CHAPTER 23, Pt. 2: "Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny"
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother"
“Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny” is Chapter 23 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother. This is Part 2.
In the second part of Chapter 23, Legion meets with the legally required divorce counselor and that does not go well. The misogyny displayed by this court-affiliated counselor stuns her and provides an early piece in the puzzle of systemic oppression of women after separation. It supports Legion’s eventual realization that everyone affiliated with Family Court is there to aid and abet the father, and the larger truth—that marriage itself is a misogynistic institution having been implemented to cinch male control in the family, i.e. “matrimonial bondage”.
In the first part of this chapter, Legion finds a divorce attorney and unknowingly enters the “mother-fucking” Family Court, in which her entire marriage and motherhood and self will be reduced to “the case”. In retrospect, she understands that Herry could easily take her kids from her because he can. Because a man just has to accuse a woman of being “nutty or slutty” (re: Anita Hill) and a judge, working within the “androcentric” system, will gladly bequeath him his “property”. Herry was licensed by the court to wreak his revenge, to “gut the bitch”, to “obliterate” Legion for having dared step out of line and asked him to work on his sex addiction so as to save their family.
In the last chapter, Legion consults with friends about how to go about hiring an attorney after Herry serves her divorce papers. She gets some unsettling advice and discovers that her friend, Margaret, lost custody of her five children during her divorce and was financially devastated. She rarely saw her children again. Legion could not understand then how a mother could lose custody of any children, much less five. She had no idea at the time the same fate awaited her.
Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression and violence directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.
Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point [on the web page]. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday and subscribers will find them in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
That beautiful land that summer of 1988, like mine and the Truemaier Boys’ too, had simply gone down blazing in smoke and flames.
Scorched Earth we were. All of us.
It is as if, instead, both Mehitable and AmTaham merely wanted their daughters bound down, way, way down, through and by matrimonial bondage. Same‑old, ages‑old story for young girls and for old women all the World over for the last 12,000 years. All of these millennia—what a waste. An utter waste of us, the World’s majority wealth and resource. We, the 53 percent.
CHAPTER 23 [part 2]
Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny
“Women have very little idea of how much … men hate them.”
—The Female Eunuch, 1970, and Germaine Greer’s opening sentence, p 245, of the first chapter, “Loathing and Disgust,” in its Part IV entitled “Hate”
The holidays were upon us; and as the way that Halloween had gone, so too, went Thanksgiving and Christmas. I ferried the Boys to Kate Mitchell and worked at packing and cleaning out, writing documentation and keeping submissive company with Mr. Jinx and Madonna. Winter and its Solstice—that is, AmTaham’s 69th and my 41st birthdays—came on, even out West to Yellowstone, and finally its fires and parched mountainsides were squelched and quenched. That beautiful land that summer of 1988, like mine and the Truemaier Boys’ too, had simply gone down blazing in smoke and flames.
Scorched Earth we were. All of us.
There was the life‑affirming tree, balled with roots and entirely whole, well, that year … to ignore. There was no baby blue spruce to plant on New Year’s Day, a week after it had, live and intact and ready to grow, (usually) gone up on Christmas Eve and no decorations around January 01st too, now needing to be taken down either. Mirzah, Zane and Jesse were shuttled back and forth on weekends, every weekend, to Herry’s apartments. Those 48 hours away from them then I worked on my sitting‑and‑blankly‑staring‑out‑ahead‑of‑me skills, hands still and folded on my lap, such technique, talents and cleverness I was to fully develop in the next five years. To an art form. A breathing‑yet‑dead DEhuman art form.
Catatonia and cataplexy this was in me, indeed, and it seemed that that fall and winter I mostly practiced these dance steps right after my having participated in two particular events: meeting with Herry or meeting with Larry. Our attorneys, Jinx and Scheisser, of course, didn’t like Herry and I coming together directly with each other, alone, so we did not.
Not too often, that is; but once in a great while we did. On the street corner of 09th and Ridgeway, a short and neutral way away from the real estate on Othello, about the equivalent of three blocks’ distance or so. Cold and blustery in late fall, standing out there on the sidewalk swept with dead leaves and hunched over avoiding eye contact, I maneuvered myself to Herry’s left shoulder so that I would better be able hear his words without my having to ask him to repeat himself a half a dozen times over the winds howling.
