Ch 3: Considering Who We Are

Chapter One First Light
Chapter Two The Thud and a Nipple Dress

It must have been July 1969 because they had brought a black and white TV backstage so we could watch man’s first steps on the Moon during rehearsal. Opening night I was a big hit. My sister Patricia came backstage and said to me, “I don't know why you’re bothering with a career like this, considering who we are.”

I knew exactly what she meant.  I went into a kind of trance, went home, quit the show, and started answering ads to find work doing porn. Not real porn, simulated sex. When they started doing real sex in the new porn of 1969, I quit and went to Laguna Beach to find Timothy Leary.

*************

2010 - East Hollywood, on the phone

“You'll never guess who got in my cab this afternoon, Barbara Blaine.”

“No, Rick, that was no coincidence.”

Too late. I knew exactly what that meant. 

Within weeks our plans for action about pedophile priests in Chicago were squelched.

*****************************

Even among a population of women who take off their clothes for a living, my sister Patricia stood out as a person who was willing to go just a little bit farther than the others, maybe too far.

In 1972 within a hundred miles of San Francisco there was vast open country, rugged canyons, vistas of meadow.  A network of two-lane highways twisted through open spaces that today in 2015 are so completely covered with concrete you cannot recognize them.  

In 1972 about three in the morning, the tittie bar parking lot is empty but for two pickup trucks and an aging M-G sports car.  Today in 2015 lap dances take place at bachelorette parties for school teachers, but in 1972, the topless dancer was a new phenomenon, about as popular with the general population as was the can-can dancer in 1830.

In the moonlight, Trish would get behind the wheel of her aging sports car and like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, drive up the tangle of two-lane highways to her home where events would take place for several more hours.  There were at least three vehicles  following her at the end of her shift at the topless bar, driving the 14 or so miles to spend the next few hours on a vast mattress on the floor in Trish’s little hut near a creek, if this was Tuesday, two trucks, in a Saturday night, four or five.

Trish reeled them in using the instinctive skills placed in her at age nine, when Father Horny was trying to keep his sessions with her secret, and she, at age nine had turned the tables, driving the drunken priest crazier than he already was.

Around that same time, 1972, I lived in Dallas Texas in a Yoga ashram. 

My sister was an atheist in 1972 when she was taking men home from topless bars.  She was six years older than I was when Father Horney predated on our family, she remembers what happened more clearly than I do, and so has never to this day trusted a religious figure enough to give in to a spiritual life. She won’t even go to 12-step meetings, instead becomes enraged that you have to “buy into this god shit” in order to go through rehab if you need it. 

I on the other hand in 1972 was in full religious mania mode.  The experience with Father Horny at age five had made me, from puberty onward, into a kind of religious zealot who always confused sexuality with spiritual pursuits.  I made an absolute fool of myself once in Tim Leary’s home, don't want to go into detail about that.

(((((((((((((((

1969: In the dark with other cast and crew, we're in awe as the man in a space suit takes slow slow slow steps down towards the Moon surface with the shadow of the space station in the TV picture.  Just as Neil Armstrong is saying the famous words, “That's one small step for mankind,” my Director calls from the stage, his shrill soprano drifting  in with the dust in the light of the curtain. “Where’s Charlie, get Charlie out here now. We're ready to rehearse the scene.”  

I wish I could say playing the lead in “Charlie Was A Lady” was a career advancement, something worth missing one of the most important moments in the history of mankind. 

But it was not. 

Even though it was based on the historical character Charlie Parkhurst, Charlie Was A Lady” was probably the world’s worst play. I include more about it here as I'm pretty sure that as Charlie, I insisted I not wear pants in the scene where I pull my gun (see photo at R-Rated site Outtake 1).  It was when the compulsions in me from being molested by a pedophile priest were just starting to emerge.  

I've found a character in California history from around 1860, actress Adah Menken, whose biggest performance was playing the role of a man. Menken insisted on appearing near naked in a thin leotard in a scene that was usually performed by a dummy. Raised Catholic in a broken home, she became the highest paid "actress" of her time, just by appearing almost nude, as if she were driven to do so by some compulsion placed in her in childhood. More about Adah Menken at the bottom of this post. 

Adah Menken insisted on performing a role near-nude, when up until then it had the scene had used a dummy, like I insisted on performing bare legged, compulsions so similar, so similar.

*********

Charlie sings Solitaire

The "musical comedy" Charlie Was A Lady was an embarrassment, except for one song.  I asked them to let me sing it as blues and “Solitaire” became a show stopper.

Opening night Patricia came backstage and reminded me I'm a pedophile priest victim, sort of.

Patricia came back to my dressing room after the performance opening night. 

In the middle of my celebration, she came up close to me with a strange air.

Looking me straight in the eye, she said to me genuine concern:

“I don't understand why you pursue a career like this, considering who we are.”

I became stunned. 

I knew exactly what she meant.

The party around me became unimportant because she’d shocked me out of reverie into a reality I had been avoiding, somehow.  I had a job and rehearsed at night and took voice and dance classes, so as always I lived at Faster Than the Speed of Life pace.

But what she was was more than what it looks like on the surface. 

It was not about the futility that all my work had only gotten me as far as Burbank Community Theater, that's not what Trish was trying to tell me. 

It was this deep shared secret we had of which we never spoke but all she had to do was look at me and we knew we shared it. 

What she said put me in a fugue state. 

Honest. 

Next morning I went out and picked up Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety and in both of them were reviews of Charlie Was a Lady.  Both said the play was awful but singled out my performance and the song as something to look at.  Both of them mentioned me. 

But I was in this fugue state, still reeling from what my sister had said to me the night before. 

And I turned to the back pages of the trade papers, both Variety and Reporter were running ads for pornography shoots in their classified ads at the time.  The Supreme Court ruling that created the X rating had just come out and people didn't really know how to deal with it, so for this short time that lasted only a few months, the two main entertainment industry trade papers in Los Angeles were both running ads for work in porn films in the help wanted section. 

I called Pretty Girl International agency and began my career in “nude modeling” which included film that day.  I also called the director and told him something came up and to have the understudy do my part, which ruined the whole play because she was just a mediocre performer. 

I did soft core for the next six months.  It ruined what chances I had to have the acting career I’d dreamed about my whole life.  Really in a way because of what Patricia exhaled at me that night in my dressing room.

I HAVE TO POINT THIS OUT

We did not have real sex in porn in 1969

Back then porn was not real, it was “simulated sex” it said so on contracts, on posters, on movie marquis.  In fact the day I quit porn was when it stopped being simulated and eventually I will write that episode at R-Rated section of this story.

Oh heck here is a short version:  Link to R-Rated Outtake 1 

**********

PRESENT: LAKE TAHOE 2015, CAN-CAN DANCER  

I have cable TV for the first time in years, and a can-can dancer scenes in an old Western movie got me wondering. I’d just packed up and moved for the fifth time in four years. So I spent a few hours online reading about the history of the can-can dance form around the same time I was reading history of Tahoe sites. 

Tula performs her Quadrille Dance at the Bijou Tavern near the Tahoe Lake 

Tula took to the new dance trend that had come out of Missouri around 1830 as if she’d been born to do it and came to California as soon as she was old enough. She landed in Tahoe where wealth was available to the ordinary man, if you were willing to dig in the dirt to get it. 

Tahoe Lake, where prospectors came with their gold to party and Tula was well known locally for her performance of the can-can, which in the unruly region now known as the Sierra Nevadas had evolved into an erotic public sexual performance that involved the customer in ways that would shock the coldest owner of a tittie bar in the San Fernando Valley today.

