Chronologically speaking, my story begins with my sexual molestation by a 55-year-old neighbor when I was 11-years-old. In the years following that summer, I developed into a second generation alcoholic. My father is a functional alcoholic who will be drinking until the day he dies. From the age of 20ish until I was 31 I drank everyday of my life. After I woke up on Feb. 9 2002 and couldn’t even sit up in bed due to alcohol poisoning from Jim Beam, I quit drinking. So I’ve been sober seven-plus years.
I also used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and quit doing that when I was 27. Which may seem like a minor point but bear with me…
When I was 28, I bought a dirt cheap run down old house that was surrounded by nothing but trees and hills. It was the ideal bucolic life for a writer who craves the inspiration that comes from a verdant landscape and the daily interaction with wildlife that you just don’t get to encounter in heavily populated areas.
In that setting, I decided to start growing my own weed so as to eliminate the cost and the perpetual hunting down of those hit-and-miss dealers that any pot smoker knows about. In the summer of 2002, pot plants started disappearing from my property while I was at work. So I put up a dog run beside the plants and chained my 90 pound mutt on it while I was away from the property. Seven days later, my house was raided by four county narcs replete with a fly over by a helicopter.
When the lead cop on the raid said someone had anonymously called in the plants, I knew that had to be the worthless p.o.s. hypocrite that was stealing my plants. When he further said that he had seen the plants from behind the privacy fence I’d built while he was standing on the roadside, I countered in a rather bitter tone, “Then why did you fly over with a helicopter?” Realizing he wasn’t dealing with some moron who couldn’t make a logical and cohesive tapestry of the events unfolding, he didn’t even bother trying to back out of his glaring inconsistency but just grinned and said sadistically, “We just wanted to see how you’d react.”
In the police report of the raid, the police fabricated that they had found scales at my house. They said they had found baggies, which was true- they had found sandwich bags in my phuking kitchen where everybody all over the phuking country has sandwich bags.
The book that I’m writing is specifically about the immense and irreparable damage caused by child sexual abuse. A facet of that damage is that my sexuality is, to put it mildly, a bit aberrant. Of course, consensual sexual relations with other adults, no matter how lecherous or atypical, is across the universe when compared with abusing an 11-year-old child. So I carry no guilt or shame or regrets for anything I’ve ever done with grown mature people. Nonetheless, when four total strangers go through every inch of your personal space, they will discover all of your private characteristics but for what resides solely in your mind and soul.
So a month after the raid on my house, my nearest neighbors (who I often smoked pot with) said that they read an article in a local weekly rag about all of the bisexual porn and swinger magazines and naked pictures of ex-girlfriends that the p.o.s. troglodyte sadistic cops found in my house. My first reaction was to go get a copy of the police report (which is when I first realized they had lied about finding scales) and there was no mention of this stuff in the report. This meant that the officers had intentionally disclosed this private information to a reporter who then wrote the story and, need I say, without consulting me.
Then about two months after my conviction on August 23, 2003, I got a tax bill from the Revenue department of my state for $128,000. That was $2,000 for each plant, even though 52 of the plants were about an inch tall and would have eventually been whittled down to the healthiest 25 and half of those would have been males. Thus, reproducing for the summer months the 12 five-foot-tall (still very small by normal pot plant standards) female plants that were in the yard. The growing was an enjoyable pastime as well as a practical matter so if it all sounds very involved, it wasn’t as “involved” or as costly or as frustrating as looking for weed every other weekend from some mercurial pot dealer who didn’t care if you had to drive all the way into town and drop $75 of your paycheck on a bag.
So, I ended up with a felony conviction, five years of probation, mandatory drug rehab (for a guy who had quit drinking a fifth of Jim Beam a day without any help from AA- give me a phuking break!!!), my privacy which had nothing to do with my crime illegally disclosed by cops in an attempt to publicly humiliate me (didn’t work, don’t care what atavistic halfwit bigots think) and a bogus $128,000 tax bill simply designed to ensure that I’d be forever poor.
Now, the legal system has this supposition of moral authority and protection of community standards when it asserts its authority over the citizens within its jurisdiction. It is protecting us.
It took me until 2005 to realize the total fallout and pervasive effects from the sexual abuse that I suffered when I was 11. Having looked into the progression of the psychological detriment and healing of other victims, that is not an unusual time frame of revelation. Subsequently I spent two years being, for lack of a better word, dumbfounded by all of the ways in which my life had been shaped by this most heinous and insipid of crimes.
