism: How Strong is the Drive?” and then asked the question, “If your place of work gave its employees the chance to take paid time off of work to do community volunteer work, how likely are you to take the time off?”

The results showed that 51 percent of people surveyed would in fact take the time off to volunteer.
But what they asked for was not volunteerism - what the question asked is would you volunteer if you were still being paid by someone. By definition, that’s not volunteering.
Ask the same group of people if they’d be willing to put in the same amount of time when it was their own time, and they were not being paid for it.
I’m sure the results would be much, much lower.
People work for a living. They go to work in the morning, come home at night, and live off of what they earned - that’s Capitalism, and for the most part, that’s America (at least that’s what this country was founded on). People, for the most part, don’t want to give away their labor - or their money - to people who haven’t earned it.

A summit to encourage people to come together to volunteer is one thing. Asking individuals to volunteer to help out the “less fortunate” is one thing. People have the right to choose what to do with their own time. Making it sound like volunteerism is the responsibility of individual companies is another.
Businesses, by producing better goods and services, have increased the standard of living - for everyone in this country (consider that poor people can purchase televisions, have entertainment and other “luxuries” that no one could afford fifty years ago). Businesses are doing a service to the world as well as to themselves when they produce. They earn a product; competition brings better products; everyone wins. It is not the responsibility of businesses to lose their workers to regular volunteer times, because they don’t owe anything to “the community.”
“The community” consists of a group of individuals. Individual rights is how this country was founded. Expecting business owners to shell out money to employees for not working - for volunteering - is just another way of extracting money from the producers. Won’t that hurt the economy in the end, which affects the standard of living for all?

The article went on, stating that there were philosophical questions with wide-scale, imposed volunteerism:
“How should the role of the government be balanced with the roles of companies, individuals and non-profit groups?” It shouldn’t be balanced; the government shouldn’t be involved. Government intervention would mean more taxes and less freedom for individuals. Companies should not feel the need to volunteer, as imposed by a government; if they want to help, they can, but should not be expected to. They do enough by producing better goods and services for the individuals that purchase them.
“Is volunteerism a politically popular but lightweight response to the intractable social problems government leaders can’t, or won’t manage?” Now we’re getting somewhere. Volunteerism won’t solve a problem if the individual you are helping doesn’t want to help themself, or expects to be helped instead of working on finding their own solution. The government, when involved with other aspects of our lives, has made a very expensive tangled mess of red tape - consider education, for example. Pressure groups have pulled funding back and forth for education, providing not the best education, but what the right people wanted. The result? a poor educational system that the government thinks more money will solve. When more money doesn’t help, add more money, and tax the people some more.

“Volunteerism is one of the great glories in America,” states Will Marshall of the Progressive Party Institute. No it isn’t. It’s a great glory to communism, where people are supposed to make sure everyone is equal and not be able to advance with their achievements, therefore giving them no incentive to achieve. It’s a great glory to Christianity, because you’re not supposed to rise above everybody else, you’re supposed to not like the things to earn. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” No, it’s individual rights, and the right to own your accomplishments and achievements that is one of the great glories of America, and that directly opposes volunteerism. The right to produce and create and succeed is the American way - and it developed this country into the greatest country in the world. But for years now, we’ve been told that we need to help others.
Since we’ve heard that cry, our country has been slipping.

General Colin Powell is working on the volunteerism summit, and he added that it is in individual’s best interests to look beyond their neighborhoods when volunteering. Why? How is it in any individual’s best interest to do work for free that doesn’t affect their lives? No answer.

Companies may be interested in participating in volunteering programs because it bolsters their image in their community, providing business. Or it may give the employees a feeling that their company cares about others, which may reduce the turnover rate. Or it may be a tax write-off. Either way, the only reasons a business should - in order to be an efficient business - explore volunteerism, is in order to help their own business out somehow. The CEO of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, said, “We don’t do it (volunteerism) because it increases our business.” Well, then, your business isn’t running as efficiently as it should be. Where are the costs of volunteerism going? Probably the prices of the goods and services the company sells. When you don’t see a return on an investment, the loss has to be eaten up somewhere.

In 1993 Maryland Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend “pushed through a controversial requirement that all her state’s public high school students must do 75 hours of community service before they graduate,” the article goes on to say. What does that teach students? That the government has the right to tell people how to spend their time, that the government can tell people what to do, that the government can force people to do things, whether or not they want to do it? Does it teach students that volunteerism isn’t actually volunteer work, but a required activity? Does it teach them their achievements don’t matter, that other people matter more then they do? A “requirement” to do “community service” is not volunteering.

At the end of the article, there was another chart with the results of a survey. It asked people, “Who should take the lead role in meeting the following goals (providing medical care for the poor, caring for the elderly, reducing homelessness, reducing hunger, helping illiterate adults learn to read, providing job training for youth): the government, through programs and funding, or individuals and businesses, through donations and volunteer work?”
Answers varied, but people thought the government should help out in all of these areas. But how are they going to do it? With your tax money, deciding how to spend it without conferring with you. If it were the responsibility of individuals and businesses, on a volunteer-basis, at least you would know where your money was going.
But then it occurred to me: it’s not the government’s responsibility, and it’s not a business person’s or producing individual’s responsibility - it’s the responsibility for those in need to do something with their lives, to satisfy that need and accomplish their own goals. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” means that people have a right to their lives, and the right to do what they want with their lives. They can’t infringe on other’s rights to help them.

Stalker

The Final Pages of Fear

And she got out of her car, walked across her driveway, and walked up the stairs to her porch, trying to enjoy her solitude, trying not to remember that he had followed her once again. She thought she was free of him; she thought he moved on with his life and that she would not have to see his face again.
Why did he have to call her, on this one particular day, years later, while she was at work? Maybe if she could have been suspecting it, she might have been braced for it. But then again, she didn’t want to think about it: she was happy that she was finally starting to feel as if she had control of her life again.

It had been so many years, why would she have expected him to follow her again? Didn’t she make it clear years ago that she didn’t want him waiting outside her house in his car anymore, that she didn’t want to receive the hang-up calls at three in the morning anymore? Or the calls in the middle of the night, when he’d stay on the line, when she could tell that he was high, and he’d profess his love to her? Or the letters, or the threats? No, the police couldn’t do anything until he took action, when it was too late. Why did he come back? Why couldn’t he leave her alone? Why couldn’t it be illegal for someone to fill her with fear for years, to make her dread being in her house alone, to make her wonder if her feeling that she was being followed wasn’t real?
All these thoughts rushed through her head as she sat on her front porch swing, opening her mail. One bill, one piece of junk mail, one survey.
It was only a phone call, she had to keep thinking to herself. He may never call again. She had no idea where he was even calling from. For all she knew, he could have been on the other side of the country. It was only a phone call.
And then everything started to go wrong in her mind again, the bushes around the corner of her house were rustling a little too loud, there were too many cars that sounded like they were stopping near her house. Her own breathing even scared her.

I could go into the house, she thought, but she knew that she could be filled with fear there, too. Would the phone ring? Would there be a knock on the door? Or would he even bother with a knock, would he just break a window, let himself in, cut the phone lines so she wouldn’t stand a chance?
No, she knew better. She knew she had to stay outside, that she couldn’t let this fear take a hold of her again. And so she sat.
She looked at her phone bill again.
She heard the creak of the porch swing.
She swore she heard someone else breathing.
No, she wouldn’t look up from her bill, because she knew no one was there.
Then he spoke.

“Hi.”
She looked up. He was standing right at the base of her stairs, not six feet away from her.
“What are you doing on my property?”
“Oh, come on, you used to not hate me so much.” He lit a cigarette, a marlboro red, with a match. “So, why wouldn’t you take my call today?”
“Why would I? What do I have to say to you?”
“You’re really making a bigger deal out of this than it is,” he said, then took a drag. She watched the smoke come out of his mouth as he spoke. “We used to have it good.”

She got up, and walked toward him. She was surprised; in her own mind she never thought she’d actually be able to walk closer to him, she always thought she’d be running away. She stood at the top of the stairs.
“Can I have a smoke?”
“Sure,” he said, and he reached up to hand her the fire stick. She reached out for the matches.
“I’ll light it.”
She put the match to the end of the paper and leaves, watched it turn orange. She didn’t want this cigarette. She needed to look more calm. Calm. Just be calm.
She remained at the top of the stairs, and he stood only six stairs below her. She sat at the top stair.

“You really think we ever got along?”
“Sure. I mean, I don’t know how you got in your head -”
“Do you think I enjoyed finding your car outside my house all the time? Did I enjoy seeing you at the same bars I was at, watching my and my friends, like you were recording their faces into your memory forever? Do you think I liked you coming to bother me when I was working at the store? Do you -”
“I was.”
She paused. “You were what?”
“I was logging everyone you were with into my head.”
She sat silent.
“At the bars - I remember every face. I remember every one of them. I had to, you see, I had to know who was trying to take you away. I needed to know who they were.”

She sat still, she couldn’t blink, she stared at him, it was just as she was afraid it would be.
And all these years she begged him to stop, but nothing changed.
She couldn’t take it all anymore.
She put out her right hand, not knowing exactly what she’d do if she held his hand. He put his left hand in hers.
“You know,” she said, then paused for a drag of the red fire, “This state would consider what you did to me years ago stalking.”
She held his hand tighter, holding his fingers together. She could feel her lungs moving her up and down. He didn’t even hear her; he was fixated on looking at his hand in hers, until she caught his eyes with her own and then they stared, past the iris, the pupil, until they burned holes into each other’s heads with their stare.

“And you know,” she said, as she lifted her cigarette, “I do too.”
Then she quickly moved the cigarette toward their hands together, and put it out in the top of his hand.
He screamed. Grabbed his hand. Bent over. Pressed harder. Swore. Yelled.
She stood. Her voice suddenly changed.
“Now, I’m going to say this once, and I won’t say it again. I want you off my property. I want you out of my life. I swear to God, if you come within fifty feet of me or anything related to me or anything the belongs to me, I’ll get a court order, I’ll get a gun, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you away forever.”

