During the decade-long saga of Catherine Lynne Carter’s fearful fixation on me, I made three CD “playlists” of songs that brought me comfort as I remembered, meditated and prepared for the unpleasant hearings and legal stupidity she had chosen. The first mix was a farewell mix made after her 1999 suit against me, to capture and honor some of the emotional roller-coaster that was our “romantic period”, from the time we first slept together until she unilaterally decided that I wanted to kill her. The second mix was a meditation mix, made after the 2006 hearing to help me think about and consider various things that might be at play within her clearly disturbed mind, so that I might find more compassion and understanding around the irrational things that she had done. The third mix was made just before our third hearing date in 2009, a pre-fight mix to help steel me for the unpleasant task ahead. The first mix was sequential, representing various phases in our romantic relationship and ending with a hopeful Goddess song about her longing for her dead mother, Lynne. The others were designed for “random play” and are listed alphabetically by song title.

1999 Mix on Romantic Journey

Each of these songs refers to a specific incident within the relationship, with the final two being one each for where I was and where I hoped she would find comfort.

1. Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet (Henry Mancini Singers)
2. Obsession (Sara McLachlin)
3. Crash (Dave Matthews Band)
4. Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand (Primitive Radio Gods)
5. Barely Breathing    (Duncan Sheik)
6. Long December    (Counting Crows)
7. Counting Blue Cars (Smashmouth)
8. Arms of the Angels (Sara McLachlin)
9. Dar Williams – February (Dar Williams)
10. River (Joni Mitchell)
11. Sympathetic Character (Alanis Morissette)
12. I Miss You (Randy Williams)
13. Hymn to Her (The Pretenders)

2006 Mix on What Might Be in Her Head

This mix I made entirely of Alanis Morrissette songs and entitled “Temporary Arrangements.” Morrissette is a brilliant singer-songwriter from a country known to produce brilliant singer-songwriters, and her deep insights across multiple perspectives on the human condition has always served to deepen my understanding, make me more compassionate and enrich my life.

• Are You Still Mad
• Flinch
• Hands Clean
• I Was Hoping
• Joining You
• No Pressure Over Cappucino
• One
• Sympathetic Character
• Thank U
• That Particular Time
• The Couch
• This Grudge
• Uninvited

2009 Mix to Prepare a Clean End with Mercy

This was a “pre-fight mix” such as boxers or cage fighters use to prepare for battle which, in this case, meant to steel me against the willingness to try and protect someone who wanted to damage me, as I had in 2006. This mix was prepared the day before our hearing, and was what I meditated on the night before.

This was a random-play mix, with titles listed alphabetically.

• Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
• He Stopped Loving Her Today (George Jones)
• Not Ready To Make Nice (Dixie Chicks)
• Pressure (Billy Joel)
• Sympathetic Character (Alanis Morissette)
• That Particular Time (Alanis Morissette)
• This Grudge (Alanis Morissette)
• This Is It (Kenny Loggins)

From http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/555af724-0e63-4da4-bd28-4cfa2a3281b2

June of 1998 was the last time I spoke with Catherine Lynne Carter. She had moved out in February, we had broken up in April, and she came by in June to pick up a few of her things and see the kittens of a beautiful feral cat named Ginger. She said she needed some space and had to focus on some things, cordially promising to touch base with me sometime before my birthday in October. I told her that I would keep my eyes open for other small things of hers, and she specifically asked me to save a small rice bowl of hers into which she had transplanted for me the gift of a small jade plant.

The rice-pattern bowl, for those unfamiliar, is a Chinese ceramic style wherein grains of rice are supposedly placed onto the bowl before firing, forming small indentations where the bowl is thinner and often translucent after the rice has burned away in the kiln. This bowl was a particular beautiful example, and the first such one I remember seeing. Like the small plant within, it meant a lot to me, and the last two promises I made to Catherine Lynne Kate Cate Invisigoth Carter were to remember her birthday and return this rice bowl. When Carter failed me many months later and added insult to injury through a creeply lawyer friend and her low-rent, drive-by legal threats, I still remembered, and cared for her beloved bowl. Things meant a lot to Cate Carter, as they often do to women of her class. The ownership of things allows one a sense of control and self-delusion that relationships with authentic people does not. Heirlooms often comfort heirs because the original owner is safely dead.

I did not spend a lot of time thinking about Carter after the colossal rudeness of October and my biting, unanswered “dump-o-matic.” I had been diagnosed with a severe, episodic depression and ordered to take a medical leave from work while I stabilized. On a wild roller-coaster over the loss within three years of two beloved jobs, two major relationships and the suicide of my youngest brother just weeks after he had attacked me and I had thrown him out of my house, I was doing the months-long tango of trying to find whatever drug and dosage that would stabilize me after almost two years of talk therapy had not done so. For anyone who has not been depressed, it is difficult to describe. The closest I have come is to say that it is the exact opposite of being in love. Rather than irrational and delirious joy, though, one fantasizes about train tracks, oncoming cars and half-way trips across tall bridges. If one has the energy, that is, to get out of bed, eat once a day, or bathe and brush one’s teeth once a week. It is something that I would almost not wish on anyone, and after over a year of it and mixed results from drugs, I was not sure that even at the height of spring I would be in the majority of those who emerge.

Looking over my journals for May and June of 1999 I see that I was methodical. I cleaned my house thoroughly and boxed up various things. I wrote brief thank-you letters to people I had not seen, and I prepared a small box of miscellaenous household items to send Kate Cate Carter, including one rice bowl.

My memory is not as clear as it might be, but the written evidence suggests that I was preparing to die. Having seen the chaos that such death can cause the survivors, I was methodically trying to be polite. Borrowed books were labeled so they would be returned. Pornography was purged and rooms were put in order. Because I had not spoken with Carter, I did not know her address and so sent the rice-bowl package to her care of her parents in California. A few days later I got an email asking what was in the box. I answered and got a notice from the post office a few days later. Because I was not feeling up to it, a friend took care of the notice and brought the box back to my house. Awaking after dark, I found that my carefully-prepared package, my final promise, had been returned, marked “refused.” I was livid.

To appreciate my feelings it would help to know that Carter had moved into my house almost three years before, and that I had rearranged things to make her feel at home. My bedroom became her study, shelves of almost a thousand books were boxed. A loom took up the front room next to a large white couch of hers which I had often hated. Having spent weeks trying to reassemble this and put my house in order, this small and petty gesture struck me as supremely selfish. With the sort of poetic clarity that often strikes me, I decided that I would take a chance and see if I could complete my promise after all. Among the things of Carter’s I had was a key to a Toyota pick-up that Daddy had purchased for her at college, given to me “in case I ever needed” to borrow the truck. Driving on a warm night to the last place I knew she lived in Portland, I found the truck and drove it ten miles, put three gallons of gas into the tank and her sofa in the bed before returning the truck and leaving the “refused” package on the passenger’s seat. Seeing this as an attack on her through her property, Carter set her crack legal team into motion.

A few days later I received a subpoena, as she and her legal eagle had decided to make good on Dell’s threat from many months ago. Heading down to the courthouse for what I thought would be similar to a traffic-ticket hearing, I found myself as the defendant against not one but two lawyers, who spun a self-centered tale of woe. I had invaded her privacy, she said, and had a temper that placed her in fear for her life. Failing to mention that I had put gas in the truck I borrowed (to return her property) she explained to the judge how use of someone’s valuable property was right next door to a threat on one’s life. When the package arrived at her parents’ house, she explained that they thought it was a bomb and so returned it. The judge established that (a) I had never visited her since she left unless invited, (b) had never hit her, (c) had never threatened her, (d) had jobs that required background checks and (e) no criminal history or motivation to hurt her. He told me to return her truck key through her lawyer and to try not to be a jerk in the future. Why exactly I would have put my return address on a letter bomb is something that I wish I had asked Carter to explain.

Then again, perhaps the rice-pattern is not really a decoration, but to aid the ceramic in fragmentation should the bowl be filled with hot gunpowder tea…

Comment from M on Wed, May 21, 2008 – 10:01 AM

Oh, Rory – wow. What a whack-job she turned out to be! ( Were there any hints, along the way, that things might turn out the way they did? Just wondering . . .

Two things: I understand depression from having been deep inside it for many years. Zoloft is a maintenance med for me, and may always be. Also, I have a collection of rice bowls and cups – I love them, and am always on the lookout for more when at thrift stores. They’re beautiful as a table centerpiece with some water and a floating candle in them – throws off a lovely pattern. ) Take good care of yourself! ~ Misha

Reply to Comment on Wed, May 21, 2008 – 9:29 PM

I think her problems are more complicated and subtle than the phrase “whack-job” conveys, and emerged from a variety of influences. She lost her mother to cancer when she was about ten, and never really resolved that. Her quest for meaning and acceptance led her into some very odd places where a lack of keen intelligence and useful insight were exacerbated by over-use of psychotropics. Just as the line between a nice Christian boy and a latent homosexual can be hard for some women to discern, I was pretty much oblivious to the differences between being artsy, addicted and mentally ill.

I was not aware of her drug use, its nature or frequency, until well after we broke up. Some people are too fragile to work with psychotropics, and I think that she was one of those. Unfortunately I never brought it up, she did not trust me to disclose and I never even suspected. In retrospect I could see a pattern where she created sympathy by portraying herself as a victim, and I think a lot of what happened with this incident was that she was looking for motherly support and comfort from older, matronly women. They got to be all mother-hen and she got to be doted on: a clear win-win. I was merely a convenient foil, chosen for deep psychic reasons that I can only speculate on.

In a word, no, but then I was distracted (on many, many levels).

No one wants to admit that they misread and over-estimated anyone as much as I apparently did her. Mostly it is just embarrassing, but funny. Mostly. Ten years later.

Comment from M on Fri, May 23, 2008 – 4:31 PM

It’s never just that simple – I know that. ( I hope you didn’t feel belittled by my impertinent-seeming question. I appreciate your insights.

Take good care of yourself! ~ Misha

Reply to Commment on Sat, May 24, 2008 – 8:37 AM

Oh, not at all. I just want to be certain that I am not painting some cartoonish picture of her as vile villain or myself as injured innocent. No offense taken.

From http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/2b2ec689-57f0-4e53-8419-948901984656

One of the things that Catherine Lynne Carter and I had discussed in couple’s counseling was the desire to remain cordial and to examine what had gone well and not so well in the relationship, to thoughtfully process our way out and hopefully learn from it. This was something that she didn’t feel up to right away, and so promised to catch up with me later.

Cate Carter moved out of my place in February of 1998, inviting me to stay over at hers as late as April, jealously interrupted me and another woman in May and then visited my house for the last time in June, saying she would try to be in touch by my birthday in October. When she hadn’t done so I sent an email telling her I planned to call her later in the week, whereupon her creepy older lawyer friend, attorney Martitia Marti Dell of Portland, inserted herself and thoroughly pissed me off by threatening legal action. I don’t know if Dell’s boyfriend ever got the sexual play he wanted with Kate Cate or not, but I was feeling pretty dismissed and dissed after so many mixed messages. I had heard of similar mixed messages and games she had played with others, so I decided to at least have some fun and get pro-active. Having recently had some golf pencils printed up for my company, I enclosed one along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope and mailed it off to Carter, calling it “The Dump-O-Matic 98.”

I had honestly hoped that the dump-o-matic would provide some insight and let things finish in a vaguely humorous way, but Carter apparently didn’t agree. She never returned the form but I heard much later that she had sought advice on magical spells to keep me at bay. Did it work? Hard to say. Taking the phone call or returning the form probably would have been simpler, but for my own amusement I reproduce it here.

DUMP-O-MATIC 1998

With our hectic schedules today, we here at Rorybowman.com appreciate how important your time is. Talking to people or dropping a card can be hard, we know, so we’ve developed this new version of Dump-O-Matic 98. In combination with Microsoft’s Pencil Wizard we think you can quickly and sincerely communicate your deepest feelings to those you once loved (or perhaps loved under emulation). Just check the boxes below which apply and drop it in the mail today. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed for your convenience.

Please note that, for cross-platform compatibility, we have not included punctuation.

