CHAPTER 8: Two Tools

From: "The Saga of One F**ked Mother"

“Two Tools” is Chapter 8 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother based on author Dr. Blue’s own Post-Separation Crisis. Her novel uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are Mother-Fucking—a form of severe emotional abuse directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically deprived of her children and career and reduced to One Fucked Mother.

In Chapter 8, Legion is horrified that she had missed “tons of red flags” and did not recognize Herry was emotionally abusing her and her boys. She recalls the misogynistic humor he would use to denigrate her in front of the children and the judges. And she realizes his reciting of sexually-charged jokes to the children is not only abusive, but criminal—the same as exposing them to porn.

She wonders—can she ever forgive herself?—as she concludes that two tools are necessary to make right choices: awareness of the wrongness and willingness to make change, the latter of which is most often lacking. The chapter quote about a man on a horse refers to how, no matter how great men present themselves, underneath they are just men—so women beware.

Dr. Blue also adeptly illustrates in this chapter how judges accept men’s testimony as “evidence”—without any support or proof. Nor do the judges make any effort whatsoever to fact-check men’s accusations. This crediting of men’s false assertions about women in Family Court is a key component of the “mother-fucking”. Men’s lies are treated as truth—and there’s nothing (by design) women can do about it.

“Two Tools” follows “Foreplay”, Chapter 7, which has Legion realizing that Herry’s detailing of his extra-marital dalliances and fantasies during sex was emotional abuse. Recalling this disgusting behavior segues into her realizations in Chapter 8 of other behaviors of Herry’s she had endured that she had not recognized as abuse. Or had she?

All published chapters are included in the Women’s Coalition News & Views Section: “The Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page.

Chapters are stand-alone interesting so it’s possible to start with this chapter and work back. A Character List follows to help readers at any point. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday. Of course, subscribers will find each new chapter in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!

TEASERS

I wanted not “to know” them [red flags] because I wanted him…Ordinarily, justifications and rationalizations are brain functions; and my brain, being brilliant and all, would not have caved in to this sap. Surely it would have “recognized” the beast, the monster that this violent man is, wouldn’t it have?

The ‘findings of fact’ written by these various judges within and preceding the final pronouncements of their decrees, conclusions, decisions, all those court orders of theirs, came about from ‘evidence,’ they called it. Because it was testimony, it was then, just by that designation—as having been something attested to under oath—miraculously worthy of being known as and called … ‘evidence.’

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BOOK ONE: Chapter 8

Two Tools

“It’s just a man on a horse, Baby Girl. Nothing more. Just a man on a horse.”

— Anne Shropshire in the film role of ‘Doodlebug’ Bichon’s Great-Aunt Rae, “Something to Talk About,” 1995

I didn’t know it then. I didn’t know that this talk of Dr. Edinsmaier’s was abuse and violence. I didn’t know I didn’t have to listen to this or … respect, cherish, honor, revere, obey, treasure and trust such a person who spilled forth on me such crapulous things. I know it now.

And what’s more, I will probably write this a thousand times—ad nauseum—throughout this treatise until I can finally forgive myself completely for this life-altering blunder of mine: I am stunned at myself. At my passive, wussy, wimp behavior. I cannot believe that there ever was a time in my life, my life that is most precious and the life, the brain and the heart that I had considered most intelligent, hip, with it, even brilliant, I cannot believe that there ever was a time that I thought that what I wanted in that life of mine for my life-long “best friend,” for my helpmeet, confidante, lover, partner, for the father of my precious, precious children, for my husband … was such a person as this man is. How could I have gone after, allured, hoped for, besought, been made besotted by, wanted such a man to be my husband and my Boys’ parent? For a lifetime?

’Cuz that is how I had married Herry in my heart—and in my brain. For a lifetime. How could I have ever been such a person as this myself? The kind who actually had believed that this guy, Herry Edinsmaier, was the type of man in whom I had actually desired to place my respect and honor and trust? What had I been thinking? 

It’s obvious now. I had not been thinking. That is, to the point of recognizing, reconciling and accepting consequences. But I had been making a choice. The wrong one. A really, really wrong one.

Herod Edinsmaier and many from the nouveau therapy-ese 12-Steppers and other ‘functioning’ dysfunctionals love to spout on and on about how all of our lives are really a series of choices we get to make. What fails to be owned up to, even though it is well-discerned by these folks, is that for as many of the choices that are the correct ones in all of our lives, there are as many or more that are the wrong ones.