“Now go.”
He held his left hand with his right, the fingers on his right hand purple from the pressure he was using on the open sore. He moaned while she spoke. She stood at the top of the stairs looking down on him. He slowly walked away.
She thought for a moment she had truly taken her life back. She looked down. Clenched in the fist in her left hand was the cigarette she just put out.

Sunday, November 13, was my best friend Ben’s fifteenth birthday. Too old for a party, he asked instead for permission to take his father’s 13-foot Boston Whaler out to Skeleton Island and camp overnight. His parents were divorced last year, but his father still keeps the boat at the Island Watch pier ‘cause he qualifies for owners’ rates. Anyway, his mother first got his father to say no when he asked back in June, but all summer long Ben demonstrated his skill at handling the boat, and he even overhauled the 35-horsepower Evinrude in his small engines course, so his father couldn’t think of any real reason to object. His mother-and mine, too-finally gave in when we agreed to set up camp at the southern end of the island where our red tent could be seen from the front windows of the bayfront townhouses where we live. I think they were praying for a blizzard, though. Of course, Ben brought along his father’s old binoculars so we couldn’t actually be spied on.

Well, Mom said I could go but what she meant was after I got finished helping at the restaurant. It’s been tough on her running the place by herself since my dad died two years ago, though it seemed to me that she always did most of the work even when he was alive. It’s a family-type seafood place right on the water a few blocks from where we live called Admiral Benbow’s after her father, who started it when he retired. Actually, he was only a tugboat captain so he must’ve given himself a promotion. But all day long I washed dishes and polished tables and scoured pots and stirred the soup and had to watch what a gorgeous day it was. The sky was so blue and clear it made my eyes ache, and every time I carried garbage outside I could feel how warm it was for November.

Until we started to load the boat, that is. Anyway, we were underway by 2:30. Since Ben’s mother also works on Saturdays, and we don’t have any sisters or brothers, there was no one to see us off. Old man Trelawney, who used to be the mayor, was fishing for flounder from the pier. He pointed to the dark anvil-shaped clouds forming in the western sky and said we oughta wait, but we’d been planning the expedition too long to be put off.

“Well, squalls pass by quick,” he said. “I guess you boys won’t shrink any from a good dousing.”

The weight of all the camping gear, extra clothing, food, fresh water, and spare gas tank prevented the boat from planing properly, and the bay was much choppier than we had imagined, so it took us almost half an hour to cover the two-mile distance.

By the time we had the boat unloaded and beached, not a speck of blue could be seen in the sky, the water had turned black, and thunder was starting to rumble. We set up the tent as fast as we could, stripped off our outer clothes, and threw them in along with all our gear and food. When the first bolts of lightning cracked open the clouds, we had just filled a plastic garbage bag with dry salt hay.

Then all hell broke loose. I never seen anything like it. From where I knelt, holding up one end of the tent with my left hand and protecting my eyes from the flying sand with my right, I could see a pair of bewildered mallards waddle up out of the water and sit down on the wet beach like they, too, just figuredto wait out the squall and then resume their plans for the day.

“Hey, your head’s bleeding,” called Ben, who with his back to the wind was holding up the other end of the tent.

I wiped my hand across my forehead and felt the sharp sting of sand rubbing into flesh. I watched the rain wash away a half dozen red stripes from my right palm, then covered my eyes again. “Goddam sand’s blowing so hard it cut me,” I called, glad for having chosen to face the wind.

For fifteen minutes we kept the tent upright against the battering wind and rain. Before it started, Ben told me that once before, on an overnighter with the Boy Scouts, his tent had been knocked over in a storm and he let it stay in a crumpled heap while he kept himself dry under the big dining tarp. But his sleeping bag and clothing were soaked through in every spot that had touched the wet canvas, so he spent a long miserable night. That wasn’t going to happen to us.

And then it was all over. Why, the sunlight had broken through the clouds in the west before the rain even stopped. By the time Ben and I were securing the tent ropes to the driftwood “dead men” we buried in the sand, the sky was a cool blue again and the squall a mile out to sea. We tied a rope between two trees for a clothesline and waded into the water to rinse the sand off our feet and legs. Damn, it was cold! Then we stripped off our bathing suits to hang them on the line and allowed the sun and wind to dry our naked bodies. “Don’t you wish we had some girls along?” Ben asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “How’d you like to see that Darlene Kaye with nothing on?”

“Are you kidding? She’s old, my mom says she’s over forty.”

I reflected on this, not wanting Ben to think me a stupid kid just cause I wouldn’t be fifteen until February and I was only in the ninth grade. “Who cares? She’s got the biggest tits I ever seen.”

“You never seen her tits, did you?” I think Ben was suddenly frightened he might’ve missed something.

“I’ve practically seen all of them,” I said. “That bikini she wears in the pool doesn’t cover very much.”

“My mom says it’s indecent.”

I had to laugh. “Mine, too. I swear she calls me into the fucking house every time Darlene comes near the pool.” Then I could feel my pecker starting to get big cause I was thinking about Darlene’s tits, so I crawled into the tent for some clothes. When I emerged, I said, “That damn wind is sure getting cold. You better put something on.”

He said, “I don’t feel cold yet, but I guess I better not let my prick get sunburned.” Ben’s summer’s growth spurt had made him four inches taller than me. He also liked to stay bare-chested to show off the muscles which were beginning to bulge in his tanned arms and shoulders after a summer of serious weightlifting.

“Yuck,” I said, screwing my face into an expression of pain. “Let’s see if we can get a fire going.”

Trapped behind the sand dunes were ancient pilings, driftwood, and pieces of abandoned boats deposited by the high tides of past hurricanes and northeasters. We used to search for buried treasure here cause every boy from New Jersey knows this island was one of Captain Kidd’s secret hiding places. Within a half hour we gathered twice as much wood as we’d need. We split it with hatchets to expose dry surfaces, and on the beach in front of our tent built a log cabin of firewood around a pile of salt hay. With a single match, Ben ignited the dry hay. The flame spread to the intersections of the wood and we soon had a blazing bonfire going. Ben looked at his watch. “It’s quarter after five. My mom should be home from work now. Do you think she’ll be able to see the fire from shore?”

“Sure, she can at least see the smoke. My mom probably has all the waitresses watching for it.” I could see the red roof of the restaurant due south of the island and was happy to be out here away from the noise.

Suddenly a loud roar shattered the calm silence and echoed across the water. I saw a line of white streaking toward us. “Look at that baby!” I said, pointing.

“Boy, how’d you like to own one of them?” Ben asked.

“Fat chance,” I answered. “They cost around fifty grand.”

“So? Just think how many broads you could get with a boat like that. I bet there’s a gorgeous blond on that one right now. Let’s take a look.” He crawled into the tent and came back with his binoculars and the telescope my dad gave me last year for Christmas. “Wow,” he added, “there’s two of them! A blond and a redhead!”

“Son of a bitch,” I said when I got the long, shiny silver fiberglass boat into focus, as it roared by a quarter mile away.

“It’s called Pieces of Eight. That baby must be twenty-six or twenty-eight feet long. Those guys are sure lucky.”

“Yeah. But they oughta call it Pieces of Ass.”

###

For dinner Mom had made us foil stews-chopped beef, potatoes cut into small cubes, corn niblets, and sliced onion, all rolled up in a double thickness of aluminum foil. We placed the two packets on a bed of hot coals and raked more coals around and on top. “You’re the cook,” Ben said. “How long do you think these’ll take?”

“Let’s try twenty minutes, that sound okay?”

“Yeah.” Ben walked over to the boat and returned with a six-pack of Budweiser. “Want a beer?” he asked.

“Yeah, how’d you get it?”

“Simple. My father took some friends out fishing last Sunday. I offered to unload the boat while they were cleaning the fish, and I accidentally on purpose forgot to check the baitwell. I threw some ice in this morning to cool it off.”

“Pretty smart, man.” Ben always knew how to do things right. And he was well liked at school and a good athlete. To be treated as his friend, despite being a grade behind, had been gratifying to me during the year we’d been neighbors. “How much you got?”

“Another sixpack besides this one.”

“That oughta be enough.”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna get too drunk.”

“Me neither.”

After finishing a second can of beer, I decided the stews were done and pushed them out of the coals and into dry sand with the aid of two long green sticks. I poured water on the foil to cool it, then untwisted the tops to let the steam off. “Looks perfect,” I pronounced. “Here, pour the grease out,” I said to Ben as he opened the second one. “You don’t wanna get the runs.”

Hungry, we ate in silence, watching a lone sailboat glide out the channel toward the deep water past the island. “Wonder where they’re headed,” Ben offered, nodding toward the boat.

I opened another beer and passed the last one to Ben. “Maybe around the world. Or maybe just around North Cape. Who knows?” That reminded me of something I’d been wanting to tell him. “You ever go sailing?”

“No, I think it’s boring. What about you?”

“Shit, it ain’t boring. You gotta know what you’re doing to handle a sailboat.”

“Well, did you ever do it?”

“I went once with Carolyn Martin and a friend of hers.”

Ben looked as surprised as I had hoped he would. Carolyn Martin is considered the best-looking girl at Waterwitch High, but she’s generally seen only with seniors and basketball players. “No shit! I guess you weren’t bored, then.”

Me and Ben were the envy of every boy at the school ‘cause Carolyn also lived at Island Watch, which meant we got to wait for the bus with her in the mornings. At least on those rare mornings when a kid with a car didn’t pick her up. She was five-nine, which was taller than half the boys in her class including Ben, and she was the star of the girls’ basketball team. Nobody in any of the local bars ever even proofed her anymore. Carolyn was in Ben’s grade and lived with her mother and aunt. Ben told me her father skipped out last year and ain’t been around since. That’s tough on a kid, at least Ben’s dad takes him out fishing sometimes.