_ My once-beloved
_ Dear Rory
_ You fucking shithead

_ I am sorry I haven’t written but
_ I’ve been very busy with school
_ I’ve been very busy with work
_ I’ve been busy with new disposable friends
_ I’ve been dealing with emotional issues
_ I just really can’t be bothered
_ I can’t distinguish you from your dead brother
_ I’m afraid of you for reasons I can’t articulate
_ I’m afraid of you for reasons I won’t share
_ Marti told me not to
_ I never really gave a fuck anyway
_ I’m more comfortable with dead people
_ Who the fuck are you to complain that I haven’t written

When months ago I said that I wanted to play “for keeps” I was

_ a naive little twit who didn’t know what I was saying
_ enacting my own gender stereotypes about respectability
_ under the influence of hormones
_ grossly mistaken about who you were
_ suffering from romantic delusions
_ fooling myself
_ just kidding

_ Sorry that you believed me

I think that we should have

_ never slept together
_ never moved in together
_ just kept things as a sweet 3-week fling
_ just kept things at a sweet 3-month fling
_ taken time off after Marcus’ suicide
_ killed Marcus ourselves
_ moved to a different house
_ killed ourselves like in that Shakespeare movie with Leonardo

Right now I need

_ space to figure out my own feelings about Marcus
_ space to figure out what the hell happened to my identity
_ space to process Reed
_ space to figure out my feelings about you
_ time to figure out who I am
_ to find someone who wants to impregnate me
_ time to finish school
_ another dodge

I hope that I can

_ talk in person with you soon
_ send a more detailed letter soon
_ talk by phone with you soon
_ touch base with you around (insert date and year): _________________
_ see you in some public place or perhaps at a party where we can visit
_ live my life without any further contact with you
_ visit you only at Samhain across an empty plate
_ forget I ever knew you

I would like to

_ see you once or twice a year
_ see you every month or two
_ talk to you by phone every month or two
_ talk with you by phone once or twice a year
_ exchange birthday cards and such once or twice a year
_ forget I ever met you

Right now I need to

_ get this in the mail
_ go to the bathroom
_ other: ________________________________

_ I love you
_ I’ll be in touch, I promise
_ Fuck off
_ I want you dead
_ I’m so very sorry

Comment from M on Thu, May 8, 2008 – 8:49 PM

Rory, what I mean to say is that this is just both so fucking funny and *painful*!!! You are such a smart man – blows my mind! I’m sorry things went down with Catherine Kate Cate so crappily, but we have so little control, and I *know* you’re better off without her. Hope to meet you some day! ~ Misha )

Comment from SA on Fri, May 9, 2008 – 9:40 AM

I like the dump-o-matic.
You should sell this concept to the Hallmark people.

Reply to comments on Sat, May 10, 2008 – 6:39 AM

Thanks for the kind words and yes: The sort of person she has shown herself to be is not the sort of person who should be central to my life. Exactly how this became so abundantly clear will have to wait for future episodes, but that’s a funny and painful story for another day.

So, you think I should talk to Hallmark, eh? In the interests of being more environmentally friendly, perhaps I could design a card that uses those little “select an option” wheels. One wheel on the front could adjust to show pictures of a flower, a duck and balloons, respectively. The inside greeting could also change between sympathy, holiday wishes and occasions, with a third multi-choice wheel to indicate one’s relationship (daughter, brother, parent, friend). With three such wheels, though, it would be very expensive to produce.

The original multiple-choice option may be simplest. Too much for Catherine Kate Cate Invisigoth but still sad and funny, worth some poignant retrospect. Please feel free to adapt the format for other, happier uses! With S’ keen eye for all things vintage, I see great things ahead for the genre.

From http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/fa8692f1-7e81-4934-80a8-66239f2fa4a4

Cate Carter lived with me for the better part of two years, moving out to focus on the latter portion of her senior year at Reed College in February of 1998. There was the usual talk of “space” and time, including a few visits to a couples counselor. I have only been in couples counseling twice, and in both cases it was pretty much divorce counseling. This was no exception, and at such a session we ended.

According to my notes I broke up with Catherine Lynne Carter at approximately 4:45 pm on Thursday, April 9, 1998. It was in the office of Tom Talbot at 1525 NE Weidler St in Portland, Oregon. A few days earlier I had declined what would be her last invitation to spend the night at her apartment because (a) I wasn’t sure the invitation came from a place of strength and (b) some vulture named Larry had been by, leaving his pot pipe on her bedstand. I remember sitting in my car with her outside of the building where we broke up, concerned about her as she discussed her anxiety about graduating from Reed on time and expressing a temptation to join her dead mother.

The next time I remember seeing Carter was at Renn Fayre in early May, when she passed me once without seeing me and then later found me, presumably out of her mind on some psychedelic. She interrupted me as I made out with another woman, then lay in my arms for the better part of twenty minutes. After her thesis orals ten days or so later, I swung by to see her, but she had not shown up at work. Concerned she may be in trouble, I went by her apartment afraid that I might smell her body as I approached, but a few phone calls showed that she had instead fled to father in California. She asked for more space and so, except for one afternoon visit at my house and a few politely banal emails, I gave her the space she wanted, asking her to contact me for my birthday in October.

Having not heard from her as expected, I sent an email to announce that I would call her on Tuesday, October 13, whereupon a creepy older woman by the name of Martitia Dell decided to step in on Cate’s behalf. Martitia Dell was, if memory serves, the youngest child in a family that did not value her achievements. Not the smartest or best looking in her family, Marti Dell became a low-rent real-estate lawyer and was generally a disappointment to everyone. Pretentiously into the local SM “scene,” Marti was old enough and lonely enough to play mother figure to Cate, a relationship encouraged by Dell’s boyfriend: Glenn A. Slate. Slate was another piece of work and retail lawyer who wanted to engage Cate in some sort of SM twaddle. The story as I heard it was that Glenn was reportedly “psychic,” carried multiple handguns and could not live in the city because the “vibrations” disturbed him. Whether Dell was Slate’s procuress or just another SM loser, I was still willing to meet with Marti, concerned what was up with Cate. On Sunday evening, October 19, Ms. Dell showed why her job involved working with papers rather than people, and why she would probably never do well at either.

I arrived with a few possessions of Cate’s to return, and am not sure exactly what Dell intended for our meeting. She opened strongly and belligerently: I would only see Cate through her, Dell explained, and if I did not like that Dell would seek a restraining order. Having had a single polite email exchange with Cate scarcely a month earlier, I was taken aback, and basically told Dell to go fuck herself, which did not endear either of us to the other.

Goodness only knows what Dell told Carter of the meeting, and to this day I do now know if Dell was acting as Carter’s attorney, Glenn’s madame, Cate’s big sister or some sort of demon stepmother. There are some people who should never take psychotropic drugs, and Cate Carter in my judgement was one of those, as was self-styled psychic cowboy Glenn Slate. I had scant idea what the heck they thought they were doing, but I was very clear after meeting with Dell that she was a nightmare and to be avoided. Dell and Slate are the sort of people I have in mind when I assert that most lawyers are neither smart nor brave. That Carter considered them trusted friends was all I ever need know of her mental state.

With friends like that, the smart money stays away. Two-legged nightmares like that are to be avoided. Bitter and offended that Carter would not only fail to check in as promised, but send such a piece of shit as emissary, I decided to send her a faux form letter I titled “the dump-o-matic.”

The dump-o-matic would not endear me to Carter…

Comment from N on Tue, April 15, 2008 – 7:20 PM

I’m not so sure this is a good idea for you to be blogging this. It’s starting to sound like a smear campaign against this woman, who obviously broke your heart. It was 1998. That’s 20 years ago. For god’s sake, let it go, man. It doesn’t matter if she’s sending lawyers and restraining orders and blogging about you now. That’s a reflection of her, not you. Don’t buy into it. Don’t get hooked into it again. It’s not worth it. Let it go.

Reply to Comment on Wed, April 16, 2008 – 8:50 AM
I am here to be myself, in all my flaws and glory.

Do you mean it’s a bad idea? I agree, which is why I have not substantively opposed or objected to her histrionic bullshit over the past ten years. It is my considered belief that Catherine Lynne Carter is not well, and that certain psychological issues she inherited with her childhood were exacerbated by drug use and bad legal advice. She comes from privilege, though, and one of the things that privilege can give one a self-centered sense of entitlement and a general lack of compassion or perspective. I had a very hard time after she left me, mostly from exhaustion from over-work and chronic pain, capped by the suicide of my youngest brother. Carter left me because I was not well, but even in the worst of my condition I honored her dignity and privacy over my own, as a clear documentary record shows.

When Carter asked me in June of 1998 to return certain small personal items of hers, I did so, and she suspected me of sending her a mail bomb. When she emailed to ask what was in the package, I told her and she had it returned as “refused.” I then used a truck key she had given me to return a large and ugly sofa she had also left and never picked up, whereupon she told a judge that use of her valuable property was next door to threatening her life, and tried to get me legally branded in court in a way which would complicate my professional life, despite a total lack of violence or property damage or threats of either on my part. She certainly failed to mention to the judge that, for the twenty miles I put on her truck returning her property, I put five dollars (a bit over three gallons) of gas.

My vocational degrees are in criminal justice and education, industries with routine and constant background checks. By selecting an accusation that lumped me with cowardly woman-beaters, she insulted me gravely. By playing to every pretty-white-girl versus crazy-veteran stereotype, she offended me on levels she does not even understand. I don’t think she is smart or ruthless enough to have done this on purpose, yet she did. And for years I have taken it, seen her around town, mostly ignored her, and been silent. When she drug me into court again (after seeing me on the *internet* of all places), and I gave the legal system a chance to do the right thing. With fair warning and announcing my intentions, I shall do so again. There is no dishonor in losing a fair fight, but only in cheating to win.

I have repeatedly contacted her lawyer and consistently been ignored. My original point to Ms. Dell so many years ago was that human decency was a greater protection than the law, and that the fundamental power of the state was to imprison or kill. If Carter wanted to play the legal game, she had best be prepared to see me imprisoned or killed, because the message that sends is that I am a bad person who can only be dealt with through force. Bullshit.

Are you familiar with a 1964 book called “Games People Play?” Carter is a second-degree player running games such as “Courtroom” and “If It Werent’ For You” and “Let’s You and Him Fight.” Dell is fond of sexualized power games and classic Karpman drama triangles, but very inept. I try very hard not to play games, but have now begun a third-degree game of “Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch.” By calling my shots before I make them, I demonstrate my skill and regain my sense of agency. My plan has never been to look good, but to be good: Oὐκ ἔστιν ἀνδρὶ ἀγαθῳ̂ κακὸν, eh?

Martitia Dell is a feckless daughter of privilege who parlayed her class position into a law degree which she pretty much uses to paper over her place on the planet and to aggrandize herself well beyond her merit. I think that right now she is selling fire places for her boyfriend’s business under the lofty title of “general counsel,” which is a good place for her given the downturn in the hot tub and home-spa sales industry.

I assure you that I am quite aware of how this shall make me seem, and I have no intention of making myself look better than I am. I am not here to make friends but to be myself, to tell my story, and to let the cards fall where they may.

Do you know the poetry of Stephen Crane? He is most famous for his stories and short novels, but a line from a poem of his became the title of a race-novel by Joyce Carol Oates. I have thought of that poem over the past two years, as I consider who I am and what I can do, reviewing who I’ve been and what I *have* done. My silence has covered craven idiocy and the failures of privilege long enough. If these people want to play games of insinuation, reputation and law, fair enough. Cry havoc and let us all observe that, in matters of libel, truth is an absolute defense. From Stephen Crane:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter-bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

Comment from S on Sat, April 19, 2008 – 7:43 AM
compassion

Ah my friend, I had no idea what you had been going through….
I knew you were bitter and tough, but not why, not really.
I am sorry you were hurt. by all the women in your life, (including me -unintentionally) and by your brother…
You know you were in the right… they may never admit it. even if a court of law tells them so.
take a deep breath and look around you at what you do have now.
chickens, green trees, freedom, and a beautiful woman who really does love you.
I do understand the value of lancing the poison of the past. and wanting to get it down for posterity…
and you may well say F*%#@ compassion! (for them).
sometimes this kind of thing is like cutting on yourself to feel better (trust me, I’m spinning on the rotisserie of my own percieved guilt
and angst.. after losing James.. on a daily basis… funny how seeing someone else doing it makes it look so much more clear.)
My dear friend, thank-you for being there for me when things have been difficult, more than once.
and do look at all this it from another angle, and give yourself compassion.
give yourself permission to purge this from your system with your writing, don’t let it poison you again. (by giving them your attention, a fight, a focus, you give them your power )
and remember that no matter how badly the universe has treated you by hooking you up with these creatures,
you are strong, you are beautiful, you are loved.
(and you know how to make kick-ass salsa and brandied pears!)

Reply to Comment Sat, April 19, 2008 – 5:00 PM
Hurt by women? No. That was me.

I don’t feel that I’ve been hurt by all the women in my life, and both of these are really beneath bothering to hurt. At this point it is mainly my pride and that can be cleared up in court. Other than perhaps an apology there is nothing I could want from her, and I don’t think that she is capable of that. Their punishment is to be them, as my honor is to be me. At this point is just a matter of clearly establishing position and finishing up the paperwork.

