Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

I found this on one of my dancer-friend's blogs. It saddens and frightens me.

American citizens have been setting themselves up for a fall like this for years and years. I believe the public schools' attitude of "sit down, shut up, and do it like everybody else" plays a key part in the erosion of democracy in our society. Now nobody can think for themselves.

Thank God I am contrary enough to want my kid out of that mental meat-grinder. Thank God I live in a country where I still have the chance to make that decision for him.

Here is the beginning of the article

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. more here

Haunted Strip Clubs

Houses are not the only places that can be haunted. When you think of a what a strip club can be like--all the emotions people express there, frustrated sexuality, unrequited love, happiness, lies, anger, and sometimes even violence that go on there—It would surprise me to mind out that a majority of then were not haunted.

I have worked in 3 small regular strip clubs over the years (as opposed to bars where dancers are just part of the entertainment). Everu single one of them seems to have had a ghost. One was haunted by the ghost of the man who used to own the building. I never saw this ghost, just heard about him form the other girls. He was apparently harmless. The back-stage part of the strip club had once been a large house, and the public front part had been added on later. The former owner is said to have come down the stairs and sat in one of the dressing room chairs. According the girls who did see him, he didn’t seem creepy or weird, just lonely. The girls seemed to think he was really just hanging out for company. They would talk to him. I can vouch for the dressing room being icy cold a lot of the time, but I actually just thought the owner was too cheap to pay for the heat.

Another club I worked in had some raised separate booths on the side of the room opposite the stage. If you were up on the stage, you cold see into these booths. Frequently, I would see people sitting in those spots, and of course I would look over and smile at them. When I looked again, they were gone!

This is my best haunted club story:

The first actual strip club I worked in was this skanky little dump in Indana. The manager and the DJ were both young guys, who were also friends, and who apparently got their ideas of how to run a strip club from watching movies like “Stiptease.” One day the manager and the DJ came in with a box of clothes they said they had gotten hot somewhere and sold them to us. They claimed the things were new, but I and another girl noticed that when we took the things off, they looked like they had been worn more than a few times.

At about the same time, I started thinking I saw somebody by the door coming in, then I would look again to see if it was a staff member or a new customer, and there would be nobody there. Strangely, there always seemed to be an orange cast to the imaginary person, as if they were standing under a neon light. We had no such orange neon lights in the club. I saw this same thing once in the hallway by the VIP rooms.

Another girl had a bizarre experience while entertaining a customer in the VIP section. That club has small curtained booths for a VIP area. They only ever allowed one dancer and one customer to a booth, and there wasn’t room for more than that anyway. This dancer was sitting on the customer’s lap, facing away from him, and for some reason turned her head to the side. She saw ANOTHER GIRL'S FACE just inches from her own! By the time she recovered from the shock, the other girl disappeared.

A couple of weeks later, a girl came back to the club who had been off work for a while having a baby. She saw my gown that I had bought from the manager, and said "Oh my god, where did you get this?" When I told her, she told me that it was a gown the house mom had custom made for her, and that after she had gotten tired of it, she gave it to a new girl named Autumn. Autumn eventually became engaged to and moved in with the DJ. Shortly afterward, she was killed in a car accident on her way home from work!

Strangely, the only ones of us who saw anything unusual were those of us who had unknowingly bought Autumn’s used outfits from the DJ! Neither one of us knew her.

The (haunted) house where I used to live

The first house I shared with my husband was full of spirits. That house was also newly built, but it had been built under contract for somebody who had reneged on the deal at the last minute. That house was built on land that was once a farm. The original farm house was next door to ours, and it had even more problems. The house behind that one and the house next door to ours on the other side all seemed to be affected. In the 8 years my husband lived in that house, those 4 houses saw 3 divorces, the demise of one good friendship between 3 room mates, the financial ruin of one couple, actual psychological illness, spouse abuse, and dozens of knock-down, drag-out fights that frequently spilled out into the yards.