“No, Ben, I wasn’t bored.” I grinned, remembering the day. I was fishing for fluke from the end of the pier when a voice I instantly knew to be Carolyn’s yelled to me from a 16-foot Hobie Cat sailing by. “Want to join us?” It turned out that they just needed my weight for extra ballast ‘cause the wind was real strong out on the bay, but I didn’t mind. Just to be seen in the same boat with Carolyn Martin would assure my reputation for an entire school year. We stayed out for three hours which made me late for work and thus the unhappy recipient of one of my mother’s angry lectures about responsibility. But that only gave me more reason to remember the day.

“How come you never told me?

“I was saving it for a special occasion.” I did manage to tell everyone in my own class that I met during the summer, but I was careful not to exaggerate my role in case it ever got back to her.

“So when was it, anyway?”

“In July, that day you went fishing with your dad I was just hanging out feeling pissed off at you for not asking me along when they sailed by and picked me up.”

“Wow, I wish I’d’ve been with you!”

The breeze from the northwest was freshening and I suddenly shivered. I reached into the tent for a sweater and put it on. Ben stirred the coals and added a few more pieces of wood.

“She has some pair of legs, huh?” said Ben, still trying to get more details about my afternoon with Carolyn Martin. “How would you like it if she wrapped them around you?”

I grinned again. “Absolutely perfect!” I remembered sitting with my legs dangling from the windward side of the catamaran’s trampoline, watching her tall rigid body hiked out horizontally in the harness to stabilize the boat as gusts of wind pounded us from abeam. Her toes gripped the bar of the trampoline like a fucking monkey’s, and her long tan legs stretched diagonally upward to where the narrow straps of the trapeze harness worked her bikini up, exposing the bottom of her ass. I was sure we would be spilled over and the other girl seemed terrified, but Carolyn was ecstatic. She must thrive on danger, I thought. No wonder she was bored with school.

“That’s not all she’s got that’s perfect,” said Ben in a tone that begged to be asked for an explanation. He finally reached for the windbreaker I brought out for him.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, she got a cute little pair of tits, kinda small, but real nice. And she got a perfect pair of ass-cheeks.” His voice cracked on the last word.

“Yeah, I’ll go along with that.” I answered.

Ben cleared his throat and drained the last of his beer. “I mean I know exactly what they look like.”

“What do you mean?”

“I seen her naked.”

“Go on, you’re bullshitting me.”

Ben now had the upper hand. “No I ain’t. I seen her naked lots of times.”

I felt as though I had been gypped in some permanently unknowable way. “Oh, sure, I suppose she puts on a show for you every night.”

Ben grinned. “She does, but she don’t know it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Ben reached for his binoculars and waved them in front of my face. “I watch her undress at night. I can see right into her room from my window.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah, it’s great.”

“Doesn’t she pull down the shade?”

“She just got new curtains, you know, the kind that only covers the bottom half of the window? I have to stand up on my desk to see over them.”

I’ll tell you, at that moment I felt absolutely convinced that life just wasn’t fair. The front of my house faced the front of Carolyn’s, a fact which I had, until that moment, regarded as fortunate. I could wait for her door to open before leaving for school in the mornings and then walk with her to the bus stop. I had never before seen Ben’s advantage in having the rear of his house face the rear of Carolyn’s. “You mean you just stand there looking out? What if somebody sees you?”

“Nobody can. I put in an extra set of brackets for my shade a few inches down the window. When I want to watch, I set the shade in the lower brackets and pull it all the way down. Then I can see over the top.”

Once again I admired my friend’s ingenuity. “So, do you watch her every night?”

“Usually. I like it when she looks at herself in front of the mirror.”

“Yeah? What does she do?”

“She like studies her whole body. First she puts her hands under her tits and lifts them up, I guess she’s trying to make them bigger. Then she turns around and checks out her ass.”

“I’d check it out anytime she wants,” I declared, remembering again how great she looked on the catamaran but wishing I had had the nerve to reach over and grab a handful.

“It’s perfect, man, just perfect. Too bad you’ll never know yourself.”

“Come on, you gotta let me watch some night. I’ll spend the night at your house.”

Ben pretended to think gravely. “It’ll have to be when my mom’s away. Maybe next summer.”

“Shit, man, you know what I think?” I asked. I really felt pissed at him by then, and confused. Seeing Carolyn Martin naked would have excited every guy in school, but somehow the idea of Ben spying on her didn’t seem right. It seemed to violate her in some way, yet I knew I was going to pester him about it until he either admitted he was lying or else let me stay at his house and watch her. “I think this is all bullshit. I bet you never seen her naked.”

“You can think anything you want. But I know what I can see anytime I feel like it.”

###

“Here comes that Pieces of Eight back,” I said, looking through my spyglass from the top of the highest sand dune on the island. We had been exploring, looking for evidence of life. Two summers ago on a picnic with his parents Ben discovered a perfectly readable copy of Penthouse in the sand next to an empty wine bottle. He hid in a thicket of beach plums and studied it from cover to cover before realizing that the beach plums were thickly intertwined with poison ivy vines. He dashed into the water and scrubbed himself all over with sand scooped up from the bottom, but three days later the skin on his legs, arms, and back, which had brushed the vines as he crouched, swelled into blisters. His mom had to take him for daily shots of cortisone for a week and spread calamine lotion on for another before his skin returned to normal. He said he treated the blisters on his pecker by himself. When he was able to pedal his bicycle we went to the library for information on v.d., but we couldn’t find anything about catching it from poison ivy.

The sun had set fifteen minutes before and the evening turned out as gorgeous as the morning had been. The only sign of the afternoon’s violent storm was the succession of long swells on the bay which the silver boat raced over, leaving, on the reddish water behind it, a three-mile widening line of white that curved gradually toward the island.

“Look’s like it’s coming here,” Ben finally answered. The boat roared to the northern end, a quarter mile from where we were camped, before it cut speed and the sound changed to a thumping chug then died altogether. “Come on, let’s go see what they’re doing,” he added.

“Think we should leave all our gear?” I asked, uncertain what he had in mind. You could never tell with Ben.

“Who’s gonna take it, stupid? Just bring your telescope.”

“Why?”

Ben looked exasperated. “So we can watch them, you know, see if they do anything.” Soon we were lying prone within a clump of ground oaks near the crescent-shaped island’s northern end, only about a dozen yards from four people milling about trying to light a fire. I still had an apple in my coat pocket which I had brought for dessert, but we were too close to risk making any noise. The anchor of the silver speedboat was stuck in the sand, but the northwest wind was blowing the boat parallel to the beach and it was taking a terrible pounding. Not only that, but the tide had just started to drop and it would be beached in half an hour. Either they didn’t know enough to keep a boat offshore with a stern anchor, or they were too drunk or spaced out to care. I was beginning to wish we had stayed on our end of the island. But you never could tell with people like that, they might’ve tried to bother us. I supposed it was better that we knew what they were doing, but I sure hoped they didn’t ruin our trip. “Hurry up, I’m cold,” a female voice whined. I thought it belonged to the redhead.

“Well, don’t just stand there, find some dry wood,” a male voice responded, harshly.

In spite of my hesitation, by the time I had my spyglass fixed on the little group, I was caught up in the excitement of the adventure. Ben whispered, “I wish they’d get that damned fire started. It’s too dark to see anything through these binoculars. How’s your telescope?”

“Okay, but I wish we could get a little closer.”

“Well, we can’t, they’ll spot us! And keep your voice down!”

The first man rose and said, “I’ll get a fire going, just watch me.”

The other said, “But everything’s wet.” He sounded real vague, like he didn’t know why.

The first one said, “Just make a pile of small pieces of wood. I’ll be right back.” He started walking toward the water, limping noticeably as if his left leg belonged to someone else and he was obliged to carry it. He lifted himself into the cockpit and in a few minutes climbed back onto the beach carrying a paper cup above his head. Then he limped back up to the others, poured something onto the wood, placing the cup at the base of the pile, removed a lighted cigarette from the other man’s mouth, and ordered the others to stand back. He puffed on the cigarette a few times till the tip glowed red and flipped it into the cup. The gasoline exploded with a shocking boom! and both girls screamed. Flames flew twenty feet toward the beach, following the fumes where the man had carried the cup.

Ben and I heard our own involuntary cries of fright and hoped we hadn’t given ourselves away. But no one turned. From our position in the bushes, we could see the two men clearly in the bright flames, but the girls were facing away. They were both wearing jeans and windbreakers, but you could tell the blond was a real piece. She was taller than the redhead who looked kind of dumpy. The man with the limp announced, “Now there’s a fucking fire!” His face looked around thirty but he had a real high forehead and long silvery gray hair. He was wearing old army fatigues and a heavy khaki sweater.

The other man, much younger and not as tall, but with a bulging beerbelly, sallow cheeks, a full blond beard, and long straight blond hair tied into a ponytail, answered, “Yeah, John, but you didn’t have to fucking try and kill us!”

“Yeah, John,” the redhead added, “I think you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.”

“One can never be too drunk, lassie,” John answered, with a mocking bow toward the redhead. Then he turned toward the blond and said, “And how’s our newest young beauty this fine evening? Did she enjoy her ride on my silver walrus?” The guy had a real crazy, fancy way of talking, like he knew all the secrets and was just toying with people.

“Oh, yes, thank you, it was fun,” she answered, and me and Ben turned to look at each other. “But, I’m getting kind of chilly, do you think we’ll be going home soon?”

“Holy shit!” Ben whispered, “that’s Carolyn Martin.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I wonder what she’s doing here.”

“I don’t know, but we better stick around. I don’t think I trust those guys.”

“They look kind of wild to me, especially that guy John that started the fire. He scared the shit out of me.”

“So let’s get this party started,” John said. He pulled a half-empty bottle out of a canvas bag, opened it, and took a long swig. “Ah, good stuff,” he said. “Take some yourself, Thomas, but save a little for the ladies.” He passed the bottle to the other guy, who drank and offered it to the girls.

