No Filter

I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to someone I know and obviously, I'm keeping her name out of it. We'll call her "Jane".  Jane met someone who took her on a first date. He was charming. He was very handsome. He seemed verbose and funny and talkative. They never ran out of conversation. Great food, great conversation. An admittedly naive Jane invited this stranger back to her house post-date to watch a little television in her room. That was when her date bound her arms and wrists, pinned her legs with his and raped her.  She doesn't remember every moment of the assault, mostly due to the trauma of it all. But she remembers the pain of her arms and wrists being bound to her headboard, the pain on her legs and the feeling of desperately struggling to get out of the restraints and his grip.  He mercifully used a condom. Small favors I guess. When it was over, he just left. Jane woke the next morning in excruciating pain, u...

Hi again. Hi, all two readers of mine. How are you? I could be better. Again, Few Readers of Mine might recall that I struggle with some, erm, "Issues". For at least the last eight or nine years I have experienced severe panic attacks, otherwise known as a Panic Disorder. I'm not talking about that girl who sits in the cubicle next to you who accidentally sends an email draft that she wasn't supposed to send and then says, "Omg, I am totally having a panic attack right now!" No. It's not that. It's me standing in the subway station in MacArthur Park, waiting for my train, thinking about literally nothing and then ten seconds later I'm hyperventilating, the world is closing in and things are going black. Like the end of the Looney Tunes cartoon (I guess I'm Porky Pig in this analogy) https://youtu.be/nzZfdWzUrQs   and then it ends with me, losing consciousness on said subway platform. And...That's all folks. This has happened a lot ...

A few months ago, an ex-boyfriend, who had been pursuing me, got through to me somehow. I think the vulnerability that he was able to exploit was my acute sense of loss and loneliness that I was still in the midst of experiencing, post breakup this past year. He could smell it, because desperation smells. Fact. I finally wrote him back: "Sure, let's get together and catch up." I figured we would go to a diner (something we had been fond of in the past) or get coffee, or, at most, go to a real, grown-up dinner. Now, I know that this is a blog titled "No Filter". But I have remote fears that he may read this one day (very remote) and I don't think it's necessary to completely shame this person, so I'll keep the details of what came next between the two of us, only. I can say though, that what he proposed was none of the above, but something entirely different with a few added bells and whistles of inappropriateness. I can't say that I was shock...

It started abruptly on Nov. 9th, at about 4:00 a.m. PST.  I had fallen asleep in front of my laptop, streaming MSNBC, anxiously watching the returns coming in for each state and at some point, I guess when things started looking a little grim, my body gave in to exhaustion.  But like I said: 4:00 a.m., I woke with a start, my laptop still STREAMING/SCREAMING at me, announcing in no uncertain terms, that Donald J. Trump, reality star, professional self-promoter and carnival barker and above all else, world renowned con artist, was elected to be the 45th president of the United States. My mouth formed into an upside down 'U' and I suddenly became the living embodiment of that one emoji you would use to convey shock and dismay.  I stumbled into work later that morning and perhaps a bit childishly, couldn't shake my disbelief that our company didn't have the compassion (for ME) to shut down the office for the day! I mean, we were in the midst of a national trag...