“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
