Haunting

I used to have a recurring nightmare that stemmed from three seperate events that somehow became melded in my mind. The events took place years apart from each other, and have been a part of my psyche - and my night time journeys into my subconscious - ever since.

I had The Dream again last night... for the first time in more than 15 years. It stays with me even now - the stench of it surrounds me and I am fighting the urge (for the fiftieth time today) to run into the shower and scrub my skin raw.


Without too much detail, I'll share the events that created The Dream:

I was working the night shift at NAS North Island, and had to stay late on the night in question, though I don't remember why. My route home took me over the Coronado Bay Bridge, and as I began my ascent to the summit I noticed that someone was standing in the outside lane near the center of the bridge. It took a few seconds to register, and when it did, I pulled over next to one of the call boxes on either side of the bridge and used it. Then I walked up.

He was still standing there, very still. He wasn't startled at my approach; he didn't tell me to get away from him or run away or even look in my direction. He just stood, looking out over the water, colorful with reflected light and dark promise.

I stood there silently for a while, not knowing if I should speak or what I could possibly say. Helplessly, I finally asked, "Are you going to jump?"

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "It's cold and windy and I've always been scared of this bridge. I'm not going to stay here very long."

He said, rather comically, "Don't hang around on my account."

I asked, "Please don't jump while I'm here."

He looked at me then, almost quizzically. He shook his head slightly and said, "Okay."

We stood there in silence until I saw the lights, signalling the approach of professionals. And because I didn't know what else to do - and because I couldn't bear to answer any questions - I turned and walked down the inland side of the bridge to my car, got in, and drove away. I didn't look back. And to this day I don't know the outcome... I only know that the morning paper mentioned an emergency call to the bridge and nothing more.

A few years prior, the Search-and Rescue Training Squadron I was assigned to picked up a jumper in the San Diego Bay and transported her to the hospital, where she died on the operating table. We (the night crew) waited for the helo to come in, knowing that it had conducted the mission the crew was trained for and also knowing that a lot of work would need to be done to prepare the bird for the next day's flight schedule. I, in particular, would need to change out the SAR bag assigned and outfit the craft with a new, unused one. We waited on the flightline as the helo taxied in and shut down.

One by one, the crew egressed. The last to exit were the aircrewman, one salty old Chief and one new Airman with only a few flights under his belt. The Airman was sobbing and retching and the old Chief was doing his best to comfort him. I climbed in the cargo door in search of my SAR bag.

The deck of the helo was wet with salt water and blood and littered with bandages, packaging, and bits of flesh and bone. One of her eyes, oddly deflated and trailing ganglia, rested under the troop seat. Horrified, I gathered the pieces of the SAR bag that I could find and quickly sought the relative peace of my little domain in the hangar.

20-year-old I had academic knowledge of suicide, of course. 20-year-old I knew, with the elitist and seperated knowledge of the book-learned, that people jumped off of bridges and other sky-scraping objects in order to end their lives. 20-year-old I had never, however, thought about what a person who did such a thing would look like afterward, nor had 20-year-old I ever known the type of despair that would lead a young mother - not much older than myself - to plan such a cold, lonely, and violent death for herself. 20-year-old I sat in my shop and cried for the unknown woman, knowing that contributing my tears to her pain came too little, too late. And when I contacted the hospital in an attempt to locate the last missing piece of my SAR bag - the rescue collar - I didn't push it when each administrator told me that no one had any idea what happened to it. I didn't want to add it back to my inventory anyway.

Years later, one of our sister squadrons lost an aircraft in deep water, all four of her crew with her. It was several months before the wreckage was able to be recovered. Both pilots and both aircrewman were sailors that I had trained, that I had outfitted to the best of my ability with the finest survival gear available, some of it custom crafted with my own hands. The wreckage and remains were finally pulled from the water and deposited in another hangar on base, where I and a team of others assembled to make sense of it all, to try to piece together what happened.

I sorted bones and tatters of flight gear based on the locations that they were found, and at the end had three neat little piles and one SV-2 gun pocket with a hand-lettered name (done by yours truly). The gun pocket and other assorted tatters of his survival vest was all that was found of one of the young pilots. I was very attentive to my job, as I knew the men and wanted their families to have the peace that is hard-won through the closure of buried (or otherwise honored) remains. Despite the smell of months of salt water decay that suddenly hit air, despite the leftover organic slime coating everything I touched, I was attentive to my task.

Awaiting further investigation, the found flight gear hung in my wet locker, and even dry the stench remained. Theough the remains of my shipmates were long buried, the stench of their deep, cold wait remained. And for months I showered several times per day, trying to get the smell out of my nostrils, off of my skin. The flight gear was finally moved, and later destroyed. The smell remained... but faded, little by little, every day. Until it was gone and I didn't need to wake up in the middle of the night to shower anymore.