Which, of course, more likely than not have shattering consequences! But, like I said, we know, we always know. On the big ones. When we are making the wrong choice. And we so … choose. We go ahead and make the wrong choice anyhow. ’Cuz we wanna.

Two tools—ones very, very cheap, indeed, particularly when contrasted to the costs of shattering consequences and the price to be paid in the fallout after intentional but wholly wrong choosing—are all that are needed for making change in people’s lives: i) the knowledge or awareness that a change is needed, that something is amiss and needs correction or repair and ii) the willingness to make that change or that correction. Most folks, even small children, throughout most of their lives have the first one:  they know. And have always known. Since about the age of 5, 6, 7 or 8 years old what the right thing to do in any truly, truly huge life-altering situation is. [Granted: Children hijacked, abducted and, at once, molded into becoming kiddy killers as adult men’s soldiers and sexual slaves … the exception.]

What is lacking or totally absent is the second tool, the willingness. Which is why nothing changes when nothing changes. Making the wrong choice is not made in ignorance. It’s a conscious, brain-directed action. Even with those shattering consequences often known ahead of time, ahead of the choice one knows one is going to go ahead and make, or at the very least, even with the horrible consequences speculated upon ahead of time, one still consciously decides to shove the thoughts of these … aside.  Out of sight, out of mind.

As was mine … As was my decision to deny the consequences in order to choose to marry Dr. Wonderful. There had been warnings, of course. Lots of ’em, loads, tons of red flags in fact. I just chose, it was a conscious, brain-led activity, my choosing. I know it now. I chose to be blindfolded from every single one of them. I wanted not “to know” them because I wanted him; and if I had heeded any one of those signs instead, that intelligent, brilliant brain of mine would have had to prevail over any weak, sappy throbbings my heart could have put forth in order to justify and rationalize my wanting him. Ordinarily, justifications and rationalizations are brain functions; and my brain, being brilliant and all, would not have caved in to this sap. Surely it would have “recognized” the beast, the monster that this violent man is, wouldn’t it have? Beauty and the Beast. That was us all right ’cept I’d chosen to deny it. 18 December 1976, the afternoon we made our union legal in the eye of the State, I had even exhaled, a la Author Terry McMillan-style. After all, this was soon-to-be Dr. Wonderful. Ya’ know, Mr. Right! 

*  *   *   *

Where in the hell had I let my convictions and truths, the things that mattered, that had value and worthiness, where in the hell had I let them all fall away to? By wanting such a man as this to be beside me for all of my life.

Because there was more, much more that I listened to. That I let pass by my one eardrum without protest, without even so much as my holding up my hands as a silent halting against any more of it at the time the words tumbled inside of me and invaded and assaulted every cranny of my brain and my heart. I listened as the most attentive wife and mother of his three, most beautiful, azure-eyed boy children with silken, fine hair the color now of Iowa corn kernels, as the wife that my mother had taught me to expect to be. Servile, dependent, not as soft as she’d taught and hoped I’d’ve been, but, O, quite … attentive.

One night recently with my eyes closed, no noise in the house whatsoever, late at night in the dark, totally undistracted, I purposely went over in my mind’s ear and eye, year by year, period by period, the life I had had with this man. Specifically remembering just for the words that I had actually heard come out of his mouth, he using that voice of his that was dark velvety chocolate and, fuck knows why, could command and control whatever its so-smooth words fell upon. Specifically remembering, too, for the particular notes and musings of his, in his own hand-written script that I had seen, my eyes so stunned, that they couldn’t even well up yet the brain immediately behind them seeming to snap from the pressure just put there by the reading of these, his writings. I could actually hear the snappings in my head and the subsequent feeling of massive weight behind my eyes. My frontal lobe had been assaulted and violated yet again. Just in memory.

Words, everything about them, their derivation, their essence, every nuance, had been such a passion of mine. And my sweet Daddy’s, too. I’d adored Latin in high school, just devoured it. We’d spent hours and hours of our childhoods, both Daddy and I had, reading the dictionary for fun, for christ’s sake! And now this?!

