He threw his hands in the air and looked at her with angry bewilderment. “Well what was I supposed to do?” he shouted. “Change what happened? Fix everything? You know I can’t do that!”
But she only closed her eyes and gave one small, sad shake of her head. “That night, I just wanted you to come and find me,” she whispered. “You didn’t.”
Happy Halloween lovely readers! If y’all are looking for a little light and spooky reading for Samhain, check out the poem I contributed to Wildlife Waystation’s e-magazine. It’s on page 20. The title?
Monsters.
http://wildlifewaystation.org/_blog/News_and_Videos/post/issue-10-animals-that-symbolize-halloween/
Dear Private Boys’ Schools,
let’s talk about your rape education program.
If you even have one.
As someone who attended a private all-girls school from the age of 3, I received a fair amount of self-protection spiels. From the awkward “it’s not okay for anyone to touch your private parts” mumbles I received in elementary school to the assembly of junior high where a police woman came to talk to us about reducing our risk factors as potential targets to the high school prom night safety and it’ll-ruin-your-life-to-get-pregnant talks, I was doused in awareness from the very beginning that there were people out there who, if I wasn’t careful, would try to take advantage of my sexuality.
Sure, threat prevention awareness is a good thing to learn. But notice how it was presented to me as an “if I weren’t careful” scenario? Notice how I was taught about “reducing my target risk-factors?” While I was never explicitly told that it would be my fault if I were raped – in fact, I was usually vocally told the opposite – that message was still insinuated by the very approach the rape education programs took.
And oh hey, just a side note – nobody ever taught me what to do if I were raped. Police calls, hospital rape kits, legal paths, therapy – I only found out about those things through watching Law & Order SVU. In college.
But most of that, I suppose, is irrelevant to the main thing I’d like to tell you, oh vaginaless boys’ schools. You see, what I’d really like to say is that while all those rape talks about making sure we were safe might have done some good for me and my fellow females, it would have done even more good to have made sure there weren’t any rapists to begin with.
And that’s where you come in.
If anything, the rape rate would go down more drastically if boys were taught how to not rape. Girls don’t get to choose whether or not they’re victims. Boys always get to choose whether or not they’re rapists.
Sure, not all rapists are male and not all victims are female, but as things stand right now, males do make up the majority of aggressors. Where “majority” means 99%.
But surely, your sweet young upperclass boys who have been hand-fed good, moral values from the age of five would never do something so terrible?
Well. That has not been my experience.
I had friends who had been raped by the time we even got to be seniors in high school. It wasn’t by some thug from the bad part of town. It was by one of those nice, privileged boys that their friend had just gone to the winter dance with. The straight-A student, the drama club regular, the average joe on their crew time they’d hung out with on Friday nights. You know, the one nobody could ever envision as a rapist.
I mean, the sense of entitlement that would require!
Surely this son of a lawyer who drives his shiny car to school and has a tight group of male friends to back him up no matter what he needs would never have such a sense of entitlement. Sure this good Catholic boy who was taught that a vagina is a prize to be won by wedding vows would never be tempted to think he deserves the goody bag early!
Oh. Wait…
Hopefully by now you’re seeing my point. Those innocent young boys in your private prep school, they’ve been set up by their socioeconomic status to maybe become not so innocent. And even if those traits don’t quite take hold in adolescence, your boys are the ones who go on to become the frat guys you read about in the news who got to college and decided that finally, sex was theirs for the taking. Or if they make it beyond that, they are the ones who form into utterly distinguished businessmen with prim-and-proper wives and a white picket fence and a routine predictable as clockwork and 7 am traffic, and who when they become bored with their utterly distinguished, utterly regimented lives find themselves relieving that boredom in their niece’s bedroom…
No, these are not figments of a perverted imagination. They are real stories. Of my friends.
So. Now that we’re all properly horrified here, what do we do about it?
Well, let’s go back to those rape prevention talks I mentioned earlier. How about we have them again, except at your school this time? How about we make rape prevention as important a curriculum component at boys’ schools as at girls’? And while we’re at it, why not incorporate it into a recharged version of sex ed? One that could be used to teach both boys and girls, at private and public schools, from a practical perspective? Because honestly, telling us that hey, here’s your reproductive system, and it will do these things is about as helpful for managing daily sexuality as telling a pilot-to-be that hey, here’s a diagram of a plane, it can fly. Great. Now the pilot knows the plane can fly. Probably has no idea beyond that what the fuck to do with it.
Why not go beyond the mere “here’s a uterus and a vagina, here’s a penis and testicles” to actually tell budding pubescents, “and here are some feelings that you’re probably going to have with respect to your particular genitals, and here’s how to handle them.” Instead of just telling kids that it’s not okay to have sex before marriage, why not focus more on telling them that it’s not okay to abuse another’s body? Teach about abstinence in religion class. Teach about consent in sex-ed.