Tula had no boundaries, there was nothing Tula would not do.  

CUT TO R-RATED OUTTAKE 2 

Tula’s mother in St. Louis was a Roman Catholic who, when not dancing on the wrong side of the tracks, went through periods of reverence where Catholicism dominated the household for months on end.  Little altars with statues of Mary or Jesus appeared in parts of the house where there used to be furniture. 

It was during one of these periods of reverence that Tula’s mother became friendly with a young priest, who really was visiting the home to get his hands on Tula, then age seven and lithely prepubescent.

So Tula confused the serenity and “holiness” that accompanied the priest with the sexual arousal she felt at the tip of his fingers between her legs, when mom went off on an errand and he stayed behind to watch her. 

None of the other dancers ever do more than a kick where the man gets a peak at their panties, at least not while dancing at the Bijou Tavern.  They were shocked at what the girl with the Catholic upbringing was willing to do.

Tula performed sex in the tavern as if it were just another dance, having no boundaries, not after all those months when she was age seven being finger banged by Father Horny in Missouri.   

BACK TO PRESENT:

I POPPED AWAKE

I’d been dreaming after reading a bit about the history online on the new region where I’d moved, Lake Tahoe, and the history of the can-can dance.  The tall trees looming in my window disoriented me, as only days earlier I’d lived in a desert, now I live in a mountain resort.  I just keep running and running and running

Woke up in that familiar place where I'm both angry and grateful for the astounding sexual imagination I've had since puberty, thanks to ideas put in my head by Father Horny when I was six years old.  He taught First Confession classes and for some reason met with me in private sessions where he described exactly what “impure thoughts” are, and how to repeat them back to him later in Confession. 

A group of children surround the priest as he explains, "In the confessional, you tell the priest your sins, if you lied, stole something, had impure thoughts."

I pipe in age six, "What are impure thoughts?"

He reddens, "Wait and I'll show you later." And he does. He fills my head with fantasies about exposing myself in a sexy way to several men at a time. . . 

***************

EAST HOLLYWOOD 2010

On the phone, “You'll never guess who got into my cab today,” he said.

“Who?”

“Barbara Blaine.”

I filled with dread as he continued, “Yeah I was at the cab stand at Karnacki and Wabash, and I turn around and it's Barbara Blaine in the back seat, she asked me to take her to the SNAP office.  I recognized the address and looked up, wow imagine how surprised I was, you don't expect Barbara Blaine to be in that part of town."

I had called him to continue a conversation we’d been having, with emails, about me coming to Chicago because my case is in that archdiocese, and we both agreed there was a dearth of activism where there should be more in Chicago.

Now I held the phone awe struck as Rick continued his story.  Why would Barbara Blaine, who probably has a car, be anywhere hailing a cab in Chicago, and how could she happen to be there on that corner hailing Rick’s cab.  It sounded funny from the start. 

“What a coincidence,” I said, “what happened?”

“Well we got to talking and she told me there is something brewing in Chicago, and we should hold tight and not do anything until we heard from her.” 

That was even stranger. 

“What did she say was brewing?” I asked Rick.

“She said she’d be telling me in a few weeks, but in the meantime, whatever we are planning, we should put a lid on it, and wait for SNAP to do what it's going to do.”

“Rick,” I said, “don't you think it's kind of strange she just showed up in your cab and said this?”

“No-no-no,” Rick said. “It just shows you never know who’s going to get in your cab on the streets of Chicago.  Boy oh boy.”

Two weeks or so later, when I called Rick wondering why I hadn’t heard from him when we’d been cooking up plans for this project, he hesitated before saying to me,  “You know what, we've been talking here locally and decided whatever we do, it should only be people who live in Chicago.”

“Is that Barbara Blaine you're talking to about those plans, Rick?”

“Well yeah, you know, we're doing together something together, locally, and it should just be people who live here, this time.  I'm sorry to say this, but we've got this big project coming up, and it's better if it's just local people, you know what I mean.” 

"What are you telling me, Rick?"

"We want to keep it local." 

I wanted to say, “And you don't think it's funny that the result of her happening to get in your cab is that the project you and I were planning gets canned, isn't that a little suspicious?

But I didn't.  I avoided confrontation again.

Still, just to niggle Rick, every few months or so far a while after that, I’d call and ask him, hey whatever happened to that big project you were cooking up with Blaine to publicize pedophile priests that could only  involve local Chicago people.  But he never had an answer.  He started pretending he didn't hear the question.  Then he stopped taking my calls.

That day I just held the phone out from my ear as he talked, shaking her head.  They did it again.  SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, kaiboshed what we were trying to do, and kaiboshed it in the name of doing something for us. 

I wasn’t keeping track but up until then Rick and I had held at least ten conversations, between phone and email, that I was going to come to Chicago so we could combine forces and do some kind of activism to expose the pedophile priest cover-ups in that city.

Now I was no longer welcome.

When I got there about two years later, the situation was the same.  

refernce

**********

Today it's 2015, I'm getting old and a bit beaten down.  Everyone in my family has cut me out of their lives because of the stories I've written about pedophile priests, specifically the dysfunction in my own family created by the injudicious fingertips of one perpetrator priest in a small town outside Chicago in 1955.

***

I did almost dance topless myself once

When I am contemplating dinner these days, I think about the kitchen pantry in Lakshman’s house.  His real name was Lee, I met him when I moved into the Yoga Ashram in Dallas.  At one point he tole me, “My daddy owns a bank.” L lived in the ashram too, he was dedicated to god more than I was, which was saying something. 

He’d take me to his family house and I’d just gaze.  They had a walk-in pantry in the kitchen.  You opened a door to what was like a walk in closet with shelves so well stocked it had more food than a corner bodega. They had every snack and convenience food you could find in 1970.  I think of L’s pantry a lot today when I go through another “end of the month” with no money so no food.  That happens a lot to me as an old lady in 2015, which is fine because I had gotten too fat, but still. . .

His parents never did more than sniff at me from behind their backs in the next room when L introduced me. I think of Lakshman a lot when I'm looking at the one shelf I have for food in the one room where I live, because when that shelf gets empty, there is nothing else left. . . and that happens at the end of every month.

One day when I was still a new arrival at the Ashram in Dallas, L took me on a job interview. 

I had decided to be like my sister and get a job as a topless dancer.  My interview was at a tacky bar somewhere in Dallas. L drove me and watched from the empty tables.

I came out in a costume they had provided and in what is really a journalist’s body, did a very awkward dance, felt totally strange, and never went back there again. 

Like I said, the pedophile priest experience at an early age affected me and my sister in different ways. At this point in my life I was confusing sex with religion in most embarrassing ways.  In a few months I was editing the newsletter for the ashram, I ran the kitchen for a while, and learned hatha yoga good enough to teach advanced classes there in that house on Lemon Avenue in Dallas.

((((((((((((((

Things I found in other files that may incorporate here:

http://cityofangels2.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-sister-patricia-is-very-much-part-of.html

Possible line of dialogue:

I was not a horrible person but I had uncontrollable compulsions that I had to act out on but then had to keep secret. Once people found out who I was after hours, it would get me hated and fired and thrown out of groups.  I was not born a slut, something made me that way.

I laugh now when I think of the one or two encounters I’ve had with men since the memory came in in 1994.  I’d run two blocks down the street before I realized he was just trying to say hello.

The amazing part of the whole experience is that since 1994, I've never acted out in a promiscuous way at all.  The sick behavior just came to a stop, once I realized what was causing it.  I knew it wasn’t really me, and stopped being a whore. 

