Tag Archives: Stony Brook

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The GOP’s rape confusion

Recently, I have heard a lot from the GOP about rape.  Apparently, women cannot become pregnant if they are raped.  This information would have been very useful to me when I was younger.  When I was 18 to be exact.  That’s the year I was raped and then went four months without having my period.  Not knowing it was impossible for me to be pregnant as the rape I experienced was very forcible, I panicked and went to my doctor.  I was too embarrassed to admit what had happened so I just let her think I had irresponsible sex.  It seemed less embarrassing at the time (now, too).  Silly me!  If I had just told her I had been raped, she probably would have not even given me the pregnancy test!

(Side note: if you read my blog regularly, you know I write a lot about my life and from what you read here, it probably looks like it sucks.  It doesn’t though.  Really.)

Stephen Colbert had it right; anytime any GOP politician thinks they should talk about rape, they should stab themselves in the eye with a pencil.

You’d think the party of Paul Ryan would know better than to stick its head into these conversations.  I thought they were all about facts and figures.  I guess not.  If they were, they would know that one in four women is raped.  That’s right; one in four.  Take a look around you. See four women? One of them has been or will be raped.  True story.

Since I brought it up, I’ll tell you my story.  I was 18.  I had been drinking.  I was at West Meadow beach with a friend.  I met someone whose sister had gone to high school with me.  Irony:  I never remember the names of people I dislike but I remember his.  No, I am not going to call him out here as much as I want to.  Maybe he’s a decent guy now.  He was a jackass then.

Anyway, I met these two guys.  They said they wanted to see if I was a “real redhead.”  Side note:  I am, and yes the drapes match the carpet.  One held me down while the other raped me.  I cried.  For years I felt better about them because they said, “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to make you cry.” Right.

I grew up at the beach.  It was one of my favorite places on earth.  Looking back, I see that I stopped going to the beach when that happened.  That sucks.

Positives that came from that:  In college I got the SUNY Stony Brook campus to install  a blue light phone system (seriously, you’d think with all the murders at Stony Brook that would have been a no brainer but it took some doing, you’re welcome Stony Brook students) and got a support group together for rape victims. I took survival seriously and I wanted to help others get through that.  I like to think that I made a difference for some people because it took a lot to make a difference for me.

I am not “over” what happened to me.  I am not of the school of thought that thinks rape is worse than murder. If I had been murdered, I never would have any of the cool things I have been able to do.  I am a different person than before that happened.  Not better nor worse, just different.  It bothers me when people discount rape in the way the GOP has been.  Had I become pregnant, it would have possibly killed me.  Despite the GOP hype, no one is “pro abortion.”  I am pro-choice but if I had become pregnant, that decision would have been horrible.  It is horrible.  I don’t know what I would have done.  My pro-choice side thinks I would have had an abortion but I don’t think I would have.

I am pro-choice because there is one piece of real estate that I want to always be able to control.  That real estate is my own body.  No, right wing, you don’t get to lease my uterus. I don’t like abortion.  In the years since this has happened I have become pregnant and miscarried (it happens more often than you might think, and yes, I am trying to justify what I think it a basic failure on my part as a woman — if I cannot bear children, what’s the point of me?) and that’s why I am not sure if that event would have resulted in an abortion.  I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I should make that decision.  Not Mitt Romney (or Paul Ryan).  Not Todd Aiken.  Not anyone who doesn’t answer to the name Alyson Hillary Chadwick (how crazy will I feel if there is another person with that name?)

So, GOP, you want me to think there is no “war on women.” You want me to think you care about things I care about.  Maybe you do.  Talking the way you do about rape does nothing to make me believe you.  Stop.

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How Stephen King changed my life

Stephen King signature.

Stephen King signature. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are only a handful of people who have really influenced my life in lasting ways.  My grandmother, Judy Chadwick Clarke, tops the list.  After family, there’s President Bill Clinton (you cannot work for someone as long as I worked for him and not be impacted — for the much better).  Probably Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) — my first job out of college was working for her, as I have said before.  Many of the people who have made an impression did so during adulthood so their contribution was limited in some respects.

The same cannot be said of Stephen King.  His contribution changed the entire trajectory of my life and  made my current career possible.  Thank you, Mr. King.

My family is made up of a lot of readers.  Percentage wise, I think there are more librarians than any other profession but that could be a skewed view based on Judy (I always called my grandmother by her first name), who was one.  Even the non-librarians read and as things are, I am the least educated member of my family (BA in French from Stony Brook University, pre-med certificate from Georgetown) — unless you consider my cousin Abbie’s child Knut and he is a baby.  I am pretty sure he has at least a maters in something by now.  Probably particle physics or economics.

