The Place

This incident was included in a collection of vignettes submitted by incarcerated sex offenders titled “Voices Never Heard.”

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I was visiting a friend at his family camp on a lake. I'll call him William. Over the last years we have both run the gauntlet of miscellaneous tortures that are meted out to people who have been convicted of sexual abuse.

I am in my 70s, and generally have to get up a couple of times during the night to take a leak. We had gone to bed early – shortly after nine. When I woke for my first piss call I was surprised to find him sitting in a chair in a corner of the living room, bundled up in a cover. “You’re up,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’ve got to take a leak,” I said.

“It’s raining,” He said. “Just stand on the top step under the eve and pee off the side.”

As I went to the door I asked if he was daydreaming. He said that he was having very violent daydreams.

It was raining hard enough that I didn’t want to go out into it, so I did as he suggested, and peed from the top step. When I returned to the living room he told me to sit down in a chair that was facing him at a distance of about seven feet. I did so. He handed me an afghan that he said his mother knitted. “This will keep you warm,” he said.

When I got settled into the chair with the afghan covering me, he explained that he wanted to tell me about his violent fantasies. He said that periodically he drinks excessively, while he also smokes pot, in order to get to a particular place in his head where he’s able to have certain violent fantasies. He wants them. As he described them, he said repeatedly that this was very weird and he’s never told anybody else about it before. He says that the fantasies never involve killing people, because he wants them to suffer.

As I asked him to be more specific about the people he fantasized about, he named people that have hurt him in various ways. One of the main people is his ex-wife who was responsible for poisoning his son’s mind against him, and ending his relationship with him. This was especially painful to William as he had been the one who raised his son while his wife worked. He and his son were very close. But his fantasies also involved people who had humiliated him either while he was incarcerated or when he was trying to reestablish a life for himself afterwards. He also mentioned some people who forced him into social isolation by their public attacks on him.

He told me that it is good that he doesn’t have superpowers, because, if he did, he would be able to get away with hurting these people without being caught. He said that he would do this if he were able to. He wanted me to understand that it was not moral principles, but simply the fear of being caught that prevented him from acting on his sadistic fantasies.

It was clear to me that these were not S&M type fantasies. The goal was not sexual gratification, but revenge. He has been hurt over and over again, and has not been able to defend himself or fight back. He did tell me earlier about a man in the jail that he came close to killing when the man went out of his way to humiliate him. But that was the exception.

As I listened to him, I thought about the different forms of injury that he has suffered. It was the same suffering that virtually every man who has been convicted of sex abuse has also experienced. First there are the losses. Not only is the relationship to the beloved boy taken away, but typically a person in this situation loses a large number of relationships to family and friends. William has maintained a relationship with a sister and with a few friends, but the loss of his relationship to his son was overwhelming. One of the most intense forms of suffering inflicted on people who have been outed is always grief.

Perhaps the second most intense form of suffering inflicted on sex-offenders is humiliation. To be on the registry and to have the public identity of the “pedophile” ensures one of a life of ongoing humiliation, against which one is helpless to defend oneself. People underestimate the impact of humiliation.

Sticks and Stones

Never-mind the things they sing.

Words sharp and witty,

As well as stones,

Despite the ditty,

Can break my bones.

Even an eyebrow raised can sting.

People will kill or die to avoid being publicly humiliated.

Additionally, one is subjected to social isolation. Once you have been convicted, or even accused, of the sexual abuse of a minor, you will never again be fully accepted by your community. You may find niches where they tolerate you, at least tentatively, but your acceptance in the community is always insecure. Such was the case with William. One of the people on his list of those to be hurt was a man who threatened his fragile acceptance in a restaurant/bar where he had managed to get a job.

In large part, he probably chose me to tell about his “place” because he was convinced that I wouldn’t have the same judgmental attitude toward “weirdness” that most people do. But he also mentioned that most people would not want to hear what he had to said. The general attitude he encounters around matters of psychological pain is that you should just “man up,” and get on with your life. To try to push against the resistance that others might have to hearing him would risk being accused of wallowing in self self-pity.

I pointed out to him what he already knew, which is that the forms of suffering he was telling me about are intense, and are the lot of all of us who have been outed. And because we are helpless to defend ourselves, or to respond in any effective way, it is inevitable that we will, from then on, be struggling with a inner cauldron of rage. There was nothing “weird” or unusual in what he was feeling. Everybody deals with this rage in different ways. But it’s there in everybody who has been through the experience.

