Restorative Justice

I sent this email, to try and give Mr. Maron a brief glimpse of all that is stolen, and the further damage he creates, by re-exploiting young victims of child sexual abuse.  

"Sep 13, 2022, 4:03 PM

Mr. Maron,

This one's going to be long.  And it is going to be me, doing something I have witnessed other broken people like me get to do, but have never been able to experience myself.  If you have read my emails up until now, you will recognize how my writing style includes introductive and interruptive breaks to set up and more completely explain what I am trying to express.  A lifetime of coerced silence, and an inability to communicate verbally with any skill at all, is why my writing comes out the way it does.  You will either click this straight into the trash file, read it and tear it apart in every way possible while deriding it, or read it and perhaps catch a glimpse of a viewpoint I don't believe you have ever seen before.  I do not need to know what you choose to do.  That is not the point.

Some people get to confront those who hurt them in a situation called "Restorative Justice."  There's a lot of ways this has been implemented in various survivor groups and court systems throughout this country.  I have seen this in action once.  For reasons that include my own safety, I will never get to experience this.  I have always had a basic outline in my head of some things I would want to contribute if I was participating in this process, though, and I will put those words here.  

Why would I do this here, to you?  For a number of reasons.  First, I can maybe, just a very tiny little bit, help you catch a glimpse of what gets stolen in this society every time a broken young person has their worth further sexualized during their interactions with adults.  What gets stolen is immeasurable, irreplaceable, and because once stolen it never gets to exist, invisible.  Our society as a whole does not seem to understand what is being stolen at all, and cares even less.  But I like to think that the man walking onto the stage for "End Times Fun," the man who cares for stray/feral cats who show up within his home radius, the man who knew he was becoming a better human while finally experiencing real love, would not reject getting to glimpse some of what is stolen from certain people in society.  Second, I feel that you, as a person who has publicly felt like it is okay to "date" many broken young women/girls and made others laugh while joking about it, might be edified if you can try to actually see some of the hidden truths behind the falsified myths in so many male minds.  And third, I do not have anything to lose.  I am already seen as a slut, my kids are now adults and do not have my last name, and I will feel a bit better if I send this, regardless of what you do with it.   

Little aside here (bet it drives you nuts how I do shit like this in my writing.  Sorry...).  I have a wager with my muse.  I am betting you are never going to read this, and you will eventually let yourself believe that my emails made no sense at all, and you will continue to live your life as you have chosen, with no concern for any damage that happens to certain groups of people.  My muse thinks you might actually read this, and maybe even start to understand a bit, or at least try.  Whoever wins this bet gets to drink a can of cold mango nectar, a sugar-filled delight I never buy, because of the added syrup.  As you may have already deduced, I will have no idea what you have chosen to do.  So, when I finish this and hit send, I am simply going to go purchase a can of this ambrosiac drink, and as I consume it later, I will know one part of my brain won, one part of my brain lost, and my taste buds won't give a shit.

Still with me?  Here we go:

The first time the principal fucked me, he got mad afterward, and sharply asked, "Where's the blood?"  I never had told him all that had happened to me.  I had just answered yes when he asked me if my father had molested me, which was when he first took me under his wing, so to speak.  I was not anywhere near ready back then, to put into actual words what had occurred throughout my childhood.  But I wrote a poem a few hours after he asked that question.  I was remembering a slide on a playground when I was 5, a spiral one, as I wrote this. I wrote it in red pen.  I never shared it with anyone until I was in my 40's.  Here it is:

Slide
by Judy S. Lentz

Drop away beneath me in
breath snatching glee
Is the laughter beating in my ears
from me?
The mirrored slope descending
Sheets of silver floating down
Invisible windfingers lift my hair
the breath of a clown
Whose hand trails behind me, streaking
blood where I slid down

One down, two to go.

When I was around 19, I had started joining a friend in doing some amateur strip dancing.   After she and I got raped by 3 guys, I started to realize that perhaps I had been sent off into the world by my father with a sucky set of work skills.  I wrote this:

 Strip Tease
by
Judy S. Lentz

I would start with my hair
take it off like a wig
throw it into that hole

you once made me dig

Next, it's the feet
that failed to run
rip each one off slowly
smile when I'm done

Now for the skin
it's easy to peel
off layers of pigment
with nerves made to feel

Out seeps old blood
a dark, stagnant flow
from a heart that ceased
doing its job long ago

The muscle and fat
that created my form
comes off in great lumps
odorous, barely warm

Skeletal fingers grab
ahold of dead eyes
rip the orbs from skewed holes
as lungs heave relieved sighs

Unholy lips are torn
from a face
that has longed for the time it
is finally erased

Exposed teeth gnaw at fingers
tear away at each hand
shake them off violently
no one cares where they land

A deformed mass of
doughy gray matter
slips out of the skull
hits the ground with a splatter

Bones tense up, shiver
turn to dust, drop defiled
into dry shattered tear drops
unshed by a child

Okay here I am
daddy what will you do
this last time your child stands
raw before you

Alright only one more.  On my 18th birthday, I got to perform my first adult legal signature when I stood as a witness for my friend's wedding at a justice of the peace.  I remember looking at her and her boyfriend and recalling her telling me about her "first time," which was his first time, too.  I remembered the years of watching them and other couples date in high school.  And for the first time, on that day I turned 18, I thought that if I had never experienced my childhood and teenage, there was probably a guy somewhere out there that I might have done the whole wedding thing with.  I wrote this poem for that unknown guy, on my 18th birthday.  I was thinking of my father a little, but mostly of the adventist principal, as the ones who owed the debt in the poem.  That birthday was just the very tiny beginning of me starting to realize that if the principal had been a woman who cared about me, I might have started experiencing a better life.  Of course, it was only when my kids hit high school that I really understood how important the first adults are who interact with broken teens like I was.  One decent teacher can truly save those kids and change their lives.  One man like the principal, and a life of hell is set in stone.

I may have written this poem for that unknown boy when I was 18, but when I found and reread this poem in my 40's, I realized it was also for me:

High Noon
by 
Judy S. Lentz

There is a man out there
To whom you owe a debt
If he knew all that he had lost
I know what you would get

You stole his high school sweetheart
You took their special dance
That kiss goodnight outside the house
He never had a chance

He never took her driving
They never shared the heat
Of teenage fumbling passion
In a fogged-up car's back seat

The gift of his engagement ring
Never made her smile
He never knew the joy of walking
Her down some church aisle

He never saw their children
Or shared their family
He never got the chance
To grow old and gray with me

Somewhere there is a man to whom
A lifetime's debt you owe
But he won't ever call you out
Because he'll never know

Yeah.  Well.  Okay.

I'm gonna go drive to town for that nectar.  May have to wait awhile to get it past this damn lump in my throat that showed up unexpectedly as I did a quick read-over.

If you made it this far, thanks.

Sigh Lentz"