The Darkest Hour

The darkest hour is not just before the dawn.  It may be a pretty, poetic notion to say so, but anyone who has even a smattering of astronomical knowledge, or is the least bit acquainted with the night, will recognize it as preposterous.  The darkest hour is exactly halfway between sunset and sunrise, on that slice of Earth which is facing directly away from the sun.  It takes half a night to get so deeply into darkness, and another half a night to get back.

Of course, during the first half of the night, the sky is growing steadily darker, and during the second half, it is growing steadily lighter.  It might be more accurate, then, to say that the darkest hour is just before the resurgence of the light.  That is not only correct, but logical, even to the point of being rather too obvious to bother mentioning.  After all, the very definition of darkest requires everything else, in every direction, to be brighter, if only a little.

I can't help but think that's why we celebrate the hiemal solstice, the calendar's own midnight, the darkest hour of the year (and celebrate it we do, nearly all of us, whether we know it or acknowledge it or not).  On the surface, it seems odd for primitive agricultural societies to have celebrated the beginning of winter.  Of course, there was an element of desperation involved; many solstice festivals contained an entreating or propiatory component, to effect the return of the sun with its life-sustaining light and warmth.  The common folk-belief that "like produces like" accounts for the prevalence of candles, bonfires, and other sources of warm illumination in the imagery and festivities of winter celebrations.  What it doesn't account for is the sheer joy of these celebrations, the hope and goodwill and ebullience that distinguish solstitial traditions from Inti Raymi to Yalda.  The months follwing the winter solstice were the hardest time of the year for our ancestors.  Harvest was over, and hunting was difficult; whatever had been stored away would have to last, and if crops had been poor or the winter weather continued longer than expected, starvation was a very real threat.  Even if there was plenty of food stored away, staying warm was always a challenge.  How could anyone find joy in celebrating the beginning of that?

Of course, it wasn't the hardships of the months to come that they were celebrating at all, but the "return" of the sun.  If the sun at his (or her) most remote chose to continue on further into distant realms, forever forsaking the people, they were surely doomed.  The beginning of winter, the cold and cruel season in which every night is a little shorter than the night before, promised the inevitability of spring, and it was this that inspired such festivity.  It's easier to sit tight through the worst, when you know something better is surely on its way.

The darkest hour is just before the resurgence of the light.  As obvious as that may be, isn't it true that we forget that sometimes during the long dark nights of our own souls?  The moment things are at their very worst is the moment they begin to get better.  And sometimes something ugly and ineffective has to be stripped away to make room for what is beautiful and right.

Winter is here.  Spring is inevitable.  Let's keep our eyes open and watch it come.

Let Me Love You While I Can

I wrote this song when I was in high school.  It's typical of the songs I wrote back then - fatalistic, abjectly devoted, and chock-full of words like "frangible."

I don't want to waste this moment
You are tangible and near
I wish time could stop forever
You would linger with me here
You swear you'll always love me
But I cannot ignore
How words can be so volatile
I've been hurt too much before

CHORUS:
So let me love you while I can
For a lifetime or a day
With all the power I possess
Cherish you in every way
Let no good deed go undone
Let no kind word go unsaid
Let me love you while I can
And the future lies ahead

There's so much I want to tell you
So much you have to see
I want to give a gift to you
Of all the best in me
I want to sing a song to you
Of joy without refrain
Wrap wreaths of flowers 'round your head
And bear away your pain

CHORUS

I don't want to wait
Procrastinate
And find to my dismay
We won't have the love tomorrow
That we know we have today
Let's savor every second
Leave nothing for regret
The better things that might have been
The heart cannot forget
So let's leave nothing for regret

CHORUS

I don't want to waste this moment
You are tangible and near
There's a lifetime in this moment
Love is frangible, but here

Let me love you while I can
Let me love you while I can
Let me love you

Hamlet in the Hospital

One of the books I happened to have with me during my first stay in a hospital psychiatric unit was a volume of Shakespearean tragedies, but it would seem that, despite my suicidal depression, I was in more of a dryly comedic frame of mind.  Plagued by insomnia and lack of appetite as side effects of my new medication, my intelligence insulted by the banality of the literal-minded professionals around me who offered a chemical solution to everything, I found myself envying Hamlet, whose purported "madness" was regarded with a certain awed solemnity, and whose suicidal crisis constitutes one of the best-known and most poignant passages in all of literature.  I doubted even the melancholy Dane would be taken seriously in the modern mental-health system.  With the play in hand, I sat down to vent my frustrations in parody.  Nearly every line in this is lifted directly from Shakespeare, with a few obvious tweaks . . . and what isn't Shakespeare was borrowed almost verbatim from conversations I seemed to have on a daily basis in the hospital.

SCENE ONE: Dining room, Elsinore.

(Ophelia, Prince Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Polonius are seated around a circular table, eating breakfast.)

HAMLET (to Gertrude): Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?

GERTRUDE: I would!  The pleasures of life are so much greater than the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

HAMLET (to Ophelia): Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

OPHELIA: I would, my lord!  Of course I would!

POLONIUS (to Claudius): Your noble son is mentally ill.  Mentally ill call I it, for, to define true mental illness, what is't but to be nothing else but mentally ill?  That he is mentally ill, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true.  You would do well to start him on an antidepressant.

SCENE TWO: Courtyard, Elsinore.  Two hours later.

(Hamlet stands alone in the courtyard.  Claudius and Polonius watch him secretly from around a corner.)

HAMLET: To be, or not to be - that is the question.

(Hamlet unsheaths his dagger.  Before he can plunge it into his chest, Gertrude walks into the courtyard and Hamlet quickly restores the dagger to its sheath.)

POLONIUS: He's a danger to himself.  I recommend that you confine him where your wisdom best shall think.

CLAUDIUS: It shall be so.  Mental illness in great ones must not unwatched go. (He exits.)

HAMLET (with a sudden start): A king of shreds and patches - save me and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!  (To the air in front of him)  What would your gracious figure?

GERTRUDE: Alas, he's mentally ill.  To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?  Nor did you nothing hear?

GERTRUDE: Nothing at all.

HAMLET: Why, look you there!  Look how it steals away!  My father, in his habit as he lived!

GERTRUDE: This is the very coinage of your brain.  This bodiless creation psychosis is very cunning in.

CLAUDIUS (re-entering): How does Hamlet?

GERTRUDE: Mentally ill as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier.

CLAUDIUS: His liberty is full of threats to all, to you yourself, to us, to every one, and especially to himself.  If anything should happen, it will be laid to us, whose providence should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt this mentally ill young man.

GERTRUDE: But so much was our love we would not understand what was most fit, but, like the owner of a foul disease, to keep it from divulging, let it feed even on the pith of life.

CLAUDIUS: Hamlet, for thine especial safety, which we do tender, we must send thee hence with fiery quickness.  Therefore prepare thyself.  The ambulance is ready, the paramedics tend, and everything is bent for the hospital.

SCENE THREE: A small conference room in the psychiatric ward of the hospital.  Later that day.

(Hamlet and a doctor sit facing each other.  Hamlet's sheath is empty; the dagger was taken away and put in a storage room.)

DOCTOR: Hamlet, do you know why you're here?

HAMLET: I will tell you why.  I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire - why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.  What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!  And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?

DOCTOR: Will you sign yourself into the hospital voluntarily?  (Offers Conditional Voluntary Hospitalization form.)

HAMLET: Gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you.  (He signs it.)

DOCTOR: You'll probably have to stay here for a couple of weeks while you're getting stabilized on the medication.  We're going to put you on Zoloft for depression and Risperdal for psychosis.

HAMLET: Psychosis?  My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music.  Just ask the nurse who took my vital signs earlier.  It is not mental illness that I have uttered.  Bring me to the test, and I the matter will reword, which mental illness would gambol from.

DOCTOR: Okay, here's the test.  Tell me what you see in this inkblot.

HAMLET: Do you see this mark that's almost in shape of a camel?

DOCTOR: Hmmm . . . show me.  Ah!  By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed.  Here's another one.  Tell me what you see.

HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.

DOCTOR: Where?  Indeed, it is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET: Or like a whale.

DOCTOR: Very like a whale.  Now how about this one?

HAMLET: That's a hawk.  No . . . wait . . . I think it's a handsaw.  Or is it a hawk?

DOCTOR (nodding his head several times in a self-satisfied way): Hamlet, you are mentally ill.  Do you wish to know how you have been diagnosed?

HAMLET: I am tame, sir; pronounce.

DOCTOR: Major Depressive Disorder, severe, with psychotic features.

HAMLET: Is't possible?

DOCTOR: Our time is up.  My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal - except my life, except my life, except my life.

DOCTOR: But can you contract for your safety?

HAMLET: I do not set my life at a pin's fee, but conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.  So, unfortunately, yes.

SCENE FOUR: The conference room.  Two weeks later.  (With apologies to Macbeth.)

(Hamlet and a counselor sit facing each other.)

COUNSELOR: Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET: Excellent well.  You are a fishmonger.

COUNSELOR: Not I, my lord.  I'm a counselor.  We met last week.  How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET: O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.

COUNSELOR: So I take it things could be better.

HAMLET: O God, God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!  Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed.  Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.

COUNSELOR: What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET: Between who?

COUNSELOR: I mean, why are you so unhappy?

HAMLET: I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thought to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.  What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?  To die, to sleep - no more - and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. . . .

COUNSELOR: But, Hamlet, you have so much to live for.  You're a student at one of the finest universities in Europe, and you're next in line to the throne of Denmark.  I don't understand why a young man who has so much going for him would want to die.

HAMLET: There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  To me 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

COUNSELOR: I understand your father passed away not quite two months ago, and you're still quite upset about this.  How is it that the clouds still hang on you?  Thou know'st 'tis common.  All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.

COUNSELOR: If it be, why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET: Seems, madam?  Nay, it is.  I know not "seems."

COUNSELOR: Let's not bicker over words.  'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father.  But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness.

HAMLET: He was so excellent a king, so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.  Heaven and earth, must I remember?

COUNSELOR: We can change the subject, if you like.  How have you been responding to the medications?  Have you noticed any difference?

