"Women Are Crazy"

This is a thing that enrages me to hear. However, I hear it regularly from men who should know better, or be made to turn in their testicles.

My mother claimed to be a feminist. She was not one. She hated men, because she blamed them for her own bad decisions. Calling herself a feminist put a positive spin on irrationally writing off half the human species, shielding her from her own failings.

I don’t accept it when I hear a woman say “Men are evil”, or anything like it. Nor do I accept the flipside:

“Women are crazy.”

I hear this, or a variation of it, from a number of otherwise intelligent testiculated humans. It has always rankled when I hear it, because it has always sounded like bullshit, even when I had little knowledge (or self-confidence) with which to refute it. It’s a sweeping generalization, with no allowance for deviation. I hate those.

The first reason I hate this statement is the plain arrogance of it, as though the speaker has knowledge of an entire gender. It is self-congratulatory, or self-pitying foolishness. It doesn’t allow for the possibility that the speaker is missing something, that their method of observation is flawed. It also disregards the very idea of mathematical odds, which would tend to say that 3+ billion human beings could not all be crazy.

The second reason for my ire is that this thought disregards the possibility that speaker has some part in creating what they observe. Let me be plain in this: If you believe All Women Are Crazy then

A)    you attract only crazy women,

or

B)    you do something to make them crazy. Either way it’s more to do with you than them.

The third and most important of my reasons is this: those who make such statements never describe insanity when they describe female behavior. What they describe are the behaviors of people who’ve been manipulated and fucked with for too long and now doubt their own value, instincts and reasoning; they describe the desperation of people who have such little self-worth they will offer to do things that they really don’t want to, but feel they must in order to keep a someone near them.

Once in a while the male who makes such utterances is under the delusion that failure to give him all that he wants is insanity. This attitude is the one that makes me most nauseous. It’s the childish bullshit of a clinical narcissist, the belief that only he is important and women are tools for his use. In this context, when these males say “insane” they mean “malfunctioning”,  which is their synonym for “disobedient”.

Why does this make me so angry? Quite simply, because I have seen real female insanity. My mother, for as long as I can remember, was prone to periods of utter madness, of becoming someone radically different, of believing things not just untrue, but impossible. More than once I experienced absolute terror at the possibility of what she might do in any given situation, whether it be publicly embarrassing, violent or otherwise dangerous. As a child, many times, I experienced the fear that she had been possessed by a demon, or replaced by an alien, that the life-force motivating her body was no longer the woman who had birthed me.

I know from insane. If you say that “Women Are Crazy” but don’t have any stories like mine, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You attract women who you (wrongly) think are crazy, cause them to act so, or have standards based on a personality disorder. And you sound like an idiot to me. The more vehemently you make this statement to me the less pleasant I will be. Or, the less present; I have no patience for people who believe destructive things that are not true, ignore the evidence against, yet aggressively evangelize said beliefs.

Such males are not men, but boys. They will not grow up until they can see their own part in the dysfunction they complain about. Since they will probably never be man enough to admit their own part in things, they should just turn in their testicles.

I have spoken.

Piece Written and Read at Beat Night 4-17-14 (So You)

So You

It started with a text message from my father,

February 10:

I was just notified that your mother died on Feb 6. She is being cremated today. Do not know further details yet.

I was reeling. It was inevitable; she’s been months from death

For years…

But I had always expected to be called, as in the past,

By a doctor

Or the police

Not with the previous “Your mother has been brought in for…”
fill in breathing trouble

Or coworkers’ concern over her erratic behavior,

But instead with
“We regret to inform you…”

I couldn’t anticipate a text from a man who had not seen her in 25 years.

Ages of keeping from myself a secret hope for a call from her saying “I’m seeing a psychiatrist,” 

evaporated 

like rubbing alcohol.

A carefully constructed defensive belief that this news, 

when it finally came,

Would bring nothing but relief, possibly celebration,

Toppled.

Years of anger

Cultivated as hedgerows

Against the Blitz

Of her moodswings, paranoia, and misandry

Suddenly useless,

But no less entrenched.

And I was left confused by my lack of surprise

Thinking at her

‘This is so you.
Thanks mom.”

Chris Walters

April 17, 2014

Music I've been working on

I've been reworking this tune recently:

DSSI

I originally did the piece 2 years ago. I've been revisiting things, and found this one had potential.

I've also gotten back into my obsessive mixing habit, finding and eliminating mistakes for hours on end.

Part of the obsessive state is an attempt to not thinking/feeling/writing certain things; I'm in complete control of the volume and placement of various instruments, have final say over how much an effect colors the whole.

So I'm telling on myself, and shoving the piece out into the world. I do need to relearn and rerecord (maybe rewrite) the guitars, but right now I need to not escape into, what is essentially, the semantics of the music.

Raised A Hand To Her

Raised A Hand To Her

It was 1978, maybe 79

I was 6.
We lived in Kittery, on Dennett Road,

in a rental house that still stands.

I had just, that day, decided to

Incorporate

The word ‘Fiend’

Into my vocabulary,

Having heard it on some cartoon.

We were in the car,

And my father was detailing

Some dishonesty

Of his employer.

Not fully understanding,

But knowing he felt betrayed,

I broke in with

“Well, I guess that makes

General Dynamics

A fiend.”

My parents laughed,

And agreed with my precociousness.

It was a quiet day, and night.

Until I was woken up by mom

Climbing into my bed, demanding

That I move to the edge to make room.

I slept again.

Her hand smacked my face,

Bouncing my head off my pillow.

From REM to terror in painful confusion.

