http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Holy shit. What an epiphany.

I hope that dude rots in his rape-apologism and woman-silencing and narcissism and white savior bullshit.

I use “god.”*

Growing up, we were not allowed to “take the lord’s name in vain.” Exclaiming “god!” was on par with “shit!” or “fuck!”

It’s the third of ten infamous commandments. Dogmatically speaking, it’s disrespectful and profane and you’re gonna burn in good ol’ dude-god-dude-devil hell for it.

For godssake, save “Goddess” for situations of sincerity.

If you need me, I’ll be over here pissing on patriarchal religion’s grave.

* I actually prefer “dangnabbit,” but for aesthetic, not philosophical, reasons.

- To go back and time, and have the coffeepot in the coffee maker when I switched it on, so that it will not back up and overflow sludge all over my “office”
- A daily planner
- 24 more hours in the day
- Some Xanax
- Extra arms
- The end of patriarchy
- Some Prozac
- The end of western civilization
- A place to live, with kitchen, bathroom, and bed
- Steel teeth
- Free lifetime supply of pickles
- To relax
- An eye for an eye
- A tooth for a tooth
- Cigarettes that cure cancer
- New work clothes

##

I don’t remember a specific moment that I decided to take up the anti-porn yoke, and I’ve never looked back. But there are so many memories that demand I confront them for the first time. I don’t think I ever really “believed in” repressed memories. Maybe in theory, maybe for other people, but not me. I’ve known a lot of things about myself: I was raped, I was in porn, these are trivia, plain facts. I remember these facts.

But you know how it goes, I think. All the visceral memories. The smells. I just figured out that the memories I thought I had — an out of body experience, looking down on my body down there on the bed, ants, the window seat — are really just memories of porn. I don’t really remember! A composite sketch. Strangely familiar. Some low-budget scenes. A catchy jingle. A song stuck in your head because it was whispering at the drug store this morning.

Touch that dial.

I don’t remember the past ten years.

Then come the compulsions to fill the sill with all your trinkets of memories. A milky-eyed shard of green glass. A rusty bottle cap. A twisted stick. Mica. Detritus. Make it flash before you.

Lately, I can’t sleep for thirty hours. No, I mean, I can stay asleep forty hours, or four. But I can’t get to sleep for forty hours. Sometimes the montage won’t stop, face blurred but grimacing, grotesque. My eyes too large like flies’. One weapon is to masturbate.

It’s clinical, powdered latex, it’s an ambulance chaser, sirens, defibrillator, ovaries, the laugh track grown garbled with blood. I can hear the ocean in here.

Nine, ten orgasms. Zap. Zap. Will the victim resuscitate?

What day of the week is it? Can you count backward to fourteen? 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, breasts still new, 17, yes is yes, 15, childhood . . .