Seriously, there are so many ways to tackle teaching boys about rape prevention. And they’ve been shown to work. Take, for example, the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign in Vancouver that led to a 10% decrease in the rape rate. Or the course designed by Foubert, Tatum, and Godin that told men, among other things, about other males that had been victimized – and that even led participants to report two years later that they had retained perspective and behavioral changes as a result of the course?
For decades, girls’ schools have been trying to keep down the rape rate from their side. Honestly, hasn’t done a whole lot of good.
Guess the ball’s in your court now, boys’ schools. Whatcha going to do?
I really hope it’s not just sit back and change nothing. This is not somebody else’s problem. It is yours.
Sincerely,
Miceala Shocklee
A poem for this late Sunday night.
Falling Awake
You never go to bed alone,
with the whispers of your memories
sounding in your head,
keeping you awake
with the uneasy doubt
that there is something you forgot.
One flash in your brain, like lightning,
silent.
You never go to bed alone,
with all those ghosts behind your eyes.
Written in a coffee shop, for all you lonesome lovers.
I will not settle for muffin scraps,
those neglected shavings you pay no attention to
but which I might bite on fast and swallow
and so delude myself I have been given the real thing.
They are but a poor fragment
of the full substance of your sweetness,
and you will leave no trail of crumbs
for me to follow you home.
Hello, lovely readers, from me and my welcome-overstaying sinus infections germs. It’s a tissue party over here.
But at least I’ve got something to really celebrate! As some of you might remember, waaaaaaay back in March, I sent my memoir, its ink freshly dried after a mere two months of official existence, to compete in the “life stories” arena of the 21st annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Books Award. You know, this post: https://thequillwritings.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/writers-digest-contest/
Well, the results are in! No, I didn’t win. But I did get something pretty damn cool: a FANTASTIC score AND an AWESOME review from the judges!
Books were evaluated in five different categories along a scale, with 1 meaning “Needs Improvement” and 5 meaning “Outstanding.” A 0 was given if the category wasn’t applicable.
Here are my scores:
Structure and Organization: 4
Grammar: 4
Production Quality and Cover Design: 4
Plot (if applicable): 0
Character Development (if applicable): 0
All 4’s for a first-time memoir that I wrote, edited, and published entirely on my own? I’ll take it!
But what I was even more excited about was the review:
The best part of Drop Dead Gorgeous by author Miceala Shocklee is her passion to write her own story about her eating disorder. She writes about how eating disorders hold a deadly attraction. There is the attraction of winning, of reaching “ultimate thinness” but there is also the attraction of playing. There is a seductive temptation in the eating disorder game.
But eating disorders are not beautiful. They are not pretty. Eating disorders are not just an attraction, an addiction, a disease. They are not just a way of life, they are an obsession. How could I want such a deadly disease so much? Good question. You see, it’s not the disease I wanted–it was the promises it made. The promises of superiority and power, of satisfaction and happiness.”
Perhaps one of the deadiest facets of eating disorders is that because you can always go farther and farther, there is always, always a competition going on. The author realizes how through therapy her recovery is not done.
A must read for those who are going through an eating disorder and or recovery.
– Judge, Writer’s Digest 21st Annual Self-Published Book Awards
Seriously, the only feedback I got was this amazing review, and a suggestion to possibly add pictures to increase readers’ understanding of the disease. I totally respect the judges’ feedback (have I mentioned yet how SUPERBLY GRATEFUL I am for their review???), but I don’t think I’ll be adding pictures – at least, not the kind they mean. There was a reason I didn’t include pictures in the first place. Too much emphasis has been put on the way that eating disorders look. To be sick, you must be stick thin. But that’s not true. Even technically “overweight” people can starve themselves. Some people can eat next to nothing for a week and lose three pounds. Some people can eat next to nothing for a week and gain two pounds. Sure, a lot of the danger of eating disorders is on the physical toll they take on a body. But the media, whether we’re talking tabloids or medical websites or individual blogs, have done a fair amount of showing what eating disorders can look like on the outside. The whole point of my book was to show what eating disorders look like on the inside. And that’s not easily done with pictures.
I want victims of eating disorders to have a voice out there who says, “yes, I have lived this life too,” but even more than that, I want victims of eating disorders to have something they can hand to their friends and family, the ones who never be privy to that world of eating disorder mind, and say, “this is what it’s like.” In all my years of encounters with other victims, there have been just as many ways as there were victims that eating disorders looked. For the most part, however, there was really only one way that eating disorders feel.
And besides, do you know how daunting it is to have to sit down in front of those who mean the most to you and try to explain yourself? Oh god. What are you even going to say? What if you can’t explain it right? What if they don’t perceive it accurately? What if they keep interrupting you while you’re trying to tell them things? What if as soon as you open your mouth you start to cry?
I hope that maybe, my book will take that burden from some people out there who find resonance in my words and can just hand all those loved ones my book and say, “here, read this. Then we can talk.”
So. Long story short, I think I’ll pass on the pictures.