To a considerable extent William evaded one of the most intense forms of suffering that is the experience the majority of sex offenders: guilt. He did not feel that what he did was intrinsically wrong, and as he knows, I agree with him on this. Making sure that “perpetrators” feel profoundly and incapacitatingly guilty is one of the main goals of the so-called “treatment” to which sex offenders are subjected. It is assumed that they are all sociopaths, that they knowingly and deliberately injured the their younger partners, and that therefore they must be taught guilt.

He emphasized that “I’m not asking you to do anything. You can’t solve it. I know that. I just wanted to tell somebody else about this.” And of course he was right. I could not “solve it.” That would mean undoing the past.

We are destroyed externally: by having our life situations ripped apart, by being excluded from our communities, and by being incarcerated in a continuing social prison even once we are released from literal prison. We are destroyed internally: by unbearable loads of guilt, by profound and continuing humiliation, by loss of loved ones, and by the condemnation of the innermost source of our love. How many times, and in how many ways, can a person be destroyed, and then pick himself up to re-establish a world, and a self that might wish to live in it? I mentioned a poem that I wanted to share with him, about the Phoenix. But I hadn’t memorized it so I was unable to share it with him at that time. But this is the poem that I had in mind:

How many times

[replace with formatted]

will you break my heart

World?

This Phoenix thing goes

only so far

Before the dust settles

on the furniture

And rises again

only

as dust.

Clearly there was nothing “weird” about his fantasies. When we are attacked we desire to retaliate – and when we are deeply hurt, we desire revenge. All of us find different ways of dealing with these issues. The way William found is undoubtedly harmful to his health. The alcohol and the pot will take its toll on his body. I suppose one could fault him on that account, but since he has little desire to live anyhow, this is a small matter to him. Meanwhile he is hurting no one else with his secret retreats to that place where he can vent his rage on a world that has been unspeakably brutal in its dealing with him. Like most “sex-offenders” he did nothing that both he and his younger partner did not want.

Toward the end of our conversation he told me that not all the fantasies he had in his secret place were violent. Some were about positive things that he wished he could have. The main thing he wished for was the right to seek out the kind of love relationships that many societies have deemed honorable and beneficial to both the older person and his younger partner.

He reiterated the fact that he understood that I could not solve the issues that were manifest in his secret place, and that he did not expect me to. He just wanted to share it with someone. He had done so and it was time for me to return to bed.

I got up one more time that night. It was still raining when I went out to the step to relieve my aging bladder. He had gone to bed. I hoped that he was having good dreams.

I Bring You Flowers

I must have been about seven at the time of this incident. We were on vacation at Big Deep Lake – where we spent a month each year. I was always the first one up. This particular day my attention was drawn to flowers which seemed especially lovely. So I decided to collect a bouquet for the woman in the cabin next to ours – whom I was courting. It didn’t take long to gather together a bunch of flowers that I thought were quite spectacular. They were sure to melt anybody’s heart.

I had to wait a short while until I could hear some rustling around in the cabin next to ours where there was a woman with whom I was somewhat enamored. I didn’t want to wake anybody up. I knocked on the door diffidently but loud enough to be heard by anyone who was already awake. She came to the door and opened it. With an exclamation of horror she grabbed the bouquet from my hand and threw it into the stove. “It’s poison sumac,” she said by way of explanation. It may have been. I don’t know. I never broke out into a rash from it.

She gave me a lecture about not picking any weeds because I didn’t know which ones might be poisonous.

That was it. No thank you for the effort or the thought. No smile. Certainly no kiss. That was the end of my courtship. Whether I was gathering the wrong flowers I didn’t know. But I could see that I was courting the wrong woman.

Much later I wrote a poem about the incident.

I Bring you Flowers

I wandered early, before my family was awake, among the

flowers of my Eden, peopled with salamanders and

chipmunks.

I was searching for gifts for my beloved, the woman in

the cabin next to ours.

I was gathering a bouquet of blue and yellow and red

epiphanies,

– Fragments of a shattered sun that were too numerous

for my counting skills.

Bouquets.

For my love.

I was seven.

She forty seven.

A perfect match.

And she, when I presented them to her hoping for a

smile, an exclamation, a kiss even, threw them

in the early morning fiery stove declaring my

gifts to be poison sumac.

Since then I have never returned to my Eden, or only

partly so, as from a distance.

And now World which I love,

For you I gather bouquets.

You mistake my wild gifts.

You who know only what you grow in hothouses,

burn them, and threaten me with fire.

But

I bring you flowers.

Only that,

World.

Wild, and simple,

Lovely

Flowers.