The five years I lived there were the most difficult of my life.

Though I had stayed with Ted on weekends before I was pregnant, I had never noticed anything weird or unusual. I would attribute that to the constant activity—(Besides Ted and me, there was also Ted’s roommate, the roommate’s 12 year old son, all their rowdy friends, and several cats) and my continual state of drunkenness, hung-over-ness, and/or post-coital bliss. Hell, I was lucky if I noticed whether my shoes were on the right feet. When I got preggers, though, we kicked the roommate and her entourage out and started fixing up the house That was the year natural gas prices were so outrageous, so we stayed in my condo and only went down to the house to work on cleaning and decorating it. That was when I began to notice things.

The house was a split-level ranch, with a short stairway in the living room that lead up to a hallway that was open on the living room side. Frequently, when I came around the corner from the kitchen or the bathroom, I would see someone standing there. It was a man, rather short, in a tan jacket and pants, and a wide-brimmed hat. He usually stood with his hand on the newel post, looking down into the living room. He would always fade away as soon as I saw him.

One time, when it was bitter cold, Ted and I went into the house to do a few things. We had to turn up the furnace while we worked (we usually left it set at 50) and left it on when we went for supper. We had planned to do more when we came back, but for some reason we stayed out several hours and decided not to do any more in the house. When we went back to turn down the thermostat, we found it had already been turned down.

When we brought the cats down to live in the house, they went crazy. One stayed under the couch for days and growled. The other ran right to the top of the stares, where the figure of the man always stood, and started to cry. (Not really crying—it’s this desperate-sounding noise she makes when she wants something and we don’t know what it is.) We put the litter box in the basement bathroom, and the older cat would sit on the steps and cry many times when she didn’t want to go down to the litter box. She would stare down the stairs with her ears pointed forward as if she could see something, and meow like somebody was killing her.

When we brought he baby home, things got worse instead of better. When I sat up nights with the baby, I could hear another baby crying. Having worked in an emergency room, I know a baby’s fever cry. Sometimes it was that, and sometimes uncontrollable bawling. I heard cats meowing. Kiddo’s electronic music toys would begin to play spontaneously. Musical instruments, like bells and tambourines, would play. Things got moved to improbably places. Things disappeared all together—especially shoes. Over the years, I threw out several single shoes and slippers, after despairing of ever finding the mates. I sort of expected to find all that stuff when we moved, but no luck.

The sprits got bolder. One time I came home and opened the front door, the find the tan-suited man standing in my living room. As the door swung open, he stared at me in surprise for a moment before fading away.

I began seeing a female form, too. She had a long pink dress. One time, I had taken Kiddo out for a walk in his stroller, and he had fallen asleep there. I simply wheeled the stroller inside and parked it in the kitchen, letting kiddo sleep. I got busy doing some dishes. When I turned away form the sink to check on Kiddo, the woman was bending over him in the stroller. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, just an interested one; the way people usually look at babies in strollers. As I opened my mouth to speak, she disappeared.

As kiddo got old enough to stand and walk, he developed the charming habit of lifting his arms and smiling at whomever he wanted to pick him up. Sometimes he would turn to what seemed to us an empty space, make faces that showed obvious pleasure and recognition, and then lift his arms to be held. He would also babble and wave to people we could not see.

Ted had his experiences, too. He likes to soak in the bath tub with a good book. Frequently while he was doing this, the bathroom door would open and shut, as if someone had passed through. A couple times, the bathroom door flew open forcefully and banged against the wall. Sometimes it didn’t open, but there was still a banging sound, as if somebody were knocking desperately to get in. When in the basement, he could hear footsteps in the empty house above.

