Exploring the Limits of Poetic License .. up to the Letter of the Law (and Beyond) - Part 2/4

» This page is PART TWO, continued from » Part One. This entry was broken into FOUR pages in order to adhere to principles of web site optimization. Here you go...

The Famous Hollywood SignMeanwhile, others are left trying to deal with the effects of their dysfunction (.. both parental and also generally).

Over the years the Dog and I have had many conversations about parents and parenting.

From both sides of the parenting fence. Both as parents, and as the children of parents.

For example, he told me how it is his wife (the Czech-girl) who holds together their marriage.

"If it were up to me, Dog," he said, "this wouldve been over long ago."

One of the most memorable stories that I have about the Dog .. involves him "walking away" .. from a situation that he felt had deteriorated sufficiently.

It is beyond the scope of today's entry .. but let me just suggest here that » nobody walks away (3,000 miles) quite like the Dog.

So .. this girl, his wife, who I've never met .. must be good at what she does. Cuz I've never seen a woman who can hold on to the Dog for more than a few months. (With no do-overs.)

In this regard, the Dog's Czech wife reminds me of the Film school girl .. cuz she knew how to handle me. She knew how to deal with me. And she was probably the best at knowing how to make a relationship work .. of anybody I ever knew.

Most girls would say » "You make me crazy." To which I would usually respond » "Think how *I* feel." [ « Yes, that's a guy-joke .. but only because of the kernel of truth it contains. ]

In other words .. I'm not trying to make you crazy. So it's not like I am unsympathetic. No, ma'am. Not at all.

The Film school girl would say » "You gotta have something in the relationship that you are both CREATING .. either together or separately. Otherwise the relationship deteriorates and dies. If you have no kids together, you need to create something else. Something you love. Something that stirs your bliss."  

She Made Me an Offer » I Couldnt Refuse

This is the same girl, by the way, from my Statistics class, who I got to know when she made me an offer I couldnt refuse .. massages in exchange for tutoring.

She totally had the massage magic. Altered-state magic. She said that the magic in a good massage comes from » intention. (Notice that intention involves directed consciousness.)

Remind me to tell you the story about my first massage .. when she poured that warm oil all the way down my spine, beginning at the base of my neck .. and ending » in the crack of my butt.

"Ooh, this is gonna be a good massage," I thought. "I can tell already. I wonder if she meant to pour that oil in the crack of my butt, like that? Or did she accidentally go a little too far?"

I had never felt anything quite like that, I must say. Major altered state of consciousness. Like you did not think possible.

I've had her clients tell me (more than once), "I've been getting massages for a long time and she's the best of the best." Like she had a gift for it. She told me that the best massage she ever got herself was at Esalen (.. up in Big Sur).

The first time I came over to her house, she had a place with a view you would have to see to believe. Jaw-dropping. In Laguna. "How does this girl make this kind of stuff happen?" I wondered.

On the ocean-side of PCH. At 10th-Street. Which is known locally as "Thousand-steps." Tho really only 238. Or was it 214? I counted them more than once.

Anyway, she had her own private walk down to the beach. A goat path. One of the nicest beaches in Laguna.

[ The property has since been purchased, I heard, by the guy who runs General Dynamics, who owned the property adjacent .. directly south. I heard he paid $1.1 million for it.

So he just made his own property a little bigger. Somebody told me that he built an art studio for his wife on it. ]

And she was playing James Brown when I arrived. Pretty loud. "Good music to clean the house by."

I did not want to get involved, cuz I wanted to focus on my classes that semester (Statistics, Calculus & a 7-unit Chemistry class .. the one for doctors and engineers). But she was interesting enough that my curiosity got the best of me. "I have never met a girl like this before."

When I met her (.. she walked up to my desk after class) .. she was sleeping with her Statistics book under her pillow ..

.. as tho the formulas might magically levitate themselves into her consciousness.

I'm like, "Uh, that's not how it works."