Spanking wasn’t allowed in our house,

so I had little experience

With violence,

Thus was transfixed with a bonedeep

Thought of “WHY?”,

in conflict with animal fear.

My wide eyes fixed on hers,

And she said something

I didn’t quite understand

That I later thought was:
“That’s what you get for calling

General Dynamics a fiend.”

Fright dominated, and I fled.

I woke dad, and told him that

Something

Was wrong with mom.

He rose in an all too familiar

Anger,

A similar look on his face

As when he would fix our

Fourth-hand car yet again,

Saying to me, as gently as he could

“Stay here.”

Moments later they both 

returned to their room.

Mom was enraged, 

and saying things I didn’t grasp,

But with such venom 

I felt the world freeze, and

My cold body falling away,

Leaving just my eyes and ears.

Dad replied with something about bed,

Maybe about hospital,

And about scaring the boy.

She lunged at him,

Arms outstretched,

And shoved as hard as her

Unexercised muscles allowed.

He barely moved but to grab her shoulders

And return her to her distance.

She tried again, and he slapped her.
It was an action from old movies,

And TV,

The rational man applying an open hand

To a hysterical woman’s face, all noise,

and no follow-through.

She stopped her violence.

She remained standing,

And returned to words,

“How dare you!?”
and more.

Dad reminded her of how many

Years

It had been since there’d been

Physicality

Between them,

How many years since she had

Attacked him.

And she didn’t dispute it,

Just denied he had a right

To touch her.

But, with words,

he eventually

Sent her back

To my room

And let me stay with him.

There followed avoided questions

About what was wrong with mom,

Answered only with vague statements about

Her being sick.

I accepted there were forms of sick

That didn’t look like the flu.

Terror faded to safe comfort,

And faded further to sleep.

Years later I considered that

At that age, his late 30s,

His physical strength was barely less

Than in the USMC.

He had seen combat, been shot at, 

and shot back.

He could have knocked her down. 

He could have hurt her severely.

He did not.

That was not the only time

She was ever sick.

But it was the only time he ever

Raised a hand to her.

Chris Walters

February 25, 2014

Misandrist: The Implications of a Dead Kitten

Misandrist: The Implications of a Dead Kitten

I was 13-14, wearing my Chuck Taylors.

We had a kitten, a tiny little black ball of freak out and fuzz.

And as I was running from my room (we were late for something)

The kitten freaked out and ran to meet my step.

Though I checked my step, there was just enough compression to break vital things, and cause a violent death throe.

Kitten was dead, I was crushed.

But ever after, when self-medicated, my mother would recount the story shrieking “You were stomping around in your big black boots!”

She hated combat boots, or engineer boots, because, in her mind, they were male. They existed because of Y Chromosomes, therefore were signs of stupidity and needless evil.

And, in her mind, all her problems were because of men. Including the death of a kitten.

Knowing, after trial and sickening error, she could not hear or understand truth through her madness and liquor, I stopped trying to tell her she was cruelly false.

Years later she had been forced to dry out, the state of Maine not allowing her to drink and receive their hospitality. She recounted the story again, still insisting on her anti-man version.

This time, though, as she was not chemically altered and could form memories again, I borrowed my father’s Marine Corps voice to briefly drown out every sound in the apartment building to say “I was wearing sneakers, god damn it! No matter how much you want it to be some blatantly male symbol of evil, it was not! Don’t ever tell that story again unless you’re gonna tell the truth!”

And she never told the story again.

Where I could hear.

Chris Walters,

February 10, 2014

Chess

I was 9

When my mother

Taught me

Chess;

Her disguise was still intact then,

The mask of a rational woman,

With a job,

And justified anger;

She’d smoke,

And exhale memories

Of being

The Barmaid Who

Could Beat Anyone,

And tell me to think

Moves ahead;

I tried, but

My sense of the future was seconds,

Tiny increments of feeling

Safe from others’ sickness,

Hers most of all;

It was her game,

And in learning it I thought I could

Follow the eel-twists of her mind,

Predict the explosions and melt-downs,

Learn how she put on the disguise;

But, as a boy,

I couldn’t become good at the game,

And the frustration enraged me;

She tried to throw a game once,

And I told her to stop it,

That I actually had to beat her

Or it wouldn’t feel like victory;

She was happily merciless after that,

Beating me time and again on the board.

When I was 17 her mask became

too heavy

to wear;

No longer playing chess,

She spent her time drinking,

Weeping,

Threatening,

Blaming,

And hating men.

I escaped into girls, and drugs,

Putting on a mask of stability and wisdom

That I, at least, was fooled by,

And left her to her shrieking;

When I was 21

My mask became too heavy

And I dropped it;

Seeing in the mirror

The reflection of terror long

Ignored

I slipped into depression,

A chaos of self-hatred

And disorganized, irrational thoughts;

Some days my only solace

Was that I could end myself if I felt worse;

I started playing chess again,

Fervently using it to force order

Onto my mind,

Teaching myself to think instead of feel;

And I surprised myself by becoming good,

finally understanding the game,

thinking ahead, and planning;

I went to see her,

And challenged her to a game;

There was no disguise left for her then,

No clothes, only bathrobes, and cat-piss stench,

the house a maze of baubles,

1,000s of buttons arranged by color

On every horizontal surface that she termed

“A Map of My Mind”;

She accepted with a meek shrug,

And played ineptly,

Looking at the pieces in a way that said

She remembered remembering 

how they worked together,

But couldn’t make them do now;

And, more resigned with every move,

She finally admitted defeat;

I had won, but it didn’t feel like victory.

Chris Walters

February 20, 2014