The creepiest thing that ever happened to me there was once, while I was standing in the hall, a huge black shape flew from the bedroom at the front of the house, straight down the hall, and out the bathroom window at the back of the house. It was not a bird or a bat—this thing was huge. It was probably about as big as a person, but it seemed shapeless. It passed just inches from me in the narrow hallway and blocked out the light from the bathroom window before it made its escape. Although it was a hot summer day, I felt cold.

The oddest thing was the way the house or its spirits seemed to affect our relationship. Although our relationship was rocky in those days, we would be fine as long as we were outside the house. As soon as we came home, a fight would start. I’m not joking—sometimes as soon as we were in the door, Ted would say something, and I would take it the wrong way, and off we’d go! They really seemed to thrive on this—the worse the argument, the more activity we’d see for the next few days. Strangely, sex seemed to have a similar effect on them. Many women state in a figurative way that they herd bells and music after hot sex—we really did!

The activity seemed to calm somewhat as Kiddo grew older, but I still hated being in the house. I never felt comfortable there, and I never felt like I was alone. And we still tended to fight whenever we were together in the house.

Thank God Cook County raised their property taxes; because that was the only way I could convince Ted to move. Our new house, a restored school, is super quiet. In almost a year and a half, there has been not one single incident. The nights here are peaceful and quiet. When I sit up at night to read or work, I can relax, instead of always listening for unexplained noises and watching for God-knows-what.

The (haunted) house where I grew up

Ok, Halloween is coming, so let’s talk haunted houses. Not the kind somebody sets up in an old barn or whatever, but real houses people live in that have ghosts.

I have had lots and lots of experiences, from the tine I was a little kid. My Mom’s house is full of spirits, although she refuses to believe it. My Mom and Dad had that house built form scratch, so all the spirits there are somehow related to my family.

My brother died in 1967 at the age of 18. I was born in 1969. The house was full of his presence. I had an area in the basement where I worked on my model horses, which had also been his area for working on civil war soldiers and stuff. He was always flickering the lights and messing with the stereo and banging the pipes when I was down there. At first it scared me, but I began to get used to it. I would talk to him sometimes, and that seemed to calm the noise and lights and so on.

My Dad died when I was 13, after a lengthy illness. The last few months before he died, I could hear someone pacing the hallway between the bedrooms. The pacing would stop when my Dad would get up for any reason, and then resume when he went back to bed. I used to lie awake nights and listen to it. I became convinced that that was my brother, waiting for my Dad to come join him. I may have been right, because after my Dad passed, I never heard that sound in the hallway again.

My anniversary . . . . more mushy stuff.

I had to work Friday, unfortunately. Suck. I dropped Kiddo off at Mom's house, and she took us out to lunch to celebrate the anniversary of "the day we all married together," in Kiddo's words. (Remember, he was 19 months old when we got married.) Then I got my nails done, and had to fight traffic, all of which made me terribly late. To make matters worse, the police had set up a roadblock just half a block north from the bar. Roadblocks are so not good for business!

Well, that was a waste of time. On an impulse, I kept my work dress on under my jeans and sweater when I left. I walked up the street, around the roadblock, and to the discount liquor store, where I spent a quarter of my meager earnings om wine. Then I grabbed a baked potato at Wendy's and raced home. Including the stop at Wendy's, I made it in one hour and 29 minutes, which is a land speed record coming out of Stone Park on Friday night.

When I hit the driveway, I saw that the house was mostly dark, with only a light in the bedroom window. Well, shit. I bet he fell asleep. That would be understandable, really, since Ted gets up at 3 am to get ready for work. But even if his intentions are good, once he nods off, he's never quite the same. Even after he wakes up, he is in this weird disoriented state. So, I resigned myself to a little computer time and looking forward to the morning, when we would both be rested and refreshed.