There were the jokes. The ones to which Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was later to make sideways reference when telling a couple of judges including Butcher a couple of different times that he and his next wife as well, Fannie Issicran McLive, had great senses of humor. Humor the boys found particularly entertaining and educational, the humor that served as bonding between not only them and their dad but also between the Boys and their maybe, gonna-be, new stepmother. It made, he had testified, for “cohesion” in his, Dr. Edinsmaier’s newly forming “family in transition.” He told judge after judge that these traits of theirs for causing the Boys “to laugh and feel good” made him and her wonderful, caring role models, just terrific parents.

Sideways because, of course, the actual details of said humor were, in the courtrooms, kept vague, very, very vague. No specifics were gone into, about the depth or, more appropriately, the shallowness and the real substance of such jokes, the writings, the items displayed as funny to the Boys, the words. O no, no. Especially not the words. Especially not the words that were uttered or scripted and went inside of and beat up their mom, those wonderful Boys’ wonderful baby-making gismo, their mom.

So, of course, the judges, taking this all in, if not nodding off in actual slumber, nodded ever so slightly with just the smallest hint of a snide smile sneaking in at the one commissure of both upper and lower lips, their bulky, stogie-shaped and gilded fountain pens in hand hovering over their lined legal pads which lay at poised angles atop their massive bench desks built of solid oak or walnut or mahogany or hickory … and padded with black leather, too.

Poised for what? Bear? They didn’t really write anything down. Anything of meaning. Nothing that would be their guides from the sidelines, their memory helps from the margins or, for that matter, just their plain, goddamn notes. Notes from which so-called clarity and understanding would be derived and then go into meting out justice later on in what were to be called decrees, conclusions or decisions, that is. Court ORDERS. Tens of hundreds of them nearly. Over the course of six years.

Starting from that terrible year of the physical splitting when Herod Edinsmaier first grandly moved out of his own hand-picked Othello Drive master bedroom, the one done up in teal and sunshine yellow with oyster- and ecru-hued drapes that he never wanted drawn across the two nearly picture window-sized panels to the southwestern forest, the curtains he would concertedly haul open again and again—after I had shut them at night because we were disrobing.

He left that room during a blinding blizzard and permanently went to take up repose on the same blue- and green-flowered sofa I’d found him shedding tears upon and been scolded to get away from him then, too, some three years earlier during his pathology residency and my PhD study in Columbia, Mizzou. Over his mother’s death that particular 1985 episode of splitting away from me had been.

The couch was in the living room, of course, and also in front of several glass panes, one to the east and the street, the neighbors and traffic. Then there was the overwhelming one to the west, that football‐field view to the urban forest and whoever might inhabit it, especially at night, that, he had liked to boast to whoever came by the house, had ‘sold’ him on buying the structure in the first place just a half a year earlier.

For $112,500, he had bought a bachelor pad. The first ranch-style house built in Ames in 1947, as old as I was actually, and on the market just three weeks in July 1987, the same amount of time Dr. Edinsmaier had been in the town. Only he wasn’t a bachelor by then. Far and long from it. He had left us four in Kansas to finish out the Boys’ summer activities alone without him—and to completely pack up the household there, also alone and without him. Three weeks after getting into Ames and supposedly starting up a new branch of his Kansas City-based pathology laboratory when the absolutely highest cutoff offer we’d agreed that we could manage for a residential property had been 90 grand, he up and frickin’ bought a sprawling bachelor pad.

Well. It was only a marital agreement, one verbally made between a wife and a husband so certainly nothing to get bent out of shape over, let alone, care about keeping—apparently. No self-serving need to keep loyalty to me or stay bound to such a verbal ‘a-huh-ing’ to me at all now, was there? Just how was staying loyal to me cleaning up back there in Kansas and staying loyal to our made-over-the-phone agreement going to serve what it was he wanted now? Well, it wasn’t. He wanted that house and that picture window so, hey, end of loyalty. Period.

The newly titled and practicing doctor with three little Boys and mountains of educational debt had even as a finishing resident just the year before, also purchased not one, but two airplanes! The up-and-fly-away-in kind of airplanes, not the remote control-flown models, I mean! And kept them stabled, for monthly rental fees naturally, out at the hangers a couple of miles west of Manhattan. One a single engine and the other a twin which he wasn’t even rated to fly himself. He had purchased the twin so that when his single engine teacher pilot managed himself to get in enough hours flying it to become rated, why then, Mike could teach Herry and get Herry rated for the twin as well. Well … probably.

