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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: Sacrifice

#Me Too?

16 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by David in memoir, Sacrifice, Sexuality, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#Violation

I’m sitting in my chair. I went to AA earlier. A memory keeps surfacing. It is painful and yet I want to exaggerate my response, minimize the significance, although the incident occurred fifty one years ago on the same kind of cloudy, chilly autumn day that we have today.

I remember details, the reason why I was there and the reason my abuser gave for raping me.

I was seventeen, a track and cross country runner. It was cross country season. And I was a Senior, Captain of the team. And I developed swelling and discoloration in my lower leg. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but it could have been a blood clot. So I went to my family doctor.

His practice was in a building called St Luke’s Hospital on Harrison and Grace Streets. The neighborhood was sketchy then; gay beer joints that you wouldn’t know were places where gays cruised, unless you were gay. There was a movie theater that showed slightly risqué foreign films, like The Lovers with Jeanne Moreau, tame stuff by today’s standards or by the porn explosion that came after Deep Throat.

Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) and the University of Richmond’s University College were there. In 1968, their primary purposes were to provide student deferments to keep middle class kids out of Vietnam. Higher Education, at its best. (note sarcasm and irony in statement).

So here I am at the family doctor, getting my leg checked out. Were I gay, I guess I could have been considered a twink, in today’s patois of the subculture. So my lean, 17 year old muscular runner’s ass is there for a diagnosis, a competent medical opinion about this oddity in my leg, when kindly old Doctor Respectability decided I needed (Get Ready For It!) a prostate exam.

“Drop your shorts.”

Shorts dropped.

“Bend over the table.”

I bend over. He starts probing me with what I assume are fingers. I dunno. When he’s done he hands me a box of tissues to “clean up”. There is some fecal matter there. I pull up my shorts and leave. I leave with this funny feeling that hasn’t gone away after fifty one years. Rape? I dunno.

No subsequent digital rectal examination has ever felt like that one.

I won’t say that my life was messed up because of that office visit. Other stuff did most of that. I won’t say I got warped ideas about human sexuality because of that rather, uh, comprehensive digital exam. The warping began years before.

This whole thing was just one stop in the sexual penny arcade we all visit in the course of living.

At least I am sober today.

The Patronesses of France

31 Thursday May 2018

Posted by David in Catholic Life, Sacrifice

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#Patron Saints of France, #Saints

St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Joan of Arc are here depicted kneeling before The Blessed Virgin Mary.

St Thérèse, The Little Flower, and St Joan are Patron Saints of France. The turmoil in Western civilization, including France, today is exacerbated by spiritual decline and down right decay. We would be wise to remember these two Saints. The Little Flower, St Thérèse, proclaimed that we can bear witness to Christ, in the smallest of deeds and prayers. We need not accomplish the great, merely do the small things well, like a meal lovingly prepared for our families or a Rosary prayed from the heart.

St Joan’s witness is all about courage. She was a soldier. Arrested by the enemies of France, she was put on trial, where, in the face of martyrdom, she professed her faith, remaining steadfast to it, as she was burned at the stake.

For our time, we need to proclaim The Gospel with simplicity, discipline, and courage. Pray that we can emulate these two Saints.

Parting Company With A Character

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by David in Sacrifice, self-indulgence, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

books, clothes, Honesty, image

One disturbing truth about my life I discovered in sobriety is that I hide who I am in personae I create. I project intelligence, compassion, and amiability, but, truth be told, I possess limited quantities of the qualities. I am really just a scared and needy little boy in a 65-year old body.

At the heart of projecting these images are the clothes I wear. I buy clothes to cultivate my self-image. The consequence of this is that I have bought a lot of clothes, more than I can possibly hope to wear. They take up space. Since I’ve been recovering from the fusion, the clothes that I wear most often are at the top of a storage system of three plastic tubs. Like an iceberg, I have  used only the top of my clothes iceberg. Time to say good by to clothes I won’t ever hardly wear,.

Next in the parting with an image is gleaning an accumulation of books. Some books belonged to my brother, some to my aunt, my cousin, my father, my uncle. Most of those stay. The ones that can go are classic books that will never go out of print, those I can find at a library or on Kindle.

Almost 20 years ago, part of my “image” was pipe smoking. I enjoyed smoking, but I did not enjoy the coughing, discolored teeth, and smelly clothes. So I quit. My recent activity is a resumption of my abandoning of a false image of who I am.

I’m just another one of God’s children.

Pax.

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