From http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/6ade6ee1-ef37-4f4a-84c7-46d92c425e08

Catherine Lynne Carter on the beach near La Jolla, California, Spring 1996.

He said ‘I’ll love you ’til I die.’
She told him he’d forget in time.
And as the years went slowly by
She still preyed upon his mind
He kept her picture on his wall
And went half-crazy now and then
But he still loved her through it all
Hoping she’d come back again…

(Braddock & Putman, “He Stopped Loving Her Today”)

There is a very big story that we tell ourselves in the west about the power of love and the romantic ideal. From the chivalrous ballads of the medieval romantic period through their successors, the sappy movie, we wish to believe in the eternal power of love and commitment as a counter-balance to  betrayal and death. We live and die for a sense of narrative completion and fairy-stories of love are beautiful. Love and literature give us pretty stories, and as a winter sparrow may fly the length of a great feasting hall from one door to another and out again, so are we in our path through the light. From darkness to darkness we have our stories, and it is pretty to think the stories matter. I believe that stories matter, and so I shall tell a few on myself and of a character I shall call Catherine Lynne Carter.

I first met Catherine Lynne Carter in 1994, when I was working as a security guard and she was a first-year student at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. Cate, as she is now known, had just arrived. A privileged daughter of an alumna, Cate’s mother had been Lynne Carter, a biology graduate from 1966. Presumably it was at Reed that Lynne had first been exposed to the carcinogens that would kill her when Cate was ten, so as much as anything, Cate was arriving into grief.

The day I met her though, bright eyes and clear skin, someone had broken into the Toyota truck her father had purchased for her to use at college. Richard Carter was a man whom I only met briefly, but from seeing Cate I can imagine what her mother must have been when he married her so young so long ago. Rich was a smart man, a Vietnam-era veteran, slightly prone to paranoia but very focused on Cate. As a woman, she was unfortunate to have inherited her father’s nose, but he had compensated heavily for Lynne’s death by doting on Cate, his only living child. I’m not sure entirely what all Rich had done in his professional life, but having worked as some sort of executive at Intel, he had been shown Cate love through home-cooked meals, sending her on trips as a teenager and to the prestigious private prep school in La Jolla, Bishop’s Academy, whose most famous alum would become serial killer Andrew Cunanan. With plaid uniforms and field hockey, however, Bishop’s had done well by Cate Carter, who was talented and beautiful and as intelligent as most babies can be, given good food, care, and access to education. That afternoon, though, someone had stolen her car stereo.

My official title at Reed College was “community safety officer,” which meant I was to patrol campus, tend to locking buildings, watch for damage and keep the low-income riff-raff away from the clientele. A working-class student who had graduated from Reed on scholarship myself, my job was either at the upper end of being a security guard or in the bush leagues of community policing. I loved what I was doing and, had I seen the future, I probably would have stayed for life. It was a beautiful day to be patrolling the Reed campus, and among the many pleasures of my job was that sometimes it brought me into close contact with beautiful young women such as Cate Carter, who would sometimes flirt as I helped them or took a crime report.

Flirting is a very interesting thing among young women, and in retrospect I understand it primarily as a defensive mechanism. Attractive to social predators and unsure of their status, flirting gains them the attention and protection of the powerful. It is a kind of bonding and invitation that they habitually use with almost everyone, appearing more attractive and being more attentive and ostentatiously kind in ways that they shall eventually outgrow. At the time though I just enjoyed the flirting, took Cate’s report and made a mental note. Smart and pretty, I would look forward to seeing her around over the next four years. How little did I appreciate how that would work out…

Comment from M: Fri, March 28, 2008 – 10:42 AM

And you’re going to tell us more, right? I hope so! Thank you, and take good care of yourself! ~ Misha

Reply to Comment on Fri, March 28, 2008 – 5:55 PM

Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
Yes. It is from a book project I’ve been thinking about and avoiding for the past few years. I hope never to complete it, but the time has come to start. I’m looking forward to finding out what the ending is! I have definitely lived in interesting times…

Comment from A Mon, April 14, 2008 – 2:56 PM
Wait, are you thinking of writing a book? I was writing this morning, yup, I am writing a book. BTW – gorgeous photo!

March 25, 2008

Kevin D. Balmer
[ADDRESS REDACTED]
Portland OR 97218

Happy birthday, Mr. Balmer.