How he hated that! When I couldn’t hear. And had to or did ask him to repeat himself. So repulsed, so revulsed by this is Dr. Herod Edinsmaier that he simply will not repeat himself, not even just a second time.
Narcissist Herod cared not a whit whether or not I eventually ever did hear him. He said so. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it.” These comments were final I could always, always tell. There was no chance of having him reconsider and, therefore, repeat his words. No chance. Because he would turn away, walk away, slam doors, hang up, drive away. Pure passive aggression. As evident as it was that he loathed me and anything the very essence of me, Dr. Edinsmaier clearly loathed as much … any accommodation to me.
It wasn’t deafness the ‘real’ doctor hated; it was my deafness that he hated. And what that would mean he’d have to do in the way of work on his part—in order to help me hear. Work … like the labor of … remembering. Like remembering to project his voice, to be facing toward my eyeballs and not away from my view, to stand on my right side, to not be covering up his mouth in any way. All of this was work. Work that would go into benefiting Legion. So. The Good and Wonderful Doctor Edinsmaier simply chose not to do it at all.
But I would, … later on, within the few instances whereof I was ‘allowed’ to participate somewhat in his decision‑making, when I was ‘allowed’ in to taking actions, in to making transactions and deals and to conducting any portion of future endeavors …, why, then I would—by the Spectacular Spouse I was so privileged to be bound up to—Herod Edinsmaier—I would then be expected to have heard him earlier on as to exactly what his thoughts and subsequent behaviors on all of these matters were precisely … to be.
But. I hadn’t heard him. And. Herry chose. Passive Aggressor Herry purposefully chose to refuse to repeat himself so that … I could hear him. So that I could know these things.
Recalling our entire relationship I would have to say that this manner of Herry’s was the routine and standard measure of his response to my auditory anatomy, defective and ‘less than’ as it was to him. “In sickness and in health”––from the mawwiage wows, er, marriage vows. Hell, he must’ve purposefully and concertedly not taken that part in. Because from the git‑go Herry despised my manner of single‑sided hearing which is, evidently to him, so, so different from that of how others with whom he interacts apparently most often comprehend … his noise.
But, most curious it is to me how I must’ve missed this during those lust‑filled months before our declaration of avowal to each other, the time some folks’d call a courtship. That time of pensive thought and immersed reflection where this sort of thing about each other a lover is supposed to … aaaah, catch, isn’t one? I was a scientist, for chris’sake: how the fuck had I ignored this—this evidence of Herry’s own science of insulting the woman in his life purported to be “his love?!” We are stupid, we women. Not brilliant scientists at all. Stupid.
We met one another, Herry and I, on the neighborhood’s detached and frosty corner sidewalk to discuss the immediate and daily caretaking of the Boys and the legally allowed counseling to save the so‑called marriage for which I had asked Mr. Jinx to go ahead and mark us down. Apparently, to make things appear all authorized and official, the state’s district court judges out in the various hinterland counties need to take in on some registry the fact that a couple, where one of the two has filed papers for divorce, is or is not taking ‘advantage’ of this state‑legislated provision for marriage counseling therapy. In Iowa, the law regarding this supposedly rehabilitating treatment for a sick union amounts to three sessions with a marriage counselor. I have never seen, then nor since, nor was ever told of the existence of any sanctioned guidelines or approved prerequisites held by the court systems or the state legislatures that go into constituting the definition of what is meant by the two words, ‘marriage counselor’—for the purposes, at any rate, of its use in their judicial actions by said divorce courts.
At the time, I had no knowledge whatsoever of certain groups’ suspicion of and oftentimes outright righteous contempt for marriage overall. One such group is feminists. I had no awareness then of feminists’ positions, often termed radical or extremist. Or called a lot worse than that by those whom feminists seem to threaten. Specifically, I did not know feminists’ thinking—women’s or men’s—on any society’s legal system of marriage, let alone, on any of the binding contracts held out by most, it seems, as ‘necessary’ if a couple is to be in accordance with the precepts and canons of one or more of the World’s current, allegedly ‘great religions’.
