I'm writing it all down but then I think, Who would even believe this? In order to get these experiences into some kind of art, I have to write them all out and out and out then stand back and try to see/choose the illuminating bits. The ones that truly HURT. It's the little things. Left as a whole, it seems insurmountable, unreal in the first place and the impact of all the small wounds lost.
Once, we tried to buy some borsht from a Polish house-front store in south Buffalo and they wouldn't sell to us because I was Black. I thought it was very funny. (It reminded me of the time that my friend's Czeck wife told me I was her first black friend - they mean Roma, which my face clearly betrays, and to Poles and Czecks etc, that's Black) I'm not nearly political enough. Not about people, anyway. Garden ordinances, backyard chicken freedoms, greenspace policies, yes...but the peopled world I try to tune out as much as possible, feeling naggingly guilty about it always. It felt good to be "oppressed" for a minute, I remember feeling, like the slight had given me some miniscule load off my a-political karmic guilt. And then I didn't give it any more thought. I should have.
Meanwhile, I might be okay with everything on that list except #7. That is, if we get as far in counseling as we need to, which is to them, his childhood, his narrative that starts at "I was born, and then the fucking with me began" as the story starts for us all. That's mostly it right there in #1 "don't take it personal", the first two sentences; I put him beyond their debt. He was no longer beholden and not particularly interested without being forced. The only thing he still could be manipulated by was the fictions he'd buy into, the spell they cast about how the ur-form a happy marriage took was their own only. It had two forever-little boys in it (mine had aged out, and Mistress had two new ones to switch them out for). The happily-ever-after had a nearly inert (seemingly) parked man in the center (otherwise always slaving away so the story went). "I want a marriage like my parents'," he'd (re)told her under the approving and urging eyes of his parents, the same wedding album ritual, down to the word, as if he weren't already married.
In the story this is, there are many lessons to be learned. One: never underestimate the power of an untrained unethical witch (which) (one is it?). Now they're all learning a thing or three about the three-fold law. And I am breaking this spell.
truth: their expressions
In the disputed baby book I still have, that is still mine because it is his and my name is on his ass, this is the "happiest" photo. That book, it's 4 inches thick of photos. And in that mountain, never do they smile at each other, never are in physical proximity to each other except to pose like this. Take a good look at their expressions. That look like an expression you'd like to have on your face for the rest of your life? Even Brian is already fucked. The only one still innocent of the pose he's suppose to strike and hold is that baby in the middle, little Aaron.
