#4

$3
or trade

Survival

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Dedication
To the martyrs of the Mavi Marmara, shot dead in international waters on May 31 by Israeli soldiers who attacked the Turkish vessel as it attempted to transport humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza: Ibrahim Bilgen, Ali Haydar Bengi, Cevdet Kililar, etin Topuoglu, Necdet Yildirim, Fahri Yaldiz, Cengiz Songr, Cengiz Akyz, and Furkan Dogan. Read more about these heroes and their loved ones at: lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/ news/2010/06/putting-names-to-faces.html. And to survivor Emily Henochowicz, International Solidarity Movement activist, student and visual artist from the U.S., who was shot point-blank in the face by an Israeli soldier while protesting the Mavi Marmara massacre alongside her Palestinian sisters and brothers at a West Bank checkpoint. Emily lost an eye but continues her important workor as she says, "Revenge of the Cyclops!" Front cover: Survival by Jaimie Hashey. Jaimie calls herself "A silly one who just makes weird noises and plays with my guinea pigs. Doodling and drawing is fun! I do a zine called ButtRagMag and it's on it's 7th tissue. Like to fiddle around in music and may one day play the fiddle! Now it's bass and nose keyboard." Order her NSFW zines and visit her online at myspace.com/ buttragmag or email Jaimie at buttragmag13@ gmail.com. You can read Jaimies survival story starting on page 35. Back cover: Self-Portrait as Masturbating Gargoyle Devouring Itself by redguard

AC #4: Survival was made under the influence of: Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre, Arizona apartheid law, Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, insomnia, Sit On My Face Stevie Nix by The Rotters, work kraziness, Boyfriend Hole by Broken Water, Buffy on Logo, Honduras coup anniversary, Hunx & His Punx, 2nd U.S. Social Forum, Toronto rebellion against G-8 Summit, Oakland rebellion against Oscar Grant verdict, Phoenix by Aimee Mann.
Thanks to: D.S. for great patience, Emily Henochowicz, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, Claire Dailey, Kim Clit, Rachel Haywire, Deanna-Marie, Laura-Marie Taylor, Pussy Power!, Imani Henry, Rachel & Sari, Sarah Tea-Rex, Elise, Shelley Ettinger, Lauren Melodia, China Martens, and you. I like correspondence, art swaps and trades of all sorts. Write me if youd like to hear my alternative theory of the origin of vuvuzelas.

Explore the dark side with Absent Cause

Underground cultures, hidden histories, feminist and queer sexualities, body image, chosen families and radical politics; vampirism, the gothic, horror and the macabre; surviving abuse, coping with mental illness/dangerous gifts, self-harm and suicide.
Absent Cause #4, July 2010, edited by redguard. $3 or trade ($4.50 postpaid) from Absent Cause, P.O. Box 1568, New York, NY 10276 redguard@gmail.com * http://www.absent-cause.org * http://redguard.etsy.com Absent Cause is copyleft 2010 by redguard. This zine may be freely reproduced in its entirety, with credit. Individual pieces are copyright their respective artists and writers. Please contact the creator if you want to reproduce an individual piece.

Also available from redguard.etsy.com For trades: P.O. Box 1568, NYC 10276 redguard@gmail.com 83

Absent Cause 2 & 3 Mentally Ill 1 & 2 TUMS: a smut zine On Loving Dracula Frankenstein is a Bottom! Transylvania Bibles 1 & 2

S is for survival
By redguard
I imagine that for a certain
demographic of the U.S. population, the term survival conjures images of that long -running "reality" game show about obnoxious people competing while stuck on an island. (For television on that theme, give me Gilligan's Island any day.) But for me, and probably for you, the reality of survival is a hell of a lot more real. It means coping with the immediate and lifelong consequences of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, rape, molestation, torture, war, police brutality. More of us who have lived through these terrors than will ever be counted. It doesn't end there though. Even if you haven't had hands laid upon you, you may still be a survivor. We live under a system that dehumanizes and degrades people hour by hour, day in and day out, especially if you are a woman, a person of color, an immigrant, a queer, or poor. Sometimes, the best we can dofor ourselves, for 3 othersis to tell our stories. This collection reflects the painful contradictions of survival, with no apologies. Now let me tell you about a survivor who had a big impact on my life. We'll call her "S." S was my first lover. When we hooked up in 1991, I was 19 and she was in her early 40s. S was a cougar before it was cool. We were (and are) both revolutionary organizers. We were united by our common political determination as much as physical attraction. But there was another bond that drew us together, mostly unspoken, just as powerful as the others. Long before I put a name to my own experience of childhood abuse, I felt that connection deep in my guts. S grew up in the projects of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in a workingclass Jewish family. She rarely spoke of her childhood. On those occasions she talked about the emotional abuse and isolation that she and her younger

Anti-Imperialist Activist Resources

Workers World Party http://www.workers.org International Action Center http://www.iacenter.org Troops Out Now Coalition http://www.troopsoutnow.org New Jersey Solidarity http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org May 1 Immigrant Rights Coalition http://www.may1.info Millions for Mumia http://www.millions4mumia.org Granma InternationalCuba http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine http://www.pflp.ps/english Philippine Revolution http://www.philippinerevolution.net Venezuela Analysis http://venezuelanalysis.com Colombia Action Network http://www.colombiasolidarity.org The Icarus Project http://www.theicarusproject.net Fight ImperialismStand Together (FIST) http://fistyouth.wordpress.com Womens Fightback Network http://www.iacboston.org/WFN/wfn.html International Union of Sex Workers http://www.iusw.org/ FIERCELGBTQ Youth http://www.fiercenyc.org Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) http://www.ucpnm.org Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) http://www.suci.in Korean Central News Agency http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm New Colombia News Agency http://anncol.eu Honduras Natl Resistance Front http://www.resistenciahonduras.net Socialist Party of Bangladesh http://www.spb.org.bd Generation Five End Child Sexual Abuse http://www.generationfive.org

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Read more zines!

sister faced daily in their household. That would have been bad enough. But I understood that she had also lived through other kinds of abuse. That unspoken pain, which I knew so well, was etched in her eyes. Influenced by the radical movements of the 60s and early 70s, S's sister rebelled. She left home, becoming an activist and groundbreaking woman militant in the New York labor movement. S, meanwhile, followed the path a good Jewish girl was supposed to take. She married into the middle class, had a child, moved to Long Island. Nearly died of disgust and boredom. Eventually she divorced, brought her daughter back to the city, and joined her sister in fighting the good fight against capitalism. She'd been at it for a decade already when I moved to New York. It's hard to put our relationship into words. We stayed together for almost six years. It ran hot and cold. Our problems as a couple had much less to do with our age difference than what 4 we'd lived through. We were both prone to withdraw into our own shells. Too much alike, I guess. I was young, naive, didn't understand much about my own experiences yet, so I blamed myself for her withdrawals. On the other hand, I've rarely felt as deeply connected to anyone, before or since, because of that common experience of abuse and complete solidarity of political outlook. When S became chronically ill, I did my best to take care of her; at the same time, she paid the bills and made it possible for me, a young activist, to devote most of my time and energy to political work. She trusted that I would represent her in the struggle even if she couldn't be present. What an amazing gift! S taught me about sex and relationships, naturally. But she also showed by example the kind of determination a revolutionary organizer needs to overcome any obstacle, inside or outside of yourself, to get the job done. In retrospect, though, maybe the biggest lesson S taught me was that a damaged, abused child can, against all odds, become a
Hoax. #3 (hoaxzine@gmail.com) First I noticed how cool this zine looksits like my dream of what Absent Cause should be. But content is key, right? And its equally good. Editors CRG and Rachel do a great job of balancing their own unique voices with those of other contributors. This issue focuses on Feminism and Health, including a strong serving of queer and gender-queer health matters. Dont Put a Label on Me discusses the good and bad in claiming the label of victim or survivor of sexual assault. AC readers need this!

Baby Shark Gets Blue (eliseeffect@gmail.com) This slim handwritten and drawn zine is about Baby Sharks battle with Anxious Depression. She describes a dilemma that many of us can relate to: feeling desperate to be wanted by someone when were down in the depths. I had a lot to learn, especially separating my depression from my actual desires. She also talks about how she uses her love of creativity and biking to pull through. An inspiring read for tough days.

Get a Grip (sarahtearex@gmail.com) Its mind-boggling that someone who has lived a very different life experiences her survivorhood so much like me. But thats what I felt as I read Sarah Tea-Rexs zine. She guides us through her struggles dealing with new people and situations during her time in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She also rips apart the perception that practicing good consent is unsexy. Since people treat consent like a strange kink, she says, Heres my call to become sexual perverts with me and embrace active, hot, explicit, sexy communication with your partner(s). Im down.

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Musick
Surprise guest Paul McCartney joined his former band mate Ringo Starr onstage and played The Beatles Birthday at the finale of the drummers 70th birthday concert at New Yorks Radio City Music Hall, July 7, 2010. Photo by redguard

Read Ringo Starrs Peace Dream and see more concert photos on the Absent Cause blog: absent-cause.blogspot.com
Asspiss Fuck Off and Die EP Disclaimer: This is the first time Ive talked about a record sent to me as a review copy. Ive gotten some CDs unsolicited in the past and didnt review them because they didnt appeal to me, and I dont want to slam somebodys work just because it isnt to my taste. But Im happy to say that Asspiss is great! The band hails from the penis of the U$, Lake Worth(le$$), Florida. Their EP includes five churning, fast punk songs. My favorites are Rubber Bullets, about an activist who was shot by cops at the FTAA protests, and Burn Palm Beach, which a scrawled note on the insert calls Our idea of what Karl Marx would want done to this plastic land of bullshit. Fuck yeah. Fans of political punk should check this out. And Jaimie, our cover artist, would really dig the awesome butt and toilet imagery on the record label! Sample the tunes at myspace.com/asspiss666 and order from suburbanwhitetrash.com.

What This Survivor Sees by redguard

good parent. S raised an extraordinary daughter, and now devotes much of her time to helping raise her grandsons. I wonder if they will ever know how lucky they are. *****

Another survivor dear to my heart has been in the news recently: Lori Berenson. Lori, a social-justice activist from the U.S., has spent the last 15 years as a political prisoner in Peru.
5

She was arrested in 1995 when President Alberto Fujimori, aided by the CIA and U.S. military intelligence, carried out mass arrests and massacres of suspected revolutionaries and allies. Lori was accused of being a "terrorist" supporter of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a Marxist guerrilla group inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Along with leaders of the MRTA and the Communist Party of Peru

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("Shining Path"), Lori was put on trial before hooded military judges. She refused to sell out and dramatically denounced the regime when the political police paraded her before the media. Lori was sentenced to 20 years in a harsh military prison. Although I never met Lori, I've always felt a special bond with her. We are nearly the same age and came to revolutionary politics in the same bitter era of Reaganism. I too was very active in solidarity work with the Peruvian revolutionary movement. Had my path changed just a little, I could have wound up in a cell next to hers instead of protesting her detention on the streets of New York. Though Fujimori was later disgraced and accused of criminal conduct, the new, "democratic Peruvian government (still firmly under Washingtons thumb) didn't free Lorieven after she gave birth to a son, Salvador, last year. But in May, Lori's defenders finally won an important breakthrough. A Peruvian court granted Lori limited parole that allowed her and her baby to leave 6

prison and move to a private residence in Lima. Lori's struggle is far from over. Five years of her sentence remain. When I contacted her defense committee about the possibility of an interview, Lori's dad Mark wrote back, explaining that one of the many conditions of her parole is that she is not allowed to grant interviews. In the upscale area of the capital where Lori's been housed, she and Salvador face harassment and threats from reactionaries. Nevertheless, Lori's family and friends are relieved at the progress that's been made. Lori deserves our solidarity and our thanks. *****

Artists Against Arizonas SB 1070 Statement

Speaking of interviews, you

may notice that there aren't any in this issue. That's because, even more than usual, this edition of Absent Cause is all about people sharing their own stories in their own voices. Even when contributors asked me to edit their work, I tried very hard to keep their style and flow authentic, grammar books be damned. Trust me, these stories are worth it. redguard, 7/5/10