Later that year, I started to have The Dream.

It always begins the same, and always ends the same. Only the middle is different.

He stands on the Bridge, and I stand next to him. Sometimes a pale young woman stands with him. Sometimes he jumps, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes I catch his arm, or part of his coat, and we struggle - each time I lose and he falls. Once, he grinned an evil grin and my arm pulled off at the shoulder and went with him. Once, he and the young woman jumped together, and she screamed "NO NO NO" until she didn't scream anymore. Two or three times, he jumped just as emergency vehicles arrived and I was accused of throwing him over. A few times, he took me with him.

Every time, I've awakened to the stench of salty human decay and uncontrollable sobbing.

Several months after it started, The Dream stopped coming just as abruptly as it had started.

Until last night.

Shhhh!

Let us pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and talk about masturbation.

Yes. I'll even say it aloud: "MASTURBATION."

I have to admit, I'm a fan. Masturbation is a fantastic stress reliever, a quiet moment alone with fantasies still not wholly developed, a celebration of self, and the safest sex there is. And, as I told one of my children long ago (who came to me worried because someone had told her that "God hates people who touch themselves"), if God didn't want us to masturbate, She'd have given us Tyrannosaurus Rex arms.

Yet, as a I stole a moment alone this morning, I found myself feeling rather guilty: making sure the house was empty, locking the bedroom door "just in case," making sure I was out of window range. I fear that one day, MSU will "catch me in the act," and will feel hurt because I didn't ask him to "help me out." I worry that my children - though I've been nothing but honest and open about all things sexual when the topic(s) arise - would wonder if I've lost my mind if they discovered me writhing away all alone.

Sometimes I even wonder if I'm somehow "not right," as it isn't strange for me to prefer my own company over that of MSU.

My revelation? After over 30 years of successful and enjoyable masturbation, I have finally reached the point where I am fully, wholly, and intimately okay with it. I don't have to feel guilty for indulging my own whims with my own body on my own time. I don't feel guilty that I choose to keep this activity private, self-love kept within my own soul rather than given to another.

This, of course, doesn't mean that I'll be hanging out in the living room, fiddling away like a madwoman, as the family goes about their business - but it does mean that I can stop feeling guilty for not feeling guilty about loving myself, loving my body, and loving the fact that my sexual pleasure does not depend on the attention of another.

I have given myself permission to love me as intimately as I expect others to. it is a BEAUTIFUL thing.

D-Tac

I've spent the past week in the most physically demanding course I've ever experienced. Boot Camp has nothing on these folks.

I was selected by my employer to become an instructor for our Defense Tactics system, and attended a five -day course for certification. Though it sounds academic, the course really consisted of five full days of tactical defense and counter-offense, primarily hand-to-hand. I'm honored to have been selected - especially given the fact that the majority of the 16 students were at least ten years younger than I - but I have to say that I have never been exposed to such encompassing physical exhaustion in all my close-to-41 years. I look like I went ten rounds with a speeding train, and that's not an exaggeration. Believe me, I am feeling every hour of my age.

My hands look like black and purple balloons. Blood continues to seep under my skin in several locations, the worst being the radial side of my right forearm and the outside portion of my right upper arm, which have significant tissue damage that will take weeks to heal. My knees are swollen beyond recognition and are only slightly less purple than my hands. I have mat burns to the bone on both elbows and deep abrasions on both shoulders. My neck is bruised from repeated choking. The inside quadrants of both breasts are contused and fascinatingly colored. The insides of both thighs are sporting huge point-of-impact bruises from repeated kicks to the A-frame. My nose is swollen and tender (but not broken!!) from a punch which I failed to respond to in time and only partically deflected. The rest of me is peppered with smaller bruises, cuts, and abrasions, giving me an all-over beat-to-shit look that I can't help but pause to inspect every time I find myself in front of a mirror. I am truly a sight to behold.

I thought about trying to incorporate this battered look into a photographic series: the building where the class was held sits in the middle of a Fire Science Academy for our local Fire Department and there are several old buildings that have been used as training grounds for new firefighters. Some of the burned-out former Navy barracks looked exactly how I felt over the week, and I toyed with the idea of using a lunch break to try to capture the parallel on pixels.

Instead, I did what any wily old lady would do and used the time to eat a little bit, hydrate, and power-nap.

I finished the course and am now certified to take my knowledge to the rest of my Department and, hopefully, teach new officers how to save their own lives if attacked. I am feeling a heavy responsibility tempered with a real sense of accomplishment and competence that I was only vaguely familiar with prior to attending the course. I can only hope that I am capable of effecting this same feeling in the ones who come to me for training.