I certainly wish I had known.
Most certainly, I wish I had known before I was being divorced. As a matter of massive fact actually, I wish I’d known long before I, pregnant or not, had ever married anyone. Married anyone under the laws of a republic’s government or under the laws of any rulers’ rigid, patriarchate‑riddled religions.
All of these ‘great religions’, of course, were written down—down through their histories—by only males. None of them had their books, the concepts, the principles or canons put down on to paper as thoughts initially directed from women’s brains. That is, absolutely none of the entire ‘holy’ bible, the dharma, the koran or the torah—such loudly touted and revered ‘sacred scriptures’—all!––none is known to have been written down by even one female. All of the works of any of these religions that comprise the schema for the construction, the composition and, most certainly for the control and correction of folks, these written works, catechisms and commandments to be used in their mosques, schools, synagogues, churches, shrines, holy sanctuaries, basilicas, cathedrals, madrasahs and temples around the Whole World are made so and mandated––by the Entire Earth’s very, very clear gender minority, by only the 47 percent of the Planet’s populace who are male. Even, realistically, a far fewer percentage number than that one when you consider that the littlest male humans, our World’s weest boys, who are on the whole, cared for and raised up by women and girls, aren’t themselves—yet—counted among these religions’ and legal systems’ constructors either.
So. The 53 percent who are, and have been for quite some time now, the Entire Earth’s very, very clear gender majority, we females, are completely left out of the loop—in making up and writing down these religious rules by which to apparently live. And about this marriage thing? For sure!
Sounds to me these religious rules do—as well as to other feminists—mighty suspect. As well as, shall I say, convenient?! How quite literally and utterly mother‑fuckingly convenient. How colonizing and rendering again childlike is this consecratory, crushing dominion over that 53‑plus percent who is the entire Globe’s majority population and, distinctly and for certain, over its DEhumans who are the adult ones.
Furthermore, judges choose, particularly in regard to divorce cases involving pillared fathers anywhere, to play right into this androcentrism from their lofty legal‑system benches worldwide as well—when, in some countries at least—such as the United States of America! they’re supposed to be representing ‘the law’. Separated, they are supposed to be, from the religious angle of contracts, separated away from the religious angling and wrangling of marriage contracts. Civil laws and their adjudicating officers are supposed to be separate. Aren’t they?
I certainly wish I had known. I wish I had known about there being groups of people out here in the real World who know and find marriage to be so dishonoring and so disrespectful and destructive—so DEhumanizing—to so many people. I hold Mehitable and, to almost an equal degree AmTaham, accountable for not specifically educating me and all of my sisters when we were very young about the great non‑requirement for religious or for governmentally sanctioned unionizing. They both, as our parents and thus as our protectors, should have been responsible for instilling in us three daughters, Legion, Endys and Ardys, the obligation to ourselves—the absolute exigency—to grow up independent—as The Way to life’s true and complete happiness. Independence … My Way, Sinatra (quite da’man) without a doubt, so correctly crooned.
It is as if, instead, both Mehitable and AmTaham merely wanted their daughters bound down, way, way down, through and by matrimonial bondage. Same‑old, ages‑old story for young girls and for old women all the World over for the last 12,000 years. All of these millennia—what a waste. An utter waste of us, the World’s majority wealth and resource. We, the 53 percent.
Hooking up? Yes.
Romping? Yes! Definitely!
Even rearing up babies together? Yes, of course. Absolutely!
But … but … but … just NOT in the manner of mawwiage.
Where men’s religions and men’s laws rule and reign down dominion over. All the fuck over The Other of the World’s adults who are now caused to be made, who are now—through the willful and purposeful, patriarchal tethering of marriage—rendered childlike and enslaved.
This enslavement of us is made so incredibly easy, this thralldom of Us The 53 Percent, because we DEhumans, we Not Males are not really … human. We are not. We are not human precisely to the degree and to the quality that Males are human. We Females, that is John Stoltenberg’s Not Males, are The Less Than. We are The Other. Ask any broadcast or print journalist reciting to us all or writing the World’s evening news. Ask any judge. Or any marriage therapist. Well, ask at the least Mr. Larry Brouhaha.
