He called it honesty;
Was sincerely fond
In spite of all she wasn’t
And so many things she was
He found repelling.
She called it cruelty;
He wasn’t fond enough
To call it love
The following is a transcript of a recorded conversation I had with a woman several years ago. I don’t know whether I still agree with myself about what I said here, but I suppose I must have at the time.
She: You were talking about these dependency relationships, where the man, if he wants certain things from a woman, is willing to put up with a certain amount of bullshit to get it, and the woman usually ends up with more bullshit to tolerate. And you made a point of saying that, whether or not he says “I love you,” makes a big difference in how she’s handling it. What does that mean, does he feel like he has to say it, even if he doesn’t really love her? Why is it so important for women to hear that, but it doesn’t seem to be important for men to say it? Or is that just some circumstances, and some relationships?
He: It’s just some circumstances and some relationships, but it’s pretty pervasive. Fact is, it doesn’t matter what the guy feels. He can truly love her. He can sort of love her. He can not know whether he loves her. Or he can not love her. But he knows the rules say that he’s got to say that he loves her.
From the perspective of the woman, she can’t know which one of those situations he’s in. She doesn’t acknowledge that such things exist. But the female sex has forced the issue. Thanks to 10,000 years of females demanding that men say they love them whether they do or not, you have all the men saying I love you, easily.
Now some don’t, I don’t, some other old guy friends of mine don’t, but it’s a subject of some discussion between us, it pisses us off. Fact is, that’s what women try hard to make a guy do, they are willing to go through all kinds of games and machinations to try to force a man to say it, no matter what the man feels.
My friends encounter it all the time with women. I’ve encountered it with most of the women I’ve ever gotten involved with. It’s pretty much a hundred percent. It’s as though they don’t give a rat what you’re really feeling.
What women are saying is, “Okay, what I want you to do is say I love you, whether you feel it or not, and I’m gonna behave as though I believe it’s true, for whatever reasons. Then I can use it as a bludgeon against you.”
(“Ooh, you said you loved me, and now you’ve done this or that, or haven’t done this or that, to prove you were lying. What you’ve done or haven’t done is prima facie evidence of your liarhood! And down underneath that is proof that you are lowlife scum because you said it to get something out of me. And besides that, the fact you actually don’t love me is proof you are cold and unfeeling, because I love you sooooo much.”).
“So,” the female sex is saying, “First and foremost I want to hear you say it. I want you to hear yourself say it. And I’m going to take all kinds of coercive and manipulative steps to make you do that.”
Well, the fact is, most of the male population out there says, (“Screw it.” *sigh* ) “Okay, I love you.”
She: You don’t think most women really want to know?
He: Well, they want to know if the answer is Yes. None of them want to know if the answer is No. “I want you to tell me you love me, and I want it to be true.” But if it isn’t true, say it anyway. The object isn’t getting a better hold on reality, or a better understanding about how he actually feels. The object is to hear him say those words, and to make him hear himself saying them.
She: So it doesn’t really matter whether he loves her or not, if he’s going to play that game and say it?
He: Well, he’s going to play it. But fact is, men know this about women. And for the most part, men have a really cynical view of it. It’s something that gets talked about. She’s on the warpath? “ Oh, send her some roses. Tell her you love her, man. Snuggle up a little bit. She’ll get over it.”
Guys will, for the most part, go ahead and do it. They’ll do whatever they have to do to make their lives easier. And so the upshot is that women have created a situation where a guy out there who won’t lie is all of a sudden called cold and unfeeling, when in fact all he is, might be just honest.
One of the problems is in the difference in the way men and women view sex. Men, as a rule, have no problem with the concept of uncomplicated sex. Even if they don’t happen to indulge in it. Women, on the other hand, have 10,000 generations of training to use it as a weapon or an instrument of coercion and extortion. The monopoly women have is one they’ve guarded so consistently, so long that for most women the concepts of sex and power are inseparable.
Selling sex for any commodity is prostitution. Trading sex for power instead of money isn’t exempt. But those who do it are ‘unadmitted whores’, as opposed to straight, upfront whores.
