American Poverty: 2

When the time was right, Gary had sex with both of his stepdaughters.

Good. With that out of the way we can move on. Once I saw him drifting through the bright open spaces of 30th Street Station, and I thought: no one here knows this but me. He looked lost, and sad too yes but also certain hardness set about his face I did not know from the Institute. There Gary was a talker, soft & good natured, easy to make fun of...

...when I was young I remember a cartoon like this: a big bulldog walks down the street. he's got this chihuahua sidekick leaping around his feet going on and on with the "are we going to the park, boss? I love the park, boss, I do I do I do-" until a well-timed smack shut the little guy up. I was the same age the stepdaughter when Gary first started. He was like that chihuahua, at the Institute, always prattling at Dr. Ingel's heels. And then the inevitable smack. But now here he was, tight lipped and tough cheeked as the college students rushed to trains to take them away for the holidays; the feeling of Christmas coming up, and days without work or deadlines; I was high and floating through myself, my head up in the vaulted glass ceiling amongst the stray pigeons and the light. He was no chihuahua now. And when Dr. Ingel's interview for the city paper came out -- the one where he called himself a victim-practioner and told the story of what his neighbor had done some thirty years ago -- Gary got there early with the other men, a newspaper under every seat, waiting...

Oh but it's complicated. Abuser and abused. How to document the many ways to cross each others' borders? Once I saw a woman inhabit her secretary. As the weeks went by everything about the manager -- her clothes, her attitude, her weight -- entered in the young woman's being until dressed up fat & angry the secretary was barely recognizable as the baby-faced girl I remember. And the manager did less work than ever.

One time, Mike came in me and tried to fry my brain, though it was my hand that brought the pills to my tongue, my choice to swallow...

Dr. Ingel defended his decision well. Freudian or no there was a time for disclosure, and though I agreed I also smelled blood and it made me nervous, all those men watching him with something singular in their eyes -- they who had fondled cousins and touched daughters; whose mouths has pressed up bare vaginas, who gave with that first strange sensation a shadow that could live for years, a lifetime sometimes of hypervigilance and exaggerated startle response; vaginismus, vagina dentada, frigidity and lovelessness, PTSD, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, talking cures, the ability to keep a secret even when one should not. For Dr. Ingel, it stopped here. He surrendered his secret for a cross and climbed on. These men know naked when they see it, and so they watched, and they laughed when he joked and smiled their congratulations for his bravery, teeth like dull white nails... they know how hard it can be...

With that out of the way we can move on. It will be almost 60 degrees tomorrow, unseasonable for January. But this is 2008, and anything is possible. I store all my favorite songs compressed and placed in the inside pocket of my jacket. I don't get high anymore. Soon Bush will be out of the White House and we can hope to understand what we've done to Iraq. No one stays on top for long. The episode ends with a reversal - the chihuahua struts with that oversized sidekick jumping and "yes bossing" him until enough is enough, and the smack comes because it has to. Because he can. And with that out of the way, we can move on.