“No, thanks,” said Carolyn. “I really don’t care for rum.” Her voice didn’t sound as confident as it usually did, but she didn’t sound exactly scared, either. So I didn’t know what to think. I mean, she always hung around with older kids, but not this old. I wondered if she knew what she was doing. A lot of the guys thought she was kind of stuck up about being so pretty and so smart-Ben said she always got the best grades in the class-but that time she took me sailing she was real nice and friendly. My mom always said she was wild, but I couldn’t imagine her doing anything really bad.

I guess the redhead must’ve liked rum all right ‘cause she practically drained the bottle. She passed it back to John, who did drain it, and then he hurled it right at the boat. We heard it smash as it struck the bow and it probably shattered into hundreds of pieces, though it was too dark by then to tell, and the moon was just rising in the east. “What the fuck did you do that for?” asked the fat guy, Thomas.

“Why, I just christened the craft.” “Christ, asshole, you do it every fucking time you finish a bottle. Don’t you think it’s fucking christened by now?” Thomas was pissed and he seemed like the kind of guy that gets mean when he’s pissed. I began to worry about Carolyn.

The redhead seemed angry, too. “Now there’s broken glass all over the fucking beach,” she said. I knew Carolyn wasn’t used to that kind of language, and it bothered me to hear a girl say fuck.

“But we’re all properly shod, aren’t we?” asked John in his mocking tone. “Unless you’re planning to go skinny-dipping, I see no cause for concern. And it’s a bit chilly for that, wouldn’t you all agree?”

After a few minutes, the redhead said, “You want me to dance for you, you gotta be nice, John, don’t you know that by now?” She suddenly dropped to the sand and curled up on her side, her back to the fire. “Make sure you keep putting wood on, fellows.” Then she must’ve just passed out.

“You got another bottle of that shit?” asked Thomas.

“No, but there’s plenty of beer in the boat. Would you be kind enough to fetch it?” Thomas disappeared from the fire-lit area, and returned with two sixpacks. Carolyn took a can-I was glad they weren’t bottles-and stepped back a little from the fire. Thomas addressed John as if the girls weren’t even there: “You know, your boat’s just about sitting on the beach right now. I tried to shove it back in the water, but it’s too fucking heavy.”

“Again, my friend, there’s no cause for alarm. It’s a clear night. We have fire. I have several blankets and extra clothes on board. We can keep quite cozy until the tide comes back in.” John looked at his watch. “That should be just around sunrise tomorrow.”

“Well, what the fuck are we gonna do all night?” Thomas demanded.

John looked at Carolyn. “Ah, yes, there is the matter of entertainment.

###

Ben nudged me and whispered, “Let’s find a spot where we can talk.” Covered by the darkness, we moved out from the trees as silently as we could and made our way south to the beach to a point where it curved out of sight. We were about three hundred feet away from the fire now, but we could still see its glow in the sky. My heart was racing and I would’ve given just about anything to be back home, or even washing dishes in the restaurant. I felt terrible about what we had seen and heard. Since we were both chilled from lying on the ground for so long, we decided to walk back to our tent at the other end and get some more clothes.

“Do you think they’ll try to rape her?” I asked when we got there, feeling ashamed for her but also aware that the idea excited me. Then I felt even more ashamed for imagining that I would want to see Carolyn raped.

“Shit, yeah,” Ben answered. “Couldn’t you tell by the way that guy looked at her?” What I couldn’t tell was whether Ben was hoping it would happen or not.

“Well, we can’t just watch her being raped by a pair of animals, can we? I mean, she’s our friend.”

“What the fuck, maybe she wants them to do it. She came out here with them, didn’t she? She didn’t seem to be their prisoner or anything like that.”

Damn, if she did know what she was doing and actually wanted it, well, maybe Ben was right.

“Anyway, what could we do about it? Did you see the size of those guys? They’d beat the shit out of us if we tried anything.”

“Maybe we could figure out some other way. Let’s try to think of something.”

“If we could get my boat into the water, we could take her home.”

“How can we let her know we’re here?”

“I don’t know, but let’s make sure we can move the boat first.” It was too heavy to pick it up and carry, but we were able to lift up the stern and pull it down the beach, a few feet at a time. We had to get our legs all wet and our fire had burned itself out, and it felt damned cold, but at least we had a means of escape.

We agreed that if it looked like she was gonna be raped, we would try to protect her. We were smaller, but we had the advantage of surprise. They had no idea we even existed. We would sneak up to within a few yards and then charge them with weapons-we brought a hammer and a heavy wrench from the boat with us. We’d have to hit them as hard as we could, aiming for the backs of their necks to knock them out with a single blow. Then we’d grab Carolyn and run back to Ben’s boat. Now, all we had to do was get her, so we walked back up the beach as quickly and quietly as we could. On the way, we decided that if she seemed to be enjoying herself, we would leave her alone, though neither of us said whether we planned to watch or not.

Even though we don’t really hang out together, the three of us had that one thing in common-no father. Of course, my situation seemed more permanent, mine being dead and theirs just divorced. Still, it provided a bond among us which I hoped Ben would feel too. But once I got thinking about my dad, I knew I couldn’t have watched Carolyn being fucked, even without my spyglass, cause I was afraid my dad would be watching me watch her. That made me feel guilty as hell.

Halfway there, we could hear some kind of music, so instead of returning to our spot in the ground oaks, we decided to move in a little closer to check things out. We managed to climb to the top of a small dune that overlooked the spot where Carolyn and the others were. An enormous boom box sat on the sand near the fire playing some raunchy-sounding electric guitars and drums. Maybe the music itself wasn’t raunchy, but the redhead was doing a pretty raunchy dance. She seemed to be in her own world again, lifting her arms up and shaking her ass. “Take it off, baby!” Thomas said, and she suddenly unzipped her windbreaker and tossed it aside. “Now your sweater,” called Thomas. “Show Blondie how to do it!”

That’s when I both realized Carolyn was nowhere in sight. I wondered what had happened, and apparently Thomas did too. “Hey, where’d that little bitch go?” he suddenly shouted. He also turned off the music, but the redhead continued to dance like she hadn’t noticed.

“In the woods to relieve herself, that’s all,” John answered. He did not seem as drunk as he did before.

“I don’t think you should’ve let her out of your sight.”

“My friend, ain’t nobody leaving this island tonight, so relax. What if she decides to take a little walk? When the temperature starts to drop, just think how grateful she’ll be to climb under my blanket and let me make her warm again. You worry too much.”

But Thomas was not satisfied. “Listen, I don’t feel like stumbling around in the dark. I’m gonna go look for her.”

“I suggest, then, that you wait until the moon is a bit higher. The longer you wait, the better you’ll be able to see.”

The redhead finally stopped dancing and reached for another beer. “Come on, Tom,” she said. “Don’t you like me anymore, huh? You like that skinny blond better?” That was the first real good look at her that I had, and I could see that she wasn’t bad, really, but sort of used-up. She looked around thirty or so, just starting to get a little heavy in the ass. I felt something touch my foot and kicked at it, but then it grabbed my ankle and I let out some kind of sound, not much, but enough to make me glad that Thomas had turned the music back on. I turned around to look and I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. It was Carolyn!

I nudged Ben and we crawled silently back down the south side of the dune where Carolyn stood waiting for us. “How’s the view from up there?” she asked. “Did fatso take her clothes off yet?” It was amazing to me how she could tease us like that so soon after what had almost happened to her. I began to think Ben might’ve been right when he said that was just what she was looking for. But when she spotted the weapons we were still clinging to, she put her arms around us both and began to cry softly. She whispered, between sobs, “I knew you guys were planning to camp out here tonight, and I saw your tent when we passed by before. I was so scared but I had to think of an excuse to get away from those awful men. Then I spotted you. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.”

We must’ve looked pretty silly, I thought, all huddled up like a lop-sided tripod. You know, she’s two inches taller than Ben, and he’s four inches taller than me. “Come on,” I finally whispered, “let’s get out of here!”

We backtracked to the beach and ran as fast as we could back to our camp. “Holy shit!” Ben said when he rounded the final bend. “The boat’s gone!”

###

What a couple of dumb shitheads! We had forgotten to set the anchor after we shoved it into the water. It must’ve got pinched between the wind that was blowing out of the north and the current that was moving northeast. We spotted it a couplehundred yards offshore. “Looks like I’ll have to swim for it,” Ben said. He seemed relieved that it was retrievable but not anxious to enter the water which was only around fifty degrees.

Ben’s pretty strong and he’s a good all-around athlete, but one thing I’m better at is swimming and he knows it. So I said, “Wait a minute, Ben, I can make it faster.”

“Nope,” he said, “it’s my dad’s boat, and I’m responsible for it. I’ll go.”

But Carolyn must’ve had her own ideas and by the time she finished saying, “Listen, both of you know that I’m a better swimmer than either of you, and this whole mess is my fault, so I’ll go,” she was out of her sneakers and socks and jeans and sweater. I saw her standing there in this skimpy little bra and panties for about half a second and then she was gone.

She just ran into the water full speed, dove head first when she was in knee-high and started swimming in a straight line toward the boat. She was as beautiful and graceful as anybody I ever seen in the Olympics. We couldn’t take our eyes off of her and I know I prayed that she’d make it. Ben didn’t believe in God, so I prayed for him, too. Well, she made it all right, but just as she was lifting herself up over the side-and giving us a beautiful view of her ass in the moonlight-Ben said “Holy shit!” for the third time that night.

“What’s wrong now?” I asked. He reached into his pocket. “I’ve got the fucking key. I took it out of the boat before.” He stripped off his clothes and shoes as fast as Carolyn did and then grabbed his bathing suit from our clothesline, put it on, and put the key into the pocket. “If she can make it, so can I,” he said. “You get our gear ready to toss into the boat when we come back.” Then he, too, dove in and swam as fast as he could.