We believe the decision by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to sign into law the poorly-conceived immigration measure SB 1070 marks a new low in the fight to protect civil liberties in the United States. This law makes it a crime to be undocumented in Arizona and allows any police officer at the state, county or city level in Arizona to determine the legal immigration status of anyone at anytime. Millions of people everywhere believe it will lead to rampant racial profiling, particularly against people of Latino/a heritage. President Obama has called it "misguided." Furthermore, immigration is a national issue and the state of Arizona has no constitutional role in determining who has legal status in this country. We call on members of the worldwide artistic community whether visual, performing, literary or other disciplineto boycott the state of Arizona in opposition to this unjust legislation, for as long as it remains on the books. We ask artists to not perform, produce, present, appear or conduct business in Arizona so that lawmakers there understand that the rest of the country disapproves, so they will feel the economic impact of their bad decision. We call on talent agents, managers, publicists, unions and associations to also support this effort and the artists who choose to join. We also call on fans and supporters of the arts to contact their favorite performers and artists and encourage them to participate in this boycott. Fans can also show their support for the boycott by writing to Arizona Governor Brewer and by supporting their favorite artists when they make appearances in other states. The artistic community has a natural role to play in commenting and responding to social issues. Now more than ever the time is right to act.
Motion; Koba, Hip-Hop Producer and Performer, Harlem, NY; Laura-Marie, creator of Functionally Ill zine, Sacramento, CA; Lallan Schoenstein, LaborGrafix, NYC; Las Bomberas de la Bahia - Afro Puerto Rican Bomba Ensemble; Leslie Feinberg, Writer, Nat'l Writers Union-UAW, Co-Founder Rainbow Flags for Mumia; Mental Notes - Hip Hop Fusion Band; Michael Moorcock, Novelist, Austin, Texas; Minnie Bruce Pratt, Nat'l Writers Union, Syracuse, NY; Movement for the Society of Justice and Hope, Italy; Paul Drake, Painter, New Zealand; Quail Bell Magazine, Richmond, VA; Remi Kanazi, Poet, Brooklyn, NY; Shelley Ettinger, Writer, Queens, NY; Spiritchild, Founder of Movement in Motion, Artist & Activist collective; Susan E. Davis, Nat'l Writers Union, UAW Local 1981; Greater Washington Indie Arts Festival, Arlington, VA; Politically Incorrect Cabaret; Tranny Roadshow; Theater of Irregular Desire, Berkeley, CA; Tobi Vail, Writer and Musician, Olympia, WA; Tyrone Robinson, El Prieto/The Dark One, Artist, Henderson, NV; Unknown Click, Producer, Hip Hop Artist, Denver, CO; Vanessa Huang, Poet, Oakland, CA; YK Hong, Artist, Freedom Trainers, Brooklyn, NY; Zeraph Moore, Organizer, Bangor Media Collective, Bangor, ME; and hundreds more!

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STAND UP AGAINST ANTI-IMMIGRANT RACISM & RACIAL PROFILING

Join Tobi Vail, Michael Moorcock, Leslie Feinberg and hundreds more
To sign-on as an organization, group or individual, please send your name, title, affiliation, city and state or country to artistsagainstarizona@yahoo.com. Join the group Artists Against Arizonas SB 1070 on Facebook.

Survival by Kate Larson Contact Kate at teamkate@gmail.com

Warning: This zine contains potentially triggering material

Absent Cause #4 includes pieces on childhood sexual abuse, domestic and social violence, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, substance abuse, abuse perpetrators, repressed memories, consent and communication. Some images may be disturbing. If you choose to read further, please keep in mind that when these topics come up, you can always stop reading or skip over anything that you find too hard to deal with. If it becomes difficult, look to ways you can care for yourselfcall on a supportive friend, family member or helpline, go for a stroll, make artsy or craftsy things, watch something silly on TV, sing along really loudly to one of your favorite songs, impersonate dinosaurs, or make your own zine and vent that shit out! Thanks to Sarah Tea-Rex. I borrowed much of the above from her zine, Get A Grip (reviewed on page 81). 7

Partial list of endorsers: Absent Cause zine, NYC; AfricanFamily.org, African Family Film Foundation/African Family Childrens Fund, Santa Cruz CA; Alexander Billet, Music Journalist and Writer, Rebel Frequencies, Chicago, IL; Alison Roh Park, Writer, New York, NY; Andria Alefhi, creator of We'll Never Have Paris zine, NYC; ArtAndStruggle.Com, Artist & Activist Collective; Bound to Struggle: Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet, Chicago, IL; Carne Cruda, Oakland, CA; Christine Stoddard, Writer and Interdisciplinary Artist, Richmond, VA; Copycat Theatre, Baltimore, MD; Darla Masterson, Artist, Tucson, AZ; Deirdre Sinnott, Writer, NYC; Francisco Herrera, Trabajo Cultural Caminante; Freedom Train Productions, NYC; homoTiller Media Industries, San Francisco, CA; Ignacio G. Rivera, Poly Patao Productions, Brooklyn, NY; Imani Henry, Activist, Writer, Performer, Brooklyn, NY; J.S. Levario, Video Maker, Mexico City; Jaimie Hashey, Editor and Writer of ButtRagMag, Musician with Burglepig; Joseph McAnney, Stone Art, Congress, AZ; Josie Taglienti, Visual Artist, Phoenix, AZ; Juan Tejeda, Musician/Conjunto Aztlan, San Antonio, TX; Julius Gordon, Artist, Tucson, AZ; Katrn Kinga Jsefsdttir, Reykjavk, Iceland; Kelly Shortandqueer, Zinester, Shortandqueer Zine, Denver, CO; Khalil Khan, Movement in

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Fearful-avoidant attachment
People with a fearful style of avoidant attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others." People with this attachment style have mixed feelings about close relationships. On the one hand, they desire to have emotionally close relationships. On the other hand, they tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness. These mixed feelings are combined with negative views about themselves and their partners. They commonly view themselves as unworthy of responsiveness from their partners, and they don't trust the intentions of their partners. Similarly to the dismissive-avoidant attachment style, people with a fearful-avoidant attachment style seek less intimacy from partners and frequently suppress and hide their feelings. The story of my life, cribbed from Wikipedia.

into the countryside, where she executes him with the aid of a gentle draft horse symbolic of her lost life. So what is my relationship to Frigga? I want to be her. I want to share my experiences and empathize with her. I want her to fuck me. I want to fuck her. There is an erotic component to empathy between survivors, especially survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It seems inherent in

the sharing of such an intimate and vulnerable revelation with someone who is truly in a position to understand what that means. Where does my gaze dwell in the empathic feelings of a feminist and abuse survivor? Or in the sexual desire of a man who is turned on by a woman who has been transformed by abuse? This is the troubling gaze of a troubled boy.

Two Sides of the Coin. Photo by redguard

redguard, known to some as Gregory Butterfield or dad, is the editor of Absent Cause. He is currently working on a series of Transylvania Bibles mini-comix. You can reach him by email at redguard@gmail.com. He blogs at absent-cause.blogspot.com and fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com.

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Thrillers most dramatic divergence from the rape/revenge formula studied by Clover is the inclusion, alongside the typical violence and brutality, of hardcore sex scenes and nudity of the heroine, played by exploitation star Christina Lindberg. (Explicit scenes of penetration were filmed with another actress standing in for Lindberg, but were definitely intended for inclusion in the film by director Vibenius, despite later claims that these were added afterward.) When I first saw the film, the sex scenes were difficult to watch, to the point that I almost had to shut it off. However, as the film enters its second half, and we see Frigga methodically training and planning to set her vengeance in motion, I realized that the hard-

core scenes were far from gratuitous. The mechanical sex acts, followed by scenes of extreme boredom interspersed with outbursts of horrific violence, mirror the awful mix of stultifying routine and sudden terror endured by people living in abusive situations. This lays the groundwork for Friggas transformation from naive girl to warrior woman. The film also presents an interesting reversal of the rural/urban class dynamics of its North American cousins. In contrast to films like Deliverance and I Spit On Your Grave, where upscale urbanites are terrorized by impoverished rural people, in Thriller our heroine is a rural farm girl sucked into a world of urban sleaze by more privileged city dwellers. In the end, Frigga leads the kidnapper-pimp back

Happy birthday, Frida!

July 6, 2010, was the 103rd birthday of the great revolutionary artist Frida Kahlo. Her work, still deeply underappreciated and misunderstood by the mainstream art world, is so beloved by people worldwide that even Google had to give her props on their homepage:

But let's get real, shall we? Frida was a communist, a feminist, a gender-queer, a survivor. She grew up in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. She came of age in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and its influence on Latin American radical movements. She had the great, contradictory fortune/ misfortune to link up with that other historic Mexican revolutionary artist, Diego Rivera. If she were alive today, Frida would kick imperialist, corporate Google's virtual ass.

Frida and Diego march with fellow artists in Mexico City on May Day 1929.

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History of one
By Alison Roh Park
1 V_____ said she could smell your skin from the other side of the hospital door. By then the morphine dripped crystal in the IV, the wailing stopped, everyone holding their breath waiting for the helicopter to take you to Maryland. What was it, battery acid? Your mother heard the pistol butt in his hand connect with your skull. All I see is a crosshatch imprint when I close my eyes. You are 21 years old. 2 I'm washing dishes on Christmas morning. My cousin's husband drinks coffee with my brother at the table. He says about Kobe Bryant, "That guy has everything. He doesn't need to rape anyone." 3 D_____ repeats: You are your own source of joy You are your own source of joy You are your own power You are your own power 4 Brooklyn finds her first memories an apartment with a cool dark lobby doors shut everywhere. Little legs run the tap of jellies on the emerald tiles the groan of the slide and pull elevator door. doesnt cover, the 1974 Swedish rape/revenge film Thriller: A Cruel Picture. The film, written and directed by Bo Arne Vibenius, was banned in its home country and deeply censored for its release to U.S. grindhouses and drive-ins, where it played under the titles They Call Her One Eye and Hookers Revenge. The original 107-minute cut was finally released on DVD in North America in 2004. Not only does Thriller predate most of the U.S.made films Clover deconstructs, it presents an even more troubling case for my troubled gaze. Perhaps this is why it is my favorite example of the genrea film I return to again and again for 75 catharsis. Frigga, a modest farm girl, was raped as a child and becomes mute. As a young adult, she is picked up and kidnapped by a passing city dweller. She comes under the power of this violent man, who forces her into a life of prostitution and heroin addiction. Frigga makes a sickeningly protracted effort to flee. One of her eyes is pierced and gouged with a razor blade when she resists her first client. After learning that her parents have died, Frigga seeks out the training she needs to get revenge on all those who wronged her. When she is ready, her vengeance is fast, brutal, and thorough.

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was never a question of where I stood in relation to the women of these films. By dint of my experiences of abuse, I am a male who is already coded feminine by the standards of capitalist patriarchy. At the same time, though, I am erotically drawn to strong women, and for me the strongest are those whove survived and fought back against the double danger of social oppression and direct physical and sexual abuse. I am an atypical male sitting uneasily in the theater seat of the typical straight male viewer. In re-reading Clover and thinking it through, I

can identify a troubling aspect in my parallel identification and infatuation with the sheroes of these films. I not only identify with them in the context of the narrative; the rape/abuse scenario creates the outcome of the powerful woman who I wish comfort, take action beside, and make love with. If we agree that the typical straight males identification with the victim/heroine in these films fundamentally alters the male gaze, then where does that leave me? THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE I want to focus on a movie Clovers book

One night, she wakes to the light of street lamps her sister's sleeping body next to her. Little legs run down a tight corridor of shadows. She finds her brother cheek pressed to carpet; mother watching hair pulled into a towel, robe wrapped tight; father, enraged, belt buckle catching the lamplight. Little legs keep running. 5 Four strangers are talking quietly in a hotel room on the other side of the world. Rape survivor, stalking survivor, domestic violence survivor, child abuse survivor, AIDS survivor, rape survivor, AIDS survivor, stalking survivor, domestic violence survivor. We have all survived so much. Before my eyes, I watch our bodies become boats. We carry each other.

