One Man's Fight Against Domestic Violence

..........As my mentor, Chuck Braden, always used to say, "If there's one thing to remember about domestic violence, it's that you can't solve these problems with bullet points, or sound bytes. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise."
..........That is why I write full length novels, short stories and essays.

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I Can Still Remember

I can still remember riding in the car with my parents

...… the car going around endless curves

...… and over never ending hills

...… the windows rolled up, closed tight

...… no drafts or wind breaks

...… the cigarette smoke permeating every breath

A queasy feeling engulfed my stomach,

My eyeballs rolled in their sockets, while I gasped for air

I turned green and vomited out the side window

 

And, I remember the conversation as clearly as I remember the

tread on the wheels whirring on the asphalt of winter highways

the slick, black ice, the patches of snow, the cold bleak days

We stopped on occasion so I could finish vomiting

wipe off my face, be sure I got out the last drop of bile

and my parents acted like heroes for being so considerate

Then, why was the refrain always, “Quit your bellyaching!”

while I made the case for rolling down the windows

"Get that smoke out of here! Move it from under my nose."

To a longed-for crack in the window which never materialized

“Quit your bellyaching!” was their refrain to the little green elf

now lying prostrate in the back seat of our Ford Fairlane smoker

 

I can still remember being held at gunpoint

The shots through the floor, the warnings and admonitions

I could say, “See there, I was abused as a kid!”

“Do you know what it’s like to be held at gunpoint?”

But that would be a cheap shot, because I never really

thought my dad was going to kill me, not with his gun

 

He killed my youth by just standing there

praising my mother, while she had her way with me

just as if it had been a beating or sexual advance

She restrained me; she told me white was black

black was blue; she hadn’t said what she just did say

She hadn’t done what she just did do

She hadn’t borrowed my money

then denied it had ever existed

 

Restrictions were commonplace, criticism plentiful

For years, whenever we met, no matter how long the absence

her conversation would always start with something she had

just noticed was wrong with me—my beard, my haircut, my weight

 

In her later years, we bought her a dog

She kept him confined in a cage barely bigger than his carcass

He barked for his freedom, but confinement prevailed

When he finally got out to relieve himself,

even as a younger dog, he would often stumble,

uncertain on his feet, unsteady in his balance

There was nothing wrong with him, except that he had had

“the treatment,” the grist of my youth

 

That raunchy, acrid, debilitating grist of my youth

every disheartening aspect of which, I can still remember