Robert McGregor
12-03-2003, 08:53 PM
Subject: New Around Here (Am I Welcome?)
Since I'm new to this group -- in fact, new to this whole on-line thing --
I thought I should introduce myself, let everyone get to know me a little.
"Netspace" is so cold, you know? So inhuman. So mechanical. And I'm not
like
that; I'm warm, friendly, I love genuine human contact. I feel sort of
lost, sort
of disoriented in this technological hurricane. But I'm determined to give
it a
try, you know?
More importantly, I'll admit it, I'm fucking DEPRESSED. I'm sorry to
undermine everyone's good cheer; I hate to bore everyone with the parade of
horribles that I call my life, but really, I need to vent. I'm sorry; you
can abort
now, you can ignore me forever. I just need to talk, if you can call this
heartless
clickity-clack of computer keys "talking." It's just that life has dealt me
some
really dark and morbid cards lately -- like the card of death in that sniper
thing
-- and it's just getting worse. Accelerating downward into oblivion. It's
like, I
can't stop it by myself.
Have there ever been times when you felt like you could no longer cope?
Times where you felt like one more misfortune, one more snide remark from a
stranger, and you're just going to implode, or lose your mind, or veer off a
cliff-side highway into the fucking ocean? Well, that's how I've felt for
years.
I'm NOT exaggerating.
Anyway, my name is Jessie P. I'm swear I'm not usually this negative; I'm
a
really happy person at heart. It's just that awful, terrible, unfathomably
cruel things have been done to me. It's not about work -- I mean, I haven't
worked
in about three years, but I'm used to that. I'm used to that kind of awful
rejection.
I send out more than fifty resumes each week, as I've done for eighteen
months, but
no one ever wants to interview me. Oh, a few places have, but they were all
pyramid
schemes. Like one place they agreed to give me a straight commission sales
job if
I paid $900.00 for the training course and training materials. I was so
desperate
I actually considered signing up until the team coordinator demanded that I
sleep
with him first.
"I have to have sex with you to get approved as a trainee?" I asked
him point-blank; I couldn't believe it.
"That's not what I'm saying," he shot back. "I'm just saying I think
I'd like it. You're a very beautiful woman, and usually I enjoy beautiful
women's
bodies. God gave you your beauty to use. Why slap him in the face?"
"I can't believe it; you want me to fuck you."
"But don't you see? I'm not demanding it. I'm just recommending it as a
career move. Did I mention that my brother owns this company? We're both
so
busy with work all the time, we don't really have time to date. We'd both
appreciate it if you used your God-given gifts to make a nice impression on
this growing company."
There was also this great little clothing factory that offered me a job,
but they said they couldn't guarantee me minimum wage, and they also said
I'd have
to work at least twelve hours a day. I loved their products -- they were
very
chic and elegant -- but the factory itself was out in the desert, in the
middle of
nowhere, and my car was in horrible shape. It seemed like every week, it
needed
some new part, or needed to be towed, or ran out of gas in the middle of the
freeway.
I even applied at the pet food company. I offered to work on a dog food
conveyor belt -- I even offered them a five-year, minimum wage contract with
no
benefits, no overtime, and no lunch hour -- but they wouldn't take me.
It's like I simply cannot trust my higher power anymore. Nothing that I
do in the way of service seems good enough for Him. Oh, believe me -- I
know it's
a HIM. I know my higher power's a man. And I've had nothing but trouble
with men,
ever since I was a little girl. A fragile, tender, vulnerable, helpless
girl. In
a world of hardened, self-absorbed, merciless, demented men who are all,
once you
get to know them, exactly like my father. I can't tell you how sick and
hearltess
he was.
My second husband divorced me a few months ago. Oh, we still talk; he
calls me every few days to really rip into me. To butcher me to the point
of
sobbing tears with his venomous insults. He really knows how to destroy my
serenity.
I can be as blissful as a rose garden, as wildly happy as a puppy on a
clover hill,
and my ex-husband -- his name is Gary Reynold Henger -- will call me up --
usually
with another woman talking in the background, or slurping on his earlobe, or
rattling his belt-buckle -- and he'll remind me what a worthless,
unaccomplished,
uneducated, lazy, talentless, selfish, unhappy swine I am. And my whole
family
agrees with him completely. They always have -- ever since I was a fragile,
tender, helpless little girl.
