Chapter Twenty – Five “Many Men of Conscience”
Chapter Twenty – Five
“Many Men of Conscience”
“PREDICTION: Many men of conscience will ally themselves
publicly with a woman of feminist credentials.
They may be living
together or apart – it doesn’t matter; what matters is their public
alliance.
She will provide him
with credentials of his own: a plastic –
laminated wallet card that says
‘I have been approved
by a feminist woman’
and it will have on
it her good name. He will flash the card
when it suits him.
He will keep it in
his pocket when he buys pornography.
When he visits her
home, he will leave a mess.”
--- John Stoltenberg on such men in his Refusing
to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and
Justice, pp 182 & 183.
I’m a smart person, brilliant at times. Mirzah’s most intelligent, too. How does such a smart, smart person, only 22
years old, not remember anything more than a very, very few snippet moments out
of the first half of that short, short two decades’ length of his lifetime?!
“… anything about my life before I was 11. I don’t.”
We women know that question’s answer. And the explanation to a second, inferred one
also, “Why wouldn’t a person want to remember …?” We know the standard of that answer, too. O JYeah, that we do.
It is not as so many, many men and some teaching, teaching,
always talking women alike would have you to believe. From the evidence that are the facts of
history – and not the history written down and taught only from out the hands
and mouths connected to the minds of males but from the corrected history of the World – from the evidence that are the
facts, then, of the treatment of nation upon nation and individual family
members upon each other within those nations down through millennium after
millennium, it is certainly not about religiosity nor its studied absence.
As a matter of fact, I say that quite little study is
necessary. Furthermore, no college
degree, no fancy familial pedigree nor the classiest classist countenance is
required to understand – and remedy – dehumanization either. When we were eight, we knew what to think,
then what to do. By the time we are, all
of us everywhere with the exception of child soldiers, eight years of age we know, in all choices and decisions that are of life – altering consequence,
what The Right Thing to do, to think, to say, to act as, to be … is. In any exercise of our wills then after that
childhood point, in any that alters our or someone else’s life, we already know, before the action, the
wake of it. Which is exactly why folks
choose, rightly and wrongly, to go on
ahead and, purposefully upon their
wills, … act.
15 January 1989, I was standing in the
Oftentimes I used to wonder what Herry so urgently had to do that he so, so wanted to be
entirely free of the vestiges and visages of fatherly functions. But then my thinking would shortly become
clear, especially now after the first of this new 1989 year with last month’s
failed counseling theatrics and equally failed holiday therapy, “Why would he
be any different – separated – than
Herry had been when he was physically in
the marriage? Gone. Separated from it – that is, the
marriage. Separate. Escaped.
That was all the same.
Still.” Herry wasn’t off getting
help somewhere last summer, not from anyone, to change himself. And, more than ever most certainly, not now
either.
The Othello entrance is cramped so with swiftly gathering in
all three of the Truemaier Boys from the wintry temperatures, I was physically
forced solidly upside the ochre stone edging that, swinging around its corner
and into the living room proper, becomes the fireplace frame. Passing by me Jesse, Mirzah and Zane quickly
dispersed to the back, to their one and only, gothically leaden – gray
bedroom.
More on women’s answers about our memory loss suddenly
emerged.
Brushing my upper right arm, butting it really as if attempting
to diagnostically ballotte for a fetal calf or a floating kidney, thrusting his
knuckled half – fist hard into my deltoid a couple of times, maybe three even,
I heard Dr. Herod Edinsmaier derisively screech yet quietly of course, softly
enough so that only he and I – as was always Herry’s so humiliating and
dehumanizing cruelty with me – would be able to hear his heartlessness, his rage,
his violence, “You go on out there, Cunt.
Go on. You go on out there and
just try to find one. There isn’t a
married man alive out there who doesn’t lust after other women every single day
of his life. I’m tellin’ ya’, Twat,
there isn’t one man. Not one. Single or married. You jus’ try to find one. Go
on. Yooou won’t.”