HAMLET: Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!  Zoloft does murder sleep" - the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.

COUNSELOR: He's still hearing voices!

HAMLET: Still it cried "Sleep no more" to all the house; "Zoloft hath murdered sleep, and therefore Hamlet shall sleep no more, Hamlet shall sleep no more."

COUNSELOR: Who was it that thus cried?  You do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things.  Go get some water and I'll have the doctor give you some Risperdal.

HAMLET: My appetite is much decreased, too.  But what is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?  A beast, no more.

COUNSELOR: I have to go now.  Is there anything else you want to say?

HAMLET: The time is out of joint.  O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right!

COUNSELOR: Ah!  A delusion of exaggerated self-importance!

Houdini

It was my dog who taught me
to love being alive on Earth,
to poke my nose with limbic abandon
into the good greenliness of the wild's unstudied
garden, throwing myself to the ground
under the sky and rolling on the earth as if
to get closer, to make contact with the teat
of something warm and long-forgotten:
so staggered by richness as to be helpless
and pained and greedy for the abundance
of abundance, all at once . . .

and it was my dog who taught me
to be content with sustenance and covering,
living as she did on the cheap dry kibble my father bought,
sitting quietly on the floor beside the table when we ate
though usually she had nothing for her pains,
but when she did get a bit - she had a special fondness
for bananas - she licked the very last trace
of it from the giver's fingers, and if you wanted to
anthropomorphize you could pretend it was gratitude.
She never had a bed of her own, but should a pillow
or blanket fall to the floor she would never fail
to enjoy a little luxury while it was there.

And as far as this very day,
when I bruise my senses trying to distinguish
the world God so loved
from the world that we're in but not of
(and friendship with which is enmity with God)
and I look in the mirror and see whole universes waiting in my eyes
I run to the hills
and smell the holy-incense of flowers in heat
or fallen leaves fermenting for a deep winter's
nepenthe: and the sun pierces the stained-glass
leaves of the silent cathedral, and I remember
how to love being alive on Earth.

For it was my dog who taught me
the secret of the heavens that tell the glory
of the one who created them:
to be passionately in love with the perfection that lingers
in all the corrupt and desolate things,
for this is the simplest way to love God,
and the delicate channel that nourishes all the others.

Sleeping Together

No, I don't mean making love.  I mean sleeping together.  Pulling back the covers and lying down and kissing a little and then closing our eyes, side by side.

I hadn't imagined just how much I would enjoy it.  I love waking in the warm cocoon of the blankets and reaching for him in the dark and finding him there.  I love the way he sleeps, the strength I so adore etched upon his brow while his mouth hangs open with a touching vulnerability.  Sometimes I kiss him when he doesn't even know it, on the cheek or the back of the head or against the unresponsive lips, and I breathe in his softness, this piece of him so private that even he has never seen it, maybe never even thought to wonder if if it was there.

Most often we lie spoon-fashion, his belly pressed into my back, his arm around me.  Sometimes he drapes it over me with casually possessive affection; other times, the best times, he grips me tight and draws me in until I feel all wrapped up in his being, his breath and his love and the smell of his skin.  Once he held me that way all morning, mostly awake as I drifted up and down through the tight warm layers of consciousness for over an hour before I rolled over and kissed him and the gentle caress of his hands turned fierce and hungry and demanding.

Sometimes we face each other, settling down to slumber after the final kiss and the last murmured endearment.  He nearly always falls asleep long before I do, so many nights I have watched it happen, sharing his pillow and feeling the warmth of his exhalations across my cheek and nose, and only then do I turn over, rousing him for only a second as I snuggle back against him and close my eyes.

When he has to work, he rises and turns off the alarm and gets ready to go while I swim in a drowsy haze, opening my eyes for his kiss and then rolling over to his side of the bed to snuggle into the pillows still warm and fragrant with the novelty of his absence.  After the sun comes up and the heaviness of the dying night has passed over my eyes, the bed seems terribly shabby and lonely without him.  Sometimes I actually sleep better for the rest of the morning if I move out to the living room couch.

And all through the night, the delicious chilly night that we float through together in our private pocket of warmth, the love within me rises and falls like a heartbeat: sometimes a quiet ebb, a presence in the back of my mind, feeling its way clumsily into my stormy dreams; other times loud, swelling, blossoming in me like a glorious golden flower: I love him, I love him, I love him!  And I press myself closer against him and remind myself that this is one dream I get to hold onto, and I am complete.

Apart

The absence of you
chills the somnolent dark warmth
under my blankets.

Mortification

I'll never forget the date - it was Sunday, September 14, 1997: the day I accidentally handcuffed myself to one of my uncle's kitchen chairs.  Of all the people who were there that day, I'm probably the only one who remembers that it happened at all; I'm not sure the others would even know what I was talking about if I brought it up.  I'm certain I'm the only one who remembers the date.  That part wouldn't surprise any of them; my memory for dates is somewhat legendary in my family.  I don't think any of them know, though, that if everything had gone according to plan, they would be the ones who could never forget.

I was a couple of months shy of my fifteenth birthday, and not the least bit interested in living that long.  It was in January of that year that I'd first felt that extremity of despair rise up in me, the urgent and unequivocal certainty that I wanted to die.  Suicide was an idea I'd tossed around in the privacy of my thoughts since childhood, but that was the first moment I'd honestly craved it and believed I was capable.  It was a moment that passed; I continued on in the same profound misery, but the energy that might have spurred me to action was gone.  The depression eased up a bit around the time spring arrived, but as the new school year started, it came down heavy again.  By then, I'd put a lot of thought into the best solution I knew.  I had a plan.

In choosing a method, there were two criteria that mattered.  First of all, it had to look like an accident.  I wasn't a spiteful teenager out to punish my family and my indifferent schoolmates for letting me down.  My death, by my reckoning, was a settling of accounts, not of old scores.  I knew it would be a painful thing in any case for those who had loved me - but substantially more so if they knew I was the orchestrator of my own demise.  My mother's grief would be terrible enough, losing her firstborn, her only daughter.  I could not compound that agony with unnecessary guilt.

Second of all - and I'm ashamed to say that if push had ever come to shove, this consideration would surely have taken priority over the other - my suicide must be painless.  It was terror that had kept me alive so long: terror of the process of dying, and of what I might find on the other side.  (I wasn't particularly interested in the afterlife at that point - in fact, I earnestly hoped there wouldn't be one - but it was hard not to think about it when I realized it was something I might be confronted with presently.)  I thought I could overcome these fears, but I knew I didn't have the willpower to set in motion events that would result in my confronting the unknown in solitary convulsions of physical agony.  I'd never be able to drag a razor across my wrist, or tighten a noose around my neck.

I decided to go with sleeping pills.  I seemed to recall my mother offering me one out of a big jar at some point.  I didn't know where she kept the jar, but it had to be in the bathroom or kitchen, like all the other medicines.  I'd find it, and I'd swallow pills until the jar was empty.  I knew I could force myself to do that, and then I'd get rid of the jar.  We'd been living in our current house no longer than two months, and I was the only one in my family who suffered from insomnia with any frequency; it would probably be a long time before anyone went looking for the pills, and then they would most likely assume the jar had been misplaced in the move.  Afterwards, when the fear of death really hit me, it would be too late, and on some level I knew I would find that comforting.  It wouldn't be too bad, anyways, because the warm languor of sleep would come over me before I could work myself up into too much of a panic.  I would know, as I closed my eyes and let it take me, that I was descending this time into a silent abyss from which I would never return, but by then, I would be too tired, too seduced by that sweet promise of oblivion, to care.

Before I took the pills, I would change into my swimsuit.  It was late summer, still hot; the backyard pool was still so inviting. . . . When they found me, they would assume I'd foolishly decided to go for a dip alone.  Accidental drowning, the death certificate would say.  They would mourn, and then they'd get on with their lives, and all my pain would still be over.

Looking back, I find myself wincing at the sheer naïveté of this plan.  For one thing, although I later searched the cupboards and medicine cabinets  more than once, I never found any sleep aids at all, let alone a big jar of them.  Assuming I had found the pills, however, and assuming there had been enough of them to overdose on (several dozen, at least, and to underestimate what it takes is to risk waking up in the hospital the next day with permanent liver damage), there's a good chance I would have found myself vomiting as my body rejected the noxious invasion.  If I had managed to keep them down, I still would almost certainly have failed in my purpose of protecting my loved ones from the fact of my suicide.  An autopsy is standard procedure in the case of an unwitnessed accidental death - and even if I actually had drowned, slipping into a coma and falling facedown into the water before the poison could finish me off, the truth would surely come out in the tox screen.

It didn't seem like a perfect plan, even at the time.  But it was the only way out I had.

Talking to my parents wasn't an option.  I knew they wouldn't understand.  My father didn't care what I did or how I felt, as long as I stayed out of trouble and got my chores done.  He hardly ever had anything nice to say about me anyway - if I told him how I'd been feeling, he'd probably laugh, or he'd think I was making it up to get sympathy, as he'd accused me of doing before when I burst into tears during one of his lectures about my stupidity and incompetence.  I thought my mother might take me seriously, at least, but I knew she'd tell me to pray about it, and I wasn't ready to tell her - because I hadn't yet admitted to myself - that I no longer believed in her God.  And suppose I did talk to them, and convince them I needed help?  I'd be getting it on their terms.  I imagined my mother and some starched-syrup professional working together to "cure" me of what little I found in my own nature to love: my introversion, my eccentricity, my darkness.  I imagined my father telling the doctors how lazy I was, how disrespectful and rebellious; he'd known me all my life and still didn't have a clue who I was.  By the time they all were through with me, I'd be dead for sure, even if I was still alive.

