Friday, May 2, 2014

PORTRAIT OF SAINT LOUIS "FINEST", CIRCA 1982

Reading about the underage girl that was raped and then "man-handled" by the Alton police department has brought back a lot of bad memories about my experiences when I was teenager.

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Alleged-rape-victim-Metro-East-police-department-verbally-abused-me-257420951.html

Both as a rape victim, and as a young "I don't know how to say no, and sometimes men don't listen when I do" girl.

Let me just go on official record here that I have performed sexual acts in police cars, marked and unmarked, for police officers, in St. Louis city and county.

These officers knew my full name, where I lived, what school I (was supposed to be going) to and exactly how old I was.

Most of them are a blur.  A few really stand out.

The off-duty cop at the Steak 'n Shake on Manchester that talked me out of reporting a really brutal rape by two men in the Hill.  I had a ring of blue bruises around my neck from where two men had strangled me.  They had talked about killing me, in front of me.

Mr. Officer not only talked me out of it, he wanted sexual favours, too.

The worst though was the last.  I might have been of age by then, I was 16.  I'd left that crazy life of racist white men that wanted sex from me all the time.  I'd transformed into a radical communist punk rocker, in part because nothing scared those men like gay men and black people in the Delmar Loop.

Between the time I was 12 and 15 I had had sex with a lot of men.  Almost all of them white, no black men at all,  I only say "almost" because I am pretty sure there were Hispanic men when I was a runaway in California, when I was 13.

Most of these guys were average south city and county guys of that time.  (Remember, these were primarily white, working class neighbourhoods then.)

The racism really bothered me. But I had a deep father fixation.  I was hungry for any male attention.  I was wild and had no male family members to protect me.  Even young I was a very strong person, and very anti-authoritarian.

A troublemaker.  The kind of girl you hope your daughter never befriends and your son never dates.

I hated the racism, but I loved the men.  The sex was completely unenjoyable, but I liked the touching and affection from the boys I actually had feelings for.

Most of the men I just didn't know how to say "no" to effectively, and many of them were very aggressive.  To get rid of an aggressive man, I would find another that was more violent, but you can imagine how that worked out for me.

Please remember I was 13.  I was a stupid kid that thought she was really smart.

At 16 I was still too smart for my own good.  I don't recall the details of how I met Mr. Vice Officer.  Underage drinking is certain.  I saw him a lot, he was going through a divorce. And I thought he would protect me when I got arrested, which at that point had become for political activities, and not just being a run of the mill "tragic" girl/troublemaker. (Always funny to me, that I am the "tragic" girl, because so many grown "decent" "respectable" men got sex from me.)

At this point I thought I could control Vice Officer for my own purposes.  I'd finally had an orgasm a year earlier (on my own, from reading a Cosmo magazine).  That experience had been another motivation, all those men, and not once!  And too suddenly understand what had really been happening! Along with finally finding a way out of the racist world vis a vis revolutionary politics, political activists, punk rock, and the Loop.

(My family was not, but we were mostly surrounded by "white culture".  My first crush on a boy in grade school was African-American.  In third grade.  That was the year I learned that black people and white people were not allowed to mix.  And I mostly learned this from the black girls at my school, many of whom had been my friends until this crush was confided.  That is another story, for another day.)

So after awhile, Mr. Vice Officer's wife leaves him, and he takes me to his house.  After we have sex, he takes me to the den to show me this plaque he is so proud of.

Now let me tell you something about cops.  You hear all the time about cops shooting their guns, but it is still rare for an individual officer to not only  have fired his weapon, but to have killed someone.  At least back then.

In Los Angeles there was a cop in the Ramparts division that had fired his gun on ten occasions.  I don't recall if he ever hit anyone, or killed anyone, but he was called "Rambo" by his co-workers simply for the amount of times he had fired a weapon.

So for Mr. Vice Officer to have shot and killed someone made him a big man.  And he'd shot a black man during a crime.  And the man had fired a gun at Mr. Vice Officer.  (He didn't say "man" or "black man" or "criminal".)

So he takes me to his private den to show me his most prized possession.  A wood plague.

So this wood plaque has a photograph of the man in the morgue.  It's just the man's head, wrapped in bandages, so you can only see his face.  It's the guy Vice Officer shot. Under the photograph.is a brass plaque that has engraved "Portrait Of A Dead Porch Monkey."

Trauma, shock, fear, and numbness were pretty well known to me.  He took me home talking about some trip to San Diego he was going to take me on or something.  I never saw him again, that I can recall. I know I never slept with him again.  Or gave him head in his unmarked car he drove even when off-duty.  (It doesn't matter what a man does for a living, or where he's from, or what religion he is, most of them are the same thing when it comes to their dicks.)

A uniform doesn't make a man honest. A badge doesn't make him a hero.  And a gun doesn't make him courageous.

What is that about silk purses?

I have met some "good cops" in the intervening years.  Although I still don't get how I am "the tragic one".  I think it is much more tragic that men like this defined the police force, and might still today.

That men like this are given guns and license to shoot and kill.  Men that figured out they could become cops and get a salary instead of paying Klan dues. (Shut your eyes, exchange a few words, and no difference between the convo's of the cops and Aryan Brotherhood.)

And men like this should not be arresting underage rape victims for intoxication.  Or trying to talk her out of reporting the crime.

If cops are supposed to be such pillars of society and all that is right and good in the world, then they had better start living up to that.

It is not my responsibility to control your libido.

Would you have treated a boy that age that was drunk and just been raped by a pedophile in the same way?

Personally, I think prostitution should become a way of life for all women,  We should charge men money for sex.  That is the only way that we will ever be able to get control of our bodies and really make raping someone a serious crime.  The only other thing the "erect members" of society value is money.

Men should have to pay for it, every time, with every woman, and where she controls the circumstances, act and price, as well as the punishment for THEFT OF HER BODY.

You know, every time I think I am all enlightened, something like this Alton shit happens and all I can think is "I hope those cops get fired and I hope they never get laid again."

So, yeah, Happy May Day.  (Bealtaine is the eve of the 4th this year.)

PS- I 've written a lot (and spoken at a lot of feminist and rape survivor meetings) about my experiences.  On this blog, there is also this poem too about this part of my life: http://laladyrae.blogspot.com/2012/12/poem-there-was-rapture-and-all-i-got.html