I feel stupid to have so drastically over-judged Kate, but her hour of promise has passed. May both of them live very long lives, so that their worth is crystalline clear. I did some stupid things, but nothing I felt was dishonorable.

Oὐκ ἔστιν ἀνδρὶ ἀγαθῳ κακὸν, eh? “No evil can befall a good man.”

“Midway through life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.” – Dante

I

Dear Friends,

A number of you have asked over the years about my health and for the last ten years or so I have often been vague, saying I had various psychological things I was working through, mostly about depression and the death of my brother Marcus by suicide in 1997. Rarely would I say more and even more rarely would anyone ask, on the assumption that I would talk if I felt that I needed to or if it were appropriate. You have trusted my discretion and judgement these many years, and for that I thank you. I am ready to talk now, and about a woman by the name of Catherine Lynne Carter.

Those of you who have known me over the years know that I am often earnest and intense. From my early childhood I have taken ideas seriously, and pretty much lived a creed that our thoughts, decisions and choices matter. I’ve been a voracious reader and done my share of interesting things: homelessness, skydiving, the army, Earth First!, month-long trips in Europe and so on. I studied Greek and Latin and philosophy at Reed College, working my way through on the six-year plan as a scholarship student, eating from dumpsters and living in a pickup camper for much of that time. After Reed I was a charter member of Teach for America, working in Los Angeles and New Orleans as an elementary school teacher, back when there still was a lower ninth ward. A lot of these things were hard on me in retrospect, but I did them.

My time in New Orleans was the most difficult to date, as I found myself without much support or many resources, thousands of miles from home: a lone white in the lower ninth ward. I taught fifth-grade for a year but at a tremendous emotional cost, after which I was briefly married to the marvelous Magdalen Powers before her conversion to Catholicism and our annulment. After Maggie and I divorced, many of you know that I ended up back at Reed, and had a few happy years as I prepared my return to teaching. It was at Reed that I met Catherine Lynne Carter.

At Reed I worked as a “community safety officer,” basically a security guard and night watchman. My job was to help patrol the campus and do what I could to promote moderation, respect and safety for the students and staff during their time there. Because of my earlier history as a student, I tended to have a better rapport with students than most others, and I enjoyed the job enough to consider staying there for the rest of my life. I got a second degree in criminal justice, but was rightly perceived by the administration as having mixed loyalties: frequently siding with the students or the institution as a whole against the day-to-day administration. There were also various sexual temptations, as a very fit and cordial twenty-something patrolled a campus of hormone-laden young people, most of whom were too engrossed in their studies to give much attention to their own health or each other.

As a staff member, I had many friendships with students, although I was careful not to become sexually involved. One current student pointedly asked me why at one point, and I explained that the age difference would make it unfair and inappropriate: the danger of predation was just too great. I remember vividly how she laughed at me and asked me if I had ever taken advantage or preyed on anyone like that. Reviewing my life I honestly could say that I had not, and she told me I was naive: Women could be huntresses as surely as men, and she thought that my stance was quaintly cowardly. She kissed me then and left me with a lot to think about.

Although eventually my initial view of the situation would have been more prudent, I did end up having a few relationships with Reed students, although never as a staff member with any currently attending Reed. The first was with a woman who was taking a year off to study abroad, and repeatedly insisted that she had seduced me. “You didn’t seduce me,” I told her. “That would be like stealing a glance at a tree; it isn’t really stealing” I would laugh, and although I visited her overseas that year, the sexual relationship began and ended while she was away from Reed.

The second relationship with a student was after I had decided to leave Reed. An older high-school dropout from back east had driven out to attend Reed, but had been unable to obtain financial aid. I met her while a staff member and watched her for over a year as she worked as a stripper to try and raise a year’s tuition in cash. It was wearing on her as I planned my own escape into graduate school, and for various irrational reasons I decided to marry her the summer before I left Reed, so that she would qualify tuition remission: spouses of long-term staff received half off of Reed’s $30,000 tuition. We married that August and divorced the next fall, after she had proven herself in her first year and qualified for regular financial aid.

Those familiar with the details of my second marriage will appreciate the speed with which I have just explained it, because that year was one of the worst in my life. I was in a serious auto accident in August of 1995, during my first term of graduate school. Attending Washington State University’s full-time “masters in teaching” program I was also working at Reed full-time and student teaching while in debilitating, chronic pain. Doing my best to emotionally support my stripper wife at the time, I was about to find out what a twisted emotional toll stripping can take on the women who do it. For her own reasons, my second wife decided that it was in her interests for me to fall in love with her, and led me to believe the marriage might last beyond its convenient year and her success or failure at Reed and financial aid. In my distracted and weakened state, I believed her, to my eternal regret.

I met Catherine Lynne Carter in early fall of 1994, when her Toyota truck was broken into. Newly arrived as a freshman at Reed College, she noticed a pentacle ring I was wearing and flirtatiously inquired if I was Pagan. Happy to play with a fellow Neo-Pagan, I joked that actually I was from a Jewish family, but that we were poor and could only afford a five-pointed star. Having met dozens of new students that month, I didn’t make much of the incident as any service job, from cashier to waitress, involves a mild amount of banter and flirting: it is a pleasant custom that helps everyone to pass the time.

Throughout the coming years, however, I would learn much more of Catherine (then known as “Kate”) as she became involved with a student Pagan group I had helped found, and rose to become a sort of high priestess there. A striking and charismatic woman six feet tall, Catherine was slender with brown eyes, wide hips and and long black hair. She could have been an Amazonian stand-in for Rossetti’s Proserpina, approaching the very height of her physical charms. An ethical fellow, though, I kept an appropriate distance, remaining cordial with this beauty whilst still enjoying her presence and a slight undertone of flirtatious, sexual energy. She attended Reed like any other freshman, losing her virginity and having boyfriends like any other young woman as I maintained an appropriate distance. Whatever my laughing huntress had told me before, Catherine was clearly too young and naive to consider, and indeed I was a bit relieved when after my accident and marriage that August that I would not have to think about that anymore. I was on schedule to emerge from Reed’s temptations with some semblance of masculine honor.

II

“Have you ever been married, Zorba?”
“Am I not a man, and is not a man stupid? Of course I’ve been married: wife, kids, the whole catastrophe.”

- Nikos Kazantzakis

The year of my second marriage was disastrous: I was about to lose one of the best jobs of my life. I was involved in two full-time jobs with Reed security and full-time grad school with student teaching. I had been in a serious auto accident, leaving the scene on an ambulance backboard. I was in chronic pain from this injury, and doing my best to support a woman I had married during her first year at Reed, while I lived in once city and she in another, somewhere in here deciding that it would be best if I were to love her. In my weakened state, I did grow to love her, and had actually begun to believe that the marriage might be more than a convenience. Having slept with her before the marriage, I continued to do so, gradually letting her more and more into my personal life. When she sensed the sexual tension between Catherine and I, she decided that it would be a good idea to pair Catherine with my brother Marcus, and I foolishly agreed. Having grown quite fond of Catherine during her time at Reed, I thought that it would be a nice thing to have her as an ersatz sister-in-law. Little did I know. The details of what happened are largely lost to me, but Catherine and my brother Marcus paired and split up somewhere in there, and were split when my second wife had moved in with me, shortly before I found out about her boyfriend and divorced her.

The year of my second marriage was one of the worst of my life. Beginning with anxiety over leaving the Reed job I loved, the first bookend was a near-fatal accident that left me in chronic pain. Each day began stiffly with twenty minutes of physical therapy, just to be able to stand and move semi-normally. Worn down by the pain, I worked myself beyond exhaustion, beginning the final term of graduate school with the realization that the new wife who had just moved in with me had been lying to me for months. It was the deepest betrayal I had ever experienced, and deeply shook my confidence in my own reality and judgement. Had my second wife told me, in July 1996, that the sky was blue I would have run outside, to see what had changed. That year was the one of the worst of my life, but it was better than the year which followed.

The summer of 1996 was spent in finishing up graduate school and my teaching credential, looking for a teaching job for the first time since 1990 and getting divorced from a woman I had only recently come to love and trust, just in time for betrayal. I had since found a chiropractor who helped me begin to decrease the physical pain, and so in my weakened state I was still able to land a very good job, teaching sixth-grade in my favorite school district’s program for highly-intelligent “gifted” students. Although a bit of a cachet in modern times, “gifted” programs were originally an outgrowth of special education, designed to keep smart students in school and get them out of regular classes, where they tended to be disruptive. As a fourth-grader in the same district, I had been part of the very first attempts at such a program in the 1970’s, and so this job had special resonance for me. Optimistic and hopeful, I began what would be another of the worst years of my life.

Despite my previous experience in Los Angeles and New Orleans, along with my student teaching experience in Vancouver, the 1996 school year was in many ways my first year of teaching, and the first year of teaching is one of the hardest jobs anyone can do. Similar in intensity to combat or medical residency, a first-year teacher is essentially thrown into an impossible situation: no matter how well trained or competent, mistakes and failures are inevitable. The trick is to adapt to this and do the best one can, staying alive long enough to get “blooded” and become a veteran.

That year of teaching began strongly and well: I had extracted myself from Reed and finalized my divorce. My lesson plans were solid and I had good rapport with my class. The chiropractor had all but solved my chronic pain issues and the seventy-hour weeks of teaching were less stressful than the previous year’s schedule. I placed a personal ad in a local weekly, and had even begun to date for the first time in my life. An adult with a job I met other adults with jobs; we met for coffee, then movies, then trips and then sex. It was all very nice, for the short time it lasted.

The same summer I had been looking for work and getting divorced, my youngest brother Marcus was in a serious car accident. He suffered a slight head injury, but at the time seemed all right. In retrospect, he probably had a closed-head brain injury, but none of this could have known this at the time. Later that fall he moved in with me and even later that Catherine Lynne Carter re-appeared in my life.

I don’t recall the exact sequence of events, but at some point Catherine told me that my brother Marcus had been behaving inappropriately: specifically he had tried to contact her and apparently knocked on her door forcefully as she pretended not to be home. How the entire incident really unfolded, I shall never know, but I agreed to tell my brother that he was being a jerk and to leave her alone. It was shortly after this Catherine began inviting me to her apartment, and on one of these visits that we fell into bed.

After over two years of flirtatious sexual tension, I had certainly seen this coming, although we both were surprised when the clock radio awakened us to an oldies station the next morning to a perfectly timed rendition of the Henry Mancini singers’ theme to Romeo and Juliet, “A Time for Us.” I asked Catherine that morning what we should make of this: was it a one-off, an inevitable event that just happened, or did she want something more to come of it? Young and infatuated, she was quickly falling in love and when asked how we should play this, said two fateful words: “For keeps.”

III

Catherine was at the time on friendly terms with my ex-wife. I was at the time, living with my brother, who had slept with Catherine. It seemed the better part of valor to keep the relationship secret until we could figure out what to do and how to proceed. She was in her junior year at Reed, as I was busy full-time with my teaching. I asked my brother how he would feel if I were to start dating Catherine and he said that things were over, but that he’d rather she not come over to our house. I decided to keep things quiet for the time being, and see what, if anything, would come of it.

What came of it was that my brother became increasingly irrational, largely from his brain injury, although we did not know this at the time. Learning a short time later of Catherine, he actually waited for me and physically ambushed me when I came home from work one evening. To my astonishment I did not physically fight back, but just covered myself and withdrew telling him that I didn’t want to hurt him. After the attack, I kicked him out of my house whence he went to live with our mother.

To understand my deep attraction to Catherine, it helps to remember that we were friends for two years, with an undercurrent of sexual tension for much of that time. I was physically in pain for most of it, and she was deeply enmeshed with my most active circle of friends. We had worshipped together at a lot of the same rituals and had a lot of mutual interests. Our sexual relationship seemed a natural outgrowth of many things and a logical progression. Many Reed students are surprisingly mature and I had various reasons to believe her when she suggested that we try to play “for keeps.”

Catherine’s mother, Lynne Carter, had attended Reed and married her father while very young herself. Coming from a Mormon household, she married a non-Mormon in Catherine’s father, and early on contact from the church became an issue. In what was conveyed to me as a crucial story, Lynne had been visited by Mormons asking when she would return to church and had reportedly told them to get lost and stay lost: her husband did not want to be part of the church and she would stand with her husband. Against the strength of the entire Mormon church, Lynne Carter had bravely chosen love, so I believed Catherine when she proposed we stay for keeps.

