Chapter 15

 

 

Linda and Bev were enjoying some time off from work, Linda from the Club Festival, Bev from her hospital job. They were spending some time shopping at the Clackamas Town Center mall south of Portland.

Linda’s experience with Tail Gunner had changed her mind about the sweetness of revenge, yet she couldn’t help remembering the evil things men had done to her and to other women. Linda was privy to the tale of one man’s life, that of her brother Joe. For reasons she couldn’t understand, he’d become a punisher of women.

“I want to tell you about my brother,” Linda said quietly to her close friend. “Please keep this between you and me. I want you to know this information.” The two were having some lunch at the shopping center’s food court. Chinese food.

“I’ll keep it to myself, honey,” Bev replied to Linda. She continued to eat her spicy chicken dish.

“My brother Joe had been through several relationships,” Linda began. “He was a gentle soul as a young person, with no history of abuse to any living thing. He’d been particularly gentle with pets. The one time he’d shot a bird with his bb gun, he’d felt such remorse that he destroyed the gun.”

“I like that,” Bev said.

“Wait. There’s more. When he got married, all hell broke loose.”

Bev shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“At first, everything was nicey nice with the new wife. But the minute she began with the backtalk, he began with the slapping.”

Bev put down her fork. She stared at Linda.

“I guess that’s what he was taught growing up in American society. When your wife gives you any backtalk, you give her the backhand.”

“So he hit his wife?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “I guess that was his way of expressing his anger. He liked slapping his wife around. She reacted well to it, meaning she reacted poorly, breaking down, crying, whimpering. He liked that. His wife divorced him.”

“So that taught him a lesson?”

“No,” Linda said. “Things only got worse.”

By this time Bev had stopped eating and was paying rapt attention to Linda.

“He learned to hand out the punishment not in dribs and drabs, but in a withering display of human firepower. The next woman he’d push around,” Linda continued, “was a girl he’d met after the divorce. Here’s the strange part: I guess she had been involved in sex with multiple partners at the same time, what the boys call a ‘gang bang.’ Well, she became known by the guys in her high-rise apartment as a slut.”

“Man,” Bev said, “that’s sad.”

“It gets sadder for her. Her solution to her shame was attempting suicide.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“My brother Joe tried to help. He started to pick up the pieces of her life. He wanted to help her get over her suicide attempt and the depression that followed. He really did want to help her.”

“I know a bit about psychology,” Bev said. “I studied it in school to get my bachelor’s degree in nursing. Depression, huh?”

“Yeah,” Linda said, “but he also was not so helpful. He’d tell his friends, ‘Did you see the set of knockers on that Amazon queen?’ Joe told me he considered her like the woman in the Brick House song by Lionel Richie and the Commodores.”

By this time Bev had lost her appetite. Listening to Joe’s treatment of more than one woman had given Bev a sickening feeling in her stomach.

“He told me one thing he hated was her platform shoes. He called the highest stacked platforms, with at least three inches of thick soles, ‘Cripplers’ and the lower stacked platforms, with only one or two inches of stacked soles, ‘Crippler Juniors.’ He was very descriptive about those shoes.”

“Why did he call them ‘Cripplers’?” Bev asked.

“He called them ‘Cripplers’ because invariably she’d be walking down the street or down stairs, catch them on something uneven on a surface and come tumbling down.

“In fact,” she continued, “he knew so well the physics of her shoes that one night at a party he noticed she was standing in a pool of water on slick linoleum. He gave her quick push to the shoulder. The ripple effect started at the shoulders, ran down the length of the body, and ended up causing her to lose her balance and, as I said before, come tumbling down.”

“Your brother sounds like quite the jerk,” Bev said.

“Yeah,” Linda said, “he was a jerk. He’s a lot better now. But back then, he was out of control. That’s not the end of the story.

“He continued to punish that particular girlfriend, at one time pushing her down the stairs at their apartment building, following her down and threatening to kill her as he held her by the throat.”

“Whoa.”