In 1986 or thereabouts I was in therapy with Dr. DiNicola at Cedars Sinai Thalians outpatient clinic in L.A.  I told him about that incident.

I told him about the time when Patricia came backstage and said something to me that caused me to quit legitimate acting and do the new porn work instead.

He said to me, wow, I’d love to know what it was she said to you. 

All I remember is a vague memory, something like, what I wrote above, “considering who we are,” is the line I remember most of all. 

I also at that point in my life could not remember one thing, ONE THING, from my life before age six.  Dr. DiNicola told me that was usually a sign of childhood trauma such as sexual abuse and I said to him, honestly, nobody in my family would do anything like that. 

CUT TO 1995 San Francisco:

Stand up on Market Street.

With Lizzie age nine by my side, I'm trying to raise money for dinner, so with an open hat in front of me, I start improvising comedy in the financial district of San Francisco on Market Street.  I come up with this line and it gets me a twenty dollar bill:

Bill Clinton getting a blowjob in the Oval Office actually makes him more popular with voters in San Francisco.  When he makes an appearance in town, there are dozens of men and women calling out, (In funny sexy flirty voice) “Bill Bill look over here, me, Bill Bill."

The crowd laughed and threw twenty dollar bills in my hat. 

************

True Story based on my life by Kay Ebeling

Please hit my PayPal button with High Fives ($5’s) to keep this blogger alive

POST NOTES

THERE REALLY WAS A CHARACTER LIKE IN HISTORY LIKE TULA AND LIKE ME AND MY SISTER!!!!!

Me: Blowing me away, turns out there is a real historical character who was a lot like Tula and a lot like my sister and me, Adah Menken:  

Research:

Based on Menken's assertions of being a native of New Orleans, Wolf Mankowitz and others have studied Board of Health records for the city. They have concluded that Ada was born in the city as the legitimate daughter of Auguste Théodore, a free man of color (mixed race) and his wife Magdaleine Jean Louis Janneaux,^[4][7] likely also a Louisiana Creole. Ada would have been raised as Catholic. (Wikipedia)

Me: Adah Menken, young Catholic girl, came to the Tahoe area (Comstock) in 1863 to perform in her full body leotard that made her appear to be naked, an act she’d been performing in San Francisco for several years.

Research:

Menken wore her wavy hair short, a highly unusual style for women of the time. She cultivated a bohemian and at times androgynousappearance. She was deliberately creating her image at a time when an expanding media existed to publicize it

She had several husbands which was scandalous in the 1800s

Me: Also she has signs of PTSD and living Faster than the Speed of Life.  She felt compelled to publish her personal life for the world to read:

Research:

While in New York, Menken met the poet Walt Whitman and some others of his bohemian circle. She was influenced by his work and began to write in a more confessional style. In 1860-61, she published 25 poems in the Sunday Mercury, an entertainment newspaper in New York.

Me: She urged her manager to let her do this part, she wanted to do it and look nude in front of as many people as possible. Like me in Charlie Was A Lady, insisting on doing the shootout scene without pants on. [PICTURE]

I WAS PLAYING THE ROLE OF A MAN TOO!!!

Research:

Jimmie Murdock offered [Menken] the "breeches role" (that of a man) of the noble Tartar in the melodrama Mazeppa, based on a poem by Lord Byron.^[1] At the climax of this hit, the Tartar was stripped of his clothing, tied to his horse, and sent off to his death.^[13] The audiences were thrilled with the scene, although the production used a dummy strapped to a horse.

Menken wanted to perform the stunt herself.^[6] Dressed in nude tights and riding a horse on stage, she appeared to be naked and caused a sensation.^[6]Not only was she a woman playing the part of a man, and playing with conventions of gender, she heightened the sensationalism by appearing to be nude.^[9] New York audiences were shocked but still attended and made the play popular. 

Some of society thought it beneath them.

Looking for more acclaim, Menken took the production of Mazeppa to San Francisco. Audiences less concerned about convention flocked to the show and made it wildly popular.^[8] She became known across the country for this role, and San Francisco adopted her as its performer.

Me:  Her first jobs were as an actress writer performer in Galveston Texas. My first jobs were as an actress writer performer in Austin, Texas. . .

Wow

Research: Menken had the urge to travel. She arranged to play in a production ofMazeppa in London and France for much of 1864-1866, when she swiftly conquered London and Paris. Productions frequently traveled between New York and London, and were promoted in each. The sensational aspects of the production attracted attention before the show opened (adding to the publicity.)

Controversy arose over her costume, and she responded to critics in the newspapers of London by saying that she was influenced by classical sculpture, and that her costume was more modest than those of ballet or burlesque. The show opened October 3, 1864, at the Astley Theatre to "overflowing houses".^[15]She was so well known that she was referred to as "the Menken", needing no other name.^[9]

Jokes and poems were printed about the controversy, and Punch wrote:^[15]

"Here's half the town - if bills be true -
To Astley's nightly thronging,
To see the Menken throw aside
All to her sex belonging,
Stripping off woman's modesty,
With woman's outward trappings -
A barebacked jade on barebacked steed,
In Cartlich's old strappings!"

This period established her lasting image. The highest-earning actress of her time, she was generous to friends, theatre people in need, and charities  (Wikipedia)

Me:  She was able to be an exhibitionist with herself all over the world before she died. I wonder what Catholic priest got to her as a little girl to make her so profoundly oversexed in such a similar way to me and my sister.

Close to two hundred years later, Ella is in Tahoe, broke again.  All she has going for her is her body but the cops are real uptight about prostitution in this town, I mean it, where there are casinos there are very alert cops keeping the professional women out of the way.

So she came up with an idea, a dance, she put on a leotard that covered her but she was as good as naked.  Then in a public area, she set out a hat, played music on a portable tablet with speakers, and made several hundred dollars in a few hours. 

The fabric of the leotard barely covered her, but it covered her, so she could not be arrested.  She could dance as close to her audience members as if she were in a dance hall asking for lap dances. 

She had enough money to rent an apartment soon, but no one ever touched her.

Oops, dreaming again.

More on Menken:

Adah also was compulsive about religion, you could even say was “anything but Catholic”

Per San Francisco Museum website:

Research:

When she met Alexander Menken in Texas, she became Jewish and married him.  The marriage did not last as she did not want to be a wife, she loved performing and the “adulation of young men” so left him, but remained “devoutly” Jewish

Also from San Francisco Museum re the bare horseback ride onstage that Menken insisted on doing:

“At the thrilling climax of the play, the noble Tartar lad, stripped of his clothes by his captors and bound to the back of a wild horse dashed out of the wings up to the papier-mache cliffs and disappeared in the clouds, while the audience grew hysterical with apoplectic applause.

It had been a tradition that during the ride of the barebacked horse, a stuffed dummy, naked and resembling Mazeppa, would be used. 

Menken would have no stuffed dummy.  She would ride the horse herself. She would wear skin-tights.  No matter how it shocked the audience that had never seen an actress in tights, she would play the role with dramatic realism, she would wear tights.  So she wore tights. The audience was shocked – scandalized- horrified – and delighted! But New York was too stilted, too smug, too proper to appreciate great art.  And Adah Menken said, “I'll go to the one place where the audience demands real art; I'll go to San Francisco.”

“at climax of the play, the Menken vaulted to the back of her full-blooded California mustang and, clad in tights with hair streaming down her back, raced her steed at mad pace across the mountains of Tartary, the enthusiasm of the audience was a mad frenzy never to be forgotten. 