Doorway To Hell

The little incident I describe below was my introduction to prison. I am not proud of how I dealt with it. Especially I see it as not only weak but probably a bit stupid of me to pay the protection fee. But I was just an ordinary person trying to survive in an insane situation that I knew nothing about. You, dear reader, can judge if you wish. I don’t think I have nearly the vulnerability to how I might be judged by others that I did before my prison experience. Now I am much more likely to have an attitude that says, “people can think what they think. What do they know?”

What I am describing is my first day in prison – my first minutes of this ordeal. In another room I had, with a group of others, been showed, told to shave, examined and put into an orange suit. This was my first step into what for me was a hell.

“Ripper” and “Skinner” were derogatory term for “sex-offender.”

This little description was taken from my book, “These Were My Realities” where my whole experience was described in detail. Like the rest of that book, it is meticulously accurate. Most of it was written down as it was happening, or very shortly afterwards. Only the names were changed.

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Stripped, scrubbed and with my new identity in hand I proceeded down the hall, as instructed, to the next level of hell.

I entered A Pod through the double metal doors and was directed to my room. A Pod consisted of a large central room surrounded by two tiers of cells. An enclosed area with a glass divider protruded from one of the walls. This was the “bubble” where the guards spent most of their time. My room was on the second tier. My roommate, a young man in his early 20’s, was lounging on the bottom bunk. I introduced myself and we talked a bit.

Right off he asked me point blank what my charge was. This was the question I had dreaded from the beginning but, even though I had thought of doing so, I had not made up a story ahead of time. One of the reasons for my neglecting to do this was that I was pretty sure that people would either see me on the T.V. News, or run into an article in the newspaper. My plan, such as it was, was simply to be evasive until I could see whether I might slip by unnoticed. The most anxious moments I have experienced in this ordeal have generally been about being “outed.” I remember how deeply I dreaded the consequences of my indictment and charges appearing in the newspaper and the T.V. The media is a major player in the system of torture this society has established for the punishment of those who have offended its sense of decency. Punishment does not begin with a guilty finding in court but with the report of the “alleged” crimes in the newspaper.

In response to my roommate’s direct question I said, “assault” and when he questioned me further I said I didn’t want to talk about it. It was not smooth at all. But as I was soon to discover, I was right in my assumption that there was no way I was going to slide by unnoticed.

I had a rather pleasant conversation with my roommate. It turned out that he was a drug dealer, and a general wheeler and dealer, but he was nevertheless a rather appealing person. I was a daddy for him at first sight and it was clear that, except for the charges against me, I would have no problems coping with him.

After supper, which was served in the large enclosure and eaten at metal picnic tables, two other men came up to me to make my acquaintance. They also asked me point blank questions for which I was ill prepared. They seemed genuinely friendly which turned out to be the case. However, under questioning I admitted that the charges concerned sexual assault. They told me it would be better not to admit this. They were being helpful. I left the encounter feeling I had made a mistake. I guess it was my fatalism about the problem being discovered anyhow that made me so ineffectual.

During the afternoon session in the rec room I watched TV, hoping it was not their policy to watch the news. They watched sports and I was left in peace.

After supper my roommate, George, I will call him, stood in the doorway to our cell while I sat on my bunk, and he told me about his current concerns. He had several cars, a fair bit of cash, and an odd assortment of other expensive goods he had bought with money he made selling drugs. His girlfriend had promised to be faithful to him while he served his four years, but she had sold all his goods and ceased writing to him. He couldn’t even get her to send some money for the commissary. He also talked about his need for a father and how that would have made a difference in how his life was turning out. He said his mother claimed that she became pregnant with him after his father raped her.

The first indication that I had been discovered came to me when I heard someone from the next cell (or the one below mine) saying my name. Sounds are transmitted through the ventilation and plumbing system and it is hard to tell where they come from. Then I heard quotes from the local newspaper article about me. Even though I had neither seen nor heard the article I knew this is what it was. I could have written it myself.

The voice from below got George’s attention and told him he was rooming with a skinner.

George looked shocked. His potential new daddy was a skinner. He asked me about it and I did not deny it.

George was about 5’ 10” and fairly well built. He was a lot younger than me. He certainly had more experience fighting than I did. However he did not appear to be much stronger than me. I felt I would be close enough to being his match so as to not make it worth his while to try to beat me up. He was afraid of crazies and I could be a crazy if push came to shove. At first I felt intimidated by his swagger and bragging. But then I remembered the chimpanzee who discovered that by banging two garbage can lids together he could terrify the other males in his group and vastly increase his prestige. There is a lot of garbage can lid banging in prison. Assessments of this sort went through my mind as I sat on my bunk and watched George react to the news. But he was not to respond with violence.