Well. There was certainly no ‘probably’ about what he already had as accountability in his then 41-year-old life. Father of three, little kids. Husband to a wife in just her very first appointment as an assistant professor when, near its beginning year’s end, she was up and canned (“contract not renewed,” it is formally called) for wont of her $39,500 annual salary amount with which to buy something else altogether that the newly appointed and incoming director had wanted—instead of her post—in his “executive and strategic reorganization plan” for the diagnostic laboratory, the lab director who had come from South Dakota into his top Kansas position a mere month after the Dr. Legion True—hiring one up and suddenly retired. Incredible personal debt never before as high as it was now for Herry and Legion—and all this occurring before the plane purchases which’d been $26,000 and then another $38,000 more.

And now the contracting of the debt of a dwelling just a couple months later—a dwelling not suited for anything nor for anyone but a high-rolling gigolo? Certainly one not suited for a family of five in 1987, with really big, really adult-type and long-, long-term responsibilities ahead of them.

Red flag. Chose not to see. Obviously, I chose not to see. Anyone with blinders on could have seen this one coming, but, hey, not me! Not me. Instead of a family home, it was just another red flag I chose not to see. Instead I remember receiving a telephone call from Herry, the call awakening me really early one morning back in the two-bedroom Kansas duplex, the top floor of which we’d been renting at $400 a month for that one and only professorship year of mine. About the same monthly leasing amount, really, as nearly all of the two-bedroom rentals we’d lived in throughout all of vet school, med school, residency and graduate school. He was asking, “Exactly how much money do you happen to have saved up that, maybe, you don’t remember about? Ya’ know, that I might not know about?” 

I can’t remember the amount I told him I’d had saved at all. In any accounts. Remembered accounts or unremembered ones! But I think it was around $2,700. What I do remember thinking at the time was, “You already know about all the money I have in any accounts and assets that I take care of. I’ve kept nothing from you that I’m aware of and certainly nothing about money amounts, that’s for sure. We’ve only been just students, for christ’s sake. We don’t have that much to keep track of yet, do we?” Had he had bucks stashed somewhere in some accounts that I didn’t know about then? Turns out, he didn’t.

Upon this second house-buying junket, the realtor wasn’t wearing a bra size nearly that of this house’s living room window. As had been the case just 14 months earlier in Kansas. The realtor wasn’t even a woman. The agent was a Mr. Jim Cornball, a loser about 55, formerly a pissant middle manager of the now defunct Ames Montgomery Wards store whom Herry had just met in those three short weeks at an Ames Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and who, when I was a month later escorted by him into the east foyer, actually strode into that living room, grandly gestured to the window to the west and pontificated, “This’s what’s convinced your fine husband to buy my wonderful house here, Ma’am.”

As if the minuscule and wholly unmentioned details that there was no dishwasher, no air conditioning, no garbage disposal, no insulation, that there was a dying refrigerator that actually expired for good just a few days after closing and a totally unfinished basement which was 37 degrees at Christmastime keeping cold everything above it as well and was itself totally uninhabitable by three little kids meant nothing to me and the Boys. As if the distance to the clothes washer and dryer in the catacombs of that useless, freeze-drying wasteful basement, being 77 steps from the kitchen sink upstairs and 113 from the Boys’ bedroom, was going to win me over as my new fitness training program beings how it came to consume so much of my energy and day to get the laundry for the three done that I didn’t have strength or time for true leisure exercise. As if a living room blanketed with the original drab olive green shag carpeting and huge enough to set a grand piano and host wedding receptions in would be a Hoovering housewife’s weekly delight. As if I, with this wholly unaffordable piece of shit for a home put upon us kids and me sight unseen, no less, would be just fantastically impressed by the same view that Mr. Cornball said had caused Herry to exclaim upon his immediately walking through its front door for the first time, “I just have to have this house!”

This from a man who, in just a few short months from then, was to claim and proclaim in courtrooms multiple times that he, by this real estate-buying episode of July 1987, had had ten years already of Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step recovery. Pish! If this family housing escapade is the definition of a “sober” state of brain and body called “recovery,” then goddess save us all! Save us all—from such a state. 