Perhaps just as importantly, that wasn't the way my story was supposed to go.  I wasn't supposed to be one of those troubled teenagers.  I was a brilliant student.  I was a talented writer - just a couple of months earlier I'd written a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times, and they'd chosen it for publication without knowing it was the work of a fourteen-year-old.  My mother assured me that I had what it took to succeed in competitive debate; she'd insisted I join the high school debate team, even though what I really wanted was to act, and although all I'd done so far was sit in the meetings and watch other students practice their speeches, she was sure I would love it if I only made a little effort.  That was the sort of person I was supposed to be: driven, hardworking, ambitious.  I was supposed to be making friends, maybe even wanting to date, and at the very least I should be packing my days with activities that would look good on a college application.  After all, college was only three years away, and I'd already begun to suspect that that wasn't as much time as once it might have seemed.  I wasn't sure I would really like college.  I loved to learn, but I had a notion that institutions of higher education might not be the ivory-tower havens I dreamed of.  From what I'd heard, most college students were at least as interested in partying as in their studies, and many of them were there because their future earning potential would be higher with a degree, not because they were consumed by a passion for knowledge.  It sounded a lot like high school, actually, but without the structure of a tightly organized schedule of daily classes.  I was supposed to be looking forward to it.  I was supposed to be a success, tackling one challenge after another with verve and aplomb.  How could I bring myself to admit that I felt on the verge of collapse most days, that I didn't know what I wanted anymore, and the future was closing in on me too fast?

It was better, I thought, not to have any future at all.  All I needed was a day alone in the house, when I could carry out my plan undisturbed.  When my mother announced one day in early September that we would be going the next Sunday to visit my uncle, I thought I'd found the perfect opportunity: all I'd have to do was not go.  By some poetic twist of fate, the date would be September 14.  I remembered that date all too well from the previous year.  My father had been yelling at me again, consciously lording his parental authority over me, and he had called me "inferior."  A great tide of something more heady than anger surged up in me then, and I ran out into the yard, utterly uncontrolled, and threw myself down in the grass.  The feeling needed to expend itself in destruction, and I was all that I had; and before I knew what I was doing, I was digging my fingernails savagely into my arm and tearing them through the flesh, as hard as I could bring myself to do.  It was thirty seconds or a minute at most before it passed, abandoning me bewildered in its wake, my arm sore - but also leaving me feeling hollowed and cleansed, chastened.  It seemed somehow fitting that on the anniversary of my first foray into self-injury, I would finish the job.

"I don't really think I want to go," I told my mother casually.  "I have a lot of homework this weekend.  I should probably stay here and work on it."

"You're going," my mother said firmly.  "You can do your homework on Saturday."

"It's going to be so boring," I complained.  "It's not as if any of you are going to want to talk to me anyway."  I saw my uncle and his family a couple of times a year, at most, and I didn't particularly care for any of them.  I was too old to bring a book along to lose myself in while the adults conversed about uninteresting things.  The occasion was certain to be dreadfully dull, and I would secretly have wanted to skip it even if it hadn't posed a scheduling conflict with my suicide.

"You're going," my mother repeated, in a tone that brooked no refusal.

I thought about deliberately dawdling over my homework.  Education was a priority in my family; surely they'd leave me behind if my grades were at stake?  They wouldn't let me leave it undone, and I doubted they would have me take it along to my uncle's.  I could even lie and say I had something big due on Monday, like an essay or report.  No - it was only the second week of school.  I didn't even have that much homework yet, let alone the sort of project I'd need all weekend to finish.  I could pretend I was sick; I'd never been much of a malingerer, so my mother probably wouldn't suspect I was faking now, especially if I started on Thursday night saying I felt a little under the weather and I thought I would go to bed early . . . but no, if I'd stayed behind sick, there was no way they'd believe I'd spontaneously decided to go for a swim.

I won't pretend there wasn't a streak of relief in me that Sunday morning when my mother packed us off to church as usual, and then on to my uncle's place.  Unless I had that heavy energy searing through me, I wasn't sure after all that I had the courage to go through with something so . . . immense.  I didn't know whether it terrified me more that I might do it if I had the chance, or that I might not.  I didn't really want to live, and yet . . . How cruel it was that I'd had to be born at all.  I'd never had a chance not to be faced with this dilemma: to suffer or to die . . . to be or not to be, except that I already was.  In a way, the day's outing seemed like a nasty circling microcosm of my own life: dragged away from plans I didn't really want to make, to go somewhere I didn't really want to be.  Conveyed, carried forward, swept on ahead, life pounding relentlessly on to the next thing before anything previous had been resolved.

We went out that afternoon to explore some cute little gift boutiques in my uncle's town.  The adults pretty much ignored me, which suited me fine.  I browsed a little and found a small framed wall hanging depicting an antique-style world map, the kind with "TYPVS ORBIS TERRARVM" across the top and sea monsters frolicking in the ocean beside an illustration of the Four Winds.  It wasn't expensive at all, and I decided to buy it.  I wondered if it was foolish, spending my money on something I wasn't planning to be alive long enough to enjoy - but then, I wouldn't need money either when I was dead, would I?  Still, it seemed like a betrayal of my intentions to make any kind of investment in the future, even so small an investment as the ownership of a beautiful and fascinating object.

We went back to my uncle's house after that, and it was about as dull as I had expected.  I don't remember anything else in particular until that evening when we happened to go into the kitchen.  I don't even remember why we were there - surely the living room would have been more comfortable?  What I do remember is that there was a pair of handcuffs on the back of one of the chairs.  It was a wooden kitchen chair with a slatted back, and one of the cuffs was closed around the top between the slats; the other cuff hung down loose and open.  When I pointed them out, my uncle explained how they'd come to be there; I think they'd been part of a costume, and someone had put them on the chair for a joke.  I stood behind the chair and fiddled with the cuffs while the conversation went on around me.  It wasn't hard at all to sink into my own private, brooding sphere, a bubble of dark thought.  I slipped my right wrist into the open cuff, just testing the feel of it.  I wasn't supposed to be here at all, I was supposed to be home, I was supposed to be dead -

"We don't have the key to those," my uncle said, and somehow the words penetrated my haze.  I looked up, and saw that he was staring at my arm, where I'd just closed the handcuff around my wrist.  I remembered doing it, remembered the satisfying click, but I couldn't quite process how it had happened.  My actions had been deliberate but without thought.  For a moment reality hovered around me, quivering, as if there were a thin, thin veil between now and thirty seconds ago, and all I had to do to make this go away was step through it.

Then it hit me.  There was no going back.  I was really and truly handcuffed to this chair.  "I thought they were a toy!" I protested, as if I could argue my way out of this.

"Oh, they're real," my uncle said.  "Not police-issue, but they're real."

I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid.  It had never occurred to me that these were real handcuffs, or that there wouldn't be a key.  It would have been bad enough if there had been a key, and I'd had to stand there chained to the chair until someone found it and released me.  But what on earth was I going to do now?  I tugged, but the heel of my hand was simply too wide to fit through the circumference of the cuff.

"We might have to go to the hospital," someone said.  Probably my father or my brother.  "They have tools there that can cut metal."  (Strangely enough, no one ever suggested calling a locksmith.)  I wondered if they'd really be able to cut the metal without cutting my skin.  I imagined climbing clumsily into the backseat of the car while someone pushed the chair in after me, walking into the emergency room while it dragged behind me, and if I'd been much for prayer, I think I would have prayed the floor would open up and swallow me right then and there.  Chair and all.

By now, everyone had gathered around me, focused on my wrist and the cuffs and the chair.  I felt strangely dissociated from my own arm, as if I were a pushy spectator at the scene of an accident, getting in the way of rescue efforts.  "Let's see if we can break the chain," someone said.  I honestly don't remember what happened next; I was too busy cursing my thoughtlessness, and my stupidity, and my existence.  I do remember my relief when whatever they did succeeded, and the chain linking the cuffs broke.  It wasn't a much better situation - I still thought I would die of shame if I had to go to the hospital and explain how I'd come to have a cuff locked around my wrist, but at least I wouldn't be going in with the chair in tow.  I pulled on the cuff again, but I couldn't get it off no matter how I twisted my hand.  The metal dug painfully into my skin and I had to abandon the attempt.

"Soap," someone said.  I think it was my mother this time.  "Maybe we can get it to slide off, and if not . . ."  I wondered if removing the cuff would still be considered a matter of urgency now that I wasn't attached to my uncle's chair.  Maybe I'd have to go to bed tonight with it still on, and then to school tomorrow.  I wondered if I would be able to convince my classmates it was a statement of some kind.  Anyway, we all went over to the sink then, and someone found a bottle of liquid soap and started slathering it over my arm, and someone else tugged at the cuff.  The tightness of the metal biting into my hand was terrible, and I kept jerking and crying out, forcing them to abandon one attempt after another.

I'm not sure how long it was that we struggled there - five minutes perhaps, but that's really only a guess.  It seemed much longer at the time, but was probably really much shorter.  I do remember the moment the cuff slipped tightly over the thickness of my knuckles and I was free.  For a few seconds I was just dazed.  To be in possession of my own unencumbered arm again was so precious as to be strange.  Then a wave of relief that I wouldn't have to go to the hospital at all swept over me, existing alongside, rather than mitigating, the humiliation of the ordeal.

It wasn't quite over yet.  After I washed the soap from my hand and arm, my father picked up the cuff, the closed, locked circle of stainless steel resting on the counter where it had fallen.  I never wanted to see it again.  I never wanted to think about this incident again.  I didn't want to hear anyone mention it ever again, but instead of tossing the horrid thing away, my father rinsed it in the sink and held it out toward me.  "Take it," he urged.  "You can keep it as a souvenir."

"Um, I . . . don't really want -"

"Go on!  Take it!  You can show it off someday when you look back on this and laugh."  For some reason I suspected the only one who would ever look back and laugh about this would be him.  I could imagine him telling his clients the story of his stupid daughter who accidentally handcuffed herself to a chair.  If I happened to be around, he'd probably ask me to go get it and show it to them.  This humiliation was never, ever, ever going to go away.  I didn't have the energy to fight.  I took the cuff from him and slipped it into my pocket, where I could feel its metal heaviness against my leg for the rest of the evening every time I shifted position, as if it were still holding me.

