Lucky one

I did not want to be the one who spoke up publicly about Marc Maron's harmful behavior. During the last few weeks before this past April 26, I increased the personalization of my writing, in hopes something might finally convince Mr. Maron to face and stop his re-exploitation of girls from my group, those children harmed by sexual exploitation and objectification.  (The latest girl in crisis, and her access to a gun, ended my attempts to reach Mr. Maron himself.)  I am going to post 3 of these last emails.  I am posting these because I really let myself re-feel how deeply it hurts to be silenced, as a child.  Each sexually exploited child is silenced in different ways, but whatever the method, such silencing works.  The next time anyone reading this might be tempted to view a sexualized child as being the one who is responsible for their sexualized behavior, I hope these emails may give that person a better idea of just how malformed the neural pathways in such a child have been shaped, and not because the child ever wanted to think that way.  

Please be warned, the following is harsh, and will be triggering.  

______________

"Cosplay

Mar 17, 2023, 7:10 AM

So, ready to explore another imagined scenario? Why do I hear your voice saying, "Cunt, shut the fuck up, you raging bitch, and leave me alone!"  Close to the truth? Prolly.

So, what I am gettin ready to do, is not technically cosplay. Oh well, sue me for poor choice in subject lines. I am gonna set up a scene, gently lower 5 yr old you into it, and see where it goes.

All following imaginings have zero connection to any single person in your life or family. Please do not think I am inferring anything regarding any of them. This is just me, trying to explain something in a way you might be able to really feel.

Buckle up? Or not. Makes me no nevermind. (Put a pin in this last sentence. It will come up later.)

I have heard you talk of dogs you experienced as a child. I have not heard you discuss any cats you interacted with early in life. So, please take how you feel about your cats now, spread that deck-of-cards-worth of emotionally ranged feelings cats can evoke in their adult coexistors, and pick out the cards representing how children tend to feel about their pets. Throw the other cards off to the side, and lay out the ones you picked, tarot-reading style. Focus on these feelings children experience for their beloved animals. 

Imagine a day when you were around five. Imagine the house where you lived. See the way your bedroom ceiling looked at night, what shadows you saw before drifting off. Imagine going outside, looking down in the grass or dirt, and seeing a toy you once played with, how it looked whenever you found it laying beside a tree trunk or under a rosebush. A cap-gun or a tonka truck, a magnetic gyro wheel, or maybe a wooden beagle on a leash, legs moving independently as you pulled it along. You back there?

Turn around and see Buster, as a kitten, approaching little you. He responds to little you differently. He comes up and rubs his tickly whiskers and cheek fur against your kneecap, as you look around your yard. You reach down and wrap your arms around his belly, picking him up in that way cats only tolerate from human children. His face and concurrently his hind end dangle degradingly, on either side of his hoisted and squeezed arm-encircled belly, bouncing along as little you heads toward the faucet on the side of the house. You set Buster down, he flops it, while you struggle to turn the awkward handle. A trickle comes out of the spout. You curl your hands into a cup, barely noticing the smeared dirt and kid sweat and cat hair in the creases of your palms. The water is cold. Tastes like pennies. You get more, and offer it to Buster. He sniffs it, then goes back to licking his paw. You stand up, forget to turn off the handle, and walk around the house. Buster gets up in time to dash through the open screen door past your legs, as you head inside. You sit on the couch as the sun goes down. You hear Buster crunching cat chow. Gilligan's Island comes on. Things get fuzzy. You must've slept a little, because you realize someone is standing over you and you didn't see her walk through the door and up to you. A woman you know. She comes over when your father is home and your mom isn't. She looks mad. She has brown eyes that turn black when she is mad. You scramble back and up, until you are sitting as close to the arm of the couch as you can get. The woman sits next to you. She never moves her angry eyes away from your face. You are in trouble. What did you do wrong? Think. If you can think of it fast enough, maybe her eyes will go back brown. What did you do? What did you do?  

Your father walks over. You finally make your eyes stop looking at the woman's angry eyes. You see your father is carrying Buster. Your face and stomach go really cold. What did you let Buster do? Your kitten has scared eyes. The woman is talking. You can't stop looking at Buster's eyes. The woman says you told your mom about this woman coming over. Did you? When did you do that? Why did you do that? You shouldn't have done that.