After coming to grips with my reality, on April 29, 2007, with all the trepidation you might imagine, I called the Crimes Against Children unit of the police department to report my abuser. I was greeted by a machine and had to follow an automated response code to get to an answering machine where I was told by the machine to leave a message. I did so.
Two weeks passed without a return call. I called back and this time a real live person answered the phone. I told the woman that I had called two weeks prior and left a message but had not heard from them to which she snapped in a nearly apoplectic fit and half-screamed “WE GET 2,000 CALLS A MONTH!” I was utterly dismayed and when she continued she said that I could talk to Lieutenant So-and-So if I wanted. So I said that I did and she transferred me to… drum roll please… an answering machine. I left another message and a year and a half later I’m still waiting for that return call.
So here is my reality:
If I want to, I can smoke cigarettes and get lung cancer, emphysema, throat cancer, etc. but I rejected that and quit smoking Camels when I was 27.
If I want to, I can drink myself to death with Jim Beam or drink and drive and kill an innocent person or cripple them or kill myself or cripple myself. But I rejected that nightmare and quit drinking.
I can’t grow my own weed and smoke in the privacy of my house even though I can’t figure out the deleterious effects of doing so. And my house is raided by four officers and an unnecessary helicopter used to “just see how I react.” And these hypocritical officers who are invading my privacy with the righteous empowerment of “the law” turn around and publicly disclose private information acquired during the raid undertaken in the name of protecting the community?
And then when I call the Crimes Against Children unit to report a pedophile I’m told by a machine to leave a message that isn’t responded to. And when I call back, I get yelled at and then told to leave another message that still doesn’t receive a return call?
Indignant and angry don’t begin to sum up how I feel about our society. Right and wrong have absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy of “the law.” The hierarchy of the law operates in the same realm as 99% of the rest of society: the law of finance. Molested children take a back seat to corporate profit.
Should pot be legal? Of course it should.
Should child sexual assault be illegal? Of course it should.
But the one operates in the marketplace of evil greed and the other has no potential to create wealth for a handful of CEOs and those sycophants who can catch some of the green spilling out of those fat pockets.
I’ll end with a modification of the truism given to us by the late great Deep Throat of Watergate fame:
Follow the money… even if child molesters get to operate with impunity.
Chronologically speaking, my story begins with my sexual molestation by a 55-year-old neighbor when I was 11-years-old. In the years following that summer, I developed into a second generation alcoholic.
I also used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and quit doing that when I was 27. Which may seem like a minor point but bear with me…When I was 28, I bought a dirt cheap run down old house that was surrounded by nothing but trees and hills. It was the ideal bucolic life for a writer who craves the inspiration that comes from a verdant landscape and the daily interaction with wildlife that you just don’t get to encounter in heavily populated areas.
In that setting, I decided to start growing my own weed so as to eliminate the cost and the perpetual hunting down of those hit-and-miss dealers that any pot smoker knows about. In the summer of 2002, pot plants started disappearing from my property while I was at work. So I put up a dog run beside the plants and chained my 90 pound mutt on it while I was away from the property. Seven days later, my house was raided by four county narcs replete with a fly over by a helicopter.
When the lead cop on the raid said someone had anonymously called in the plants, I knew that had to be the worthless p.o.s. hypocrite that was stealing my plants. When he further said that he had seen the plants from behind the privacy fence I’d built while he was standing on the roadside, I countered in a rather bitter tone, “Then why did you fly over with a helicopter?” Realizing he wasn’t dealing with some moron who couldn’t make a logical and cohesive tapestry of the events unfolding, he didn’t even bother trying to back out of his glaring inconsistency but just grinned and said sadistically, “We just wanted to see how you’d react.”
In the police report of the raid, the police fabricated that they had found scales at my house. They said they had found baggies, which was true- they had found sandwich bags in my phuking kitchen where everybody all over the phuking country has sandwich bags.
In the summer of 2002, pot plants started disappearing from my property while I was at work. So I put up a dog run beside the plants and chained my 90 pound mutt on it while I was away from the property. Seven days later, my house was raided by four county narcs replete with a fly over by a helicopter.
The book that I’m writing is specifically about the immense and irreparable damage caused by child sexual abuse. A facet of that damage is that my sexuality is, to put it mildly, a bit aberrant. Of course, consensual sexual relations with other adults, no matter how lecherous or atypical, is across the universe when compared with abusing an 11-year-old child. So I carry no guilt or shame or regrets for anything I’ve ever done with grown mature people. Nonetheless, when four total strangers go through every inch of your personal space, they will discover all of your private characteristics but for what resides solely in your mind and soul.