I presume you’ll remember me as the man who contacted you two years ago to discuss my existence and intentions around an acquaintance of yours named Catherine Lynne Carter. As you may know, Ms. Carter lost her mother at an early age, has done a lot of drugs and has certain dramatic fears she sometimes uses to elicit favors and attention. Her grip on strategic and tactical reality is sometimes tenuous (as she demonstrated once by assuming I had sent her a bomb in the mail), and I have reason to believe that in December of 2005 she told you I was a bad person with plans to assault her. I found this insulting both morally (that I would hurt her) and technically (that she could stop me). Various actions immediately thereafter made me suspect you were being used for back-channel communication, so I did an Internet search for you and we met briefly on the morning of March 17, 2006.

If I were one third the monster Carter asserts, it would have made no sense to poke me. My goal in contacting you was to present myself directly to you as a human being, so that you could assess me and discuss the situation as you thought best: face-to-face, man-to-man, what-have-you. I briefly introduced myself and offered to meet for lunch at a time and place of your choosing. Your decision around this was to notify Carter, stoking her fears and supporting her decision to use the court system to brand me as a bad man: some sort of troubled genius who would use my evil skills against her for vague and unspecified reasons (as if thumping on a crazy girl could bring me peace or honor). At the time I did not hold this against you. You believed someone it was necessary for you to trust at the time, serving domestic harmony as best you understood it. But that was then, and this is two years later.

You have had time to consider the situation at length, to re-assess whom I might be and whom Carter is. I did not contact Carter then because I did not think her well, and I have no reason to believe she has improved any. I was (a) offended that she thought I might want to hurt her and (b) disappointed that she felt insulting me in open court would discourage me. When I felt that you were playing butchy-boy on Tribe by posting an avatar of a pointing gun, I was annoyed but made two logical assumptions: (1) that she was crazy and (2) that you were a fool. I now offer you an opportunity to prove me wrong.

As promised immediately after my last embarrassing subpoena, I sent a letter to Bobbie Callahan this past October, advising him that if Carter did not undo this legal insult then I would do so. If I had to pay to defend my reputation in court a third time, I told Callahan, I would not be so gentle and protective of Carter’s dignity. I have been thinking and writing about Carter off and on for years now, and she has introduced a variety of information into the public record which can be used quite legally to paint an unflattering picture of her. Oregon has very strong free-speech protections, and accurate transcripts of court hearings are explicitly exempt from accusations of libel. I think it has been clearly established that I am a creative guy with a lot of skills who respects the law and has a strong sense of self, justice, and right. No?

As a matter of principle I do not thump cripples, but I also do not suffer fools and would rather not let a persistent insult go unanswered. I would encourage you to consider Carter’s mental condition and your own complicity in insulting me. Would you like to see Carter deposed and questioned about the past fifteen years, Mr. Balmer, or be deposed and need to decide about perjuring yourself? I encourage you to have a chat with drug-lawyer Callahan. Ask him what he would do to clear my name and character as (or more) publicly than it has been insulted. You have insulted me, Kevin, and been complicit in further insult. I encourage you to help us both resolve this with quiet dignity by beginning to make amends and/or apologize.

If I do not hear from you by April 21, 2008, I shall begin my legal counter-attack and defense of my narrative as a point of honor. I take no pleasure in humiliating cripples and fools, but feel a certain pain at unanswered calumny.

Your move, Pard.

From http://askasexywomananything.tribe.net/thread/cadd5309-6f9d-4a7e-8e8d-f68cc09edc6e

My occupational degrees are in education and criminal justice, which means that there are often background checks if and when I apply for a new job. About ten years ago I broke up with a woman who apparently developed some psychological problems and decided that I was a Bad Man ™. Twice she has sought a restraining order against me and while the first was denied in 1999, a second judge in 2006 granted one and told me it could later be rescinded. When I went down to the courthouse about this, though, I find this is not the case. At some point I am probably going to have to spend between $1-3K to find her and get an official court record that I never threatened her, struck her, damaged her property, committed any crime and whatnot. This should be relatively straightforward, but he question I have for you sexy women is this:

As long as I have to pay to bring her into court and clear my name, how appropriate is it to spend a little extra money to return a legal favor and embarrass her as well?

General discussion and responses may be viewed at Tribe.

from http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/c2caa0d6-5488-4e80-a5a5-db763208aa70

Berne's "transactional analysis" diagram from 1964.

In the 1940′s Frank Capra directed a series of propaganda films titled “Why We Fight,” a title re-used for a more recent film that criticized the US war machine. This weekend I had a brief email exchange with a friend here on Tribe who had decided to leave and so took some time to consider yet again what I am doing here on Tribe myself and, essentially, why I write. What the heck are you doing here on Tribe?

