I cried.

I thought that was supposed to make me feel better! Now I am hung up on all of these things. Where is that magic drug to numb me? Where is that heal all that can give me clarity? Where is that God? This is feeling like a very empty existence.

I need a therapist. This is not going well.

So, here is my ranting on the world conceive.

Mary conceived Jesus.

Pro-lifers have been fighting that life begins at conception. Jesus’ life began at the moment that Mary was touched by the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian… you cannot believe anything other than this. Jesus existed (in the Earthly realm) since conception.

My mother was violated.

Rogue sperm forced their way into my mother, surging into her body. One bastard sperm punched its way into the life giving, nourishing egg that my mother created for the life she was to give out of love. One million spears thrust into the air to pierce that one small target. My mother’s rapist won his power struggle that day. I am here.

Am I pro-life?

You bet your ass!

“DICK” is my uncle… and my mother’s rapist (according to her side of the “truth”). Don’t get me wrong, my life is pretty TV talk show already because of that.  But please keep in mind that he is my mother’s sister’s husband… not her brother.  So all of the incest jokes can’t rightfully happen.

“DICK” is that character in Law and Order who is there the whole time, who’s alibi checks out, who is charismatic, smart, good looking, and who is the bastard who did it all. There is always one clue… one overlooked clue that gives the perp’s secret away. “DICK”‘s clue has been somewhat confusing to me… and at the same time it may have also proved his innocence of rape, but guilt of the lie.

During that teenage anger burst of mine, mom drove a dagger into my soul by telling me that she was raped and that I was a child born of an evil act. She did not say who raped her. I assumed it was “the man from Ohio.” “The man from Ohio” was the man that I thought was my father.  She said that his name was “Ford.”  It could have been Toyota for all I am concerned.

I continued on with my life. I did not want to, but I did. For whatever reason, I thought that I was better than just offing myself into that abyss. What would that prove? I forced myself to fill my time. I filled it with jobs, extracurricular activities, homework study groups and other completely different things that one would consider mindless that would just keep me away from the “truth.”

At some point in time, “DICK” found out that my mother had told me that my life was a lie and that I was not only a mistake, but that I was also a child born of that act of rage and power. It must have been eating away at him to come out of his closet and tell me the truth… He, at one point, I am assuming, decided that enough was enough and that he had to stick his head out and tell me his “truth.”

“DICK” told me that he had gone my entire life watching me. He was proud of my accomplishments. I was not a mistake. He loved me.

What was to gain by doing this? I guess that would have been me.

In secret, we met. I lived two lives. I was the mistake and the loved. But, never was my life changed from the fact that I was truth and lie.

“DICK” lives in the Southern portion of the States. As I have said, he is smart, charismatic, good looking and does fine financially. He has been doing work for a prestigious southern school. He works at a methadone clinic in a southern metropolis. He runs the clinic and when I visited… it looked like he was doing a wonderful job. He took me there one day while visiting. He was an admitted past junkie himself. He beat the system and was back to show the system that it was wrong. Everyone at the clinic loved him. He ruled with a soft heart and an iron fist. Everyone there connected with him… just as I did.

While on the drive out of the burbs to the inner city, he admitted to me that he was clean of cheating on his wife. One year and a half… I knew that he lived the lie still. I could see him coercing my mother into doing something that she would later regret. I guess this could be considered rape. He took advantage of a young innocent woman of 18 that was visiting for a week. While sis was out, the predator came out as well.

Everyone around me lied. Whether or not someone raped my mother is not the issue anymore. I fucking exist. That is the thing. I fucking exist. My biological mother says that she was raped, my biological father says that he did not rape her.

Both have little to gain and everything to lose. So… lets think about this logically.

Behind door Number One:

Mother:
“I was raped” – This is the statement that my mother has stuck to since the day that she found out that I was secretly meeting with my father. Before that day of being found out, she had been telling her pathetic lie about that enigmatic anonymous man in Ohio that no one knew and that could never be found. My step-father of 6 years had been along for the ride.

Let it be known that my mother has a serious form of rheumatoid arthritis that has left her mostly crippled and unable to do many of the things that we take for granted every day. That being said… she depended on my step-father; his love… his money… his INSURANCE. After “the day” he realized that he had been duped. She went grovelling back on her stomach to him.

She could never admit that the sexual act that she engaged in was consensual.

Behind door Number 2:

Father:
“Your mom is nuts…” “we’ve all known it for years.” “For God’s sake, you look like me.” “Everyone knows.”

First of all, I hate even mentioning his name or mentioning Father or Dad at all. To be blunt, I don’t like saying “Dad” or “Father” at all. It is a shame to my children. We will refer to him as DICK to keep anonymity.