Another thing to know about Catherine and her mother was that Lynne died when Catherine was about ten years old and that her father remarried thereafter. Following her mother’s death, Catherine found some comfort in the Mormon church, and undertook some religious training as she came of age, including various training in marriage. Mormons believe very strongly in marriage, and even have a ceremony called “sealing” which cements a marriage so that it lasts beyond death. Another story Catherine told me about her father was one time when her second mother, upset with her father, had told him that either Catherine had to leave or she would. Without a beat, Catherine’s father told her to be out by the end of the week. Although a young woman, I believed Catherine’s “for keeps” and loved her so deeply then that I would have probably converted to Mormonism myself, if I felt Catherine wanted that. Perhaps this is madness or perhaps it is commitment. The difference between the two does not matter now, but this is important in understanding all that followed.

IV

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: When he had found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.  – Matthew 13:45-46

After my brother Marcus had attacked me, I had some decisions to make. Based on my belief that he was my brother and would remain so, that he had initially thought he was okay with me and Catherine, as well as Catherine’s tale to me of how he had been a jerk, I decided in this case to side with Catherine. Marcus had been behaving erratically, which is not unusual for a man in his early twenties. I resolved to love and support my brother, but also to hold true to Catherine “for keeps.” I kicked Marcus out after he attacked me, but I believed that his anger was fleeting and would pass. When he phoned a few weeks later and then came down to do laundry while Catherine was there. He came although I asked him not to and was very upset. He was carrying a pistol but I had faced pistols before. He was my brother and so, as Catherine cowered in a back room, I faced him down and spoke with him in the living room. He left and then came back, to later trash the house: tearing out a sink, damaging doors and such things. He was upset, but I felt confident that things would pass.

Two weeks later, I was with Catherine on a spring morning, walking through Saturday market when I got a phone call. Hurry home, my brother Darin said: go to mom’s house immediately. He did not say what it was, but knowing how Marcus had been, I was in mortal fear for my mother.

I know I drove at least 85 miles per hour to get home, weaving through traffic in my haste. When I came around the corner to see an ambulance and siren, I was more worried, then I saw my mother. The ambulance personnel were walking, but as we got closer I could see a coroner’s van. I got out and immediately asked the police if my brother had hurt anyone. “Can you describe your brother?” they asked me. It was then that I learned he was the only person dead.

My youngest brother Marcus killed himself at approximately 10 am on Saturday, March 29, 1997. He had been increasingly paranoid, enough that I was concerned for my mother’s safety. He had at one point accused my mother of trying to poison him, but on the morning of his death he awoke her at 7:00 am to tell her that he had found God. Believing herself and knowing that he had been troubled, my mom was overjoyed, and so left normally that morning. It was after she left that Marcus stepped fully clothed into her shower and with one bullet from his revolver killed himself.

The story of that day is longer than I remembered, but it ended with my middle brother collapsing and going himself to the hospital. I gave the police my name and credit card number, so that they could bring in a special cleaning service which specialized in murder scenes, to clean up the worst of the blood. The day was a haze of sirens and details, but after my mother was safely at my remaining brother’s house for the night, Catherine and I went back to check on the cleaners.

Given the past month or two with my brother, I was ready to find a lot of things when we stepped into the house. I was ready to find blood and bullet holes and worse. I was ready to feel despair and fear and anger. I was with Catherine who was appreciably more sensitive than I to psychic things, but what we found there surprised us both. The smells were distinct, and there were some things to clean yet from the cieling, but the entire area was suffused with the most palpable feeling of love and joy I have yet experienced. It was an amazing aura of embracing love and acceptance, as if a portal to heaven itself had been opened and was still leaking. Catherine felt it too, as strongly or more strongly than I had, and we looked at each other in blessing and wonder. Marcus was gone, but he was not bitter, and the energy there was of love and approval such as one rarely feels. We cleaned up and left, but the feeling was truly amazing, and remains with me today. It sounds very odd to say it now, but to this day I feel blessed to have been there with her and felt that. It was one of the strongest psychic experiences I’ve ever known, and I felt blessed to have had it with Catherine.

Because of Catherine’s role just prior to Marcus’ death, my mother probably hates her to this day. I do not mention Catherine around my mother and she knows to keep Catherine’s name out of her mouth when around me. I had decided that Catherine was my pearl of great price, and would have done almost anything to protect our promised “for keeps.” My brother and mother and family could come around later, but I was determined to stand by Catherine through death itself.

Tensions were such that it was best that Catherine stay away from the burial planning. Marcus and I had bought matching tuxedoes for my middle brother Darin’s wedding, and it was decided that he would be cremated in his. As Darin supported my mother as best he was able, I stood by Catherine, sneaking her in to view the embalmed body, encouraging her to prepare a small token I placed in the casket. I remember the first morning after Marcus’ death that I got up and stepped into the shower then, sobbing, collapsed. Catherine was at my side in a matter of seconds, and stood by me as strongly as anyone ever could, as I did for her. I had a few days of bereavement leave after this, and Catherine stayed home the day of Marcus’ family-only service. I remember my astonishment when I got home from that and Catherine told me that she had expected me to kick her out. I looked at her in horror, reminding her of two stories: the story of her mother and the story of her father. “This is for keeps” I told her, and believed it. She was forever my pearl of great price.

That spring I decided I didn’t want the stress of teaching within the gifted program any longer, as he didn’t feel I was currently up to it. My principal agreed and so I planned to step back to a more standard, middle school assignment. Catherine moved in with me the summer between her junior and senior years, trying to take a required language class during the break but pretty much failing at it. Things were tense, and I was exhausted. The years of over-work, the chronic pain and the tension of my brother’s death were finally catching up with me: I was near adrenal burnout and not much of a helpmate. That Thanksgiving we went down to her father’s house near San Diego, but I was already fading. Somewhere in there I cleared the floor-to-cieling bookshelves from my living room and we drove down to pick up a loom near Santa Cruz, but I was already becoming a shocked shadow. There were various projects and things I was trying to do, but I was still astonished when Catherine announced that she would be moving out in January. In early March I decided to leave teaching at the end of the year. This would prove the worst year of my life.

At this point I was mess, and got much worse when Catherine finally left in February. I left it to her to contact me as she was comfortable, and didn’t even ask where she had moved to. I was heading into a severe depression and finally broke down completely that spring. I had been in counseling since Marcus’ death a year ago, but in April the therapist suggested I see a psychiatrist, and in April he gave me a prescription and recommended I take an indefinite medical leave immediately. “You are severely depressed, and this is a serious illness. Untreated, mortality can be 20% or higher. This is as serious as it gets.” With instructions on how to check myself into a psychiatric hospital as needed, I took my prescription and never returned to the classroom. I had enough accumulated sick days to finish out the school year, and I have not returned to teaching since.

In April Catherine phoned me, as expected, lonely. She told me her new address and asked me to come by. As luck would have it, that was the same day I had picked up my prescription, and I had this bottle of pills with me that evening. I met her at her apartment, where I saw signs of another man. We visited cordially, and she invited me to stay the night. I declined telling her that I didn’t want to take advantage of ambiguity, and that if the invitation came from a place of strength she would offer it to me again. She assured me that it had and I left politely, wondering what the difference was between taking a pill that would change how I felt and putting a bullet through my brain.

For someone who has never struggled with mental illness or a chronic condition, it is difficult to convey how confusing it can be. The pain of such desperation is hard to explain or endure, and the closest I have come to is to say it is “the opposite of being in love.” If you know the insane, irrational pleasures of love, where joys and pleasure in everything explodes, it is the exact opposite of that. There were weeks when the only pleasure I felt was that of warm water as I washed my hands. I consciously set a schedule which kept me in public, away from danger. I was with people as much as possible and I did not do such simple things as walk across overpasses or next to busy streets, lest I impulsively jump off or in front of something. When I had to drive I forced myself to stay in the center-most lanes as I drove past posts and across bridges. There were days when I literally sat in public for hours, afraid that if I stood up I would walk down to the river and just step in. This went on for most of April and May. If Catherine graduated, I don’t recall hearing. To this day I am convinced that the only reason I lived is because my friend Sarah literally came over to my house and stayed with me every moment she was not at work, for the better part of four months. It was hell.

After months of increasing doses, dry mouth and stomach pain, the medications I was on began to take effect. I could sleep for three or four hours at a time, and there were days that summer when I took some pleasure in small things: an orange, for example, or a bit of sun. Sarah spent hours planning and shopping for gourmet foods, sleeping on my floor as she nursed me back toward health. To this day I have little idea how she did it, but do it she did, and my existence proves it.

Out of work and in debt, I was incapable of holding even the simplest of jobs. The only thing which gave me any pleasure was the computer, which seemed finite and predictable, someplace where I could do something and know it would be done. With Sarah’s encouragement, I began to work toward becoming a tech writer and started my own business at a very dark time. I had some Unix and Macintosh skills and managed to piece together a Macintosh computer consulting business: initially doing piecework for individuals at $25/hour for simple networks, then getting occasional demonstration gigs and some part-time work. I largely lived off my excellent credit rating for two years, hearing little if anything from Catherine.

In 1999 I landed my first and only dot-com job, filling in as a project manager for the online arm of Disney while a woman with a difficult pregnancy took maternity leave. It was in Seattle, so I worked like a dog for several months: salaried ten-hour days during the week and then trips down every weekend to catch up on my clients. I was living with a dear friend rent-free up north, putting every cent I earned toward accumulated debt. It was sometime in here that Catherine re-emerged.

V

Catherine’s father was an interesting man. A Vietnam veteran who referred to the American Legion as a “bunch of war-mongering drunks,” he had been an executive with Intel, among other gigs. He was an interesting fellow and would pepper his conversation with aphorisms such as “everything is for sale” and “all items are negotiable.” I recall him explaining how corporate politics worked, and the casual cynicism with which people at that level would lie and even commit perjury. How much of this was bitter bluster and how much true, I’ll never know, but he definitely had his paranoid streak. I recall that Catherine had wanted a security system, for example, since as a teacher I was frequently away from home. At some point after she had moved out, her father had come up and they had come by, accidentally setting off the alarm system and unable to reset it. I don’t remember if he was carrying a pistol or not but Richard had decided that the best thing was to leave immediately, lest they be found by the police with identification that did not place them at the house. I remember the incident because there was a police report filed and I was put on notice that I would be fined for future alarms. In retrospect, I suppose he was mildly paranoid.

When Catherine had left in early 1998 there were a variety of small household items she had mentioned wanting back when I was done with them. The only one I recall is a delicate porcelain rice bowl, in which there was a small jade plant. In the autumn of 1999 I was collected enough to gather these things and carefully package them to send to her in care of her father. Despite my improving health and mood, however, I was enraged when my careful package was returned and boldly marked “refused.”

Having deliberately sided with Catherine even against my own family and then having been abandoned during a time of intense need, I did not take kindly to Richard’s gesture, living as I still was in the house I had rearranged for Catherine’s presence and never really restored. The empty rooms and small things were minor, but there were larger things, such as an oversized white sofa that Catherine had wanted and which I had not cared for. I had resented her leaving the sofa when she left, but had not realized how strongly I resented it until I came home one weekend and found the refused package. Thinking that this was petty bullshit of the highest order, I decided to make a gesture that I did not appreciate her cowardly abandonment and rude refusal of my kind favor, so I drove over to see if Catherine still lived at the same place, used a key to steal her pickup and load it up with her damn sofa, as well as the package which I left on the front seat for her to find the next morning, still intact.

A few weeks later on another trip home I found a subpoena to appear in Multnomah County District Court regarding a hearing for a permanent protective order for one Catherine Lynne Carter. I was confused, but took the day off from work. Waking at 5:00 am I drove down from Seattle and there found myself in court facing a charge of harassment or menacing or somesuch. The details are largely a blur to my mind, but the gist of it was that Catherine’s father had assumed that my package to her was probably a bomb and so he had sent it back. My stunt with the truck had also been interpreted as a threat and an older lawyer friend of hers who was playing hard to be her mother (and get Catherine into bed with her very weird older boyfriend) had encouraged her to get a lawyer. I defended myself as best I could amid all this confusion, and the judge basically told me not to be a jerk, to return the truck key and to make any further contact through her lawyer. He told Catherine that he did not think it was reasonable for her to be afraid, given the circumstances and history, and that was my last direct contact with Catherine for many years.

