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Ask a Funeral Director
2011.09.01 21:02 OKfuneraldirector Ask a Funeral Director
Welcome to AskFuneralDirectors! A place to ask questions or post information about Funerals, Embalming, Cemeteries, Cremation, or anything in the Death Care Industry. Please check out our FAQs and helpful information below...
2014.02.13 22:31 artisurn Cremation: Discussion & Cremation
Respectful discussion on the topic of cremation for your loved ones and pets.
2023.06.04 06:45 Soymilk_tea FearFul Great Dane Adolescent and socialization
Hello all, I'm back agin for more advice, this time on socialization for my adolescent Great Dane puppy. Moose just turned 9mos old at the end of May and I have only had him since he was 6mos old. When we first got him, I found him in a rehoming group and upon talking to the woman who had him she mentioned she had a family member pass away and was unable to care for him. A couple of red flags when I picked him up. He was underweight, mainly due to a not so great feed, though she says it was because he 'ran it all off' and when she handed me his vaccination reports, from a vet 3 hours away in Alabama, she let it be know that he did not have a rabies shot...at 6 months old.
So we bring him home, we isolate him from my other pets, just in case, and I immediately call the vet. Get him an appointment for the next day and get him his rabies, bordatella, flea and tick, and Heartguard. At the vet, he nervously growled at he vet and his tech when they came into the room, and hid in the corner. I did my best to not let him hide behind me, but by the end of the visit, he took a treat the tech had thrown his direction and was fine. He didn't growl at the receptionist or even the dog that ran up to him, which I inserted myself in between the two before he cold make it over there.
Though now that I am trying to work on socializing him more, it appears he is a very nervous and unconfident dog. He barks when the door to our house opens, not the doorbell, but for example if I return home from work, and he is in the living room with my mom, the moment he hears the door its barking, not aggressive barking bt more alert style barking. He will walk p to the baby gate we have up and look at you, bark a few times, then wag his tail.
We've taken him outside a few cafes, and haven't let anyone touch him, but it is very wishy washy, sometimes people will walk by and he will do nothing, other times he will bark, and low growl while baking up. But when I have taken him to Pet friendly stores, there was no growling at other people or children except once when a child was very loud. He even saw a woman carrying her small dog and he simply looked at them pass by, it wasn't until the woman backed up and started talking to my dog that he growled, only once, and then stopped.
We even had our coworker, Susan, come and help watch him for a day while my mother, and I had to attend a funeral a little ways away, and she told us he was a peach for her, no growling, or barking, just very calm.
I'm just super frustrated, I personally have never taken him to a dog park, or anything, and it feels like every time I try to socialize him, I look like a bad dog owner. most people see him and understand he is a puppy and is nervous but I want to help my dog be more confident and socialized so I can do things like sit outside in cafe's and take him to PetSmart etc. without having to worry about him reacting negatively to other people. I don't let people pet him or anything, but if they have questions I let them talk to me, so he gets used to people being around etc.
I watch a lot of dog shows, which usually have barking and other people talking, on the TV while he's in the room, and he never reacts to that so is that a good sign? any tips/ ideas would be greatly appreciated. We have a dog park in the area with an agility course I Want to take him too(hopefully for his confidence), when the park is empty but every time I go by there, there are always other dogs so we don't stop. Does this sound like reactivity based on fear and unconfidence or is there something else? If it is something else what do you think it is, and is it too late for my adolescent dog? Socialization tips are welcome
thanks in advance, -Ray
submitted by Soymilk_tea to Dogtraining [link] [comments]
So we bring him home, we isolate him from my other pets, just in case, and I immediately call the vet. Get him an appointment for the next day and get him his rabies, bordatella, flea and tick, and Heartguard. At the vet, he nervously growled at he vet and his tech when they came into the room, and hid in the corner. I did my best to not let him hide behind me, but by the end of the visit, he took a treat the tech had thrown his direction and was fine. He didn't growl at the receptionist or even the dog that ran up to him, which I inserted myself in between the two before he cold make it over there.
Though now that I am trying to work on socializing him more, it appears he is a very nervous and unconfident dog. He barks when the door to our house opens, not the doorbell, but for example if I return home from work, and he is in the living room with my mom, the moment he hears the door its barking, not aggressive barking bt more alert style barking. He will walk p to the baby gate we have up and look at you, bark a few times, then wag his tail.
We've taken him outside a few cafes, and haven't let anyone touch him, but it is very wishy washy, sometimes people will walk by and he will do nothing, other times he will bark, and low growl while baking up. But when I have taken him to Pet friendly stores, there was no growling at other people or children except once when a child was very loud. He even saw a woman carrying her small dog and he simply looked at them pass by, it wasn't until the woman backed up and started talking to my dog that he growled, only once, and then stopped.
We even had our coworker, Susan, come and help watch him for a day while my mother, and I had to attend a funeral a little ways away, and she told us he was a peach for her, no growling, or barking, just very calm.
I'm just super frustrated, I personally have never taken him to a dog park, or anything, and it feels like every time I try to socialize him, I look like a bad dog owner. most people see him and understand he is a puppy and is nervous but I want to help my dog be more confident and socialized so I can do things like sit outside in cafe's and take him to PetSmart etc. without having to worry about him reacting negatively to other people. I don't let people pet him or anything, but if they have questions I let them talk to me, so he gets used to people being around etc.
I watch a lot of dog shows, which usually have barking and other people talking, on the TV while he's in the room, and he never reacts to that so is that a good sign? any tips/ ideas would be greatly appreciated. We have a dog park in the area with an agility course I Want to take him too(hopefully for his confidence), when the park is empty but every time I go by there, there are always other dogs so we don't stop. Does this sound like reactivity based on fear and unconfidence or is there something else? If it is something else what do you think it is, and is it too late for my adolescent dog? Socialization tips are welcome
thanks in advance, -Ray
2023.06.04 06:40 RyderHammer NEVER pick up the phone for a number you don't know
Alright, I don't have much time, I am currently hiding in a cramped-up closet. I can hear it moving outside my room. You're most likely wondering how I got here, or why I don't have time. Well here is my story. One sunny California day, I was sitting on my lumpy couch with a new phone I had just bought. It had all the important apps I would spend most of my days on (Youtube, Tiktok, etc.) But I was too lazy to insert a SIM card into my phone. I was checking some Youtube, then over to TikTok repeat like what I always do. Eventually, I decided to put the SIM card into my phone so I can add my parents' numbers and my friends as well. I glance over to the counter where I had left the SIM and lazily get up from the couch as its leather detaches from my skin.
It's only a few steps from the couch but for some reason, it felt longer, maybe it was my laziness or tiredness but it felt as if you were walking up a never-ending staircase. Eventually, I reached the marble counter, but instead of the SIM card being there, there was nothing! "Must have misplaced it?" I thought, trying to come up with a reason. I closed my eyes for a long blink before jogging over to my closet, things always got lost in there. For some reason though, I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched.
As I was miles deep into the pile of clothes I heard, a few steps away from me *BUZZZZ* The very distinct sound of my phone ringing "Must be my imagination" I murmured. My entire body was covered by this point. Then I hear the same sound again, then again, then again. Eventually, I get fed up with the ringing and burst out of the sea of clothes. And trudge over to my still-ringing phone.
"19 Missed Calls" it reads. "Odd" I blurted out loudly. I pick up my phone with a sense of urgency. *BUZZZZ* Another call rings in. I've seen enough horror movies to know to not pick up the phone. *RING* It goes, I had got a text, "Let me in!" It read. I looked at my phone in fear, I have no idea why, but still, it sent chills down my spine. Just then an Amber Alert set off in my phone "Masked killer seems to be stalking around (they said my neighbourhood)" it read. I almost screamed. But I managed to stay calm and ran into my bedroom.
I ran so fast I almost knocked down a picture of my mom- we had just had her funeral last Tuesday. When I got into my room I closed my window and locked my door. *BUZZZZ* my phone went, I decided to be a man and answered it, and all I could hear was low breathing, then another Amber Alert "Masked killer has been sighted outside of (they said my address)" My heart pounded, I ran into the closet I am in now, and here is where my story resumes, "Honey, come out now" A familiar voice says outside, another Amber Alert rings on my phone "Masked killer can replicate voices, STAY AWAY" it reads. I remember the voice now, it's my mom's. "Honey, it is ok" My mom repeats. I have to open the door now, goodbye. My mom is home...
submitted by RyderHammer to Creepystory [link] [comments]
It's only a few steps from the couch but for some reason, it felt longer, maybe it was my laziness or tiredness but it felt as if you were walking up a never-ending staircase. Eventually, I reached the marble counter, but instead of the SIM card being there, there was nothing! "Must have misplaced it?" I thought, trying to come up with a reason. I closed my eyes for a long blink before jogging over to my closet, things always got lost in there. For some reason though, I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched.