“Next girlfriend,” Linda said, “same thing. He remembers strangling her and threatening to kill her. That always went over big. His girlfriend became hysterical and just about went nuts when he threatened to kill her, she was so desperate to escape the grip he had on her neck. He liked to go for the throat, I guess.”

“Tell me that he didn’t kill some poor woman,” Bev said, eyes wide open, jaw dropped.

“Finally,” Linda said, “one of the exploited women asked that he see a therapist. Which he did. Then after the first group therapy sessions were finished, he slapped and kicked his latest woman friend in front of witnesses, which got the cops called, which got the fellow straightened out for sure. Before the court ordered he get back into therapy, he was enrolled.

“Therapy was good for the man,” Linda said, “and he straightened out, for over two decades.”

Bev’s eyes narrowed.

“You mean up until recently?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “He met a woman, got engaged to her, though she understood his past problem with anger and violence. In his defense,” she said, “she took it upon herself to tease, taunt and torment him until he lashed out at her. But there is never an excuse for any form of violence.”

Linda knew there is no excuse for roughing up a woman. She knew at the root of the problem must be an understanding of the psychological and sociological reasons for domestic abuse. She’d heard the statistics of how many women in the U.S. are battered by their significant others.

She also knew that even if you did take the time to look at the stats, the numbers might create a disconnected image, and might not really hit home emotionally. It’s much like when people hear of a war. They have a hard time relating to a mass of unknown combatants fighting and dying, on both sides, but it’s hard to ignore the story of one person. One person makes it personal and more relatable. One person can be related to intimately.

The issue of domestic violence is probably one of the most serious yet seriously underappreciated aspects of our American society. Linda felt that unless there is a revolution in the thinking process, this country cannot address the issue with enough gravity.

An avid TV watcher, Linda had seen hard evidence, irrefutable evidence, of the epidemic of domestic violence in America. She found it in the TV show Cops.

In many of the 30-minute programs, there were at least three sub-episodes of police encounters. Many of the encounters, possibly one out of three, involved domestic abuse. A pattern within that pattern is to see how, sadly, even after being abused, the women insisted they loved their men. In the filmed follow-up narration to the incident, viewers find out from police officers it wasn’t the first time the women had been abused. Viewers also discover how men are liars, rarely admitting their crimes.

Linda knew there were safe houses for battered women and their children. She knew that the media does report the instances of domestic abuse, especially when they involve some Hollywood movie star or New York musician. But as an overall theme, domestic violence is swept under the table, like the issue of how America is hooked on drugs, or of how Americans are becoming brainwashed with the concept of entitlement to social services.

Domestic violence is woven into the thread of American culture. Movies and TV shows depicting the psychological and physical abuse of women and men abound. So much that it becomes numbing after it’s portrayed enough.

From a feminist perspective, the culture of dominating and abusing women is part and parcel of the patriarchal society in which we live. In other words, men have the final word, and when looking at it from a purely physical attitude, the last word is a slap on the face, a push into a wall. Portrayed in popular media for ages, all one has to do is play back some of the images, both visual and aural, created by artistic media.

Linda not so fondly remembered a song from the 1970s and 1980s that used to play on the Portland classic rock radio station.

Boom, Boom (Out Goes the Lights) by the Pat Travers Band was a popular tune, getting some amount of play on the classic rock radio station.

Its lyrics are chilling.

Roughly, the lyrics to Pat Travers Band’s Boom, Boom (Out Go the Lights), written by song hit maker Stan Lewis, per the live version:

“No kiddin’/I’m ready to fight/I’ve been lookin’ for my baby all night/If I get her in my sight/Boom, boom, right here, out go the lights!

“No kiddin’/I’m ready to go/When I find her boy don’t you know/If I get her in my sight/Boom, boom, what is it? Out go the lights!

“I thought I treated my baby fair/I just found out she don’t want me here/If I get her in my sight/Boom, boom, come on, out go the lights!

“I never felt this mad before/When I just found out she don’t want me no more/If I get her in my sight/Boom, boom, come on, out go the lights!