Ten days earlier on 05 January of that year, Herod
Edinsmaier, the seventh of eleven, live – born kiddos of rurally isolated Detanimod
Edinsmaier and, of course, all of those babes spawned by Banished – to – the – Milkhouse
Sperm Donor Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier, Fatlantic’s saints john and jude roman
catholic lay priest, … Herod Edinsmaier marked, in his own way whatever that
had been, his 43rd birthday.
What measure is this man … … this man to whom I was still
married!?
I split. Immediately those kinds of words will do that
to women. Immediately. So that I, Legion Two, was able to thank
Herry for bringing me back my sons.
Instead of vomiting. Which is
what Legion One, the vulnerable and fragile, original core – I of the thing in
the vestibule that was me and which existed somewhere choked and tamped down
deep, deep inside Two, was doing.
Smirking of course, Herry
Edinsmaier opened the door, swaggered out through it and fled. Gone off, with all manner of that routine snorting,
sneering and sniggering of Herry’s, to his reality – evading pornography or out
“to teach” yet another alcoholics anonymous “friend” or to whatever else brought
him self – centered and self – aggrandizing escapism, I suppose. To do something of his own, that is – gone
off and away on “business” of his own.
This short scenario and its date I have, as part of the
initial question’s answer, mysteriously never
forgotten. I cannot account for precisely
when it was that AmTaham gave me such the wonderful apology gift that he did;
but in contrast, I sure’s hell can recall
this event of the exact middle of January.
It is easy to remember: the
braggadocio so typical of Herod Edinsmaier for one thing and the fact that, for
another, on this specific date there
is a second adult man’s birthday, thereby providing for a famous and instant
connection. 15 January is, of course,
the totally titled and allegedly reverent, nonviolent and peace – bringing reverend
doctor martin luther king’s calendar birthday, that date is. To remember when Herry visited this mess of
vernacular upon me – again – with filliping his filth out and onto my
humanness, all that I’ve ever had to do then is to hear that date. Then the link that this specific and
supposedly renowned man’s birthday on it makes to “drop – my – pants – and –
pop – ‘em – right – there – on – the – spot” Herry and to the rapist mindset
behind Dr. Edinsmaier’s mouth comes to me.
Simple. By association.
Nonviolent, peace – bringing, respectful, reverent, freedom
– loving, esteemed and now with a birthday as national holiday, literally
really, really time – honored, too.
These are all adjectives that many, possibly even most persons, use to
extol in verbal and written laud martin luther king, jr, but … in truth named Michael King at the time
of and after his actual birthing. I ask,
“Just how much peace and nonviolence, just how much esteem and respect, just how
much honor did this male, one of the 47 percent who are the Entire Earth’s very,
very clear MINority bring to me? By his
free will to make life – affirming choices in his behavior – or not – just exactly how free, by his
choosing to go ahead and to act on that will of his … am I? He – king – blesses me exactly how?”
“But he didn’t work for you!
He didn’t labor, suffer and die for you, White Girl! king did what he did for his people,” I hear all the time thrown back at me. And, … worse.
“Weeeeell, of females then, for only the black ones did he
march? Struggle for? Endeavor to deliver justice to? Or, more accurately, preach at? Only the black
ones? Okaaaaay. ” Saffron – and sometimes silver – blonde that
I surely am, I still am left
thinking, “All of those trafficking, clitoris – carving, acid – tossing, stone
– hurtling, abortions – forcing and “honor” – murdering ‘godly’ tribesmen’s
labors and sufferings and killings to bring upon us DEhumans esteem, reverence
and peace? For our own sakes? Those
acts are done for their peoples, their
holiest humans including king tell
us.”