As I was miles deep into the pile of clothes I heard, a few steps away from me *BUZZZZ* The very distinct sound of my phone ringing "Must be my imagination" I murmured. My entire body was covered by this point. Then I hear the same sound again, then again, then again. Eventually, I get fed up with the ringing and burst out of the sea of clothes. And trudge over to my still-ringing phone.
"19 Missed Calls" it reads. "Odd" I blurted out loudly. I pick up my phone with a sense of urgency. *BUZZZZ* Another call rings in. I've seen enough horror movies to know to not pick up the phone. *RING* It goes, I had got a text, "Let me in!" It read. I looked at my phone in fear, I have no idea why, but still, it sent chills down my spine. Just then an Amber Alert set off in my phone "Masked killer seems to be stalking around (they said my neighbourhood)" it read. I almost screamed. But I managed to stay calm and ran into my bedroom.
I ran so fast I almost knocked down a picture of my mom- we had just had her funeral last Tuesday. When I got into my room I closed my window and locked my door. *BUZZZZ* my phone went, I decided to be a man and answered it, and all I could hear was low breathing, then another Amber Alert "Masked killer has been sighted outside of (they said my address)" My heart pounded, I ran into the closet I am in now, and here is where my story resumes, "Honey, come out now" A familiar voice says outside, another Amber Alert rings on my phone "Masked killer can replicate voices, STAY AWAY" it reads. I remember the voice now, it's my mom's. "Honey, it is ok" My mom repeats. I have to open the door now, goodbye. My mom is home...
2023.06.04 06:39 RyderHammer NEVER Pick Up The Phone For A Number You Dont Know
Alright, I don't have much time, I am currently hiding in a cramped-up closet. I can hear it moving outside my room. You're most likely wondering how I got here, or why I don't have time. Well here is my story. One sunny California day, I was sitting on my lumpy couch with a new phone I had just bought. It had all the important apps I would spend most of my days on (Youtube, Tiktok, etc.) But I was too lazy to insert a SIM card into my phone. I was checking some Youtube, then over to TikTok repeat like what I always do. Eventually, I decided to put the SIM card into my phone so I can add my parents' numbers and my friends as well. I glance over to the counter where I had left the SIM and lazily get up from the couch as its leather detaches from my skin.
It's only a few steps from the couch but for some reason, it felt longer, maybe it was my laziness or tiredness but it felt as if you were walking up a never-ending staircase. Eventually, I reached the marble counter, but instead of the SIM card being there, there was nothing! "Must have misplaced it?" I thought, trying to come up with a reason. I closed my eyes for a long blink before jogging over to my closet, things always got lost in there. For some reason though, I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched.
As I was miles deep into the pile of clothes I heard, a few steps away from me *BUZZZZ\* The very distinct sound of my phone ringing "Must be my imagination" I murmured. My entire body was covered by this point. Then I hear the same sound again, then again, then again. Eventually, I get fed up with the ringing and burst out of the sea of clothes. And trudge over to my still-ringing phone.
"19 Missed Calls" it reads. "Odd" I blurted out loudly. I pick up my phone with a sense of urgency. *BUZZZZ\* Another call rings in. I've seen enough horror movies to know to not pick up the phone. *RING\* It goes, I had got a text, "Let me in!" It read. I looked at my phone in fear, I have no idea why, but still, it sent chills down my spine. Just then an Amber Alert set off in my phone "Masked killer seems to be stalking around (they said my neighbourhood)" it read. I almost screamed. But I managed to stay calm and ran into my bedroom.
I ran so fast I almost knocked down a picture of my mom- we had just had her funeral last Tuesday. When I got into my room I closed my window and locked my door. *BUZZZZ\* my phone went, I decided to be a man and answered it, and all I could hear was low breathing, then another Amber Alert "Masked killer has been sighted outside of (they said my address)" My heart pounded, I ran into the closet I am in now, and here is where my story resumes, "Honey, come out now" A familiar voice says outside, another Amber Alert rings on my phone "Masked killer can replicate voices, STAY AWAY" it reads. I remember the voice now, it's my mom's. "Honey, it is ok" My mom repeats. I have to open the door now, goodbye. My mom is home...
submitted by RyderHammer to Creepystories [link] [comments]
It's only a few steps from the couch but for some reason, it felt longer, maybe it was my laziness or tiredness but it felt as if you were walking up a never-ending staircase. Eventually, I reached the marble counter, but instead of the SIM card being there, there was nothing! "Must have misplaced it?" I thought, trying to come up with a reason. I closed my eyes for a long blink before jogging over to my closet, things always got lost in there. For some reason though, I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched.
As I was miles deep into the pile of clothes I heard, a few steps away from me *BUZZZZ\* The very distinct sound of my phone ringing "Must be my imagination" I murmured. My entire body was covered by this point. Then I hear the same sound again, then again, then again. Eventually, I get fed up with the ringing and burst out of the sea of clothes. And trudge over to my still-ringing phone.
"19 Missed Calls" it reads. "Odd" I blurted out loudly. I pick up my phone with a sense of urgency. *BUZZZZ\* Another call rings in. I've seen enough horror movies to know to not pick up the phone. *RING\* It goes, I had got a text, "Let me in!" It read. I looked at my phone in fear, I have no idea why, but still, it sent chills down my spine. Just then an Amber Alert set off in my phone "Masked killer seems to be stalking around (they said my neighbourhood)" it read. I almost screamed. But I managed to stay calm and ran into my bedroom.
I ran so fast I almost knocked down a picture of my mom- we had just had her funeral last Tuesday. When I got into my room I closed my window and locked my door. *BUZZZZ\* my phone went, I decided to be a man and answered it, and all I could hear was low breathing, then another Amber Alert "Masked killer has been sighted outside of (they said my address)" My heart pounded, I ran into the closet I am in now, and here is where my story resumes, "Honey, come out now" A familiar voice says outside, another Amber Alert rings on my phone "Masked killer can replicate voices, STAY AWAY" it reads. I remember the voice now, it's my mom's. "Honey, it is ok" My mom repeats. I have to open the door now, goodbye. My mom is home...
2023.06.04 06:36 hoodedknight5 Defining the relationship, anxiety, and uncertainty. 24m, 22f
I (24m) started seeing this girl (22f) about 5 months ago after we matched on hinge. We have been going on dinner dates, and hooking up/ she sleeps over about once a week for 5 months. We have a glass of wine and exchange in small talk/ banter before hooking up. It was more like a friends with benefits type situation even though neither of us has previously brought up exclusivity or defined the relationship.
This all changed a month ago when her dad died. She had to travel back home and I felt really bad and messaged her a lot during the funeral weeks. She became more clingy and texted me more hearts, and saying how much she misses me. When she came back, we went on dates and she even invited me to a party where I met her friends. She's a sweet girl but I could tell she was getting attached. Yesterday, I asked her what she was looking for and after she said "i dont know", I said that I am not ready to commit to a relationship or exclusivity right now in my life. This is because I am very focused on my school, finally feel mentally healthy after a toxic past relationship, and am enjoying my free time and don't want to commit because she will be moving back far away for the summer. I dont know if im doing the right thing.
After our talk she cried. She asked if she scared me away, and I ensured her I enjoy spending time with her and want to see her again, but wanted to be honest about my intentions. She understood and we are cool still and text still. She asked for my instagram to follow me. I am very nervous and this triggered anxiety. This is because my instagram is super private after my last toxic girlfriend, stalked and harassed me on instagram and I almost had to get a restraining order for it. That was 2 years ago and Im finally healed from that but feel hesitant to share my IG information. Any advice on what to do or what to say?
TLDR: Should i provide my instagram info, and did I do the right thing saying im not ready for a relationship?Thank you.
submitted by hoodedknight5 to dating_advice [link] [comments]
This all changed a month ago when her dad died. She had to travel back home and I felt really bad and messaged her a lot during the funeral weeks. She became more clingy and texted me more hearts, and saying how much she misses me. When she came back, we went on dates and she even invited me to a party where I met her friends. She's a sweet girl but I could tell she was getting attached. Yesterday, I asked her what she was looking for and after she said "i dont know", I said that I am not ready to commit to a relationship or exclusivity right now in my life. This is because I am very focused on my school, finally feel mentally healthy after a toxic past relationship, and am enjoying my free time and don't want to commit because she will be moving back far away for the summer. I dont know if im doing the right thing.
After our talk she cried. She asked if she scared me away, and I ensured her I enjoy spending time with her and want to see her again, but wanted to be honest about my intentions. She understood and we are cool still and text still. She asked for my instagram to follow me. I am very nervous and this triggered anxiety. This is because my instagram is super private after my last toxic girlfriend, stalked and harassed me on instagram and I almost had to get a restraining order for it. That was 2 years ago and Im finally healed from that but feel hesitant to share my IG information. Any advice on what to do or what to say?