“No kiddin’/I’m ready to fight/I’ve been lookin’ for my baby all night/If I get her in my sight/Boom, boom, one more, out go the lights!”

The radio stations don’t play the song any more, but the image of spousal abuse is of no doubt.

Linda felt as if it would take a radical change, a sea change, in attitude before the abuse of women is finally eliminated.

“But let’s not fool ourselves,” Linda said to Bev. “There is also abuse of men by women.”

Linda related a case she personally knew about, where a wife got so out of control that she bit her husband’s hand, and then threatened to burn down the house with the kids in it. The husband had to call the police, who had enough evidence, with the bite on the hand, to take her away in handcuffs and charge her with domestic abuse.

“It’s as if there will have to be a complete change of attitude with regard to the treatment of both men and women before there can be any change,” Linda said. “The same can be said of the issue of the crazy-stupid number of guns in America, and the American proclivity to ingest massive amounts of drugs. It’s part of our culture.”

“I sure hope those things do improve,” Bev said. “I hope they aren’t part of our culture forever.”

“Me, too.”

“I’ve got a novel idea,” Bev said. “Why don’t we consider domestic abuse a disease and treat it like cancer or addictive behavior? We could treat it like the disease it is, maybe with counseling, maybe with medication.”

“I don’t care what happens,” Linda said. “Something has got to be done.”

What Linda had seen regarding domestic violence had been shocking and saddening. She received a startling education in how destructive it can be from one man, her brother; luckily she was not one in a series of women having a relationship with someone like him. Her knowledge, although not first hand, was not from a detached source such as an article or news broadcast. She knew the truth, the sad and difficult truth of a scourge that plagues society.

It was shocking what men do to women as a result of either repressed or overt anger issues. Linda had known more than one woman who put up with all manner of abuse, including being called disgusting names like “stupid cunt” or “fat whore.” Those were actual names that men had used to call their significant others. Linda had heard it, not second hand, but first hand as a witness, out of the mouths of men. Not only had Linda heard such abusive language, she’d seen the results of the physical abuse perpetrated by men on women.

To add to her own personal witness, she’d also seen photographs and videos of abuse. She knew the situation was bad. She couldn’t say whether the situation was getting any better. Certainly the awareness of such violence had increased in the last part of the 20th century, but by the first part of the 21st century she really hadn’t seen much improvement in the statistics.

For her own sake, she’d educated herself. She knew there were many forms of abuse.

Some of those forms included men controlling the actions of their spouses, one of the forms of psychological abuse. There was the taunting of a spouse by calling her fat or lazy, a form of abuse not actually involving physical contact. These were forms of abuse, not physical, but hurtful and real nonetheless.

Stepping up the intensity of the forms of psychological abuse, there’s what can only be called “yelling at the top of your lungs” at your spouse, which is demeaning.

The next step is actual physical abuse. There again, there are many layers. It might start with a simple shove. Maybe throwing an object at the spouse. Pushing her into the wall.

Linda had known one fellow to throw an entire milkshake into the face of a woman with whom he was having an argument. She related that incident to her nurse friend Bev.

“What would have happened if that were a cup of coffee?” she asked Bev.

“That’d be horrible!” Bev said. “Why are men such maniacs?” Bev had seen her share of trauma working in the hospital, with multiple cases of partners beating up on each other.

The next step after pushing and shoving is actually slapping, kicking, punching, hitting.

The final step is killing. By knife. By gun. By baseball bat.

Again, Linda personally knew of at least one instance of a woman having anger problems leading to getting physical with her husband. But that instance of domestic abuse is in the statistical minority. Most instances come from men and are aimed at their dates, their girlfriends and their wives.

Linda researched some of the different organizations that promote the prevention of domestic violence, and although all those organizations are necessary and needed, they only strike at the symptoms, not at the disease itself. Bev knew what Linda was talking about.

“It’s like trying to stop the problem of heroin or methamphetamine addiction,” Bev told Linda, “by closing down the places where people deal and take the drugs. Drug houses. That doesn’t stop the problem, it only slows it down, for a bit.