In retrospect it is painfully obvious to me that Catherine and I would never have worked out. I was a working-class, public-school kid with no higher aspirations than to be a good public schoolteacher. She was a younger, private-school child of the middle class with decidedly more perverse sexual tastes than me, eager to enjoy those and the associated party lifestyle of that and fashion. A very talented textile artist, she was deeply into costumes, and happiest when she could interact with fabulously dressed, vaguely naughty folks. I was attractive because I seemed fairly adult at the time, seemed a decent protector and was moderately popular among her current group of friends. Marcus’ death and my neediness violated the terms of our agreement, and when I became lethargic and short-tempered on the way to depression, I had voided the deal she’d signed. Having never been hardened, she freaked out and ran. Her mother had died. Now Marcus had died, and she had good reason to believe I might be next. From fear she ran, as is understandable. Telling stories about the mythical loyalty of one’s parents is very different from staying loyal oneself, and she was clearly not ready “for keeps.” I can appreciate that now, and forgive. At the time, though, it was much harder.

Having decided to throw my fate in with Catherine, I was devastated when she left. I didn’t understand how that could have happened, and this was greatly complicated by Marcus’ death. On one reading I had slept with my brother’s girlfriend, believed her over him, and now he was dead. I had a lot of guilt over that, without the vindication that Catherine had been worthy. Psychologically, it was as if I had killed my brother for nothing, and nothing was what I was left.

Catherine’s decision to paint me as a villain or the bogeyman complicated things further. At first I was confused that she thought I had threatened her, especially after I had sided with her over my family. I tried to send letters through her lawyer, as instructed, but these were returned and I was left alone, needing to work through this morass without her feedback. I spent literally hundreds of hours on these feelings, and thought about it constantly for a period of years. On vacation with my mother in early 2003, I sent her a birthday letter care of her father as a gesture. A mutual friend had told me that she was in Portland and doing well, so I told her I was glad to hear that and would welcome news of her as she was ready. She was, I wrote, the last unresolved detail of Marcus’ death. Catherine freaked out and got her friend enraged at me.

Knowing that there was nothing I could do, I still mulled the entire situation over in my mind, and spoke about it more often with one lover than I should have. An amazing older woman who would have been a fine life partner, she told me that I would not be whole until Catherine found me, but that I should know Catherine would indeed find me. She encouraged me to keep working and to be ready for that day.

VI

That day came in late 2005. I had joined a social networking site and was hanging out on the small business, Mac OS and masculinity boards showing the flag and looking for clients. I had seen Catherine around town at a distance, so was only slightly surprised to see her online. She had a business doing fiber arts and custom clothes and seemed to use the board for social and business networking. There were photos of her and her work, as well as a few of her with a Canadian boyfriend. Because of the way I found them, these surprised me a bit, but I was glad to see she was well and happy, assuming that she would see me as well, to ignore me or contact me as she saw fit. She decided to contact me, but in a sideways manner.

I had come to the board in mid-November and posted actively over the Thanksgiving weekend. In early December Catherine posted a city-wide “personal security issue” which made it impossible for me NOT to have noticed her. She then changed her handle to “Invisigoth,” which was a character from an X-Files episode we had watched together the month she left me. Both of us had admired the name when we first heard it, and she said she would use it someday if she needed an alias. It made no sense that she was really trying to avoid me. She was looking for attention, but I held my ground.

As many of you know, I am a computer expert and one of my degrees is in criminal justice. I’ve studied martial arts pretty much my entire life and trained for bowhunting as well as black-powder deer. In Earth First! I did my fair share of recon and sneaking, so tracking down a single person in Portland whose hobbies and habits I knew would be simple. After the insult of the 1999 court hearing, I have consoled myself in knowing that I could find Catherine if I wanted, probably within 72 hours. Certainly I wouldn’t show myself if I were hunting her online, and if she were trying to hide, she would not announce the fact so loudly. It just didn’t make sense.

Simultaneous to Catherine’s city-wide “alert” a fellow on a masculinity board I knew changed his avatar to one of him pointing a pistol directly at the viewer. Some poking showed this to be Catherine’s Canadian boyfriend, so when he invited me to a film screening in January and requested an RSVP, I accepted. I was the third person to
RSVP, while Catherine was the fourth. It seemed a gesture, so I attended, sitting prominently in the center of the theatre. When neither of them approached me I decided to leave the site. Catherine’s histrionics had probably poisoned this pond for business networking, and such bullshit was not worth whatever business it might bring.

I pondered what Catherine’s motives or mental state might be. Certainly a fearful person would not have stayed in Portland or behaved as she had: posting her personal life on a website, issuing press releases with her name for shows, a business site festooned with photos of her and a phone number. Remembering how she had drawn me to to her side with stories of my brother, my best guess was that she was using me to manipulate the boyfriend, Kevin. When a birthday letter to her lawyer bounced as undeliverable, I decided to send a letter to her through Kevin and contact him directly, to let him decide what to do about her. If Catherine was authentically fearful, he could help assuage that. If Catherine was lying about me to play him, I was annoyed and felt he should know. Certainly it was in no one’s interest for him to get all butch with me, and the idea that he was taking credit for “protecting her” against me was annoying. Six hours of effort got me a home address for a certified letter, so I sent one and met him at work one morning to introduce myself and be done with this. This was the day, and I was definitely ready. She wasn’t my problem and I would tell him, man to man, that there was no risk or danger.

The following week I was served with a second summons, as Catherine again sought a permanent protective order. Citing my “violent temper,” “extensive background in martial arts,” a “disturbed mental state” when I “confronted” her boyfriend for news of her, she again seemed to paint me as a monster. Fortunately 1999 had left me distrustful, so I had carefully documented my actions. I felt more completely done with this bullshit than ever, and actually looked forward to the hearing. Understanding the reasons and rationale of domestic violence law such as stalking orders, I was confident that my own actions were moral and just, and wanted vindication. I didn’t get it.

On the way into the courthouse I happened to see Catherine on the street as she saw me, and I was struck by the palpable fear that gripped her. In the courtoom I laid out my case but emphasized that upon seeing her I honestly believed that she was fearful. I agreed that I was technically capable of all sorts of mayhem, but offered the past seven years as evidence that I was no threat. There was nothing that Catherine Lynne Carter could offer me, and I had not harmed her, so I felt that her fear was irrational. The judge ruled that, irrational or otherwise, I should not have physically contacted Kevin at work. The restraining order was granted, and I was fine with that. I had presented my case clearly and cleanly, honestly and with integrity, and although I had “lost” I felt that I had spoken my piece. The other was for the court to decide, and the judge had done so, with great deference to Catherine’s fear (as it should be). I was arguably bloodied but, in my heart, unbowed.

VII

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the past ten years I have reconciled myself to many losses: the physical losses from my auto accident, the losses of a job and career I loved, the gross misjudgement of Catherine’s worth and character and, most of all, guilt over Marcus’ death. Marcus killed himself because of a brain injury from a car crash, not because of anything I did or did not do. Catherine was a foolish and serious mistake on my part, but I forgive her whatever madness her guilt has brought her. Her fear shall punish her more thoroughly than I could ever hope to, but that is not my problem.

Catherine Lynne Carter is crippled by fear. And bourgeois fear, in my experience, comes from guilt. Those who have profited from injustice know it, yet often believe in justice enough to to feel they deserve punishment. Given her age when her mother died, her part in Marcus’ death and her desertion of me, Catherine must surely feel guilt of many sorts. In her heart I believe she feels she should be punished, but I shall not be that avenging angel. Let her save that erotic charge for young Kevin. At this point my compassion exists, but is unwelcome, and so I await an apology that may never come. Any progress Catherine makes must come from her, but I’m not waiting. Perhaps in five years she will have heard and found me. Perhaps never.

I have had my share of losses, to be sure. My brother is dead, my teaching career over. I was a fool for a woman but I am not the first. I had mountains of guilt and confusion to work through, but I have done so, and emerged.

For those who have asked, that has been the matter.

At the end of it all, I honestly feel good. I have done my best and held to my truth, although it cost me more than I could imagine. Plato’s Socrates asserts at various places that “nothing bad can befall a good man,” and my experience this month makes me think that is true. This has been the matter, but I think it is over now. I am much better now that it can be told.

Thanks for your indulgence and support these many years.

- Rory

“The secret of a long life is knowing when it’s time to go.” – Michelle Shocked

Letter from RGB to CLC sent to father’s house in Del Mar CA, return address 1400 SE 34th Ave, Portland.

19feb03, Las Vegas NV

Dear Kate,

Forgive me for not writing you as promised last year, but the point of your birthday as a time to write was to choose something clear and neutral: something well-defined but arbitrary that would lessen your fear and lessen my chances to do something rash or speak impulsively. “It is a characteristic of wisdom,” as Thoreau once wrote, “not to do desperate things.”

I was surprised when Elinor mentioned you were in town, but pleased to hear that you seemed well. I don’t make much of Elinor’s insights into your character, but I have quite literally slept better since hearing that, making me realize how much free-floating anxiety I was carrying around you for all these years. As I was telling a friend earlier this month, you are in ways the last unresolved strand around Marcus’ death, the one variable I have not been able to balance. At an intellectual level I don’t understand what happened, at a limbic level I have not been able to process your scent spiritually* and the meds have partially arrested the mid-level stuff. Although clearly I needed them just to stay alive I believe that drug use (even anti-depressants) in some sense “freezes” emotional and other development, so some aspects of my coping and processing have been delayed until I am completely weaned of their effects. You must do what you need to, of course, and I have honored that, but just an FYI: I am glad of news and that you are well. Perhaps you could find it some year on my birthday to send news of your own, perhaps with a picture and news of your family.

I miss you, as I’ve said, and not always as one would think. Aristotle was right in the Nichomachean Ethics when he asserted that friends are dearer when one is happy. It is the good things I would share which pang me most sharply: a book or song, some craft or fabric. I understand so much more now some of the things you said of color, as this week in Las Vegas I am bathed by shining lights. I think you would cream over the Franklin-Covey organizing system and wish I could share small business tips and insights with you.

Was it worth gaining our brief sexual time time together, worth losing your friendship? At the time I thought it was, and I still might if we were now friends, but life is funny that way, so today I am not so sure.

I think today of Gary Snyder’s poem “Seaman’s Ditty” and a song from Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, “Born, Never Asked.”

Happy birthday, Catherine Lynne, wherever you may be. – Rory

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR THE STATE OF OREGON
IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH

CATHERINE CARTER, Petitioner,
vs.
RAIN RORY GREY BOWMAN, Respondent.

Case No.: 99-0708238

Portland, Oregon
August 20, 1999
1:30 p.m.

TRANSCRIPT OF HEARING
BEFORE THE HONORABLE DAVID SMEDEMA
MULTNOMAH COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE

APPEARANCES:

For the Petitioner:    Nancy Cooper, 121 SW Morrison Street, 11th floor, Portland, Oregon 97204, 503-228-3939

For the Respondent:    Rory Bowman, pro se, P.O. Box 202, Vancouver, WA 98666, 360-695-6929

Proceedings recorded by electronic sound recording; transcript produced by transcription service.

INDEX

OPENING STATEMENTS:

On behalf of Petitioner, by Ms. Cooper

On behalf of Respondent, by Rory Bowman

WITNESSES FOR PETITIONER:    DIRECT     CROSS     RE-DIRECT    RE-CROSS

Martitia M. Dell            4        6        N/A        N/A

Catherine Carter            11        15        20        21

WITNESSES FOR RESPONDENT:

Rory Bowman            22        25        N/A        N/A

ARGUMENT:    Ms. Cooper                            26

RESPONSE:        Rory Bowman                        27

THE COURT: Let’s go to matters which have counsel. Carter then, and Bowman. I’ll hear that one. There was, it looks like, a temporary order issued after a hearing August second and uh…

MR. BOWMAN: Excuse me, Your Honor. There is an order issued?

THE COURT: There is a temporary protective order, yes, issued August second that runs until today.

MR. BOWMAN; Oh, is that part of the original subpoena I was issued?  I had been notified of nothing until I received that subpoena.

THE COURT: Uh, that subpoena was given to you after this order was entered, yes, setting this hearing and telling you of your, your right to appear and contest it. Alright, on behalf of Carter then, the attorney, your name and bar number.

MS. COOPER: Nancy Cooper, 95328.

THE COURT: Do you have any opening statement or summary?

PETITIONER’S OPENING STATEMENT

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, this is a relationship that ended, over a year ago but despite many requests to have no contact, Mr. Bowman has continued to contact my client in an escalating threatening manner. He has made statements such that if she were to get an order such as this that she should be prepared to either have the police shoot him or he would take her out with him. Uh, my client is in fear for her safety. Most recently he took her truck from her apartment parking lot, loaded a package that had been returned to him, loaded a sofa and returned the truck without letting her know any of this was happening which placed her in fear because he had obviously managed to find out where she lived. He is unpredictable, an unpredictable temper, and she is in fear for her safety.

THE COURT: Alright, and your first witness, they can testify from there if she wishes to.

MS. COOPER: My first witness will be Marti Dell.