Your father squats down in front of you. Puts Buster in your lap, holding Buster's paws tightly between his whitening fingers of his hands, that have curled up, almost into fists. Buster starts to make yowly noises. You reach out to try and grab him out of the big hands. The woman flashes her hands over yours, forces your hands down onto Buster's fur. His neck. You feel hard lumps and string-type things under his skin. The string things feel like they are getting tighter. Buster tries to lift his head up. He is reaching. He wants away. His eyes are scared. Your chest is burning. You try to pull your hands out from under the woman's hands. You have to hit her. You have to help Buster. Your hands are gone. You still see them. Under the woman's hands, her knuckles going white, around Buster's neck. You see them, your hands. But they must have fell off. You can't feel them. You can't feel them. Why can't you feel them? Move them. Buster. Move your hands. Hit the woman's arms. Help Buster. Help Buster. His eyes are sticking out, are growing bubbles. They are going to pop. Help him. Buster. Make your hands move. Buster. I'm sorry I told my mom. I'm sorry, Buster. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Buster.

______________

Mar 17, 2023, 8:32 AM

If you think that last email must've been hard for me, you are right. I will be unable to eat anything today. My face is wet, from tears I do not remember crying. In trying to place you into that moment, I was taken back to that moment. The worst fucking moment of my whole fucking life. I just forced the vestiges of my 5-yr-old mind that still reside in my brain, to re-experience that fucking moment. All to make a point. Saddest part, I am doing this for a man who does not give one single shit about me now, the child I was when my Buster-look-alike kitten Barney was killed, or any girl who has, in her own set of fucked up experiences, been sexualized and objectified and silenced and turned into a girl who will always be re-exploited, over and over, by men who choose to act like you.  

So, fuck you for not caring, maron. You think that bothers me? You think I give a shit if you care or not? I have lived a lifetime of being re-exploited by men just like you. I don't give a duck fuck what you think about me, motherfucker.

Remember the sentence in the last email, where I asked you to put a pin in it? Well, unpin that sentence and insert it here:

"Buckle up? Or not. Makes me no nevermind. (Put a pin in this last sentence. It will come up later.)"

That quote is a lie. As is this paragraph I just wrote: "So, fuck you for not caring, maron. You think that bothers me? You think I give a shit if you care or not? I have lived a lifetime of being re-exploited by men just like you. I don't give a duck fuck what you think about me, motherfucker."

Those are lies. Every single goddam time I have brushed off and walked away from, the pain I have been caused by every man (and woman, to a lesser degree), who has re-exploited me, I am surrounding myself in a wall. A big thick, solid as fuck, wall. Most of the time, that wall lets me believe I have always known how bad men are, lets me believe it never surprises me to hear about 13 yr olds being rescued from a locked shed in NC after being abducted by a predator who met that girl online at places and posts just like your very tiktok and instagram, or little children like Samantha Runnion, who are abducted and used and thrown away like so much trash. This fucking wall keeps me from having to feel what lies buried inside and under that wall. You know what that shit under there is, maron? It is the pain I feel, because I understand intimately what that 13-yr-old went through, because I wish I could stop her abductor in a manner that would keep children safe from him forever, because the story of "Mantha Ray Runnion," wrecked me when it happened, and the worst thing I felt was something I could not admit, because it would be so misunderstood: I knew Samantha Runnion was actually lucky. She died. She was spared the hell of "trauma bonding" with some old man when she was 13, or 16, or 18, or 22, or even fifty-fucking-three, an old man who acted like he cared, who knew exactly how much she had been hurt, who she told herself she did not trust, but who, in the secret places in her heart, truly wanted to finally be the man who was not just using her like her abductor was. This man KNOWS what she has been through. He was drawn to her because he knew her deepest pain. There is no way this man would ever just use her body, and later make jokes about how her pain has messed her up. It was her pain that drew him to her. He wouldn't do that just to get off. He has to know how badly it would hurt me to find out he was just misusing me. If I do everything right for him, he will not leave me. He will care for me so much, we can both learn about love. He knows my pain. He won't hurt me. We will help each other. He won't use me in jokes. He knows my pain. Only a bad man would hurt me again. He is decent. This man will be the time I do not end up being hurt. This man will make all my abduction/rape disappear. He will be a man that will never hurt me. My pain will finally go away.