By today’s coastal standards, not too shabby a price, $112,500 for a bachelor pad, I know. Yet this was a quite married father of three still-growing youngsters, boys. The creek out back had no fish in it with which the three could get piscatorial. And the house itself? A two-bedroom. Same number of bedrooms that we’d nearly always had in married student family housing. From the metal and so cold, World War II Quonset hut that was the alleged, temporary housing of 796 Pammel Court at Iowa State University to the concrete blocks that gathered mildew so massively because there was no breathing of its walls of Hawkeye Court at the University of Iowa to the green wooden duplex on Braemore Road near the University of Missouri–Columbia. Except for the time in Iowa City that we’d brought from Mercy Hospital brand-new Third Boy Child Mirzah to his first home which was a one-bedroom unit in Hawkeye Court before we were able to move into our two-bedroom apartment there some several months after I, alone, had diagnosed the cause of Mirzah’s wheeze and Cloroxed off all of those moldy walls so that he could stop coughing and finally get the restful sleep that he so badly needed to be … a growing and thriving baby.

So. The Boys were still all in the same one room as always they had been and as small a room as ever, the same square area of their stuff all over the floor within a flash. Like always.

*   *   *   *

The court orders poured out from behind those small Iowa county courthouse walls week after week, month after month, from the time of this bed-to-couch move of Herod’s, February of 1988, which was made with such spectacular flourish meant so the Boys would witness that he, the schismatic, refused nightly ‘to be with their mom’ right through to November of that terrible year of 1994, and the final appellate colleague cover-up. To that last one-page cop-out of a so-called ‘order’ by the Iowa Supreme Court covering up the horrendous Iowa Court of Appeals’ precedent-setting decision. And covering up and covering over years and years and years of the lives of four fine folks those judges never even knew. Not to mention that of my sweet, now-dead Daddy.

The ‘findings of fact’ written by these various judges within and preceding the final pronouncements of their decrees, conclusions, decisions, all those court orders of theirs, came about from ‘evidence,’ they called it. Because it was testimony, it was then, just by that designation—as having been something attested to under oath—miraculously worthy of being known as and called … ‘evidence.’

Evidence implies something consisting of truths, of actual existence, doesn’t it? Webster’s Collegiate Tenth Edition Dictionary says “evidence” is: i) “an outward sign,” ii) “something that furnishes proof” and iii) “something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter.” That last, that’s a $5 fancy crock of a word for ‘judge.’ Some say it’s ‘the court,’ that ‘tribunal’ means ‘the court.’ But we all know by now, don’t we, just who the hell ‘the court’ is really? It’s the judge, simply a man.

Well, I guess words coming out of Herry’s mouth, oath or no oath, are, shall we say, “an outward sign.” But this testimony, this coming out of his mouth makes it ‘evidence.’ He said; therefore, it is. Oath-taking, as a Quaker, never meant anything to me. Truth’s truth. Whether it appears on one side or the other side of a courtroom door. In or out of the witness box, chair, hotseat. That’s why there is no oath-taking by persons of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, in court—or anywhere else for that matter.

Never once in six years, never once did I ever hear, see or know of any tribunal at the district court level or at the Iowa Court of Appeals level, six of them there who are still called ‘judges,’ or at the final state one, the Iowa Supreme Court where those nine are actually reverently ensconced each in the title of ‘justice’ … never once did any man and the one woman, any so-called ‘justice-dispensing official’ involved in our proceedings, demand that anything that came out of Dr. Edinsmaier’s mouth, his next wife’s or his last wife’s mouths either for that matter, be researched for its veracity. Not one time.

Dr. Edinsmaier, or Fannie McLive or I too, on any day in court, in anything he or any of his lawyers or legal assistants wrote or submitted, could say or put down whatever he liked—and not once did Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor, Judge Harley Butcher or any of the 15 judges and justices of those two state appellate courts, including each of those two courts’ chiefs, send an unbiased courthouse official, in the manner of an uninterested, neutral third party “outwardly” into the community to bring back “proof” to the judge that what had just gotten ‘said’ was, indeed, ‘evidence.’ That is, that it was, indeed, “an outward sign,” something that furnished proof or legally ascertained the truth of any matter related to this case. Never.

So. In effect then, Dr. Edinsmaier could, for instance, say thus and so or this and that, over and over, time and again—and no one anywhere ever checked out what he said. No one did. Ever.

I did not know it then, but I know it now:  Depending upon who you are, it is easier to lie to and deceive anyone inside an American civil court of law and get away with it than it is to lie to and deceive one’s own mom and dad. It is easier to lie to and deceive an American civil court of law, which, we all know, is a judge or a bunch of ‘em, than it is to lie to and deceive your own minister, your own teacher, your boss and co-workers, your spouse or even your own child. It is, mind you, easier to get clean, slick away with lying to and deceiving an American civil court judge about anything, depending, of course, upon who you are, than it is to lie to and deceive yourself!