That? That is holy
work? Besides his own frequent and
flagrant dissing – philanderer wanderings and because of it, too, ml king did
that wicked work also. By
doing nothing to stop it for his
people. By
his doing nothing for us DEhumans
who were his black people. Except
maybe siding, solely however in philosophy and rhetoric, against the tribal
abortions’ forcers – since in
And, we know why, we remember why, we DEhumans know
why. It’s about humanization, about
being a human being, a human. Who is and who so is not.
“But I’m white and of European descent. So, you say not those things to me then, because I’m white, you infer? So acts for me? Done to me?”
I further examine. “Only those of
folks of the same hues and ancestry as mine?
Those of, say, perhaps bill
Known … that is, by way of similarly “corrected”
history. Finally. Known, that is finally, that it ain’t at all about race!
Pulpits and podia and benches have long never been the
realms of Not Males; our stripe and color matters in this Truth not at
all. The visitation of Male hypocrisy
down upon us, the DEhumans, from such structures, however, most certainly has
been. These men’s acts, when None With
Voices of all races are watching, are done for and to me. And are done for ill for and to me. These men’s’ acts
bring not one of us freedom, no peace and no honor – if these same acts done in blatancy, or done in secrecy,
do not bring to all of us Females …
humanization.
“Abigail Adams to her husband John: ‘I desire you would remember the ladies, and
be more favorable to them than your ancestors … Put not such power in the hands of husbands. Remember
all men would be tyrants if they could.’
They could, and they did. The machine of the patriarchs ground on, crushing
women, children and native races as it went, consigning the flower of its youth
to dusty death miles from home, making those same women, children, youths and
natives the excuse for
all its own self – serving, self – deluding obsessions,” writes the verse of
Prophetess Rosalind on p 215 in Chapter Nine, “Dominion and Domination: The Rod of Empire,” of her Holy Scripture, The
Women’s History of the World.
Furthermore, the Righteous
Prophetess rightly declares early, early on – – already on page 3 of her
Scriptures’ Introduction – – in fact, “… why women’s history at all? Surely men and women have always shared a
world, and suffered together all its rights and wrongs? It is a common belief that whatever the
situation, both sexes faced it alike.
But the male peasant, however cruelly oppressed, always had the right to
beat his wife. The black slave had to
labor for the white master by day, but he did not have to service him by night
as well. This grim pattern continues to
this day, with women bearing an extra ration of pain and misery whatever the circumstances.” And just why is the Prophetess correct about
this in history, do you suppose? No,
certain white women didn’t have to service any black man at night as well; but
at times, certain others did have to and then, at other times, all colors of
women had to – had to – fuck all colors of other men.
Or? Or otherwise
endure the messes, the wakes of these men’s wills – more than we, “only”
physically fucked so far, already had been enduring. We Not Males, We The Other, We The Less Than,
We The Not The Standard Measure of All Things Human, We The Females … We have
had to permit and to prevail through all of this – no matter the pulpit and
podium preachings, no matter the bone – crushing, mother – fucking rulings from
the judicial benches on high, no matter his pillared or picayune comings and
goings and thinkings and doings, no matter the colors of the Males’ canons and
marriage contract avowals, sacred or secular.
* *
* *
Three months later, in the heart of springtime, AmTaham sat
at my cleared, brown table facing east, there for his field of vision a kitchen
wall of nondescript – and me. His tender
hands squeezed the two of mine across from him.
I hurt, and he knew it, and it was only 10 o’clock in the course of that
particular morning so far.
Trial was upon us in a couple of weeks’ time hence, and I
was not yet released. That is, I am
thinking that AmTaham and Mehitable and all of my other blood, too, are these
nice, churchly folk who are going to be so disappointed in me when I fail at
this vow I had promised to keep for all of my so ungodly life. For a second time! A second failed, males’ – made mawwiage this
one is going to be, you see.
After all, it was the Truemaier Boys’ Gran Dame of a
grandparent, Mehitable herself, who had screamed at me and within easy earshot
of not only AmTaham but also of all three of my sons when we’d returned from
that friggin’ wonderment of Wisconsin known as the House on the Rock, “You
what?! You did what?! Herry’s moved out?! Om’god, Legion. You went and did it! You did!