“So thrilling was the performance that it was said on the opening night the leading man, Junius Booth stood in the wings and completely forgot his lines.”

Me; Yes, performed like a true pedophile priest survivor acting out compulsively as an adult. 

****************

More notes on Adah Menken from San Francisco Museum website:

Later years:

“The tide turned.  Ill health, the fruit of dissipation, wasted her away. She had made a fortune; her wealth had disappeared, and she lived in comparative poverty. In London, desperately in need of funds, she published her volume of Victorian poems and realized a few dollars.

“London was cold, unfriendly. She returned to Paris and Paris had found new loves.”

And the religion again:

“Faithful to her adopted religion, she spent her last hours speaking of life and faith and hope to a friendly rabbi.”

She died in Paris at 33

http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/adah.html

More on Adah Menken

actress "not known for her talent, but rather for her frenetic energy, her charismatic presence, and her willingness to expose herself," was born in a suburb of New Orleans (Richards 192)

n the summer of 1859, Menken first became introduced to Pfaff's by her friend, the actress Ada Clare. According to scholar Justin Martin, Menken soon gained the reputation as being "the wildest, most brazen, and most colorful" of the Pfaffians (Martin 68).

https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54132

more on Adah from another source:

A sheer body stocking made Menken appear nude. Her audacity made the puritanical Horace Greeley, owner of the New York Tribune, the single newspaper which refused to carry advertisements for French contraceptives and virility aids, fume. Greeley blasted the “naked lady” for daring to expose her nude body. Outrage gave way to astonishment: Menken not only usurped an exclusively male role, but in the dangerous scene rode the horse herself instead of using a dummy.

About this time a magnificent spectacle dazzled my vision—the whole constellation of the Great Menken came flaming out of the heavens like a vast spray of gas-jets, and shed a glory abroad over the universe as it fell!—Mark Twain

WORLD'S FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE was about Menken who was performing when Lincoln had just taken office 

In Albany, Menken’s manager Edwin James called the first press conference. He lured his fellow journalists up the Hudson to gape at the beauty whose star quality struck them like a bolt of lightning.

James, a former lawyer, currently theater-sports reporter on the New York Clipper, mustered representatives from New York’s six daily newspapers, three weeklies and two monthlies.Mazeppa opened three months after Lincoln’s inauguration. The Civil War may have been heating up, but the “naked lady” captured front page attention. James could boast of notoriety in his own right. An Englishman, he provided the model for Stryver, the crooked barrister in Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities.  James may have had a shady past, but he remained Menken’s truest friend, the only one to stand fast when flatterers eager to drink champagne at her expense in flush times abandoned her in adversity.

Me: So weird, so weird that she also played a man in the play where she exposed herself, and I think I insisted on keeping the pants off in my costume for that scene from Charlie Was A Lady in that picture as well.

Research:

Mazeppa-Menken, a Tartar prince, first appeared onstage, a regal figure in black velvet cloak and tights ready for swashbuckling and dueling. At Mazeppa’s climax, a gang of enemy soldiers apparently strip our hero-heroine nude. Tied to the back of a snorting steed, storm raging, Menken clattered up a cardboard mountain over a narrow plywood ramp ending on the “flies” four stories up. This pioneering striptease act kept Menken in the limelight throughout her brief career.

The toast of Frisco and Europe brought rave reviews from discerning critics like Mark Twain, a friend and admirer. In 1864 Twain, who worked as a fledgling newspaper reporter for the Californian, witnessed the Menken bring down the house. His inimitable prose described how “A magnificent spectacle dazzled my vision—the whole constellation of the Great Menken came flaming out of the heavens like a vast spray of gas jets, and shed a glory abroad over the universe as it fell.”

Mark Twain reviewing Mezzepo in The Californian.

“a complete ballet with prima assoluta, secondi and ballerini was unknown. The little the public had seen of women in tights was confined to the performance of "Mazeppa," in which either an Adah Isaacs Menken , a Kate Fisher or a Leo Hudson was lashed to the back of a wild, untamed Barbary steed. The sensation can be imagined when all at once the stage of Niblo's garden, New York, was filled with what seemed to be myriads of women in short skirts, in trunks and in tights. It was a beautiful spectacle and it appealed to the senses as no theatrical performance ever had before.

http://cather.unl.edu/j00002.html

That above is published for some reason in Nebraska State Journal

April 1, 1894
page 13

Between the Acts

OMG I think I may be Adah Menken reincarnated:

Infelix

BY ADAH ISAACS MENKEN

Where is the promise of my years;

    Once written on my brow?

Ere errors, agonies and fears

Brought with them all that speaks in tears,

Ere I had sunk beneath my peers;

    Where sleeps that promise now?

Naught lingers to redeem those hours,   

    Still, still to memory sweet!

The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers

Are withered all; and Evil towers

Supreme above her sister powers

    Of Sorrow and Deceit.

I look along the columned years,   

    And see Life’s riven fane,

Just where it fell, amid the jeers

Of scornful lips, whose mocking sneers,

For ever hiss within mine ears

    To break the sleep of pain.

I can but own my life is vain

    A desert void of peace;

I missed the goal I sought to gain,

I missed the measure of the strain

That lulls Fame’s fever in the brain,

    And bids Earth’s tumult cease.

Myself! alas for theme so poor

    A theme but rich in Fear;

I stand a wreck on Error’s shore,

A spectre not within the door,

A houseless shadow evermore,

    An exile lingering here.

Wow.  

CUT PARAGRAPHS: 

Charlie Was a Lady was loosely based on Charlie Parkhurst, a woman who posed as a man so she could drive stage coaches on the El Camino Real. She's a real character in California history.  She realized as a woman she could never have a career and she had to support herself, so she dressed and acted like a man, slept in the barn with her horses, drove a stage coach better than almost all the other Wells Fargo drivers in early California, and it was only upon her death that the public found out, after a coroner’s examination, that he was really a she, there really is a good story there.

In the Burbank Community Theater 1969 version, 

******************

2010 - East Hollywood

“You'll never guess who got in my cab this afternoon, Barbara Blaine.”

“No, Rick, that was no coincidence.”

Too late. I knew exactly what would happen. 

Within weeks our plans for action to publicize pedophile priests in Chicago were squelched.

 More coming in upcoming chapters 

CUT PARAGRAPHS ABOUT THE ASHRAM IN DALLAS

Apparently since I only remembered the molestation experiences the way one remembers things that happen at age six, instead of being an atheist, I pursued alternative religions with passion, anything but  Catholic. In 1969 I had moved to a commune in Laguna Canyon where we took LSD every day and sometimes had face time with the man himself, Timothy Leary, who had a ranch just across the Riverside County line.  From Laguna I moved into the Integral Yoga Institute ashram in Burbank, meditating with starlets, and when Swami Satchidananda opened a branch in Dallas, I made my way there.  So in 1972 I lived in an old mansion on Lemon Avenue close to downtown Dallas sharing a dorm-like room with two other yoginis. 

Like Adah Menken, I found religion in Texas through a man, dropped the man, kept the religion.

Now in the ashram, I was still in the Annie Fanny phase of my life.  The fashion was to go braless and I joined in, although my Polish C cups were, as a result, a distraction everywhere I went.  Instead of covering myself up, I’d stand in awkward stances trying to cover my protruding nipples with my elbows to no avail.  In that state I arrived at the Integral Yoga Ashram to learn to be a Yoga instructor, when all the time, inside, I was really in pursuit of the priest

We got up every morning at four A-M or so, for group meditation, conducted chanting and prayer sessions for the public.