“I’m not judgmental,” he said finally. He shook his head. “Still, I don’t know what to think.” He asked me more about it. I said I could not tell him what actually happened. But it was not the kind of thing one would assume from reading the newspaper. He pointed out that his friends were “solid guys.” By this he meant the blustering would-be-alpha-males on the unit. They would not be happy with him. Still, he did not threaten me.

After he thought it through for a few minutes, George came up with his conclusion.

“Look, this thing could go one of three ways. First, I could get myself taken out of this room, I know how to make that happen. Second, you could get sent to protective custody.” He spent a bit of time telling me why this was probably a good option – reasons, which I have since learned, were essentially accurate.

“Third,” he said, “You could pay me something.” There was no threat in this. He simply pointed out that he would get a lot of flack from the “solid guys,” which turned out to be true. He needed something to make this worthwhile to him. He had no money at all now in his account. He desperately wanted a radio. He said he might be able to get some of the guys to back off a little bit on the harassment they would certainly give me. He could physically protect me if someone attacked me. And he could give me someone to talk with in the room.

It was a business offer. He neither threatened me nor implied he would rile up others against me. The threat from the others was real enough without his doing anything in that regard.

“I’m not rich,” I said. “You may think I’ve got lots of money, but I don’t.”

“Could you come up with sixty or seventy dollars?” he asked.

The truth was that in many ways this did not sound like too bad a deal. Having a roommate with whom I would be safe and who might have some influence with the people on the unit who would probably be the most dangerous ones to me might actually be worth something to me.

“The thing is,” I said, “suppose I paid you the $60.00. What’s to prevent you from deciding a week down the line that this is turning out to be harder than you thought for, and that you need another sixty, and then another.”

He nodded. He understood this to be a reasonable concern. He looked down, scratched his head and said “All right. Suppose we said $100 and that would be all.”

“Whatever shit your friends give you or anything else,” I said. “This would be a one time payment?”

He agreed.

“If you came back for more I wouldn’t pay it… whatever…” I said.

He nodded again and I told him I needed to think about it. I mulled it over in my mind weighing the potential risks and benefits as best I could in an unfamiliar scene.

Finally I looked at him, still standing in the doorway. “I can see you really need the money,” I said, “and I’d like you to have it. Also I can see that your friends will give you a hard way to go if you room with me. But if they knew I paid you anything they might think I was an easy mark. Then after you left, someone else might come after me for money, and I wouldn’t pay them. So it’s in your interest as well as mine that this is confidential.”

He nodded.

So we came to an agreement.

I suppose someone must have spread the news about why I was in prison during the last recreation period (between 7 and 8). At any rate on the first night of my stay in A pod I experienced the night calls on the dorm. I was, of course, unable to see anything or even guess who was shouting. They were just voices and screams in the night – loud, raucous, full of hate and venom – animal-like voices in their primitive intensity but with a malice and hatred that was distinctively human.

“Hey, Hunter, you piece of shit.”

“You go to ‘check in’.” [Slang for commit suicide]

“Why’d you do it?”

“Why don’t you kill yourself – I’ll do it for you.” And the chants started by one person and finished by another: “Rip – per”

“Skin – ner” It continued for perhaps a half hour and then died out. The newspaper article had not yet been seen by everybody, and they had not yet been incited to their full fury.

Somersaults

I recall an event from one of my visits at the East Coast Gathering sponsored by the Sunbathing Society. The society Rented a fairly plush resort with cabins, tent sites, a hotel, a sauna bath, and a fine swimming pool. I met a boy named Eric at the swimming pool. He was a polite intelligent 11-year-old boy, and we enjoyed each other’s company. These were the days before the hysteria about pedophiles and boys as well as men enjoyed being naked. Each day I would find him waiting for me in the same place beside the pool. Of course he might just have happened to be there when I came looking for him. Maybe he just liked to hang out there. But, no. It was more than that. As I approached the pool I could see him looking around for someone. Who else could it be except me? And when he spotted me his face lit up and he smiled. And when I joined him at the poolside he stayed there as long as I did. We had to make it look very casual. Even in those days eyes would have been raised had we followed each other around all day long – which I think we both would have liked.

We talked. It was mostly about him, course. What he did when he was home. His friends. His interest. His accomplishments. Whatever.

And periodically we would swim around together making up excuses to touch – to be closer. Also he would show me the “tricks” he would could do in the water. The main one was turning somersaults. He could do two or three without coming up for air. And I could admire him from a window in the side of the pool that I could access by going down some steps. How beautiful he was. And pleasant to be around.