ESWFRH Part Two - End of the Season

So, my daughter's softball team went to the championship and lost in a very close game. My daughter smacked the holy hell out of their pitcher and was responsible for two of the three runs across the plate. She also played at one position (catcher) the entire season, in EVERY game. Despite the complete lack of REAL coaching, the team managed to come together and make some amazing plays and demonstrate some growth. And my baby got at least one hit in every game but two, threw out atttempted base steals at second and third fairly consistently, and prevented at least one run in every game. I'm very proud of what she was able to accomplish with very little coaching (besides what she got at home and from my humble place in the stands) and a lot of inconsistent yelling.

And the Evil Softball Wench from Hell? Well, it started off bad and just got worse as the season progressed. She managed to 1) find a way to make an appeal in every game, 2) piss off every single parent of every single team member and every other coach, 3) take a team to the championship without any real knowledge of the game or skills of her own (not to mention no coaching and all yelling), 4) make a girl cry in every game and almost every practice, and 5) vote only the daughters of Board Members into the All-Star team.

The All-Star coach picked my daughter as the ONLY catcher for the 8 and under All-Star team. Evil Softball Wench from Hell (also the wife of the League President and Board Member in her own "right") vetoed the ENTIRETY of his "pick list," but relented when it came to the children of other Board members. When told by the All-Star coach that he did not see another catcher in the entire division that he wanted, she told him, "I don't care if you have a catcher or not. You'll take her over my dead body."

Don't think for a second that it wasn't tempting, my friends.

Memorandum of Understanding

We, the REASONABLE, LAW-ABIDING, and VESTED CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, agree:

Oh, wait. I guess I should offer some definitions first.

Reasonable: Holding one's self personally accountable for one's decisions. Recognizing that special circumstances often dictate special action. Committed to the concept that "liberty" implies limitations.

Law-Abiding: Upholding the rights of others as sacred as those of self. Refusing to impinge upon the liberty of others for personal gain. Recognizing the spirit of the law as well as the letter and using the tenets therein as guidelines for safe and progressive living.

Vested: Payer of taxes. Owner of property (or lessee who understands that "lease" does not mean "please use my property for your own personal trash bin"). Child's school attendance enforcer. Person whose sole income source is not state-subsidized, or person who accepts state subsidy only in an extreme circumstance and discontinues acceptance as soon as possible.

Citizen: American-born or naturalized person. Speaker of English. Person who has reached the age of majority and is subject to and protected by the Constitution of the United States. Tax-payer.

Now...

We, the REASONABLE, LAW-ABIDING, and VESTED CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, agree:

That a person who is injured in an automobile crash caused by mechanical malfunction of the vehicle which that person unlawfully took from another during a high-speed chase in which said person was attemtping to evade justice for the felony offenses they committed IS NOT entitled to funding from the law enforcement agency in question for expenses related to "pain and suffering."

That a person who commits egregious felony acts IS a criminal and shall be treated as such, up to and including loss of his/her Constitutionally-protected right to privacy.

That the previously mentioned person IS NOT entitled to funding from the law enforcement agency in question because "they treated me like a criminal."

That a person who is injured as a result of their own negligence or failure to incorporate the simple Laws of Physics into their daily routine IS NOT entitled to funding from the privately-owned business or franchise that provided a paid service which peripherally and incidentally contributed to said person's previously existing negligence. Further, that a person who enters the home or business of another with the intent to commit an illegal act or unlawfully impinge upon the rights of the persons therein IS NOT entitled to recompense from said resident or businessperson if injured during the commission of the aforementioned act.

That a person who wishes to become a naturalized Citizen of the United States of America is a person who will commit to learning the National Language and ensuring that their children learn it as well. Said person, who has expressed an interest in citizenship and all it encompasses by choosing to take up residence in the United States of America, IS NOT entitled to Constitutional protection, healthcare at the expense of citizens, state-subsidized income, or minimum wage until citizenship has been bestowed. Said person IS NOT entitled to remain illegally in the United States indefinitely.

That effective parenting is an obligation and a responsibility, not an inconvenience. Said parent IS NOT entitled to indefinite state-subsidized income based on the ability to procreate irresponsibly.

That drug use is a choice as well as a crime. A person who has lost their home, family, and dignity as a result of drug use IS NOT entitled to be surprised, nor are they entitled to state-subsidized income and healthcare based solely on their chosen "addict" status. Further, a person who has chosen to unlawfully impinge upon the rights of others in order to facilitate said person's choice to use controlled substances IS NOT entitled to "second chances," nor is that person entitled to taxpayer-funded programs outside of a custodial institution.

That Citizens of the United States of America are, each and every one, equally subject to and protected by the Constitution.

That this Memorandum of Understanding is an evolving document and will be referenced and updated over time.

(Just venting... but it does occur to me that the pen is mightier than the sword.)