This was the tail end of my Annie Fannie period.  Mind you, I was as clueless as the cartoon character as to the effect I had on people.  I was just who I was, a busty barely clad curious female who because of how I looked, often ended up in the middle of the story.

Maybe I was always born to be a journalist.

Make this a scene: Within weeks I was wearing whites and teaching beginning hatha yoga classes

-ke

I know this goes on and on and on, I am in bad need of an editor. 
And a publisher

-ke

And PayPal clicks, please click my PayPal button with high fives

COMING NEXT
CHAPTER 4
"The Blog"

-By Kay Ebeling
the City of Angels Is Everywhere

COMING IN 2017

In Pursuit of the Priest at NASA in Houston 

refernce

PTSD and capacitance

Hard to describe these things

but I keep trying

PTSD and capacitance: 

When you experience the original trauma, the capacity of your nerve cells expands.  At a cellular level, you now have an ability to contain new trauma. Nerves are elastic-like and now, after the trauma, have an increased capacity to expand. 

So years later, when someone hollers at you, or an everyday type trauma happens- traffic, weather, news-  this PTSD patient feels something like the original trauma, re-experiencing it at least at a nerve cell level, because the cells open up and expand to accommodate a new influx of a large amount of trauma.

So even though the two incidents are very different, the second one a minor everyday trauma that most people just tolerate, it can cause this PTSD patient to re-experience the same feelings experienced during the original trauma, at a nerve cell level.  I open up and experience all the horrible physical stuff all over again, just I guess, from memory, sense memory? 

Something like that anyway.

-kay ebeling

Backstory for Ch. 3, Considering Who We Are, coming soon

Fr. Horne-y

My sister Patricia is a big part of my story.  She and I were both molested by Father Horne-y, all our lives we were connected in a strange way that was probably because we shared that experience, although neither of us knew the other went through it until 1995.  That's when I knew for sure it really happened, because I learned in a phone call with my sister that she too had been diddled by Father Horne-y.  Her memory is weirder than mine, because when she had a baby in the 1970s, she started “remembering things” as my dad said, and he put her in a suburban L.A. mental institution and authorized 12 shock treatments, as many as it took to keep her from remembering.  I too started “remembering things” after having a child, when L reached the age I was during the abuse, it all came pouring in.

-----------
(This is Backstory for Chapter 3 published here )
-----------

Most of my life I followed my sister around the globe.  She went to Geneva Switzerland in 1965, my parents sent me to stay with her in 1966 when I graduated high school.  That's where I was Taken and almost sold to some Arabs, a story I've written here before.

Trish seemed to have the opposite reaction to being molested by Father Horne-y in the early years.  She stayed a virgin until age twenty-one, and since she dated so many people and was incredibly popular, all through high school, as a cocktail waitress later, her virginity was an issue, and when she finally gave in and let someone have sex with her, it was news all over the Balboa Peninsula.

As Tri

Trish, c. 1990?

sh got older, she seemed to go the opposite direction and became more sexually profound even than I was.  She danced topless for years working a circuit in Northern California, and often told the story of how she’d take several men customers home with her some nights. They’d follow her in her blue sports car out past the canyons north of San Francisco where she lived in the middle of nowhere then in a shack with a metal rooftop.  There they’d have sex through the night.  

That was my sister.  She is, I think to this day, proud of her sex life, has friends in the Hookers and Dancers rights groups in SF. 

Me, I would try to be rigid and straight while carrying on at night.  I would get hired at amazing places, such as NASA in Houston in 1978 and in L.A. later at uptight PR firms. Then in the night hours, I’d eerily do similar things as my sister, especially taking several men home at a time to have sex.

I distinctly remember Father Horne-y teaching me a sexual fantasy at age six, about having sex with lots of different men. He was training me for First Confession, explaining what "impure thoughts" were. Honest that happened.  It might have happened to Trish as well.

The two of us, Trish and I, lived as adults caught in that pattern, wanting to have sex with men by the numbers.  At least Trish was smart enough to work in industries where people didn't mind her sexuality. 

It also probably happened to Adah Menken in around 1850, see as we will see in Chapter Three. 

I ended up acting out with way too many men who were my colleagues at work, and then I couldn't understand why I kept getting fired when I was performing these difficult complicated jobs so well.  I was not proud of my sexual profoundness, I thought I could carry on both lives at the same time and it did not work.

That may have been what Trish was trying to tell me that day  when she came backstage to see me after opening night in the show I was in in Burbank in 1969.

Something Trish said to me that day caused me to pretty much quit my acting career and start doing porn.  Here is what happened:

MORE COPIED FROM PATRICIA backstory

Another mystery I carry with me to this day is what was it Patricia said to me in 1969.  It was backstage in a Burbank community theater where I’d just gotten standing ovations for my lead performance in a very bad play.  My sister came backstage and something she said to me put me in this weird fugue state.  She said something like, “I don't know why you are pursuing an acting career like this, considering who we are.”  And I knew exactly what she meant.*  The next day I told the director to have the understudy finish the run of the show.  Then I picked up a copy of Daily Variety that had a glowing review of my performance and practically skipped over it, turned to the Help Wanted pages, and answered one of the new ads they were just then starting to run.  Since the Supreme Court decision to allow pornography to be mass produced, in 1969 legitimate casting boards were listing “modeling jobs” in the newly acceptable sex-movies. 

Still in that fugue state, I registered and did porn for for the next six months, at a time when doing porn meant you could never do real acting work again.  So it destroyed whatever chances I had of doing real film or  TV series work or even anymore plays.

In 1984 I was in therapy in L.A., and when my shrink heard that story he said, “Wow, I really wish I could hear what it was your sister said to you backstage that night.”But I can’t remember the exact words, something like “why bother, considering who we are,” and I knew exactly what it was she said, and went into the sex industry instead.  

Yeah. When a Catholic priest starts fooling around with kids in a family, it messes up all kinds of dynamics.

 Related link: http://cityofangels2.blogspot.com/2010/01/watching-taken-brings-up-time-i-got.html 

Note to self: Go through family albums and get more pics of Trish to use in these posts. 

* Just like I knew what she meant when she said, "No Wonder I've been so hostile to you my whole life, you took away my first lover when I was nine years old."

note

After all that turmoil in my family in '97-98, Lizzie and I packed up our apartment in San Clemente, and as we drove up the 405, I joked, “You know what people do when their families fall apart? They run away to Hollywood.  So we're going to run away to Hollywood.”

She went “Yay.”  She was eight? Nine?

I wonder if she remembers that.

People with PTSD are not insane, in fact the opposite is true

We are very-very sane.  

When a person goes through horrible trauma, the weaker mind relies on the brain’s survival mechanisms. Many people create multiple personalities after trauma like I went through, also dissociative disorders. I know because I've interviewed a lot of victims. They can end up living on disability.

People like me with PTSD hold it together and keep on working, we are just hyper alert, and, as happened to me last night, always subject to unexpected events that can trigger as much as 24 hours of reaction, even longer. 

This was a two incident event. When the first part happened out in the parking lot in the morning, my landlord screaming awful things at me for seemed like twenty minutes, I still came back inside and finished a job and got the doc sent back in plenty of time. Made my deadline. Then went for a walk and only when I got out of the apartment and down to the lake did I let it all pour.  I shook then for, I don't know 12 hours, I still actually haven't stopped. 

Then when I came in, the person involved, the perpetrator, decided that since he manages the building where I live so has the electric breakers in his apartment, hey, wouldn't it be funny to just sort of accidentally bump the switch and turn off the old lady’s electricity. 