I felt very lonely standing there by myself, but I didn’t waste a second. I stuffed all our clothes, even remembering Carolyn’s, into the duffel bag, put the food back into the little Igloo cooler, rolled up our sleeping bags, and took down the tent and folded it as good as I could. I didn’t even lose a tent stake. From time to time I looked up to check Ben’s progress. Carolyn was standing up paddling the boat toward shore, trying to close the gap, looking as beautiful as a goddess. I had everything ready by the time I saw him climb in the boat, and I don’t think I ever felt as relieved as when I heard that old Evinrude start up on the first crank.

But just about the same time I heard Thomas’s obnoxious voice calling, “There goes the bitch, she’s getting away!” And John was running along behind him, moving with amazing speed for a guy who had to drag a leg. They were still about a hundred yards away from me, and the boat was only half that. I lifted the bag of clothes up over my head and waded out to where the water was chest high. God damn, but I never felt anything that cold! Once my lungs were covered, I just couldn’t fucking breathe anymore. I turned to see that John and Thomas had stopped at the water’s edge. I guess they figured that no fifteen-year-old blond was worth it. They still had the redhead. Instead, they started throwing things at us. They threw stones, pieces of firewood, debris from the beach, anything they could get their nasty hands on.

“Grab the duffel bag,” I heard Ben say, and its weight was lifted from me just as I was hit in the back with a small rock.

“Grab his other arm,” Carolyn said, and I was pulled over the forward gunwale. I fell all the way in the boat as Ben gunned the engine, turned the boat sharply, and sped out of hurling range toward home. “Fucking assholes!” Carolyn yelled back at the two men. “I hope you freeze your balls off.”

Damn! Language like that coming from Carolyn Martin was a greater shock than November seawater. But judging by the way my own felt then, I knew it would be the perfect revenge.

I am a tumbleweed. Unanchored, I drift about on a desert, clinging to life. Hate being a tumbleweed: melancholy, no purpose. Blown by a breeze, I roll this way and that-unable to avoid the merciless sun, but somehow avoiding the prickly cactus. I’m searching. For what? I only know that by my third drink, I’ve become a traveler...

A sea gull! Yes, I’m now a sea gull circling over New York City, recklessly zigzagging around smoke stacks. I’ve migrated from a posh Connecticut town, separated from my flock; their route was unappealing. Alone, I spread my wings and soar, then coast on the wind. Oh, the exhilaration of flying. So beautiful, don’t want to stop.

Tired, though. Very, very tired. Must find a resting spot.

I’ve settled down as a rock near the Atlantic Ocean.

Solid, dependable, enduring. Steve Wilson, the lush, has become a rock. Nothing tires a rock. Having no eyes to see with, I face the ocean stoically, accepting whatever fate offers. My slender, refined ex-wife walks by. She can’t see me inside the rock, but her daughter, Jana, can. Adorable six-year-old Jana pauses, pats my shoulder, and whispers affectionately, “Nice rock.” I’m stirred by sweet little Jana, feel intense loneliness as I watch her skip away to join her mother gathering seashells. Even Jana can’t see me now. Locked up inside this rock, I gaze with sightless eyes. No good being mere background. I’m a traveler...

Could be a horse or cow or pig. Maybe ass-ha! ha! I could wallow contentedly in mud like a hippopotamus, or trot over sand like a camel. Or, how about a watermelon? Cool, delicious watermelon, fertile with seeds, protected by thick rind. People would want me. A nice, middle-aged housewife in Murray Hill might select me at the supermarket. Thoughtfully, she’d weigh me in her steady hands, wondering if I’m worth the price. I’d smile, hoping she’d notice my pristine condition, unsullied by fifteen years of alcohol. Agreeing I’m pure, she’d deposit me in her grocery cart, and serve me at family dinner. The kids would scream with delight, “Oh, boy, watermelon!” I’d be relished-a refreshing treat on a hot summer day. Then, forgotten.

Okay, I’m not a watermelon; I’m a wristwatch. Mr. Moran, my owner, checks me impatiently as he runs for the train. He reminds me of my ex-boss. Obese and sixtyish, Mr. Moran is a big-shot executive in a super corporation-like the one I used to work for. He lives in a swanky house in Newport, Connecticut, and commutes to New York. Mr. Moran depends on his wristwatch to fill his life. Time is important to him. I’m awed. Being a wristwatch is a heavy responsibility. Responsibility is not my forte. In fact, that’s why I quit my prestigious managerial job and started dropping by my favorite East Sixties pub. Don’t want people laying their burdens on my conscience; can’t take it. Mr. Moran frowns at me as he finally sits, huffing in his seat. He almost messed up his routine and, for some idiotic reason, blames me. Why do people blame me when things go wrong? Why did my parents blame me for being unhappy with success? Demands, demands, demands. That’s what started my drinking. Can’t stop now. Too late. I’m a traveler...

Could be a canvas. That would be hopeful. A canvas waiting to be filled up: lines, shapes, rhythms, faces. Yes, I’m a canvas wanting an artist to buy me in a supply store in Greenwich Village. He’ll take me to his studio with its cheerful skylight, and for a long time I’ll ponder the artist while he ponders my emptiness. I yearn for the colors he’ll splash on me. He’ll give me life. How I crave life! But, must be patient, wait for the painter’s gift. He’ll make me significant, worthy. I wait. The painter, an intense young man of twenty-five, shakes his head. He’s not in the mood today to paint. Perhaps tomorrow. I wait in the darkened studio. I feel forlorn, despite the other canvasses. They’re alive; I’m not. For weeks I wait, but the painter doesn’t return. Something has happened. Don’t know whether he’s been killed in an accident, committed suicide, or what. His wife, Louise, enters the studio this morning. She gazes with velvety eyes at the paintings, strokes her husband’s work with her long, thin fingers, and sighs. I’m certain something terrible has happened to my painter, but don’t want to think about it. Can’t be a canvas-too upset, lost heart. The young man seemed so full of potential-like myself at that age-and now he’s gone. Not a canvas anyway. I’m a traveler...

A cloud, that’s what I am. Floating lazily in an azure sky. Not a worry in the world. Ah, feel utterly content. Don’t need another drink. May never drink again. You don’t need liquor when you’re a cloud. I’ll float over New York and watch the inhabitants. Busy, busy, busy. They have so much to do: going to work, shopping, making love, maybe even traveling, like me. It’s comforting being a cloud. Free of human pressures, I can descend wherever I like, peek into my favorite pub, and see what my drinking buddies are up to. They’re eating pretzels and watching television. Don’t like to observe them because I know they’re wasting themselves. Makes me uncomfortable. I quickly rise, then descend again to inspect offices, kitchens, tennis courts, hear nonsensical chatter about stock certificates, hairdos, buying a second car. Bored, I retreat into my carefree sky. Don’t like it there either; atmosphere too rarefied. Being a cloud no longer ends my need to drink; feel the desire returning.

So goodbye, cloud, puffy with importance. Must resume my journey, escape this pub with its pseudo-Tiffany lamps glowing over sad-faced couples in booths, my buddies at the bar repeating their maudlin stories to ears that don’t listen. The affluent drunks are those in conservative suits with loosened ties. Drunks without affluence are sprawled on park benches or gutters. How lucky I am to be an affluent drunk! Thanks so much, Dad, for making all that money in real estate. Truly considerate of you to insist I attend Harvard, pursue a sensible career like Business Administration. You made sure I did all the right things, yet none of them...

I’m a train. Sleek and shiny. I can toot my whistle and puff steam. Pregnant with passengers, I proudly roar out of Grand Central Station and head toward the Midwest, away from the frantic pace of the city. I’m a train. What freedom! Feel as if I were born to be a train. I fly by the countryside, watch the tracks spinning and weaving like black ribbons, watch the planted fields adjoin and merge, looking alike yet somehow different. Sometimes kids on bicycles wave as I pass, and I whistle at them cheerfully. Oh, I feel so happy being a train. I pass through little towns and big cities. Such variety. I discharge passengers, welcome others; I’m beginning to love them dearly. I obey the engineer’s every command.

I go, wait, stop, whistle, steam, grin. Yes, I actually grin, though people in the pub don’t notice and wouldn’t care anyway. But that’s because they don’t know I’m a train. Now I approach a ghetto. I sneak through, ashamed as I scan decaying tenements. I see hopeless faces, feel their hate. They hate me because I don’t let them rest. I rattle the windows of their obscenely-poor apartments, give them no peace whatsoever. No wonder the ghetto hates me. My tracks always run through the poorest section of town. Not allowed to bother the rich, only the poor. My God, being a train is getting on my nerves! Don’t want hate; only love. My parents didn’t hate me. Misunderstanding is more apt. That’s why, when drunk, I’m careful not to disappoint anyone. I smile a lot, am very accommodating. But, shouldn’t dwell on that. Too depressing. Instead I’d rather be a mirror.

My owner, a divorcee, goes out a lot-mostly to bars like my favorite pub, where she picked me up. Judy worries about me, fearful I’ll shatter. Gently, she props me on the booth seat. What a soothing relationship we have! As a mirror, I receive much attention. My owner studies her reflection in my blue eyes, discusses her hopes as she combs her dark curls, and I listen.

Don’t feel lonely anymore. Sometimes she clowns with me, wrinkling her nose in an amusing way, and I laugh. It’s such fun being a mirror! But, after several weeks, Judy regards me mournfully, which makes me squirm. When she first propped me in the booth, she was excited about finally being on her own, and I shared her delight. Now, I glimpse her terror of the unknown future, and I don’t like it. Contemplating the future makes me nervous. She’s lousing up all my joy of being a mirror. She’s causing me to want to be something else, sending the road again, a traveler...