Many years ago a whore named Frenchie in a bar on the waterfront in Texas was bantering with me. I was trying to seduce her in the non-commercial sense. “Sex is no fun if there’s no money involved!” was her final answer.
Frenchie just about said it all, one way or another, and if you think of money as a synonym for power.
One of the reasons women who don’t admit they are whores dislike women who do admit it so much involves the concept of inflation. From the perspective of a non-admitted whore, the whore is selling a commodity for mere money that’s worth so much more than money. In doing so, she (the admitted whore) is making that commodity available for a price that’s easily met, thereby robbing all non-admitted whores of some measure of power. Several generations of Texas men had their first encounters with uncomplicated sex at a cathouse in LaGrange called the Chicken Ranch (now famous). For most of those men visits to the Chicken Ranch ended up as the ONLY encounters with uncomplicated sex in their entire lives.
The only commodity rarer and more precious than uncomplicated sex is honesty.
She was the mayor
Of course
Chief of the cops
Dog catcher
And sometimes ran
The sewer plant
Owned the bar
The grocery store
The factory
And bank.
Although the berg was small
It always seemed larger
When the yes-men
Those yes-men she served
Those little people
Saluted
I noticed several years ago a person can’t get good drill bits in the US anymore. When you buy them they’ll barely cut into aluminum, afterward they’ll cut nothing and can’t be sharpened to hold an edge capable of cutting.
Today I walked up to Gale’s to look at some spectacular rocks he’s acquired [opalized petrified wood], and this drill bit thing was on my mind because I’d just attempted to drill through some aluminum. I mentioned the Chinese steel drill bits and how we need to watch the thrift stores for US bits from a time when they’d hold an edge.
“I’m seeing the same thing in saw blades,” he mused. Damned band saw blades won’t cut with any duration.
As we discussed it the light dawned. Even Chinese screwdrivers bend instead of breaking.
“Do you suppose it’s the alloys they’re using, or the temper?” Neither seemed to me to satisfy the symptoms.
“Might be a bit of both, but it doesn’t make sense.” Gale’s done considerable tempering of steel, as I have. “Tempering just isn’t that big a deal.”
But whether it’s intended or not, whether it’s the alloy, which it probably is [There’s a good possibility they’re sending us something nearer IRON than carbon steel] the fact is it creates a still greater dependence. Nobody in the US is going to be able to operate any of a hundred metalworking businesses if they can’t get good tool steel bits, blades, tools.
I’ve got a pair of wire pincers out on the porch I thought about when I got back to the cabin. I’d noticed just the gripping them enough to cut woven wire bends the handles to the center. This was a more-or-less expensive pair of pliers.
If I believed in conspiracies, I’d be tempted by this. But I’m at loss why we’re not getting high quality tool steel inadvertently.
How, I wonder, would it appear differently if it were a conspiracy?
I heard a helicopter out there somewhere and was slipping into my orange jump suit while I headed out the door. The helicopter faded, but I encountered a gathering of cats and chickens as I hopped off the porch.
Hydrox: “Is that how you’re going to dress for Halloween?”
Me: “I haven’t given any thought to Halloween. What are you guys going to do? Is Halloween something you’re thinking about? You used to hate it when we were in Placitas.”
Hydrox: “I don’t know. Coons driving us off the porch every night, you shooting them through the window screen. Hauling their carcasses out to the meadow on a grain-shovel. Something BIG carrying them off. Life’s sort of scary around here.”
Great Speckled Bird: “That ain’t the half of it. Coons and skunks trying to dig into the chicken-house every night gives me and the hens a case of the willies.”
Guinea #1: “You think that’s bad? What about the possums climbing around up in the trees looking for US? It’s gotten so we’re flying around blind all night long finding branches in other trees.”
Shiva: “It’s whatever it is carrying those coon carcasses off that worries me. If we run out of coons it’s liable to come up here looking for the only thing outside worth eating. Cats.”
Guinea #2: “I resent that.”
Me: “Whoooooah! What is it you guys want? I’m doing everything I can think of to keep you safe.”