THE COURT: Alright. Come forward.

MARTITIA DELL, PETITIONER’S WITNESS, SWORN

THE COURT: Be seated, give your full name.

MS. DELL: My full name is Martitia, M-A-R-T-I-T-I-A, Mary, M-A-R-Y, Dell. I go by Marti.

THE COURT: And spell your last name.

MS. DELL: Dell, D-E-L-L.

THE COURT: Counsel, go ahead.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY NANCY COOPER:

Q.    Ms. Dell, uh,would you state your occupation and address for the record?

A.    I am a lawyer and my address is 102 <inaudible>

Q.    No, your professional, your office address.

A.    242 Southwest <inaudible> Avenue, Portland, Oregon 972<inaudible>.

Q.    Thank you. Do you know Catherine Carter?

A.    Yes I do.

Q.    How do you know her?

A.    She’s a friend.

Q.    Has she also been a client?

A.    She has.

Q.    Do you know Rory, Rory Grey Bowman?

A.    I do.

Q.    And how do you know him?

A.    I know him as the former boyfriend of Ms. Carter.

Q.    Did you ever have occasion to meet with Mr. Bowman regarding Ms. Carter?

A.    Yes, I did.

Q.    Could you tell the court about that meeting?

A.    Uh, if I remember correctly it was in October of last year and Ms. Carter had talked to me about contact from Mr. Bowman and I offered to meet with him to request that he leave her alone. We discussed the manner in which I was going to do that. And, um, we decided that I would do it in a friendly manner to start with and depending on how he responded, potentially I would tell him that I was her attorney and I would tell him that she wanted no further contact with him at all.

Q.    Did you make that statement to him?

A.    I ended up making that at the end of the meeting, yeah, but that was not how it started out.

Q.    And how did he respond?

A.    He responded increasingly hostilely. He was very threatening. I said that Ms. Carter did not want to get a restraining order or anything of that sort but she wanted to just amiably part and he said that if she did that first of all, it wouldn’t stop him and, second of all there was nothing left for him to behave for, and she just better watch out before doing that.

Q.    Did he make any comments regarding how he would react to the police?

A.    If I remember correctly, he stated that he would do something very close to lethal force.

Q.    Did you feel that this was a legitimate threat?

A.    Yes I did.

Q.    Why?

A.    I had known Mr. Bowman for as long as I had known Ms. Carter and um, before this <inaudible> seemed very irrational and he seemed very angry and very uh, very certain of what he would do. He seemed determined.

Q.    I have nothing else, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Mr. Bowman, then, do you have any questions of Ms. Dell?

CROSS EXAMINATION BY RORY BOWMAN:

Q.    At any point during the conversation, Ms. Dell, did you say anything about being her attorney or anything about representing her or was that merely implied by my language?

A.    If I remember correctly, at the end of our conversation I told you I was her attorney and to no longer contact her.

Q.    Was there anyone else present for that conversation?

A.    Yes there was.

Q.    Who would that be?

A.    Uh, her name is Sarah Perrault.

Q.    How do you know Ms. Perrault?

A.    She also is an acquaintance of yours, so I have not had much contact with her.

Q.    So did you meet her before or after you met Ms, Carter?

A.    Before.

Q.    What can you tell me about Ms. Perrault and her general tolerance for abusive behavior or threats towards women…?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I don’t see the relevance. I object.

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection. Do you have other questions?

Q.    Um, do you believe that Ms. Perrault would also agree that I was

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I object.

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection. It calls for speculation.

Q.    Um, was there anything other than my general manner and, that made you think that I was threatening you in any way?

A.    I’m not sure I understand the question.

Q.    Did I raise my voice?

A.    Yes.

Q.    What did I say when you claim I raised my voice?

A.    Uh, seeing how this conversation was almost a year ago I don’t remember your exact words but yes, you did raise your voice to me.

Q.    So do you think that Ms. Perrault would also testify that I raised my voice?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I object.

THE COURT: I will sustain the objection as already been asked and answered.

Q.    Okay. Where did this meeting take place?

A.    It occurred at Divine Mocha on Grand and approximately Broadway. I don’t remember exactly <inaudible>

Q.    Okay. How many other people were there in the room at the time the conversation took place?

A.    I don’t remember.

Q.    Where there more than 5?

A.    I don’t remember. My back was to the room.

Q.    I thought you were facing south looking at me.

A.    I was facing you the corner.

Q.    Okay. I was in the corner of the room. So, would you say there were at least possibly half a dozen people in the room?

A.    I told you I don’t remember.

Q.    Okay. Which with you and I and Ms. Perrault there were at least five?

A.    Correct.

Q.    So it would not be unreasonable to think there at least a half dozen people there?

A.    I suppose.

Q.    Do you think that any of them would have noticed that I raised my voice?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I object. Speculation.

THE COURT: Sustain the objection.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay. I guess I am not exactly sure how this works, your honor. I had no idea it was going to be this legal. I thought it was going to be like a traffic hearing.

THE COURT: I don’t know what your questions are. I can’t advise you. I don’t practice law privately. I hear the cases so I can’t tell you what to do here.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay, I guess my point would be that, in my opinion, and I believe that Ms. Perrault would agree with this, Ms. Dell came in not at all happily. She came in very confrontive.

THE COURT: Well, you can testify later if you choose to do that. That’s totally up to you but now you are starting to argue facts I haven’t heard yet.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay.

/////

THE COURT: The sequence of things: they’ll put on witnesses then you can put on witnesses then I’ll allow each other very short closing comments and I’ll decide the case.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay. I had not known about witnesses.

Q.    Do you consider yourself to have good people skills, Ms. Dell?

A.    Uh, I’m not sure what you mean by “people skills.”

Q.    Do you think that, when you interact with people do they perceive you the way you want to be perceived?

A.    I have no idea. Most of the time I get the results that I want and I am effecive.

Q.    Did you intend, on that evening to come, in combative and offensive?

A.    I never intended to be combative and offensive. However, being an attorney, I certainly came in with an attitude of representing my client.

Q.    So your basic position that evening was representing your client?

A.    Absolutely.

Q.    And was oppositional?

A.    I wouldn’t say that.

Q.    Adversarial?

A.    I suppose, if you consider it that way. I did not consider it to be adversarial.

Q.    In the gist of your remarks, did you say that I had no business requesting to speak with Ms, Carter?

A.    I don’t recall.

Q.    Does the phrase “why should she grant you a meeting” sound familiar? Would that fit? Is that something you might have said?

A.    Sure.

Q.    Do you think it’s something you did say?

A.    I don’t remember.

MR. BOWMAN: Um, Excuse me Your Honor, are we sticking to this meeting as the only thing on the table?

THE COURT: I don’t think I understand your question.

Q.    Ms, Dell, do you know of any, and what sorts of contact I’ve had with Ms. Carter over the last year? Oh, let’s say two years. She graduated in May of 98.

A.    I could not tell you other than that email.

Q.    Have I seen her ever physically within the last 14 months? Ever? To your knowledge?

A.    To my knowledge: the last 14 months would be August; that would be August that would be June. Yes. Not personally that I was there but I understand from her telling me was that yes you have.

Q.    Okay. How many times and under what circumstances?

A.     I have no idea.

Q.    Would one of the times be when she came to my house?

THE COURT: You are asking her to speculate. She started to answer that based on pretty much a guess.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay.

THE COURT: That’s not very fruitful for what I am trying to decide.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay. Um, I’m not sure how, we, if there were no objection. Hmm.  Would counsel be willing to stipulate that I’ve seen Ms. Carter twice in the last 14 months?  Once when she came to my house to see some kittens and the second time in passing at Fred Meyer last January?

MS. COOPER: No, Your Honor, I am not willing to stipulate. I don’t have that information. I’ve not spoken to my client to get specifics on when she’s seen him or not. Part of our contention is that he has been contacting her and as she will testify and I mentioned in my opening statement that there were times that he has been around her property that she doesn’t even know about. So, she doesn’t know whether he’s seen her and she isn’t aware of it or not. So, no, I’m not willing to stipulate.

THE COURT: Any other questions of this witness?

MR. BOWMAN: Oh, um, I’m wondering when I’m going to do. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not even a caveman like on SNL who has fallen into some ice. No further questions. It seems like pretty much a done deal.

THE COURT: No redirect?

MS. COOPER: I have no further questions your honor.

THE COURT: You may step down.

MS. COOPER: I call Catherine Carter, Your Honor and ask that she be allowed to testify from here.

CATHERINE CARTER, PETITIONER’S WITNESS, SWORN

THE COURT: Give your full name, spell your last.

MS. CARTER: Catherine Lynne Carter, C-A-R-T-E-R Is my last name. I spell Catherine C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. COOPER:

Q.    Ms. Carter, do you go by any nicknames?

A.    No.

Q.    Do you live in Multnomah County?

A.    I do.

Q.    Do you know Mr. Bowman?

A.    Yes.

Q.    How?

A.    Uh, Mr. Bowman, um, and I, were very much in love.  We lived together at his residence for two months.

Q.    Is this a current relationship?

A.    No it is not

Q.    When did it end?

A.    I’d say it was officially over by the middle of April.

Q.    Had you separated prior to that?

A.    Yes, I moved out of his residence on uh, February 15, 1998.

Q.    Have you had contact with Mr. Bowman since the relationship ended?

A.    Yes.

Q.    Would you explain that contact to the court?

A.    After I moved out of the house, we occasionally corresponded by email.

Q.    Let’s take the email.

A.    Okay.

Q.    You said they started out friendly.

A.    Yes.

Q.    When did that tone change?

A.    Um, late summer of 1998. The emails began to be concerning to me.

Q.    Can you describe them?

A.    Um, Mr. Bowman was becoming increasingly angry about the ending of the relationship and he didn’t understand why it ended. Um, I didn’t have anything to tell him. He was not satisfied with my answers. I asked him to um, give me time.

Q.     Did you ask Ms. Dell for help?

A.    Yes. Marti is my friend. I asked her for help because I didn’t know how to make him stop and I wanted her opinion on what was going to be the best way to end communication.  I didn’t…I felt like Mr. Bowman clearly felt there was resolution and I wanted to satisfy his desire for closure and just get on with my life.

Q.    Did the context change?

A.    There was a period of uh, about eight months where I didn’t have contact with Mr. Bowman. Then in late July of this year um, I received an email from Mr. Bowman, one line, that said if you have anything to say to me, do it soon. Within two days I received a call from my parents. I spoke with my father, a package had arrived addressed to me at my parents’ house in La Jolla from Mr. Bowman and they wanted to know what I wanted them to do with it. There was discussion about what was in the package, if I knew what it was and what was going on. There were concerns about what might be in the package because I had no idea what it was. What me and my family decided to do was return the package to sender. I responded to Mr. Bowman’s email saying that this is not how I want to remember you: please just don’t contact me and don’t contact my parents. If you have to contact me, contact my attorney. He wrote back an accusatory email, accused me basically of ruining his life, and I became extremely frightened at this point and left my home. I stayed with friends. When I returned home to feed my cat and take care of some personal business I found that my pickup truck was sitting in my apartment parking lot with a sofa that a friend had given me while I was living with him sitting in the back of it, and the same package that he sent to my parents sitting on the driver’s seat. At that point I called the police, um, and, they came and the package was opened. It contained some personal effects of Mr. Bowman and a few items of mine that I had left at the house when I left that I didn’t know were still there., At that point I felt that my security and my safety had been violated to a point that I was not going to be able to reside at that address. I felt very threatened.

Q.    Why?

A.    Um, up until that point the communication had been, it had been annoying and concerning but it wasn’t scary. It was actually about physical things. It was like, Mr. Bowman took something of mine, something that had a lot of value, to prove that he could do it.

Q.    Is there any behavior in the history with Mr. Bowman that caused concern?

A.    Yes. It is my opinion that Mr. Bowman has a rather short and violent temper. When he is angry I have seen him break different objects: from breaking pencils to ripping apart books to ripping a pair of jeans to breaking glasses. I feel that there is some instability in his behavior in the female realm. He made several references to suicide, and I feel that there are issues, that lead me to believe he may not be stable at this time.

Q.    Do you fear for your personal safety?

A.    I do.

Q.    Why?

A.    I feel that, if someone can’t control their temper, that is a really disturbing sign of what could happen. I feel like my things of great value that belong to me and were taken without my permission. And it disturbs me. The most basic personal property is my body and beyond that the things that belong to a person are theirs. If you can violate my personal property to the point of taking my car, I don’t know where things could escalate to, but I feel they are escalating.

MS. COOPER: I have no further questions, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Mr. Bowman: questions? do you have any?

CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. BOWMAN:

Q.    Ms. Carter, did you ever give me any keys to any of your items you would consider personal property?

A.    Yes, you had the keys to the truck at one point in time.

Q.    Okay. And any other keys besides the truck?

A.    No.

Q.    Was there an apartment on Hawthorne that I had the keys to?

A.    At one point in time, yes, that was Fall of 98.

Q.    Okay. And do you have a key, and at one point did you know the alarm code to my house?

A.    Yes.

Q.    And what was that code that I gave you at that time?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I object. It’s not relevant.

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection.

Q.    Um, at one point the code to my alarm system at my house was your birthday, was it not Ms. Carter?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, I fail to see the relevance. I object.

THE COURT:  What’s the relevance?

MR. BOWMAN: The relevance is that at the time she moved out I told her the code would stay the same unless I told her I was going to change it. I have not changed it. At the time she gave me the key, she gave me the key to her truck saying that she’d like me to have a key in case I ever needed it. I’m not sure this crosses the line…

THE COURT: I’ll allow her to answer the question.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay.

A.    I would like to first state that I don’t remember making that statement, although I may. And I believe that not talking to someone for a year, he’s no longer, I don’t believe that gives him the right to take, to take the vehicle. Even if he still had a key.

THE COURT: You did give him the key at one time and you did have the code to his apartment?

MS. CARTER: I did at one time, yes.

THE COURT: Okay. Any more questions?

Q.    Um, did you ever at any point ask me to return the key or return any of your personal property?

A.    I do not believe so.

Q.    Did you ever ask me to return a small rice bowl with a jade plant at one time?

A.    I don’t remember asking for that, no.

Q.    You don’t recall a conversation wherein you gave me a jade plant and said if I ever moved it from the bowl you wanted the bowl?

A.    I don’t remember that, no.

Q.    Would you be willing to testify it was something you might have said?

MS. COOPER: Your Honor, Objection. He’s asked the question three times and she’s obviously…

THE COURT: Sustained. Another question.

Q.    If there were items of yours I had and I needed to return to you, but I’ve been asked not to contact you what would be the logical way to do so?

A.     The logical way to do would be to contact Ms. Dell who was acting as my attorney and ask her what she, ask her to contact me and find out what I wanted her to do.

Q.    What would be another way I could that without contacting Ms. Dell?

A.    You could have contacted a third party. You could have contacted a friend.

Q.    Would mailing things to a permanent address, a thousand miles away from you be the same as contacting a third party to you?

MS. COOPER: Objection, relevance.

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection.

Q.    Would it have been reasonable for me to think, even though I had not contacted you and I didn’t know whether or not you had moved since you last invited me to your apartment…

THE COURT: You’re starting to ask long extended and argumentative questions. This is a fact-finding stage.

Q.    Ms. Carter, would you agree that mailing something to your parents’ address in California where your father lives would be a reasonable way to return the items asked for?

A.    I don’t know.

THE COURT: Okay, next question.

Q.    Given that your first choice involved dealing with someone who I found to be  confrontive, um, deceptive, manipulative, and incompetent, um, and choosing to…

THE COURT: I’ll strike that question.

MS. COOPER: Thank you, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Please sir, I want light. I do not want heat. If you cannot deal with the kind of questions you should ask, I’ll ask you to leave and I’ll decide the case in your absence.

MR. BOWMAN: Okay.

THE COURT: This is not a time to be smart. This is not a time to be dismissive of the people on the other side. I am trying to give both of you the fairest hearing I can but it gets tougher and tougher when you keep asking those types of questions.

Q.    Is it reasonable to believe that you may have given me a key one time that you can’t remember and that you had asked for the return of the bowl at one time?

MS. COOPER: Objection, Your Honor. Those questions have been asked and answered.

THE COURT: Asked and answered, yeah. I’ll sustain the objection. You can’t continue to ask the same questions.

Q.    Ms. Carte:  except for the time I recently took your truck to return you your sofa, to your knowledge have I ever gone to your apartment unless I was explicitly invited by you?

A.    No.

Q.    To your knowledge, what was I doing professionally when you first met me?

A.    When I first met you, you were working as a member of the campus security office at Reed College.

Q.    Okay. I was a security officer. And, what was I doing when I moved out?

A.    You were teaching elementary school, I’m sorry, middle school at Gaiser Middle School in Vancouver.

Q.    Does it seem likely to you that working in security on a residential campus or teaching Middle School would be frustrating jobs at times?

MS. COOPER: Objection, Your Honor, calls for speculation.

THE COURT: Sustained.

Q.    To your knowledge have I ever struck another person in anger?

A.    Not to my knowledge.

Q.    To your knowledge have I ever physically threatened any person?

A.    Depending upon your definition of physical threats, yes.

Q.    Okay. What would you consider a physical threat that I may have made?

A.    I am referring to an incident involving [Kaleb Napoli], in which he was standing on the porch at Reed college talking to a professor, at which point you walked up beside him and he became concerned for his safety.

Q.    So, what was the threat I made in that instance?

A.    I believe you commented to me that you would use your elbow, and that he was concerned by your presence.

Q.    So I have never threatened anyone that you know of. I have never struck anyone that you know of?

MS. COOPER: Objection, Your Honor, already asked and answered.

Q,    Other than Ms. Dell’s comments, do you have any reason to believe I might be threatening towards you?

A.    You stated in an email that you feel you have nothing left to lose.

Q.    Um, and that’s a threat?

A.    It was creepy.

MR. BOWMAN: No further questions.

THE COURT: Any other questions?

Ms. COOPER: I have just a couple re-direct, Your Honor.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. COOPER:

Q.    What was the nature of your relationship when you gave the key to Mr. Bowman?

A.    We were romantic partners.

Q.    Why would you give your partner a key?

A.    At the time we would originally borrow each other’s cars on errands. I think that it is possible that this situation was one where he used it to pick up a desk or something like that.

Q.    When you gave him the key did you intend for him to use it after the relationship ended?

A.    No.

MS. COOPER: I have no other questions, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Do you have any other witnesses?

MS. COOPER: I would like to recall Ms. Dell very briefly, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Can you stand and testify from the table there?

Ms. DELL: Yes, sir.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. COOPER:

Q.    Ms. Dell, do you have any knowledge regarding Mr. Bowman contacting Ms. Carter, uninvited?

A.    Yes.

Q.    Could you relate that to the court?

A.    Um, my recollection is that Mr. Bowman called my house and left a voicemail on my machine that he was very concerned that Ms. Carter was not at home and had not been at home for two or three days, that he had stopped by to find out, and that she wasn’t there and she hadn’t contacted him to tell him why she had gone, and this was after the relationship had already ended and, did I know where she was.

MS. COOPER: I have no further questions, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. No other witnesses?

MS. COOPER: No, no other witnesses.

THE COURT: Mr. Bowman? What?

MR. BOWMAN: Can I touch on redirect?

THE COURT: If you are dealing with that sole…

MR. BOWMAN: That sole issue?

THE COURT: Those one or two questions, yes.

RE-CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. BOWMAN:

Q.    To the best of your recollection, Ms. Dell, was this after she had possibly not graduated from college, and did I say at the time that she did not show up for work?

MS. COOPER: Objection, Your Honor, that was not, um, I did not address what was going on…

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection.

Q.    Um, did you, um, did we find Ms. Carter at that point?

A.    At that point?

Q.    Um, I mean after that incident?

A.    I’m not quite sure. Did you or I find her?

Q.    Yes, yeah, there wasn’t a call made to her father after I talked to you?

A.    I did not make a call, no.

Q.    You don’t remember a follow up call to her father?

MS. COOPER: Objection, Your Honor, asked and answered.

THE COURT: I’ll sustain the objection. Mr. Bowman, did you wish to testify or call any witnesses? It’s your choice.

MR. BOWMAN: If I could testify <inaudible> that would be great.

RORY BOWMAN, RESPONDENT’S WITNESS, SWORN

THE COURT: Give your full name and spell your last.

MR. BOWMAN: Rain Rory Grey Bowman, B-O-W-M-A-N

THE COURT: Okay. Go ahead.

DIRECT EXAM/TESTIMONY BY RORY BOWMAN:

A.    Um, Ms. Carter left under ambiguous circumstances and left some property with me, including a particular rice bowl that she said was important and a couch which I found particularly ugly and didn’t care for, as well as the key to her truck, the return of which she never asked. At the meeting with Ms. Dell, I found Ms. Dell to be confrontive and basically  looking for a fight. I brought a mutual acquaintance who agreed with that assessment at the time.  Um, I felt that…

THE COURT: I’m more interested in what you did, not why you did it.

MR. BOWMAN: About what I did?

THE COURT: You heard me. Talk about what the issues are. People seem to want to run the field.

A.    Okay. I had items, I had the bowl…

THE COURT: You said you had a couch, rice bowl and the truck key. What did you do with them?

A.    I returned them because I was planning… I wanted her to have them.

THE COURT: Did you tell her or her attorney that you were going to do that?

A.    I did not.

THE COURT: Why was that?

A.    Because the package was returned refused and I found her attorney to be a prude, a confrontive jerk who was probably misrepresenting her. The attorney in question is Ms. Dell. So I returned the items and that was going to be the end of it. <crying> At no point did I threaten her or anything other than my own death.

THE COURT: Did you ever hit her?

A.    What?

THE COURT: Have you ever struck her?

A.    No.

THE COURT: Have you ever told her you were going to hit her?

A.    No.

THE COURT: Do you carry uh, any kind of weapons at all?

A.    No.

THE COURT: What about when you were a security guard? Did you have a gun in the house?

A.    I have no firearms.

THE COURT: So you’re a campus police so you are unarmed?

A.    Correct.

THE COURT: Did you carry a baton or anything like that?

A.    At the time I began they did not. By the time I left we had handcuffs and mace, or rather capsicum.

THE COURT: When you left the car to pick up the couch and the package did you leave a note with it of any kind?

A.    No, I just left the package there.

THE COURT: In the pickup?

A.    In the pickup on the driver’s seat where it would be very obvious from outside the car.

THE COURT: What did you do with the key?

A.    I still have the key.

THE COURT: You didn’t like lock it in the vehicle or mail it to her or something?

A.    It didn’t occur to me to do that, but I could. I meant to bring it here today but I was running late. But that doesn’t matter.

THE COURT: You don’t carry it on a keychain like most people would.

A.    Uh, no, not other people’s keys I keep it in a drawer in my kitchen cabinet. If I carried all the keys people have given me to their houses and cars and stuff I’d go through more trousers than I do.

THE COURT: Do you have any keys to other apartments or vehicles of hers or anything else of hers remaining.

A. All those things were in the truck.

THE COURT: Okay, besides these items, it sounds like the package of miscellaneous items, I mean you kept your clothes and personal belongings and she kept hers?

/////

A.    Yes.  I met her because someone had broken into her truck. Originally I thought there was a certain component of closure in returning her truck and her ugly sofa and the package she asked me to send her months before. It was poetic.

THE COURT: I imagine one person’s poetry is another person’s cacaphony. But be that as it may, do you have any questions, counsel?

MS. COOPER: Yes, Your Honor.

CROSS EXAMINATION BY MS. COOPER:

Q.    Um, Mr. Bowman, you were told not to contact Ms. Carter, weren’t you?

A.    Um, I was asked not to call her which I didn’t. I was asked not to contact her by Ms. Dell and I sent email to her and Ms. Dell simultaneously because I did not trust Ms. Dell’s account of Carter’s views or preferences.

Q.    Ms. Dell asked you not to contact Mr. Carter, or, Ms. Carter, is that correct?

A.    Uh, that is not my recollection of the conversation and I do remember much more of the conversation that Ms. Dell does.

Q.    And this meeting occurred in October of 1998, is that correct?

A.    Um, yeah, I think it was August of 1998 but I’m not sure of the exact month.

Q.    And the incident where you took the truck and returned the package and stuff occurred in July of 1999, is that correct?

A.    Correct.

Q.    You broke an item against the wall in anger before, haven’t you?

A.    Uh, I don’t recall any but I’ll tell you something I would do. I know I would throw a lot of the glass into the recycling bin in anger.

Q.    You’ve thrown other things in anger, too?

/////

A.    I’ve thrown pencils. When I was teaching fourth grade in New Orleans I threw an eraser.

MS. COOPER: I have nothing else, Your Honor.

MR. BOWMAN: at a blackboard…

THE COURT: The summation then, Ms. Cooper?

MS. COOPER: Very briefly, Your Honor.