Alison Roh Park is a Queens, NY, native, writer, performer and activist. She is a former artist-in-residence at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia as part of the Artists and Performance in Action (APIA) Residency program, where she developed and performed a one-woman show, A Magpie Sang on the 7-Train. Her work has appeared in several publications, including the Ozone Park Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, The NuyorAsian Anthology, The Asian Pacific American Journal, and Yell-Oh Girls! Park has performed, competed and educated across the U.S. Visit her online at alisonrohpark.com or email her at alisonpark@gmail.com.

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The yellow line

By Deirdre Sinnott
I dont like being near the
edge of the platform, said my mother as she pinched the shoulder seam of my jacket and pulled me back. We were heading out to Boston University on the T so I could visit the school before choosing a college. I dont want to be tempted to throw myself in front of the train. Mom gazed at the merciless metal tracks in the pit at our feet as the boxy green and white train chugged into the station and the clack-clackclack of the wheels deafened me. We got into the subway without incident. However, I never forgot the idea that my hard mother, the woman I took to be invincible, toyed with suicide. When I moved to New York City at 22 years old, I figured out how tempting it was to stand at the edge of the platform and imagine being devoured by an oncoming subway car. My Anna Karenina moment was just the other side of the 12 yellow warning line on the platform, if I wanted it. Im imagining a 22year-old version of my mother in 1950, waiting for the commuter rail to return her to her home in Leominster after an outing in Boston. Every nice thing she sees in the store windows is too expensive. Her job at the G.E. plant doesnt provide her with eligible upscale young bachelors, so shes still unmarried. A certain brightness that she strove for that she imagined as her destiny is dimming into the everyday reality of compromised dreams. All those nights, studying the voices on the radio and practicing until her NewEngland-nasal was erased, meant nothing. The two years she tried to learn dress design arent leading her anywhere. Shes still small-town, alone in spite of her Veronica Lake hairdo and perfectly painted lips. Train headlights appear down the tunnel. Cold air

The troubling gaze of a troubled boy

By redguard
I love rape/revenge movies.
There, Ive said it, and Im not sorry. I used to think my interest in the genre was something to hide. I was ashamed to admit it, even after I read Carol J. Clovers Men, Women and Chain Saws. I believed the feminist women in my life, whose opinions I regard highly, wouldnt understand. I thought there must be something some awful, reactionary, sexist aspect of me in my delight for the likes of Ms. 45 and I Spit on Your Grave. Mainstream critics like Roger Ebert, along with some feminist film analysts, read rape/revenge films as authorizing an assaultive male gaze, or even goading men to rape and other acts of anti-women brutality. Clover asserted that these films instead put their (mostly male) viewers in the position of the victim, both as she suffers violation and 73 humiliation, and later, as she claims her power and takes revenge. Clovers analysis draws on the one-sex theory the notion that prior to the European Age of Enlightenment (that is, the dawn of capitalism), sex was not considered a static, hard-and -fast category. Female genitals were viewed as an inside out version of male sex organs rather than something wholly apart. While women and femininity were branded inferior, there were still seeds of ancient matriarchal society in this concept. Now, even after centuries of strict social enforcement of sexual difference, this one-sex understanding still has deep though unarticulated appeal. Ive been able to come out and embrace rape/ revenge films as a male survivor of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, both as a child and adult. To me there

Oppression
By Ali M. Assaf
Their lies that prosper in our silence they seek, The mortality of opinion and the wordsmith, Do they not desire us, to wish or to speak Against the fabricated reality of the substitute myth? No longer shall tongues knot in fear, And no more shall the words be lost in time, But know the people will be free to hear, The eternal echo of the words of youthful rhyme. Let not the peace that descends on all fool Your minds that have bred in contemptuous routine, For the pens shall be the revolution's mightiest tool, And the safety of silence shall never again be clean. The Surviving Voice that will ever be heard Will be echoes of the sounds of the righteous word.

pushes ahead of the cars and begins to move her hair. A loose strand drifts away from the rest. It floats above her forehead, shaking fast as the lead car approaches. The wind, the lights, and the growl of the train are rushing toward her. She wonders if she will ever get away from her mother who is already in her sixties, slowing and growing fat. How many more times does she have to hear her sister Corrine nag her to find a husband, quit work and settle down? And the train is so enormous, so definitive. It would completely close the question of who she is and how shell get on in the world. Her throat is choked and, despite the wind, she cant breath. All she needs to do is lean. Just lean and it would all be over. Her heart beats fast, excited at the prospect of taking complete control and just as the T is almost upon her, she swivels, turning away from the edge. She decides that it wont be today as car after car whiz past the platform. Instead of dying, in a few short years she would meet my father. They were married in 1953. Within four months she was preg13

The train is so enormous, so definitive. It would completely close the question of who she is and how shell get on in the world.
nant with her first child. A year and a half later she was pregnant again. When the second child was just over 3, she began to try to get back to working, but for the third and last time another baby was on the way. She once said to me that she never wanted to have children, but when each of you came along, I loved you. I wonder what her voice sounded like when she broke the news about my conception to my father. ***** As I ponder my relationship with my mother, I can see its evolution. I used to think that it was as simple as my fathers pronounce-

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ment that I was Just like her. But by the time I was 20 we seemed to be opponents. I remember standing in her office discussing my boyfriend. Her desk was on the first floor of the new house she and my father lived in, a house where I slept in the guest room. My boyfriend and I often snuck into her office and had sex on the pull-out sofa. I lost my virginity on that sofa bed. It was a space where I disrespected her weekly. What kind of birth control are you using? she asked. I flinched because we hardly talked about intimate things and she rarely asked me direct questions. Condoms and spermicidal cream, I admitted. She studied me, eyebrows drawn together, eyes bright and focused, hands on her hips. You know what they call girls who use condoms? I shook my head. Theyre called Mommy! Bang. No warm motherly advice about men and their ways, no talk about other forms of birth control, only a smack. Yes, I would have called her hard. At 30, when I was in the depths of an alcoholic 14

depression, committing slow suicide one swallow at a time, lonely, loveless, and career-less, I might have said that she didnt care about me and that was fine. I didnt need questions about why I quit working in the theater, a career I pursued obsessively in my twenties. There were no inquires about men in my life, no prodding to focus on something, no recriminations about working in a video retail store. I would have lied if she tried to ask me about my drinking. On her side, she didnt tell me or my siblings that, just before she and my father drove down to Florida for the winter, she had fallen and broken her arm. We found out after the cast was removed. I called her moments before her gall bladder surgery and told her I loved her. She sighed and hung up the phone. There was a tight and mutual silence about anything personal. What we did talk about? I dont know. I just knew that my life had to be kept secret and apart from hers. She seemed fine with that. By 40 I was sober. Suddenly I couldnt keep some

The pain
By Diane Carroll
The pain is something thats hurtful when youre lying There each day struggling to work, to pay bills, to just walk, When you have someone who looks at you and doesnt show feeling Doesnt show his heart to you any more When his family looks at you as though youre just a thing, not a person Pain, when you have stopped crying, stopped feeling for him and your own Life becomes your main thing in life, to get away from that person And his family, but when you leave that place to show new life The pain never leaves.
See Diane Carrolls artwork at beachbead.deviantart.com

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sudden upsurge of interest in the world, as my energy is released from the obsessive focus on one person. I am filled with creative energy and new ideas for projects. I have been having engaging conversations with many more people. This I affirm: I can live with the hole where my father's love should be, where my father's love has never been, without trying to stuff the hole up with something (someone) else or pretending that it doesn't exist. I can let the hole be empty as long as it needs to be, until some wind blows through it, making it into a flute, whistling out a song to

call me back to myself, to once again fully inhabit my flesh and blood and bones, to trust the solid ground beneath my feet, the air that snakes through my lungs, the circle of friends that stands around me, the series of hands that plant the seeds, pick the crops, drive the trucks, stock the shelves, chop the vegetables, stir the soup, always ending with my own hands, solid and warm, bringing earthy sustenance to my lips.

River Willow Fagan is a queer and gender-queer writer, activist and Tarot reader in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He blogs at willowfagan.livejournal.com and (semianonymously) at phoenixandtree.wordpress.com. He would love to hear from yousend e-mail to him at gaias.eye@gmail.com.

of the old hurts locked away any more. But sobbing at the kitchen table and telling her that my older brother had tried to have sex with me when I was 6 and that I had been fondled two years later by a stranger did not draw us together. Instead she was frozen by the news. At that moment I needed my mother to love me. But instead she sat motionless, arms tightly crossed over her chest, stunned to discover that her home had been unsafe. She needed to believe that I must have been lying or making too much of the incidents and said so. For about a decade we never broached that particular subject again. Now Im almost 50 years old. I volunteered to speak at my old high school about alcohol and drug abuse. In the cavernous gymnasium I told the students my story. My sister videotaped the talk. I told them about how I started drinking at their age, right there, in the field behind the gym. I told them about the drugs I took and how I tried to douse my feelings. I told them a few of the worst incidents, hinting at much sexual wreckage and the loss of years of potential. 15

No warm motherly advice about men and their ways, no talk about other forms of birth control, only a smack.
That evening, I played back the talk for my mother. After the video ended she sat quietly. Finally she said, I didnt know you were going through any of that. I said, Mom, I did everything I could to hide all this from you. It was important to me that you didnt know. I worked hard at keeping you out. She held my gaze for a moment. Even from across the room I could see that she was deeply troubled. The next morning, she was already sitting at the breakfast table with the newspaper when I sat down. She looked tired and I noticed that her face hung lower than before. I couldnt sleep, thinking about all the things you said in that talk, she said. I really had no idea what was going on. She got quiet.

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Her head dropped down and she stared at the newspaper in front of her. With her eyes still downcast she added, Im sorry I wasnt there for you. She got sick a few months later and I knew, for the first time, that I needed to help her instead of running away. As we sat together in the sunroom of the nursing home/rehab she was in, talking about how to get her released so she could go back to her house, she listened to me, one adult to another. She let down her guard and I spoke to her without reserve. Some weeks later, as she got weaker, she smiled whenever I came to her bedside. When I brushed the backs of

my fingers across her cool cheek, moving the light hairs on her skin, she accepted my touch with a soft look rather than the stiffness I was used to. She died in January 2009, but in those last months she finally let me love her. For most of our lives, we kept ourselves on opposite sides of the yellow warning line. My reticence and protective shell mattered as much as hers did. For all those years, she was more human than I was able to give her credit for. She had fears and vulnerabilities. She was a whole person who dreamed of ending it all on the Boston train tracks, but didnt. And she loved me in her fashion.