TLDR: Should i provide my instagram info, and did I do the right thing saying im not ready for a relationship?Thank you.
2023.06.04 06:23 hashbrown3stacks Does secondhand grief lead to PTSD?
Thought popped into my head: do people whose occupations involve regular contract with deeply bereft people have a high incidence of PTSD?
I was thinking of veterinarians but I suppose funeral home workers would have even more of this.
*I don't work in any such industry. Purely asking out of curiosity, Google wasn't much help. Wanted to ask on psychology but they have a lot of criteria for posting
submitted by hashbrown3stacks to NoStupidQuestions [link] [comments]
I was thinking of veterinarians but I suppose funeral home workers would have even more of this.
*I don't work in any such industry. Purely asking out of curiosity, Google wasn't much help. Wanted to ask on psychology but they have a lot of criteria for posting
2023.06.04 06:16 hoodedknight5 Defining the relationship, anxiety, and uncertainty. 24m, 22f
I (24m) started seeing this girl (22f) about 5 months ago after we matched on hinge. We have been going on dinner dates, and hooking up/ she sleeps over about once a week for 5 months. We have a glass of wine and exchange in small talk/ banter before hooking up. It was more like a friends with benefits type situation even though neither of us has previously brought up exclusivity or defined the relationship.
This all changed a month ago when her dad died. She had to travel back home and I felt really bad and messaged her a lot during the funeral weeks. She became more clingy and texted me more hearts, and saying how much she misses me. When she came back, we went on dates and she even invited me to a party where I met her friends. She's a sweet girl but I could tell she was getting attached. Yesterday, I asked her what she was looking for and after she said "i dont know", I said that I am not ready to commit to a relationship or exclusivity right now in my life. This is because I am very focused on my school, finally feel mentally healthy after a toxic past relationship, and am enjoying my free time and don't want to commit because she will be moving back far away for the summer. I dont know if im doing the right thing.
After our talk she cried. She asked if she scared me away, and I ensured her I enjoy spending time with her and want to see her again, but wanted to be honest about my intentions. She understood and we are cool still and text still. She asked for my instagram to follow me. I am very nervous and this triggered anxiety. This is because my instagram is super private after my last toxic girlfriend, stalked and harassed me on instagram and I almost had to get a restraining order for it. That was 2 years ago and Im finally healed from that but feel hesitant to share my IG information. Any advice on what to do or what to say?
TLDR:
Should i provide my instagram info, and did I do the right thing saying im not ready for a relationship?Thank you.
submitted by hoodedknight5 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
This all changed a month ago when her dad died. She had to travel back home and I felt really bad and messaged her a lot during the funeral weeks. She became more clingy and texted me more hearts, and saying how much she misses me. When she came back, we went on dates and she even invited me to a party where I met her friends. She's a sweet girl but I could tell she was getting attached. Yesterday, I asked her what she was looking for and after she said "i dont know", I said that I am not ready to commit to a relationship or exclusivity right now in my life. This is because I am very focused on my school, finally feel mentally healthy after a toxic past relationship, and am enjoying my free time and don't want to commit because she will be moving back far away for the summer. I dont know if im doing the right thing.
After our talk she cried. She asked if she scared me away, and I ensured her I enjoy spending time with her and want to see her again, but wanted to be honest about my intentions. She understood and we are cool still and text still. She asked for my instagram to follow me. I am very nervous and this triggered anxiety. This is because my instagram is super private after my last toxic girlfriend, stalked and harassed me on instagram and I almost had to get a restraining order for it. That was 2 years ago and Im finally healed from that but feel hesitant to share my IG information. Any advice on what to do or what to say?
TLDR:
Should i provide my instagram info, and did I do the right thing saying im not ready for a relationship?Thank you.
2023.06.04 05:52 NotSoWellAdjusted I feel like I'm living in a horror movie...
...and it all seems like some sick joke, waiting to see the next big "climax". Each is more drastic than the last, as if life itself is trying to push me towards a mental break of my own.
I was never the most social type. I chose my friends early, kept them, and have maintained a few over the last decade or so. I can count my close friends and family on two hands, and that's the way I like it. But almost 9 years ago, one of my closest friends passed away after a long struggle with illness and addiction. He experienced a psychotic break due to amphetamine abuse, during which he experienced delusions and auditory hallucinations of his closest friends dying in torturous ways. His experience opened my eyes to another perspective to both drug abuse and the brain itself.
Fast-forward about five years, and I’m on the phone with my brother N. It’s late night, and he’s at his new apartment all alone. He hears my other brother B and his partner C (who live in a different state), saying terrible things about him in the hallway and he can’t believe they would fly such a distance just to torment him. I’m talking him through the experience, but he’s trying to snap photos of them from over the balcony, and I need to get off the phone and get in contact with somebody who can reach him faster than me.
Thank God my parents listened to me, and left their concert early to intervene. They drove him to a hospital, and after a few days, he came home. He got the hallucinations under control, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I knew two relatively healthy young men who experienced these severe mental episodes. I just thought, “why does this keep happening to people around me?"
Of course, this is all before B.
I remember when C first reached out to us to explain the problems that B started experiencing. Prior to this, when he’d come to stay for a month, he exhibited manic and dissociated behaviors, but things were worse than we had seen. He was seeing visions in the skies, and feeling drawn to his higher purpose in the universe to a degree that surpassed earthly expectations. He would disappear in the middle of the night, converse deeply with strangers when compelled to do so, and lived in pure extravagance - despite his limited actual working hours.
After frustrating arguments with my husband about logistics and caring for my two baby girls (another stress entirely!) I ended up with two nights to go with my mother and try to take care of my eldest brother. We flew in on a Friday night, and once we checked into the hotel, we drove straight to his apartment.
The situation had already escalated prior to our arrival. My brother had already turned against his partner and his family. Since my mother made the mistake of defending them in her first minutes on the premises, he immediately turned against her. And so I went alone into his apartment, with the sole priority to gauge his mental state and determine just how “crazy” my brother had gone. My mom texted me from the outside, asking me continuously: “Should we call for help? How is he?”
Initially, I thought we could talk him into a hospital stay voluntarily - but anybody in a situation such as this might understand how difficult this can be. It’s no joke when Belle’s father is thrown into the back of a carriage and taken away: these situations are dangerous, and is there really any other way that they can go? My brother was unpredictable, and lashing out against those who wanted to help. He put a cigarette out on his arm, and carried a pair of scissors around in his pocket. He joked about the “devils” trying to keep him from being who he wanted to be, and to an extent, that may have been true. But in this moment, his stress and unhappiness had cultivated into a violent psychotic break that demanded professional intervention.
I don’t regret calling for help in this instance. I regret the fact that, at his age past 30, we had not drafted a written plan in case he needed this sort of medical intervention. In fact, there wasn’t any paperwork at all! As such, the police took my brother away, and he ended up in a shithole downtown for the homeless and forgotten - all because they could not share any information with us and we could not make any choices for him due to HIPAA, but he was not in the right mind to share information about his insurance or make any decisions for himself. And so the state took over, and he fell off of our radar. We drove from one police station to the next, from one hospital to another, but no luck,
B finally called my phone just before noon the next day. Thank goodness I had the same number since I turned 13 - it was the only one he remembered. The place they took him was a shithole - nothing like they promised, but what can you expect with an overloaded system like theirs? That just set the tone for the rest of our time, trying to get him in an outpatient program - trying to get him through an inpatient program - trying to get insurance to accept a program closer to us, or trying to find a program they’ll accept near home…
Life played out the way it did. There’s no right or wrong way anymore. This is just the way it happened, and nothing else will change it. In November of 2021, we realized my brother was sick. On May 31, 2022, he woke up and decided that he would leave us by any means necessary. That ended up being at a gas station pump in the middle of nowhere, in front of my father, who had the unfortunate job of trying to drive him to the hospital he liked in California.
And so my family began the “healing”(?) process. It took us four months to have a basic funeral, though it was just the close family and his ashes. C and his family flew out and spoke, and our closest friends supported us through the nightmare. C had already had some mental breakdowns of his own, but he was on medication now and his family seemed to be helping him through. We spent some time together, and he doted on my children, and delivered gifts from B that were intended for them. We took a rare photo together. I hugged him and told him to please, please stay strong for my family. My daughters loved their Uncle B, and he could keep his memory alive for them.
It was a hard and emotional time. I knew that B would want me to take care of his partner, no matter the drama between them at the time. I tried, with everything I had, to be there if he wanted me to be - but I was scared, and we are anxious people who value personal space. I didn’t want to come off too strong, but when he called me asking for permission to marry my brother in heaven, what could I do? I told him how much I loved him, and how much he already meant to me. I assured him that he was already my brother-in-law, that he had already been with my brother long past a common law marriage. Maybe that’s just the problem. Love is the strongest drug of all, isn’t it?
