life

Basket Case

~ bethbishopwrites ~ Leave a comment

From the storage space under the basement stairs, I took out my mother’s wooden picnic basket. I opened the lid, with its grinning sun. I removed the plastic utensils and plates. I spread the checked napkins on the bottom. On them, I laid

  • a ceramic chicken
  • a plastic mouse in a vest
  • a triceratops sticker
  • a drawing of a snake-clad woman

I closed the lid and took the basket with me.

I kept the basket safe for years, never opening the lid until one day, you needed me to open it. I took out these precious talismans, hoping somehow they could help me help you. I released the pieces of my heart they held and tried to bandage your wounds.

Too strong. Not strong enough? Spoiled? For whatever reason, it doesn’t quite work. I don’t have something you need.

A Few Miles South

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You are there

On the cusp of the beanbag,

The protected island but

Near the edge of the storm.

Close enough to

Hear the wind scream

Through the window screens

Close enough to

Hear the wind suck

At the shingles.

And after,

You find pieces of

Someone else’s life

Lodged in the mud

Of your backyard.

You are perched on the edge.

And you face forward,

You look over the cusp.

You close your eyes,

And thank Whoever

That you were on the beanbag.

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Even knowing you don’t, I can’t help but.

I covered my face – though no one but god was watching – and sobbed, the water of the shower washing my tears down the drain, wasted just like my feelings. I blew my nose in my palm and washed that down the drain, too. I slapped myself.

Snap out of it. Don’t spend yourself.

Well, I have to afford it. The grief shows me that I am not cold, isolated, or bitter.

I felt the imagined loss as if it was real, and I mourned it. I mourned you and the believed-death of beauty in potentia. I asked myself why? Because I do, and I can’t help but.

Pantera

~ bethbishopwrites ~ 2 Comments

Sitting on the concrete bench in front of the building, I smoked between classes. I liked the spot, a kind of perch atop the wide stairs that overlooked sidewalks, flowerbeds, oaks planted after the campus burned during the Civil War, and the crosswalk. Despite a flashing neon yellow sign that read, “Stop for pedestrians,” someone got hit there every semester. Stupid kids, driving like stupid kids, and hitting other stupid kids like they were squirrels.

I hogged the bench. I had my feet up, my knees tucked up to my chest. I liked sitting that way – the way they made us hunker during tornado drills or actual tornados when I was in elementary school. With my right arm wrapped around my knees, I clasped my left arm just above the elbow. With methodical timing, I bent my elbow, took a drag, and straightened my arm. Then, I watched as the smoke wafted out of my gaping mouth or streamed from my nostrils. I’m a dragon, I thought childishly and smiled at myself.

“Hey,” someone called to me.

Like a Viewmaster, I blinked to switch from what I thought to the real world. I looked two steps down to find the guy-in-the-Pantera-T-shirt. He always wore one with faded, black jeans, black Chuck Taylor’s, and three wallet chains. This day, he wasn’t wearing his dog collar bracelet or armor ring.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He tossed his backpack at the base of the bench and took out his pack of cigarettes. Since he meant to sit, and I felt polite, I swiveled, letting my feet drop, and sat on the bench normally. He patted himself, and knowing what he sought, I offered him my lighter, keeping my hand out as a reminder for him to return it. He did and sat beside me.

“How’re you doing in this class?” He waved his cigarette at the building.

Simultaneously, we turned our heads and blew smoke over the azaleas instead of in each other’s faces while never breaking eye contact. I rubbed my cigarette under the bench to put it out, not minding when bits of hot tobacco stung my hand, and set the butt on the bench between us.

“Good,” I said in answer to his question.

“I thought so. Could you maybe help me? I mean, I can pay you, some.”

“Yeah, I’m real busy.” After a glance at my watch, I knew I had time for one more, so I bent sideways to fish out a smoke from the front pocket of my backpack. Pantera bumped my arm and offered me one of his.

When I took it, he said, “Yeah, I figured, but look, I’m serious. I have to pass this class.”