DICK lives with my mother’s sister and three daughters to my mother’s sister. That makes them sisters and cousins to me. DICK has been in my life since I have been born as Uncle DICK. I was very close to my cousins/sisters from a very young age. I spent quite a bit of time with them to the point that I stayed at their home during the summers sometimes. (I’m not sure I would have let my bastard child stay at DICK’s house if it had in fact been true that DICK raped me…but anyway)

When DICK told me about the “truth” he seemed sincere and as though he was telling me the truth. I believed him. He is a charismatic bastard. He is able to manipulate any situation into working out for him.
Let it be known that a couple of years back after at least ten years of NO contact from the night I found out, I made contact. My wife and I went to visit him (to the dismay of many in my family). I found out that he continued to lie. To his wife- he won a significant amount of money while there on a scratch off lottery ticket and did not tell her. He spent the money on God knows what… He admitted that he was “clean” from cheating on his wife (my aunt) for a year and a half now (WTF does that mean?). And my sisters had eaten his lies for years… but that is another HUGE story.

Here is your first Jerry Springer moment of this blog…  My mother’s sister’s husband is my father.  My cousins are my sisters.

He said it was only “one night.” That it was a mistake, but that I was not.  We met regularly for the next month or so.  He might pick me up from work and we would go around town or stop someplace for a bite to eat.  All of that came to a jarring halt when we were on our way into K-Mart one day and my mother was coming out.  She was stunned to the point that traffic came to a halt outside of the front doors.  She looked on in terror and ran to the car.   My father said, “it was bound to happen sometime.”  He took me a block from my house and dropped me off in the usual fashion.

My grandparents were at my house.  My mother was sobbing in the living room on the comfy seat.  Her head was held by her hands.  I could not see her face.  A family meeting had been called with the local priest.  We went to my aunt’s workplace, sat around a conference table, mother sobbing and it was there that another element was added to my confusion.

My uncle was my father and according to my mother… she was raped by him.  My solace, however awkward, by knowing that my father was my uncle and that it was one stupid night turned back into an act of rage and terror.  I was in a vortex…  surrounded by people that “knew” what I was.  I was dead to the world.  I fell into a heap on the floor in a fit of sorrow and rage that noone could have ever imagined.  I never recieved therapy for any of this mess.  After this night is was something that the family shoved under the rug and acted like never happened.  I think that hurt me worse.

One of my coworkers had told me that she would take me home that day, I told her that it was o.k. because now I had a ride.  I had a ride from an uncle that lived an hour away on a weekday at the end of spring…  I was entrigued and scared at the same time.  He wanted to know if there was a place that we could go and talk away from everyone else.  I mentioned a local park.  We set off… silently.

We got to the park and being that it was the end of spring it was still light at 8:30p.m. so we got out and walked to a nearby pavilion.  He looked me in the eyes with a sad kind of stillness.  Tears welling up… he told me that he was my father.  I crumbled again…  He told me that everything that my mother had told me was a lie and that when he had heard what my mother had told me he got sick of everything.

I looked like him.  I looked like his 3 children.  My sisters… my cousins…

My mother was a petite woman 4’11″, small build, cute little face…  I was stocky, thick, square and full.  I personified the opposite of my mother.  I knew that I looked like him.  Who else would I look like???

I continued to participate in my musical activities because it was my escape.  I sang and performed because it got me away from the truth.  It allowed me to make my own truth.  It seems that little stocky guys are good for fullbacks, rapists and tenors.  I sang constantly.  It became my release.

I got a job when I turned 16 for a local steakhouse.  I quickly became the head cook of steaks.  My boss said that I had an uncanny talent for cooking steaks.  I loved it.  I loved cooking because it made people happy.  I also loved cooking because I imagined cooking him.  I wanted him to burn over the charcoals.  I would have burned him to a crisp.  In shop talk we might call that blackened to make it a bit more marketable.

In spite of all of this mess that was dumped on me I continued to succeed in academics, extracurricular events and my job.  I was actually class president twice in high school.  I hid my depression.  I hid my terrors, my desires to kill myself, my need to hunt him down, brand him on the forehead with “RAPIST” and execute him medieval style.

In 1997, when I was 17 I was still working at the local steakhouse and at this time I was really doing a good job.  I made an awesome rib-eye and my t-bones couldn’t be beat.  I made them constantly…  While I was cleaning up the floor one evening in the middle of spring I had a surprising guest come to the restaurant…

Drowning in the deepest sea
In hell he burns
Pushed by by boy like me
through the grinder he churns

In a labyrinth
the boy walks in strife
devoured by the minotaur
his jugular bleeding with rife

Through an opening he sees
by the man who sneaked silently
his entrails…his insides cleaned
is this a mortal sin?

A quiet night
Sleeping in bed
He is in fright
but now he is dead.

-me (1996)

daggers of ice drip from each level

icy shards curl waves of winter

each leviathan open wide

filtering out winter

dousing the mountainside

devour and preserve me with calm coolness

spit the lies out in shame

-me (1995)

Roughs her down
A punch turns into a tear
Pushing her down
Every scream muffled

Regiment for which he belongs
Animals rage in him
Punctures her soul
Enough for a great sin

Running away
Away from the knotted tree
Perhaps she didn’t know
Evolving from this terror is ME

Making a product of the damned
Everyone knows her secret…

-me 1995