And so, less than a week and a half after that phone call, C went to find his soulmate through the same awful method of self-immolation. To his mercy, I heard that his soul passed much faster than that of my poor, beautiful brother. With an imagination like mine, it is not just the guilt… it’s just the whole fucking thing.
Well, if my circle is small, my living brother kept his even smaller. B and C were his best friends, and with them gone, I’m just impressed he has maintained any sanity at all. But now, as stress at work ramps up and his psychosis returns, all I can do is wait and see. This time is different: since I’m involved, he’s pulled away from me, and he won’t be as honest as he used to. His boss is listening in, there are cameras in the lightbulbs, and he’s been living on the “Truman Show” for a while now. He’s deactivated all social media to keep his boss from following him, and he’s currently been missing for 12 hours.
Everything feels hopeless. How much is one person supposed to take? I have three babies now, all aged 4 and under, and they need me to be strong. But I just feel so sad and broken all of the time. I had panic attacks before, but now? Am I doomed to follow the same path? I sleep okay, and I don’t abuse any medications, but god knows I’m a mess these days. I miss my family. I have no friends. My husband is working as hard as he can to help us.
I used to be able to count my circle with two hands. Now I’m down to one, and all the others have lost their mind and/or died. Why is this a thing now? How can I stay strong for my kids? I didn't know about this family curse until I was pregnant with my third... I don't know if I can keep watching this happen over and over again.
submitted by NotSoWellAdjusted to offmychest [link] [comments]
I was never the most social type. I chose my friends early, kept them, and have maintained a few over the last decade or so. I can count my close friends and family on two hands, and that's the way I like it. But almost 9 years ago, one of my closest friends passed away after a long struggle with illness and addiction. He experienced a psychotic break due to amphetamine abuse, during which he experienced delusions and auditory hallucinations of his closest friends dying in torturous ways. His experience opened my eyes to another perspective to both drug abuse and the brain itself.
Fast-forward about five years, and I’m on the phone with my brother N. It’s late night, and he’s at his new apartment all alone. He hears my other brother B and his partner C (who live in a different state), saying terrible things about him in the hallway and he can’t believe they would fly such a distance just to torment him. I’m talking him through the experience, but he’s trying to snap photos of them from over the balcony, and I need to get off the phone and get in contact with somebody who can reach him faster than me.
Thank God my parents listened to me, and left their concert early to intervene. They drove him to a hospital, and after a few days, he came home. He got the hallucinations under control, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I knew two relatively healthy young men who experienced these severe mental episodes. I just thought, “why does this keep happening to people around me?"
Of course, this is all before B.
I remember when C first reached out to us to explain the problems that B started experiencing. Prior to this, when he’d come to stay for a month, he exhibited manic and dissociated behaviors, but things were worse than we had seen. He was seeing visions in the skies, and feeling drawn to his higher purpose in the universe to a degree that surpassed earthly expectations. He would disappear in the middle of the night, converse deeply with strangers when compelled to do so, and lived in pure extravagance - despite his limited actual working hours.
After frustrating arguments with my husband about logistics and caring for my two baby girls (another stress entirely!) I ended up with two nights to go with my mother and try to take care of my eldest brother. We flew in on a Friday night, and once we checked into the hotel, we drove straight to his apartment.
The situation had already escalated prior to our arrival. My brother had already turned against his partner and his family. Since my mother made the mistake of defending them in her first minutes on the premises, he immediately turned against her. And so I went alone into his apartment, with the sole priority to gauge his mental state and determine just how “crazy” my brother had gone. My mom texted me from the outside, asking me continuously: “Should we call for help? How is he?”
Initially, I thought we could talk him into a hospital stay voluntarily - but anybody in a situation such as this might understand how difficult this can be. It’s no joke when Belle’s father is thrown into the back of a carriage and taken away: these situations are dangerous, and is there really any other way that they can go? My brother was unpredictable, and lashing out against those who wanted to help. He put a cigarette out on his arm, and carried a pair of scissors around in his pocket. He joked about the “devils” trying to keep him from being who he wanted to be, and to an extent, that may have been true. But in this moment, his stress and unhappiness had cultivated into a violent psychotic break that demanded professional intervention.
I don’t regret calling for help in this instance. I regret the fact that, at his age past 30, we had not drafted a written plan in case he needed this sort of medical intervention. In fact, there wasn’t any paperwork at all! As such, the police took my brother away, and he ended up in a shithole downtown for the homeless and forgotten - all because they could not share any information with us and we could not make any choices for him due to HIPAA, but he was not in the right mind to share information about his insurance or make any decisions for himself. And so the state took over, and he fell off of our radar. We drove from one police station to the next, from one hospital to another, but no luck,
B finally called my phone just before noon the next day. Thank goodness I had the same number since I turned 13 - it was the only one he remembered. The place they took him was a shithole - nothing like they promised, but what can you expect with an overloaded system like theirs? That just set the tone for the rest of our time, trying to get him in an outpatient program - trying to get him through an inpatient program - trying to get insurance to accept a program closer to us, or trying to find a program they’ll accept near home…
Life played out the way it did. There’s no right or wrong way anymore. This is just the way it happened, and nothing else will change it. In November of 2021, we realized my brother was sick. On May 31, 2022, he woke up and decided that he would leave us by any means necessary. That ended up being at a gas station pump in the middle of nowhere, in front of my father, who had the unfortunate job of trying to drive him to the hospital he liked in California.
And so my family began the “healing”(?) process. It took us four months to have a basic funeral, though it was just the close family and his ashes. C and his family flew out and spoke, and our closest friends supported us through the nightmare. C had already had some mental breakdowns of his own, but he was on medication now and his family seemed to be helping him through. We spent some time together, and he doted on my children, and delivered gifts from B that were intended for them. We took a rare photo together. I hugged him and told him to please, please stay strong for my family. My daughters loved their Uncle B, and he could keep his memory alive for them.
It was a hard and emotional time. I knew that B would want me to take care of his partner, no matter the drama between them at the time. I tried, with everything I had, to be there if he wanted me to be - but I was scared, and we are anxious people who value personal space. I didn’t want to come off too strong, but when he called me asking for permission to marry my brother in heaven, what could I do? I told him how much I loved him, and how much he already meant to me. I assured him that he was already my brother-in-law, that he had already been with my brother long past a common law marriage. Maybe that’s just the problem. Love is the strongest drug of all, isn’t it?
And so, less than a week and a half after that phone call, C went to find his soulmate through the same awful method of self-immolation. To his mercy, I heard that his soul passed much faster than that of my poor, beautiful brother. With an imagination like mine, it is not just the guilt… it’s just the whole fucking thing.
Well, if my circle is small, my living brother kept his even smaller. B and C were his best friends, and with them gone, I’m just impressed he has maintained any sanity at all. But now, as stress at work ramps up and his psychosis returns, all I can do is wait and see. This time is different: since I’m involved, he’s pulled away from me, and he won’t be as honest as he used to. His boss is listening in, there are cameras in the lightbulbs, and he’s been living on the “Truman Show” for a while now. He’s deactivated all social media to keep his boss from following him, and he’s currently been missing for 12 hours.
Everything feels hopeless. How much is one person supposed to take? I have three babies now, all aged 4 and under, and they need me to be strong. But I just feel so sad and broken all of the time. I had panic attacks before, but now? Am I doomed to follow the same path? I sleep okay, and I don’t abuse any medications, but god knows I’m a mess these days. I miss my family. I have no friends. My husband is working as hard as he can to help us.
I used to be able to count my circle with two hands. Now I’m down to one, and all the others have lost their mind and/or died. Why is this a thing now? How can I stay strong for my kids? I didn't know about this family curse until I was pregnant with my third... I don't know if I can keep watching this happen over and over again.
2023.06.04 05:28 AccordingDaikon3671 Help me think of comebacks to use at my Baby Shower when my husband’s incoherent family makes rude comments
My MIL is having a baby shower for me and my partner next weekend. I’m a short, mid-size woman and will be 33 weeks pregnant at the shower. My fundal measurements are normal for this stage, but my husband’s tall, skinny cousins don’t have a filter and don’t shut up about how “huge” I am and I “must be having a large baby”.
They also love to ask me why I’m wearing whatever I happen to be wearing. “It’s so hot, why are you wearing that?”, “omg you must be sweating so much in all black”, “don’t you think you should put some shorts on?”, “a dress would have been cooler”. Whether they’re trying to be nice or not, I’m very uncomfortable with my weight as I’ve gained 40 lbs so far in this pregnancy and I kind of feel like they’re calling me on this on purpose. At least that’s how it feels. They are always wearing revealing clothing that is borderline inappropriate for the situation and then will comment on my outfit in front of everyone.