[ Perhaps now you can understand why some have suggested that I am the one who got the Film school girl thru Film school. Especially grad school, where the focus is on » doing .. rather than » learning.

This came from others. Not me.

She worked very hard. Amazingly hard. She would dump a handful of Advil into the front pocket of her jeans at 6AM and say » "See ya tonight. I should be home by ten or eleven. And then I'll need to edit video for a few hours."

And then do it again the next day. And the next. Boundless energy.

She would drag your ass into the bedroom, throw you down and have her way with you .. until you were exhausted, begging for mercy.

"Have I got a special treat for you." ]

She says, "I'm not a math person. But I need this stupid Statistics class for my degree path. How do you know this shit? You're the only one in the whole class who seems to get this guy."

"I read ahead a few chapters," I said. "So I know the general flavor of what's coming. But the way that he teaches what is contained in the book seems designed to confuse, rather than clarify."

Statistics, as I encountered it, is about knowing which formula to apply in order to solve your problem. Once you know that .. the rest was easy .. cuz I could show her which buttons to press on a calculator.

That impressed her. She went from clueless to button-pushing Statistics wiz. I could see that she wanted to throw me down right then-n-there and have her way with me. (I jest, yes, but not entirely.)

She had two brothers, one older, one younger. No sisters. Thus reinforcing my point about tomboys. "Before I met you," she later told me, "I never owned a pair of high-heels."

The kicker came one day after a different class, when I stopped by her house unannounced. On PCH at Crown Valley, I could turn left to go home or right to her house.

Spur-of-the-moment I turned right, and she happened to be home. The door was open. "Hello?" I called out.

She came around the corner and when she saw me, a great smile broke across her face. (Her dad was a dentist, so she had great teeth.) How can you stay away from someone who you know is genuinely glad to see you?

I digress. But that was fun, nonetheless. It's always fun when a girl pours warm sesame oil down your spine and into the crack of your butt .. by candlelight. Let me tell you.

This is also the girl who took me on my best vacation ever. "We're throwing all our stuff in storage," she said, ..

.. "and you're coming with me this summer. I'm going to show your military-industrial ass things it has never seen.

Big Sur Bridge Foggy SunsetFirst we're heading up to Big Sur for some camping at Pfeiffer and a special treat at Deetjen's.

We probably wont be able to get into the Benedictine Hermitage .. but we can try.

Maybe we'll be able to score a few nights at one of the two environmental sites .. where you have to hike everything in.

Then we head over and meet the kids and their friends at Yosemite ..

.. where we hike to the top of Half Dome on my birthday during a meteor shower.

By the time we return, I'll have you hugging trees and eating sushi and drumming in drum-circles around a fire at the beach. You can run but you can't hide. Just watch and see. Your military-industrial ass is mine."

She was playfully competitive like that. My point » she knew how to handle me. But back to the Dog.

» The Dog Confronts His Parents

The Dog also told me how, after many years, he approached his parents .. about some of the behaviors he had endured while growing up there in Hoboken (like Marques).

"They totally denied it," he said. "They denied everything .. like they had total amnesia."

"That was very courageous of you, Dog," I said. "It must have been very hard." You can lead a horse to water...

He was hoping for some kind of apology .. to help him get beyond the mis-treatment he endured as a child. But it was not coming. Are you surprised?

[ It is beyond the scope of today's entry, but I never cease to be amazed at the ability of some to forget shit they find uncomfortable. This 'forgetting' looks genuine to me. Sometimes I am tempted to be jealous .. because of what Nietzsche said. ]

» The Girl at the Gas Station in San Clemente at Midnight

I know only ONE person .. who ever had a Confronted-Parent respond in a way that brought any degree of comfort or healing. A girl, tho I am not talking about the Film school girl. No. (That's another story, entirely.)

Lindsay Lohan on OprahAnd I must say .. this girl who confronted her dad about shit that had fucked her up ..

.. she was definitely a wow-girl.

