Personal journal entry from 19oct98, following the meeting wherein Marti Dell threatened a bogus restraining order and Bowman advised her that involving the legal system was an escalation to lethal force and one that should not be taken unless Carter was at a point where she was ready to kill me or see me killed. The context for this conversation was a June promise by Carter to exchange letters by my birthday in early October, which Dell had apparently discouraged. I had been awaiting Carter’s letter to write and send mine, formally closing the romantic period in our relationship. As part of counseling for depression triggered by the death of my brother Marcus, I was addressing an overwhelming sense of failure, and trying to bring loose ends such as the formal, final exchange with Carter to a close. Most of my other journal entries at this time are very much “one day at a time” about the challenges of simply staying alive within a major depression. SMP is a friend who was caring for me during this time, who had introduced Marti Dell to Kate in the first place.

Your pompous lawyer
threatened me with paper
as if paper could stop me
when I daily pray for death.

Well, it can,
one paper:
your letter.

Met with Marti last night about Kate and she was pompous, heavy-handed and unskilled, getting angry with me and grossly miscalculating where I was and what I was about. Marti is neither a skilled negotiator, nor very smart. Kate has many problems, but they don’t come from me, and Marti had grossly miscalculated where I am.

Marti immediately took issue with my attitude, asking me why I felt I deserved a meeting, then implying that I wouldn’t get one if I didn’t cave and kiss her ass. I explained that I could force a meeting (holding back that it could be at any time and circumstance I chose) and she said she could file a restraining order. I shook my head and chortled, telling her that she had no basis for an order and asking her where she thought such an action would go. I told her that false accusations to invoke the police were an immediate escalation to lethal force, explaining that she should only file one if she was ready to kill me, because anything short of my death assumed my cooperation.

Marti is a pompous, self-important, meddler. Old, ugly and jealous, she is making herself more important to this than necessary, keeping Kate from mailing letters that she wanted to. We were able to negotiate a postal-letter exchange, which I think shall be a good thing. That will take Marti the fuck out of it, and oh, how pissed off she was at my “cc” of our exchange to Kate! SMP stayed afterward to explain to Marti that Kate wasn’t the one in danger and that it was in no one’s interest to pretend that I was like my brother. I am, Sarah said, emphatically not, and my death would serve no one, Kate included. In many ways I think my death would be simpler and easier for Kate than my life: death she knows. It sure as shit would be easier for me, but blah blah blah.

No death today.

What a pompous twit.