You really went and did it now, Legion.
YOU LOST A MARRIAGE TO A DOCTOR?!
HOW COULD YOU LOSE A MARRIAGE TO A DOCTOR, YOU … YOU … YOU IDIOT?!” JYeah.
Yup, those’re pretty much exactly the words she shrieked out – when,
earlier, I had wanted to scream out at the glossy glassy opulence of that
fucking colossal dwelling dangling off a precipice within the Dairy State which
she had forced me to pay way over ten cents and ten minutes’ time to tour.
Second time around all right,
and Mr. Jazzy Jinx’s lawyering bills: O!
were they ever piling up! No, not
wedding presents piling up such as “second
time around” could suggest, nor even wedding
bills piling up. Not with Legion True
did it – that phrase – mean either of those!
Was it because I’d never worn white that I so flunked out? JYeah, it was surely as simple a fact as the
nonvirginal silky sky blue and silver satin on go – round #1 with John and as , of course, the
so, so same nonvirginal kiwi and lime green linen shirtwaist when wed to
Mehitable’s idyllic Good and Wonderful … Doctor
… Herod Edinsmaier, wasn’t it? Both of
which liveries I had initially purchased – for other purposes! That,
indeed, must’ve been why: those frocks and
their colors were cursed. Or, was it the
cloaked thing in the room that was me – the witch … which was cursed?
I wasn’t crying which is unusual; when pissed I usually do
sob what Oprah calls “the ugly wail.”
Loud and proud? Noooo, I loathe
the way I look when I weep. And this
morning I was really angry, not just sad, so that I could have been really,
really, well, very … uuuunbeautiful!
AmTaham had just confirmed again to me what we both already knew, “Herry
is pond scum.” Firm realization that the
divorce was imminent started when I, always a scientific researcher seeking
hard statistical data and, finally too, at 40 years of age, got up the bloody
damned nerve to ask my father something I had wanted to –– since Herry’s arm ballottement
of me a quarter year earlier. “Daddy,
out of 100 American males, how many would you say lust after other women every
single day of their lives?”
“What?”
“Ah, ah, Um.”
“What did you ask me just now?” It was his deep deafness and my hesitancy on
how to phrase the hypothesis in my head into a query instead for Daddy. To him the question wasn’t at all offputting;
he just hadn’t heard it.
And AmTaham is my father, “I can ask him anything, can’t
I? That is surely what all the parenting
books declare. Hell, I’m 40! Of course, I can. And I want to know. Who better for a kiddo to know from than from her own pa?! Than for her father to construe for her the
hearts and minds of men.” Especially
those specific slices of anatomy on men of conscience! I had a theory, a not too terribly
scientifically formed one but a conjecture, nonetheless, that said that Herry
was wrong. That men, and of course
married ones, did not, not every one
of them, “lust after other women every single day” of their lives. They did not, I am thinking. And sort of presuming so all of these weeks
since Herry’s swine spew had, once more, slopped onto my eardrums – and onto my
spirit behind them – back around that Ides of January.
“Um, out of 100 American men, Daddy, and including the
married ones, not just the single ones, how many of that 100, would you say
lust after other women every day? Ya’
know, every single day of their lives? Now I know you’ve been all over the world,
but I’m not asking about them, just about the ones raised up in
Without a flicker of indecisiveness, without withdrawing his
massive and so strong hands from mine, without even so much as a tiny twitch
from that eye tic thing of his going on, a painful neuropathy in the right
periorbit, cheek and temple with which affliction the poor, poor man had been plagued
for at least the last three decades of
his own life, he point – blank into my eyes answered, “Four.”
“Whoa. Four?!?” Confirmed, this number did, most certainly right off that Herry was, indeed,
pond shit for sure, I am thinking.
“Yeaaah. Four.”
“But that can’t be, Daddy.