Long pause.
The Great Speckled Bird: “How about we have a celebration of Life? Of surviving this long? That might be fun.”
Niaid: “Yeahhh. That sounds good. We could pretend we’re coyotes and you could open some of those special treats for us.”
Guinea #1: “No need for anything special. You could just open a can of what you give THEM,” gesturing with her beak toward the cats, “We’d love to get some of that.”
Tabby, muttering: “You guys STEAL enough of that already. Running us cats off it when he’s not looking!”
Great Speckled Bird: “Nevermind! Nevermind. No point fighting among ourselves. Let’s keep on track here. How about you give the cats the special treats, and open some canned cat food for the rest of us?”
Americauna Hen: “Yeah! Cool. And we’ll have a big celebration of LIFE before you lock us into the fortress tonight! Then if a coon or skunk gets in we’ll die happy.”
Guinea #2: “Or if a possum grabs one of us before we know it’s up there.”
Hydrox: “Or if whatever-the-hell’s carrying off those coon carcasses comes up here and catches one of us cats.”
The Great Speckled Bird: “We’ll come knocking before sunset.”
I started pulling off the orange jump suit and opened the door to go inside. Behind me I heard Niaid, “If he doesn’t do it we’ll dress up as a SWAT team and go after him.”
Probably 1978-’79 I was going north on the Interstate somewhere between Waco and Waxahachie preparing to exit when I saw a woman past the ramp trying to thumb a ride. Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole had been at work leaving a string of female corpses up and down the Interstate at the time. When I saw her I split-second decided to take a route further north so’s to give her a ride and get her off the Interstate.
“I saw you swerve back onto the highway to pick me up.” She settled the bag with her belongings onto the floorboard. Attractive, dark skinned lady in her mid-20s with a coy smirk. “You must like my looks.”
“Hi. Where you headed? I just decided to pick you up to tell you about something you might not know. I’ll get off further north than I was going to.” I was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and she was making herself obvious staring at my lower legs.
“I’ve been on the road for a month. I usually don’t take rides from four-wheelers, but I like your looks.”
I wasn’t in the market for having my looks liked by some female who’d been on the road a month hitching rides with truckers. The whole concept gave me a shrinking sensation in my groin. I explained to her about why I’d picked her up, about how someone was killing women on the Interstate and leaving their bodies cluttering up the landscape from hell to breakfast.
“Where are you from before you started hitching? Can you go back there?”
She settled back and gave my legs a rest, frowning. “I’m from the Kickapoo Reservation.” She named a mid-western state. “My husband was drunk and mowing the grass. Slipped and cut the front half of his foot off.”
That last sentence had a lot of visual impact for me. It drew a cringe and a moment of silent recovery. But after I’d digested it the next question was obvious. “So what are you doing here, thumbing rides?”
“I left before he got out of the hospital.” Her face twisted into a mask of indignation. “I wasn’t going to hang around there carrying that SOB like a turd between two sticks for the rest of his life! I’ve been on the road ever since.”
My exit wasn’t far up the road so I just left it at that. Made a mental note to turn loose of the handle if I ever slipped and fell backward mowing the grass.
There’s a temptation to believe we moderns living within the boundaries of the US have a lot in common with one another, and in many ways we do. But what we have in common with one another isn’t necessarily what we believe we do. One of those areas of commonality probably has to do with the perception of Native Americans as a somewhat generic group of people with a lot in common with one-another and far less in common with whites and Hispanics.
This leads to a lot of packages of thinking among people not living on the Rez, whether they’re whites, second or third generation off-Rez Native Americans, Hispanics, or folks who carry a bit of tribal blood in their veins a few generations old, but never lived on the Rez.
One of the packages contains a romanticized view that the cultural heritages on the Rez still exist, still carry some similarity to those before the coming of Europeans, and are similar to one-another. The phrase, ‘the old ways’ has found its way into the language of those seduced into buying the package. The “I-know-the-old-ways-too-because-my-granddad-was-a-Cherokee [or Apache, etc]” syndrome frequently found among artists, blue-eyed-blond-haired ladies in Atlanta, and in cities across the nation among those who see something wrong with modern life and hunger for a deeper spiritual life.