I grabbed my wine and carried it into the house. The night light in the hall lit up the usual assortment of shoes, backpacks, and hats . . . and a trail of rose petals leading up the stairs. Hmmmm . . . . I dropped off my wine in the wine cooler ( I always wanted to be the kind of person who would have a wine cooler, and I don't mean a fruity little drink in a bottle!) and went to investigate. I followed the trail of petals up the stairs, through the playroom, over several wooden train tracks, past my pole in the exercise room, and into the bedroom. There I found the bedroom cleaned, candles burning, and rose petals strewn over and around the bed. In the middle of the bed were a dozen red roses. My dressing table chair had become a makeshift stand for a bottle of blackberry merlot and two bottles of champagne chilling on ice. In the sitting area, Ted was waiting for me, grinning, surrounded by rose petals and pink-wrapped chocolate pieces that he had scattered over the table also placed in dainty dessert glasses. He stood when I came in and took me in his arms. . . . .

The first thing that happened tome in the morning was that someone dropped a lovely decadent piece of dark chocolate in my mouth.

Along about noon we had to emerge form the bedroom, if only to raid the wine cooler. I made brunch--fried-egg sandwiches on home-made whole grain bread, with sauteed candy onions and green peppers from the garden, sliced garden tomatoes, smoked cheese, soy sausage, mustard and mayo. We washed 'em down with more wine (hey, it's not like we do this every week!) while we watched Showgirls, which Ted had brought home for me the week before. The picture of the girl with the pole on the front of it had caught his eye, and this was a particularly lovely gift set which included the DVD, shot glasses (I collect shot glasses) party games, etc.

Oh, my gawd! what a horrible movie. I had heard it was bad, but I wanted to see it for the dancing and the costumes. It didn't have enough of either, in my opinion. The main character was just . . . . awful. Completely despicable. After the first few minutes, Ted kept wishing more and more horrible fates on her--"I hope she gets hit by that truck!" he would say. "I hope she falls off the stage and breaks her neck!" "I hope Jason gets her!" The movie's only saving grace was, not only was the plot simple enough to follow even when intoxicated, but the more we drank, the more fun we had ripping on it! Hence the shot glasses included in the package.

Only, the more we drank, the more we had to take breaks to go to the bathroom, and the more my attention span wandered and then I'd come in the office and fuck with the Internet, so that the movie, which was too long to begin with, stretched out and devoured our whole day. I had had it in the back of my head to do something outdoors, since it was so nice out. Oh well. We drank some coffee and watched the sunset form our back porch, then got cleaned up and went out for dinner.

Dinner was a big flop. Ted had wanted to go to a Chinese buffet, and he had one in mind that we had never tried before. Won't be trying it again, either. The food was greasy and bland. As a vegetarian, I had a real problem because crab meat was hidden in everything. It wasn't enough crab meat to actually make anything taste like crab, because I took a few bites before I realized something was not quite right. Apparently the only reason they put it there was pure perversity. Oh, well. Live 'n' learn, right?

Last stop of the night was Carlo's in Cedar Lake for karaoke fun. I love it when we go out singing. I have had voice lessons, but I used to be too shy to ever sing in front of other people. Back in the days when we were just buddies, Ted convinced me to do the female part in Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Singing is easy after you've had a few beers. Anyway, karaoke had been a huge part of our dating life and life as a couple. It is one of the things we most enjoy doing together. So, a bucket o' beers at Carlo's, and we had our entertainment for the rest of the night.

I first sang, "The Search is Over", from Survivor. I adore that song because, not only was it released about the time I met Ted (maybe a couple of years before, I'm not quite sure) but, when I sing it to him, it is absolutely the story of our relationship.

SURVIVOR lyrics

Ted sang Chicago's "Make Me Smile" and Seger's "You'll Accompany Me." Together we did "Sgt. Petter's Lonely Hears Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends," and "Getting Better All the Time," both of which we perfected as duets 20 years ago or more, singing with a cassette tape in a boom box in Ted's 1966 Mustang convertible.

The DJ packed up his stuff at 1 am, but we were still singing when we left the bar.

The evil bastards at Ted's work scheduled him to work (yet another) Sunday, so that was then end of our fun. Oh well. I still have the roses.