“Sure,” Bev continued, “closing down a drug house probably makes it safer for the neighbors, but the problem doesn’t end there, it moves to another part of town. To solve the issue of drug addiction, or the addiction to domestic violence, we need to get to the root of the problem.”

Bev and Linda agreed the work domestic violence partnerships are doing is vital in helping to keep women safe from abusive men. No issue there. But both also agreed on the fact that there’s a deep-seated culture of relationship abuse that is ingrained into the psyche of the American male.

“Do you think it would help if all men turned into feminists?” Linda asked Bev.

“I don’t know,” Bev admitted. “All I know is that things are not working now, and we’re only sticking our finger in the dike in trying to stop the eventual flood, always about to overflow and drown us.”

“If they can send a man to the moon,” Linda asked, “why can’t they send them all?”

Bev gave Linda a stern look, then laughed out loud.

“I haven’t heard that one in a long time,” Bev said. “Pretty funny.”

The women were comfortable with each other, and so sat quietly without saying anything for several minutes.

“So what is the answer?” Linda again put it to Bev. “What is our society going to do to put a stop to women getting beat up? How are we going to stop it?”

“That’s a good question,” Bev said. “I don’t know what to say.”

Bev paused for a moment and thought.

“I don’t know,” Bev said. “Men kill men in wars. Everyone in the United States seems to own a gun. Boxing matches are still taking place. We’re a society and country steeped in violence. How are we supposed to stop men beating up women when we approve of kick boxing matches?”

“I don’t know either,” Linda responded. “Maybe we’ll have to evolve out of the tendency to beat the shit out of each other. I mean, look at what we both do for a living.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Linda continued, “I work in a bar where there’s a least one fight a week, if not more, and you work in a hospital, where you are constantly putting people back together after a fight.”

“It’s a crazy world,” Bev said. “But I’m not giving up hope. I think the fact that you and I are talking about it and that the cops have domestic violence laws counts for something.”

With nothing left of their appetites, the two women continued to sit at the tables in the mall’s food court. Around them swirled young and old people, couples and singles and parents with small children. Bev spoke once again, with gravity.

“The struggle of good versus evil truly exists today, right now,” she said. “It’s not some concept that’s found in old books describing chivalrous knights or gallant deeds accomplished by men in white hats on horses.

“It’s a life and death struggle,” she said, “and not something ‘ripped from today’s headlines’ to create television dramas featuring cops, perps and victims.”

“I know you’ve seen a lot of the results of domestic violence working in the hospital’s emergency room,” Linda said. “You’ve told me some pretty hair-raising stories of the lowlifes who abuse women.”

“You know, though,” Bev said, “that it’s not only trailer trash that bung up their spouses. I’ve seen rich people, I’ve dealt with folks from the inner city and from out in the sticks. And from watching TV, you and I both know famous people who’ve gotten into trouble with the law for working out on a spouse.”

“I guess we all personally know somebody who has been abused,” Linda replied.

“I remember from basic psych class in college,” Bev said, “Abraham Maslow said that a human being’s most fundamental needs are first the needs of the body, including breathing, eating, water, sex and sleep. Let me think for a second.”

Bev stirred her cold, congealed Chinese food with her fork. Her left eyebrow arched.

“Now I remember. Once those basic needs are met, we want to satisfy the need for safety.” She paused for a second. “That includes the security of the body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health and property.

“Women who are abused live without the satisfaction of the safety and security of the body. Many live with a big unknown with regard to family, property, employment.”

Linda nodded her head in approval.

“But what can be done,” she said, “to change a man’s attitude so that he doesn’t threaten the physical safety of his spouse? I don’t want to get bogged down with the gender issue, because in our society we see women abusing men, women abusing women, men abusing men. When will it stop?”

“It’s good versus evil,” Bev said. “It’s that simple.”

Linda Avery and Beverley Beech both had witnessed the root of evil. Although not victims themselves of the abuse from a partner, they both had seen the effects. They both were struggling to understand the causes.