The fact is, those tribes don’t have much at all in common with one another, aside from being packaged and treated as though they were similar for at least a century-and-a-half by the US Government, far longer for some in the eastern US. Bits and pieces of the original cultures have survived on some reservations, less on some, almost none on some. And those cultures remaining are as unlike one another as they are different from European.
But I’ve digressed. I began this blog entry with the intention of talking about a particular cultural phenomenon re-emerging on Navajo tribal lands, strange and not easily understood by anyone including the Din’e living there. The Skin Walker. A person who voluntarily adopts witch-like and other behaviors that violate the most fundamental religious/spiritual forbiddings of the tribe. The subject, even the name is such that even most Din’e have only a general understanding of what those practices are. But there’s no lack of agreement that Skin Walkers are a threat to everyone, a cause for revulsion, anger, fear, hatred.
On the Pine Hill Navajo (self-determination) Rez south of Ramah Chapter there’s a place that’s come to be called, “Skin-Walker Valley” by everyone who’s willing to use the word. Interestingly, the valley extends into an area checkerboarded with white-owned lands called Candy Kitchen.
What’s surprising is that, while the Skin-Walker phenomenon clearly began on Din’e land, the weirdness and negativity spills over and permeates into the white community. Although some good folks, both white and Din’e, live and make out as best they can in this remote area, it’s shockingly pervaded by all manner of crime. Speed freaks and laboratories are drawn there as by a magnet.
Violence is pandemic. As an example, a few years ago three Navajo youths tortured and killed an octogenerian white woman in her home, puncturing her skull with a screwdriver eighteen times until she died. She had nothing much worth stealing. They did it for ‘fun’. When the lads were identified they were arrested on the Rez, where tribal authorities resisted giving them up for white justice for several days.
Meanwhile, deep in the Rez to the north, near Pueblo Pintada, another valley is rapidly coming to be known as ‘Skin-Walker Valley’, and another at Alamo, far to the southeast.
This phenomenon, were it discussed openly and recognized as in need of investigation, would be far easier for tribal officials to develop strategies to deal with. Open discussion would also help nearby residents and authorities off the Rez toward a clearer perspective concerning an energy and a belief system that is oozing up through the cracks of their lives, slouching across from tribal lands.
But this is getting too long and it’s time to turn out the chickens. Maybe more later.
Edit: 7:50am
This poem was written a few years ago about an event on the minds of northwest New Mexico at the time. The fact it happened near ‘Skin-Walker Valley’ was a cause for a lot of concern and confusion.
Last Friday Night
“It’s just too deep in the Rez
For a white-man style killing,” he says:
“A bullet each to the back of the head,
At Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead;
Two Navajo brothers are dead.
“It isn’t a skin-walker killing;
No feud, not a woman too willing.
A knife, a club, a thirty-ought-six
Is common enough and at least doesn’t mix
White man logic with Navajo tricks:
No bullet each to the back of the head!
But at Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead!
Two Navajo brothers are dead.”
From Bread Springs to Shiprock you’ll hear people say
“No place is safe now! You can’t get away!”
Nageezi to Yah Ta Hay
You’ll hear the Din’e people say
“The killer’s from Pie Town or Santa Fe.
Some white, somehow, somewhere must pay
For a bullet each to the back of the head!
At Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead!
Two Navajo brothers are dead.”
In 1967 I was working 5.5 days a week doing hard physical labor, taking night courses at the University of Houston and having an urgent, compelling romance with my wife-to-be living in Port Lavaca, 150 miles away. Every minute I could spare I cranked up that Metropolitan and headed west to spend a few hours with her. Even for a young man exhaustion built and I had a lot of difficulty staying awake while driving.
Picking up hitch-hikers was one of the ways I stayed awake. Just having someone to talk to on that endless road was a major asset.