I need Alcoholics Anonymous. I need a loving fellowship, with
compassionate,
wise, level-headed women to mentor me. The laughter, the warmth. Free
cookies
and coffee. In my town there are no women-only meetings, unfortunately, so
at
every meeting I'm forced to run the gauntlet of philandering, adulterous,
deceitful
men who want to "take me to coffee," or "read the Big Book" with me, or
"take me to
a meeting." Oh, I've been taken to coffee a few times since coming to A.A.
It's
just another cheap and creepy masculine ploy. No man in this world has ever
had
a single idea which didn't somehow involve or imply ejaculation. Well, I'm
sick
and tired of being a sewer hole for emotionless scum.
Don't think for a minute that my problems are all of the masculine
variety. My worst problem of all is my little girl, Dede. She is the most
arrogant,
selfish, tyrannical, greedy little pig I have ever met in my life. We go to
McDonalds, and she insists upon ordering a Big Mac, a large order of fries,
a
strawberry shake, an apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, and a twelve-piece
sack of
McNuggets with three different kinds of sauce. If I have ten bucks in my
wallet,
she'll spend it all on herself -- without offering me a bite. Without
offering me
so much as a single pickle from her burger. One she offered me a french
fry, but the
instant I reached for it she pulled it away from me and tossed it to a bird,
which
snatched it up and flew away.
Dede uses my make-up, steals my money, smokes my cigarettes, throws away
my unopened mail, sells my jewelry on Ebay, tears out pages from my journal
to use
as toilet paper, and once in a while crawls into bed with me, urinates
copiously,
then saunters back to her own bed.
Nearly every evening, she tells me, "I hope that when I grow up, I'm
absolutely nothing like you, Mommy. I want to be someone people care about.
I
want to be loved by men, and appreciated by women. I want to be
intelligent,
self-secure, beautiful, graceful, and happy. If I ever turn into you, I'll
swallow
a cyanide capsule, cut my throat, blow my head off with a double-barrel
shotgun, then jump off a ten-story building into traffic."
If I have any problem more severe and time-consuming than Dede, it's my
health. My problems are not idle, entertaining emotional problems; it's my
body. My physical body. A few years ago I was a gleaming tower of health.
My
bulimia had no observable side-effects, and I even exercised periodically.
I could
eat fucking anything without putting on the slightest tummy puff. Then
about three
years ago I began feeling the pain, the strange, faint, itchy pain behind my
rib
cage. I could never describe quite where it came from, but I became totally
pre-occupied with it. I couldn't sleep for weeks at a time. No medical
tests
could pinpoint its source. Then my ankles both gave way while I was
visiting my
brother in prison, and I was totally immobilized for nearly four months. I
could
not move to save my life, and since I was unable to exercise, I put on
nearly
forty pounds of sheer flab. Literally, I could not move without assistance;
if my
house was burning down around me, if Dede was being raped by a seven-foot
masked
assailant, I could not have done anything; I simply would have lain there in
my
sweat-drenched sheets, my gaping bedsores oozing repulsively -- watching it.
Watching helplessly as the seven foot masked assailant raped my innocent,
fragile,
virginal daughter. I probably wouldn't have been able to scream, either,
since I
caught a lung infection which filled both lungs with scalding, algae-like
mush,
preventing me from breathing almost at all, and making it totally impossible
for me
to speak above a frail, helpless whisper.
Within two weeks after recovering from my lung condition, I contracted a
potentially fatal wasting disease, sort of like a cross between consumption,
malaria, and AIDS, only less common, and consequently totally untreatable.
My
doctor speculated that I caught this disease from a dead animal at the
cemetary
where I went alone to bury my beloved tabby cat, Kimmy. Kimmy had been with
me
my entire adult life; she was, I truly believed, the only living creature
who
understood me, and who cared unconditionally. Oh, I'm sure you're thinking
that
I gave Kimmy whatever it was that killed her, but she died of grief caused
by
having to watch me suffer so relentlessly. I could not afford to give her a
proper Christian burial, so I slithered under a chain link fence surrounding
a
pet cemetary, and buried her myself. The graves were all unmarked, so in
the
process of trying to find Kimmy a suitable permanent resting spot, I
inadvertently
dug up at least nine pit bull corpses at various stages of decomposition. I
gazed at one -- I could tell it had been a very beautiful animal; vigorous,
strong,
living life with urgent delight and curiosity -- and I thought to myself,
this
tattered, filthy dog corpse, how different is it from me? Anyway, the
wretched
wasting disease I caught from those corpses nearly did me in. My digestive
system
totally failed for almost a year, and I went from an ample-breasted 175
pounds to
60 pounds. My body had become a concentration camp, only worse than
Auschwitz, or
Dachau, because I was completely alone. Alienated from all human society,
abandoned by God, and cast away like a worm-infested apple core by my
exploitative,
heartless husband.