A Pekingese? Yes, indeed, a pampered pet, that’s me! I’m the mascot of a drying-out hospital in Long Island. Feel so protected here: fed, bathed, medicated, given vitamins. Marvelous! In return, I follow orders, am lovable, eager to please. Though the doctors try hard, they can’t cure my self-destructive habit. Know they mean well, but I’m beginning to resent their tyranny. In the back yard, a nurse calls me:

“Stevie! Stevie! Come here, you naughty little dog. Come here at once or I shall become very angry!”

Don’t know why she doesn’t realize I’m running toward her as fast as my little paws will allow. Running so fast, I’m losing my breath, but her yells are getting angrier and angrier. Oh, I see why-I’m running in the opposite direction! I’ve left the yard and am fleeing down the street, away from that scary institution with its electric-shock treatments. Well, seems I wasn’t happy being a pet. No more calling me, overly-concerned nurses. Can’t hear you. I’m off on another journey. I’m a traveler...

An old man has bought me at the liquor store. What? Can I really be a bottle of wine? Is that how I end up? Ironic, perhaps, but morbid. He pats me tenderly, gazes at my label, but doesn’t see me. He wants to quench his unquenchable thirst. He doesn’t care about me. As they say, if you’ve tasted one drink, you’ve tasted them all. He staggers from the store, and pauses with his cargo. He’s very dirty, baggy trousers colorless, like his life. His shirt is torn. Think at one time it was plaid, but now hard to tell the pattern. Streaked with stains: liquor, undoubtedly, and maybe last week’s breakfast. He wanders for awhile. Finally settles on a bench in Central Park, removes me from the paper bag, and takes a long swig. I sense his appreciation, but wish he’d linger more. Savor me, cherish me. He drinks in gulps, as though it were his last chance, and who knows, it might be. Thought I’d be happy being a bottle of wine, satisfying someone’s deepest desires. As I watch the old man

with his grizzled cheeks and bleary, once-blue eyes, I’m sad, terribly sad. Want to cry, for him and myself...

Why can’t I satisfy people? Why can’t I ever be satisfied? Hell, I’m damn lucky to be standing on my feet, fumbling in trouser pockets and shoving bills at the skinny bartender. So long, Mike baby. See you tomorrow. And every day after that...

Finally leave the pub, stare at swaying apartment buildings across the street, and faceless people floating past in the rainbowed lamplight. Not a traveler now. Noooo, too drunk to travel. Just groping along, trying to find my way home.

Chapter 1

The cool morning dew soaks through the seat of Alice’s faded thin jeans, as she stretches across the grass, only half-ready to begin another day. Joey is curled up next to her, his front paw extended and touching her leg. Quietly, Alice breathes a soulful sigh, almost a whimper. Her eyelids are red and heavy from another restless night. The handlebar of her rusty silver bike is balanced against the park bench directly in front of her, casting its dawn shadow on the grass. Her few possessions are draped majestically on this bike. Joey’s cage is wired in place, lodged between the handlebar and the front fender. There’s a stack of blue-green paper towels from a gas station lining the cage, with dead leaves and grass softly packed on top.

A musty green water-fountain stands five yards south. All night the sound of the water trickled in the fountain. The winds are beginning to pick up now and the sound of waves slapping against the boats docked in Belmont Harbor intensifies. After seeing the morning’s first jogger, Alice feels relieved. The sun gently washes her face with color. When she closes her eyes, transparencies of yellow, red, and orange spin uncontrollably before her. Soon it will be time for her to rest. Another night, another quiet night. Quickened by her good fortune, she makes a mental note to return later to this spot.

Joey stretches and gently pumps his white front paws. Alice delights in this ritual. She loves Joey. She adopted him eleven summers ago, in what seems like another life. Gracey, the grey tabby who belonged to Gina, her next-door neighbor at the time, gave birth to three grey tabby kittens and Joey, who much to everyone’s surprise, was stark white. A flush of nostalgia warms her cheeks as she remembers Joey as a kitten. He used to sit perched on the outside sill of her kitchen window starring into the house for hours. Alice never cared much for cats, but she found his incessant interest in the goings on of her life quite flattering. Before she knew it, Joey had found his way to the inside sill of her kitchen window. There he would sit for hours, looking out with an equal mix of interest and disinterest, like only a pampered cat can do.

Early morning is their preferred time of day, quiet and usually safe. The lakefront is deserted except for the familiar parade of early morning bikers and joggers. Traffic on Lake Shore Drive hasn’t picked up yet.

“OK, big boy. Back in a second.” Standing slowly, she feels dizzy from the rush of blood to her head. She staggers and waits for it to pass. When she catches her balance, she makes her way to the water fountain. Using her hand as a cup, she rinses her left arm to the elbow, then her right. She unties the red handkerchief from her neck, soaks it, and uses it to wet her face. The water feels cool against her forehead and eyelids. She leans down to drink but loses her balance and falls, landing on her left knee. Gently she removes a small brown chard of broken glass from the skin of her knee, and she starts to bleed. Looks worse than it is, she thinks. There’s no one around to complain to anyway. The hazy orange sun peaks half out of the water, far across the lake. Another day beginning.

Each day proceeds much the same as the next. No hurry. Find a good spot and stay there. Running water is nice. At first she required a toilet, now a secluded bush at night does just fine. Less competition that way. Safety is another consideration, though more difficult to predict. This morning’s spot has lots of shade, private toilets, and the promise of picnic leftovers; a spot of relative good fortune.

Alice wakes up hours later. The bench is hot and the sun is burning her face. When she fell asleep the park bench was shaded. She is startled by a stray toddler standing directly over her, starring intermitantly at her and then Joey. The park is crowded with picnickers. She looks over to Joey’s cage. He is wide awake, peering suspiciously back at this little girl. Both Joey and the child have grouchy looks on their faces. She wonders who the youngster belongs to. Before long, a young Hispanic girl, maybe seven, comes and retrieves the toddler. The girl looks tired. She grabs the hand of the baby and drags her away without making eye contact with Alice or Joey.

“Time for breakfast.” Alice reaches for a plastic bag inside another plastic bag, inside a paper bag. Joey stands up and paces the circumference of his cage when he hears the rattle of plastic. He may be old, but there’s nothing wrong with his appetite. He lives to eat, and much to her pride, he eats every day.Xinir, LA, 1978 in Autumn on Fluid Ave.

Backed up for 2 miles on a major highway, I said I was going to turn the radio on then began to speak very sexually and I felt lewd with my tongue sticking out, but then 1 person sitting in the backseat explained it to the rest that I’d never turn it On with crass attacks like that. I’d have to be suave. Shaking and snapping my wrist, I went up to it, said “Hey, baby,” and with a click we were listening to one of the many religious programs broadcast by free white people. You couldn’t survive in LA without a tape player in those days, I don’t know about now. We didn’t survive.

Somebody moved an inch so Monica turned on the engine, revved up an inch, shut the motor and I told everyone I knew I was going to sleep. The faggots in the back who were friends of friends, who I didn’t know, overheard me.

I dreamed about Demi Moore which was pretty amazing in ‘78 but it didn’t strike me until right now. She was being chased by a large pack of football team pencils which unwrapped itself as it went along. Then the scene shifted to a hotel in Peru where all the girls wore hair barrettes on their tits and sprinkled little toes on their morning Sugar Smacks. There was a Norwegian elk who had speakers for ears and tried to get me to subscribe to the Ebro river while I ate blue boiled eggs seasoned with anarchy and shotgun butt shavings.

Waking because I heard the laughter, I didn’t remember a thing about my dreams until an hour or so later (that’s the way it always went), but I still had that morning breath that comes like a prick no matter how many seconds your frontal lobe is unconscious. I thought the rumbling noise was strange, but I had to look at the ground to tell we were moving. There certainly wasn’t any wind. Not fast enough for it. But we were really keeping up with the preceding bumper anyway. I reached for the radio because the voice of God was better than no sound at all, and there was an 8-track! An orange box inside, and I suddenly realized that the drone that I thought was the wind hitting up against the shine of the car was really The Lettermen.

I looked around, scared. None of my friends were there. It was the wrong car. I yelled at them when I saw different color road signs, “Who are you? Where am I? This the right way to the Dead?”

They laughed together and said, “It’s Bay City Rollers, dude!” and they cheered to one another as we got closer to the concert, and I remember screaming “AAAHHHHEHINVINEINDONVNEINAQAAAAHEINFNIEAAAAAEI43NANAAAAAHHHHVZHHH!!!!!”

There is no subtle way to lead into what I need to write.

A little before midnight on Saturday evening, the 21st of January 1995, at a “big band” dance, immediately following two swing numbers, my husband looked at me and said, “I’m feeling dizzy,” swayed slightly and collapsed onto the dance floor. CPR began at once: the orchestra leader was an internist, a dancer was another M.D., another dancer was a cardiologist, and aided by nurse-dancers, all persevered to bring my fallen dancing partner to his feet. With the arrival of the ambulance and ultimately in the hospital ER, resuscitation efforts continued nonstop. My husband never breathed on his own again. It was nearing one-thirty when the cardiology team let him go. A while later I was allowed to sit with Stafford, that is, with the body that had been the home of his essence. I laid my hand high on his forehead and my head near his, aware it was the last time we would share a pillow. My thoughts zigzagged between the profound and the profane; had they been wired, their pattern on the monitor - like yarn unraveling from a tightly knit sweater - would have resembled the scrambled line that had represented Stafford’s heart muscle’s struggle to resume normal, effective pumping. I sat beside him, letting my thoughts have voice, believing that no matter how tangled they were, he would understand. After all, he always had.

Any tears, however, were silent. I was bone weary from an evening of energetic dancing - we seldom paced ourselves; having my hair wet with perspiration and Stafford’s shirt uniformly damp were normal manifestations of our dancing elation. I was in shock from having giddy gaiety shattered by watching Stafford’s healthy color replaced by an ashen pallor - I knew within minutes of him hitting the floor that he whom I loved was gone - trauma had drained most of my emotions and cushioned what was left, placing me in a semi-numb state. Ah, Nature has such wisdom.