If you are thinking, wow, you sure are lazy compared to them.  Yeah, I am.  That goes way back.  When I was in elementary school I hated to do any schoolwork and dreaded reading.  Not because I didn’t like to read but the drivel they gave me bored me to tears and if you’ve read my posts about the wonderful adventure that was my childhood, you understand that I had enough to cry about without letting shitty books do it.  So, I never read anything they gave me.  This, in turn, made the school think I couldn’t read and it was not an idea I was in any hurry to disuade them from.  They put me in the reading class basically for kids who should have been drooling in the corner.  I don’t think I did any homework for at least a year, maybe two.

In retrospect, I am not sure how the educators at my school were so oblivious– and the Three Village School District where I went is considered a really good one.  Look it up.  While you’re at it, look up the Wikipedia entry for Stony Brook the town.  You’ll see a familiar name under “famous people from here.”  Kevin James went to my high school (graduated before me).  But the name I am talking about, of course, is mine.  My parents were divorcing and that just wasn’t done back then.  Plus there was the whole fake kidnapping issue that my father kept harping about (the time my mom took me to Iceland for the summer and he said I had been kidnapped) and maybe they just didn’t want to deal with me.  It was easier to just let me do my think, whatever the hell that was, than actually pay some attention.  I sound bitter – and I am about a lot of things but this isn’t one of them.  I didn’t bother them (much) and they didn’t bother me (much).

Meanwhile, I went on reading and learning in my own way.  I liked to read quite a bit.  On one visit

Stephen King, American author best known for h...

Stephen King, American author best known for his enormously popular horror novels. King was the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Taken at the 2007 New York Comicon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

with my mother I begged her to buy me a Stephen King book — The Shining.  She did, after making me promise to read Agatha Christie, which I never did and never have.  Those books bore me, too.  And if you are an Agatha Christie fan, save your hate tweets and emails (or don’t, I love getting hate mail), just not gonna get into it now.

Anyway, I was all about Stephen King.  As soon as I would finish one book, my mom would send another (side note, if you really want to get the full horror effect of ‘Salem’s Lot, read it by candle light under the skylight in your attic bedroom after a hurricane has knocked out the power to your town.  Seriously.  I hung garlic and crosses around my room for months.  Damn vampires aren’t getting to me that easy.  Fuckers.).

This Stephen King obsession began when I was in the fifth grade.  I think it was that first book, The Shining, that I brought to school.  My terrified teacher, and I wish I could remember her name because she was the first I ever had who took an actual interest in my work and me, asked What are you doing with that book?!?!  I like to think I answered something smart-assy like, Well, I am not burning it, if that’s what you’re asking.  I am not sure that’s what I said or not but it sounds like me, so what the hell?  That’s what I said.  And unless you were there, bite me.

In any case, that caused quite the stir as the school realized that I wasn’t as dumb as a box of rocks (that would come later, like now).  They moved me into the second highest reading level, which pissed me off at the time because there was actual work in  that class.   The class also introduced me to creative writing, which is a passion I have pursued ever since.  I have not left home without a pen and notebook since I was 11.  If you ever see me on the street, you can ask if I have one.  I do.  Don’t take my word for it.  By the time I got to high school, I was a pretty decent fiction writer — a persona I am desperately trying to recapture — and my teachers did wonders to nurture that in me.  I remain grateful to them as well.

The writing bug was not the only things Stephen King gave me.  His books did more to help me survive certain really bad years of my life than anything else.  Therapy (individual and family) didn’t do it.  While I have the honest hat on, I think part of the appeal of his books was I was able to confront demons in his fiction that I couldn’t in my real life.  Violence wasn’t an abstract concept for me back then, it was never more than a heart beat away.  Reading books like It let me fight back and win, every time.

Much of my professional career has included a lot of writing; press releases/statements, talking points,  briefing materials, blog posts, op-eds, newsletters, whatever press materials need to be produced — I have produced them.  In addition, I have maintained this brilliant blog for at least five years (I think, I could be wrong, I have been hit on the head a lot and am too lazy to look that up).  In 2011, I started getting paid to write political satire for the site www.pardonthepundit.com — the first time I have ever been paid for comic writing of any kind.  I also write and perform stand-up comedy throughout Washington, DC and New York City.  The only other thing that I can do in such a public manner that I like almost as much is karaoke, which is one of the most awesome things.  I may break into Don’t stop believing right now.  I am at work so I won’t but you get the idea.

The only productive things I did as a kid really were read, write and work on campaigns.  None of that prevented me from spending the latter part of my teens doing way more drugs and alcohol that I should have (and I am still surprised that I am still alive, I have to be on life 8.5 by now) but when I left the abusive situation, all of that stopped and the positives in my life took the place of the negatives.  I can only imagine where I would have ended up had I never brought that book to school.  I would probably have stayed in that class for idiots and then when I discovered drugs and alcohol, that’s all I would have had and I would probably still be on Long Island.  My mind cannot even grasp how awesome that life would have been.

Thank you, Stephen King.  You really changed my life and I will never get to thank you enough.

PS.  The second best book on writing, after The Elements of Style, of course, is Stephen King’s On Writing.  I would also like to add that even as a kid, I LOVED his introductions.  They rock.