It’s way, uh, uh, it’s way more than that, isn’t it?” another furled
brow and, at 40, as nearly all
daughters I know believe, still utterly and unconditionally thinking that my
father is infallible. Sitting here on
Othello Drive in Herry’s kitchen at Herry’s table, it is that certain I’m – the
– center – of – Daddy’s – universe je ne sais quoi from when I was, alone with
just him in that cold, cold country kitchen, that three – year – old sipping
really hot mocha lattes made with our real
cow’s real cream at 5 in the 1951
morning – that he is my father which,
therefore, makes him … perfect.
I walk a lot now and, while doing so, purposefully never use
any noise – blaring electrical device on my hearing ear as I go; where I mostly
stroll in
Returning to my fourth decade and the statistic on the
percentage of American adult males who, every
day, lusted, he elaborated, “It may be.
It may be way more than that; I don’t really know of course, but I truly
do doubt it. I doubt that it is very
much more than four.” This sounded to
me, um, … better, at least better, a
truer answer, even if with no mammoth figure in it than just the number
four. “I do know one thing for
certain though, Kitty.”
“Yeah? What is that?”
“The vast majority of men do not possess carnal greed, let
alone the time necessary, for it. We
just aren’t made up like that.”
“No?! Yeah well, I
get the time thing, Daddy, but not the prurient part?” I had learned that word from AmTaham. What I’d really learned from him about
‘prurient’ is how to correctly pronounce it which, to this day, I hear folks,
even ones knowledgeable, ones who should
know Noah like Daddy knew Webster’s but apparently do not, slaughter it.
“No, we aren’t. We
are not. Not truly accountable men. We are not.
And if you walk even just over this
country alone, let alone over the World, there is so much to just staying
alive that consumes a man’s will and his energies that, well, that is where his desires are
placed. If he is responsible. You know, accountable. That is what polishes off a man’s innards.”
What I hadn’t yet defined for
myself, let alone learned deep in the pit of me, Daddy was so trying to teach
me. When a man’s thoughts interfere with
life’s responsibilities, whether to the self or to the self who has chosen to closely
put others into his life, then that is … unaccountability. The effort and time expended in thinking, an
action in itself – and so, so often consuming inordinate amounts of time – results
in outward endeavors and labors that either are the taking care to keep one’s
self and his family alive, safe, well and happy or it results in the squandering, slacking, defrauding, cheating,
deceiving, threatening, dehumanization and destruction of those same people and
of all that is worthy to them.
AmTaham finished, “Nothing, absolutely not one thing, is
done, no act happens from out the hands and mouth and feet nor out from any
other anatomy either, unless it is … first
… thought up. Not by any human being,
male or female, Kitty. Molecules of sex
hormone chemicals cause a man to look after the well – being of himself and his
loved ones? Uh – uh. You will never convince me of that, that
sexual desire and lustful thinking over and over and on and on every single day, result in the actions
that keep a nation’s people healthy, safe and happy. Never.
Sure, lusting occurs. And
sometimes more than at other times, but thinking is not only an act but an act
of … discipline. One truly accountable
disciplines himself before choosing, before choice – making. Will is what I’m talking about. One’s will is honed; it is disciplined. And this is begun as a little, little kid, Kiddo. Honing one’s will is. Into making the choices about then going
ahead and doing The Right Thing. Both
then as small, small children and right now, too. No, accountable men do not lust after
anything – power, material wealth or women
– every day. And, Kitty, neither do
accountable women! I’m not saying that
women aren’t seductresses and temptresses or just looking for fun? Sure, that they can be. But not every single damn day. Fudge, no.
Anyhow, how absolutely exhausting would that be, don’t you suppose? Well, think about it, wouldn’t it be? Yes, so the same is true, not on all matters
I know, but on this one? I am convinced
on this one. About this – your stat
question, Legion – I am correct. Four.”