Deirdre Sinnott is a memoirist, speaker, and literary critic who reveals the disturbing truths, outrageous behavior, and humbling circumstances that taught her how to survive unasked-for adversity. She is presently working on two full-length books. Her writing has appeared in Foreword Magazine, Cadillac Cicatrix literary journal, in several anthologies, The Catskill Review of Books, various literary websites and newspapers. Read more of her work at deirdresinnott.com or email her at ds@deirdresinnott.com.

sexual but I couldn't completely disown my sexuality either; the pseudorelationships were a way of playing out this ambivalence in a way that was safe. Most of these pseudorelationships began with some form of ambiguity long conversations late at night in which we shared secrets we had never told anyone else before, painting each other's nails, cuddling on the porch for warmth in the winter. At the same time, I always knew that I was lying to myself. I just had a deep belief, rooted in my experience in my father's house, that I couldn't survive without illusion; I just didn't know what else to do. By falling into these illusions again and again, I was giving up my own power. I was acting as if I were powerless because I believed I was powerless. I was placing my own ability to comfort myself, to nurture myself, to create safe spaces for myself, to be my own loving witness, into the hands of those straight boys. I was acting as if I were still in my father's house, where I truly lacked the power to change the relationships, where the only 69

hope for ending the violence was being rescued by someone else. This is not the only echo. With these pseudorelationships I have been trying to solve the impossible puzzle that was my relationship with my father. I have been trying to square the desire to be sexual with the desire to be safe, the urge to never let go of a safe hug with the urge to run away from all touch, the need to be known and accepted with the shame that wants to hide and disappear. I have been trying to make up for what was stolen from me, to find a surrogate father, to recreate my relationship with my father, only this time healthy, only this time without being raped. But this will never work. It is yet another illusion, yet another desperate attempt to change the hard rock of reality with the feather touch of wishes. I have recently ended a pseudo-relationship, which I intend to be the last time I embark on that queasy roller -coaster ride. I may be sad and lonely but I am learning that I can live without illusion. I have found a

16

You suspect that you're subconsciously churning up difficult emotions so you can hold his hand, that you're more than willing to hurt yourself in order to be close to him.
much the accompanying actions hurt. This is what a pseudorelationship looks like when it starts to go sour: he lies to you about how much time he spends with a girl, about the fact that he is kissing this girl. You tell him you feel like he cheated on you; he says he feels like he cheated on you too. You talk a lot about how to repair your relationship, about strategies and techniques, but he becomes increasingly distant. You get more manipulative, desperate; you feel suicidal, you call his friends to find out where he is, why he won't answer your calls. The warmth, the safety that his presence used to 68

fold around you while at the same time opening up a world of possibility, a world in which you make sense, gives way to constant anxiety, to the prospect of a glacial landscape, to a tangled ball of mutual acrimony that neither of you knows how to untangle. I have been in at least five or six pseudorelationships with straight boys; I have only actually dated one queer boy. While these pseudo-relationships have brought me a lot of pain and angst, in one sense, they gave me exactly what I wanted: emotional intimacy/ support and the semblance of romantic companionship without the threat of sex, a terrifying prospect in light of the unhealed wounds gouged out by my father. Of course, at the same time, I wanted to be sexual with these straight boys and felt continually dissatisfied. With one of them, I spent a period of a few months only thinking about him when I would masturbate, in a kind of imaginary monogamy that made the illusion grow stronger by leaps and bounds. I didn't (and don't) feel safe actually being

Organizing against intimate & gendered violence

By Victoria Law
On December 18, 1752, the
New York Gazette reported that an odd Sect of People had been appearing in New Jersey. Calling themselves the Regulars, they dressed in womens clothes, painted their faces and then visited the homes of reported wifebeaters. They stripped the abusive husbands and flogged them with rods, chanting, Woe to the men that beat their wives. The author of the article noted, It seems that several Persons in the Borough (an tis said some very deservedly) have undergone the Discipline, to the no small Terror of thers, who are in any Way conscious of deserving the same Punishment. The following year, the New York Gazette printed a letter by a Prudence Goodwife whose husband had incurred the wrath of the Regulars: [T]hey have regulated my dear husband, and the rest of the Bad Ones hereabouts that they are 17 afraid of using such Barbarity; and I must with Pleasure acknowledge, that since my Husband has felt what whipping was, he has entirely left off whipping me, and promises faithfully he will never begin again. Were it not for these Regulars, Goodwife warns, then poor Wives who have the unhappiness to be lockt in Wedlock with bad Husbands, take care of your tender Hides; for you may depend upon being bangd without Mercy. The example of the Regulars demonstrates the potential of community responses to stop gender violence, especially at a time when wife beating was both legally and socially condoned. At the same time, it demonstrates that, even as far back as 1752, people were organizing community responses to prevent and stop violence. As late as the midtwentieth century, when awareness around battering grew more widespread,

communities have organized grassroots responses to intimate violence when police and existing power structures proved indifferent to their survival. These responses have taken various formsfrom self-defense classes for women to creating community support structures that can mobilize to respond to gendered violence. With the onset of the Womens Liberation movement in the U.S., police and judicial indifference to gender violence led to increasing recognition that women needed to take their safety into their own hands and learn to physically defend themselves from male violence. In 1969, members of Womens Liberation group Cell 16 began offering Tae Kwan Do classes for women. Unlike existing martial arts classes at the time, Cell 16s classes incorporated concepts of Womens Liberation, challenging its students to draw the connection between their learned sense of helplessness and their role in society as women. One student, Sarita Cordell, reported that, after studying Tae Kwan Do, she and other 18

students noticed a palpable difference in both their perceptions of themselves and their self-confidence: We talk about the strange paradox of feeling more womanly, happier about ourselves and each other, and of feeling less dependent on a man to escort us and protect us. Cell 16 was not the only group to recognize the political importance of womens self-defense. In New York City in 1974, the belief that all people had the right to live free from violence and the recognition that women, especially those with the least access to resources, were often disproportionately impacted by violence, propelled Nadia Telsey and Annie Ellman to start Brooklyn Womens Martial Arts (BWMA). I have felt that it [selfdefense] is connected to self -determination, stated Ellman. Its really important to be able to be taking [seriously] our safety, health, well-being, and right to live free from violence and try to create an organization that was going to make this happen [We wanted to] take our training into our own hands to prevent and avoid violence. We

house, I found refuges in other relationships, relationships that had real emotional intimacy but also a large portion of illusion. I called these relationships pseudo-relationships; they all involved emotionally intense friendships with straight boys in which I pretended that we were actually in a romantic and sexual relationship. The fantasy aspects of these relationships relied on the actual friendship for sustenance and a solid place in which to dwell, the way a parasitic worm lives in a stomach, the way an orphaned wisp of a spirit lives in a bottle or a house. This is what a pseudorelationship looks like: take one emotionally damaged queer boy, with a burning need to talk about his wounds and be nurtured, and a willingness to use manipulation to get this (that would be me), and one sensitive straight boy, with a guilt complex and the persistent feeling that he's responsible for other people's well being, sometimes distant but able to be emotionally open, and, most importantly, willing to deceive people in order to 67

avoid upsetting them. Add a shared political cause radical anti-war activism or ecologically-focused anarchism, or shared passion for writing, art and music, or the simple, everyday closeness of living together. Allow time for yearning to grow. This is what a pseudorelationship looks like: everyone assumes you're dating. You tell each other everything (or almost). He lies to his girlfriend about how much time he spends with you. Lots of emotional intimacy but no physical intimacy. Or, you hold hands a few times a week, but only when you're upset. You suspect that you're subconsciously churning up difficult emotions so you can hold his hand, that you're more than willing to hurt yourself in order to be close to him, in order to feed the illusion of closeness. You try not to think about how this mirrors what you would do with your father, i.e., approach him for sex so he would at least pay attention to you, at least touch you, at least say that he loved you, however

Letting go of my imaginary boyfriends actual hand

By River Willow Fagan
Growing up in my father's
house, I relied on illusions for survival. I could not allow myself to see the truththat my father was repeatedly raping me especially not when the rest of the family was engaged in keeping this truth far away and unspeakable. This pattern of covering up jagged pain with illusion, like a beautiful tapestry hung over a gaping hole in a wall, began with the abuse itself; my father forced me, by hitting me, by choking me, by threatening worse, to pretend that I was enjoying his sexual abuse. I learned to pretend so well that I actually experienced the abuse as pleasurable, as a form of love, as my father said it was. The lies I fed myself to live through the daily catastrophe of that house were layered. First, I pretended that the abuse was not happening; a deep part 66 of me scrunched her eyes closed and the violence and shame and fear vanished as cleanly as a magician's rabbit into his hat, out of the world. Second, in those moments when I could not deny the abuse because it was happening right then, I pretended that my father still loved me, that what he was doing was love. I needed to believe that my father loved me as much as I needed to believe that he had never and would never rape me; both were equally untrue. While my whole family collaborated in the shared illusion that we were happy, sane, normal, certainly free of anything monstrous, this was not enough. I had to further escape that house into the havens of imaginary worlds, whether through fantasy novels or elaborate, epic daydreams or writing my own stories or playing video games. Later, after I had physically left my father's

developed programs very much to reflect and to really understand that many people who came to our program were oppressed not just because they were women. There were multiple oppressions going on and we felt it was important to address them all It was really important to us to see that intersection of oppression and to see oppression as the glue that holds violence together. Feminist martial arts teachers also saw learning self-defense as a way to empower those who had survived intimate violence. Whats wonderful about martial arts and self-defense is that were talking about how we can grow our strength and our pride, Ellman noted. Whenever were working with people who have been abused, a big part of our program is helping people work through the violence and reclaim strength and pride and resiliency that weve always had Women lose [that sense of strength] once theyve been attacked, especially if theyve been attacked as children, and its very hard to get it back 19

What folks say to us is that martial arts and self-defense training restore something that gets lost at times when youve been abused, that theres very much a break. [With self-defense training] the mind-body-spirit gets reintegrated and women again start feeling like they do have a body, and they have a body thats worth defending. We have a body that doesnt just cause us pain and shame. Women have also organized in other ways to keep survivors of abuse safe: During the 1970s, in NeuIsenburg, a small town near Frankfurt, Germany, a group of women called Fan-Shen decided that, rather than establish a shelter for battered women, they would take the house back from the abuser. When a battered woman called the local womens shelter about violence, the group arrived at her home to both confront her abuser and occupy the house as round-the-clock guards to the woman until her abuser moved out. When the strategy was reported in 1977, the group had already been successful in five instances.

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?skconK tnegA nA fI ?skconK tnegA nA fI ?skconK tnegA nA fI ?skconK tnegA nA fI

od I od tahW

At a 1986 conference on ending violence against women at UCLA, Beth Richie spoke about a community-based intervention program in East Harlem, a New York neighborhood that was predominantly Black and Latino. Recognizing that the existing choices that an abused woman facedleaving her home or turning her abuser over to a racist judicial systemwere inadequate, community residents organized to take responsibility for womens safety. Safety watchers visited the house when called by the abused person or the neighbors. They encouraged the abuser to leave; if the abuser refused, the watchers stayed in the house. Their presence prevented further violence, at least while they were present. More recently, queer communities of color in the Pacific Northwest recognized that community-building could both prevent and address partner abuse by breaking through isolation, forming FAR Out (Friends Are Reaching Out) in 1999. The goal of this project is to build capaci-

ty within our community to resist isolation and sustain meaningful connections. We hope to create a community culture that values open and honest communication, and reinforce the importance of friendships in resisting domestic violence. FAR Out works with queer-identified survivors, their closest friends and family members to facilitate discussions and develop strategies to remain connected. Time and again, survivors reported that isolation was the cornerstone tactic in their experiences of abuse. This isolation takes many

Noemi Martinez, a Chicana/ Boriqua writer and activist spiller of truths and secrets living in the militarized borderland of deep South Texas. Hermana, Resist is a personal, political zine with literary tendencies which manifest in forms of poetry, free verse, haiku, short stories, journal entries, rants, raves, critiques, commentaries, photos, recipes and dreamy manifestos. She blogs at hermanaresist.com.

For a survivor who's considering leaving her relationship, the thought of rebuilding lost connections and relationships can feel completely overwhelming and insurmountable.

Federal, state and local law enforcement have a dark history of targeting radical and progressive movements and their toolbox is full of dirty tricks. Todays activists must know and understand their tactics. Key security practices can help you protect your right to dissent. Visit ccrjustice.org/ifanagentknocks to download or order a copy.