But seriously, Writer’s Digest judges, I’m tickled pink. More than pink. I’m tickled fuchsia.
And by the way, in case you’re interested in checking out this book that I’ve just spent half a tonjillion paragraphs going on about, it’s currently available in both print and kindle form:
Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/miceala-shocklee/drop-dead-gorgeous/paperback/product-20635940.html
I think I have forgotten how to dream. There is a dead and dullness in me that can provide no spark for the shell of my imagination. My soul has gone silent, weary.
When I lay down at night, my head is filled with the noise of the words I was meant to think during the day, when only the repetitive, solid clunk of sandpaper phrases like “job search” and “paying rent” were heard instead, because no matter how I try, I do not have time to sit and think. Not when there are textbook chapters from a week ago to be read. Not when there is neurology homework to complete. Not when I woke up too early, stayed up too late, been too sick and too tired for too long and my brain is too slumped from fighting itself or too hazy from illness. Not when there’s always one more thing to get done.
I am empty. I have written myself – what more can I do? I have faced the truth of myself, found the cathartic relief, the cathartic release of turning myself into words. I have written my pain and written my cracks and written the rawest understanding that I have of myself. I have written my memoir. I have written my truth. Now, all else feels a sham.
I have always been too much in my characters. My heroines, they are vessels of my dreams set out upon a sea of words. They are the stories I could not tell in my life, the adventures, the happily ever after. They were the stitches for wounds I had no other way to heal.
But it was all subconscious before. Sure, to some extent I knew I had been projected into my characters, but now – there is an awkward consciousness that what I am trying to write is just one more shadow.
Do I have no more dreams? Every time I set my mind wandering, the worlds all feel thin and shabbily built. Nothing feels like a good enough premise. Nothing feels good enough to be made real.
And so I toss the frail wisp of narrative away and watch it drift off, flimsy and sticky on the wind of being forgotten.
There is a ghost of a girl mourning within me. She holds a pen. She thinks that I have forgotten how to dream.
Hello, lovely readers. For some reason only beknownst to it, my depression has gotten rather uppity over the past few days. But rather than continuing to sit here in a grumbling match with my depression, I decided to pull out my keyboard and describe it instead. Spectres usually aren’t so hard to deal with once you’ve managed to pin them down.
So now I’ve got a poem to share with you all! Aren’t you lucky. But don’t any of you dare go thinking, “Man, more writing, this is great! If only she were depressed more often!”
Seriously. I will excommunicate you.
Nil
Depression is the tired feeling of waking up too early on a grey morning,
cloudy and alone.
Depression is the too busy, too rushed, too late sprint to the next have-to
with the no-consolation of a half-peck on the lips from a lover while you don’t even stop
on your way out the door.
Depression is the uneven kilter of a storm-ridden brain when it’s sunny outside,
and you continue to stare at the light coming through your window even while you shrink from it,
because the bewildered confusion in your eyes is too rapt to look away.
Sometimes depression is pain. Sometimes depression is numbness.
But sometimes depression is none of these things;
it is not pain or numbness or fear or hardness or solitude or sadness.
Sometimes depression is nothing.
An odd non-existence to the mold of organic matter,
an emptiness where there once was something,
a void of anything at all that would indicate you are still alive.
A hollow deadness, too much of an absence to be either blank or black.
A hole into which everything is falling,
but in which there is nothing at all to be seen.
So, in a world of questionable literary analysis, some might call the following “poignant.” I call it kinda sappy. But I thought I’d share it with all you lovely readers anyway, because it might be worth the amusement of finding out that I TOTALLY CONSPICUOUSLY I mean very surreptitiously scratched this down and camera phoned a pic (I can make up verbs if I want to) during my art class tonight. The prof had told us to spend the first twenty minutes of class looking through the library of art books; I’d grabbed a volume of fantastic Nat Geo photography and, well, this just kinda happened. Hope y’all enjoy 🙂
Oh! Btw, I am in no way advocating not paying attention during class… no way whatsoever…
Anyhoo. The brain blurb.
Good evening lovely readers. Guess what?
😉
WE FREAKING DID IT!!!!
That’s right! Jerry Mahoney‘s book Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad broke into the ranks of the top 1000 books sold on Amazon! And boy, did it happen in style. Here’s the latest updates of where Jerry’s book stands:
# 260 Overall
# 9 in Parenting
# 2 on Amazon’s ‘Movers and Shakers’ chart
# 1 (that’s right, NUMBER ONE!) in Gay & Lesbian Biography/Memoir AND featured as “hot new release!”
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who participated. Seriously, you all made a HUGE difference. Now you can be all smiley for the rest of the day over having helped an author’s wild dream come true. Good goin’ 🙂
In case you haven’t gotten a chance to order the book yet, there’s still time! Just click on the hyperlinked text above to check out Jerry’s blog and the Amazon pre-order page for his book.
Happy reading, everyone.
And now back to your regularly scheduled program…
Quill Aquiver 