“Wow! Now that’s protection, Daddy!” I didn’t tell him this though because to say
so now, “Thanks, Thanks a heap!” Thanks now for my finally receiving his learned
refuge and protective pedagogy now – that
is, now two failed marriages later
and at least four, those four of his
statistic, bad boys before and in between – well, … it would only’ve served to
hurt him.
* *
* *
Aprovechar is a verb – and a concept – expressed in the
Spanish language which when defined in regard to someone’s acts means “to take
the greatest advantage of,” “to get out of something for yourself its fullest
benefits.” The 40 – something noncustodial
mother and middle school teacher who tutored me about it, a wanderer of European Caucasian descent
who had walked around Mexico and Central America and had herself there been schooled
regarding it, stated that what its understanding is to us in English lingo is “to swindle,” “to screw the hell out
of.”
The crux of this corruption – the lethal whammy of this
particular verb, however, – is that its correct usage pertains to swindling and
to screwing loved ones as well as to that corruption perpetrated and visited upon
just anyone and everyone else. Upon supposed
loved ones and folks known and close to us, that is. Upon people we are alleged … to love.
In other words, the mama and middle school teacher stated to me, it is a
most acceptable, understood – and even expected – practice to perform acts of aprovechar
in order to acquire for yourself its noun, aprovecharse which means “profit,”
even though these actions can be the swindling and the screwing of one’s very own
mother or daughter or son or mother – in – law or girlfriend or colleague or
teacher or priest or neighborhood cop or … district civil court judge … and
vice versa.
“Now just how does this get to be acceptable, understood,
even expected?” I am left thinking.
“Well, it’s just their culture. Ya’ gotta unnerstan’, it’s just how things
are done there,” is the usual, flippancy that I receive back in reply, back to
me from several, unrelated sources, ones who, I suspect, are not truly thinking that answer through with
care before hissing and spitting it back at me.
“Uh – uh.” I
counter. First off, that’s no
explanation. That’s an excuse – just an excuse of the Prophetess’s type about which she writes in her
Scripture. Saying that it is ‘culture’,
that it is ‘cultural’, that it is a ‘custom’ of some other folks’ ‘diversity’
and ‘tradition’ and ‘ethnicity’ and that that is ‘just the way it is’, why,
that is an excuse of “the rod of
empire” and “the crushing dominion over” type of excuse for why things are.
For why things such as corruption, abuse and violence happen in certain
areas or even with different peoples in certain parts of the world. Chapter 9, verse, … well, page 215, of
Prophetess’s The Women’s History of the World,
I am thinking. An excuse to, indeed, get something for yourself or get done an outcome that you want to have
happen. A selfish, self – serving,
oftentimes self – aggrandizing and, most probably, a vengeance – exacting excuse.
Simple, a simple trick. Actually
the perpetrators of all war and all of its participants, of its warriors
… use precisely this excusing, this tricking.
This corruption, abuse and violence.
Secondly, if one
screws, swindles, gropes the greatest advantage and takes out of a circumstance
its fullest benefits by becoming, ie,
by morphing into someone who deceives, defrauds, slacks off at, squanders,
threatens, dehumanizes and destroys her or his good name and those of others,
well, fuck! That isn’t cultural or
traditional or customizing or ethnic.
That doesn’t just happen in certain areas and by the doings of certain
peoples of the most southerly portion of
A wrong as big as in, “He done her wrong!” Or, “She done him wrong!” She or he is a father – , er, ah, I mean, a mother – fucking taker.
And that, to become a taker, …
that is a wrong.
You can have your every – waking – moment lustful and surround
– sound pornographic thoughts. You can have your flings after such thoughts,
junior ml king. You, Herod Edinsmaier,
you can have, in addition, your
incessant procrastination, your insatiable insecurities, your passive
aggressive fits, your narcissistic ones and even some fun at those romps, the
ones either in your head or gropingly and voyeuristically acting them out
inside your goddamn exhibitionistic bed.
But what you cannot do, Mr.