Very interesting. Very sexy. Very different.

She had been to galaxies I didnt even know existed. (And to some cold and desolate planets).

Irresistible chemistry. Made my hormones do things I did not think possible. Electricity in her fingertips. Like she had the combination to my safe. So intuitive.

"How can such a thing be possible? How do you know me so well? Who are you, really?"

I will tell you a secret if you promise not to tell anybody » this girl *is* the nuclear-grade lace-top thigh-high girl. Well .. she was the original, anyway.

She opened my eyes in many ways. She was bi-sexual. And older women were craving her stuff (she once lamented).

Rad note » the section of today's entry that deals with the Wow Girl is so different from the rest of the entry that I transferred the contents to its own, separate entry .. see here » The Wow Girl.

At the end of that entry, I provide a link to return you here to the exact spot from which this text was lifted.

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••• today's entry continues here below •••

We were talking about the Dog, remember?

The Dog met my mom when she came out to visit and live with us in Hawaii for a few weeks. (By herself. Dad didnt come.) When I was living with the Dog. Downtown Waikiki ..

.. on Ala Wai blvd, right below two strippers from Vegas (Sandi & Bambi). The Dog dated one of the strippers for a few months .. until it was time for us to go back to sea.

[ All of my best stories involve the Dog. Like the time we got a pair of complimentary tickets to go see their show, down at the Chinese Cultural Center, located downtown Honolulu. A big place. Front-row seats, no less. So close.

They even got the Dog to come up on stage to assist with one of the acts. (The Dog is a natural on-stage.)

After the show, we went out with the girls for breakfast. Their manager, this older woman named Liz, was not happy. She was the one who gave us the tickets and she wanted us to take HER out to breakfast afterwards.

I said to one of the strippers, "You're kidding, right?"

"No," she said. "So let's get out here. Quick."

Dont get me started about the time that the Dog dated his Writing professor at Columbia .. cuz I dont want to get anybody in trouble.

I am pretty sure that bedding your students is an academic no-no.

But the Dog knows how to be discreet and the secret lovers were never caught .. as the rendezvoused at clandestine locations scattered thru-out the city.

At the time, the dog was living "in a shoe-box literally across-the-street from Harlem. Sometimes you have to step over dead people to get out of the building in the morning." So I doubt she went there. ]

Julia Roberts in August: Osage CountyI didnt know then what he meant when he said (about my mom) » "You don't know how lucky you are."

» We Dont Smack, Mom

He also told me about the time when his 18-month old son spilled Cheerios on the floor ..

.. and his mom said, "You gotta smack 'em when they do stuff like that."

"Mom, we don't smack." (Smack an 18-month old baby? What the fuck?)

Where do you reckon the Dog's mom learned that you "gotta smack" babies? Probably from her OWN dysfunctional childhood, no?

Here's my point » if you MAKE EXCUSES for them » it becomes a whole lot easier to emulate their behavior .. and eventually BECOME them (.. particularly where your same-sex parent is involved).

And I know it seems obvious .. to even the most casual of observers .. but perhaps worth mentioning anyway ..

.. that » no, we do NOT "honor" our parents .. by adopting their dysfunctional behavior and making it our own (.. which includes "smacking" 18-month old babies). Feel me?

[ If merely telling the truth about our parents' parenting techniques somehow dishonors them, then whose fault is that?

Such things no child would ever care to think about .. so unpleasant are the ideas behind those kinds of thoughts.

How are we as an enlightened society ever to rise above such tragic dysfunction .. which can fuck people up for their entire lives .. if we don't call attention to it? ]

Because once you start making excuses for their dysfunctional behavior, it becomes much easier to adopt it and make it your own .. as I'm sure the story of the Dog's baby-smacking mom would support my point.

Baby eating a lollipop» Better to Have No Kids Than to...

For a long time, the Dog was not interested in having children ..

.. because he did not want to perpetuate the dysfunctional parenting ..