My father in law also gained notoriety this Christmas when we announced our pregnancy at the family Xmas gathering and he exclaimed that he “noticed (I) was getting fat because my hips were getting so large” but he didn’t realize I was pregnant because he “just figured it’s from sitting around because you’re unemployed”. (I have a business and work from home actually). He said this in front of a crowd of 14 people, seconds after our announcement. I was only 9 weeks along which made it hurt my feelings even more. And I had actually lost weight too from the morning sickness. I cried and it ruined xmas. Everyone was mad at me for taking it too seriously. Even my partner was a little mad that I got so upset.
My father in law also told me I should “watch (husband’s cousin) breast feed her 1 year old so I could watch and learn how”. He said this at a public event with my MIL’s coworkers in a circle chatting around us.
My husband’s uncle will also be at the shower, he is known for a few years ago when he was yelling across the room demanding repeatedly to know why I haven’t given my partner a baby yet… at my husband’s grandma’s funeral. I hadn’t gotten pregnant yet because I have PCOS and we struggled for a couple years to conceive.
My MIL doesn’t say these dumb comments to me like everyone else, but instead loves to berate my husband’s looks in front of a crowd. Tonight she was shouting that he’s “getting fat and getting a paunch” out loud in front of the family. He pretended not to hear her but he’s been very sensitive about some recent weight gain.
I was terribly abused by my family growing up and their toxicity completely ruined my self esteem. I’ve been in therapy for a while and am healing from that damage, but the healed version of me wants to stand up for myself when they make these horrible comments. I don’t want to just brush it off and take it. But I’m also worried about their reactions if I call them out, and I don’t want to ruin the baby shower. I’m hoping to plan ahead a little and maybe have some comebacks in my toolkit that will make them think twice about treating me this way without making everyone upset and ruining the shower.
What are some good comebacks you’ve used or heard in these situations? Or just responses to politely yet firmly put them in their place?
submitted by AccordingDaikon3671 to BabyBumps [link] [comments]
They also love to ask me why I’m wearing whatever I happen to be wearing. “It’s so hot, why are you wearing that?”, “omg you must be sweating so much in all black”, “don’t you think you should put some shorts on?”, “a dress would have been cooler”. Whether they’re trying to be nice or not, I’m very uncomfortable with my weight as I’ve gained 40 lbs so far in this pregnancy and I kind of feel like they’re calling me on this on purpose. At least that’s how it feels. They are always wearing revealing clothing that is borderline inappropriate for the situation and then will comment on my outfit in front of everyone.
My father in law also gained notoriety this Christmas when we announced our pregnancy at the family Xmas gathering and he exclaimed that he “noticed (I) was getting fat because my hips were getting so large” but he didn’t realize I was pregnant because he “just figured it’s from sitting around because you’re unemployed”. (I have a business and work from home actually). He said this in front of a crowd of 14 people, seconds after our announcement. I was only 9 weeks along which made it hurt my feelings even more. And I had actually lost weight too from the morning sickness. I cried and it ruined xmas. Everyone was mad at me for taking it too seriously. Even my partner was a little mad that I got so upset.
My father in law also told me I should “watch (husband’s cousin) breast feed her 1 year old so I could watch and learn how”. He said this at a public event with my MIL’s coworkers in a circle chatting around us.
My husband’s uncle will also be at the shower, he is known for a few years ago when he was yelling across the room demanding repeatedly to know why I haven’t given my partner a baby yet… at my husband’s grandma’s funeral. I hadn’t gotten pregnant yet because I have PCOS and we struggled for a couple years to conceive.
My MIL doesn’t say these dumb comments to me like everyone else, but instead loves to berate my husband’s looks in front of a crowd. Tonight she was shouting that he’s “getting fat and getting a paunch” out loud in front of the family. He pretended not to hear her but he’s been very sensitive about some recent weight gain.
I was terribly abused by my family growing up and their toxicity completely ruined my self esteem. I’ve been in therapy for a while and am healing from that damage, but the healed version of me wants to stand up for myself when they make these horrible comments. I don’t want to just brush it off and take it. But I’m also worried about their reactions if I call them out, and I don’t want to ruin the baby shower. I’m hoping to plan ahead a little and maybe have some comebacks in my toolkit that will make them think twice about treating me this way without making everyone upset and ruining the shower.
What are some good comebacks you’ve used or heard in these situations? Or just responses to politely yet firmly put them in their place?
2023.06.04 04:07 BigBlueMagic BE HEARD!!!! Last chance to stop TERRIBLE STADIUM HANDOUT!!!!
(I also posted this in /vegaslocals. If reposting here isn't allowed, I apologize, and feel free to take down).
Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
submitted by BigBlueMagic to Nevada [link] [comments]
Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name], I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons: Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it. Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium. Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable. Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team. Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed. I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue. Sincerely, [Your Name]Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
- Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and team President Dave Kaval, strategically released details about stadium funding to minimize public awareness and participation. They released the legislation on Friday of Memorial Day weekend and the only public hearing was on Memorial Day during the Golden Knights playoff game.
- Fisher and Kaval failed to even show up at the Memorial Day hearing, demonstrating a lack of accountability and a disregard for public concerns. They have never publicly answered any questions.
- The prioritization of funding for a sports stadium over public education in Nevada, particularly the Clark County School District, is concerning.
- Economic projections presented by Fisher's lobbyists are questionable and disconnected from reality, as experts have pointed out.
- Fisher's history with the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer raises doubts about his commitment to investing in a competitive team with public funds.
- The low payroll of the A's compared to other MLB teams suggests a strategy of minimizing expenses for greater profitability.
- Mark Davis, owner of the Raiders and A's shared the Oakland Coliseum, expressed personal animosity towards Fisher and his management approach. Other MLB owners have expressed similar frustration about doing business with Fisher.
- Elected leaders should consider these concerns and prioritize the needs of the community over the interests of wealthy individuals.
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day. Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas. Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel. If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity. That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games. The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities. Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities. Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen. “That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”But what about job creation?
Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job. “So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
The A's were a top-5 team in 2022. Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners. “The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.” Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis. The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million). It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years. Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year · 2015 (20 teams) — 15th · 2016 (20 teams) — 11th · 2017 (22 teams) — 16th · 2018 (23 teams) — 19th · 2019 (24 teams) — 19th · 2020 (26 teams) — 17th · 2021 (27 teams) — 24th · 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd · 2023 (29 teams) — 21st That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum. “They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’” … Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics. “Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
2023.06.04 03:48 BigBlueMagic BE HEARD!!! Last Chance To Stop the Legislature From Giving Away Hundreds of Millions in Terrible Stadium Handout!!!!!!!
Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
submitted by BigBlueMagic to vegaslocals [link] [comments]
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name],Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons:
Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it.
Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium.
Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable.
Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team.
Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed.
I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
- Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and team President Dave Kaval, strategically released details about stadium funding to minimize public awareness and participation. They released the legislation on Friday of Memorial Day weekend and the only public hearing was on Memorial Day during the Golden Knights playoff game.
- Fisher and Kaval failed to even show up at the Memorial Day hearing, demonstrating a lack of accountability and a disregard for public concerns. They have never publicly answered any questions.
- The prioritization of funding for a sports stadium over public education in Nevada, particularly the Clark County School District, is concerning.
- Economic projections presented by Fisher's lobbyists are questionable and disconnected from reality, as experts have pointed out.
- Fisher's history with the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer raises doubts about his commitment to investing in a competitive team with public funds.
- The low payroll of the A's compared to other MLB teams suggests a strategy of minimizing expenses for greater profitability.
- Mark Davis, owner of the Raiders and A's shared the Oakland Coliseum, expressed personal animosity towards Fisher and his management approach. Other MLB owners have expressed similar frustration about doing business with Fisher.
- Elected leaders should consider these concerns and prioritize the needs of the community over the interests of wealthy individuals.
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day.The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas.Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel.
If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity.
That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games.
The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible
Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities.
Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities.
Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen.But what about job creation?
“That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”
Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job.4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
“So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
The A's were a top-5 team in 2022.When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners.Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
“The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.”
Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis.Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million).
It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years.
Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year
· 2015 (20 teams) — 15th
· 2016 (20 teams) — 11th
· 2017 (22 teams) — 16th
· 2018 (23 teams) — 19th
· 2019 (24 teams) — 19th
· 2020 (26 teams) — 17th
· 2021 (27 teams) — 24th
· 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd
· 2023 (29 teams) — 21st
That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum.Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
“They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’”
…
Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics.
“Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
2023.06.04 03:45 throwaway104824 Im so happy that my daughter cried
throw away because i dont want anyone to see this, im very sorry if there is any mistakes but English isn't my first language and im also dyslexic.
Some background story so i (M45) have a daughter (15), she is the happiest, most positive thinking, most understanding preson and over all best human on the earth i know. She is always happy to help everyone, but since me and her mother divorced around 4 years ago. She has been having trouble in expressing her emotions since our divorce.
