Diary of a Sex-Starved Pseudo-Mennonite, Part 16

I made myself glance at the writing Satan left on my doorstep. It's incredible. I read a 1 page grad school response to David Rivard's poetry pamphlet Wise Poison dated 10.4. This would have been 10.4.1999. 10.4 is my wedding anniversary. 10.4 Good Buddy.

Satan was also taking this course. I earned kudos from him when the professor asked me to read my response aloud. The room became an electric circuit of my writing and Rivard's writing and the unspoken writing of my classmates and professor. Satan made a point in front of the class and privately to tell me how great my response was. Satan thought virtually everyone in our program was a retard, especially the professors. I found Satan's cruel dismissiveness intoxicating.

My response to the chapbook ends "before I knew it my world view had altered and it was not me against the cold, morning floor--aggrieved by no meaning. Now I am simply here, trying not to learn, only letting sensations wash over me, reminded that life need not exclude pleasure." Ah. So I have been here before. I was a dark little angel then, the writer a resigned existentialist privately courting hope through substances and submission.

By 10.4.1999, Satan and I had not yet had sex. Or maybe just once. In the mid to late 90s, I thought waiting until the second "date" was personal growth. Flash forward to Freddy. Had I really learned so little?

By 11.1999, Satan had dropped out of school and been released from his job. He was on unemployment. He ran the benefits out. Most of my energy shifted away from graduate school and my writing and my television internship and my 2 public relations work-study jobs so I could focus on Satan's hardships full-time. The more I invested in him, the worse my life became. I left school and my 3 school-dependent jobs to take a 2nd shift 40-hours-a-week gig at a local news station. I was on pins and needles about passing the drug screening after spending St. Patrick's Day week in Santa Cruz partying like it was still 1999 with hometown friends. I passed. My old money employer, locally infamous for being sweatshop cheap, only chunked up for the most minimal of screens. 

Satan remained unemployed and unsupportive of my new TV job which impressed everyone else, even me. The stress of having left school to please him and taking the real job to bolster our future only to then be unsupported was breaking me down. I lost 7 pounds and was crying often. He told me I should be a secretary. I was Phi Beta Kappa and one quarter shy of a Dean's List Master degree. I quit my TV job. I malingered with him for 6 weeks smoking dope and buying groceries with food stamps I earned when I knocked out my front tooth at a party at the house of the professor who asked me to read aloud (not quite ready to write that blog) and we used Satan's unemployment to buy a boatload of discount mushrooms. Never buy mass quantities of discount mushrooms. All you get is a bottomless pit of bad trips. Then I took a front desk position. Stepping stone to secretary.

All these years I thought I was a failure and that glued me to Satan. I only failed by sacrificing myself to the devil.

Almost the minute he left--the minute they all leave--I'm right back to badass Ness. Writing. Getting cool jobs and prizes and money boons and adventures. You don't have to be a genius to connect the dots.

I wonder if Satan's blog would say how he loved me deeply but I was so otherworldly and remote he felt he had to detach to protect his heart. I was so unwilling to pretend I cared about practical matters like paying the bills (yet never failed to produce my share or more of the green stuff) and let's be clear: the concept of "sweat equity" makes me want to vomit. I don't even like to sweat when exercising. 

Satan told me to stop being a princess. But the thing is, I AM a princess. His relentless goal was to get me to live in a trailer because he grew up in them and they were so affordable and practical. The concept deeply offended me. I married a self-admitted hillbilly. His relations came from the mountains and cousins married. I am not a class or culture bigot (except against rich assholes). But I saw no need to convert to trailer living. After decades of pressure I finally said I would, and he lost interest, because the point was not the trailer but to break me. He forced me to move and carry heavy objects to stress me out and humble me. I feared his wrath if I scuffed or dropped. I have wrists the size of a toddler. I am built to drink from a prissy tea cup and write letters longhand, not pull a fucking plow. He was setting me up to fail and get hurt. I don't even like to carry my own purse. 

Me existing at all in the 3-D world is mostly illusion and I love it that way. My personal astrologer confirmed that I don't have a single earth element in my birth chart. I'm all air and water and fire, baby. And that's why I'm so special. She had never seen a chart like it before. I have lived many past lives. I am psychic. Children are very important to me. I should not waste a moment worrying about love because I will get more opportunities than I can ever imagine, more than a mere mortal could manage.

So Satan continues to teach me, even though I was expelled from his exclusive military school. I mean, how many people get to say that after more than 20 years chained to him in a fetching bikini like Leia to Jabba, they got truly free?

Until Next Time, Sweeties!

Ness Sweet Ness