But what sustained me then and continues to give me strength 10 days later are these blessings. First, I know that my husband had absolutely no fear of dying. In fact, he often said that he rather looked forward to it, the new experience, the opportunity to grow more. “Not that I’m in a hurry for anything premature because I look forward to growing old with you. You’ll know that I am moving on...” Second, there was nothing incomplete about our relationship. We were current in what we needed to share with one another. There was nothing left unsaid or misunderstood, nothing about which to feel guilty. Third, I knew with every fiber of my being that my husband deeply loved, honored, cherished and trusted me, just as I did him. I was able to let him move on, never once feeling he had abandoned me. Protectors don’t abandon. He knew I would be okay.

I could not have experienced such a joy-filled marriage had I not gone through trials in tandem with and followed by recovery. There had been three previous marriages which I ended with divorce - to a scholar, and then to two alcoholics - the first was physically abusive and the second was emotionally cruel. Had I remained stuck on a pity pot, feeding my feelings of victimhood, there would have been precious little about me another would have found attractive - except someone similarly haunted and flawed. Instead I was privileged to be the wife of a man who had the respect of all who knew him and the love of most, who enjoyed so much inner security that I had both the freedom and his encouragement to be my very own self - someone he found stimulating, fumy, and occasionally wise. He often said that he had learned so much from me. Translation: he benefitted from what I learned during recovery and since.

A few months earlier Stafford had composed a bio blurb for his upcoming Princeton reunion. The conclusion reads: “This second marriage has brought greater balance and much joy and support. It has sustained me through my stressful recent years. As a `professional couple’ - Donna is very busy as a writer, editor, publisher and activist, and I am both a consultant and inventor - we are a great team. We are mutually supportive and very productive. We also dance every chance we get. Fred and Ginger, yet.”

Surely it takes no imagination to know that as happy as I am for Stafford - that he literally dropped his body and moved on having just spent an evening dancing up a storm - what a dancer! We first met, 20 years before, dancing - that he passed on without suffering - what an exit! - that he’s applying his impressive scholarship and enhancing his already remarkable spiritual growth on another plane - and that in spite of all these good feelings I have, I am also living with waves of sadness, sometimes overwhelming. I miss his serene aura, his incisive thinking honed “down among the molecules” (he held, at last count, over 35 patents), his sweet heart. But I know, just as sure as I know anything, that my husband, the best editor anyone could ever have, is encouraging me to keep on keeping on. He was proud of me and proud of my publication. I’ve got a life. I’m not finished here.

Now it’s nine months later and I have no idea how much longer grieving for my husband will be at the center of my being. By the time the New Year rings in, I will have spent 94% of this year as a widow. I am semi-accustomed to having had my life turned upside down, wrong-side out, and hung out on the line to dry, so to speak. Sometimes I play that senseless game, “Last year at this time...” and shake my head in disbelief. That was 500 miles and a different house ago. That was “couple” time, “team” time, two trees with branches intertwined but with plenty of air circulating between their trunks. Yes, Stafford and I took our marriage vows seriously and appropriately so: we wrote most of the ceremony, weaving in such wisdom as Kahlil Gibran’s, “But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.” (The Prophet)

Because Stafford fostered my independence and showered me with his loving support in all my interests, he was, in effect, guaranteeing he would have a happy wife and further, that should the unthinkable occur, I would be fine as a widow.

So far, so good.

Among the many discoveries I have made in recent months, the most shocking to some is hearing me say that for me, being a new widow is easier than being a new divorcee. Consider this: I went from a wonderful marriage straight into widowhood. I became a divorcee straight from a miserable excuse for a marriage. I came into widowhood from a position of strength and self-confidence. As a new divorcee, I felt I had survived a living hell. My mind reeled from 10 years of head games generated within a labyrinth of lies.

From the time I became that shell-shocked divorcee, let me take you back 11 years to the breakup of a love affair with Stafford. A diabolical relative polluted the harmonious climate our love had thrived in, and when Stafford walked away, I was left with both a broken heart and relief the suspense was over. Hindsight says that the rush I received one year later, telling me everything I wanted to hear, was bestowed upon someone on the rebound - me.

The fact Stafford and I found one another again (what a love story that is!) gives credence to the phrase, “Obviously, you were meant to be together.”

Usually the next words are, “Oh, how awful - all those wasted years when you could have been together!”

Of course there were other ways I would have preferred to have spent 10 of those years but were they wasted? Not by a long shot!

For it was during those years that I grew more than all the previous years rolled together. First I regressed. Then when that core within us that is designed to be healthy asserted itself, I joined three different libraries. And thus began my independent study of alcoholism and how it affects those close to an alcoholic. In the process I could see some of the ways it was affecting me. Delving into me through Al-Anon and various combinations of private therapy jolted my insight into accepting more truth about myself. One of the most significant recovery tools to have become integrated into my being is challenging myself about what my motives may be, especially when I am trying to decide how I should approach a particular issue.

By the time I filed for divorce, I was like the little engine that could: I had regained most of my self-confidence, much of which still needed testing. The aspect that made being a new divorcee more difficult than new widowhood was the knowledge I’d been conned, betrayed, and emotionally plundered. I had to work through the factual awareness to the saving insight: there was no reason for me to take such abuse personally. If it hadn’t been me, it would have ben someone else. So there was some solace in being a face in the crowd.

Because I got to know myself quite well, I believe I was a much better wife to Stafford than I would have been had we gone ahead with our marriage plans years earlier. Such a belief lends credence to another belief I share with millions of others: everything happens for a reason.

Without those infamous 10 years to my credit, I would not have felt qualified to produce a magazine for people in recovery from anything. In turn, having this publishing responsibility has been, truly, a godsend during these initial months of widowhood.

See how important it is, to quote one of Stafford’s favorite descriptions of himself, “I’ve paid attention along the way”? By paying attention to what’s going on in our lives, we accumulate knowledge to tap into when it’s needed. We’re aware we’re alive. We can judge for ourselves whether or not we have a life. And if we find that we haven’t, we can do something about getting one.

A full year has gone by and I’m finally coming to terms with the “loss” aspect of grieving. Recovering from the sudden and fatal collapse of my husband meant that I had to deal with loss. Looking back I know the shock was akin to the springing of a trapdoor: my world feel away. The sad and empty feelings of loss are shared to a degree by all who are in recovery from anything, be it the death of a loved one, quitting nicotine and/or stopping drinking (or living with someone who just has), and whatever else people choose to do to cause themselves harm and others enough discomfort built from frustration to say, “I’m outta here!”

For years I thought the common bottom-line feeling for folks new to recovery was a lack of self-worth. Now, it seems to me, the feelings of loss underlie all other feelings.

Someone’s physical presence is gone. The closeness of humdrum rituals shared become painful solitary exercises. Or, because you’ve quit smoking, there’s no cigarette with a cup of coffee....or after making love. No longer drinking means there are no Bloody Marys at impromptu tailgate parties. Or, you eat a plate of food and don’t deliberately throw it up. Your toddler spills milk all over the kitchen floor you just washed and now that you’ve learned anger management (old term: self-control), you simply mop up the milk, smile at your little one and laugh, “We’re not going to cry over spilt milk, are we?”

Losses guarantee changes, for better or worse. When at first we long to fill the emptiness with what was there, it’s guaranteed the loss deepens. And if we deliberately recruit a substitute make-do, we could be borrowing added grief.

Lumping the loss from giving up smoking and drinking with the loss of a loved one through a quarrel, divorce or death may seem flippant to some. But to varying degrees these events create a ground zero within us that initially only the resumption of tobacco or alcohol or the return of the one who left can possibly neutralize. That’s where recovery begins.

That’s where I was.

Within a week of losing my husband, I knew I’d be returning to New England to be near my family. That would be my first step towards filling the emptiness. Finding a house and making an offer took three days. How’d I do that so quickly and here it was, 1 1Ú2 years later and cartons still needed to be unpacked?

From talking with a grief recovery expert, we concluded that I remained in varying degrees of shock for a full year. Half of that time I belonged to a support group for the widowed where I made dear friends, one in particular - a middle-aged man trapped in an 85-year-old body whom everyone loved. He was mourning his wife, I my husband, and the talking and shopping and dining were preliminary healing times. Alas, on the first of February, without warning, his heart stopped.

At about the same time, I emerged from the shock of my husband’s heart stopping. That a full year had gone by seemed impossible. My memories were as sharp and clear as if the year had not happened. I cried more, and more often, than I had the previous year. Vivid dreams of my husband, always around daybreak, seemed more like sweet, personal visits. Several times I awakened and burst into sobs because whether I’d experienced a vision or a dream, the result was the same: he was not there in the flesh to welcome a new day with me.

I was working my way through recovery.

The correctness of my decision to move close to my children and their children was reinforced repeatedly. Cookouts became a regular event with friends, family and extended families. One afternoon the head count was 34.

By the end of the summer, because my time was divided between my publication and family, I was chided more than once about not having a life. Moi?

Was I nearing the time when I would be ready to expand my socializing to include more than my family, to actually develop a social life apart from my family? It wasn’t that I had stopped missing and loving my husband, rather the original sharp feelings of loss had softened. I was torn between letting go and wanting to hang on to all that I could of such a good, loving marriage. I knew that until I closed a door on what we shared, no other doors could be opened. So I thought: Okay, I’ll do it, but for now it’s a screen door.

I looked within and saw self-reliance, emotional strength, heightened spiritual awareness. (Never mind what I saw when I looked in the mirror! Health spa, where are you?)

For months after my husband passed away, my identity stemmed from being a widow, even to the point of feeling like there was a big red W on my forehead. Not any more. I’ve regained my integrated self. This tells me that with the exception of that temporary screen door, the hard work of my grief recovery is done.

And isn’t this what all in recovery are striving for - to one day be able to declare, “I am no longer feeling at a loss like a victim. I am recovered.”