So a month after the raid on my house, my nearest neighbors (who I often smoked pot with) said that they read an article in a local weekly rag about all of the bisexual porn and swinger magazines and naked pictures of ex-girlfriends that the p.o.s. troglodyte sadistic cops found in my house. My first reaction was to go get a copy of the police report (which is when I first realized they had lied about finding scales) and there was no mention of this stuff in the report. This meant that the officers had intentionally disclosed this private information to a reporter who then wrote the story and, need I say, without consulting me.
Then about two months after my conviction on August 23, 2003, I got a tax bill from the Revenue department of my state for $128,000. That was $2,000 for each plant, even though 52 of the plants were about an inch tall and would have eventually been whittled down to the healthiest 25 and half of those would have been males. Thus, reproducing for the summer months the 12 five-foot-tall (still very small by normal pot plant standards) female plants that were in the yard. The growing was an enjoyable pastime as well as a practical matter so if it all sounds very involved, it wasn’t as “involved” or as costly or as frustrating as looking for weed every other weekend from some mercurial pot dealer who didn’t care if you had to drive all the way into town and drop $75 of your paycheck on a bag.
So, I ended up with a felony conviction, five years of probation, mandatory drug rehab (for a guy who had quit drinking a fifth of Jim Beam a day without any help from AA- give me a phuking break!!!), my privacy which had nothing to do with my crime illegally disclosed by cops in an attempt to publicly humiliate me (didn’t work, don’t care what atavistic halfwit bigots think) and a bogus $128,000 tax bill simply designed to ensure that I’d be forever poor.
Now, the legal system has this supposition of moral authority and protection of community standards when it asserts its authority over the citizens within its jurisdiction. It is protecting us.
It took me until 2005 to realize the total fallout and pervasive effects from the sexual abuse that I suffered when I was 11. Having looked into the progression of the psychological detriment and healing of other victims, that is not an unusual time frame of revelation. Subsequently I spent two years being, for lack of a better word, dumbfounded by all of the ways in which my life had been shaped by this most heinous and insipid of crimes.
After coming to grips with my reality, on April 29, 2007, with all the trepidation you might imagine, I called the Crimes Against Children unit of the police department to report my abuser. I was greeted by a machine and had to follow an automated response code to get to an answering machine where I was told by the machine to leave a message. I did so.
Indignant and angry don’t begin to sum up how I feel about our society. Right and wrong have absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy of ‘the law.’ The hierarchy of the law operates in the same realm as 99% of the rest of society: the law of finance. Molested children take a back seat to corporate profit.
Two weeks passed without a return call. I called back and this time a real live person answered the phone. I told the woman that I had called two weeks prior and left a message but had not heard from them to which she snapped in a nearly apoplectic fit and half-screamed “WE GET 2,000 CALLS A MONTH!” I was utterly dismayed and when she continued she said that I could talk to Lieutenant So-and-So if I wanted. So I said that I did and she transferred me to… drum roll please… an answering machine. I left another message and a year and a half later I’m still waiting for that return call.
So here is my reality:
If I want to, I can smoke cigarettes and get lung cancer, emphysema, throat cancer, etc. but I rejected that and quit smoking Camels when I was 27.
If I want to, I can drink myself to death with Jim Beam or drink and drive and kill an innocent person or cripple them or kill myself or cripple myself. But I rejected that nightmare and quit drinking.
I can’t grow my own weed and smoke in the privacy of my house even though I can’t figure out the deleterious effects of doing so. And my house is raided by four officers and an unnecessary helicopter used to “just see how I react.” And these hypocritical officers who are invading my privacy with the righteous empowerment of “the law” turn around and publicly disclose private information acquired during the raid undertaken in the name of protecting the community?
And then when I call the Crimes Against Children unit to report a pedophile I’m told by a machine to leave a message that isn’t responded to. And when I call back, I get yelled at and then told to leave another message that still doesn’t receive a return call?
Indignant and angry don’t begin to sum up how I feel about our society. Right and wrong have absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy of “the law.” The hierarchy of the law operates in the same realm as 99% of the rest of society: the law of finance. Molested children take a back seat to corporate profit.
Should pot be legal? Of course it should.
Should child sexual assault be illegal? Of course it should.
But the one operates in the marketplace of evil greed and the other has no potential to create wealth for a handful of CEOs and those sycophants who can catch some of the green spilling out of those fat pockets.
I’ll end with a modification of the truism given to us by the late great Deep Throat of Watergate fame:
Follow the money… even if child molesters get to operate with impunity.