Hysteria
by Ann Bogle
"Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse?"
—Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
The fathers hit their daughters who grew up to fear women, fear or avoid them, distrust or blame them, wanting to shock or maim them, the hitting fathers masterminds against lesbians.
One father in thirty-seven—or one in three—depending on the reckoner—thought to have fornicated with his teenage daughter. I have learned to ask whether “fornication” is what is meant or whether that's a false rumination, wishful insistence on what is dire.
I once sat in therapy sessions with a kind male psychologist who took notes after our visits. Twenty years later, I reread the notes. Whereas I had told him that I had had my clothes torn from me on numerous occasions by boys—what I now call gang stripping—he wrote that it bothered me that a boy had “fondled” me. My sacred boxes contained this misinformation. I called Dr. Hall and asked him to revise his records, shredded by then.
Brad Errett sucked my nipples until I screamed “suck them.” Keith Lammi kissed me in the raspberry bushes at band camp near Moosehead. We met there daily when he wasn't playing trumpet and I wasn't playing clarinet. Marco Popp and Robert Raithel kissed me in Germany. Marco Popp pinned me to the sofa in the disco after he'd watched Robert Raithel whisper in my ear. Marco's pinning me hadn't upset me so I name them.
What bothered me was the violence of American boys—a Roman conquering by one of them when I was fifteen and he was sixteen—a childhood friend. Son of my father's friend, paddled by my mother's friend—neighbors like the Rubbles and the Flintstones—dead. He died of a heart attack at almost 41, days after 9/11. Someone superstitious might say that he's my husband, I'm his widow. Boys had learned that football is gay.
Mark Jacobson died of a heart attack days before 9/11. Mark Jacobson didn't ransack “the girls,” meaning a girl, but a tree limb knocked him to the ground as he rode bareback through the park trying to tame the wandering Appaloosa.
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Author's Note
Published in _Camroc Press Review_, Barry Basden, Ed., September 5, 2012.
Other stories by Ann Bogle
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Well, you got me with the line: "Keith Lammi kissed me in the raspberry bushes at band camp near Moosehead." Fav.
Strange, forward moving, spare, and oh so interesting
*
Fave - Marvelous writing here, Ann. I agree with Susan's comment of spare. Nothing is wasted. Great piece.
I get the impression that confusion here is deliberate, part of the purpose, part of the dilemma. American violence is unique, but I will probably spend the entire week working over the line, "Boys had learned that football is gay."
Amazing.
A fascinating amalgam, Ann. Mandates several readings. *
Spare, yes. Deliberate confusion, hm, well I'd say verging at times on the cryptic ('batted son'??). This is original, personal, replete with obsession-motifs including that now overworked 3-digited American. But I could mull at length whether 'masterminds' is a noun or verb, so I'll settle on both as being an example of your ambiguity.
And speaking of which, does '..thought to have fornicated ..' mean that (1) many fathers have fantasised having fornicated, or (2), it is thought that many fathers have actually fornicated?
That kind of purposeful imprecision I find indefinably impressive.
"The fathers hit their daughters who grew up to fear women"
what about the daughters who did NOT grown up to fear women? Were they hit?
Matt, if I cut the first two paragraphs, I have 275 words, still too long for the 52/250 group's theme "Corrected Vision." I thought what corrects vision is to discuss in a group the statistics that go in print in various journals and magazines and books and that shape consciousness in a non-discussed way. People keep quiet about hardship as they do about its absence. Hardship becomes assumed in long faces, its absence in happy faces. Women with happy faces hit by their fathers are loving not feminist. I knew to name a generalization would bring in statistics not related to Gertrude Stein. The novella I wrote about girlhood is better than this, though "no one" wants novellas.
Thanks, all, for reading.
Rev. par. 2: from "the false implication" to "a false rumination".
I found this a really interesting meditation which seems to loop around on itself.
'The fathers hit their daughters who grew up to fear women...' interested me, because I'd have expected the obvious take to be 'men' rather than 'women' though I presume that's entirely deliberate? I assumed the question it was presenting was where were the mothers in that?
I often think misogyny stems (at least in part) from fear of women. Maybe the same token that'd lead someone to label some of the things within the piece 'hysteria' or the psychologist to downsize what had happened into 'fondling.' I think people often try to shrink down what's frightening or threatening to them, take away its power. I guess violence would be just one example of that.
Roberta, swift comment. Thanks for that.
Edited two spots: "someone superstitious" and "paddled." 9/27/10 at 2 p.m.
Edited same spot: "paddled" 3/27/11 at 5 a.m.