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attending the funeral: of kin & abusers

By Noemi Martinez
the house was complete. he couldnt leave the hospital, had his laptop by his side mournful and missing, we circle like starlings these abysses hiding horrors of what and that and lost. but I saw them tired, on the way to the cemetery sitting next to the accusers strange things narrated the conversations I'm not having as if in the deepest slumber they are guilty and here I sit I'm not lost, know the reasons mad at the conversations talk of shoes, dry washing the pain the afterbirth, as overpowering as it was his left hand boiling alcohol, speaking of sins on the pulpit or in cemeteries private dicks we smell murder hide behind the deaths see you behind coffins until next time dangerous writing is, like getting up just cant some mornings wait for beautiful nights laughing at the doom and masks. 64

Protesters denounce massacre of Gaza aid flotilla, Times Square, May 31, 2010. Photo by redguard

forms, but the end result is always the samesevered ties between the survivor and her support network. Without that access to support, perspective and feedback, the abuser has total, unimpeded power to dominate their partner. For a survivor who's considering leaving her relationship, the thought of rebuilding those lost connections and relationships can feel completely overwhelming and insurmountable. That developing community has also occurred in other venues. Women at BWMA (renamed the Center for Anti-Violence Education, or CAE, in 1989) have 21

also, at times, worked together to ensure the immediate safety of its students. Dimitrea Tokunbo, a student and abuse survivor, recalled, I was in a situation where I had to drop my two daughters off with their dad while it was unsafe for me to be near him I called CAE and a group of women got together to help us. Each week someone would drop off and pick up the girls for me, and they didnt ask for anything in return. These stories make up only a short and very incomplete history of community organizing against gender violence. Many more examples, both historical and

present-day, exist and should be researched, explored, and learned from. To know about these possibilities allows us to draw on others experiences and begin conceiving of and actively working towards a world in which communities take safety into their own hands.
Books and Articles
Bustamante, Cindy. (1986). Planning to End Violence Against Women. off our backs, 26(5): 14. Cordell, Sarita. (1972) SelfConfidence, Self-Defense. The Second Wave 2 (4), p. 39

Finding Your Voice: A Conversation with Dimitrea Tokunbo. (2007, Fall) CAE Update 15 (2), p. 3. Kimaro, E. It's F.A.R. OUT! The NW Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse: www.nwnetwork.org/ index.php?option=com_ content&view= article&id=50&Itemid=68 Lafferty, Jeanne and Evelyn Clark. 1970. Self-Defense and the Preservation of Females. No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation: 96-97. Womens Patrol Ousts Beaters. 1977. The Lesbian Tide: 18.

Plus I would probably punch him. Now I just want my share from the sale of our apartment. It wont be enough to buy a place in London, so I think Im going to buy somewhere in Eastern Europe. Renovate it and run a retreat center ... who knows?

And last week I joined a dating site and have lined up dates with half a dozen guys in their early thirties. Thats whats been taking up so much of my time the last few days, hours spent chatting on MSN with hot younger men. They all like the older ladies.

Now Available! Mamaphiles #4: Raising Hell

The collaborative effort of 34 zine-making parents, Mamaphiles takes on the wilder side of parenthoodfrom toddler-chasing to rabble-rousing. "Children are natural born hell-raisers," wrote Henry Miller, and as Mamaphiles' writers can attest, raising them can be a revolutionary act. $5-$7, sliding scale Order from: Mamaphiles, c/o Confluence Media Collective, PO Box 186, Grand Junction, CO 81501, or visit gjredpill.org and click on the Store page to order. 63

Victoria Law is a writer and activist in New York with many ongoing projects. Books Through Bars-NYC is an allvolunteer group that sends free reading material to people in prison nationwide. Learn more at: abcnorio.org/affiliated/ btb.html. She is the editor of Tenacious, a zine of art & writings by incarcerated women: resistancebehindbars.org. Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is a zine series (that will culminate in a book) about supporting families in radical movements. More info, including a link to download the latest issue as a PDF, can be found at: dontleaveyourfriendsbehind.blogspot.com. Contact Vikki at vikkiml@yahoo.com.

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But when the settlement came back ... well looky here, we got the percentage for the Saturday but only the guarantee for the Friday. The settlement was about 3,000 short by my reckoning. And by the evidence of my own eyes the Friday was not just sold out, it was over -sold. If only the band had had a proper tour manager to interrogate the numbers... But hang on, what was stopping me from being that tour manager? Why, my husband, who wanted a wife not a tour manager, who had always defended the coke-head agent, who was vile to me at the gigs in question, who had been undermining everything I did for months, who in fact had behaved exactly like someone who is on the fiddle right from the start. No wonder he had hated my friend who was helping me set up the tour company. I had inadvertently brought an industry Rottweiler into a situation where my husband was scamming. Whoops. I asked my friend about it all, he said that all the feedback from his contacts over the months confirmed that the cabbaging 62

split had been three ways: the promoter, the agent, and my husband. And I realized that I had known all along really, but had refused to believe it could be possible that the man I loved, whose career I had worked so hard to support, of whom I was so proud, could have managed to justify any of this bullshit to himself. And I felt glad that Id made the decision to divorce him before I realized what he had done. And having realized what he had done, I was very glad indeed that I had decided to divorce him. Bastard. I told the artists lawyer everything I know. I owe it to the artist. The beauty of cabbaging is that theres no proof, the evidence is the audience which walks out the venue at the end of the gig, gone forever. So theres nothing the artists lawyer can do to my husband other than keep a close eye on him, which she will do from now on. He has no idea, he still thinks that she thinks he is so charming and adorable. She doesnt. I havent confronted him, I cant see the point.

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women by Victoria Law highlights the issues facing incarcerated women and their acts of individual resistance and collective organizing. It won the 2009 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award as a publication that focuses Americas attention on our criminal and juvenile justice systems in a thoughtful and considerate manner. $20 from pmpress.org or resistancebehindbars.org.

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Broken Tree by BeutifulDeadCreature My name is Shanna, but I go by Annie mostly. I'm a 22-year-old Canadian girl born in a small town nobody likes to admit exists. I'm a paranormal writer and alternative model. I draw and play with a lot of photography. I think beauty needs to be shown in all light and can't always be pretty to the collective world. You can find me and my work at facebook.com/Kreatuire and beutifuldeadcreature.deviantart.com, or email me at hostilelullaby@gmail.com.

that I was going through the UB statement and I was also thinking about the tour finances and how the settlements from some of the shows had come back short, and about why... I should explain that the music industry is riddled with scams, cons, fiddles. One such is under-reporting ticket sales, known as cabbaging. For a live show the fee to the artist is usually a guaranteed fee plus a percentage of the shows profit after costs. So the final amount of the fee depends on how many tickets got sold. The shows promoter will report the online sales and sales made by the venue, the costs are subtracted and the artists representative gets paid the final settlement. Its up to the tour manager to interrogate the numbers, check the arithmetic, and if they think the promoter sold more tickets than hes admitting, i.e., he is cabbaging, then the TM can ask for a ticket count. The promoter can go one further than this; he can, if he thinks he will get away with it, say that sold out gigs didnt sell out, or else that 61

they didnt even sell enough tickets to make any profit. So the artist only gets the guaranteed fee, not the percentage on top. For the scam to work the promoter, the agent and someone within the artists circle need to be in on it. And Im sitting there looking at my UB statement and thinking about how vile my husband was to me at the gigs in Devon. That was where he blanked me in front of colleagues. There had been two gigsthe first one booked was the Saturday and it sold out straight away. So they put the Friday in too and it sold well and was still selling on the night. When I arrived at the venue two of the staff had told me yes, Friday had sold out too. Excellent, two sold-out gigs and a big fat percentage, I thought. The Friday gig was completely rammed. It was like the Tokyo underground in there, impossible to move. I watched from the side of the stage. In contrast, the following night, the Saturday, was busy but less so than Friday. Saturday was sold out, Friday must have been over-sold.

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Life, which had been a giant shit sandwich for months, is becoming sweeter.
single parent again so I do everything my way; I live with only one of my children so only half the day-today parenting (the other child is an adult so dont worry about her); I am starting a business and putting my brain power into what I want to do for a change; I have lost weight (with all the stress) and have started to give a shit about my appearance for the first time in years. I got my hair dyed purple. Life, which had been a giant shit sandwich for months, is becoming sweeter. The divorce petition is filed. There had been no adultery (that I know of) so I filed for Unreasonable Behavior. I had abundant examples. Some of them are in the first part of my story. 60

My husband disagrees with them all. Screw him. I stopped working for the band at the end of April. I had to draw the line somewhere, working with him was completely unbearable. I only did it for the money. By the time I left I had earned enough to pay the deposit and first months rent on an apartment, buy some furniture, and survive until the Jobseekers Allowance came through. I hate claiming state benefits but my husband was the breadwinner and Ive left him and until I build up my business I have no money coming in and rent to pay and a child to feed. During April, just before I stopped working for the band, I put my Unreasonable Behavior statement together for the divorce. I kept the details out. I would never bring the artist into it of course, but I sent a copy to his lawyer because my husbands behavior related to our work together and I wanted her to be completely clear about what I was (and wasnt) saying. I was due to go and meet with her on my last day of work to give a final report. A few days before

No color
By Helen Georgia Stoddard
You dont look Hispanic
has been the constant affront I have dealt with my entire life. The typical physical appearances of races and ethnicities have been drilled into the minds of little kids: if youre brown, youre Mexican; if youre yellow with slanted eyes, youre Chinese; if youre black, youre, well, black, and if youre red, youre a savage. When the snickers and smirks come from classmates, I gulp down. When I was little I never really classified myself as Hispanic or white, because I am both. I just was who I was. I have light skin, hazelgreen eyes, and wavy brown hair; I look nothing like the typical Mexican who has brown skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. I speak Spanish a little better than the average gringa. I was raised speaking English because my mother wanted me to have the best American accent and English grammar that I could. If I could speak Spanish perfectly, but had a hard 25 time speaking English, the educated language of America, I would only bring disgrace. It would put her to shame, because of all her personal efforts to assimilate to American culture. Compare me to the average Latina, and only a trace of my Salvadoran heritage is visible; according to one Bolivian guy, the only thing that makes me look Hispanic are my hips, mis caderas. Never have I taken Merengue or Salsa classes when I was little. Never have I worn extravagant stage costumes, adorned with feathers or bells or sequins that were inspired by the Mayans and Aztecs. Never have I performed a Latin dance routine or danced the Jarabe Tapato. I can only dance enough Cumbia to get by on the dance floor on the rare occasion that I dance with my own people. From my father comes Europe. I carry Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, and France in my heart, or rather

in my genes. I am a relative of the first inventor of plastic, Bakelite, and Velox photographic paper, Leo Hendrik Baekeland of Belgium. To many, I look straight out of Europemuch of the time, France. Once I was even mistaken for the French exchange student at my school. However, the food I eat defines my Salvadoran heritage very much. My mother came from El Salvador to the United States in the late 1980s, and brought with her the most outstanding homemade recipes that her own mother had taught her. What I eat is called beaner food: the food of the Latino community. Huevos Rancheros start my day right, quesadillas for lunch, maybe. For la cena come the frijoles rojos refritos and, if I am lucky, pupusas

con queso y loroco, homemade. The aroma of these dishes fills me with appreciation for my heritage. My pride sits at the dinner table with my family. Perhaps I cant speak Spanish with the perfect accent and maybe I dont look Hispanic enough. However, I am not just any animal with a brand on my thigh, etched into me, proclaiming that I am part of only one land or heritage. On my left shoulder I carry El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Spain; on my right I carry France, Scotland, Ireland, and Belgium. I am part of many nations that hold many cultures. I am a whirlpool of old customs and colors. And I will shake mis caderas until the day that I die.

