Know Thyself

I am Kathleen Hensley, radiating energy.

[kathleenhensley]

X Files

Scene Three

We have been out for my then-friend’s birthday (I lose her after the fall-out from X). After two drinks I black out. I can remember squishy flashbacks: vomiting in a trashcan at X's (and his then-girlfriend's) house (she is conveniently out of town). I am not a puker (I in fact fear it), so it is clear something is not right. The blackout is extensive from what I later understand from onlookers, long hours of not remembering. I have a fuzzy memory of him on top of me in his bed. I have no control over my body. I feel like I am swimming inside of myself. When I wake up I still feel very out of sorts, not myself, don’t have any underwear on, call in sick at work, and go to my friend’s house and tell her something terrible has happened. She urges me to call the police, but I can't bring myself to do it because of the weird history between X and me. This kind friend, incidentally, is one of the only people who heard the story and believed it.

He assaulted me, or worse raped me. Even now, many years later, I am reluctant to call it what it is. Not because I doubt the truth, but because I hate it.

Many people who caught wind of this didn't believe it happened. Or they didn't believe I wasn't complicit or somehow responsible. I was a harlot, and his name was in no way tarnished. Putting it simply: it was easily one of the darkest, worst nights in my life. X I think still lives in Kentucky. I’m not sure how his health is. He's an artist and people love his work. I know he will never admit to what he did, and that his deceit quite possibly will slowly kill him.

Meanwhile I just want to scream it to the world that this happened! This happened! This behavior is unacceptable. And no-one, not even a love-torn affairs-strewn woman deserves it. I admit my faults with him and with others, but that night was certainly not my fault. What he committed was the worst kind of invasion.

Myth: If the assailant, victim, or both are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the victim is free to consent to sex and the assailant therefore cannot be charged with rape.

Fact: When intoxicated, an individual cannot legally consent to sexual activity. Forcing sex on someone who is too drunk to give consent is still Criminal Sexual Conduct in the Third Degree. Rape is a serious offense, and people who commit crimes while under the influence of alcohol or drugs are not considered free from guilt.

[kathleenhensley]

X Files

Scene Two

X drunkenly chases me out of his little one-story bungalow. I’m not sure where his girlfriend is, but he isn’t happy that I have been talking to some of his friends (one, by the way, who shoved his way into the bathroom with me and tried to get me to stroke his penis, which I refused to do. X did not keep very good company as it turned out). It quickly devolves to a terrible late night with terrible selfish musicians. X, as I was saying, chases me out the door, yelling who knows what at me. Probably calling me a whore and a slut, and whatever else. I’m run/walking because something is off. His anger feels dangerous. Lo’ and behold: he launches a half-drunk fifth of bourbon down the street, aiming for me. Luckily he’s a poor aim, and the bottle shatters in the street about 6 feet away from me. I don’t let my good fortune stop me from flat-out running. X’s pretty crippled by his arthritis and lack of proper self-care so I know he won’t be able to catch me. I don’t expect him to get into his van and begin driving after me, though. A few blocks into the chase, he pulls into a driveway that is right before me (quite hazardously) and yells at me to get in the van. I refuse and tell him he should not be driving and he should go home. We both repeat ourselves a few times, he is so angry smoke clouds should have been erupting from his ears. He might as well have been gritting his teeth at me, too. I don’t really remember looking too closely at him, for fear that it will make things worse. It isn’t pretty. He speeds off and around the park that we are next to. He drives like he has a wild animal hanging off his back: swerving and speeding and peeling out. I shake violently and walk quickly the rest of the way to my apartment.

That wild animal hanging off X’s back? It is, likely, a real threat by another name: white male aggression. It comes out again later, too, and in a worse way. But because of the undeniably terrible status we hold societally (i.e. he is engaged, and not to me), the backlash from peers is that a) it didn’t happen, or b) I deserved it, or some twisted combination of those two.

[kathleenhensley]

X Files

Scene One

I was searching through my email trying to find the name of a song. I found, as I knew I would, old playlists from my days as a radio dj. There is a small batch that caught my eye from early 2007—I was 23. My identifying landmarks so far: I finished college, escaped to Montana for a brief year, and then to Brooklyn and then crashed and burned my way back to Lexington, KY where I began the subconscious work of rebuilding. I was listening to everything, as one does in their early 20s, but as I consider these amalgams of tunes with wizened ears, some of the tempo switches I find jarring.