Aprovechar (instead of Mister Doctor Wonderful or hardly Reverend Doctor
Wonderful) is … insult me.
You cannot expect me to understand nor can you expect me to
find any of it … acceptable. Nor will
you, in any fucking way, find me agreeable to promoting and to enabling you in
your quite literal mother – fucking pursuit of any of it. You can have it all but utterly none of it,
as a matter of fact, can you have … on my time or on my dime. Or with, ever
at all, – in any mother – fucking
format – my Truemaier Boys.
You just can’t have any of it and, at the same time, have also
… avowals, accountability and prominence or dare to preach to or judge out of chancel
pulpits or from behind solid oak podia and leather hide – trimmed, judicial benches
… me!
And the absolute last mother – fucking thing I will ever let
you, Edinsmaier, do is make me … “go
under.”
As in … make me “undergo”
a Strindberg – style program, er, … pogrom … of mental therapy that you, Dr.
Aprovechar, have “designed” in order to change, in any frickin’ way, me!
Least of all will I succumb to your plan of conniving fuckwash to change
me over to … your way of being! I shall
not be tattered with your chatter and your prattle of how it is I don’t
understand you or how I don’t understand your people or how it is I am not
tolerant or that I am discriminatory or that I should be (even more fucking) generous to you and not (what you call) prudish, straight – laced, that I need to just get
over, that I need to just quit with my disgust and loathing of your obsessions
with yourself and your accoutrements – be they in your hands or in your
pants.
I shall not … become,
Mister Corrupt Doctor. I shall not
become, with your tyranny and your torture of me … you. And you will never, never, never “sign off”
on me. Uh – uh. Uuuuh – uh.
I shall not become you.
Except hardened. In my way and not yours. I shall become hardened, steeled. A ring of steel around my finger, no longer a
gold ring, a ring of steel around all of myself. Tougher and stronger than I had ever previously
thought myself capable of … becoming!
There’s an order to having your disorder of aprovechar
addiction, too, Dr. Edinsmaier. That’s
dis – order: jya’ know, as in dis – ease, malady, sickness, illness. You can have all of your sickness, your
illness, all of what you want, even when it is getting your pros and yourself
some strange, having your porno pix and “poetry” and your slimy jokes’ prose,
even frotteurizing her when she isn’t looking and not able then to positively
identify your hands and your crotch. Or,
your face. You can. Just not exactly when it enters your head to
have it, however.
You want a couple of prostitutes? Fine.
You want to engage in all manner of these sexual addiction behaviors of
yours – from voyeurism to exhibitionism to the indecent liberties’ groping in
the press of a crowded elevator or the clamor of a St. Cecil’s youth basketball
game, Herry? How it was you did grope Grace?! Fine!
Just not when you are … in my
life. So, jya’ know, that will mean not with Grace! Since she’s my very best friend, jya’ know,
Grace is in my life! So … not
with Grace!
You can take it all, Corrupt Doctor Daddee. But you cannot take it – and have me and my
Boys, too.
That is the aprovechar insult to us four which AmTaham is
helping me to stop you from taking from us.
You cannot be around me and around my children and keep on taking from
us our dignity and our integrity like that.
So in the order of things that, … that
… is why you are gone, Pillar of the Community Doctor Edinsmaier! You can have it all, the dissing, the
disrespect and the disloyalty and the distrust and the disconnect – your unaccountability, Herry – but
now? Now … you order it up from others. Not
from us four. Not anymore.
Given enough rope – about such men as you, Herry, one of John
Stoltenberg’s and AmTaham’s 4 percent at least, comes a prediction! From another of Stoltenberg’s so – apt
descriptions of you, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, you Pillared Man of Medicine in the
Community, from his 1989 Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice, p 183.
