A True Story

This is still my favorite thing, how I went to the gynecologist to get my witch’s tit cut off and I told her how I told everyone that was where Satan suckled from me.

“Of course it is,” she said.

 

Why Did This Happen?

In my own life, one thing I want is to understand my inherited mess, be at peace with it, and pass as little of it along to the next generation as possible. I don’t want to do this in order to excuse what’s happened. In most cases, it’s not my place to let people off the hook for their actions anyway. But I don’t have a questions like “How could a man do x to people he supposedly loves?” I have a question like “How could this man, whose name I know with my soul, do x?” It feels always like there must be some story behind it. Some way a person learns, “This is how I can treat people.”

When I was younger, I used to imagine making some kind of art project that would represent my life. I imagined a huge instillation piece where all these pendulums or spoons or knitting needles would hang overhead, but within arm’s reach. And each of them would be named with the names of people in my family, as many of them as I could learn. And then they’d be tied together in ways that represented our relationships. Short, tight strings for siblings and parents, looser strings for cousins and aunts and uncles, and so on. And then, the viewer would be invited into the room to shake one of the objects. This would represent the something–the thing under question–and then you could sit there and watch it rattle out through the family. See how setting one swinging wildly sends so many of them into chaos.

But I never did it because I’m not an artist and I didn’t know how to begin to make it work. But I still like the idea of it, because it makes pretty clear how something that happens to a person, say, when he’s 8, can reverberate through all his relationships, can cause a grandchild to move a certain way, long after the man the 8 year old was is dead.

I’ve been thinking about that with this whole Chris Brown thing. We know how this goes. We know that victims of sexual abuse often reframe it for themselves as some kind of conquest, some kind of proof of their sexual prowess–and we know how, even when that’s the story they tell themselves about the abuse, the damage some of them leave in their wake suggests otherwise. I’m not trying to excuse Chris Brown nor insinuate that all victims of sexual abuse are lying about their experiences of it or broken by it in some way that makes them a danger to others. I am saying that, when an 8 year old kid learns he cannot control what happens to his body, it’s not hard to see why it’s so important to him as a man to keep complete control of the bodies around him.

And I think it’s possible to be broken-hearted and alarmed for someone like Brown and to be frightened of what he’s doing to others in his adult life.

I Have So Many Questions about the Campfield-Ramsey Fundraiser Affair

Read this and then come back here. Please.

Okay, here are my questions:

1. Is this proof that Campfield can spell and use proper grammar when it suits him?

2. Or does he already have a new executive assistant doing this stuff for him?

3. Didn’t his last executive assistant get fired for campaigning on the taxpayer dime?

4. Why in the world would Ramsey fundraise with Campfield? Especially in Nashville? I would love to sit outside that fundraiser and see who from here is giving money to Campfield. Because I would laugh at those dumbasses every time I saw them.

5. Was sending this email really a mistake on Campfield’s part or a way to try to undo the sting of getting his executive assistant fired by showing that he hadn’t pissed off Ramsey so much that it personally hurt Campfield, even if it cost the job of the executive assistant?

6. If Campfield is trying to outmaneuver Ramsey, that’s going to be hilarious. But, if Ramsey is throwing his support behind Campfield, well, good luck with that.