I was involved in a false and troubling affair with a man who was severely arthritic. We’ll call this man X. When I first met X several years before the affair began, he was on disability, though from my rather cruel and ignorant vantage point it looked like he just drank a lot, drew, and played music in his two-piece band. He was pained, no doubt, and didn’t deal with it very well. I drank with him often in the early months of 2007. It didn’t help the arthritis, I’m certain, and our affair didn’t help with my own emotional brokenness. We were, on the whole, a toxic and disturbing pair.

X no doubt influenced quite a bit of my choices in these playlists I have uncovered. If there is one positive thing I could attest: he had reasonably good taste in music. I say reasonably because he had a thing for KISS (need I go into how exasperatingly stupid KISS is?). The rest of his preferences were agreeable and followed some semblance of logic. Of his many records, some were semi-obscure 50s jazz, rat pack, then the odd country record. He also really had a thing for Prince, which was where I could get on board. I wanted to impress him with my interest in and awareness of delta blues (I was especially fond of Charley Patton and Lightnin Hopkins). I’d play some of these songs in my radio shows, then, in the same set, sweep into the Cambodian rock (Ros Sereysothea), or Fleetwood Mac, or The Fall, or the endless tracks from the Eccentric Soul compilations. Those jarring musical shifts so perfectly mirrored the turmoil I willed my life to be.

One memory unfortunately wasn’t blackened by alcohol abuse. Imagine being swayed by a sputtering, dismissive, and sloppy drunk man with patchy facial hair and a fedora, singing, God forbid, a Tom Waits song, in the middle of the night on a lonesome downtown court. I can’t imagine that wooing me today, but for whatever reason it worked in 2007. I wonder did anyone living in that court hear him bellowing? Beyond that his voice was a good match for Waits, it was remarkable only in how ludicrous, slovenly, and selfish the moment was. Though any feelings about him have faded to something resembling a dull mental “huh,” I do find his choice of serenade irritatingly vindictive. “Nobody is gonna love you the way I could, cause nobody’s that strong.” His eyes glazing, voice raspy, and feet stumbling. Charming. Who knows what got into him that night (besides the whiskey and thousands of cigarettes), but lord knows it was not love.

[kathleenhensley]

A Moment Longer

I kiss you on your forehead

Where you smell gently worn

Soft and lovingly, mildly bathed.

“A familiar smell,” I later tell my sister,

“Of childhood.”

I pepper your hospital eggs

Adjust the settings on your bed.

You are upright.

It’s just us two chickens, grandad,

In room 15 of the hospice unit.

A lonely 8 a.m. in this darkened space.

I check the skin of your arms,

Wrap the orange wool shawl around your elbows.

You take a few bites of lukewarm

Mechanical feed and wave it away.

Then you give me the signal.

I hand you today’s paper.

I enjoy watching you peel it open,

Reading as curious as ever.

I enjoy this as much as I enjoy watching you rest

With deep lung-filled breaths,

The rise and fall of your chest

Assuring me you are still with us

At least this moment longer.

“I don’t understand how he got elected,”

you say, skipping over obituaries.

You hand me the front page

And fold what remains neatly

Your prize in the crackerjack box:

The crossword.

“It’s a long one,” you say between shallow coughs.

“blank blank c blank blank e, r, blank, blank blank.

“Heal.” You count the letters. “10 letters.”

You figure it out quickly: “recuperate.”

We skip around, and largely you’re entertaining me,

Not actually needing me.

You need my attention as much as I need your act.

[kathleenhensley]

Ghost Return

“I want you to tell me everything,” he says. “EVERY-THING.” I listen. “I know you’re not telling me something.” I’m stunned, inactive, quieter than I ought to be. It’s been a bad phone call and I’m looking forward to it ending. The conversation has, quite magically, drifted from my relaying vulnerable personal information (that I hadn’t owed him or anyone), to him believing his “prying” the information out of me is evidence I’m keeping secrets from him. It dawns on me rapidly how little he trusts me, and that he clearly is operating with some kind of fantasy of who I am, instead of working to see who I truly be. Instead of seeing, deeply, he decides he’d rather interrogate, then shame me for the truth he uncovers. This, I’ve decided quietly, doesn’t feel like love to me. It feels like unkindness. 

At a different point in time, a million years ago, perhaps I would have felt I in fact owed him all the information he seems to require. Now I see that I owe this man nothing. This, a man who broke things off with me, and cut off communication completely. What could I possibly owe someone who treats a “special bond” in that way? That is no way of honoring love. 