“PREDICTION: Many men of conscience, when their wife says
goodbye, when their live – in maid says clean your own piss around the toilet,
when their politically astute feminist comrade – in – arms says “I no longer trust you” and stops
wanting to hang out together – when their personal conduit to feminist
consciousness leaves them – many men of conscience will become less and less
like men of conscience and more and more like ordinary men. They will turn their attention to political
issues that don’t blatantly remind them of the fact that men like themselves
oppress women like her. Nuclear
energy. Wars in foreign lands. Food co – ops. Rent strikes.
Important issues, not unimportant issues. It’s just that they’re better than alcohol or
drugs when your heart is broken. AND YOU
WANT IT TO HARDEN.”
Or, when she does recover her memory, then what? Then what, when it comes back to her
what he’s done to her, what he still does to her, what he takes from her, when she wakes up and grabs back out of that so
pissed – on, draining toilet her dignity and her integrity before he flushes it
and her away forever, then what from
some of these men of conscience? They will turn their attention to a few blatant issues that not only
remind them of their oppressing, but they will go there willfully – with that exact purpose of will. And, for him, the ultimate epitome of aprovechar in every single sense of its
meanings everywhere will be to take
away, to wrench away from her, that fucking waked – up wench, her
children. Her children. Her, not his –
never his – never, never, never his Truemaier Boys.
* *
* *
Mirzah Truemaier, who is, I so desire, one of those true and
pure men of conscience, at least in the making, needs to remember who Herod
Edinsmaier, his most immediate male Ancestor in The Making, and then too, who
his Righteous Ancestor AmTaham True both are.
Grace says it isn’t so, that Mirzah is already lost. That he is just another Herry. Herry, the amoral atheist. Grace, who
has been with me – right along beside me – throughout this entire decade and a
half. That is what she thinks and she
tells me so, too.
Because, Grace says, Mirzah was with me, his mama, the least
amount of time of all of my children and that what time there was with me as
his primary caretaker and, therefore, as his primary influencer in his littlest
years, well, she says it just wasn’t enough.
Not enough time. Thieves, a
primary one and quite a few others, took … stole that time from us. Grace is Grace Portia of the
Lionel Portia has, about Mirzah, the same thing to say and
for the same tortuous time constraint reason –– but also for another. Lionel repeatedly tells both Grace and me,
“The best thing a father can do for his children is to stay well – married to
the kiddos’ mother. The best thing a
father can do for his kids is to love their mama.” Lionel is just like Grace, his spouse, as far
as soberspeak. He does not talk much and
never animates. Never. One tends to listen to Lionel without
hesitation; because of his utterly flat affect, you’re just sort of drawn to
hearing what it is he has to tell you.
It’s about … accountability, it is.
From a true man of conscience, it’s about accountability.
Lionel’s hands clasped Grace’s shoulders outside a Second
Judicial District courtroom one October day when he finally spoke about Mirzah,
about Jesse, about Zane and, to Grace, most especially about – Herry. About Herod Edinsmaier. His jaw nearly immobile when he spoke, Lionel
deadpanned right into her lovely brown eyes as he tenderly yet ever so
imperceptibly squeezed both of her upper arm deltoids. “You just remember, you remember, Grace, what
that man took from all of us. Can you do
that? For yourself, for Legion of
course, and for me too, Grace? Can you remember, Darling?” Grace, unlike Mirzah and unlike me and unlike
so, so many women, Grace had, well, Grace had never mother – fuckingly forgotten.
I so yearn to know that Grace is, on this one –– on Mirzah,
wrong. But, I fear, I do not know. I don’t know about Mirzah. I do know, though, that it is not about the
male’s humiliation, his embarrassment, his shame, his avoiding the Truth and
protecting and hiding his image. It’s
not about him.
It is about
accountability and what AmTaham calls “so much to just staying alive” that we
should learn and remember from our ancestors.
On becoming accountable, on
that, Mirzah. Accountable Ancestors – in
– Training and, then too, what eventually always, always will follow: Accountable
Ancestoring.
It is about
remembering history, our history –
and what happens when we do not.
To that end then, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, iiiiit’s …
Show Time!
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