I lit the cigarette and took a drag, exhaled and took another, making him stew just a bit. “How about Saturday?  There isn’t a game.”

He winced. “I can’t do it then. My friends and I…we build rockets.”

My eyebrows darted up at that. “Really?  Like fifth grade science class?”

“Well, not dinky ones.”

“You build rockets,” I mused and thought of the little engines that looked like rolls of coins with tampon strings. “Do they have parachutes?”

He laughed and looked off into the bushes. “Yeah, and one weekend, a buddy of mine had his dad down and he helped us make napalm.”

I choked. “That’s just…not normal.” Then, I laughed because anyone who spoke to me for more than five minutes knew I wasn’t normal. “Yeah, okay Pantera-Napalm-Guy. When are you free?”

We made plans to meet at the library on Thursday afternoon, and when he finished his smoke, I said I’d meet him in class. I sat a bit longer, wondering how much money the University spent on grounds upkeep. The azaleas were quite beautiful, cotton candy pink.

When I stood, my bottom was numb from sitting for so long on that hard, concrete bench. Nintendo butt, my brother called it, like Nintendo thumb. Except now, there was Sega thumb, X-Box thumb, and Playstation thumb. I wondered if anyone had ever used a Playstation dual-shock controller as a vibrator.

I pinched my cigarette just above the filter and rolled it between my fingers.  When the hot rock fell out, I scrubbed it across the concrete with my boot and flicked the unburned tobacco free. I always left that little bit because I hated the taste of burnt filter.

After buying a coffee from the street vendor, I pitched my butts into the trash and headed back in the building to class.

Decartes

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It’s painful to care about someone who doesn’t acknowledge your existence unless you’re in the same room together. Mariposa was the first person I ever met with this ability. I have always wondered if she is this way because her mind is so full of other things – worries, school, work, her lover, herself – that she has no room for anyone else, or if deep inside her, she believes that no one really exists unless she thought of them. She is the creator. She could bring me into the world or remove me with a thought.

When I send her an email, does it cease to exist until she chooses to receive it and open it?

And not just her. So many sociopathic gods. I ask myself these questions: how do they do it? How do they convince themselves that someone they met, someone that made an impact (for better or worse), is no more?

To all the gods, if I meant something, even if you can’t define it, how can you ignore me?  The only answer I find is that you tell yourself that I don’t exist anymore.

But, you won’t read my words or hear my voice because you’ve already forgotten me.

Even so and throwing like a girl, I send out the digital version of a message in a bottle. My message reads like a fortune cookie fortune. It isn’t really a fortune, just some vague advice or nonsense that’s funny when “in bed” is tacked to the end, and then is tossed it into the trash bin with the used napkins. I’ve grown used to it to the point that I’m not sure I exist unless I think of me. Then my head hurts because I’m a paradox.

Worry not. I think of you, all the time. I’m keeping us here.

 

We Are Not Walking Pussy-Tit Dolls

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By now, I’m sure everyone has heard about writer Kelly Oxford’s tweet requesting that women share the stories of their first sexual assaults. If not, you can read about it here. She posted this tweet on the evening of October 7th:

Women: tweet me your first assaults. they aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my “pussy” and smiles at me, I’m 12.

By about the same time the next day, she had accumulated over 9,000,000 tweets from women sharing their stories. I tweeted my story to her, followed by this tweet to her:

The saddest thing about this is, I had to really think about which assault was the first.

In four hours, I received over 200 likes, messages, and re-tweets. Women who told me they had to do the same thing. Women who told me that they realized after they tweeted her that there was a prior assault.

I am still getting tweets about this (over 400 now), and it breaks my heart. And the other responses: story after story of girls (yes, it seems most of us were around 12) violated.