My 5th Wedding anniversary

Here we are 5 years ago yesterday. Wow! Hard to believe that's us!

BTW, I still have the dress, I can still wear the dress, I do still wear the dress, and 2 years ago, I had the dress taken in!

Getting Better All the Time

BEATLES, THE lyrics

Today is my 5th wedding anniversary. Amazing. A-fucking-mazing.


That we made it this far is really tenement to Ted's amazing strength and patience. Or maybe pig-headed-ness and not knowing when to quit. Whatever, I am profoundly grateful.

We tried to have our wedding before Kiddo was born, but it was too much of a rush. I was also taking some classes (I was pre-med at the time) and working full time. The extra strain of planning a wedding was just too much, and so we gave it up.

The combination of unresolved grief and raging pregnancy hormones, combined with uncertainty in my relationship with Ted and my general emotional baggage, made me a horrible person. There is no other way to say that. I was selfish, emotional, whiny, bitchy, childish, and hateful. I blamed Ted for everything--how miserable I felt physically and emotionally, how I couldn't go on with school, somehow I even managed to blame him for Rick's death. Everything was all his fault.

That Ted didn't leave me during my pregnancy or the year or so after Kiddo was born, is testimony to his patience and steadfastness. He forgave me time and again, until I knew he would never leave me. For some reason, he even still wanted to marry me.

But sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, and besides sticking around, Ted did little else to hold up his end of the relationship. He was as childish and spoiled as I was, and still wanted to live like a bachelor, in spite of the fact that he had a baby-momma and a child at home. For reasons of his own, Ted replayed some of the worst from my childhood--he objectified me, ignored me, didn't know how to cope with my emotional storms, and escaped into work or hobbies. For the longest time, it seemed like his only interest in me was "What can you do for me? In what way are you of any use? How does whatever happens to you affect me?" (Re-reading this, I recall that Ted's mom passed away when our son was about 6 weeks old. So only now, 6 1/2 years later, have I pulled my head out of my ass enough to see that Ted was grieving. How insensitive have I been? )

Each of us was desperate to get our needs met, and unable to ask like civilized people. We were both so miserable.

For those first few years, I conducted myself like a spoiled child, resorting to tantrums to try and get the attention I needed. I blew things completely out of proportion, for example throwing a screaming and bawling fit because Ted had spilled coffee on my clean floor. Ted would withdraw, or worse, resort to hurling hurtful insults that always seemed to get right to the heart of me. This escalated for a few rounds, until I would resort to hitting to make him stop. Then he would yell some more, and withdraw again.

The last time I hit Ted, I also broke his finger when he tried to restrain me. I turned around and saw Kiddo had seen the whole thing. That was one of many ah-ha moments that brought things around for us.


We've had a lot of those moments in the last 5 years.

Fortunately, we are both stubborn loners. Neither of us was willing to admit failure, and we both knew we had no one else. We were committed to creating a stable, two-parent home for kiddo, even though we disagreed violently about what that meant. So, somehow, we knew we had to hang on to each other. We didn't know how, or even where to start. Several months of marriage counseling didn't seem to have any effect until months after we had given up on it. Now bits and pieces of it still come back to us from time to time.

Love, apparently, can conquer all. Neither of us believed it at the time, but here we are. With the momentum of a speeding glacier, we have changed.

Ted believes the pivotal moment was when we moved out of our old house. To say that the old place had a bad vibe, is like saying The Amityville Horror was a somewhat creepy movie. We both firmly believe the place was haunted. It is an undisputed fact that in the 10 years Ted lived there, in that house and the 3 lots touching it, there were 3 divorces, a ruined friendship between 3 roommates, 2 couples who regularly had knock-down, drag-out fights, and 2 cases of near financial ruin--that we know of. And I can certainly say that moving out to the quiet, low stress, low traffic country has made both of us happier. So yeah, maybe there is something to that.