Helen Georgia Stoddard says Ive been making art since I was capable, singing since I understood what a voice box and diaphragm were, photographing the world since I was 14 and writing since grade school. I have been teaching myself some guitar and messing about on the piano; the result is my one-woman band, With Fawns (myspace.com/withfawns). You can find Helens poetry blog at helengeorgiastoddard.blogspot.com or contact her at helen.stoddard@gmail.com.

sound check at the recent gig that he's a guitarist, not really a singer. This man had one of the most beautiful, effortless, unaffected blues voices anywhere ever. In his heyday he was the best. And now he sounds like the croakiest old blues man, wonderful, heartfelt, and very moving. Incredible vocals. But in his humble mind he's not really a singer. In contrast, my husband, who is a perfectly solid guitarist but no virtuoso, considers himself to be the Artist. Where the artist himself won't step up and be the Artist, my husband is doing it for him. As the artist gets saner my husband gets crazier. No wonder my husband doesn't want me anywhere near the gigs. Somewhere in the back of his mind there must be a place which knows that all this is bullshit. He was so wrong to defend the coke-head agent, that man was a fool and now my husband is tarnished by associationthe artist's lawyer has a lower opinion of my husband than he knows about. He thinks she's fallen for his charm. She hasn't. 59

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... Having been handed a golden opportunity for us both, my husband has screwed it for me and will screw it for himself if he doesn't come back to reality soon. I've got to negotiate my way out of my husband's debts and this marriage I'm 40 and I have my health and my integrity and my beautiful daughters. I have to put us first, I can't keep worrying about my husband and the artist, let the lawyer do that. I can't imagine what the future will bring for any of us. 3:22 am 14 JUNE 2010

Its days after I said I would send this completed story to Absent Cause, they even extended the deadline specially, and Im sitting here bug-eyed from staring at the screen for hours already today. More on that later. My life, which reversed polarity back in October last year, has flipped back, but is now unrecognizable from what it was pre-October. I now have a new home which I really like; I am a

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threatening to pull them. I stepped in and worked round the clock to get visas together in time for the deadline, and I saved the gigs. The artist's lawyer is undyingly grateful. She's a nice lady. A new high-powered agent has been appointed. He told me what the cokehead agent had said to the Australians. The coke-head agent had told them he was going blind and therefore couldn't respond to emails, he could only talk on the phone. And then he just never answered the phone. I'm now calling him Blind Lemon Underpants (a play on his real name). Everyone needs a blues name. The artist is a gentle soul who has been burdened with a beautiful and terrible gifta gift that has brought him fame and accolades and five million plays on U.S. radio, but also decades of illness and pain. I am so happy to see him happy onstage and taking joy in sharing his gift with enraptured fans. I wish him every happiness and I'm so sad I can't continue to work for him it's been a privilege. But the emotional toll of being continually put down and 58

snubbed by the man I used to love is insufferable. My husband treats me like a non-person in front of colleagues and strangers and venue crew, he talks over me or ignores me. Our crew were concerned for me last month at a gig in Devon and very uncomfortable with the way my husband was treating me. No one can work in those conditions. And the crew have also told me of various instances of diva-ish behavior on the roadwhen I was in Milan my husband had been so abrupt with a promoter that I felt shocked. He has become intoxicated with the success and the applause and thinks everything he says and does must be right. He has been in and out of bands since he was 15he's waited a long time for this. Yes, he has worked wonders with the artist and the band, but he can't do business or finance for shit. He is living in a dream world. Yesterday he told me that he is the Artist. But he is not the artist. Only the artist is the artist. Something has gone very wrong here. The artistthe actual artistis very shy and selfeffacing. He told me after

Field Days
By Andria Alefhi
I'm a girl.
My parents were surprisingly out of sight, out of mind. Don't know that I ever logically figured that out and took advantage when I could. As a kid, I burst with social curiosity that could not be tamed. Right now I recall the short bike rides. I knew how far I could go and it satisfied me, the little freedom. I loved those bike rides. Down my street and up Sanger Avenue, the big hill. Continue straight and go up as far as Woodbury and turn around, or make a right onto Jordan. Either way it was nice, rich people's homes, set far back on plantation lawns. Down Jordan was my favorite. There was a roadside cross. There were four steps down and a standing crucifix with a plaque and two stone benches on either side. I was a good kid. Believe it or not, I would come there and pray. It was quiet 27 and otherworldly. Behind this was a convent, set back far from the road and so covered with shrubbery you wouldn't know it was there, except this was my neighborhood. Just a few streets over from that, it was good enough to be another world. Never kids playing in the street here. I would sing when I rode my bike. I'm thinking mostly 5th, 6th, 7th grade. One day I rode my bike down the winding driveway right up to the front door. Don't remember muchI guess some nuns were standing there. We talked, I was bold and friendly, they invited me in. Probably I was inside briefly, who knows, I had a cookie, and I left. Later I told my mother, who freaked out that I had gone inside a stranger's house. Didn't matter that it was a convent; it was even worse that it was a convent. Yes, we were Catholic, but nuns and a creepy

house. I was exceptionally trusting and this kind of behavior was typical for me. Whats interesting is that if I hadn't told her, she wouldn't have known. Sounds obvious, but my parents were authoritative. They weighed in on anything you can think of. Punishments were clear and pretty damned threatening; they had followthrough. They had to approve of friends. Sleepovers weren't allowed. I had to ask even to have a candy. You can forget backtalk of any kind. There was the belt, not afraid to use it. Yet they didn't follow me around. Caught doing something that would piss them off was one thing. If that thing hadn't been established, or if I kept my thoughts and ideas to myself, maybe shit I pulled in school that didn't get called out, it was mine. This was groundbreaking to me. I didn't see it that logically then, but I believe now that the seed was planted. I didn't go wild, not at all. Not outwardly and not for a long time. What stayed was the trust. It morphed and I split in two. My personalityI was like a lead paperweight. 28

Compact! Intense! Sure! I was bold in school, spoke my mind, got in trouble sometimes. Not at all what heavy-handed, firstgeneration immigrant parents would produce. You must understand how I went against the odds and grew in between sidewalk cracks. You would expect shy, timid, second. I'm like a cactus in the plant world. I need dirt and sun, yes, but just a drop of water. Just the tiniest bit of encouragement. Less encouragement and more just don't get in my way. It's a visual slideshow in my mindthe elementary school years. Hours of rolling modeling clay into tiny figurines. Whose idea was that? I was sometimes funny in school. Once I threw raisins at the lunch lady. Wasn't I afraid of being beaten at home? I should have been. Cactus. Sidewalk cracks. Out of sight, out of mind. My parents didn't know enough about school to be involved and I was a good kid. Still I marvel at how I developed in spite of the extremes. Back to the sentence, I'm a girl. Later I was split in two. Now sometimes I

I'd been saying I wanted a separation but he's been on tour and ignoring me and refusing to take it seriously. Yesterday he realized that it's real. He is being really spiteful, telling me that I've wrecked my chances in the industry and that I'll never get more work because of my attitude, and that the band don't really like me, they're just pretending. My mother used to say stuff like that to fuck with my head, I can't listen to that stuff anymore. On Monday the band have a big show in London. I've got all the artist's lawyers the best seats in the house. This is my last chance to attend a gig in a working capacity, my last chance to network with promoters and get praised and get my face around. I want to go for sound checkthat should be part of my job but my husband doesn't want to see me before a gig. At a recent gig I had to hide out with the promoter before the show so my husband didn't see me. Ridiculous. But on Monday I want to be there for the duration. I have put my heart and soul into this tour company, I have worked around the 57

What a terrifying thing, that your best friend and companion turns into someone else and your love for them switches off. But that's what happened.
clock to monitor finances, report to lawyers, prepare itineraries, liaise with everyone on everything. I have created every company document. This is, in many respects, my company. But I have been blocked from attending most gigs which would normally be part of my job. The artist's lawyer has been very sympathetic of my plight and says I have been an absolute star. I need to get that in writing. The coke-head agent finally resigned and will soon be gone. We discovered he had been ignoring the Australian promoter for weeks and the gigs were in jeopardy, the promoter was

So I went to Milan to see what the fuck was going on. I played it cool and nonconfrontational. I even fucked him. It felt like doing a puntercall-girl slang for servicing a client. During the weeks leading up to Milan I had listened to so much emotional abuse over the phone that my love for my husband had switched itself off. What a terrifying thing, that your best friend and companion turns into someone else and your love for them switches off. But that's what happened. I got back from Milan and immediately set up couples counseling for his return. I feared and dreaded being in our tiny apartment together, he was totally unpredictable. I was brought up by an unpredictable, violent, spiteful mother and fear of my husband was not a situation I could possibly tolerate. Sharing a bed was unthinkable. He agreed to stay at his studio and has been there ever since. On 1st December I was at my friend's place, we were working, planning the upcoming shows. My friend was outraged at the way my 56

husband had treated me. I was outraged at how my husband had treated my friend. And then my husband called my friend, they had a screaming match over the phone, my friend told my husband to fuck off and put the phone down. Then my friend resigned from the tour company. I felt so completely bereft; my friend had been a voice of sanity in the mad world my husband had created. Now I would have to continue in this world of shit on my own. Since then I have single -handedly set up and organized two sets of UK dates and an upcoming tour of Australia, unsupported in my work, under continual attack from my husband and the coke-head agent who criticize or downplay everything I do, ignore requests for information and both make free with the band's money, squandering it on shit we don't need. Did I mention that my husband has run up over 35,000 in credit card debthis business debtin our joint names? Fast forward to now. I met with my husband yesterday and told him I want a divorce and I'm moving out.

was a helium balloon floating above myself. When I was maybe 13 I joined the Saquoit Community Marching Band. I don't know, maybe it was Westmoreland. It wasn't my town, it was a town or two over. So odd. I joined with Rene Niehausen who went with her father. How did this one get though the parental screen? Maybe this was while my father was cheating on my mother and they had their own private shit going on because the Niehausens had certainly never been preapproved. I rode in their car to some kind of street parade with marching band music that would end spilling out onto a summer fair. They are called Field Days where I am from. It is a blur now as it was thenit's not my memory but how I took it in. Renes father was drunk in no time. Clearly we were too young to be there. Something something something and me and Rene were in the parking field, standing with some older guys and their cars. Nothing happened? Then it was approaching evening. I was there but turned into a heli29

I was like a lead paperweight. Compact! Intense! Sure! I was bold in school, spoke my mind, got in trouble sometimes. Not at all what heavy-handed, first-generation immigrant parents would produce.
um balloon. Probably I knew I shouldn't be there, that something could happen, but didn't really know what, either. Then we went home. I wasn't looking to be a bad girl. I was unbelievably naive about sex and sexual attraction at 13, 14, 15, even keep going. But it was like going to the nunnery. I just went. As I got older this happened again and again. In high school I was truly clueless about what boys expect from girls. In college I knew but wasn't ready and just didn't worry, assumed the

guys I liked or went with would be cool. But there were many other encounters discounting the safety of college dorms where I was systematically leading a guy to the bulls-eye, to ground zero, and dropping him cold. Honestly, I cannot count the scenarios I ended up in where a potential rape was ripe for the picking and yet I walked away untouched. As I aged, I knew often I was flirting, then more than flirting, then yes, let's go to your hotel room. Yes, to hotel rooms. Once in the San Juan islands to a co-ed nude hippie spa. Once with a New Zealander sleeping over in a closed shop in Cork, Ireland. Once in Manhattan, in the mid-90s, to visit and stay with a guy I'd met once over music. Unsuspecting, single, ready-to-score men. And me. Not wanting to and then changing my mind. Just vacant. Completely asexual. Feeling no sexual attraction and expecting the same. That words like I have a boyfriend were a perfectly fair explanation for why I had just spent the last several hours or days ramping you up for the hard sell. 30

Get this, even words like I'm married when it was true. I did it then, too. Then after the marriage ending, there was the distancing sex. Just something to put between me and the ex. I had sex with the guys who wanted to have sex with me. I finally got to a point where I felt I couldn't say no after I'd totally said yes. But it wasn't me. It was the helium balloon talking. Deflated and lowered but still drifting above the ground. A forced smile. Yes, it is beyond bizarre. I used to wonder if I got raped at that Field Days thing and blocked it out. Imagine my parents would have noticed. Not something you could hide at 13 probably. There are other indicators in my life that nag at me (used to, now I don't care anymore) that some weird shit went down somewhere at some point. I used to speculate; was it an uncle? Which one? But I don't think so. There was that superfreaky, like Friday the 13th vampire freaky girl that lived next door for a while. Lori Wolfler and her friend, Nancy Lee. I do remember one of those vacant

head fool? I knew I had all the skills to set up a tour company and run the tours, so I met with the artist's lawyers and they agreed that I come on board. I brought a friend with me, an experienced tour manager, to mentor me. It was obvious to him also that the agent was a coked-up freak who was going to fuck things up. My husband was pretty ambivalent about me and my friend coming on board. I thought he would be grateful for the supportmore fool me. As soon as my friend and I started trying to get any information from my husband about the band information we needed in order to set up gigshe went into a temper tantrum. The band went on tour, we tried to call him on the road but he just shut off, locked down, wouldn't answer phone calls, treated the mildest of enquiries as threats, then called me up and screamed down the phone at me that our marriage was over unless I agreed with everything he said. I thought he had gone mad. Six months later I still do think he's gone mad. And 55

he still thinks I betrayed him by daring to question anything he said, by agreeing with my friend. Deadlock. But at the time this happened, in late October, I didn't know what to think, I was really freaked out. We hadn't been getting on too well for a while but this was different. Who the hell was this stranger? He looks and sounds like my husband but some terrifying personality change had taken place. He was defending his work with the artist as if my friend and I were trying to destroy it. He still thinks we were. But we were trying to set up an efficient tour company so his work would be easier. I couldn't come to terms with the severity of his reaction. By the time I flew to Milan on 18th November he was insisting that I wasn't allowed to mention my friend's name in his hearing, I was only to refer to myself, never we, meaning my friend and me. Madness. Through the whole tour my husband never once called my friend and confronted any of the issues between them. Instead he would call me and scream down the phone at me about how our marriage was over.