So, I drop the rope. I refuse to commit my heart to someone who won’t come to me in a whole way. It’s over. The lightness is immediate and brings me a crisp joy. I dance in the kitchen with my kitten. I talk to friends with my whole self, and whole energy. I crank tunes. I sleep enough, eat enough, work hard. I feel whole, and content, almost immediately: because I know I’m being loyal to my own self. I want a whole, enduring love, and won’t sacrifice that for anyone any longer. 

[visceralrealist]

A new playlist. Summer tunes to get your slummer on. 

[kathleenhensley]

Hard to not crave this. 

Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester

[visceralrealist]

“I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature”

[kathleenhensley]

Vin Diesel singing Rihanna's 'Stay'

"Not really sure how I feel about it, something in the way you move, makes me feel like I can't live without you. It takes me all the way. I want you stay."

An oldie, but a goodie. Current mood, definitely. Thank you, ghosts. 

[kathleenhensley]

Queen - Somebody To Love (Official Video)

Subscribe to the Official Queen Channel Here http://bit.ly/Subscribe2Queen Queen- Somebody To Love (promo video, 1976) Click here to buy the DVD with this vi...

I want to love. 

[kathleenhensley]

When I feel, very deep down, that something really good is about to/is presently happening, I have this funny tendency to emotionally/energetically feel the need to hold my breath, so to speak, lest I somehow ruin it by merely attempting to put into words what it is. Language takes away the mystery that is happening inside - it is an unveiling. Sometimes I want to hold onto the unknown a little longer.

[visceralrealist]

In the beginning, there can only be dying, the abyss, the first laugh.

Helene Cixous (via visceralrealist)

[kathleenhensley]

[kathleenhensley]

Romance is this. Seizing moments.

[kathleenhensley]

In the past I’ve listened more to The Index’s version of this song, which is glorious, messy and raw, but something about the full sound in Vanilla Fudge’s version speaks to me now. I also adore the harmonizing vocals. 

I wish I had a good anecdote for this one. I am alone, happily so, and yet crushing and fantasizing from a distance about an incredibly unassuming person. It is wonderful, and perhaps also dangerous, to have a mind that can and does create an entire mythology about a stranger. I don’t even know his name, though when we speak I imagine him to be very wholesome and I imagine what it would feel like to fall asleep with him, his arm draped on my hip. The fantasy is strong.

[kathleenhensley]

Living in the library the last several weeks, working through to the finish line of my thesis, due this fall. I can feel the end is near, feel maddeningly close to my work, my ideas. 

Also suddenly inspired by a new voice in my life - a new man - a new hope. Quite out of nowhere. Someone who I think is prepared to see me, and I him.

I have been rather obsessively listening to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On album - this song specifically probably several dozen times (and this particular demo version of “Symphony”). There is something so compelling in Marvin’s versatile, urgent, tense, overwhelming sensations, proclamations. The scratchy, tired rattling sound in his questions and exclamations. He feels a raging sadness.

He feeds my heart. 

[kathleenhensley]

"So?" 

I was fidgety, wishing almost that I did not have a body in that moment that his eyes could look at. I found him unattractive. He looked 10 years older than he said he was, shorter, fatter. Kind of Peter Lorre-ish. Tried not to recall "M."

"How do you think this is going between us?"

I had met him about 30 minutes prior. "I think you're interesting." I was reaching, and felt like an ass for lying.

"God you're so fucking beautiful." I didn't hear this over the traffic. We were sitting at a table outside on a busy street at 9:00 having a beer and fried pickles.

"What?" When he repeated himself, it made the whole thing worse. "Oh, thanks, but, no." He laughed. He knew it was not going well.

He tried holding my hand and I quickly took it back (he laughed again) and asked him about California, the drought. We talked about camping and Brazil. I didn't want to get into any deep waters, kept it light, polite. Brief.

As we were getting up to part ways, he asked me, "how's my voice?" He has a thing with nice voices. I told him it was lovely, which was true. It wasn't swoon worthy, but it was pleasant.

We got to a corner, and said goodbye. I told him it was nice to meet him, because it was. It was a lesson in expectations and not creating them, especially in these scenarios. I have a tendency to create a lot of wonder around an unknown, and a lot of romance. It's time I depart from this disastrous thinking.