* * * *
Mr. Brouhaha, Mr. Larry Brouhaha greeted us each with a handshake, first to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, of course, and then lastly to me. To me the ushering‑in was made with a slight curling smile; it was a smirk all right and curved around the commissure of his thin lips. “And this, Mr. So‑Called Therapist, along with your deadened dishrag of a handgrip, is not my imagination,” I am left thinking. About 55 at the time, Mr. Brouhaha motioned, with a flip‑off of his forehead to his right, for us to be seated. His office was borrowed actually. It was in a modest, concrete block building rented by Storm County’s version of mental health services; and he, Mr. Brouhaha, performed this type of ‘service’—counseling on the county’s payroll, that is—I had no idea why except that, in hindsight, he couldn’t have made a living at marriage therapy had he been in a private practice.
Of average and truly nondescript, white‑bread appearance, his demeanor and countenance would have been equivalently as characterless except for the unmistakable haughtiness apparent in the air around him. The man exuded arrogance and entitlement. Right down to his head‑tossing when signaling to us the direction of our seats.
He and Narcissist Herry hit it right off. Herry, who when notified hadn’t wanted a whit to do with therapy for this marriage contract of ours and was present there only because of a canon‑backed court order to come, cracked a beginning snide smile, too. Himself swiftly seated with clasped hands thrown behind his head while simultaneously swiveling and leaning back, Mr. Brouhaha, minus so much as a “Tell me a little bit about yourselves,” began the session instead without missing the beat by stating, “So, Dr. Edinsmaier, tell me. In this marriage of yours to her, have you felt, well, ya’ know, married?” During the complete query, Larry Brouhaha, over his tortoiseshell half rims with his nose aimed at the floor, gawked at the thing in the room that was me, not directing this glare of his at all at Herry.
“Huh?” the Good and Brilliant Doctor answered.
Pivoting then both his view and his rotating chair toward Herry finally, Mr. Brouhaha I guess clarified, “Ya’ know, have you had at all that ‘I’m married’ feeling?”
“Aaahh … aaahh, yeeeaaah, yeah. Sure.” the Good and Brilliant Doctor answered. Stammered.
“I see. Good. That’s good. Well, maybe it’s good. Okay then. I have assignments for my clients so yours for our next session is to write down a list of what have been good things in your marriage and what have been, well, not so good things. As you see them, ya’ know, not so good as you see ‘em. Have this list ready by our next session. Ten days’ time suit? Thanks for coming. I’ll see you then. Just make the appointment with my girl out front.”
“Only I’m to make this list?” Herod Edinsmaier whined.
“O. No. No. She’s to make a list, too, of course.” Mr. Brouhaha repeated the rimming of his reading frames at me but addressed his words to Herry. This seemed to please Herry. Slacker Edinsmaier didn’t have to be the only drone here apparently. I was also a worker bee, certainly no queen of anything. Least of all, queen over that landscape of curdling coddled milk, rotting clotted cream and sullied honey that was our eroding, spoiling marriage.
Then that was that. The end of the entire first marriage counseling session.
“Wha’?!!! What just happened here?! Nothing. I mean literally nothing happened here, did it? Did I miss some utterly stupendous marital counseling tips or something? We are out the door and this is it?! Fine. Fine. I’ll make that goddamn, mother‑fucking list. I have just a frickin’ passel of things to put down on it, too!”
“And what the fuck’s up with this ‘my girl’ fuck? ‘Make the appointment with my girl out front.’ ” How cuntingly so pussylike Brouhaha’s androcentrism dripped that Herry picked right up on it and knowingly nodded his head vigorously while responding to Mr. Brouhaha, “Yessir, I’ll be sure ‘n’ do just that.”
We parted, silent, Husband and I, as usual. I went home. Only, later that afternoon, to telephone up “Brouhaha’s girl” to find out the date and time of that next appointment in ten days’ time hence—which Herod Edinsmaier had not only promised to do but’d also conveniently forgotten, I am thinking, to tell me of its details.