The best & worst of times

By Priority B
21 MARCH 2010 the road, were sick of the sight of each other and wanted to go home. But we had fun anyway. The gig had been okay, I've seen better. It was well received though and at the end of the day that's what matters. I had started working for the band in October, having persuaded my husband that I could set up and run the tour company. My husband was in the band, in fact he had hooked up with an artista blues guitar legend of the 60s who hadn't toured for years and had fallen out of the collective music subconscious. My husband and the artist put a band together. My husband had got a guy he met to be the band's agent. This guy was a coked-up disaster area, I could see that from the get-go, but my husband insisted this guy was cool. So what should I do? Should I stand by and let my husband's promising career with the artist go down the toilet because of this coke54

On 19th of November I was sitting in Milan airport waiting for a flight back to London and reading Absent Cause #3 and I got to where Leslie Feinberg quotes from Dickens: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, and for me it was one of those moments where the universe delivers something to you that describes your situation exactly. I had woken up that morning in a hotel room full of empty beer cans, having been up drinking with my husband and the band the night before. They were nearly at the end of a threeweek tour of Europe and had clocked many miles on

moments of something something, she takes my shirt while we are standing in her driveway. I wonder what she is doing. Then I am home. She had been to our house, too. How did she get past the parental third eye of knowledge and suspicion for anyone not a Maronite or at least Catholic like us? Must have been during more cheating or other stuff. There were often stretches where they wouldn't talk to each other. Catholic but not white trash. Instead of yelling, cursing, throwing stuff, they ignored each other and functioned. The sentence, I'm a girl. From Eileen Myles, Cool For You. Seems it should have conjugated to
Andria Alefhi lives in New York, where she edits Well Never Have Paris, a zine devoted to all things never meant to be. She co-hosts the monthly Zine Therapy! show on Washington Heights Free Radio. Visit Andria at

was a girl since it is in the past tense. That's why it hit me. I realize that in those moments without abandon, for good and for bad, it as though I channeled myself as a boy. Eileen Myles references her identification with boys throughout the whole book. I'd never felt that way until I read this book that yes, it's true, the male influence was strong in my house. Male equaled power and women didn't, no question about it. Don't know how to end this. I bullied myself on the boast I don't save drafts and I've been coming back to this essay for three days now but I think I will stop here. I've pulled up the anchor.

neverhaveparis.blogspot.com.

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Warlock
By Amberly Mason
I want to speak but every time I try the words become stuck like a rock in the back of my throat, and I wonder are you out there somewhere, do you laugh from the dark, watching in the shadows, or am I little more then a memory from the grave. I want to slay you with my words, to exorcise your ghost to penetrate your soul and rip out your heart to watch you bleed but it seems I become paralyzed, and I try to turn the other way.

The meaning to life is quite simple, each man for his own, trust no one, love nothing, be the first to throw the stone. In the end I learned my lesson, sacrifice anyone but yourself, you knew all along they were liars, set your instinct on the top shelf. No one gives a shit about you, they'll only care for their own, you'll understand this all quite clearly, when all thats left is dust and bone.

Your chains cannot be seen but they are felt a heavy weight that will not let go, though I have railed though I have strained there is no escape and my soul is chafed. Somewhere far away you have locked up in a little box some piece of me that you cut out when I was not watching, do you wear the key around your neck, or have you thrown it away into some ocean deep or buried it beneath the sand of an endless desert. Can I ever reclaim what I have lost, or sever its connection let it die, leaving you only with dust and ash. 32

Spanky McSparkleton has been pouring out her soul in her poetry since the age of 12, but only recently became enamored with the idea of sharing it with others. She is working up to having her poetry and photography intertwined and published in a hardcover book. She currently resides in Waterloo, Ontario. You can reach her at spanxmcsparx@hotmail.com.

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Anybody give a shit?

By Spanky McSparkleton
I killed myself today, just to see who cared, laying in my bed of lies, everyone sat and stared. Not a single tear was shed, beneath their veils they smiled, the bitch has finally met her fate, their eyes stared wide and wild. The hyena smiles sat mocking me, in my eternal slumber, I memorized each hated face, and gave them all a number. They will all suffer, for their knifes stabbed in my back, no one will have a single clue, as sly as a snake I'll strike and attack. This was all but a game to them, a harmless game of chess, after all the lies and torment I can't love them any less. You see I played the game as well, with pins and a voodoo doll, danced you around quite mischievously, smashed your pretty face through the wall.

Every time I try it comes back, you are a thief that moves unseen a bandit in the night but just what do you want? Only perhaps to try and play some semblance of god, do you think I dance upon your string? I will not give you that last satisfaction, for you I refuse to die I will not plunge the dagger in, though I may be haunted, I learn to live with your lurking ghost, that grinning memory that tries to drag me down.

Amberly Mason enjoys exploring our darker natures in her writing, and bringing into light the things most of us try to keep locked away. In addition her spiritual beliefs, ancient mythology and the Romantic Era are her primary influences. She enjoys writing, painting, sketching, and photography. See Amberlys artwork at silverwynd.deviantart.com or contact her at WhimsicalWarrior@aol.com.

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Survive by Robert Trujillo Robert Tres Trujillo of Oakland, CA, says, I paint murals, I draw/ paint smaller things too. Parenthood, ethnic studies, storytelling, food, music, social justice, science fiction, design and publishing are regular thoughts. Contact me for commissioned art, freelance, or collaboration. See Robs art at investigateconversateillustrate.blogspot.com or email him at beatdontstop@gmail.com.

national business and finance major with an emphasis on economics. But I'd hate myself too much. Right now, I'm in a pretty bad mood. And I'm getting tired of typing too. Sorry to end it on a bad note. Maybe that's what we need. The more time passes, the more I realize I'm changing. I'm getting more political. I cannot imagine what it must have been like before all this time passed, to have been alive in the societies before the violent colonization of this world.

Today, I bought American Holocaust by David E. Stannard. It's making me sad, pissed and desperate. Not apathetic. Although, today I briefly let a thoughtmore like a feelingalmost a relief, that I could just live in selfindulgence (more than I already do) but more like everyone else does. I just need to set a goal, and get there. Today was nice. It was a good day. The moon is out. There will be many moons after this.

On my back She gags me Her cock in my mouth Curlicues of spunk Sliding down my throat While she eats me out I love to eat your pussy Boy. redguard 34 51

and especially smoking pot make me cut through the bullshit of everyday life, business as usual, that I may snap and become the crazy fucker you see every once in a while on the bus yelling at people listening to their iPods or texting on their phones (something I do now to waste my life in the meantime), yelling, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING? WE'RE SO STUPID BECAUSE WE'RE SO FUCKED TO SEE THAT THIS IS NOT OUR FAULT AND THAT WE CAN CHANGE THIS FUCKER!" The problems we face are not easy. I can't blame people if they want to kill themselves. But if I want to kill myselfwhich is tempting, let's be honestwhy not take out some fuckwads doing it? Well, because its scary. But we need to get ourselves prepared for the worst, which is probable to happen. Get your mitts on weapons manuals. Cover your ass. Don't type the shit I'm typing in your computer. Or do it. I don't know. Fuck. Just go to the store and pay cash for gun magazines. Join the NRA? Go to gun 50

shows? I was told by Ward Churchill that redneck gunnut hicks love nothing more than to show people how to use guns. So take that as a lesson in itself. Find people you trust. That's the hardest part, I think. We're all scared, but that's the reality; scary reality. I'm in no place to offer advice. None at all. I'm lonely, and unsure what to do. I am afraid that the dirty work that needs to be done is not being done, and we're spending far too much time talking and not acting. I want to start simple. Don't make the leap, but take steps. It starts with a step. Make yourself more probable to do something that needs to be done but that you don't want to do. Do it. Set yourself up. 9/11 changed a lot for me. It cut through a good layer of indoctrination and propaganda, something I assume which could only be done by an event of that scale. So, really, for all of us, it was a spiritual gift, whether we realize it or not. We don't really know how desperate people are because of our enormous privileges. I know full-well I could be an excellent inter-

Testing
By Jaimie Hashey
Life is full of tests and ya
gotta survive 'em! Ya know what I kinda dislike? When I try to talk about my problems and family to a friend and they cut me off with how hard their shit was, not even wanting to listen to me. It's like they think I'm having a pissing contest about whose life was harder. So I sit back and listen and ask about certain things. I mean, I am interested and I do want to know about my friends problems and lives, I just get a bit perturbed that they dont think my problems are worth listening to. If it wasn't for keeping a journal, I'd have to kill somebody. If it wasn't for doing some drawing and writing, I'd be punching somebodys head off each day. I already am a bit violent and do have violent thoughts regularly. The violent outbursts only come out when I'm blacked-out drunk. That happens with a lot of 35 people when they drink though. That's what I grew up aroundviolent, drunk parents. I grew up watching my dad beat up my mother and brother a lot! I'd get it, too, but not as often (I thinkor I blocked it out). My mother would end up in the hospital every other month. Yup, I just found out who my real dad is after 37 years! I don't want to meet him yet. Or will I ever? I think I asked my mother three times when I was a kid if the man that was there beating her was my real dad. She said yes. She lied. I guess I could understand why she did, though. When you're a kid you don't really understand that people get drunk and hump and babies can appear unwanted. I was unwanted by my real dad and my grandma. They both wanted mom to get an abortion. I think mom had me just to spite them. I often wondered why there were no baby pictures

If it wasn't for doing some drawing and writing, I'd be punching somebodys head off each day.
of me. I asked my mother and she said her roommate stole them. Kinda weird, huh? The story goes that one day she got home from a modeling job and I was lying in the middle of the floor crying. Her roommate had taken everything except me. I tried to have fun as a kid with my imagination and my pets. They were my best friends. Humans were mostly mean to me. I didn't realize it then, but growing up dirt poor was a factor, and the fact that my folks were druggies. I always knew about the weed and alcohol, but I didn't know about the coke, speed and meth. That explains all the mean mood swings and violence. It also explains why my mother wouldn't eat for days and why she would disappear for 36

a month or two. Yes, it was a crazy childhood. It was rough surviving it. Did I also mention that we lived out in the boonies up north? The winters were harsh. My dad bought a camp on a pond. It was gonna be built into this big home that I saw the beautifully-drawn plans for. Dad knew how to draw really well. I think that's why I started drawing. Anyway, the house never made it to completion. We lived in a dilapidated shack. It was so hard in the winter. It'd be snowing in the house! It'd get so cold, too! I never talked about my problems with anyoneI just hid it by making up weird shit and acting crazy, trying to have a good time. Meanwhile, that morning my mother chopped a hole in the ice to get water so we could brush our teeth. Yeah, I was teased a bunch in school. After a while I got used to it. In Kindergarten I didn't talk, so I was held back. I remember being teased about not knowing my address or what lunch was. I also remember having this cute guinea pig named Charlie. He was my best

had problems. My mom and dad always told me, as my sisters have, that the best thing that happened to that family was them getting me. I'm not ever sure how to react to that. It makes me want to cry and I fight tears back now. I've only wanted the best for them. I recently found my biological siblings, with the help of primary adoption documents only available to me because I had requested them over a long period of struggle and lots of tears with my mother. "You're mine," she says. Mom, I love you, but I have to figure out who I am. I remember their faces when I told them I found my biological family. Oh god, I'd never seen my dad so sad. I rarely call them still because I'm afraid they think I don't remember them when I think of them ever day and I miss them terribly. I do not want to say, "Mom, Dad, I love you guys and I know I don't have much time left to be with you so yeah talk to you later when I finish working out the rest of my life." I wonder if I shame them because now I'm an