In every one of my emails, describing how I watched other broken girls suffering because of being re-exploited, I made it sound like I was never one of those gullible girls. Even the mf'ers using me for decades never knew that inside my walls, way in a dark corner, was a tiny belief that maybe this person will care enough not to further destroy me. Every time I was re-exploited, the wall got thicker. It was only at that SAA meeting in my 40's, where that truth-speaking woman slammed me with truth, did I finally begin to understand any of this shit. In my teens and 20's and 30's, I said whatever the fuck I knew men wanted me to say, expected me to say. Did what the fuck they wanted. I said I was mature, grown up, grinned about my sluttiness with them, degraded myself. Why? Why did I do this?

Because since that moment my mind started scrambling desperately to find the right combination of words and promises that would make pam and my father happy, would let my Barney stop struggling and not be killed, let the bad stuff stop because I had finally discovered what it was I was supposed to say and do to keep my father and pam happy, so that they would not hurt my kitten. Not hurt me. Since that very fucking moment, I have still been scrambling to get the right combination of words together, to say the right thing, to try and stop the pain people choose to cause others. I am still, behind that wall inside, a child who believes I am the one that made Barney have to die, and it was my failure to say the right words, that made my father and pam keep choosing to fuck children, take pictures of children, make a child's pet die.

I really want you to be a human who simply didn't understand the damage you were doing. See, and if that is true, then maybe I can find the right combination of words to help you decide to no longer re-exploit exploited girls. Fucked up, huh? So, the facade of me, outside my miles-thick wall, says, "makes me no nevermind," "I don't give a duck fuck," and every other way I try to deny me feeling any pain, I am desperately trying to deny that behind the wall in my mind, a little girl is forever frozen in a moment, desperately trying to say the right words, so her Barney won't die.

If you can smile and keep re-exploiting girls after that, then you fucking deserve whatever comes your way. Me, outside the wall, I will not care. But inside of me, to that little girl, you are yet another human who will not stop causing pain to happen in this world. You would help pam and her father finish Barney off.

And I am done for now. Heading out. If this isn't edited correctly, fuck you.

(Yep, some more of that denial of the fact that it does hurt, somewhere in me, that you do not give a fuck for me, or any other broken girl. Make you feel powerful and badass to be breaking broken children over and over? Make you feel good to have me admit the pain you have caused me? Fuck you.)

________________

Mar 18, 2023, 6:31 AM

Did you look up Samantha Runnion? Do me a huge solid, okay old man? If that story will cause a blood rush and tugs and twitches, do not, do not do that to the memory of that precious child. Let her rest in predatory-free peace. Let her be. She is at the rainbow bridge, with the cat she loved, who can be found next to her in a photo online. The childfucker who destroyed her, used her love of animals to convince her to leave the safety of her yard. He asked for her help to find a lost dog. When parents try to protect their kids from predators, they often used to say things like "Don't take candy from strangers." Candy is something children take notice of. It grabs their attention. But animals, damn... A child who hears of a lost dog or cat, they will immediately feel like they have to help. Their mind will believe that if they don't help, the animal won't be found. They will feel that illogical sense of responsibility that children feel when parents divorce, when siblings die, when something bad happens. They will think they caused the bad thing to happen. Samantha Runnion had to help that man. She had to save that missing dog. It was the only thing her kind heart could do. Such pure intention, such unselfish willingness to help a missing dog. The fury my heart feels for the piece of shit who destroyed her is insanely strong, and is uncontrollable for me. If you were reading about her abduction and assault and murder for the first time, and I was anywhere near you during that first reading, if I saw even one little inseam stretch, even one little wrinkle in the crotch of your pants flatten and lift as you read her story, I would try to kill you with my bare hands, right then, and stopping me would require extreme measures.

Does it piss you off that I mention you be turned on by such an awful story? Are you self-righteously angry that I would dare accuse you of such an awful response? Why? If she had lived, and you interviewed her today, you would "trauma bond" with her and get hard hearing her talk about her abduction and assault. You would see her as someone you were free to "help" "resolve" this awful experience. Your voice would have that charged, subtle tone, as you ever so "gently" guided her from re-entering that most awful place in her memory, straight to your bed. The stories of trauma that turn you on, are real moments. The ONLY reason Samantha Runnion is safe from you re-exploiting her, is because she's dead.  

See now how I could actually think of her as lucky? Do you see?! Do you fucking see? Does this email's combination of words finally help you understand what you do, what you have done for 30+ years?"