At home, I considered throwing it away, but I could just imagine someone - probably my father - pulling it out of the trash and pressing it back upon me.  Or demanding I produce it so he could have a good laugh with his clients, and then getting angry when I had to admit I didn't have it anymore even though he'd told me to keep it.  Instead, I just shoved it under a pile of laundry in my closet.  Out of sight, out of mind . . . eventually . . . maybe.  I listened to the silence of the house around me, imagined my parents and brother coming home, my mother coming to knock on my door, and only the silence answering. . . . I wondered how long it would have been before anyone thought to look in the pool.

I had been humiliated as only an adolescent - self-conscious, self-absorbed, and unsure - can be, and of course I overestimated just how important the whole thing was.  After that night, no one ever mentioned it again.  "Remember the time Truth handcuffed herself to that chair?" was never a topic of discussion at family gatherings, and my father never asked me to bring out the cuff to show to one of his clients.  There was no reason why I shouldn't have thrown it away, but to do that I'd have to go into the closet and dig it out.  I'd have to see it again.  I'd have to remember that awful day, acknowledge that it had really taken place.  Better just to leave the cuff under the clothes and junk at the bottom of the closet.

Every now and then, over the course of the next three years, I'd be looking in the closet for something, and I'd turn over a shirt I hadn't worn in months and there it would be, still locked shut, staring up at me like a wide silver eye.  I hated it, but something perverse and punitive in me wouldn't let me get rid of it, even when the opportunity presented itself naturally, and I would bury it again, pushing it deeper under the pile of clothes like a shameful secret.

Years later, after I went off to college, my father and brother packed up my bedroom.  I suppose the cuff turned up when they were going through the closet, and got stored away with the rest of my belongings, to which I have had no real access since then, even after I ended up hospitalized with suicidal depression halfway through my first semester and had to come home in what felt like disgrace..  When my family moved into our current residence, my mother found it necessary to "downsize" my stored possessions, but she assured me that all she'd given away was a few boxes of paperback books, which means the cuff might very well be at this moment in a box in our storage shed - and in a few months or years, when I get a chance to go through my old things, I'll see it again for the first time in over a decade, unchanged by the passage of years: still locked shut.

It doesn't have the power to hurt me anymore.  I've suffered worse humiliations since then, over the course of the years I've spent in the mental health system.  My emotionally abusive father no longer has any power over my life.  Through all the aching awfulness I have never been crushed entirely, and I continue to astonish myself with my own resilience.  I wouldn't say I look back and laugh now when I think of that night in my uncle's kitchen, but I have perspective enough merely to shake my head and sigh.

This time, when it turns up, I won't feel compelled to keep it, by my father's command or by my own denial or self-loathing.  I'll finally be able to throw it away.  The funny thing is, I'm not actually sure I will.  It's just an artifact now, a steel-hard memory.  There's something almost pathetic about it, this single useless cuff clenched tightly shut holding on to something that slipped away long, long ago.

Requiem

The moment I knew for sure;
the contorted grimace of your face
as rigor drew back the corners of your mouth:
such memories I can endure.

The biology of decay;
the physics of the crematorium:
I can live with such knowledge.

Theology?  Such questions
as concern the stuff of death
have always been the stuff of life for me.

What writhes in my heart like a tapeworm
is yesterday your being, and today not.
Such a thin film, thin as the glaze
of tears, yet impenetrable as the faraway look
in an unseeing eye. . . .

Chandler

for Him

Splendid overhead shone
the sun, hot
and heavy as a breath.  It was
summer, high
golden summer, days of sweat
and ennui under an orb of fire.

The warmth settled into my shoulders, and the roof of your car.
It warmed the dust in the vacant field
we parked on the edge of, and the stubbly straw
that clung to my legs after I rose from my knees.

Lord, to Whom . . . ?

The words that he had spoken were shocking, even
obscene.  Eat my flesh, he had said, and live
forever!  Before he had even finished, some in the crowd
were already turning to go, the eagerness on their faces
turned to disappointment and horror, and a learned man
whose face had been starting to soften
was standing at a respectable distance from the masses
pursing his lips with contempt
and a kind of glee.

When he came back to his friends it was the same.  Some had
already gone, slipped away without a word; more than a few
were ready with the flimsy excuses he knew so well; two or
three had courage or audacity enough to look him in the face
and say "That was disgusting!" . . . Finally surrounded
by his most precious ones, he lifted his weary eyes to their wary ones
and asked the question that was on all of their minds.
You, too, now?

The twelve men remembered the days when living was simple.
One closed his eyes and sighed, remembering the salty smell
of the sea air, the motion of the boat, the camaraderie of
the crew and the satisfying heaviness of a good catch;
a cup of wine and a bowl of stew, the tenderness of a woman. . . .
He could go back to that.  Everything would be the same.
Like a fish gasping for life on the floor of a boat, thrown back overboard
by a merciful hand.  But a man wasn't a fish, and it wasn't the same at all.
There was nothing the same. . . .

Trembling he rose.  The others nodded open-mouthed as he spoke.
Where - to whom - shall we go?  There is nothing else . . . not
anymore. . . . He spoke with increasing courage
and certainty, for the next breath he drew
told him he was alive.

Anatomy of a Breakdown

You can't stop me?
You can't stop me!
You won't stop me!
You . . . won't . . . stop me?

. . .stop me . . .

Pulchrify

Here's another song I wrote in high school.  The melody is simple, but plaintive and pretty.  I imagine it being sung almost a capella, with only a brief repeated piano part as accompaniment.  If I were ever to get serious about setting down my songs with proper musical notation, this might be a good place to start.

If compliments could pulchrify a face
I'd be almost as beautiful as you believe I am
If wishing well could mollify my raging storms of strife
If words alone could dulcify the bitter taste of life
If love could rectify a life of errors and disgrace
My life would be as wonderful as you believe I am

If blissful dreams could somehow come to life
I'd think you were a fantasy made somehow manifest
If kindliness could ease a pain as piercing as a knife
You'd turn my pangs of agony into a peaceful rest
If compliments could pulchrify a face
I'd be almost as beautiful as you believe I am

If friendly deeds could cleanse the world of harms
You'd walk ahead of me and sweep the stones out of my way
If justice could be borne in on benevolence's arms
Life would be fair in spite of all that people often say
If compliments could pulchrify a face
I'd be almost as beautiful as you believe I am

If caring thoughts could change the world somehow
My world would be a realm of perfect love and endless joy
If all your loving wishes could be realized right now
My life would ring with sweetness that no sorrow could destroy
If compliments could pulchrify a face
I'd be almost as beautiful as you believe I am

If compliments could pulchrify a face
I'd be almost as beautiful as you believe I am
If wishing well could mollify my raging storms of strife
If words alone could dulcify the bitter taste of life
If love could rectify a life of errors and disgrace
My life would be as wonderful as you believe I am
If all your love could pulchrify a life
My life would be as beautiful as you believe I am

On Knowledge

I went through a sonnet phase when I was fifteen.  I would usually write at least one sonnet a day.  Most of them were contrived and pretty mediocre.  This is without a doubt my favorite one.  My senior year of high school, I entered it in a sonnet contest at Borders and it won second place, so it can't be THAT awful (although come to think of it, some of the poems that placed were THAT awful, so who am I to judge?).  This is Truth trying to make believe she's the next Shakespeare.  Enjoy.

May knowledge stand until the end of time
And ne'er diminish'd be by ignorance!
From basic truths to thought's discourse sublime,
Let precious wisdom ring with permanence!
When knowledge dies, soon follows humankind,
For when we lose our past is naught assur'd,
And biting is the hunger of the mind
Which through all generations has endur'd.
Thus knowledge in accumulation brought
Is treasure richer than the whole world's gold,
And sooner I'd persue these halls of thought
Than precious gems and metals I'd behold.
There is no better place, I must surmise,
Than that most blessed place where knowledge lies!

QED

This high-concept song is typical of the stuff I wrote when I was in high school, and despite (or perhaps because of) its self-conscious cleverness, comparing the inevitability of a breakup to the elegance of a mathematical proof, it remains one of my all-time favorites.  I've translated the entire song into French (with the help of a friend), and often when I sing it now, I replace the final chorus with the French version.

Do you remember when you loved me, oh, so madly
You promised you would never let me go
I still don't understand why you treated me so badly
But that the time has come to bid farewell I know
I whisper sadly
I told you so

CHORUS:
When I predicted love would make us grieve
You said you had to see it to believe
And as you leave
I'll say "Quod erat demonstrandum"

Do you remember that I cried and wondered how we
Could keep alive this love we had let start
And you held me close and promised in that vow we
Took that night that you would never break my heart
But it seems now we
Have fallen apart

CHORUS

I knew that it would happen
I watched it all unfold
The future didn't matter
When I had you now to hold
I wanted to believe you
When you said it would last
When you were with me I forgot
The sorrows of my past
But fate caught up at last
Quod erat demonstrandum

Do you remember how with sorrow did I know what
Had to happen, disregarding love and will
Now the ties of love that once conjoined us, so cut
Leave an emptiness that only time can fill
I let you go but
I love you still

CHORUS

One more embrace
Before you go
One last embrace
I told you so

Quod erat demonstrandum
Quod erat demonstrandum

Don't Wait Up

This is a song I wrote about my emotionally abusive father, who has been dead to me for two years.  (He was never physically abusive, though I sometimes feared he would lash out at me in his anger.)  I really do have nightmares about him, although these last few months they've been fewer and farther between.  I actually did dream once, back when I was in high school, that he was choking me "just for fun" (in front of other people, too, which made it humiliating as well as painful), and belittling me when I didn't see the humor in it.  Fortunately, he never really did anything that extreme, but I was regularly the butt of his mockery when I was growing up, and he couldn't bring himself to understand why I didn't exactly appreciate it.