I first came to Tribe in late 2005, encouraged by one of my computer-consulting clients to present myself here for artsy types who used Macintoshes. I signed up but didn’t really do much until Thanksgiving weekend, when I joined a few groups and made a few posts, noticing that a former girlfriend was also here. She was not well (she once thought I’d sent her a pipe bomb) so I ignored her, understanding she could contact me if she wanted to visit. Instead she made a semi-dramatic city-wide announcement that she was being hunted (and presumably said more in private circles). So much for positive professional networking on Tribe! When her boyfriend invited me to a film screening and then changed his avatar to one of him pointing a gun at the camera upon my acceptance, I decided that she was *definitely* trying to communicate. I did my honest best to honor these silly, sideways signals, but finally decided that she was a clueless drama queen I left Tribe shortly after I attended (and was not approached at) the film screening. Silly woman then sued me for civil stalking in a tale that may soon be told at http://catherinelynnecarter.com (depending on her future legal decisions) so from pride I returned to Tribe immediately after the suit.

I am on Tribe for four main reasons. In decreasing order of importance they are (1) to publicly assert and defend my own character while (2) playing a game Eric Berne calls “homely sage” and (3) wasting time and (4) trawling for interesting cultural events. It is ironic that I would have left here years ago were it not for the selfish rantings of a silly, drama girl, yet here I am.

For the most part I think that Tribe functions in much the same way as other subcultures. Human beings are social animals who seem designed for village life, and social circles much larger than a hundred or so confuse us and leave us feeling disconnected and meaningless. There is thus a strong desire to create sub-groups: smaller ponds in which each of us can be a bigger fish, a sort of comprehensible and defensible psychic space. I keep chickens and the same sort of thing happens in protestantism, as flocks break into smaller sub-flocks for a clearer picking order. Pretty much every social animal does this, as best I see, and I came to do this among  artsy, Portland-based Mac users. Having perceived personal calumny, I stayed to assert my decency and right to exist. If some twit wants to attack me, let it be in public where everyone can see how I deal with such fools.

The “homely sage” angle is something that only occurred to me recently, upon re-reading Eric Bernes’ 1964 book “Games People Play.” An influential book at the time and forward, Berne asserts that there are clear behavioral reasons for all social interactions, and identifies different ways people manipulate others and the social environment to get psychic needs met. Although much of the book is about destructive games and manipulations, he also notes a few positive games such as “homely sage” where a person of quite modest success relocates to a smaller pond where they seem wise and are revered. Having received a few compliments on my insights or contributions here on Tribe, it occurs to me that I get a lot of pleasure (or “strokes”) from this, and that the positive feedback (or fights) are a pleasure to me. I enjoy ideas and their many uses, and get to seem both more and less than I am here in print.

The use of Tribe and other online content as a means to flee our personal pain and unsuccessful lives is clear to anyone who spends more than an hour or two of discretionary time online. As a child I retreated into play or nature or with my dog. Later I retreated into books and ideas. Today people go online, but it is still essentially retreat. “Retreat” can be a positive thing (as in a healing retreat) but it is retreat, nonetheless, and much of my online time is retreat in the ambivalent or negative sense: a distraction from more fundamental issues or tasks I should probably be addressing.

As for cultural events, there are actually darn few. I found the name of a neighborhood gallery I visited monthly, and have attended a few burner-oriented events I would have missed, but much of the stuff on Tribe is clique-based or about DJ’s and (what seems to me) newage twaddle. A lot of the kids who in high school would be in band or drama club are here on Tribe more, dressing up to drink liquor. In Portland, it seems, much of the BM activities are a sort of micro-scene: a display ritual in which people dress up to see and be seen. Depressing. I know that there were lots of good people in band and drama club, but mostly they have day jobs today for good reasons. Watching them praise each other is heartening in the way that watching the Special Olympics or weeknight Little League baseball is heartening. It is wholesome and good and positive and such, but it is not the Kirov or Bolshoi Ballet.

So why do I write? To show I am not alone, and that I am not the thoughtless, senseless monster that some would paint. I am neither stupid nor merciless, just here. Thank you for reading, and giving me something to reflect upon.

Comment from N Fri, March 7, 2008 – 5:30 PM
I don’t think you are a thoughtless, senseless monster and I have enjoyed reading your blog, and very much enjoyed the Tribal interactions I have had with you, through comments and messages. I’m sorry to hear about the drama queen/stalking situation and I hope it resolves soon.