And so. The ‘evidence’ was that Dr. Edinsmaier and his next wife, Fannie Issicran McLive, could ‘relate,’ could express plenty of happiness in such a lighthearted, easygoing and fond fashion to the Boys because of the way the two of them handled humor. 

*  *   *   *

What, as a matter of…‘fact’…, were Herry-Daddee’s core-dehumanizing jokes and the smutty items touted as cutesy but, instead, so filled with his raunch culture, the vile-based jocularity by which I myself was internally brought down because it became the basis for his modeling humor to my children, my boy children? The humor that would have, no doubt however, brought great huge grins and not just ever-so-slight smiles to the mouths of men in long, flowing, ‘somber’-black robes? If they had been privy to them, say, in the steam rooms or on those Wednesday afternoon golf greens? After facing down their colleagues with such sober propriety and each blasting the other just those very mornings in district or appellate sessions? What were the actual jokes of the father to my sons, including particularly the one Herry-Daddee recounted to them all as they sat, their attention of course captured, inside the booth of a wee café in Bass County, Iowa’s City of Fatlantic that certain Saturday afternoon in July 1989, on which my three Boys at this meal were making their very first acquaintance with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, their soon-to-be stepmama about to formally become the next Ms. Doctor-Wonderful and, therefore, to comprise the servant portion of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s … second family? With Mirzah, Jesse and Zane comprising that “transitioning” second family’s male children at their prepubescent ages then of nine, ten and 12?  

Well, that specific one? Calculatingly and cunningly “cohesive” that joke was—particularly to the two of my Boys who were, by then already, quite endeared to the outdoors and to hunting with their Grandpa AmTaham and with me:  On another Saturday, a duck hunter was on his way home from a long day of hunting. He'd just crossed over the Carlton Bridge when he was pulled over by a Game Warden. The Warden walks up to his car to find the hunter's window already rolled down.

"Can I help ya’, Warden?" Hunter says.

"Well, yeah, ya’ can," says the Warden. "I noticed when I passed you that you’re wearin' huntin' attire, and it's my job to inspect any game that you might have. Have you been huntin' today? If you bagged anything, well, I'll need to see it."

"Why, yessiree, Sir, I got three ducks today—they're in the trunk," Hunter replies.

Hunter gets out of his car and walks back to the trunk which he gladly opens. The Game Warden sees three ducks—lined up neatly in the trunk. He picks up one of the ducks and holds it up to the light, looking it over. Then he begins sniffing the duck’s butt—like a hound on a scent. Then he takes his pointer finger and rams it up the duck’s ass—all the way to the third knuckle. He pulls his finger out and sniffs it. Then he points that finger at the hunter.

"You shot this duck in New Zealand, er, I mean New Hampshire. I’ll need to see a New Zeala … um, I mean a New Hampshire huntin’ license—right now!" the Warden demands.

The hunter, who's amazed by this Warden's keen sense of smell, pulls out his wallet and fumbles through it for a moment, finally producing the license. The Game Warden looks it over for a second and hands it back to the hunter.

"How in the world did you know where I shot that duck?" Hunter asks, totally baffled by how accurate the Warden's sense of smell is. "I've been a Game Warden for pretty nigh 35 years. You just get to know these things after awhile," Warden replies.

He picks up the second duck and goes through the same routine: first the sniffing, then the finger rammed up the duck's butt, then the shit-smelling again. "Ya’ shot this ‘ne in Massachusetts, din'cha? You sure do get around. Now, I’ll need to see your Massachusetts license or you'll be in big trouble, Chummy!" the Warden shouts, thinking he’s got ’im for sure this time.

The hunter, who is by this time totally in awe of this talent that the Warden is displaying, reaches for his wallet yet again and again produces the requested license. "I can't believe it!" the hunter guffaws, nearly falling on the ground in disbelief. "How did ya’ know where I shot that duck?!"

"I told ya’—it's many years of experience. I can tell by their shits’ smell!" the Warden replies as he inspects the Massachusetts license. "So far, you're OK, but let's check out this last duck."