So why does it have to be this way?
You ask when I'll come home and I say
When you stop showing up in my nightmares
You might find me at your door one day
So don't wait up
Don't leave the light on for me

Playfully you try to choke me
Back off and say it's just a joke, see?
It's so damn funny to provoke me
But the red marks on my neck are sore
And my throat hurts too much to laugh

So why does it have to be this way?
You ask when I'm coming home and I say
If these wounds ever heal without scars
You might find me at your door one day
So don't wait up
Don't leave the light on for me
And get angry when you see the electric bill

It's not my fault but go ahead, blame me
If it makes you feel better, go ahead, maim me
If it's so damn funny then go ahead, shame me
You say you're laughing with me, not at me
Funny thing is, I'm not laughing
So go ahead, strike me, push me, shove me
Tell me it's because you love me

All bulbs burn out eventually
So don't get up now
To turn the light on for me

Pudendum

The thing itself is lovely, but
the woman who has taken unto herself
that timeless synecdoche -
a shameful thing indeed.

Vernal Verdancy

When I was fourteen I wrote this poem to celebrate the coming of spring.  It's an intricate paean elaborating upon the parallels between the vernal equinox and the sunrise.  (It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I grew up to be fascinated by tables of correspondences.)  Reading back over this poem for the first time in a decade, I'm almost surprised how truly awful it isn't.  Actually, though half a lifetime ago I thought it quite an ambitious project, it pretty much does exactly what I wanted it to do!  Enjoy it for what it's worth, along with my best wishes for a season of happiness.

The sun is rising in the east
O'er 'scapes still marked by winter's hand,
For only now has newborn Spring
Come in to warm and wake the land.

O sun, now rise, and fill the skies,
And summon vernal verdancy!
Come, morning sun, for Spring's begun!
Arouse the land from dormancy.

How fast the sun seems now to move!
How much the day in brightness grows!
How eagerly the plants awake,
Released from burdens nights impose!

The birds all sing their songs of Spring,
Their praises of the verdant land.
They all rejoice, each in its voice,
Elated in this season grand.

O sun, bring warmth, bring light, to make
The flowers from their buds explode!
Bring warmth, bring light, that there may be
New wonders bursting from each node.

May ever flower bloom this hour,
This time of new Spring's sun's first light,
When night and day in balance play,
When day is pushing back the night!

The sun has risen now at last,
And vernal verdancy is near.
The night, like winter, now is past.
The day, like newborn Spring, is here!

The Last Acceptable Prejudice

I've had the subject of "the last acceptable prejudice" in mind as a topic to write about for a long time, having heard that expression used several times in the course of a two- or three-month period last year, referring to a different "prejudice" each time.  As part of my research I Googled the phrase, and quickly discovered a whole website dedicated to the concept of "last acceptable prejudices."  It seems to be the personal project of one Adam Kotsko, who promises "Up-to-the-minute coverage of who it's okay to make fun of" (although judging from the tone of his commentary, his primary target of mockery is the persecuted, whiny attitude the phrase represents, rather than any of the allegedly mistreated groups).  Kotsko has managed to collect no fewer than fifteen "last acceptable prejudices."  Clearly the human tendency to divide the world into "us" and "them" isn't going away any time soon - and neither is the smug outrage that rises from a sense of being broadly and singularly persecuted.

Some of the prejudices that have made Kotsko's list clearly don't belong there.  If an "acceptable" prejudice can be defined as one that goes unchallenged by a majority of society, including those channels (such as the mainstream news and entertainment media) that speak for the culture as a whole, "anti-Semitism" and "homophobia" clearly don't qualify.  I'm not at all denying that bias against Jews or gays exists, or suggesting that there's anything trivial about such bias when it does manifest itself.  What I find hard to believe is that anyone could consider either one to be a socially acceptable prejudice.  If anything, these are two groups mainstream society - mainstream American society, at any rate, and much of European society as well - bends over backwards at every turn not to offend.  Of course, the condescending "tolerance" so often shown to both groups clearly indicates that we still see them as outsiders to a considerable degree.  It's increasingly hard to find a series on network TV that doesn't have a lovable homosexual or two among the cast of characters, but central characters are almost universally straight: gays may be good to have around, but we're not really expected to be able to relate to one.  The cause of gay rights, in particular, has a long way to go, with the debate still open as to whether marrying the person you love can authentically be considered a civil right.  On the whole, however, really cruel treatment directed at either Jews or gays is swiftly censured in this society.  Not so for several other groups.

Take atheists, for example.  If an American presidential candidate told a gay journalist that he didn't consider homosexuals to be real American citizens, his political career would be over - but that's exactly what George H.W. Bush allegedly did to an atheist news reporter on the campaign trail in 1987.  "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens," Bush said, "nor should they be considered patriots."  The ensuing offended uproar was confined almost exclusively to the atheist community.  Twenty years later, Mitt Romney, defending himself against those who claimed that his Mormonism made him unfit for the highest office in the land, insisted that "the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country."  "Freedom requires religion," he opined.  Anti-atheist bigotry isn't limited to the sphere of politics, either.  The Boy Scouts of America has been repeatedly condemned for refusing to allow known homosexuals as adult volunteers or youth leaders, but there's far less sound and fury about the fact that atheists and agnostics are barred from membership entirely.  (The BSA, as a private organization, has a right to set its own standards for membership and to exclude those who don't meet the requirements, but as far as "acceptable prejudice" goes, there seem to be far more heterosexuals who object when a private organization excludes gays than theists, however casual, who protest a private organization's exclusion of nonbelievers.)  Ceteris paribus, a churchgoing parent is often given preference over an atheist parent in a child custody case, and some schools have refused to support the formation of atheist student groups.  Although a handful of TV shows have featured atheist characters (including the protagonists of two of my favorite dramas, House and Bones), they're often, in the words of an anonymous Wikipedian, stereotyped as "profoundly emotionally screwed-up intellectuals" (in the shows I mentioned, Dr. Gregory House is a curmudgeonly, misanthropic antihero, while Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is an outspoken elitist who disdains anything that smacks of sentimentality or superstition to her rational mind, but the audience loves her anyway because we can tell that her callous posturing protects a tender heart).

Then again, it's hard to find an intellectual on TV who's not "profoundly emotionally screwed-up," in one way or another.  "Bones" Brennan is typical of the way intellectuals are portrayed in the media: snobbish, out of touch with people and their feelings, and completely clueless about modern mass culture, while bursting with knowledge on more esoteric subjects.  Characters such as Dr. Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds and Dr. Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory may be quite likable, but they're presented as objects of admiration, amusement, and/or curiosity rather than truly relatable protagonists.  (Perhaps this is unintentional, but the fact that a number of these characters have been depicted as having the gift of eidetic memory only serves to emphasize how isolated they are in their ivory towers.  I'm not at all interested in the personal lives of celebrities, so it's almost embarrassing how many times I've found myself able to fill in the blanks for a more starstruck acquaintance trying to remember whatshisname, you know, the guy Britney Spears is dating now, simply because I skimmed an issue of People in a friend's bathroom for five minutes.)  Just as often, it seems, "nerds" are depicted as hopeless losers with messy hair and thick, ugly glasses: targets for mockery, pure and simple.  Does anyone stop to ask what message this sends to unusually intelligent children who love to read and study but also yearn for acceptance and respect?  Perhaps more crucially, what message does it send to people of more average intelligence about where their priorities should lie, and how it's appropriate to treat people they don't always quite understand?

How about introversion?  How often have you seen the word used as if it were synonymous with "shyness"?  How often do you see the assumption go unquestioned that introverts are either lonely losers, or antisocial misanthropes?  Motivational speaker Florence Littauer is perhaps best-known for her promotion of a system of personality typing based on the four humours of ancient medicine; in the assessment test she uses, the taker is presented with groups of four personality traits (not connected in any way, except that all four start with the same letter), and asked to choose the one most applicable to him- or herself.  There's a section for strengths, and one for weaknesses.  Guess what section "Introvert" appears in?  (Hint: the other items in its cluster are "Inconsistent," "Intolerant," and "Indifferent.")  "In our extrovertist society," writes Jonathan Rauch, "being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable. . . . Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathetic.  'People person' is a compliment.  Introverts are described with words like 'guarded,' 'loner,' 'reserved,' 'taciturn,' 'self-contained,' 'private' - narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality."  I've had people try to convince me that I'm not really introverted, in the same tone they'd use to contradict me if I'd said I was boring or physically unattractive - as if no one with a positive self-image could possibly identify as an introvert.  (Their evidence?  I'm friendly, caring, and interested in people.  I occasionally make small talk with a neighbor when I'm out for a walk.  I'm not particuarly shy, I can be quite outspoken, I enjoy the spotlight on occasion and I've never been nervous performing in front of a crowd.  None of this changes the fact that I am most refreshed and stimulated by solitary activities or one-on-one interaction with a close friend.)  This prejudice takes a damaging turn in the mental health system, where "isolating" is treated by default as a symptom of emotional disturbance.  I can't tell you how many doctors I've had observe that I'd been spending most of the day holed up in my hospital room instead of out in the dayroom associating with the other patients, and ask me if I thought maybe I needed a medication adjustment - only to hear me respond, "No, the meds are working great!  It's been so long since I had the peace of mind to lose myself in a book for hours!"

Neither anti-atheist bias, nor nerd-bashing, nor loner-labeling has yet made an appearance on Kotsko's site, although all three clearly, to at least some degree, fall into the category of socially acceptable prejudices.  One subject Kotsko does have covered - in fact, it has four entries in its category, more than any other single item on the list - is obesity.  Now, I'll freely admit that I could easily stand to lose about half of my body weight - and I want to.  I'm not going to argue, as some do, that morbid obesity is beautiful.  I'm not campaigning for wider chairs and doors.  I believe fat people should be encouraged to get their weight within a more healthy range.  That said, there's no excuse for some of the hateful invective that's been directed against the overweight.  Is it any wonder, though, considering how fat people are portrayed by the media?  In 2009, BBC News Magazine published an article on the subject of anti-fat bias.  Although the article is framed around the story of an overweight woman who was physically assaulted on a train by a fellow passenger, who berated her for being a "big fat pig" who took up two seats, Marsha Coupe's stunned, battered face doesn't appear until halfway down the page.  The first (and largest) picture included with the article is of a bare, hairy, bulging male torso, with a tailor's tape measure wrapped around the abdomen.  The "face" BBC News Magazine puts on the issue of anti-fat prejudice isn't a face at all.  Do a Google Images search for "obesity" and you'll see dozens of images of flabby butts and massive bellies with no faces attached.  These are images calculated to inspire disgust and contempt, not sympathy or interest - and yet a number of them accompany serious news articles.