1967 was a year of serious racial tensions and polarization. During the years immediately previous a gradual mind-opening of tolerance was manifested in a brief cliche, “I’ve got nothing against blacks, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.” For a while a person heard that at least once a week.
One day as I was leaving Houston I stopped for two black guys hitching at an empty stretch of highway. As they ran up to the car they saw the University of Houston sticker on back and without moving to get in they took on a grinning, belligerant-but-joshing attitude. “You go to U of H?”
“Yeah. Where you guys headed?”
Still no move to get in. “We go to Texas Southern [a black university in Houston]. You a queer? The last guy picked us up went to U of H was a queer. Dumped us out here ’cause we didn’t want none of him.”
“I’m not a queer. I’m going to Port Lavaca to see my girl friend.”
They relaxed and squeezed into the Metropolitan, joshing about the klutzy car, how tight it was, how they didn’t want to be seen riding with a white guy. “Anyone sees us riding with you they’ll think you’re queer. They’ll think we’re letting you queer us.”
As we reached highway speed I grinned and looked over at them. “I’ve got nothing against queers but I wouldn’t want my brother to marry one.”
Both of them gagged on that, double-took me, one another, trying to decide whether to be offended. Finally one of them guffawed. “Hey man, that’s a good one!” Held his hand up to be slapped.
Turned out to be fairly nice guys headed to Corpus Christi for the weekend. The drive to Port Lavaca went by fast, once we decided we were just three young guys not needing to fight, fear, or scrutinize every word for some slur or threat.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much times have changed.
Ruidoso Steak-House
Glanced at her reflection
In the plate-glass window
New squash-blossom turquoise
Sassy Stetson
Patted 50ish blonde curls
And wished
They’d eaten at the casino
Where this didn’t happen
Wrinkled pretty nose
“Don’t give him anything He’ll just get drunk!” Stage whispered
To her Houston lady friend
As though he wasn’t there
She was right of course
Except the old man Mescalero
Was already drunk
He turned away
Then turned back and mumbled
“Sing the Song of Life each day Or when the time arrives you won’t know how To sing the Song of Death.”
It’s become popular during the past few decades for individuals believing they have come connection to a group of dead men judged by hindsight to have harmed other groups of dead men, to apologize for the offending activities of the deceased they believe they’re responsible for to living people it didn’t happen to.
My granddad had a cap and ball pistol he inherited from his granddad. The butt had a lot of notches carved into it, which probably meant the weapon had been the instrument of the untimely deaths of a good many people who might otherwise have lived longer.
Genetic karma?
The man pictured above owned slaves in his lifetime, fought in wars and feuds. He was the great-grandfather of the man below, my biological father.
But his daughter was the mother of this man: Cole Younger. Killer, bank and train robber, rider with Quantrill during the Civil War.
Meanwhile the same genetic pool was spreading itself across the continent like some sexually transmitted disease. Cherokee, Choctaw and other tribes sneaked into the mix.
So here’s the problem:
I want to make all this right with all the people in the gene pool derived from the dead people who were wronged by the dead people within my own gene pool. I’d like to offer them an apology for the ugly stuff those who share my gene pool did to them.
For instance, the guy with all the hair on his face was part of the ugliness perpetrated against the Cherokee and Choctaw and the Trail of Tears. Naturally, if I’m to rid myself of the overwhelming guilt I need to apologize to some group of living people those painful things did not happen to. Cherokee and Choctaw, preferably.
But, whoooowah! The people on the Cherokee and Choctaw side of my gene pool are me. How can I convey my regrets to the Cherokee and Choctaw in me from the guilt-laden Anglo side? And can I assume without fear of error that my Cherokee and Choctaw genes don’t include someone who did something to some other group I need to absolve?
Is there some living group of people out there seething over something that didn’t happen to them, but happened to their ancestors as a result of some offense committed by holders of the Cherokee Choctaw genes?
And what’s all that turmoil and guilt churning around in my gene pool doing to my cells and whatnot?
Just to be on the safe side and try to set things right I think I’d best give myself a present as a gesture to calm things down. Yeah, I think I’ll eat an orange or banana.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 