The only man who ever truly loved me -- a gift young poet named Alex, who
used to take me to espresso bars, wine shops, and art museums -- was killed
during
an armed robbery at a retirement home. He had attempted to disarm, but only
provoked, the Al-Qaeda funded assailant. I couldn't find a single example
of
his work to remember him by; none of the poems he wrote about me were
written
down -- they were all enshrined in his glorious memory.
Next time I like a man, next time I show any interest in male flesh,
someone should grab me, throw me against a brick wall, slap me up-side the
head,
spray Windex at my eyes, and scream in my ear: "Haven't you learned
anything?! All
men are just little demons in the service of your hateful, vicious higher
power!"
I want to believe that there is some possibility of happiness in life. I
want to believe that there is love in the world. I want to believe that
survival
without agonizing, debilitating pain is, somehow, possible. I want to
believe
that Alcoholics Anonymous has something to offer me -- anything, anything at
all.
But I'm really not sure.
None of you have convinced me yet.
To date, I have donated nearly $6,000.00 to A.A., I have sponsored more
than
ninety women, I have organized and privately funded four international
conventions,
and I have chaired innumerable meetings. I have had more committments at
A.A.
meetings than I can count. Yet even after such enormous sacrifices, can I
honestly
say that I have been rewarded? Well: I have been raped by nine different
men from
Alcoholics Anonymous -- two of them my former sponsors, five of them former
sponsees;
I have had ten purses stolen at A.A. meetings; I have gotten food poisoning
at
meetings on five different occasions, each time requiring hospitalization; I
have gotten parking tickets totaling more than $1,500.00 while attending
A.A.
meetings; and I have been assaulted -- yes, physically attacked,
brutalized --
eleven times while speaking at A.A. meetings (invariably by older, uglier
broads
who simply could not tolerate their boyfriends or husbands nearly spurting
at the
mere sight of me).
You tell me: What can A.A. do to compensate me? Alcoholics Anonymous
brought me my higher power. My higher power is a boundless ocean of Pain,
Sorrow,
Misery, Grief, Loneliness, Victimization, and Emptiness.
Yet like a tireless, dutiful soldier, I continue to be of service. I live
to help others, because apparently there is no help left for me.
Jessica Paine
Since I'm new to this group -- in fact, new to this whole on-line thing --
I thought I should introduce myself, let everyone get to know me a little.
"Netspace" is so cold, you know? So inhuman. So mechanical. And I'm not
like
that; I'm warm, friendly, I love genuine human contact. I feel sort of
lost, sort
of disoriented in this technological hurricane. But I'm determined to give
it a
try, you know?
More importantly, I'll admit it, I'm fucking DEPRESSED. I'm sorry to
undermine everyone's good cheer; I hate to bore everyone with the parade of
horribles that I call my life, but really, I need to vent. I'm sorry; you
can abort
now, you can ignore me forever. I just need to talk, if you can call this
heartless
clickity-clack of computer keys "talking." It's just that life has dealt me
some
really dark and morbid cards lately -- like the card of death in that sniper
thing
-- and it's just getting worse. Accelerating downward into oblivion. It's
like, I
can't stop it by myself.
Have there ever been times when you felt like you could no longer cope?
Times where you felt like one more misfortune, one more snide remark from a
stranger, and you're just going to implode, or lose your mind, or veer off a
cliff-side highway into the fucking ocean? Well, that's how I've felt for
years.
I'm NOT exaggerating.
Anyway, my name is Jessie P. I'm swear I'm not usually this negative; I'm
a
really happy person at heart. It's just that awful, terrible, unfathomably
cruel things have been done to me. It's not about work -- I mean, I haven't
worked
in about three years, but I'm used to that. I'm used to that kind of awful
rejection.
I send out more than fifty resumes each week, as I've done for eighteen
months, but
no one ever wants to interview me. Oh, a few places have, but they were all
pyramid
schemes. Like one place they agreed to give me a straight commission sales
job if
I paid $900.00 for the training course and training materials. I was so
desperate
I actually considered signing up until the team coordinator demanded that I
sleep
with him first.
"I have to have sex with you to get approved as a trainee?" I asked
him point-blank; I couldn't believe it.
"That's not what I'm saying," he shot back. "I'm just saying I think
I'd like it. You're a very beautiful woman, and usually I enjoy beautiful
women's
bodies. God gave you your beauty to use. Why slap him in the face?"
"I can't believe it; you want me to fuck you."