Around 10 PM, I was just getting out of the shower when all the lights, internet, TV, everything went out.  I had an LED light nearby so pushed it on and had enough light to get dressed, then went outside to see if other people had lights.

Everyone else had power. And funniest thing, just as I open my door, there’s the building manager’s wife right there, with this goofy grin on her face, she’d just run up, and so kind of embarrassed, said to me, “Oh,” flush, “I thought it was just the internet. It's everything? Oh.”

I figured it out right there on the spot that her husband had turned off my electricity.  Something inside me said, Get the electricity back on.

And I switched into overdrive.  See this is the survival side of my PTSD. Nothing was going to stop me.  I said whatever came into my mouth, no matter how shocking.  I walked right behind her, saying, Turn my electricity back on.  She went in her apartment and shut the bottom half of their door. I leaned in and called inside the house, “Turn my electricity back on.”  She tried to tell me I was scaring her kids, but at that point I didn't give a damn about her kids, I think I even said so.  “Turn my electricity back on!”  She slammed the door but did not lock it, so I opened it back up and stuck my head in the door saying “Turn the electricity back on.”

I know at this point I looked more like a character in a sci-fi movie than a human.  I was on total auto drive. 

And the Voice.  The Voice.  I used to sing, I still do around the house, I have a very powerful voice already.  But when one of these incidents happen, I go down to this huge chasm and fill up with power and this bell tone sounds out like Quazimoto on a rampage. After she finally locked the door, I stood outside in the driveway and in full Liberty Bell Tone hollered, “Turn my electricity back on” over and over again.

She says she doesn't have a flashlight to see the breakers, and I shove my little LED light in her hand, “Turn my electricity back on.”

Oh. This is the funny part.  She hollered back, only she just had this shriek off-key soprano totally loud with no power voice.  She shrieked, “We were both asleep in bed when the electricity went off, we have no idea what happened.”

But because I was so relentless and would not stop standing right outside their door- HOLLERING - I was on autodrive- they called the police on me.  At the same time I was calling the police on them.

Anyway, Because this dumb-ass Florida cracker called the police on me, the police came, and because they went inside his apartment, they saw that the breaker is way over here, how did it get switched off if he was in bed.  “Oh,” said Nitwit, “I may have accidentally bumped it.”

From his Bed? 

Caught in a lie, la la la la la

The cop then came to talk to me, and after hearing my story, said, “Oh by the way, he did admit that he might have accidentally touched your breaker and turned off your electricity.”

Right, I said, only mine after all this.  And I think the officer rolled his eyes as well, but he was really trying to be noncommittal.

I thanked him several times.  Now, thanks to my local police, I know I'm not imagining it, he really did turn the electricity off on purpose, otherwise why did he lie and say he had been in bed. Now I have the ammunition I need.  I knocked off a couple emails and . . . well,

I feel like I may not have to pack up and move again now after all, which would have been really hard on me.

The PTSD part, this is the weird part.  If you remember the film I Am Legend, there are the guys who have the virus, they are after the doctor, they push up against his glass wall, and they just keep pushing up against it and pushing up against it, like it's more instinct than brain at work, even though they are not getting through, they still keep pushing and pushing and pushing and indeed after enough brute force and a long enough period of time, the glass does break.

That's me in one of those auto-pilot PTSD modes.  Nothing can stop me.  I was up against their door and I was going to push my head in as far as I could without breaking the law, and I was going to keep saying it and saying it and saying it until I got a response.

MORE RE PTSD

The really scary part is, it was not until this morning that I realized how horrible it would have been if I had not been able to get them to turn back on my lights.

That's why I'm so grateful that part of my overdrive was just knowing I had to get the electricity turned back on, no matter what.

You see since about 1995, I have some media on all the time.  The TV or radio or music or an internet auto-play TV series is on in my life all the time. Because I cannot let my brain get empty. If I do, horrible stuff pours in, and before I know it, I'm rolled up in a ball in out of control tears or rage.

That is what happens if I don't have electric stimulus around.  That is what would have happened to me for God  knows how many hours before I finally got those people to turn my electricity back on, if I had not been relentless.

I'm a sick sixty-seven year old lady.  This should never have happened. 

I kind of hope they move away and we get new management.  

-Kay Ebeling 

Preview: Chapter 3 Considering Who We Are

"Good women are rarely clever and clever women are rarely good.” Adah Menken, c. 1863
Faster Than the Speed of Life is continuing soon: 
Catch up here:
Chapter One First Light
Chapter Two The Thud and a Nipple Dress
I am currently writing Chapter Three with working title "Considering Who We Are" 
Featuring Adah Menken in the R-Rated part. She was raised Catholic mid 1800s and seems to have had the same sexual compulsions my sister and I had as a result of being, at preschool age, sexualized and molested by a Catholic priest. . . hmm. 

(Photo Courtesy SF Museum dot org )
-Kay Ebeling

If anyone finds out who I am, I have to move again

Because I blog about pedophile priests. 

This really did happen. I post fiction at CofA Fiction

The day the building manager came to collect the keys, his hairpiece was tipped to the side more than usual making it hard not to laugh as we did the move-out walk-through. I must have still had a fragment of faith left, or maybe I was trying one more time to reach out to him, because as he walked away, I called out, “See you in heaven.”

He turned to me, his eyes as usual buggy with that idiot look you see on fundamentalist Christians, wide open and empty, but happy happy happy.  He said, “Yes you will see me in heaven, if you accept Jesus in your heart as your one and only savior.”  I fixed him with a glare, and the last fragment of faith fell off of me, permanently. 

I was moving primarily because of incidents with my very Roman Catholic neighbor Rudy. The first time I’d encountered the bony old man he had a three-foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary in his lap. He’d just gotten it in the mail so was whizzing around with it in his wheelchair, and it looked like a massive hideous Mary Mother of God erection rising up from between his legs. He even wore an expression of euphoria on his face as he buzzed around the building, hands on his mail order object, an image I will never EVER be able to get out of my memory.

When I moved in, I didn't know the manager / maintenance man for the Senior Complex was also a self appointed pastor / fundamentalist, who ran a weekly Bible study in the building.  He also corralled the residents through makeshift celebrations of Jesus to coincide with every holiday. Fourth of July flags festooned the grounds alongside crucifixes.  

When I moved to this senior complex, I was still under a cloud of leftover faith, so I thought it was “angelic intervention” that put me in a building where I would be “protected” by an active Christian landlord. 

Then I attended one of the maintenance man’s Bible studies, where he preached that Buddhists and persons who do transcendental meditation are condemned to hell for eternity because that's not Christian. I had to get up and leave muttering to myself, “What does he think Jesus did in the desert for forty days and nights, disco dancing?”

Stranger still, most the residents attended his weekly sessions with rapt attention. Several told me when we’d meet in the halls that they were certain Delbert was a holy man, with amazing insight, you just have to to come hear him speak more often, they’d say. One asked me, "Aren't you Christian?" I said, "Yes, I am, that's why I do not go to Delbert’s Bible studies," and left her standing confused. Another very reverent neighbor who decorated her door with American flags and posters of Jesus, would see me, get alarmed, and whisper, “Jesus Jesus protect me Jesus Jesus,” as she rushed to get away from me as fast as she could. And she lived right across the hall. 

So mostly, I tried to stay to myself in the building, which would have been fine if it had not been for Rudy.

The bony old man zoomed around the senior complex grounds in his wheelchair and at first I thought he was kinda cute, and tried to engage him in conversation.  But every word out of his mouth was “Goddamn son of a bitch,” or the equivalent, for any minor thing such as the mailman is twenty minutes late. Grumpy old man barely describes Rudy, so after one or two encounters, I tried to stay clear of Rudy too.