No such appointment, “Brouhaha’s girl” told me, had yet been made. Ah‑huh. The usual. I had that, then, to do myself, too. Of course. Of course, I did.
Fresh pad and pencil I got straight to work, but by the end of the second page, chock‑full, I determined to switch over to that handy‑dandy format I had so infamously happened across at Herry’s bland, walk‑in flat, Herry‑Daddee’s every‑weekend hovel of a shelter for my Truemaier Boys: the Rolodex 2” x 3” affixed‑card filing system with such fine indexing, categorizing, alphabetizing and dividing features. Complete this particular Rolodex was with its own smoky‑black, opaque, plastic dust cover to boot.
Always an organizer, always organized, I approached this specific written assignment no differently than any other in veterinary medical school or my PhD program. Card upon card upon card, entirely filled up in phrases beginning with verbs often separated by semicolons, was entered into its appropriate division and category, those divisions and categories themselves suitably indexed and alphabetized.
List: People, Institutions, Principles
Why angry: Self‑esteem, Money matters, Ambitions, Personal relationships
Tell re list: Resentments, Flaws in ourselves (incl sloth, lust, greed, gluttony, envy, anger, pride = ya’ know, Pope Not‑So‑Himself‑At‑All Innocent’s and Actors Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey’s and a whole passel of other males’‑mandated, wicked Seven, of course), Our fault in having resentment
Tell where I am in marital problems: How I feel and believe, How I perceive I make others feel
Intermittently throughout the next entire week and more I labored at this: someone else’s command to me again and, of course, a man’s assigning command to me again, and came away from the simple brown kitchen table on Othello Drive to this next mawwiage therapy session … naturally and expectedly then—as always with any other of my many, many learning endeavors anywhere else— … very, very well‑prepared.
While now back in my possession, this December 1988 construct that was my end‑of‑the‑year, (apparent‑end‑of‑my‑marriage) Rolodex file then … wasn’t always. Upon its seizure under and within a legality known as “discovery,” my—but never Bestial and Incestuously Frotteurist Herry’s, from that one‑room apartment wherein he’d written in his Rolodex of his loves … that is, of his love for fucking “cows, dogs, pigs and chickens” and of his groping love of “fondling his three baby sisters Kay, Celeste and Murielle”—my Rolodex came to be in its entirety Shindy Scheisser’s, ah, er, truly therefore Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s possession then and, as well of course, ‘the court’s’. This Accounting of Me … This Accounting of Doctor Legion True, of who I believe I am, actually came to lie for years—for years and years—in mountains of ceremonially stored cardboard courthouse boxes to gather in them there nothing but its dust and molds as Petitioner’s Exhibit #9 and marked 11 May 1989—a date just shy of two weeks away from Wednesday, 24 May 1989, the one whereupon I became officially uncoupled from Herry, the date on the document that was the very androcentric government’s and all patriarchal religions’ not‑mawwied‑to‑each‑other‑any‑damn‑more, very definite divorce decree. I was, of course in this action, not ‘the case’s’ Petitioner.
I began to read my carded assignment––at “Counselor” Brouhaha’s request to do so. One, then the next and the next and the next:
Resent Herry asking me why I want to stay married to him; resent his defining that when I say ‘I love you’ to him that that is sick, the love that I have for him. ‘By all right and reason I know I should separate myself permanently from him, but you see’, the One Day At A Time Al‑Anon book states on February 19th’s inspirational message page, ‘I love him.’
Resent Herry’s saying the divorce is his Step 9 to me, thereby his using and twisting the Program so he will never, ever have to humble himself to say to me that he was sorry or wrong about specific matters, issues, ideas, situations, people, whatever.
Resent Herry’s saying the divorce is God’s Will; uses it to again twist the Program around so it appears not to be self – rationalization and self – justification of his will really. My perception of how to twist the Program; have done it before myself.
Resent Herry for his NEVER wanting to be in the kitchen at the same time with me; resent his not wanting to cook together, do the dishes with me, etc, plan for company.