Back to the story, so around in september 2022 her grandmother (my mother) unfortunately passed away, When I told my daughter about the situation, i had to tell her over the phone since i live in germany but come back for the weekends. She said okay and hung up the phone, i tried to call her a few times but she didnt call back. When i called her mother, to check up on her she said she was fine. I tried to talk to her but she kept dismissing me. I dropped the subject and at the funeral she didn't cry, or do anything for that matter. She just watched, i could visibly see she was hurting. After everything i tried to talk to her a lot of times but yet again i sas dissmissed. So i dropped it again. A few days ago her other grandmother passed away, this time it hit her harder because it was the grandmother she grew up the most with, fortunately i was in the country so i could help her, but the thing that i didnt want to happen happened, she saw her dead grandmother in the room laying on the floor, called dead by the paramedics. She was there the whole time and watched it, when i realised i quickly pulled her away, grabbed her in a hug firmly and looked at her again, she just looked at me and said she was fine, then left to the kitchen. For the rest of that day she acted like nothing happened, like everything was okay. I had to leave the house for a couple hours so i did it while she was asleep, but when i came back she wasn't there. I left the house again and looked for her at the parking lot (we live in an apartment) she was there sitting on the curb, i could see that she was drunk but that didnt matter to me at all, i quickly walked over to her. She stood up expecting to be yelled at probably but i just hugged her. She hugged me back and started crying, she cried so hard she screamed into my shoulders, she physically screamed on top of her lungs, with the end of each scream she let go of me a little but i hold her tighter, i could feel her legs trembling. Chills went down my spine while she spilled all of her bottled emotions that she kept up all of these years. After she calmed down i could feel her legs bent unable to walk anymore, i picked her up as she slowly drifted off to sleep, carried her home and tucked her into bed. I sat next to her watching her sleep untill i was sure she was asleep, in the morning I left a note next to her that if she wanted to talk i was there, she went to the kitchen and left a long letter expressing her emotions. I cried while reading it, i gave her some space and let her decide if she wanted to talk. But im so happy that she finally opened up to me, if youre wondring i kept her mother updated as she wasnt home. Sorry if its long i just had to tell someone.
submitted by throwaway104824 to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
Some background story so i (M45) have a daughter (15), she is the happiest, most positive thinking, most understanding preson and over all best human on the earth i know. She is always happy to help everyone, but since me and her mother divorced around 4 years ago. She has been having trouble in expressing her emotions since our divorce.
Back to the story, so around in september 2022 her grandmother (my mother) unfortunately passed away, When I told my daughter about the situation, i had to tell her over the phone since i live in germany but come back for the weekends. She said okay and hung up the phone, i tried to call her a few times but she didnt call back. When i called her mother, to check up on her she said she was fine. I tried to talk to her but she kept dismissing me. I dropped the subject and at the funeral she didn't cry, or do anything for that matter. She just watched, i could visibly see she was hurting. After everything i tried to talk to her a lot of times but yet again i sas dissmissed. So i dropped it again. A few days ago her other grandmother passed away, this time it hit her harder because it was the grandmother she grew up the most with, fortunately i was in the country so i could help her, but the thing that i didnt want to happen happened, she saw her dead grandmother in the room laying on the floor, called dead by the paramedics. She was there the whole time and watched it, when i realised i quickly pulled her away, grabbed her in a hug firmly and looked at her again, she just looked at me and said she was fine, then left to the kitchen. For the rest of that day she acted like nothing happened, like everything was okay. I had to leave the house for a couple hours so i did it while she was asleep, but when i came back she wasn't there. I left the house again and looked for her at the parking lot (we live in an apartment) she was there sitting on the curb, i could see that she was drunk but that didnt matter to me at all, i quickly walked over to her. She stood up expecting to be yelled at probably but i just hugged her. She hugged me back and started crying, she cried so hard she screamed into my shoulders, she physically screamed on top of her lungs, with the end of each scream she let go of me a little but i hold her tighter, i could feel her legs trembling. Chills went down my spine while she spilled all of her bottled emotions that she kept up all of these years. After she calmed down i could feel her legs bent unable to walk anymore, i picked her up as she slowly drifted off to sleep, carried her home and tucked her into bed. I sat next to her watching her sleep untill i was sure she was asleep, in the morning I left a note next to her that if she wanted to talk i was there, she went to the kitchen and left a long letter expressing her emotions. I cried while reading it, i gave her some space and let her decide if she wanted to talk. But im so happy that she finally opened up to me, if youre wondring i kept her mother updated as she wasnt home. Sorry if its long i just had to tell someone.
2023.06.04 03:18 normancrane I think I've screwed us in the 1960s
 | I've started writing this hundreds of times and never gotten to the end. The first few times I tried, I did it on paper in a notebook because the internet hadn't been invented yet. I burned the notebooks. This is the first time I've finished and not destroyed what I'd written. If nothing else, this act of creation without destruction is a small victory to me, but I know you hardly care about that. Nor should you. You should care about what you're about to read because if what I say is true, your generation may be in some serious shit. I'm in my late 70s, no wife or kids, not many friends, and although I'm not quite on my death bed, I'm certainly nearing the end of my life, so my personal stake in this is low, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't weight heavily on my soul in an existential kind of way. We all keep secrets, some darker than others, and this has been my darkest. submitted by normancrane to scaryshortstories [link] [comments] The story starts in California way back in the 1960s. For those unfamiliar with that period in history, the one word I'd use to describe it is turbulent. Just imagine the straight-laced world of the 1950s you know from television crashing head-on into what you probably associate with hippie culture, namely radical politics, protest, heavy drug use, rebellion against authority, and conspiracy theories, but also comradery, selflessness, and the genuine belief that it is possible to change the world for the better. I was a university student at the time, so you could say I was in the thick of it, but I wasn't at one of the true hotbed schools like Berkeley. That said, there was almost no way to be young and alive in California and to keep away from the upheaval. It was literally all around you, and it sucked you in. There wasn't a Friday night when you didn't listen to a speech by Abbie Hoffman, take LSD, or hazily conspire to take down the establishment to a background of folk tunes, and then go out to bar where long past midnight some guy in a black suit tried to recruit you for a plastics corporation or the CIA. Or so he said, or so you remembered the next morning. It was actually at one of these bars that I met my first real girlfriend, whom I'll call Edna. Edna wasn't a hippie, she was in town taking typing classes and working part-time as a receptionist, but like me she had become infatuated with the scene. Edna was only the second girl I'd slept with, and after a few months of going with her I started having trouble maintaining, then even getting, an erection. Back then it wasn't like it is now, when even polite people talk about erectile dysfunction and you can get medication to help with it. Back then there was nothing except a whole lot of embarrassment. At first, Edna and I thought it might be stress or lack of sleep causing my problem, then we suspected alcohol, but despite taking a fairly systematic approach and eliminating the possible causes one by one, we couldn't figure it out. Within weeks, my sex life just stopped. You can imagine how devastating that was to a young man. Let's rewind a bit. About six months before meeting Edna, I had met a guy named Jerry in one of my political science classes and we'd quickly become friends. Jerry and I would regularly meet up, talk about everything from music and world revolution to UFOs, and generally goof off together, and he'd always have a decent supply of weed for us to smoke and Grateful Dead bootlegs to listen to, which was fantastic. Although I've never had a truly best friend, Jerry was definitely my closest friend during my early student days in California, so he was the person I eventually turned to for help with my sexual problem. I remember that it was late at night after getting stoned immaculate, as Jim Morrison would say, that I told Jerry about my erectile dysfunction. He listened as I struggled mightily through the telling of it, and without laughing or making light of the situation told me not to worry too much, that it would probably go away on its own, but if I didn't want to wait and wanted help now, I should go see a man he referred to as Gerbil. Gerbil was about ten years older than us, originally from New Mexico and had been studying chemistry at Berkeley until about a year prior, when he'd been expelled after being caught synthesizing hallucinogens in a school lab. Faced with the possibility of going back to New Mexico without a degree, Gerbil had decided to pursue the American Dream instead. He set up his own lab, kept his clientele, and expanded his operation. Drugs, incidentally, is how Jerry had first met Gerbil. And through Jerry is how I met the guy. That's one other unique thing about Gerbil: even compared to the regular paranoiacs, he was paranoid. You couldn't just see him. You had to be introduced by someone he trusted and he had to "vet" you, which included a brief interrogation and sitting silently while he "read your mind." My vetting lasted about half an hour. After it was over, Gerbil relaxed and I explained my problem to him. It was easy because he was like a magnet for deep truths. You wanted to tell him the embarrassing stuff. Long story short, he told me I was far from the first guy to be suffering from this type of condition and that he had a tried and tested solution. I'll never forget the moment when he held out the pill bottle to me. His smiling, unshaven face, the sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows, and the pills themselves, oblong