If anything, the treatment given the overweight by our storytelling media is even worse.  You'll never see a fat person in a movie or on a scripted television program, particularly a fat woman, unless his/her weight has something to do with the storyline, and/or s/he is an object of mockery.  Even children's books get in on the act.  Writer and bookstore owner Elizabeth Bluemle has written about her disgust with "descriptions of fat used deliberately as shorthand to indicate a character's villainy, isolation, absurdity, and/or repulsiveness,"  which she claims to have seen with increasing frequency over the past two decades.  "Maybe it's just me," she writes, "but I've grown particularly weary of pudgy-fingered villains with small 'piggy' eyes in big moon faces.  And the fat kid who serves as clumsy comic relief, or is automatically assumed to have no romantic prospects.  Etcetera.  We all know the cliches."  I know exactly what she's talking about, and it makes me cringe.  In a day when one in three American youngsters is overweight, it's almost beyond comprehension that writers who claim to take a great interest in the emotional lives of children would continue to take cheap potshots at a considerable plurality of their target market - and yet they do.  It's no wonder that size-acceptance activists have dubbed anti-fat bias the last acceptable prejudice.

Do a search for the phrase "last acceptable prejudice" on Amazon, and you'll pull up two volumes with the phrase as subtitle.  The main titles are The New Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in America.  If you're interested in the subject but aren't willing to shell out fifteen dollars for one of the books, you can get a pretty thorough introduction by scanning the annual Reports on Anti-Catholicism issued by the Catholic League, each one an exhaustive collection of offenses divided up into categories such as Arts, Business, Education, Government, and Media.  Some of the so-called anti-Catholic activity seems rather more directed at conservative social opinions or Christians in general (and indeed, fundamentalist Christians have also laid claim to the "last acceptable prejudice" title), but the Arts and Media categories in particular are full of blatant examples of Catholic-bashing.  I can't help thinking the Catholic League can be a little hypersensitive; sometimes I get the impression they can't tell the difference between gentle ribbing, harsh but well-meaning satire, and brutal mockery, and the idea that sober and respectful criticism of Catholic doctrines and traditions has a legitimate place in a free society often seems to be lost on them.  But there's no denying that Catholicism and its adherents are fair game for derision in America these days in a way that other religions simply aren't - a point driven home by conservative activist Brent Bozell in a column titled "A Year of Anti-Religious Bigotry," in which he recasts some of the incidents described in the 2009 Catholic League report as if they'd been directed at Islam and Muslims.  "None of the foregoing was true," he admits at the end.  "Hollywood would never dare ridicule Islam this way."  He's right; anyone who dared to suggest in public that all Muslims were suicide bombers just looking for the opportunity to detonate would be immediately, harshly, and rightfully denounced as a religious bigot - yet pedophile-priest jokes have become a staple of late-night television talk show host monologues.

Catholic-bashing may result in a lot of hurt feelings, but in the case of transsexuals, hatred and fear can be deadly.  I hesitated to mention "transphobia" here, because there's been so much progress lately in the way transsexuality and transgenderism are treated by the mainstream media.  Several TV shows have featured transsexual characters, and a beautiful transwoman named Isis King appeared on the eleventh season of America's Next Top Model.  Except for conservative or religious news outlets, which regularly describe transsexuals in terms of chromosomal sex rather than gender identity (the most respectable organizations, at least, can usually resist the smug, hateful temptation to refer to a person as "it"), the media have generally adopted the habit of referring to transsexual individuals by their names, pronouns, and other descriptors of choice.  Yet beneath the surface, the transsexual-acceptance movement has a long way to go.  Even reasonably open-minded people often miss the point that transsexuality is about what's between a person's ears, not what's between his/her legs.  (The friend who told me about Isis King hastily pointed out that she wasn't "really" a woman "yet" at the time she appeared on the show because she still had a penis; my response was that the reason she didn't want a penis is that she's a woman.)  Transsexuals often have difficulty finding or keeping a job.  Few insurance plans cover sex reassignment surgery, as it's still widely considered, like cosmetic surgery, to be an "elective" procedure, instead of a form of reconstructive surgery (which many plans do cover).  Perpetrators of violence against transsexuals have used a "trans-panic" defense: the idea that a reasonable person, discovering that someone's (particularly a potential sex partner's) genitals don't match the gender s/he believed that person to be, could be provoked into such a state of shock and anxiety as to use deliberate deadly force - and that this mitigates his/her culpability.

Perhaps most horrifying, and least comprehensible, is the treatment some transsexuals have received at the hands of the medical profession.  When Robert Eads, a transman who still had female reproductive organs, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, over two dozen doctors refused to treat him, fearing that taking him on might harm their reputations.  Even more egregious is the story of Tyra Hunter.  When a firefighter treating her at the scene of a car accident uncovered her genitalia, he backed away from her and joked, "This ain't no bitch."  One of his colleagues mocked, "Look, it's got a cock and balls."  These professional rescuers abandoned her treatment while they stood around laughing at her.  There's no guarantee that either Eads or Hunter would be alive today if they'd received more compassionate and timely care, but the fact is that they're both dead and we'll never know if they would have had a chance.  What we do know for sure is that they both suffered more than they had to, emotionally as well as physically, because those they should have been able to trust as healers betrayed them.  Both these incidents happened in the mid-1990s, but it was only eight years ago that I was shown to my room in a psychiatric hospital and found several members of the staff taunting my new roommate, laughing and insisting, "You're a woman, Rosalyn," while my roommate earnestly protested, "I'm a man, and my name is Ross!"

Of course, in a long-term psych facility, a "woman" who thinks "she" is a man, no matter how earnestly and consistently, could very well pass for just another psychotic.  (Believe me, Ross had other problems.)  But even if we can safely assume that the hospital staff thought his masculine identity was a delusion arising from his mental illness, that raises another question: what were nurses and psych techs - licensed medical professionals - doing making fun of a patient?  Can you imagine a physical therapist mocking an amputee's clumsy walk as he stumbled around getting used to his prosthesis?  How about the career prospects of a hospital janitor who poked fun at the skinny bald kids on the pediatric oncology ward?  Over the course of my years in the mental health system, I have been mocked, been dismissed when raising a serious concern in a sane and respectful manner (including matters of health and safety, and provable inaccuracies in my medical record), had my personal preferences and values inappropriately disregarded (when I was served fish for dinner one evening and I protested that I was supposed to get a vegetarian meal, a nurse snapped "Vegetarians eat fish!" - shouldn't I know what I do and don't eat?), and even been lied to outright.  I find this disheartening, not only in its own right, but because I'd like to think that those who spend their days caring for the mentally ill would be at the front lines in the battle against the stigma that runs rampant in society.

Years before I ever heard anyone talk about "the last acceptable prejudice," I observed on my own that it seemed to be socially condoned to talk about and treat the mentally ill in ways that would be considered unacceptably degrading if they were directed at almost any other group of people.  "Dehumanizing slang still has a place in society," writes Jenny Westberg, "as long as you're talking about mental illness.  And it's not merely tolerated, it's defended.  If a reference to 'the crazies' hurts someone, that person is being overly sensitive.  They can't take a joke.  It's just a word.  They're getting upset over nothing.  They're - well, they're nuts."  Last summer, my mother and I were discussing unhealthy messages in advertising, when my brother walked into the room and heard what I was saying.  "You're mentally insane!" he sneered, before he launched into the reasons he disagreed with my position.  My mother didn't say a word; either it honestly didn't occur to her how an epithet like that would feel to someone with my history, or she was more worried about offending my brother by calling him on it than about reinforcing the insult by letting it slide.  (She's a lesbian, and I'm tempted to wonder how she would have responded if I'd stooped beneath my dignity and told my brother his use of degrading language was "so gay.")  I'm so used to hearing cruel slurs about mental illness and mental patients that I'm almost used to it.  Almost.  Nearly as bad, though much less frequent, are the times a well-meaning friend, whom I have trusted with the facts of my own condition, tries to convince me I'm not mentally ill after all, because I'm intelligent and a good person.  "If I hadn't known when I met you, I never would have guessed," a certain friend has told me more than once.  I know she means it as a compliment, but I can't help feeling like a light-skinned Negro trying to "pass."  The stigma isn't always just verbal, either; the dating service eHarmony refuses to provide matches for those who suffer severe depression, as if a person with a treatable chemical imbalance couldn't possibly make a good life partner.

Perhaps worst of all is the too-often unchallenged stereotype of the mentally ill as dangerous and violent.  This is inaccurate; the mentally ill population is only slightly more prone to acting out violently than the general population, and some mental disorders - including clinical depression, the most common mental illness - are associated with no greater risk of violence.  However, it's still painfully common to hear criminals described as "crazies" or "lunatics" even in cases when they were clearly motivated by some perfectly comprehensible motive such as greed, jealousy, or revenge.  Last year, mental health advocacy groups were outraged by a Burger King commerical that depicts the fast-food chain's cartoonish "King" character running through an office building, breaking windows, starting a fire, and shoving a man violently into a copy machine.  He's pursued by a team of white-coated psychiatrist types, shouting "Stop that king!  He's crazy!"  They finally catch up to him in the break room and tackle him to the floor.  "This king's insane," one of them remarks as they struggle to restrain him; he'd have to be out of touch with reality to offer his hamburgers at such a (debatably) low price while the rest of the world is cutting back.  Burger King has run some controversial, "edgy" ad campaigns before, but somehow I can't imagine even they would have dared to show the King being herded into a special education classroom, under the assumption that anyone who would set his prices so low must be retarded.  Perpetuating the stereotype of the violent mental patient is perfectly acceptable, however - and even some of the journalists who covered the story of the controversy generated by the "crazy King" ad couldn't bring themselves to take it seriously.  Washington Post staff writer Monica Hesse not only gave the official Burger King statement the last word in her article, she joked no fewer than three times in her article about the challenge of choosing language that wouldn't offend the mentally ill.  In the first paragraph, she claims that the ad "can best be described as completely bonk . . . er, nut . . . er, cucko . . . er, in poor taste."  There's more of same in the next paragraph, and then she turns her attentions to actually describing the ad and quoting some of the mental health advocates who were offended by it before concluding, "The real problem with the Burger King ads is that the King is a giant freak of nature with a grotesque plastic head, and that sane . . . er, normal . . . er, average people would look at him and be persuaded not to buy a hamburger but to sleep with a baseball bat next to their beds."  Apparently creepy mascots are a bigger problem than advertisements that stereotype and ridicule an entire group of people, or else we've got a case of socially acceptable prejudi . . . er, bigotr . . . er, journalistic bias on our hands.