"But don't you see? I'm not demanding it. I'm just recommending it as a
career move. Did I mention that my brother owns this company? We're both
so
busy with work all the time, we don't really have time to date. We'd both
appreciate it if you used your God-given gifts to make a nice impression on
this growing company."
There was also this great little clothing factory that offered me a job,
but they said they couldn't guarantee me minimum wage, and they also said
I'd have
to work at least twelve hours a day. I loved their products -- they were
very
chic and elegant -- but the factory itself was out in the desert, in the
middle of
nowhere, and my car was in horrible shape. It seemed like every week, it
needed
some new part, or needed to be towed, or ran out of gas in the middle of the
freeway.
I even applied at the pet food company. I offered to work on a dog food
conveyor belt -- I even offered them a five-year, minimum wage contract with
no
benefits, no overtime, and no lunch hour -- but they wouldn't take me.
It's like I simply cannot trust my higher power anymore. Nothing that I
do in the way of service seems good enough for Him. Oh, believe me -- I
know it's
a HIM. I know my higher power's a man. And I've had nothing but trouble
with men,
ever since I was a little girl. A fragile, tender, vulnerable, helpless
girl. In
a world of hardened, self-absorbed, merciless, demented men who are all,
once you
get to know them, exactly like my father. I can't tell you how sick and
hearltess
he was.
My second husband divorced me a few months ago. Oh, we still talk; he
calls me every few days to really rip into me. To butcher me to the point
of
sobbing tears with his venomous insults. He really knows how to destroy my
serenity.
I can be as blissful as a rose garden, as wildly happy as a puppy on a
clover hill,
and my ex-husband -- his name is Gary Reynold Henger -- will call me up --
usually
with another woman talking in the background, or slurping on his earlobe, or
rattling his belt-buckle -- and he'll remind me what a worthless,
unaccomplished,
uneducated, lazy, talentless, selfish, unhappy swine I am. And my whole
family
agrees with him completely. They always have -- ever since I was a fragile,
tender, helpless little girl.
I need Alcoholics Anonymous. I need a loving fellowship, with
compassionate,
wise, level-headed women to mentor me. The laughter, the warmth. Free
cookies
and coffee. In my town there are no women-only meetings, unfortunately, so
at
every meeting I'm forced to run the gauntlet of philandering, adulterous,
deceitful
men who want to "take me to coffee," or "read the Big Book" with me, or
"take me to
a meeting." Oh, I've been taken to coffee a few times since coming to A.A.
It's
just another cheap and creepy masculine ploy. No man in this world has ever
had
a single idea which didn't somehow involve or imply ejaculation. Well, I'm
sick
and tired of being a sewer hole for emotionless scum.
Don't think for a minute that my problems are all of the masculine
variety. My worst problem of all is my little girl, Dede. She is the most
arrogant,
selfish, tyrannical, greedy little pig I have ever met in my life. We go to
McDonalds, and she insists upon ordering a Big Mac, a large order of fries,
a
strawberry shake, an apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, and a twelve-piece
sack of
McNuggets with three different kinds of sauce. If I have ten bucks in my
wallet,
she'll spend it all on herself -- without offering me a bite. Without
offering me
so much as a single pickle from her burger. One she offered me a french
fry, but the
instant I reached for it she pulled it away from me and tossed it to a bird,
which
snatched it up and flew away.
Dede uses my make-up, steals my money, smokes my cigarettes, throws away
my unopened mail, sells my jewelry on Ebay, tears out pages from my journal
to use
as toilet paper, and once in a while crawls into bed with me, urinates
copiously,
then saunters back to her own bed.
Nearly every evening, she tells me, "I hope that when I grow up, I'm
absolutely nothing like you, Mommy. I want to be someone people care about.
I
want to be loved by men, and appreciated by women. I want to be
intelligent,
self-secure, beautiful, graceful, and happy. If I ever turn into you, I'll
swallow
a cyanide capsule, cut my throat, blow my head off with a double-barrel
shotgun, then jump off a ten-story building into traffic."
If I have any problem more severe and time-consuming than Dede, it's my
health. My problems are not idle, entertaining emotional problems; it's my
body. My physical body. A few years ago I was a gleaming tower of health.
My
bulimia had no observable side-effects, and I even exercised periodically.