I like to give us more credit, though. I think, mostly, we simply grew the f* up. I think we both struggled for a long time and finally something gave, and we pulled ourselves together. Ted claims I somehow taught him how to think, which means to question logically the assumptions he grew up with. This means he thinks things through logically and with empathy, rather than just being contrary for the hell of it. He is breaking his bad habit of saying hateful things in arguments. He is more willing to work with me as a team and to accept my leadership when appropriate. He shows he loves me in ways I understand, instead of expecting me to intuitively know it.

For me, trust is the essential issue. Back in high school, Ted was really the only person I trusted. I felt he was the only one who understood me. Through the years, through our separation and all the changes in our lives, I stopped trusting even him. I tested Ted to inhuman limits. He forgave the unforgivable in me, time and again. He sometimes screamed and yelled and threated to leave me, but he never did. After a while, I became able to ask him to promise he's never leave. He had to say the actual words to me, many times over, promising he's always be there for me. And gradually, I started to believe him. I stopped trying so hard to make him go away. Sometimes when I am feeling bad about myself, I will still push him a little bit, but it's not exactly the same. Now I push because I really want him to say, "I love you. Let's make things better."--but I don't always know that is what I need, or I don't know how to ask.

I have had to learn trust in other things, too. I have always had a difficult time trusting anybody with any kind of personal (emotional) information. My instinct has always been, don't tell people anything they can come back at you with later. Never give anybody a weapon to use against you. This made an impossible situation in our marriage because there was no way Ted could avoid hurting me if he didn't know what was going on with me. But I could not tell him for fear he would use the information to hurt me.

About a year ago, I felt or herd a stirring from the un-integrated core personality, the original child who was so damaged. It was in the middle of an argument with Ted. Like so many of our arguments, it started because he had unknowingly stepped on one of my many emotional land mines. In the aftermath of resulting explosion, Ted asked me in exasperation, "How am I supposed to know what hurts you? You won't tell me!" I realized in that moment that he was right. I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut again. A voice inside me screamed, "NO! NO! DON'T TELL! DON'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!" And I whispered, " I can't tell you. It's against the rules."

Lately I have had to tell. The pain of constantly getting my feelings trampled on by a good, well-meaning, man who was stumbling in the dark, got the better of me. I saw that the things I had done and the secrets I had kept to protect myself were now more cumbersome than helpful, and that they hurt Ted and Kiddo because I can't be a wife and mother to them when I am wallowing in my emotional pig pen full of shit. I decided that, if I wanted Ted to love, honor, and cherish me for myself, then he had to see my "self" as it really was. I used to accuse him of loving not me, Erin, but one of the alter personalities who had been his buddy in high school. But what I was doing, holding up an idealized, sanitized Erin, put me in essentially the same position. (Like The Wizard of Oz: Pay no mind to the woman behind the curtain!) And look, I can't do that for the rest of my life.

Now it's all out there. Or at least, all of it that I remember and understand. Ted now sees who he has in front of him. He sees the holes in me, and the places where I didn't grow properly, and the scars that are still so full of filth and shit that they will probably never heal right. And it's OK. He still wants me. Amazingly, he understands me. He gave me a beautiful gift the other day--he was angry at my mother for the things she did to me. Nobody has ever been angry on my behalf before.

Five years ago today, we stood in our back yard in front of our guests and promised to love, honor, and cherish each other. That has always been my fairy tale ending--to be loved, honored, and cherished. Like so many people, I looked to my marriage to make up for what I never got in childhood. Ted is a white knight guy--he really does want to save me and give me what I need. We balance each other that way--I so need to be rescued, and Ted needs someone to save.

Most psychologists would say this is not a perfect marriage. I know it's not. But it's honest, and for us that is a big step. It's strong and well-tested. It nurtures both of us and gives us both space and reason to grow. And it gets better all the time.