Clearly the notion that there's any such thing in our society as a last acceptable prejudice, a single holdout against the all-encompassing wave of tolerance, is almost pathetically laughable.  Acceptable prejudices are a dime a dozen - if you know where to look.  The hardest part is looking there.

Actually, there's something dangerous about the concept of a "last acceptable prejudice" in the first place.  Too often, those who get swept up in this special kind of victimhood forget that there are other prejudices out there doing just as much or more damage, even those that aren't by any stretch of the imagination socially acceptable.  Those who harbor bigoted views about homosexuals or minority ethnic groups know that their opinions go against the grain, but that doesn't necessarily change the way they act.  Plenty of "unacceptable" prejudices are still very much a problem in the real world.  Jesuit priest James Martin, in an excellent article on anti-Catholicism, acknowledges the scope of the problem but admits that "anti-Catholicism is clearly not as virulent or violent as the prejudice directed against blacks, Jews and gays."  Of an archbishop who compared a Catholic-bashing television show with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, Martin states, "This is solipsism at its worst and most dangerous."

You'd think that those who had been victimized by prejudice in any form would hate it enough to take a stand against it in all its forms.  Sadly, this is often not the case.  Hiding behind a notion of singular persecution only serves to isolate marginalized groups of people from each other, as well as from society.  The aforementioned Brent Bozell, who's written any number of columns about the media's repeated assaults on Catholics, Christians in general, and social conservatives, is a writer I can usually count on for logic and common sense, even when I happen to disagree with what he says - but he played right into another socially acceptable prejudice when  he reported on the BBC's "contemporary nativity play" depicting Mary and Joseph as foreign asylum seekers in Liverpool.  "Someone should be seeking asylum, all right," Bozell opined, "to put the BBC in a straitjacket and leave them there."  With that sentence, he managed to alienate me just as surely as he must feel alienated when Jay Leno makes a pedophile-priest joke.  Do we never learn?

That's the trouble with socially acceptable prejudices.  It's not always easy to recognize them for what they are, because they're so deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness that it's easy not to see them as prejudices at all.  As an overweight, depressive, introverted intellectual, I'm confronted on a daily basis with some of the biases I've discussed here.  Coming from a different background, I might have identified an entirely different set of "last acceptable prejudices" worth writing about.  I don't have any strong personal connection to the Catholic church, but discussions of anti-Catholicism have so often labeled it "the last acceptable prejudice" that I can't imagine any discussion of the phrase in question would be complete without it.  But I might never have thought to discuss bias against atheists and transsexuals, if it weren't for the years I spent in high school identifying as an atheist, or the dear friend who came out to me as transgendered a couple of years ago.

It makes me wonder: what have I neglected to include here?  Not for want of space, or because it was too esoteric or too similar to something else I'd already mentioned - but simply because it never occurred to me?  Whom have I been hurting unknowingly with my own thoughtless words?  What cruelties have I never opened my mind and heart enough to notice?

What is my last acceptable prejudice?

Needful

Need you?  No.  Without you I
would carry on living, certainly.  The only thing in nature
stubborner than death is life itself.
I think of the bacteria
that boil colorfully in hot springs, the eyeless fish
that swim in black water at the bottom of
a cave, or the fungus that grows tightly
on the inside of a rock.

The structure of my days, without you in them,
would hardly change at all.  I'd plug along
with a fortitude that I'm sure would make you proud,
and it would be like knowing
that never again would I breathe the scent of moss and pine
on the side of the forested mountain, or walk into
the ocean to be carried by a surge
of swelling sea -

                            or that there would be no heaven
when I die.  From moment to moment there would be
nothing in the world different, nothing different at all.

Driftin'

Over a decade ago, when I was in high school, I started writing songs.  I don't play an instrument or write musical notation, but I enjoy composing lyrics, and often the tunes just come to me.  I've made up silly little ditties since childhood (a heartfelt ballad I loved to sing in the bathtub when I was about eight, on the subject of "Green beans, stretched across the highway for miles and miles," seems to have earned a permanent place in our family lore), but I believe this was my first serious attempt at songwriting.  I've written several dozen more songs since then, but "Driftin'" remains a favorite.

Technically, the song doesn't begin with the first verse.  It's meant to open with a repeated "Na-na-na," sung to the tune of the chorus.  I wasn't about to type it all out, but in the interest of completeness I thought I should mention it.  Oh, and there's meant to be a second voice joining the singer for both the opening "Na-na-nas" and the final chorus.

It takes some sorrow now and then
To show how love can grow again
Without a few unhappy scenes
We could not know what true joy means
So stand up tall when things go wrong
For struggling will make us strong
Will make us strong

CHORUS:
And I know we're driftin' apart
But you have a place here in my heart
Too much we've shared, too much we've cared
To let this fall apart
So can we make a new start
No matter how far we're apart

I am always gonna find my way right back to you
And you will find you're driftin' back to me

We must forgive and be forgiven
If we desire joy in livin'
The seed of love that we two hold
Can linger through the winter's cold
And when the warmer breezes blow
That little seed will grow and grow
Will grow and grow

CHORUS

You are always gonna find your way right back to me
And I will find I'm driftin' back to you

Well, it won't always be easy
But we can make it through
There are some depths in me
That I can only share with you
Well, I know you need your space sometimes
And yeah, I need some too
But this is not the end, you see
Because I know that you love me
And I love you

CHORUS

I am always gonna find my way right back to you
Yes, we shall find we're driftin' back to us

Beyond Life and Choice: A Call for Clarity

"Sometimes it is not what you say that matters but what you don't say," political consultant Frank Luntz wrote in the introduction to a list called "The 14 Words Never to Use."  Luntz specializes in emotional reactions and how they apply to political decision-making, and in particular, how the average person responds to the use of words.  Sometimes his polls discover markedly different percentages of the sample group supporting a particular course of action, based on the terminology used.  Far more people oppose a "death" tax than oppose an "estate" or "inheritance" tax.  "If you want to kill the estate tax," he advises his Republican readers, "call it a death tax."  The man on the street doesn't quite understand what "corporate transparency" even means, but everyone believes in "corporate accountability."  And the phrase "drilling for oil" conjures up images of "an old-fashioned oilrig that gushes up black goop," but there's something so clean and modern about "exploring for energy."

Perhaps no issue is more fraught with emotion than the abortion debate, and perhaps there is no argument in which both sides have engaged in quite so much verbal and ideological "framing" of this sort.  Both sides have been guilty of emotional appeals, selective use of evidence, red-herring arguments, and ad hominem attacks.  And each side seems to have its own language to describe what happens during an abortion, who and what is being acted upon, and even why it matters.  Sociolinguists have discovered that people feel more positively about an issue, whatever that may be, when it is framed in positive terms, so perhaps it's not surprising that both those who favor legal abortion on demand and those who oppose it most often prefer to refer to themselves as "pro-" something: "pro-choice" on one hand, and "pro-life" on the other.

I refuse to use either term.  I despise euphemism on principle; I believe in calling a thing by its name.  It's the words we're afraid to speak that have power over us.  Moreover, abortion is an issue that emcompasses both life and choice.  What's in dispute is the moral import of that life, and the moral significance of that choice.  To reduce the abortion question to a matter of either life or choice is an insult not only to well-meaning people on the opposite side of the issue, but to those who have been personally affected by it and didn't have the luxury of obviating the nuances with a neat turn of phrase.

I'm anti-abortion, but you won't hear me refer to myself as pro-life.  I believe that term is only correctly used by those who embrace a consistent life ethic, which, as I favor capital punishment in very select cases and euthanasia for those who thoughtfully request it, I cannot say I do.  In fact, there are many who lump opposition to euthanasia with opposition to abortion under the "pro-life" label, but relatively few of them take their belief in "life" so far as to oppose capital punishment, the slaughter of animals, or war, as a consistent life ethic would demand.  I've always considered it dangerous to lump issues together haphazardly in this manner (considering the number of Christians I've heard who always mention "abortion and homosexuality" in the same breath when discussing social evils, I'm not surprised how many gays and lesbians favor legalized abortion on principle simply because to oppose it seems somehow like being in bed with the enemy), and to slap a label on your platform that doesn't quite represent what it stands for is plainly dishonest.

I also despise the easy reversal employed by some self-identified pro-lifers (yes, I'm accusing people who share my viewpoint, on this issue at least, of low tactics!), dubbing the opposition "anti-life" or even "pro-death."  This is a gross reduction that aims to shut down thought by portraying a group of principled individuals, however misguided their principles might be, as cartoon villains, rejoicing in evil for its own sake.  I have a number of dear friends who identify as "pro-choice," and not one of them thinks of abortion as an innately good thing (though I know very well that there are people who do, which I have more to say about presently).

Using the term "pro-life," and denouncing the other side as murderous monsters, makes it easy for those of us who oppose abortion to rest smugly on our moral laurels, without taking it upon ourselves to promote and develop alternatives or work to change the societal norms that make abortion sometimes seem like a desirable choice.  How many folks are there who are positively aghast at the notion of teenagers being provided with condoms and taught to use them, who rant and rail against any family structure other than the traditional nuclear family presided over by a married husband and wife, then condemn the young woman who finds it easier to schedule an abortion than to let people she respects find out she's been sexually active?  Use of such weighted language makes it easy to demonize others, while doing nothing to examine our own attitudes.