Resent Herry for his not going on walks with me EVER.
Resent Herry for his never just coming up to me in private and touching, hugging or kissing me, like in the kitchen, the shower, the car.
Resent Herry’s never coming to make love to me freshly clean shaven or groomed; resent him for the feeling of my not being able to ask him for this for fear he’d reject me and go sleep on the couch or elsewhere for that matter.
Resent Herry for his thinking that or suggesting that I became pregnant knowingly to try to trap him into some sort of relationship; resent him further for his NEVER taking at any time the precautions, through the use of condoms or simply asking me if I had the diaphragm in and if I didn’t, then his waiting about penetration until one of us was protected. Herry always left birth control to me; then blamed me for all three pregnancies – especially when I was so happy with them all.
Resent Herry for his telling me in Sept ’80 to get a job so we could ‘be solvent’. With 3 wee ones, childcare was over half of what I made that year ($16000); resent him for not considering borrowing from family members and instead of making me go back when I felt so very guilty about leaving the Boys only to clear $2.75 / hr. Then when I went back to work, resented him for not getting home from the Med Center earlier than 8 pm to save money (child care) and do some … do ANY … of the baby chores (baths, folding diapers, cleaning up clutter, making formula & baby food) leaving it to Rosemarie and others for which we had to pay. Or else, to me.
Resent Herry because he has NEVER said the words to me, ‘I love you, Legion.’ He has nev…”
I was abruptly interrupted. Interrupted with not so much as the holding up to me of an open‑palmed, still hand in the ‘stop’ signal. Nor an “Excuse me, Dr. True … ” Not even so much as a “Please, Legion.”
Just interrupted in mid word, “Myyyy Gaaaawd!!! Do you hear this, Dr. Edinsmaier?! Do you hear this?! Do you hear all of this?!!!” As always before with Brouhaha’s stares, Compadre Herry was the human addressed––but the thing in the room again locked within so‑called Marriage Therapist Brouhaha’s vista of eyeball penetration was me.
Dr. Edinsmaier muttered, “O O, jyeah. JYeah I do, Larry!” As he retorted, Herry’s mouth morphed inside that huge, huge head of his and with the snidest of curls took up a sideways stance—a practiced and long‑longtime skilled sculpting by the Truemaier Boys’ sperm source, the Entitled Pomposity who was still my spouse—on the lower portions of his mustachioed face that were his jaws.
Brouhaha continued his tirade about me in tyrannical tones but not to me, of course, “Is it any wonder?! How could you have possibly lasted this long, Herry. How?! It’s amazing to me that you can stand to just even be in the same room with this … this … this, cr__, cr__, aaaahh, person. Let alone, Herry, it’s almost Christmas, for chrissake!”
What precisely was Mr. Brouhaha about to call me? What? Creature? Critter? Criminal? Crazy. Crazy is what. Crazy and all of the other labels as well, he was. Yeah, Mr. Brouhaha, Professional Therapy Man, so wanted to but momentarily realized that legally he could not—right there in the Storm County Mental Health Services’ office—call me, the DEhuman and the Not Male that I was to him, any of those particular names. Right in front of me yet not to me. To my estranged husband, instead! Thinking in his so‑called professional brain along the same characteristic female‑loathing thread as had been Herry’s rapist‑thinking mindset when Professional Medical Student Edinsmaier so desired to drop his drawers and “fuck ‘em right there,” that is, engage in sexual intercourse and make love to the obstetrics courses’ DEhuman help––the women who were the how‑to‑perform‑vaginal‑examinations’ med‑school laboratory models.
O, wait a sec, I mean “screw those pussies” and “get me some strange,” instead, don’t I?! In order to get properly correct the parlance always of the Good and Brilliant Doctor for anyone’s coital activity.
Criminal or not. Rape or not. ‘True love’ or not.
When I glanced on Herry’s sheet of notebook paper ripped somewhere from a spiral spine, two words appeared scrawled near its top, but he had had no list of anything prepared assignment‑wise. I was not even privy to either of those two words; Mr. Brouhaha never asked the Good and Brilliant Dr. Edinsmaier one time to give either of us, least of all to give me, a recitation of anything, completed or not, that had also been Herry’s assigned homework.