and delicately off-white in their little glass home. When I asked how much I owed him, he shrugged and said that for a friend there was no cost, then laughed and added that he had more than enough money anyway. After all, he said, he was making truth serum for the CIA. "Just make sure you follow the instructions," he said. "And remember: you were never here." When I got home, I read the instructions, which had been typed out on a strip of paper and taped to the outside of the pill bottle. They were simple enough but odd: Insert one (1) pill into urethra at least one hour prior to intercourse. I'll spare you the awkward details of my first time doing the insertion. What you need to know is that the pills worked. God, how they worked! Never before, and never since, have I had an erection as hard and for as long as when I used those pills. In the past twenty years I've tried Viagra and all the others, but nothing even comes close. It was like fucking with the world's most sensitive steel rod, and you could go for hours! Edna and I sure made up for lost time, but pretty soon Edna wasn't enough. We'd go at it two or three times, she'd call it quits for the night and I'd still be raging to go. I'm not proud of it now, but I started meeting other girls just for sex. Any girls who'd have me, really. At bars, meet ups, between classes, at concerts, everywhere. There was no emotional connection but physically it was bliss. I loved it, they loved it, and I guess later they dubbed it the Summer of Love. I wish I'd counted how many pills Gerbil had given me, but I didn't. All I knew was that I was going through them like a knife through reheated butter. From what I remember, one pill was enough to last up to forty-eight hours, but I was using them almost non-stop, and the supply was depleting. I was probably addicted. It was after I'd used about half of my initial supply that Jerry asked over coffee one morning whether my "problem" had gone away. I told him it had and more than hinted at how my sex life had exploded, and he told me that was fantastic news. Then he lowered his voice and told me Gerbil wanted to meet up. I agreed, he told me the time and place, and I never saw Jerry again. But I'll get to that in a bit. Gerbil and I met a few days later in what remained of a hangar on an abandoned airfield. It was beyond city limits, and Gerbil seemed to make a big deal of that fact. He told me he'd recently purchased the land way under value and was planning on building a bunker on it. Because that sounded like just the craziness he'd be into, I took him at his word. When I told him how well the pills had been working and that I wanted more of them, he wasn't surprised. He said he was thrilled and handed me another bottle of pills identical to the first. This time, however, they had a price. But it was the kind of price that wasn't paid in dollars and that made my horny young mind spin with possibilities. Gerbil was organizing a series of orgies and he was giving me the pills in exchange for taking part in them. Back to Jerry: disappearing for a few days wasn't unusual. He went on benders from time to time during which he'd unreachable and absent from class, but those usually lasted a few days, after which he'd show up groggy and with stories to tell. After a week, I started to worry, but even then it's important to remember the times, both in terms of technology and perspective. We didn't have cell phones you could call anytime you wanted, and it wasn't unheard of for people to "drop out" of society. I had a professor who suddenly disappeared for half a semester, and when he came back he told us he'd gone on a walkabout. Still, I expected Jerry to tell me if he was planning something like that. He'd said nothing and now he was gone. I started asking around but realized I didn't actually know much about him. From what I gathered, he was still enrolled in university and still living at the same address. He just wasn't there. My relationship with Edna was falling apart at the same time. I was bored with her, and she was getting bored with life in California. She was honest about wanting to move back East, and we both knew I wouldn't be going with her. And although she never said a word about it, I'm sure she knew I wasn't being faithful. Hell, even free love has a cost. I can't say we broke each other's hearts, but I will say that as I've aged, I've imagined more and more often what my life would had have been if we'd stayed together. I went on to love again but I never found a true love. Edna, especially in those early times, may have been the closest I ever got. Ironically, we loved each other most when we couldn't be physically intimate. The first of Gerbil's orgies that I attended was held in the middle of the desert. There was music, drugs and absolutely no inhibitions. It was the most exciting experience of my life, and I loved it. Gerbil himself was never at the orgies, but almost everyone seemed to know him, at least by reputation. I don't remember how many orgies I ended up going to, but it was over a dozen, each in a different location with new women, many of them intoxicatingly exotic to me. Foreign students, bored housewives, groupies, intellectuals, stewardesses, and wanderers from all around the country and the world: India, Russia, China, Europe, Latin America, everywhere. I still have no idea how Gerbil organized these things or convinced so many women to go to them, but he did, and I must have fucked nearly all of them. The pills were my fuel. Sometime during this hazy period of hedonistic pleasure, the police found Jerry's body in New Mexico. Apparently he'd hitchhiked all the way down there, spent a few weeks living on a ranch and overdosed on a cocktail of drugs so strong he must have been halfway to heaven by the time his organs failed. Foul play was ruled out, and no one in New Mexico cared if a longhaired hippie had killed himself accidentally or on purpose. There was no funeral as far as I know. About a week after Jerry's death, I received a letter from him in the mail. Judging by the gradual degradation of his handwriting, it had been written in several sittings. Most of it was personal and there was a lot of pain behind the words, but it was the last sentence that has stuck with me because of it's plain brutality. Four words: They've fucked us. I fucked away my breakup with Edna and the loss of my friend. Orgy after orgy. It was while sitting in a bar on a hot Wednesday night in the middle of July that I discovered something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. I was down to my last pill and imagining the best way to take advantage of it, waiting for the perfect piece of ass to walk in through the door. I had a mug of beer in front of me, not my first, and I was absentmindedly walking the pill up and down the tops of my fingers, when suddenly I lost control and it fell straight into my mug. I must have been too drunk to react, because instead of fishing it out, I watched instead as it descended into the murky depths while giving off a spray of infinitely fine bubbles. I didn't know how a pill should react in beer, but something about this reaction seemed off. When it had settled at the bottom of the mug, the pill started shedding something other than bubbles: namely itself. Tiny pieces flaked off and floated to the top, and the pill began to tremble. Soon, dark spots became visible beneath the off-white colour of what I instinctively began to conceptualize as a shell, until the entire casing was gone, leaving only a trembling black insectous creature! Immediately I knew it was organic. Even more: alive! I watched mesmerized as it struggled in the liquid, scurrying towards the edge of the mug but unable to climb the glass sides. Finally, I put my fingers in and lifted it out. It was small but unbelievably hard between my fingertips. I couldn't crush it. I held it briefly against the overhead light, its body wholly opaque, before it slipped out, hit the unswept floor and scurried away. I scrambled after it, much to the cruel amusement of the other patrons, stomping forward on the floor before falling to my knees, but with no luck. It was gone. Returning to my seat, I thought, Just what the fuck have I been pushing into my urethra? I had no pills and the only evidence of anything abnormal was my own boozy memory, so I had nothing. Except a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was horribly wrong. I tried contacting Gerbil in my usual ways, hoping to get more pills to experiment on and either put my mind at ease ("You hallucinated, idiot.") or get my hands on something I could send to a lab, but all my usual ways were indirect, like asking for permission to speak, and permission was being denied. Gerbil stopped responding. Eventually I grew desperate enough to visit the abandoned airfield, which was the only address of his I knew, but it was empty and unchanged. When I went to the land office and asked about ownership, the clerk told me the land belonged to a man named Beaconfield who was mostly likely long dead. Because I didn't know anyone other than Jerry who'd known Gerbil, I had nowhere else to turn. There's only so many times you can ask a stranger if they know a man named after a small rodent. Eventually you give up. And so Gerbil was gone, my pills were gone, Jerry and Edna were gone, and soon the 1960s themselves were gone, metamorphosing into a sexless 1970s for me, then the 1980s, 1990s and the new millennium. All as if someone had snapped their fingers. To say my life was dull would be an understatement. I had work, and followed it around the country, but I had little else. Forged at a time when we all wanted to remake the world, I had remade nothing and found myself leading a life of comfortable insignificance. But despite my memories fading, they never completely disappeared, and I spent many evenings wondering, trying to piece together clues, and always unable to shake those four words of Jerry's: They've fucked us. Was I scarred by a friend's suicide? Sure. But it was more than that, often in the form of sweat-inducing nightmares about tiny black insects crawling around my insides. In the early 2000s, I saw a political ad for a candidate vying for the U.S. Senate. There was nothing unusual about the spot, but a few seconds caught my attention. They showed a series of photos of the candidate as he was growing up, attending school, graduating, etc. In one of them, he was with his mother, and my heart nearly stopped when I recognized her as Edna. I don't know what emotion I felt first, but I settled on hesitant happiness as I jumped online to confirm what my eyes had shown me. Although I didn't find the ad itself, I did find an interview with the candidate, including one with a gallery of photos, and in one of them was the confirmation I was searching for. Edna's face, older but still beautiful, stared at me from behind her son's electable smile. I was breathless. My happiness became joy. It was wonderful not only that Edna had done OK for herself but that she'd done extraordinarily, because it takes a certain kind of success to raise a future statesman. On election night, I made popcorn, drank beer and cheered on Edna's son as if he were my own. Shortly after the polls closed, CNN projected him as the winner. For one night, my own insignificance didn't matter. I shared secretly in someone else's