However, it turns out Rudy ran the CCR, what they used to call Catechism class, at the Catholic church that just happened to be across the street, and apparently soon after I moved in, he made the connection, maybe with the help of the pastor of the Church, I don't know how, but Rudy figured out who I was and read my blog, and he started to come after me.

Literally. 

You see Catholics think the pedophile priest victims were just out to destroy the Church, which is so untrue, I don't give a damn about the church.  

**************

When I think back on that incident with the grocery cart, the image that comes to mind is of a bull scraping the ground with his foot off to the side, only this person is tiny, four and a half feet of aging male skeleton with a thin layer of skin over it- so tiny he only takes up half the wheelchair.  In that skull his eyes are over-sized glaring at me from the side of the breezeway.

It was by now several weeks since I’d let a couple people know the subject I write about on the blog and I was being frozen out of most conversations, the community rooms went quiet when I entered. They even changed the date of the Christmas party and told everyone but me, little things like that. 

But Rudy also had the church across the street egging him on in his ninety-year old fervor to protect his religion. 

Rudy would be watching on the sidelines when I went to get my mail, walk to the post office, head to the weekly farmers market. Whenever I walked outside there would be Rudy, his head bobbing on his neck over the bones of his body, just watching as if he knew, “Any minute she's going to do something.”  

One day I overheard Rudy say, “Her, she, the one with the hats” so I knew he was talking about me. Then he said, “the blue grocery cart.  She's keeping the blue grocery cart inside her apartment.”

When the grocery cart incident happened, I was still communicating with the manager, so I wrote him this email.

October 14, Email to Delbert: 

Subject line: He Came After Me

Yesterday morning Rudy saw me come out of the laundry room with the blue cart. He's been obsessed about me taking carts since I moved in here, which is insane enough.

Yesterday he came after me.

I saw the expression on his face as soon as he saw me with the cart, so I took the other elevator to avoid him.  When I got off the elevator, I soon heard him get off the other elevator and with his wheelchair going as fast as it could, he was zooming up the hallway to intercept me.

When he got around the corner, the look on his face was so full of hate and rage that I am now having nightmares seeing that image.

He raced up and grabbed the cart, then pulled it out of my hand, hollering something like, You don't need two of these carts, I know you've got another cart in your apartment.

I do not feel safe with that demented old man living downstairs, plus his parking space is right outside my window.  Can you please do something about it?

Kay Ebeling

2:00 AM October 15, 2014

With no reply from the manager, a few days later I followed up with this email:

Please tell me why the crazy man who chased me down the hall and grabbed something from me is still buzzing around the building in his wheelchair?  I can't even go to the market and back without encountering Rudy, and now how am I supposed to get my mail? 

Like I said, I do not feel safe here now.  He is fixated on me, chased me, grabbed things from me when I am using them. . . 

And now he's breezing around the building like there's nothing wrong at all.  

How Is That Okay? 

(A few hours later I sent:)

Menacing. The word for what Rudy is doing to me is menacing. 

THEN:  OCTOBER 24

I Thought You Told Rudy, as manager of the building, That he had to Stay Away from me. He's Not. He's doing the opposite. You told me you talked to him.

Now this weekend, he knows you are not here, and that Roger is off site, and he is taking advantage of that time to harass me.  He always seems to harass me during times when both you and Roger are off the property.

Rudy Is Not A Nice Person and I am in danger I can't go outside, he cursed at me just now so loud my ears are ringing. “You Bitch” he hollered so loud, with his mouth snarling and his face all scrunched up.

Delbert, please, this Is Out Of Control, he is not adhering to your instructions. I went out at a time when I was sure he would not be there and Still There was Rudy In the aisle on his wheelchair where i was walking to the market. He knows when I'm going out and puts himself there, menacing me, ON PURPOSE

He IS Harassing Me

I should not have to hide in my apartment to be safe here. 

-ke

November 3

The situation with Rudy got worse last weekend. He chased after me a second time and ALSO I saw him looking in my window as he rode by my apartment, TWICE.

Because apparently no one has punished him or sanctioned him, Rudy is now empowered and getting more aggressive with me. 

On Sunday Oct 26 on two occasions when I looked up, Rudy was riding by outside AND looking in my window. 

Then He Chased After Me Again.  I went down to put a note on M’s door.  When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Rudy was at the South end of the building. By the time I got to M’s door he was at the North end.  I heard him coming after me, his wheelchair buzzing. 

It freaked me out.  I felt menaced and stalked.  After he had yelled “You Bitch” at me so loud last week, why was he still riding all over the complex, causing me to feel like I have to hide in my apartment.

It got better after I talked to Roger on Monday about it. and for a while, Rudy did not bother me.

Then just now, Sunday November 2, I encountered him twice when I went outside to go in and out through the pedestrian gate on this end of the bldg when he lives on the other end, and it makes me uncomfortable.  I just missed him.  He seems to have free reign all over the complex while I'm the one who has to hide inside to avoid him.

He menaced me, chased me TWICE, screamed at me in the rose garden in a way that makes me know I can’t water the roses anymore.

That's what happened since my previous email.

Please talk to him again, as whatever you said to him the first time did not stop the behavior.

PS I think this all started because I had a letter to the editor published in the AV Press October 9 that Rudy read and realized it was me and it made him mad.  That may have been what got him so angry at me to begin with.  I think that is what happened

OF COURSE, 
this was my fault, 
I got a letter to the editor published.

I've now learned, as the title of this post goes, that if anyone finds out who I am, I have to move.  But since there is such a flaming letters to editor page in the daily Antelope Valley Press, I could not help but pipe in one day with this one,

Dare ya to publish this one

To the Editors, AV Press: 

All of a sudden Eric Holder resigns. It looks like Obama's AG screwed up bad by being too benevolent to "nonprofits" that have Islam in their name. He allowed who knows how many dollars to flow into mosques that produced criminals such as the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston and Alton Nolen in Oklahoma.

This is the same Attorney General who said no when he had an opportunity to file federal indictments against Catholic bishops for aiding and abetting pedophile priest crimes back in 2009-10.  Now Holder has made the same mistake with Islamic groups, not believing a network of criminals could operate at the top echelons of a religion.  Holder will now no longer be our AG, but we have to deal with the consequences.  

Eric Holder did not prosecute the bishops just like he would not prosecute the imans. In the Catholic case it means dozens of felons are still in powerful positions influencing public policy. In the Islamic case, the entire nation’s security has been compromised.  

I hope someone besides me sees that the real problem here is the US Dept of Justice believing criminals are innocent just because they are leaders in religious organizations.

Kay Ebeling, Lancaster

Also ran here http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/09/holder-mistake-with-bishops-repeated.html

***************

Good letter, yes, but it blew my cover.  I'm sure when Rudy was meeting with the priest about his CCR classes, or when Delbert was surfing the web as he seemed to do every night until late hours in his office, someone made the connection, the person who did the blog that was out to tear down the Catholic Church is living in this apartment building.

*******************

Email to Delbert: February 4 2015

The other day Rudy BLOCKED my access to the staircase to my home. He saw me, stared straight at me outside the gate, and kept his wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs. Only way I could have come home would be to walk within inches of Rudy who sat there glaring at me. He saw me, saw I was waiting, and refused to move, just glared.  After a few moments, I gave up and, In Pain, had to walk all the way around to another entrance and staircase to get to my apartment.  