As I typed my message, I thought about it in more detail than I have ever let myself. It was the thing when I was 12 to 13 – “gripping” girls. The middle school version of notches in the bedpost. How many pussies can you grab? Gotta grab ’em all. I heard about it. A few friends told me it happened to them. One of my friends was grabbed while she was on her period, and all the boys made fun of the guy who grabbed her because he grabbed maxi pad instead of cunt. I walked the halls and wondered when it would happen to me. It seemed like it was happening to all my friends. Part of me just wanted to fit in, to be considered cute enough for someone to want to grab me, but the child part of me was terrified of the unknowns surrounding sexuality and my own body. She was terrified and didn’t want anyone to touch her in any way, much less that way. And why in the world was this the measure for being “in?” How did this become something that happened on a regular basis, for weeks?

I remember that I was in my science class, talking about this very thing, when one of the older boys (14 or 15 but still in 7th grade), asked me if no one had grabbed me. I told him no, and when class let out, he grabbed me right outside the classroom door. I remember running to gym with red cheeks. I remember waiting until math to write a long letter to who I thought was one of my best friends telling her what happened. Too shy, too ashamed to go into much detail, I wrote, “He grabbed my front.” She read my note, and to my horror, told our other friends about it. When I came out of the building at the end of the day, she was wearing a sign across her crotch that said, “FRONT.” I felt more alone and more betrayed by her than I ever had before. She was supposed to be my friend. This was exactly the moment I stopped trusting anyone.

I didn’t tell my mother. When my “friend” told her older brother,  he actually came up to me and said he was sorry someone touched me that way. Like ???? Right?! But apparently I was “in.”

It happened a few more times, the same guy again during science when we got up to do a lab, another guy in that same damned class. I’m sure I should’ve told someone. I’m sure the teachers only found out because someone braver or angrier than me spoke up. One day, we got a lecture on touching without permission. We were told that if anyone was caught “gripping” a girl, they would be sent to the principal’s office. I never heard of anyone being caught, but it stopped, probably because it got boring and not because of the threat of punishment.

No one was ever reprimanded. No one was ever taught not to treat girls this way. It was grab it if you want it. That was the first time, but it wasn’t the last. Only once I was a little older did I start slapping back – verbally and physically – anyone who tried something like that on me without my permission. That didn’t always work. In fact, twice, I wasn’t even awake to voice whether or not I wanted to be touched or engage in intercourse. That didn’t matter to him, and when he told his friends about it right in front of me, they laughed and slapped him on the back. Then I knew that none of them cared about me. I might as well be a walking pussy-tit doll, and this is the message sent to women when we are girls.

Not long after I sent my tweet to Ms. Oxford, I saw posts on my Facebook by some “friends” who were those boys back then. How much they love and respect their wives. How much they love and respect their daughters, their mothers, and I just wonder like…do you remember anything? I know I blocked out a lot of middle school, but did you? I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them don’t remember. It was just a game to them.

The stats are 1 in 6. I’m sure it’s far more than that. Woman are afraid and ashamed, and “friends” like mine make it even harder to speak up or speak out. Even though it’s horrible and heartbreaking to see all those tweets, I’m so glad women are sharing and supporting each other. We can help each other heal or at least cope, and hopefully, as survivors, we are teaching our daughters and sons to respect and protect themselves and others. My body, my choice.

Not Much To Say

~ bethbishopwrites ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t written here in a while now. I don’t have any books updates to speak of, as my publishing company was sold and the new owner is trying to sort out a bunch of backlogged books. They deserve their chance at getting published before mine. Besides, I’m still mulling over whether I want to update my contracts.

On the writing front, I’m kind of stuck. I need to create a disaster, but I don’t know what kind. The characters are powerful, so anything that doesn’t outright kill them is going to piss them off royally. This means I need to do some rewriting, but I can do that only after I decide whether to kill some characters.

So, while I try to make up my mind about where the Camellia series will go and how it will end AND try to make up my mind about new contracts, I am playing Sims 4. I’m getting back into DDO a little. I’m still working on perfecting my monk in Diablo 3. And of course, I’m still teaching.

I’ll figure it out some time soon. Hopefully. I especially need to because I have a novel I want to write that I think has great potential. Actually, I have three. Probably more. Okay, time to go scramble some eggs.