I'm in no place to offer advice. None at all. I'm lonely, and unsure what to do. I am afraid that the dirty work that needs to be done is not being done, and we're spending far too much time talking and not acting.
anarcho-communist atheist closet faggot. For me, right now, I'm not sure on the future. I know there's no god, now. I know they know I know. I know that I've probably put doubts in their hearts about it and it's not a comfortable thought for them. I do not want them to be uncomfortable in their older years, nearing death. I think of the wind again. The future is so scary, now is the future. I'm not sure what to do. Read these books? I'm not in school now. I'm not in any political group. I'm just working and on the Internet. Drinking 49

dragged me out by the arms and legs to the pool and threatened to throw me in. Instead, one pig pushed my face against the concrete with his knee and poured Hershey's chocolate syrup on my face and rubbed it in. It was a power trip thing. I suffered from depression. I was sexually turned on by guys. I thought I was going to hell. I wanted for the longest time to kill myself, and with my dad having guns in the house, there were times where I was pretty close to doing it. I even had plans for clean up. I would put my head on a pillow over a series of pots lined with towels. Fire, and the pillow and towels would soak up the blood. I struggled through school. I was (and still am) horribly, horribly selfconscious of my skin and acne, of the structure of my face, the way I walk, my voice, my intelligence level. I remember a news report on TV of a man who tried to kidnap a girl. His face was covered with black dots, zits. "That's what you'll look like if you don't wash your face," my mom said. I was terrified. I became obsessed 48

with my skin, and I compulsively popped those zits so much that they'd leave scars. I hated my face. I dreamed of someone kidnapping me and taking me away from my life, even as a little kid. I discovered the Internet too young, and sex chat rooms way too young as well. I used to cam with older guys and wish they'd take me away and heal the pain of sexual frustration in puberty. That never happened, but it's related to how I met my boyfriend. I gave up on god because there was never one there for me. There was never one there for me because there never was one at all. I used to sit on swings in elementary school by myself and close my eyes and summon wind. I love the wind. I always have, and always will. Each time I'd close my eyes and call its name, the wind would come to me, roll over my skin and clothes and hair and eyelashes and lids. My boyfriend, who is half-Hawaiian, says this is the Native American in me. Genetic memory. I didn't grow up in a bad family, I don't think. In fact, I'd say I lived in a pretty privileged family. We just

friend and I'd sneak him to school in my hat. Nobody ever noticed. (I just realized that my real dad has the same name as that guinea pig. Hmmmm.) I'll never forget how dad almost killed my brother. Yup, he had him by the throat, holding him up over his head and yelling obscenities at him. My brother's face was turning purple. I had to scream to get him to stop. I usually kept as quiet and hidden as possible from that man, especially when he was in a bad mood. And when I yelled he turned to me with a demon in his eyes. He threw down my bro and said What?! in a tone that demanded, You did not see that! Nothing was ever done about the abusive man. Instead the blame seemed to be put on my brother for being a bad egg. My poor brother, who I remember went to school with a black eye when he was 6. My poor brother, who had been thrown into foster homes and ran away and was put in special schools. I tried to take care of my brother and tell him not to do bad things, but he kept doing them. A 37

lot of times I would try to cover for him and get a beating for doing so. Later I tried to stay away from my brother. I would stay quiet and hidden in my bunkhouse with my guinea pig and we'd dance and listen to music. Id write really long stories and draw pictures. That's how I'd deal. I didn't see much of my brother after that choking incident. The cool neighbors up the street took him in and he seemed to like it there. I withdrew more into my own world. A lot of times my folks would tell me to get out and live somewhere else, but I stayed and tried to please them with my chores and good grades. I didn't start running away until I met a couple of punk rock brothers who squatted in the nearest town. I would stay in their squat for days. Of course, I had a crush on one of them. I finally moved out when I was 17, about to turn 18. I got a job and stayed with a friend for a bit to save money. Her mother helped me out a bunch and was super-nice. It was too hard to work and stay in school, so I dropped out. I was straight edge until

I moved out. Seeing my parents get all fucked up in front of me turned me off of drugs and alcohol. My mom had me try anything she was doing. I had my first cigarette when I was 5, my first beer when I was 4, my first hit of weed when I was 11 and various hard liquors over the kid years. I didn't like it. I also was a virgin until I was almost 19. I was hesitant about sex because my parents would do it right in front of us. My dad walked around naked with a boner quite often. He never molested mewell, there were a couple of scary tickle tortures and a really wet kiss once. Also comments about how good I looked when I was in my developing teen years. I haven't seen or talked to him in 20 years. I don't think I care to ever talk to him. Finding out he's not my real dad is a relief. I decided to just up and move 2,500 miles away! I'm not mentioning places because some shit needs to stay anonymous and it aint a need-to-know thing. Deciding to move far away was the best decision ever! I not only moved to get far from my family, but also because 38

of music. I wanted to go where there were plenty of live shows. And I've seen millions of 'em! When I got here it was rough at first. Can't get a job without a place to live, can't get a place to live without a job. People were quite surprised I did it not knowing anybody here. I had a great friend who helped me. Unfortunately, she had a rough time surviving here. She was allergic to everything, even the sun. So, she hopped her butt onto a plane and went back home. Me, I dug my hands right into the music scene and it was exciting! I grabbed shitty jobs at fast food places until I finally landed at a local sub shop where I stayed for nine years, off and on. Thats where all the musicians and artists worked. I fit right in and made a bunch of friends. So many stories of survival. It's hard to write about, a lot to remember. Some of this has brought back tears as I write. What to write of next? My stripper experiences? New Orleans and squatting? My years of bulimia and being a cutter? Or how my baby-daddy came at me with

Maybe thats what we need

By Federico
I am a male Latino heroin
baby. I was born in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. I now know I had brothers and sisters, and our biological parents stayed together until our mom died from a heroin overdose in 1995. Our dad died from throat or lung cancer in the early 2000s. I was adopted into a racist white suburban family. My adopted father was in the LAPD, and the U.S. Navy before that. My oldest brother was also in the LAPD and participated in a nationally-televised, extremely racist event in the early 1990s. I was too young to understand it then, but I have vague memories of our family living in fear of drive-by shootings or assault. We even had to relocate and have police surveillance due to death threats and harassment my family received. I knew it was bad when my nephew was picked on, because his last name matched 47 my pig brothers. Another older brother was beaten up in school. I never was. It wasn't until I was 18 that the shock of thinking white but not being white came to my consciousness. It happened after a feminist sociology teacher almost physically shook me and said, "Ricky, you're not white." Because of the televising of my pig brother's shaming, and my family standing by him, there was a lot of stress. Family ideals and financial problems, and being in school, going to church, being thrown into all these awful institutions I mean, the list is too long. I had asthma, I was spoiled materially. I wasted a lot of time playing video games. I hated reading. I hated school. I was trained to be racist. I was picked on and treated cruelly by all of my sisters pig husbands. One time, when I was alone at home with them, they grabbed me and

To take the weapon and strike my love Send him guilty to the lord above For he but injured not killed time Times vengeance was not a crime With another he would lie dead In her arms would lay his head I would flee like a murderous fool Unloved, un-pitied just a tool Under my tree he now carves her name It was hers now, as he told her to claim He promised her the beats in his heart And now the charade is replayed from the start

Egyptian activist and poet Walaa Quisay lives in London. She was interviewed in Absent Cause #2. You can reach her at sweet_devil_925@ hotmail.com.

a knife and cut my leg open while I was eight months pregnant? Should I go on about the years of smoking crack? Should I talk about the mean, druggie boyfriends who beat me up sometimes? Should I talk about my slut years? Should I write about how my cousin sexually molested me when I was 5? Should I go on about the time I had sex with a miniature collie? Or about the bad grandpa wanting me to rub his belly and I scared him by grabbing his balls? (Boy, he left me alone after that!) How about when I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and drank a 12pack to make sure I'd die, and didn't? How about the two abortions I had in my early twenties? Yeah, I know, a lot of other people have had it way worse, but I have issues and need to talk about them, too. I do have to say I pulled my life together after giving up the baby for adoption. It really came together with some good friends and meeting my current man who has educated me in the ways of the computer world. We love guinea pigs 39

and we have two! Life is good now. I made it through the tough shit to finally see some good shit happening like my zine and having good friends on the Internet and in real life. I still get in my bouts with alcohol, but stay away from hard drugs. That eliminates a lot of drama and hardship. I didn't talk to any of my family for 12 years. Then my brother found me on Facebook. I was hesitant to call. I was afraid he was still getting in trouble with the law and a mean, violent brother. Finally, I called and boy, was I wrong about him. He's completely turned around! I have been writing my mother about our issues and slowly trying to get back to trusting her. I don't want her moving in with me and drinking and drugging up all my hard-earned money, like she did when I was a kid. I didn't get too mad at her back then. I loved her, well, still do, of course. Alright nowI said I was gonna stop! Haw! Hee! Better go grab me a bowl now! Thanks for reading!

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Sunlight and thunder fulfilling my visions & dreams

By Walaa Quisay
You said you dont recall my name, it seems But once by that desolate tree You said you would always love me Oh the screams in my head they dissolve in quiet tears But it seems that you and I have been betrayed by the years Time ticked recording your oath The sounds have faded now for us both I, once, read the lines with great superstition Predicted our love with great intuition You could not read your fate although It would be violent painful and very slow Death gives man no second chance And you did not even spare me a second glance So tender she was under my tree And you seemed as glad as you could ever be For she like I kneeled before that infamous tune And let it all be gone under the moon Your eyes shaped lovingly in hers For them I once abandoned my dreams and cares The moon had once taken my soul away And damaged my broken heart for play Under the moon now you will gladly pay For she will bathe in your rare blood Which will then shower the earth and mud You will speak words of beg and plea You will remember my last memory I then will lie beside your broken heart Which will trickle little blood in the form of art 40 45

Neatly Daily by Natalie Perkins Natalie says, I am a fancy lady: a bombastic beehive of passion, sass and anxiety. A creative bon vivant who proudly calls Brisbane, Australia, home; I draw, design and advocate for fat acceptance. One of my goals is to figure out how much glitter one would need to ingest in order to produce glittery poop. You might find me a touch irreverent, almost always facetious, and constantly prepared to DIY. Visit her at definatalie.com. Youll be glad ya did!

Hell Vacuum by Fasslayer Fasslayer hails from Chile. He likes macabre art, monsters and underworld themes. See more of his work at fasslayer.deviantart.com.

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The struggle of the Palestinian people is a great survival story of the modern world.
Before my injury I was working on this piece after having visited a most wonderful village in the Jordan Valley. They literally are building the resistance with mud, one of our Earth's most excellently fun substances. They live across from a settlement community which, completely illegally, cuts off their access to water and right to expand. You might look at a fence made partially of a sign to Nablus, crates of various sorts, wires, tarps, and various car parts and see poverty, but I doubt my neighborhood in Maryland has half of their character. Toss Up by Emily Henochowicz

Released by Emily Henochowicz Emily Henochowicz, artist and activist with the International Solidarity Movement for Palestine, lost her left eye after being shot directly in the face with a tear gas canister on May 31, 2010. Emily was wounded by an Israeli soldier during a non-violent demonstration in the occupied West Bank, just hours after the Israeli massacre of nine humanitarian aid workers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. You can see more of Emilys artwork at thirstypixels.blogspot.com.

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