Not so fast! It’s now four months later, just after the second anniversary of Stafford’s passing, and I realize I’ve been waiting for something magical to happen. For what was beginning to feel like forever, I’d been waiting for closure to occur as the crowning achievement of mourning the loss of my beloved husband.

I’d come through the first year with flying colors, or so I thought. People told me, “You’re doing so well,” whatever that was supposed to mean - that I wasn’t bawling my head off in public and talking about him every waking moment? That I could function, even smile, laugh, quip and be silly?

One bit of knowledge that has supported me ever since that January midnight is that feelings are not to be judged as good or bad; they’re either comfortable or uncomfortable. So whatever I felt was okay and further, whatever I acted upon was equally okay.

By one person’s Acceptable Rules of Behavior for the Newly Widowed, my manner of observing the first solo wedding anniversary demonstrated I was certifiably out of my tree. Just as we, husband and wife, always did on our anniversary, I did by myself - lighted the marriage candle and read aloud the ceremony we had so carefully and deliberately constructed. Only this time there was no one with whom to alternate the reading. Yes, of course I wept. I couldn’t articulate why I had to put myself through compounded grief but I think I know why now: there had been three of us every day of our married lives together - husband, wife, and the marriage itself. Coming together as we did from previous legalized living arrangements that were abysmal failures culminated by divorce, to have a new opportunity to create a real marital union was a privilege and responsibility we accepted with joy and dedication. Regardless of the fact my husband had passed away, I still felt very much married. Repeating the words of our marriage ceremony felt natural. It was a ritual in which, as both wife and widow (on a cusp, so to speak) I honored my husband and our marriage. A year later, during Year 2, my feelings had not changed but I did not have the need to act them out. That did not mean, ipso facto, I had put closure to my husband’s absence and to the end of our marriage.

What did happen during Year 2 was the shock of his sudden collapse was lifted and in its place full reality descended. “Everything” took on a “just happened” harshness. I had vivid dreams of my husband, usually just before 7 in the morning, in which he was very much alive and we were together. Upon awakening I would have to wrench myself from the comforting reverie to re-experience the reality of being alone.

With the exception of the wedding anniversary, every major holiday felt like the first one to observe without my husband, as if the previous year’s holidays had not happened at all. When Thanksgiving rolled around, I thought, “Last year, we spent Thanksgiving in Berkeley Springs,” when actually I was remembering 1994, not 1995. Surely, when the 21st of January 1997 came and went, I would step out of mourning into morning. What a romantic notion!

That day came and went, and I was no less sad. In fact, I was concerned I might be sliding into the early stages of depression. It wasn’t that I was unhappy. I had the love and interaction with my family and the fulfillment that comes with writing, editing and publishing. I kept in touch with a few close friends, some in person, more through e-mail and phone. Obviously, for me, that was not enough. I recognized that I had damn well better pay attention to that woman who writes a “Get A Life” (TM) column and get myself one.

But, how? No one was going go sashay up to my front door with a solution. It wasn’t up to my family and friends to keep me amused during my spare time. Come to think of it, what spare time? I knew I had to take charge. I needed to interact with more people on a face-to-face basis. By process of elimination, I chose what I believe was the best choice for me. I joined a health club.

On my first day, I almost lost my composure when a man reminded me of my husband - very tall, long legs, long arms. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I wanted to run out of there. To hell with doing anything to make myself feel better. My sensible self intervened. I stopped looking at him. I stuck it out. It was enough of a victory to make me believe I can handle the reminders as they occur.

Within hours of my first workout, I felt better. A few of those magical endorphins had been released. I also felt better because I was being pro-active. I had empowered myself to act in support of myself. In essence, I was doing the same type of thinking that propelled me out of a disastrous “marriage” and even earlier got me to stop smoking. I had changed my attitude.

As for closure to the grieving, I don’t think there is such a thing. I think there are various degrees of acceptance. I’ve had a profound loss. I’ve accepted what I believe are facts: I will always love him, I will always miss him. In the meantime, I’m grateful for having recovery tools I can tap into, for putting my money where my mouth is, for getting a life.

Kids Can Be Cruel: The Effect of Peers On One’s Full Potential

When I was a little child, I was very smart for my age. I was always considered the teacher’s pet, and I always did my homework as soon as I got home from school. I came from a family of all older brothers and sisters, and I constantly heard language that was more advanced than a normal infant would be accustomed to. I read by the age of three. I seemed to have a good ability for math, and my memory retention was above normal. Teachers from my grade wanted me to skip a year of school.
I also didn’t have a hard time getting along with others. I was always friendly (at least as far as I can remember), and I enjoyed having fun. However, it seemed as if other children had a hard time getting along with me. I would be picked on a lot because I was smart, and I never understood why - for there were quite a few smart boys in my class as well. I don’t think it was because I was very different from them because I was smarter, for I think I acted like a kid just as much as everyone else. I think other kids didn’t get along with me and picked on me because they didn’t like the fact that I was a girl and I was smart. I could always beat the boys in any academic competition, and it was very easy for me to do so. I think that is why the people that picked on me the most were the boys.
I don’t think I acted like a boy, and I don’t think I was any less feminine because I was smart. I never picked fights with these boys, and I was never too aggressive (generally considered a masculine trait). Every day I would receive a series of cut-downs because I was considered smart. Every day I felt these blows, trying to stop me from being what I really wanted to be - what I really could have been.
Once I got to high school, I never tried as hard in any of the work I did. I became a procrastinator. More importantly, I noticed a change in the way that I viewed myself - I suddenly became overly conscious of looking and acting like a girl, and not a boy. I’m sure that others go through these changes in opinion, but I don’t think that the reasons are the same. I notice the changes now - there are differences in the way that I keep myself, for example. I make a point to always wear make-up and jewelry. My nails are always manicured - to the point of giving me difficulty in writing this. My hair has been long ever since I left the third grade. I haven’t cut my hair in four years.
For the time I spend making myself look "pretty", I could be doing something more constructive. I could be working harder to achieve my full potential in academics. I can’t help but wonder if I could have been any better if I wasn’t cut down when I was a child for doing something that was particularly masculine. I’m sure I could have.
I don’t know why the other kids treated me the way that they did. Maybe it was because the other boys felt threatened by my success. Maybe it was because the other boys thought that I was a girl that didn’t fit into the role that she was supposed to be playing. Maybe something different startled them, and maybe they felt that the only way to cope with that problem was to try to eliminate it. I don’t know what the reasons could be that a society would do that to a person, but those damages can be far too great.
I know that the things that have happened to me have had a great impact on my life as it is now. An example: I like to wear mini skirts. I must admit that they’re not particularly comfortable, and I often get annoyed by the stares that I get when I wear them, but I wear them anyway. Why? Because I feel that mini skirts will make me feel more feminine, and if more men notice that I am feminine, I feel better. Then I know that I will never be mistaken for a man again, or made fun of because I carry masculine traits. I find myself often playing the role of a "dumb blonde" around men-- I even find myself talking in a higher voice in an effort to make myself sound more feminine.
Once I grew older, I grew taller. Much taller. Five feet and ten inches is very tall for a woman to be - at least by today’s standards in society. This presents itself as another blow to my feminine ego (which is already damaged), and so I think I often feel as if I must overcompensate for these traits that I carry. I slouch more than the average; I try to act meek.
When I don’t gain acceptance in a feminine respect, especially after I’ve tried to (for example, when I’ve tried to look pretty and nobody notices the fact that I’ve made this effort to look "sexy", "cute", or "womanly"), I feel very dejected. I feel as if I haven’t done what I should have, and I feel like a failure. I feel miserable when I don’t have a boyfriend, for a woman can’t be a woman without a man. All my other female friends can’t understand why I want to have a boyfriend so much.
But I know why. Society tells me that I am supposed to be feminine. I am supposed to have a man, and if I don’t I am not a complete woman. I have accepted these notions, for they have been ingrained into my head for all of my life. I have already received blows to my fragile female ego-- I have been made fun of because I was smart (for that was a masculine trait), and I have been made fun of because I was tall. Maybe, because of this society and because of the things that have been said to me, I feel the need to make myself feel feminine.
And maybe that’s not right. And maybe, as I gain self-confidence, I will be able to change that and be myself in front of others. Maybe I will yet be able to grow to my full potential.
Look in advertisements today. There are women dressed as women in pretty pink dresses. There are men dressed as men-- in gray business suits. Women cook the meals, men go to work. Women are passive and submissive, men are strong and aggressive.
Children can see these signs at very early ages. Society - everyone that they know - accepts this and tells them that they should accept this as well. If a child sees something that doesn’t fit into this picture of a model society that everyone has construed for them, it can be considered understandable that the child may grow hostile to it, and want to make fun of it if it is considered something different.
Look at the influence that parents have over their child. Many children come from homes where the father works and the mother stays home and takes care of the kids. As soon as the child is born they are thrown into a nursery room with a color scheme that matches the baby’s sex. Girls are given dolls as opposed to trains, they are told to play inside instead of outside and they are appreciated when they act "feminine" instead of "masculine", and they are cut down when they deviate from society’s norm. Picture books even impact the child’s beliefs: Male and female role models can be found in these books, and they are particularly masculine and feminine. In the picture books What Boys Can Be and What Girls Can Be, children are informed that boys can be firemen, policemen, businessmen. Girls are informed that they can be school teachers, nurses, and - don’t forget - mothers and housewives. The effect these childhood experiences can have on children can have a great impact on them for the rest of their lives.
Not only can these things influence a child’s attitudes toward their own sense of self, but it can also have a great influence over the child’s view of others. If another child is acting in a way that seems to go against all that had been taught to that child from everyone and everything else, they may want to act out against that behavior, in a passive, conforming context. The behavior of making fun of someone that has characteristics that are different from that of their assigned sex (according to society) can reaffirm a person’s belief in their own masculinity/femininity.
But that’s not the only thing that the action of teasing does. It also has a very negative effect on the person that is being made fun of.