The Warden goes through his routine one final time and puts the third duck back into the trunk. At which point he turns to the hunter who is still quite aghast with disbelief. "All right," the Warden says, "you shot this one here in Maine, din'cha?" he queries. "’f course, I'm gonna need a Maine huntin' license right now. Or you're gonna git written up." The flabbergasted hunter pulls out his wallet again and this time, a little annoyed with the Warden, produces his Maine hunting license. The Warden looks it over carefully and hands it back to the hunter. "Well," the Warden says, "it looks as though everything's in order. You're free to go."

The Warden walks back to his truck. But just before he gets in it, he turns back to the hunter who's still standing next to his car—not believing what has just happened. "Wait a minute!" the Warden hollers.

"I know you've been huntin' all over New Zeala…, er, I mean New England today—but where in the hell’re ya’ from anyway?"

Hunter turns around, bends over, drops his pants, spreads his cheeks wide for the Warden to see. 

"You're so friggin' smart, Warden,—You tell me!"

* * * * *

An ages-old, standard measure of the why-whatever_inanimate_object-is-better-than-women ‘classic’ viewed by Dr. Edinsmaier to “cohesively” seal for all of my young Boys the slavish and dehumanized stature that there is to Herry-Daddee’s notion regarding all female human beings, regarding all of us Not Males, is best typified in his often sniggered “Why_Bicycles_Are Better Than Women” …

1.  Bicycles don't get pregnant.

2.  You can ride your bicycle any time of the month.

3.  Bicycles don't have parents.

4.  Bicycles don't whine unless something is really wrong.

5.  You can share your bicycles with your friends.

6.  Bicycles don't care how many other bicycles you've ridden.

7.  When riding, you and your bicycle can arrive at the same time.

8.  Bicycles don't care how many other bicycles you have now.

9.  Bicycles don't care if you look at other bicycles.

10. Bicycles don't care if you buy bicycle magazines.

11. You'll never hear, "Surprise, you're going to own a new bicycle!" unless you go out and buy one yourself.

12. If your bicycle goes flat, you can fix it.

13. If your bicycle is too loose, you can tighten it.

14. If your bicycle gets misaligned, you don't have to discuss politics with it.

15. You can have a black bicycle and bring it home to your parents.

16. You don't have to be jealous of the guy who works on your bicycle.

17. If you say bad things to your bicycle, you don't have to apologize before you ride it again.

18. You can ride your bicycle as long as you want and it won’t get sore.

19. You can stop riding your bicycle as soon as you want and it won’t get frustrated.

20. Your parents won’t remain in touch with your old bicycle after you dump it.

21. Bicycles don't get headaches.

22. Bicycles don't insult you if you're a bad rider.

23. Your bicycle never wants a night out with other bicycles.

24. Bicycles don't care if you're late.

25. You don't have to take a shower before you ride your bicycle.

26. If your bicycle doesn't look good, you can paint it or get better parts.

27. You can ride your bicycle the first time you meet it without having to take it to dinner, see a movie or meet its mother.

28. The only protection you need to wear when riding your bicycle is a decent helmet.

29. In mixed company you can talk about what a great ride you had the last time you were on your bicycle.

30. Plus—ad infinitum—more of them whenever Herry chose to chortle on to my Boys some newer of its lines exemplified in ones such as: “I don’t hafta send my bicycle a cutesy ‘I’ve got raging hormones’ greeting card in order to jump-start it and get it ready to ride—that is ya’ know, like the smutty one I’d purchased when nine-year-old Mirzah was with me at the store and I, Herry-Daddee, read it back to him!” — “An’ I don’t hafta prophylactically ’member to bring along on my trail for tail that cutesy, gem-studded rubber when my bicycle finally does get jump-started and is ready to ride.” 

Now … imagine, instead, this very same script—but with the one exception, though, of just one of its players inside of that scenario: Imagine instead of Herry-Daddee as the provider of the criminality to it all … if—if at these Boys’ ages Dr. Edinsmaier’s adult neighbor just next door or down the street (male or female) or his district’s upstanding United States congressman (Republican or Democrat) or any one of his so-pious parish priests over at their churchy residence had been supplying any one of my minor Boys with this predatory smut, with this pedophilic verbal molestation? with this very same … pornography? 

* * * * *

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LIST OF CHARACTERS

Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother

Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: ex/“Sperm Source” [“re: I am snide” backwards]

Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son

Jesse 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 [mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]

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 [narcissis(t) and Mc(Evil) backwards]

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

Friends: Yanira, Grace, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl

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Author: Dr. Blue AKA Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)

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