Rudy never lived up to the agreement to stay away from me, yesterday is proof. 

I am very unhappy with the way this situation was never resolved, it's obvious I am not as valuable a tenant as Rudy or my concerns would have been addressed.  I barely come downstairs anymore bk He Is Always Under My Apartment.  All you had to do was move his parking space instead you ignored my complaints and he never stopped harassing me. 

I'm moving out of the building as soon as I can, will give you 30 days notice in a few days, but you should know the way this situation was NEVER HANDLED is one of the main reasons I'm leaving

*******************

HOW DELBERT RESPONDED
Putting Rudy right outside my window

Email from Delbert, February 5

"Sorry I wasn't able to satisfy you."

On February 6, Delbert gave Rudy the job of watering roses right under my window, so at any time of day I would look out or go out and see the old man in his wheelchair, water hose outpouring, staring back at me. 

I gave notice and moved 30 days later.

I tried to enlist help from the manager and he pretended nothing was happening. 

The manager who held long prayer sessions before every building event, who invited the priest from across the street over to pray over events, who right up to the day I moved pretended he had no idea what the topic is of my blog.

I finally moved.  Not just because of Rudy.  The whole city of Lancaster is full of people who live by the word of Fox News and whatever warped interpretation of the Bible made it to their neck of the Mojave Desert and nothing else.  

There are churches everywhere in Lancaster. Even the city logo has a cross hidden in it, supposedly a plus sign, but subliminally it really is a cross, you realize after watching a few city council meetings. 

I don't know though, when I look back at the image of the bony old Catholic man chasing me around in his wheelchair hollering at me and then when I complained about it, the building manager put Rudy in charge of watering the roses under my window, and considering how much the atmosphere changed all over the building towards me once a few people knew what I write about on the blog, I think I'm better off now that I moved, even though I did end up in the slummiest area of Tahoe, it's slums with nice scenery. And I'm not telling anyone my last name, or what I write about, until I know them Very Well, from now on. 

The day I moved, when Delbert said those buzz words, “If you have Jesus in your heart,” he waited for me to give the rote response Christians give each other, some kind of affirmation, oh yes I've taken him into my heart too, and now I am saved too, as long as I keep hating anyone who won’t say that. 

In the 18 months I lived in Lancaster, everything that was left of my faith disappeared, partly due to the incredible hypocrisy at this apartment complex, and all over the city there, people using Christian words to justify hatred and bigotry, and to promote ignorance.

Also while in Lancaster, I read the book, Misquoting Jesus, which was introduced to me by one of the more scholarly of the pedophile priest survivors, one of the few who is still communicating with me. 

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433703552&sr=8-1&keywords=misquoting+jesus 

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Where I live now there are a lot of Seventh Day Adventists, and since I eat their diet, I’d probably love to be part of their church.  But I've arrived here in Tahoe in a state of never being able to enter any kind of church again. 

The whole time I was in Lancaster, Delbert [not his real name] pretended he never went online and read my blog, so when I started having problems with Rudy [not his real name], he feigned no understanding of how Rudy being active in the Catholic Church up the street might be part of my problem. 

It was my fault.  I made the mistake of writing a couple letters to the editor in the local paper there in Lancaster, and telling people I wrote about the pedophile priests, as I could not resist.  I won’t make that mistake again where I'm living now. 

I wrote this post because a lot of my Facebook friends and the couple people in my family who still speak to me think I'm imagining it when I say I keep having to move once too many of my neighbors find out who I am. 

It really does happen.

**********

Actually the way Catholics react when they find out I wrote this blog makes it real obvious that “somehow” the church has gotten out the message that pedophile priest victims made up our stories because we're out to destroy the Catholic Church, turning the victims into bad guys and the bad guys into victims.

- Kay Ebeling

Onward

Other relevant posts at CofA Blog on how coming out in public as a pedophile priest victim affects one’s life

http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com/2014/04/ch2-thud-and-nipple-dress_23.html

And

http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2012/05/big-thud.html

Oh I forgot to add: Bill O’Riley is one of the most brilliant writers out there today, according to Pastor Delbert. 

-ke

Please Click My PayPal with High $5 (High Fives) as I am, as usual, broke (see previous post) 
-ke

Culture Shock

Not in the way you would expect

I live in an SRO and it's funny because all my life I used to say, when I'm old I want to live in a hotel.  I was dreaming more of the Hotel Laguna right on the beach with room service, or something downtown in a city such as San Francisco.  I was dreaming of an era that barely existed when I was growing up, but at least I was able to observe it as a child, the era of a thriving middle class.  My dad, the son of a Chicago cop, became a corporate lawyer, and the first home I remember living in must have been a mansion, looking back on it.  There was even a “ballroom” where my parents threw cocktail parties. I went looking for it in 2011 and found that a Northwest Suburb covers the area where our "house in the woods" used to be. 

In the 1950s when we went to special events, we wore complete outfits. Everything from barrettes to died-to-match shoes had been purchased for that one afternoon. Our shopping trips took up an entire day. We'd stop for lunch in restaurants with napkins, then in the store there was a comfortable chair to sit in while we tried on clothes, sometimes a saleswoman also served refreshments. 

Whenever we went out, we wore hats and gloves. 

So that upper crust lifestyle got into my DNA. I grew up with addresses in San Marino, Newport Beach, and for a brief time, Forest Hills New York.

So finding myself in a Single Room Occupancy hotel in South Lake Tahoe in my old age is a bit of a culture shock. 

Still I'm more comfortable here than I was in the “senior complex” that I was running away from when I landed in what is, yes, a hotel, but it's in the part of town where homeless people go when they finally move into permanent shelter.     

At least you know what to expect from a guy who sits on the bench outside his room with a can of beer in his hand every morning.  You know not to even try to hold a conversation with a staggering guy hollering “Why don't management take out this trash!” as he tosses a Hungry Man box on top of a pyramid of TV dinner boxes in the community kitchen. 

One of the worst things I've learned about many “senior complexes” that dot our nation’s cities from coast to coast, thanks to IRS and state tax incentives, is they put one face out for the public to see, but inside the seniors are living in a strange state of neglect and exploitation. 

So I’d rather be in an SRO.  I'd rather live where it's obvious who to stay away from. Actually what I'd really like is to live in a real home. 

But  in 1997, a red headed woman stole the family money, taking advantage of a time when I was kind of reeling, having just found out in 1995 that I Really Had Been Molested by a priest at age five and it was the reason I screwed up everything in my life with sexual compulsions. So I did not defend us, and my mom, sister and me became suddenly poor.  Now I find myself living in the strangest places. 

*****

More to come. 

-kay ebeling 

Getting Away With It

I'm going to start faking Turret's Syndrome so I can walk around yelling at people and get away with it.  "You Bitch!" I'll snarl,, and then follow in a sweet tone, "Oh, sorry, I have Turret's."  You can walk down the street hollering and shouting when you fake Turret's and no one will arrest you. What a great idea. 

My sister and I have a similar peculiarity after what happened to us with Father Horne, my father, and incidents where we were taken away at age five-eight in cars for them to take pictures. Both Trish and I hate cars, hate to ride in cars, and hate to get into cars with men. Unless it's to fuck them.

Preview:1872 Can-Can dancer, 1972 topless bar pro

Video below ties to my story in progress, 
new post coming shortly


A dance where a woman holds her leg up, vagina in the face of the male audience member? There has to be more to the history of the can-can dance than the white-washed version in early 20th century film. How much did the first can-can dancers have in common with topless bar performers in the 1970s and today's "gentlemen's club" pros?

Stay tuned
-ke