That was that. Again. The end of this second session of marriage therapy.
No explanation to me for this outrage of Mr. Brouhaha’s and, of course, absolutely no apology.
No explanation is needed now. Now? Now … I know why the drivel that was this man’s diatribe about me, the misogyny just beneath his surface. And while, then, an apology was moooore than in order—but was not ever going to happen. No matter that besides Herry’s and everyone else’s end‑of‑December ‘holiday time’, my birthday was also coming up! This, plus no apology, was no gift!
There wasn’t even that legislatively allowed third session scheduled, and I certainly saw that, with embittered Mr. Brouhaha as “therapist,” there truly was no bother, indeed, of any other either. I paid my half portion of his fee for ‘services rendered’––of course, with my having to pay even ten cents of it actually being more abuse heaped on top of the haranguing and violence that had already been this man’s “counseling.” I never consulted with another marriage counselor then. And none since.
From these close encounters of Brouhaha’s first and second kinds began the birthing of my take on the legislatures and executive branches of both the state and the federal union as pertains specifically to the so‑male dealings with all manner of legal and religious things, of everything … as a matter of fact, related to marrying. The staunchest fundamentals of patriarchy we now see being lain down—again in this, the latest of millennia—in both their blatant and sometimes subtle legislative plans to keep female folks rigidly coupled. “If not to the original men from the women’s first or second unions, then just binding and coupling them up to any one will do. A marriage to anyone is enough to keep from our having to spend on her or her children, God forbid,” these multiple bills quietly propose—many of which are now up for discussion in states’ house and senate subcommittees. Discussed by men who wholly hold that mawwiage of woman to just any man is far better than to no man at all—not to mention … far, far better than to no man … ever … at all!
Too, these are the exact thoughts and the plans about making and keeping her mawwied off that that other addict, the one besides Dry Drunk Edinsmaier, has: that is, those of the Born‑Again Boy–King George.
* * * *
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
AmTaham True: Legion’s father [Mahatma backwards]
Mehitable True: Legion’s mother [Me hit-able—i.e. she was abusive]
Ardys and Endys: Legion’s sisters [names backwards]
Sterling: Legion’s brother [her mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]
Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco: Herry’s sister [misprision: concealing knowledge of treason/O'Revinnoco = O'Connivero backwards]
Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier: Legion’s father-in-law [juggernaut; aut = 0; misein = “to hate (misogyny)”]
Detanimod Edinsmaier: Legion’s mother-in-law [dominated backwards]
Fannie Issicran McLive: fawning enabler of ex [narcissi(st) and Mc(Evil) backwards]
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl
Legion’s Best Friends: Ms Grace and Dr Lionel Portia
Wende: = Legion's friend after divorce [committed suicide due to Custody Crisis]
Jim Cornball: Herry’s acquaintance from AA and realtor
Loser Lorn: Insurance agent referred by Cornball
Judge Harley Butcher: Family Court judge
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: Family Court judge
Judge Barry Crowrook: Appellate Court judge
Judge Pansy Shawshank: Appellate Court judge
Jazzy Jinx: Legion’s Family Court lawyer who sold her out
Shindy Scheisser: Herry’s lawyer [shindy = noisy; scheisser = German for shithead]
Li Zhang: Herry’s Aussie affair
Dr Freddie Goldstein & Ella: Herry’s colleague and wife
Mick: = Herry's acquaintance from high school; best man [not in Herry’s life after that as he had no true friends]
Varry Wussamai: Herry's AA sponsor (not a real friend) [I am a wuss backwards]
David Humes: nursing student; classmate of Legion's, y1968 - y1971, New York City
Edmund Silver: Legion's boyfriend pre-Herry
Braemore St: where Legion and her family lived, y1983 - y1986
Havencourt condominium: Legion's Ames apartment; after separation
Zephyr: tabby cat of Zane's, Mirzah's, Jesse's [pronounced “Zay – fear”]
Madonna: realtor
Larry Brouhaha: court-mandated marriage counselor
Author: Dr. Blue, aka Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)
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