CLOSING ARGUMENT

MS. COOPER: We have here a situation of a relationship that ended in early 1998. Mr. Bowman was asked repeatedly not to contact Ms. Carter. He continued to contact her. He acknowledges the meeting happened in the Fall of 98 and he makes it sound like it was just oh so convenient that he chose to end the relationship and return everything, just wash everything off and everything was clean.  However, eight, nine months ago and he just now in July decided to return everything. After having no contact these eerie emails started to appear. He appears at her apartment and takes her truck, loads things in it and then takes it back but then fails to return her key. He thought it poetic justice that he was putting the truck back because that’s how he met her and yet he has a problem with anger; he throws erasers while teaching fourth grade; he’s broken things against the wall and obviously placed my client in reasonable fear, that objective reasonable fear that she has reason to be afraid of his behavior and his constant contact and intentions even after she requested that he not contact her. And we are requesting that the Court issue a permanent stalking order. Thank you.

THE COURT: Any uh, summary you want to make, Mr. Bowman?

/////

RESPONSE

MR. BOWMAN: I’ve never gone to Ms. Carter’s apartment uninvited with the exception of this one time with the truck, which I thought fell within the realm of “if I never need it.”  When she asked me to stop phoning, I stopped phoning. I did ignore her request to move all communications through Ms. Dell because I did not believe Ms. Dell would pass them along. Um, I tried to responsibly return key items by mailing them to her father’s house because I promised I would. That’s reasonable. <crying>. I don’t particularly want to see her again. One way or the other, by her conduct, she has shown herself irrational. I think that Ms. Carter frightens very easily and has found two sympathetic characters who will get all motherly and protective against the big bad boogey man. I haven’t stalked anybody in 25 years. There is no reasonable fear. There is no reason for further contact. Besides screwing with my criminal record, such an order will accomplish nothing. And, given that I’ve worked in criminal justice and the public schools, my criminal record is important.

FINDINGS AND ORDER

THE COURT: Well, Mr. Bowman, I would, I guess I will start out by saying that you are not the first and  you’re not the last person that I am going to see in a court room proceeding who had difficulty handling the breakup of a relationship. And you don’t have no business having any kind of contact at all with Ms. Carter. And when I order that in, as I do in some types of cases, I tell people very directly you don’t call them, don’t write them, you don’t email them. You don’t do that to friends, you don’t do that to third parties, no contact means zero and that’s exactly where you should be, based on everything that I know and everything that you have told me.

I would have to find there’s not sufficient basis for me to issue a protective order that’s of full term, unlimited duration. It’s not an easy breakup but I don’t think the facts substantiate all the elements under the stalking statute so I’ll be dismissing the matter. I am doing a couple of things, though and you’ll get a copy of this order. One is you are ordered to return the key to the truck by mail by a week from today by mailing to the office of Ms. Cooper. Ms. Cooper will give you a business card or something else that has her mailing address. And I understand, I assume from everything you’ve told me that’s all there is left in this relationship and that you are advised that if you fail to do that then you can be found in contempt. I would have no problem that. I mean If I have to call you back in here and find you in contempt because you didn’t do a simple thing like put a key in an envelope and mail it then you need to be aware that I have the authority to put you in jail up to six months and fine you $500 or both. I would not hesitate to do wither one of those. Get a copy of the order. Shoot him a business card. Thank you all.

AUDIO RECORDING TRANSCRIBED BY JENNIFER ZAMMETTI, TRANSCRIBER

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 20:15:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rory Bowman <bowman@pobox.com>
To: Kate Carter <ccarter@reed.edu>
cc: Marti Dell <mdell@hevanet.com>
Subject: “Talk to my Lawyer,” she said. How charming.
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.10.9907261045150.17557-100000@amon.reed.edu>

Marti is a basket case (psychic boyfriend who carries several guns? give me a break! but then again, what judgment have I shown these last four years…). The last conversation I had with her was very curt, a regular commercial for how well she is suited to work with documents and not people. I have nothing to say to her, and she seems to me as poor an advocate as she is an adviser. Tasha and Lia are a much better bet, but then this email is a flaming brand thrown down on the bridge of whatever hope I’d left.

The package contains an undelivered graduation card and the few things of mine (or yours) you had wanted returned. I am “getting my affairs in order,” as they say, packing up and distributing my things. Forgive me if in my desperate grief I intruded on your comfort or sense of propriety. I really don’t think you’ve left me anything to lose with you, and I honored the relationship years ago by rejecting my family for what I thought was more worthy: a pearl of great price and all that. Ha.

I take it that your below email means you have nothing to say to me. Such is life; negative results are results. Thanks for at least acknowledging receipt.

I shall “honor the time we had together” (assuage your guilt) by taking what thoughts I’ve left of you (dark and cold, warm and sweet) into poems or the crematory. Certainly they seem wasted on you, or who’ve you’ve proven recently to be. I gave away my heart, health, family and self-respect. What is left?  My soul?  Right.

Please hold the trivet dear (or as dear as you can manage) and give my love to the cats.

“because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.”  (- unknown)

“The heart-breaking beauty remains
when there is no heart left to break for it.”  (-Jeffers)

- R

On Mon, 26 Jul 1999, Kate Carter wrote:

> Rory,

> I was distressed by your cryptic email of last week and the information that you sent a package to my parent’s house.  This seems strange and out of character, and it is upsetting me.  I am asking you to please honor the time we had together by not continuing with this behavior.  I have asked you repeatedly in the past to not contact me (or in this case, my parents) directly, but rather to contact Marti.

> I wish you well.
> Kate

A form letter for Kate: the Dump-O-Matic

With our hectic schedules today, we here at Rorybowman.com appreciate how important your time is. Talking to people or dropping a card can be hard, we know, so we’ve developed this new version of Dump-O-Matic 98. In combination with Microsoft’s Pencil Wizard we think you can quickly and sincerely communicate your deepest feelings to those you once loved (or perhaps loved under emulation). Just check the boxes below which apply and drop it in the mail today. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed for your convenience.

Please note that, for cross-platform compatibility, we have not included punctuation.

___   My best beloved
___   My once-beloved
___   Dear Rory
___   You fucking shithead

___   I am sorry I haven’t written but
___   I’ve been very busy with school
___   I’ve been very busy with work
___   I’ve been busy with new disposable friends
___   I’ve been dealing with emotional issues
___   I just really can’t be bothered
___   I can’t distinguish you from your dead brother
___   I’m afraid of you for reasons I can’t articulate
___   I’m afraid of you for reasons I won’t share
___   Marti told me not to
___   I never really gave a fuck anyway
___   I’m more comfortable with dead people
___   Who the fuck are you to complain that I haven’t written

When months ago I said that I wanted to play “for keeps” I was

___   a naive little twit who didn’t know what I was saying
___   enacting my own gender stereotypes about respectability
___   under the influence of hormones
___   grossly mistaken about who you were
___   suffering from romantic delusions
___   fooling myself
___   just kidding

___   Sorry that you believed me

I think that we should have

___   never slept together
___   never moved in together
___   just kept things as a sweet 3-week fling
___   just kept things at a sweet 3-month fling
___   taken time off after Marcus’ suicide
___   killed Marcus ourselves
___   moved to a different house
___   killed ourselves like in that Shakespeare movie with Leonardo

Right now I need

___   space to figure out my own feelings about Marcus
___   space to figure out what the hell happened to my identity
___   space to process Reed
___   space to figure out my feelings about you
___   time to figure out who I am
___   to find someone who wants to impregnate me
___   time to finish school
___   another dodge

I hope that I can

___   talk in person with you soon
___   send a more detailed letter soon
___   talk by phone with you soon
___   touch base with you around (insert date and year): ____________________
___   see you in some public place or perhaps at a party where we can visit
___   live my life without any further contact with you
___   visit you only at Samhain across an empty plate
___   forget I ever knew you

I would like to

___   see you once or twice a year
___   see you every month or two
___   talk to you by phone every month or two
___   talk with you by phone once or twice a year
___   exchange birthday cards and such once or twice a year
___   forget I ever met you

Right now I need to

___   get this in the mail
___   go to the bathroom
___   other: ___________________________________________________________

___   I love you
___   I’ll be in touch, I promise
___   Fuck off
___   I want you dead
___   I’m so very sorry

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.

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 21:30:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: “Rory Bowman” <rbowman@reed.edu>
Reply-To: bowman@pobox.com
To: Catherine Lynne Carter <ccarter@reed.edu>
Cc: Marti Dell <mdell@hevanet.com>
Subject: FYI 1: Marti to Rory Re Kate (fwd)

I don’t know what your state of mind is or what you have told Marti, but in the interest of transparency, following are the messages she and I exchanged recently. She has graciously agreed to meet with me for coffee this Sunday.  – Rory

———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 12:35:12 -0700
From: Marti Dell <mdell@hevanet.com>
To: “R. Rory Bowman” <rbowman@reed.edu>
Subject: Kate

Hi Rory,

Marti here (yes, Kate forwarded your email addresss to me).  First of all, I wanted to thank you for thinking of me a couple weeks ago about the tickets. Sorry I wasn’t home.  I’m sure it must have been (at least somewhat) awkward for you to call me.  I want you to know that although I am a close friend of Kate’s, I certainly don’t harbor any ill feelings towards you.  I always make my own decisions about people. So far, I still think of you as a nice and decent person, even if you may have a few emotional problems regarding Kate.  We all have our relationship issues that we need to deal with, me included.

However, I am primarily writing because of Kate.  She called me Sunday night, very upset, because you had sent her an email stating that you plan on calling her sometime this week.  I hope you aren’t offended, but I recommended that she forward your email to me, and I volunteered to write you back.  My recommendation to you is…don’t call her.

I will quote your email message here:

> “Well, I’ve been waiting months for you to write, with no good result.
> I shall probably phone sometime this week, probably in the evening. If I’m
> a good boy, the first call shall come Tuesday evening (when I assume
> you’ll be at knitting), but I’d like to talk fairly soon.

> I’ve been good, to no apparent benefit.
> Time, I think, to learn why.”

I will be very honest and admit that I certainly do not know what the content of all of your conversations have been with Kate, and so I do not know if you feel she promised to talk to you at a certain point, and do not want to make any judgments there.  However, I also know that Kate is definately not ready to talk to you.  I strongly recommend that you do not call her this week, or contact her at all for many weeks to come.

I also don’t understand what your email means, and Kate seemed somewhat confused by it also.  How do you feel that you have “been good, to no apparent benefit”?  What apparant benefit did you expect to receive? What have you been waiting for Kate to write to you about?

I can certainly understand your frustration if you feel that there are issues you need closure on, and that you may not have gotten that closure.  I have certainly had that happen in my life, and recently too.  However, you also won’t get closure (or any answers at all) if you push too hard.

Rightly or wrongly, Kate is not comfortable talking to you at this time. She needs to be in a better emotional space before she will be able to talk to you comfortably.  This is not something you can push about, and the more you try to push it, the less comfortable she is going to be about talking to you.

If it would help at all, I would be glad to talk to you about anything I may know or understand, but again, I strongly recommend that you do not contact Kate.

Give her a break, Rory.  And if you think that you already have, then give her a bigger (and longer) break.  As I am sure you are aware, she is working full time and trying to finish up her language requirements. Working full time and going to school is very demanding, so just leave her alone…at least until after she has completed school next May.

I understand that it may be difficult, but supposedly you still care somewhat about her.  If you do, then give her this space.

If you don’t care about her, and are just trying to harass her, then definately back off.  Although currently I think you are a fine and nice person, I am very protective of my friends, especially Kate.  She is like a younger sister to me.  If I think you are just trying to deliberately harass her, to get back at her because of some imagined (or real) wrong you feel she did you, then you will no longer find me to be quite as pleasant as I am being currently.  Right now, I am trying to appeal to your good nature.  I hope it is that part of you that is trying to contact her, and which will now give her the additional space and time she needs.

Please feel free to contact me, either at work or home, if you feel that there is any way I can help.  But yet again, I ask that you do not call her, quit emailing her, and just basically leave her alone and forget she exists, until at least next May. My work number is 241-2885 and home is 788-9219.

Thank you for your time.  I hope you are doing well.

Marti

———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 15:26:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: “R. Rory Bowman” <rbowman@reed.edu>
Reply-To: bowman@pobox.com
To: Marti Dell <mdell@hevanet.com>
Subject: Re: Kate

I would very much like to talk to you (or someone else with any insight as to where Kate is emotionally) if that would be okay. I’m a bit busy this week, but can adapt to your schedule. Please let me know what kind of times would be good for coffee or something. An hour or two in a public place would be ideal.

I have an Apple demonstration I am doing Sunday until 6 pm, then I wanted to go get a flu shot before 7. Would sometime shortly after 7 work for you Sunday evening?

Thanks for your help. Please give my love to Kate. – Rory