Wednesday. 7.18.12 8:34 am
�I�m scared to see you.� she texts me late night.
You always are. I�m not going to bite you.. Again.
):
Don�t be skurred.
That�s impossible though.
How?
Our relationship is going to fuck one of us up at any given time I�ve
decided.
One of us? Don�t you mean me?
Right now I�m referring to myself
What are you worried about?
Caring about you ever again.
You can�t control that
I�m so stupid. Haha. When will I learn? Meh
I know what you mean. It kind of feels like I�m walking alongside a railroad track with this relationship. I hear the train rumbling, I know the damage it�ll do, and yet I have no intention of moving.
Perfect analogy.
Ever since we were ten, her and I have waltzed through this square dance, always a bit offbeat and never in tune with the rest of the world. To claim that simplicity accompanied our youth would be fabrication. Nothing has ever been simple with us.
I�m not looking forward to taking this campaign job. Truth be told, I�m already sort of missing Harvard, Cambridge, Boston, and my classmates. I�m also missing my family something awful right now as I write this in a St. Lous Airport.
But, hey, Whatever. I signed upf or this shit, you know? I wanted to leave school � just for a semester, to try and figure out what the fuck I ought to do when I graduate. The plan right now is to do this gig for the next four months, move down to the Texas-Mexico border city of Laredo and do some legal aid work for a human rights organization down there. From what I gather, they mostlywork with migrant farm workers, trafficking survivors, and immigration issues. After that, head back up to Cambridge for the Spring semester, and figure out shit to do next summer..
I reckon I�ll either try my hand at NYC life � get back into working for civil rights and human organizations. Either that or try Florida�s gulfcoast and do what I did this summer in Hawaii and Dallas � domestic violence and child abuse prosecution.
But for now.. I�m going to start a gig that I�m very reluctant about taking in a state I absolutely loathe. One of the two biggest impediments for me to ever truly committing to giving this thing with Caitlin a legit shot is the fact that she�s grounded in Virginia. Her son, the reason that she is grounded to that state, is the other reason.
I just can�t stand that place. Any state that seemingly deifies that ethnic cleansing child rapist Thomas Jefferson is booboo to me.
Booboo.
Comment! (4) | Recommend!
I've made a huge mistake.
Sunday. 7.15.12 11:39 pm
Thursday. 7.5.12 4:22 pm
�At the end of the day,� Miles says as he looks through me, �I know that I did something to make somebody out there just a little bit safer.�
The three of us sat at that table Monday afternoon an hour before she entered, a fitted Warriors cap on her head and a sling holding her arm in place. We all stood up when she arrived, led in by one of the staff social workers. Miles, an attorney who first became a prosecutor around the time my mother arrived in this country, stood at the head of the table, left arm extended to welcome the new arrival to sit beside him. He gave her an earnest grin, the type he always uses for complaining witness interviews.
�Alyssa. I�m glad you were able to make it. Come have a seat besides me, yeah?�
She obliges with both a nod and then a weakened smile. Miles, a native Hawaiian man of Japanese descent, pulls out her chair before turning to look across the table to Linus, another attorney.
�I�m Miles. I will be the lead prosecutor on your abuse case, Alyssa. Seated across the table is Linus � he�s another attorney here to help. If you don�t mind, he�ll be videorecording our interview this afternoon. Is that alright with you?�
She shrugs and grumbled a sullen �Okay.� before Miles continued.
�You�ve already met Cynthia,� he said with a nod to the social worker who accompanied her inside. �Oh! And this,� he says as all eyes turn to me, �is Jonathan. He�s here interning from some school on the mainland� you�ve probably never heard of it though.
Harvard.� He laughed. One of those harsh, guttural chuckles you�d hear at the end of a Carlton from Fresh Prince joke. �Why he chose to come all the way out to Maui is beyond me!�
Alyssa, a native girl around my age, forced a smile as she sat down. Over the course of the next hour, I sat across from this girl and watched her tell her tale.
Her boyfriend actually sounds like an interesting guy. He�s a surfer � pretty accomplished one, even. They actually met surfing and spent most of their dates on the North Shore, surfing or hiking like weird white people do.
(For the life of me, I�ll never understand the appeal behind hiking.. �Hey guys, let�s go WALK! Uphill! It�ll be as fun as you know.. walking.. uphill.. wait, why am I doing this again?� Hiking is almost as bad as camping.)
Anyway, they dated for a month or so before they got serious. About seven weeks into exclusivity he began acting funny. He�d get real jealous when another dude would look or speak to her and accuse her of cheating. When she denied it, he would yell. When she yelled back, he punched her in the jaw and told her not to talk back.
He apologized, reminded her of all the good times, and beg her to take him back.. and she did. The next time they argued, he tried punching her again but she ducked. He ended up slugging a wall and fucking up his hand so bad that he needed a cast.
So he kicked her instead. In the stomach. Then pinned her to the ground, burying his knee deep into her sternum, and choked her with his good hand until she passed out. While she laid unconscious, he kicked her immobilized body hard enough to dislocate her arm.
When everyone left the office that day but Miles and I, I asked him what the best part about his job was.
�That�s why I do this job � we all know it ain�t for the money,� he said with another one of those Fresh Prince laughs again. I believe him. Not sure if it�s what I�ll end up doing though. Comment! (7) | Recommend! (1)
Letter to my landlord that Im leaving on his counter -- UPDATED WITH THE BACKSTORY
Tuesday. 6.12.12 2:39 pm
Saturday. 6.9.12 8:39 pm
Monday. 4.30.12 10:06 am