I choose the term "anti-abortion" to describe my position.  Yes, I'm resigned to that politically off-putting "anti," because I think it's important to speak plainly about what I mean, and "pro-illegalization of medically unnecessary abortion" is just too wordy.  Ironically, even though framing one's position in "pro" terms is supposed to have a more favorable sound, I've never heard anyone object to being called "anti-abortion," even those who preferred to call themselves "pro-life" - but the moment I refer to the other side as "pro-abortion," I find myself in a heated debate over terminology.

"I'm not 'pro-abortion,'" I've been told, over and over again.  "I believe in a woman's right to choose."  I'm sick of hearing "choice" used as a euphemism for "abortion," as if that were the only kind of choice a person were ever faced with.  Whenever I hear someone say s/he believes in "a woman's right to choose," I always want to ask (and whenever possible, I do), "Choose what?"  "To choose" is a transitive verb, and "abortion" is the rarely-spoken object, the elephant in the room.

Self-professed pro-choicers often refer to their opponents as "anti-choice" or even "pro-coercion," and this is every bit as unfair as the use of "anti-life" or "pro-death."  I, for one, believe in choice.  I don't know anyone who doesn't.  I believe you have the right to choose soup or salad or spaghetti or a sandwich for lunch.  I believe you have the right to choose Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, or to shun modern technology altogether.  I believe in school choice and cable choice.  I believe you have the right to choose if, when, and with whom you have sex, and what kind of sex (if any) to have.  If you're with someone of the other gender and both of you are of reproductive capability, you have the right to choose to conceive a new life together, or not.  If you choose not to, you have the right to choose the rhythm method, a barrier method, chemical contraception, permanent sterilization, or abstinence from any activity that could introduce semen into the vagina.  (I don't mean to state that all of these choices are equally wise, practical, desirable, or even necessarily in some cases ethical - just that they're legitimate choices.)  I also believe that some choices necessarily preclude other choices.  I choose not to go to jail, but if I commit a felony, that choice becomes meaningless.  Unwanted pregnancy is, in most cases, the direct and logical consequence of a person's choices.  (Fewer than ten percent of abortions, even according to the most liberal sources, are perfomed as a result of rape, maternal health concerns, or fetal abnormality; the actual number seems to be somewhere around two percent.)  I believe a pregnant woman has choices too.  I believe she has the right to keep her child or give it up for adoption.  I believe she has the right to be as involved in the adoption process as she wants to be, whether that means signing the papers immediately after delivery without ever looking at the baby, or cultivating a relationship with carefully selected adoptive parents who will encourage her to be active in the child's life.  If she chooses to keep her child, I believe she has the right to devote herself single-mindedly to motherhood or to pursue education and/or a career, and I believe she and her child deserve the social support systems in place that will keep them from falling through the cracks.

Abortion is just about the only thing I don't believe she has the moral right to choose!

Those who claim to be "pro-choice" surely don't believe that all choices are legitimate.  No one's speaking up for a thug's right to choose to make a living stealing cars, or a six-year-old's right to choose to have a beer with lunch, or a mother's right to choose to murder her ten-year-old child.  Granted, those are extreme examples - the equivalent of "But surely you don't believe a frail ten-year-old who was gang-raped by her father, uncle, and brother and ended up pregant with anencephalic quadruplets should have to carry that pregnancy to term?"  However, those who favor legal abortion often quite openly advocate restricting some kinds of choice.  For example, some of those who are most vocal about a woman's "right to choose" abortion staunchly oppose a pharmacist's right to choose not to participate in it by fulfilling prescriptions for chemical abortifacients.

"Pro-choice" sounds like a winning term, because in a society in which we are endlessly focused on individual rights, no one wants to be accused of limiting another person's freedoms.  The fact is, no one really believes there should be no limits on human behavior.  (Even the most flamboyantly nihilistic anarchist will take offense if you decide you have a right to steal his stereo or punch him in the nose.)  "A woman's right to choose" is simply a euphemism for "a woman's right to have an abortion."  If it really were all about personal freedom, pro-choicers would be as adamantly determined to make sure that no woman was ever coerced into an abortion as they are to keep abortion legal.  They would have been the first to express outrage when an undercover investigation by an anti-abortion group caught Planned Parenthood employees on camera offering advice to a man posing as a sex trafficker looking for confidential treatment, including abortions, for underage girls in his "care."  Instead, those who made the video were widely condemned for employing deceptive methods.

"But I don't believe women should be encouraged to get abortions, or anything like that," I'm told.  "So you can't say I'm 'pro-abortion.'  I just think they should be able to make the decision themselves."  To those who make this argument, I can only point out that to be in favor of something doesn't mean you believe it should be universal or compulsory, or even that it's right in every circumstance.  For example, I am pro-gay marriage.  That doesn't mean I believe that all gays should be encouraged to get married, or that any behavior is acceptable if it advances the gay-marriage cause, or that officiants should face legal repercussions if they refuse to solemnize same-sex weddings.  As a woman who was in an abusive relationship with another woman this time last year, and who is now very much in love with a man, I certainly don't believe that homosexual couples have any innate superiority to heterosexual pairs, or that only gays should be allowed to get married!  What I believe is that two people who want to spend the rest of their lives together, who happen to be of the same gender, should be able to get a marriage license - even though a same-sex marriage is not the right choice for me, or for a majority of the population.  If you believe that abortion is a valid option that should be available to those who feel it is right for them, you are pro-abortion, even if you'd never have (or encourage/support) one yourself.

Some who disdain the use of the term "pro-abortion" do so because they're well aware that there are people in this world who do view abortion as a fundamentally positive thing.  Radical feminists have repeatedly claimed that abortion is an empowering experience for women, a statement that is not only a slap in the face of every woman (I've known at least five personally) who has been tormented with guilt and grief in the aftermath of her "choice," but which also seemingly contradicts their professed intent to bring about a world in which abortion is "safe, legal, and rare" - if it's truly empowering, why should it be rare?  I've gotten into debates with trolls on an online anti-abortion forum who tried to persuade me that adoption is dangerous for the adoptee and for society as a whole; their arguments were transparently flawed, and it seems to me that if they really believed in women having choices, they shouldn't actively discourage an option that millions of women, unready for motherhood but uneasy about abortion, have embraced.  I'll never forget the time I brought the wrath of an entire college campus down upon my head (or so it felt at the time) for simply daring to suggest that abortion wasn't something to celebrate.  And then there's Ginette Paris, whose monograph The Sacrament of Abortion (later reissued under the much less offensive title The Psychology of Abortion) declares that abortion is a symbolic sacrifice to the archetypal principle represented by the goddess Artemis, and goes a long way toward making the absurd claims I've seen on some paranoid Christian anti-abortion websites sound almost plausible.

I can see why those whose support for abortion is much more reluctant, who've heard enough horror stories about wire coat hangers to conclude that legal abortion is a tragic social necessity, would want to distance themselves from adoption-bashers and Ginette Paris.  My knee-jerk reaction here - and yes, this is pure tu quoque with a hefty helping of overgeneralization on the side - is to tell "pro-choicers" that I will happily embrace their preferred terminology, so as to set them apart from the abortion-loving lunatic fringe, as soon as they learn to tell the mainstream anti-abortion movement apart from its lunatic fringe.  The overwhelming majority of abortion opponents soundly and unreservedly condemn any acts of violence against abortionists, abortion clinics, or the women who use them, yet regularly see themselves portrayed, in the mainstream media as well as in "pro-choice" propaganda, as murderous fanatics.  In my experience, there are more "pro-choicers" willing to use "celebrate" and "abortion" in the same sentence than there are "pro-lifers" who applaud the murder of a Barnett Slepian or George Tiller.  When you acknowledge that Eric Rudolph doesn't speak for me, I'd like to tell the indignant "pro-choicers," I'll acknowledge that Ginette Paris doeesn't speak for you.  Of course, this is an emotional response on my part, not a logical argument, and if that were all there were to it, I'd grit my teeth and leave the pro-abortion crowd to their euphemisms.

I'm not shy about my anti-abortion views - I believe abortion is a craven, irresponsible act that destroys a human life - which is why I'm sure what I have to say next would come as a shock even to those who know me well: I actually have more respect for some pro-abortion folks than I do for certain wishy-washy moderates I've known.  I'm not talking  about hypocrites, trolls, or Ginette Paris, who needs to be (figuratively! figuratively!) taken out and shot.  I'm talking about the likes of Camille Paglia, who embraces the "pro-abortion" label and scorns the use of "pro-choice" as "cowardly."  Although she supports "unconstrained access to abortion on demand," Paglia has, in her own words, "always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" and "results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue."  Her contention that the individual's "absolute right to control his or her body" justifies making legal "the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" is contemptible, but I can't deny that Paglia has genuinely grappled with the ethical ramifications of what she believes.  Compare that to, say, my mother, who claims to believe that abortion is morally evil, but considers herself "pro-choice" because it's not her business to try to force anyone to agree.  On the surface, that may sound exactly like Paglia's position, but Paglia, an atheist who presumably doesn't conceive of "evil" as a moral absolute in the religious sense, is weighing innocent life against individual liberty, while my Christian mother is weighing innocent life against . . . the possibility of offending somebody.  Hiding behind the concept of "choice," she doesn't have to think too hard about the ramifications of her position.  She can vote for candidates who proudly proclaim their belief in abortion as a right, while distancing herself from the ugly reality of what happens in an abortion clinic.

What I want to say to her, and to everyone else who claims to be "pro-choice," is this: if you think it ought to be legal, why do you distance yourself from it?  Why is abortion too terrible a thing to admit outright you believe should be legal, but not terrible enough that it shouldn't be legal?  Are you ashamed of the word, or are you ashamed of the concept?  Are you afraid that if you were confronted head-on with the reality of that "choice" you believe in, you might not find it so easy to believe in anymore?  Why are so many of you offended when anti-abortion activists distribute pictures of aborted fetuses?  If you believe it should be legal, why can't you bring yourself to look it in the eye?

If you believe abortion should be legal - own it.  Take pride in it.  Get out from under that spineless euphemism of "choice."  Maybe you and I will never find common ground on this issue, let alone come to any sort of agreement.  But however much I may hate what you espouse, at the very least you'll finally have my respect.