Power of the Story, Part 2

My father, Arnold Green, is a child rapist.

The true story: I was 20 years old and visiting my Mom. I had ceased contact with my father shortly after he'd left her and wrote me a letter telling me not to blame her for basically everything although in the letter he pretty much blamed her for all his choices. (As Carolyn would say: pah!)

So I was in Hawaii spending time with my mother and she told me that she was still in contact with Arnold and he was living with a woman named Wendy who had a seven year old daughter. I pointed out to my mother that my father being near a female child meant rape would take place. My mother informs me that in a conversation with Arnold, he told her that the 7 year old liked to instigate sexual contact with him.

(My father told my mother, years previous, that he was having an affair with my 13 year old friend. He was raping and sodomizing her on a constant basis because her single mom was at work and my friend was home alone. Years later that same woman told me that he made her childhood a living horror.)

Anyway, I called CPS (Child Protection Services) and told them my father's history and that he was living with a child. They stepped in (bless them) but Wendy, the mother, sent them away saying that I made up the story and her daughter was perfectly safe.

I understand my father parted with a lot of money when their relationship ended.

So I wrote a story about it. Oh I changed some things but I wrote about a mother pretty much letting her daughter get fucked by a rich guy and then using it. I was ina creative writing class at the time and turned the story in for group critique. Oh my God, they hated it.

Amazing how people will tell you to your face that no mother alive would do such a thing. They ripped and shredded it. Not the writing but the plot.

Apparently real life is much more disgusting than fiction.

The reason I'm writing this is because I realized recently that I've never really told my stories.  I'm certainly not a shrinking violet but outside of some poetry back when I first started getting published, I've been surprisingly quiet on the subject.

So here are some of my stories. They don't cause me pain any longer and I don't want hugs or pity. But the more our stories go out in the universe, the more we bring others closer to us.

(And yes, there will probably be more. I'm just that way.)