.. that his own parents had so thoroughly ingrained into him.

He wasnt sure that he was strong enough to resist the dysfunction ..

.. caused by the "training" he received during those tender, formative years.

"Better to have NO kids, than to cause a child to go thru what I went thru."

This is not an uncommon idea. No. And having shitty, dysfunctional, childish parents is a common element in many of these decisions.

This article illustrates so well what I am talking about that I am going to copy here the salient points of Michelle's piece »

Trained as a concert pianist, my mother was bored stiff as a stay-at-home mom. So she went back to school for her teaching credential when I was 6, and went to work when I was 7.

She was less bored then, but far from emotionally stable. Her voice trembled with self-pity, and she often teetered between fury and sobbing. She nursed grudges -- at one point, she didn't talk to my 10-year-old sister for over two weeks.

My father was distant, uninvolved, mild enough for long stretches, only to explode into violent verbal rages if milk was spilled, or if we asked for spending money [ or for a second glass of orange juice ] or, heaven forbid, he found coins on the floor.

We neither knew nor cared about money. He'd yell about how hard he had to work to support us, and how expensive we were.

Our parents did not know how to play with us, or be close, or converse amicably, without criticism. From the outside, our family looked adventurous and fun-loving.

Were we more convivial, happier, in those tents, in that car, in those campers and cabins? Rarely. In close quarters, our mother and her moods still dominated, and we girls withdrew, each into her own solitude.

I have friends from families long ridden with addiction, abuse and poverty who have become loving, responsible, sober parents and made safe, calm homes for their children.

So why did neither my sister nor I ever want to "do it right" and live in a family of our own making? Even as I learned that not all families were like this » I didn't trust myself not to recreate what I had known.

I believe it was no coincidence that I waited to marry until it was biologically impossible for me to have children. [ the author ]

This piece by Michelle illustrates that it is NOT JUST GUYS .. who feel this way.

What is it like to be such a sucky, dysfunctional parents .. unable to play with your own children without criticism .. that it makes your children not want to have children of their own?

.. for fear of raising their own children in a home similar to what their parents provided for them?

Does this weigh on their hearts as they lie there on their death bed? Or could they give a rat's ass about the crippling dysfunction that they have sown into the lives of their children? 

» Better If I-the-Child Am Fucked Up & Dysfunctional Than They-My-Parents

There is a light bulb effect associated with this next insight. See if you get the 'ah-ha moment'.

The notion, the idea, the concept, of having fucked-up, dysfunctional parents .. to a little guy .. who is obviously totally dependent on them .. for everything ..

.. is so anathema that they cannot possibly (no matter how strong or independent they might be) accept it. This leaves only ONE OTHER POSSIBILITY » you-the-child is fucked-up.

Unsurprisingly, this notion is far more palatable (to a little child) .. than the idea that his parents are fucked up.

[ This is why scripture does not mince words when is says » this. Parents who use their years-of-experience and their position-of-authority to fuck-up their vulnerable children .. are sent to a hotter part of hell. Or they should be. ]

This should be obvious .. but go ahead and do the research yourself and you will see the truth of what I say.

Maybe this is why I find myself attracted to people who have been able to reach escape velocity from their world of parental dysfunction.

These are the people with whom I resonate most easily. Most comfortably.

Because I know how difficult it can be. How impossibly difficult. But that's another story.

[ Our mommies and daddies will not be there with us .. holding our hands, when we stand before the judgment seat.

Solon the Athenian sage said » "Count no man's life happy until the end is known." ]

There is a telling line from a scene in the movie where Meryl Streep's mom-character says (on page 81 of the script-pdf) to Julia Roberts' movie-daughter ..

» "If I ever called my mom a liar, she would've knocked my goddamn head off my shoulders."

Pooh and Christopher Robin Walking together in the Hundred Acre WoodAnd I thought, "I'm sure she would have."

I thought of the Dog when I heard that line. (I wasnt trying to think of him, no.)

