Sunday, March 05, 2006

Idolatry

My real list of things I have done that were wrong:

I mocked my baby sister. I sang a song that claimed she was "born in Asia."

The night we watched Sybil on TV I was babysitting her. After the show, which didn't seem to scare us that much, I went into the hallway where there was a full-length mirror and imitated all of Sybil's personalities. My sister started screaming, and for a full three minutes, I kept up what I was doing.

Once I slapped her then immediately embraced her.

Once I took her on a bike ride and offered her a cigarette. She was in third grade. She said no and called me a "moker."

It sounds like I didn't love her, but even as a child, I loved her more than I loved any friend.

I ordered the declawing of my beloved cat, Lucy. This was to appease, not a landlord, but a future roommate who moved out to live with her boyfriend as soon as I had moved in.

I have done some really stupid things at the bidding of women. There was that, Lucy's declawing, a virtual nightmare for us, and one I didn't repeat with the other cats, Francis and now Walter. I also went on someone's diet for her in eleventh grade. I lost 20 precious pounds and three years to a mental obsession with dieting. I had an abortion at 22 when the other women -- two lesbians who had cheated me -- said I really ought to do that for them and the cause. One of the causes was that I was to go to graduate school; they believed I was already in danger of not going since I lived with an "oppressor," a man. I didn't live with just any man, however; he was not some man, any man; he was a life partner. He had nothing against my going to graduate school. It's stupid for the women just to pack up and go to graduate school, I think now. Graduate school is like a cruise that lasts four years or six. You work the deck. At the end, you owe a lot of money and there are no jobs. Then people say there had been no point in doing it in the first place, since you're in personal and financial ruin.

My aunt was a rocket scientist. Her name was Frances Alsmiller, and she worked as a physicist on the Apollo Project. I always had thought she was a doctor. We never met due to a 1930s adoption.

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