I could
eat fucking anything without putting on the slightest tummy puff. Then
about three
years ago I began feeling the pain, the strange, faint, itchy pain behind my
rib
cage. I could never describe quite where it came from, but I became totally
pre-occupied with it. I couldn't sleep for weeks at a time. No medical
tests
could pinpoint its source. Then my ankles both gave way while I was
visiting my
brother in prison, and I was totally immobilized for nearly four months. I
could
not move to save my life, and since I was unable to exercise, I put on
nearly
forty pounds of sheer flab. Literally, I could not move without assistance;
if my
house was burning down around me, if Dede was being raped by a seven-foot
masked
assailant, I could not have done anything; I simply would have lain there in
my
sweat-drenched sheets, my gaping bedsores oozing repulsively -- watching it.
Watching helplessly as the seven foot masked assailant raped my innocent,
fragile,
virginal daughter. I probably wouldn't have been able to scream, either,
since I
caught a lung infection which filled both lungs with scalding, algae-like
mush,
preventing me from breathing almost at all, and making it totally impossible
for me
to speak above a frail, helpless whisper.
Within two weeks after recovering from my lung condition, I contracted a
potentially fatal wasting disease, sort of like a cross between consumption,
malaria, and AIDS, only less common, and consequently totally untreatable.
My
doctor speculated that I caught this disease from a dead animal at the
cemetary
where I went alone to bury my beloved tabby cat, Kimmy. Kimmy had been with
me
my entire adult life; she was, I truly believed, the only living creature
who
understood me, and who cared unconditionally. Oh, I'm sure you're thinking
that
I gave Kimmy whatever it was that killed her, but she died of grief caused
by
having to watch me suffer so relentlessly. I could not afford to give her a
proper Christian burial, so I slithered under a chain link fence surrounding
a
pet cemetary, and buried her myself. The graves were all unmarked, so in
the
process of trying to find Kimmy a suitable permanent resting spot, I
inadvertently
dug up at least nine pit bull corpses at various stages of decomposition. I
gazed at one -- I could tell it had been a very beautiful animal; vigorous,
strong,
living life with urgent delight and curiosity -- and I thought to myself,
this
tattered, filthy dog corpse, how different is it from me? Anyway, the
wretched
wasting disease I caught from those corpses nearly did me in. My digestive
system
totally failed for almost a year, and I went from an ample-breasted 175
pounds to
60 pounds. My body had become a concentration camp, only worse than
Auschwitz, or
Dachau, because I was completely alone. Alienated from all human society,
abandoned by God, and cast away like a worm-infested apple core by my
exploitative,
heartless husband.
The only man who ever truly loved me -- a gift young poet named Alex, who
used to take me to espresso bars, wine shops, and art museums -- was killed
during
an armed robbery at a retirement home. He had attempted to disarm, but only
provoked, the Al-Qaeda funded assailant. I couldn't find a single example
of
his work to remember him by; none of the poems he wrote about me were
written
down -- they were all enshrined in his glorious memory.
Next time I like a man, next time I show any interest in male flesh,
someone should grab me, throw me against a brick wall, slap me up-side the
head,
spray Windex at my eyes, and scream in my ear: "Haven't you learned
anything?! All
men are just little demons in the service of your hateful, vicious higher
power!"
I want to believe that there is some possibility of happiness in life. I
want to believe that there is love in the world. I want to believe that
survival
without agonizing, debilitating pain is, somehow, possible. I want to
believe
that Alcoholics Anonymous has something to offer me -- anything, anything at
all.
But I'm really not sure.
None of you have convinced me yet.
To date, I have donated nearly $6,000.00 to A.A., I have sponsored more
than
ninety women, I have organized and privately funded four international
conventions,
and I have chaired innumerable meetings. I have had more committments at
A.A.
meetings than I can count. Yet even after such enormous sacrifices, can I
honestly
say that I have been rewarded? Well: I have been raped by nine different
men from
Alcoholics Anonymous -- two of them my former sponsors, five of them former
sponsees;
I have had ten purses stolen at A.A. meetings; I have gotten food poisoning
at
meetings on five different occasions, each time requiring hospitalization; I
have gotten parking tickets totaling more than $1,500.00 while attending
A.A.
meetings; and I have been assaulted -- yes, physically attacked,
brutalized --
eleven times while speaking at A.A. meetings (invariably by older, uglier
broads
who simply could not tolerate their boyfriends or husbands nearly spurting
at the
mere sight of me).
You tell me: What can A.A. do to compensate me? Alcoholics Anonymous
brought me my higher power. My higher power is a boundless ocean of Pain,
Sorrow,
Misery, Grief, Loneliness, Victimization, and Emptiness.
Yet like a tireless, dutiful soldier, I continue to be of service. I live
to help others, because apparently there is no help left for me.
Jessica Paine