INTENSE

I YELLED IT LOUD AND PLAIN, " Leave me alone!... I'm not interested... I have a husband... if you don't quit, I'll cut your fuckin dick off!" I reached for the knife I'd taken from the table at the restaurant earlier. I was serious. He... they were driving me crazy and no amount of complaints or waving for help had changed the situation. That had become my line of defense.. a warning of pinched nerves for uninvited sexual throes. Uninvited and seemingly part of a game... gender-centered or not. A game... hate game short of the usual punch and slap approach offered by "other than affectionate" men.

Since the riots around AnnArbor, people were acting excessively bazaar. Shootings from cars passing bus stops had become a daily report in the local news. War had set in overseas and hate crimes were on the rise. The label on my mailbox made me a target. I was determined to find the contact point for the accident that took the life of my husband. and sought assistance of Salvation Army and American REd Cross to get where they held the bodies and remnants of the flight. That concern and the still dallying matter of getting a high school graduate off to college in a stable mindset while corraling a wayward daughter who was running frantic some six to eight hundred miles away left not time for promiscuity or the interest in spelling the word. The line worked along with handcuffs and the metal bed frame that restrained a co-enlistee who claimed " the base commander told him to drive me to training dates. The ride from far south of the military base brought us in early and he arranged a room in the Officer's billeting hall, then said he was going out to find a friend of his. I lay down and nodded off only to awake and find him in the bed with me. Why a fireman needed handcuffs, I don't know but they did come in handy. When he tried to manipulate me, I slapped on his wrist and the other on the bedrail and left for formation at my military unit. I told him "no." The two acts were totally unrelated and could have become a cause for my being imprisoned. But for use of the simple word "NO"... in hearing it and understanding it. The last ride to training and back saw him nearly flip the rv he was driving, off the exit ramp, I assumed it was a result of either drinking or drug taken. I never rode with him again. It solved more than one problem.

I used it months later after waking up gaffed in my apartment; a setting that falls into place following the same individual trying to force me to perform oral sex on him with his hand in a chokehold on my neck and throat at my campus apartment where he appeared at the door after my child had left for college. The chokehold evolved after I said okay to an "apology" presented and allowed him to sit on the sofa just inside the door. I offered a drink... soda or tea... and upon bringing it my neck was grabbed... I was flung to the floor in front of him and beyond the chokehold and my hardened scowl, the only recall of the event was waking up on my bed with a bleeding gash in my groin. I was not on my period and had no gash earlier that day. I reported it to campus police and that was the end of the event. It was never resolved. What did stem from that event was the reuse of that defensive line. Men do want to preserve their penis... and will avoid performing actions that cause a woman to use the defensive threat that she will cut his dick off.

I did not use it, but held my tongue in the case of a track coach who "loved the boys" that was introduced to us by the father of my son's high school classmate. Summer track club participation was a good thing, before his departure for college. I agreed to his participation on the team and attended most activities for my own reassurance that all was well... and would stay that way. Then his mentioned of "liking the children" who all went on rides with him across the border into Canada on many occasions, for track practice. The children ranged from age 6 thru 17, boys and a few girls. I protected mine by attending, missing only one or two gatherings. When situations got into a pinch I consorted... went along with the game until my son departed to his college campus out of state. Part of that game pushed for three potential business members to combine credentials... resume and social security numbers for a business plan using college fraternity and sorority logos and colors on gym shoes and other wearable items. I bowed out as soon as my son left... leaving he and the two other women... one, an employee bookkeeper at a nursing home and the other a clerk at Henry Ford Museum to figure out the gist of operating his business G.E.T.S. The other parents never took the suggested clue to watch their babies.

I used the stress point warning one last time, at risk of being labeled "crazy lady" for making such threats. During a business trip and again when what was supposed to have been a ride to the Veteran Affairs Hospital turned out to be a ride around town, to a car dealer and finally to a motel. When the driver would not take me home, I threatened and walked away making my way to the home of someone I knew in town. It may have been a thrill for any other woman but I was trying to accomplish necessary agenda and he was on a panty raid. By the end of several years stressing over situations of this type... call it what you will, I was looking for mental and moral assistance. I stayed away from male presence as well as possible and avoided any women casting a lesbian attitude or conversation in my direction. I spent two years in Arizona's warm embrace avoiding social relations other than medical care for the PTSD and a running fracture from the military accident, complications caused by a chiropractor "releasing stress and residuals of whiplash" from a car accident; and the assumed punch to the head during the on-campus rape or mugging. Sometime later... a month or so, an exhusband stopped by in a brewed state crying over the death of his brother. He brought a nephew with him.. also brewed in hard alcohol... claiming to be on their way driving to Chicago from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I coaxed them into coffee and sleep instead of taking their fate on the highway putting the public at risk. They were both surprisingly well mannered, snoring through the night. It was the best contact with anyone of male gender in quite a while. I heard later that they made it home and no one died or was injured. It could have put me more at ease in regard to social contact but didn't. I argued with family members for sending him to me and the new husband's apartment.

I became excessively cautious when asked for a date and avoided forming my own interest in a date or mate. I was afraid to be alone with any man or any peculiar women. Compile those anxieties with serious concern for exactly what was going on with a blunt impact to concrete pavement head injury from the skid and flip over of the 2 1/2ton military truck, communication rig, generator and trailer. I was a wreck. Everyone I met managed to keep themselves intact... they backed off.

I'm calmer now... yet alive and still not gay.

call it a self analogy PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF CONTROL