And let's just pause here a moment to note that » Meryl Streep is not from this planet. What an amazing actress. I am still blown away.

The scene where they have the dolly circle her in the living room .. where she becomes the crazy person that she is ..

.. normally, in scenes like that, they cut away to the face of another person .. to convey the effect .. because it is so difficult for the primary actor(tress) to pull it off.

But they stay right with her. And yes, she pulled it off. It was a long take. They did not hurry the shot. At all. Why hurry when you have Meryl Streep in the view-finder?

Who are you really, Meryl Streep?

You will find that, as a general rule » the more-educated a parent is, the less abusive they tend to be. Therefore, ipso facto, ergo, and all that latin » less-educated = more abusive. In general. Statistiically speaking.

[ Also note that intelligence and education are two different things. You can have educated idiots and uneducated geniuses. ]

The Dog once told me » "My parents live literally 30-feet below us in this co-op, but we have never once let them baby-sit. One time, only recently, when he was already asleep, we let them watch him while we went out to celebrate our wedding anniversary. But even that was a little unsettling and we hurried back soon as dinner was done."

Demonstrating » Hoverboard Skillz

Just above where Pooh & Christopher Robin hold hands, I mentioned ".. but that's another story." Let me take a moment here to draw for you a few broad strokes. One dark, one light, and maybe even throw in a splash of color.

Blue hoverboard, clearly operationalBecause this looks like an opportune place .. to demonstrate hoverboard skillz.

Like a teen might do at any skate park.

My dad .. when he was dying, I went to see him.

Bro called and said, "He's got a few weeks, maybe. No more than a few months. If you want to see him, you should go soon."

Dad's new wife picked me up at Dulles. (Dad was the type of man who found life uncomfortable without a woman. He remarried in record time after mom died. He never told me that he was getting re-married. I found out thru a neighbor who was wondering what all the cars were doing there at the house.)

I was there most of a week. Notice how he was living on the East coast and I was on the West coast.

In other words, I was as far away as I could get .. without leaving the country, or the mainland. I didnt plan it like that, of course. It just seemed to have worked out that way.

He slept most of the time (fetal position). But we talked. "When you were young," he said, "I was under a lot of pressure."

[ Rad note » because it is so different, I have transferred the section that deals with dad to its own, separate entry .. see here » Do you want mommy to find you a new daddy?

I actually mention a little of the wow-girl in that entry, and how she ties in with my own experiences with a dysfunctional parent. ]

Wow. That was a long sidebar. I could totally get off the porch here. But I won't. (I was just getting warmed up.)

So we're leaving Connecticut now and returning to Laguna Beach.

Hotel Laguna at Main BeachThis also happens to be the girl (the lawyer who who liked the Dog) who talked me out of going to Law school.

"Might as well just shoot yourself now and get it over with."

So yes, I have her to thank for that.

She is also the person who introduced me to her friend, the doctor-girl, who I dated JUST BEFORE I met the Bug's mom (.. before she became the Bug's mom).

She took me to some nice places. Very nice. Money-is-no-object type of places.

Anyway, good thing for the Bug .. that (like the Dog with the lawyer-girl) I wasnt feeling it with the doctor-girl.

Tho she *did* have a nice house .. with the world's biggest shower. (In Laguna Beach.) "Make yourself at home. Look at this downstairs bedroom here that I never use. You might be able to fit in nicely here. Think about it."

I did think about it. And yes, I would have fit in nicely. Very nicely.

So dont think I didnt try. But the pressure of a constantly-ticking biological clock .. I could not deal with that.

» The Dog Gives Me Shit About Living in Orange County

Anyway, the Dog, when coming down, would always » give me shit .. about living in Orange county .. saying things like ..

» "They stopped me at the border, and made me put on an ankle bracelet. We don't want your kind here. You shady LA-types. We'll be watching you."

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This page contains a single entry by Rad published on January 11, 2014 1:11 AM.

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