Chew and Spit

My childhood chewed me up before I was 5 and from there had its way with me like a renegade pedophile in a lawless land. You name the drama/trauma and I can earnestly say, been there done that, with a genuine swagger or a swashbuckle or a head hanging shamefilled behind its too-long-since-a-trim bangs.

Very little was not served up in that first act. As it was pictured some personal eons ago, I stood in the registration line nibbling my eraser and circling a plus-sized load. Give me all you got, i said. I need to burn off as much karma as possible.

Let's start with I was kidnapped. Held hostage with my mother by a man who said he'd sit tight till dad came home then make him watch while he killed us, but we also needed to know that the final act (which we would miss) would be astonishing. Just after my dad's horror had been savored, he, too would have to die.

The guy thought that was a trifecta here in Derby City for a nice afternoon of revenge. I guess Daddy had pissed him off.

So, getting kidnapped is a big deal, they tell me.
The violence I witnessed is buried deep.
I can't recall the end. I just have this sentence from my mother's lips: "Your daddy came in with a shotgun."

That was really all I ever needed and that saw me through my 40s. Some time in my next decade, however, I began to wonder what happened. How did it look? Was it in horrific-vision slo-mo?

Despite the wonderings, I have not gone looking for the key to unlock these archived movies. I am grateful I never saw them.

I am also grateful to the therapist whose name, I believe, was Carol, who said, "We will leave it like this: your mother loved you and cared for you so well you don't remember being scared and your father was your hero and saved you." Yes, Carol in Houston, we will leave it at that.

That was me in Houston, Texas during my Boy George period. I dressed in black and I drove a black car. I cried a lot in sessions. I'd sit in a big comfy chair and she'd come in bringing kleenex and perch herself very ministerially on an ottoman to tell me what was what.