relevance. A few months passed in the afterglow of this beautiful discovery. Sometimes I even had fantasies about contacting the senator to offer my congratulations, which would be a reconnection with Edna, but I always knew this was impossible. I was nobody to her, a shadow from the past. She probably didn't even remember me. The reason why I mention this is two-fold: because I want to write and relive the happy moments, despite their way of decomposing into dread; and because Edna was merely the first of many. Over the next year, I recognized the faces of three other women I'd had sex with in California in the 1960s. I may not have known or recognized their names, but I do have a memory for faces and I was certain about theirs. All three were the mothers or grandmothers of successful people: a politician, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, and a lawyer. What are the chances? Over the next months and years, I started to actively research the background of anyone who had recently attained a high level of success, or more accurately, a high level of influence: of power. Most were guarded about their pasts, many enigmatic, but some made public just enough of a thread of information for me to pull loose, and whether in photos or on video, what I kept finding were the faces of my former lovers, women I had met while cheating on Edna or, more often, women I'd fucked at Gerbil's orgies. In time, I realized that the web extended beyond America. I found world leaders, generals, economists, industrialists and policy makers scattered about the globe, yet whose foremothers had all been in California with me! It was insane. I felt insane, wacko like the worst conspiracy nuts I'd met in the 1960s. Yet, just like them, I was convinced I was right, and what was right was too weird to be coincidence. Today, the people whose mothers and grandmothers I fucked rule the world, and the singular way in which they are all working toward the same goals terrifies me to the very core of my being. To everyone else, they are unconnected individuals. To me, they are connected, and it gnaws at my mind, this question that I know I will never be able to answer: What are they and to whom do they owe their allegiance? But I no longer search for them. I have accepted reality, and I don't know what difference it makes to know exactly how many of them exist. I still have no evidence. I can't go anywhere with a story relying on an old man's memory of his own LSD-fueled sexual exploits. I've tried, and gotten laughed out of the room. The best reaction is sympathy for being a senile old man whose mind is playing tricks on him about his past. And that's without mentioning my own theories involving parasites, mind control or aliens. Yet those words: They've fucked us. How I wish I had been able to hold on to that tiny black creature! Or stopped myself from putting it in my body. But I couldn't and now I'm here, posting my story somewhere at least a few people will read it. Maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't. I don't know if I want to give a warning or a confession, but either way I've done it now. What finds its way to the internet stays on the internet. I hope for your collective sake that when you find this years later, you'll be able to have a good laugh. I know I'm not laughing. I truly believe that in the 1960s I participated in something whose conclusion will be the ruin of mankind. |
2023.06.04 03:17 normancrane I think I've screwed us in the 1960s
I've started writing this hundreds of times and never gotten to the end. The first few times I tried, I did it on paper in a notebook because the internet hadn't been invented yet. I burned the notebooks. This is the first time I've finished and not destroyed what I'd written. If nothing else, this act of creation without destruction is a small victory to me, but I know you hardly care about that. Nor should you. You should care about what you're about to read because if what I say is true, your generation may be in some serious shit. I'm in my late 70s, no wife or kids, not many friends, and although I'm not quite on my death bed, I'm certainly nearing the end of my life, so my personal stake in this is low, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't weight heavily on my soul in an existential kind of way. We all keep secrets, some darker than others, and this has been my darkest.
The story starts in California way back in the 1960s. For those unfamiliar with that period in history, the one word I'd use to describe it is turbulent. Just imagine the straight-laced world of the 1950s you know from television crashing head-on into what you probably associate with hippie culture, namely radical politics, protest, heavy drug use, rebellion against authority, and conspiracy theories, but also comradery, selflessness, and the genuine belief that it is possible to change the world for the better. I was a university student at the time, so you could say I was in the thick of it, but I wasn't at one of the true hotbed schools like Berkeley. That said, there was almost no way to be young and alive in California and to keep away from the upheaval. It was literally all around you, and it sucked you in. There wasn't a Friday night when you didn't listen to a speech by Abbie Hoffman, take LSD, or hazily conspire to take down the establishment to a background of folk tunes, and then go out to bar where long past midnight some guy in a black suit tried to recruit you for a plastics corporation or the CIA. Or so he said, or so you remembered the next morning.
It was actually at one of these bars that I met my first real girlfriend, whom I'll call Edna. Edna wasn't a hippie, she was in town taking typing classes and working part-time as a receptionist, but like me she had become infatuated with the scene. Edna was only the second girl I'd slept with, and after a few months of going with her I started having trouble maintaining, then even getting, an erection. Back then it wasn't like it is now, when even polite people talk about erectile dysfunction and you can get medication to help with it. Back then there was nothing except a whole lot of embarrassment. At first, Edna and I thought it might be stress or lack of sleep causing my problem, then we suspected alcohol, but despite taking a fairly systematic approach and eliminating the possible causes one by one, we couldn't figure it out. Within weeks, my sex life just stopped. You can imagine how devastating that was to a young man.
Let's rewind a bit. About six months before meeting Edna, I had met a guy named Jerry in one of my political science classes and we'd quickly become friends. Jerry and I would regularly meet up, talk about everything from music and world revolution to UFOs, and generally goof off together, and he'd always have a decent supply of weed for us to smoke and Grateful Dead bootlegs to listen to, which was fantastic. Although I've never had a truly best friend, Jerry was definitely my closest friend during my early student days in California, so he was the person I eventually turned to for help with my sexual problem. I remember that it was late at night after getting stoned immaculate, as Jim Morrison would say, that I told Jerry about my erectile dysfunction. He listened as I struggled mightily through the telling of it, and without laughing or making light of the situation told me not to worry too much, that it would probably go away on its own, but if I didn't want to wait and wanted help now, I should go see a man he referred to as Gerbil.
Gerbil was about ten years older than us, originally from New Mexico and had been studying chemistry at Berkeley until about a year prior, when he'd been expelled after being caught synthesizing hallucinogens in a school lab. Faced with the possibility of going back to New Mexico without a degree, Gerbil had decided to pursue the American Dream instead. He set up his own lab, kept his clientele, and expanded his operation. Drugs, incidentally, is how Jerry had first met Gerbil. And through Jerry is how I met the guy. That's one other unique thing about Gerbil: even compared to the regular paranoiacs, he was paranoid. You couldn't just see him. You had to be introduced by someone he trusted and he had to "vet" you, which included a brief interrogation and sitting silently while he "read your mind." My vetting lasted about half an hour. After it was over, Gerbil relaxed and I explained my problem to him. It was easy because he was like a magnet for deep truths. You wanted to tell him the embarrassing stuff. Long story short, he told me I was far from the first guy to be suffering from this type of condition and that he had a tried and tested solution.
I'll never forget the moment when he held out the pill bottle to me. His smiling, unshaven face, the sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows, and the pills themselves, oblong and delicately off-white in their little glass home. When I asked how much I owed him, he shrugged and said that for a friend there was no cost, then laughed and added that he had more than enough money anyway. After all, he said, he was making truth serum for the CIA. "Just make sure you follow the instructions," he said. "And remember: you were never here."
When I got home, I read the instructions, which had been typed out on a strip of paper and taped to the outside of the pill bottle. They were simple enough but odd: Insert one (1) pill into urethra at least one hour prior to intercourse.
I'll spare you the awkward details of my first time doing the insertion. What you need to know is that the pills worked. God, how they worked! Never before, and never since, have I had an erection as hard and for as long as when I used those pills. In the past twenty years I've tried Viagra and all the others, but nothing even comes close. It was like fucking with the world's most sensitive steel rod, and you could go for hours!
Edna and I sure made up for lost time, but pretty soon Edna wasn't enough. We'd go at it two or three times, she'd call it quits for the night and I'd still be raging to go. I'm not proud of it now, but I started meeting other girls just for sex. Any girls who'd have me, really. At bars, meet ups, between classes, at concerts, everywhere. There was no emotional connection but physically it was bliss. I loved it, they loved it, and I guess later they dubbed it the Summer of Love.
I wish I'd counted how many pills Gerbil had given me, but I didn't. All I knew was that I was going through them like a knife through reheated butter. From what I remember, one pill was enough to last up to forty-eight hours, but I was using them almost non-stop, and the supply was depleting. I was probably addicted. It was after I'd used about half of my initial supply that Jerry asked over coffee one morning whether my "problem" had gone away. I told him it had and more than hinted at how my sex life had exploded, and he told me that was fantastic news. Then he lowered his voice and told me Gerbil wanted to meet up. I agreed, he told me the time and place, and I never saw Jerry again. But I'll get to that in a bit.
Gerbil and I met a few days later in what remained of a hangar on an abandoned airfield. It was beyond city limits, and Gerbil seemed to make a big deal of that fact. He told me he'd recently purchased the land way under value and was planning on building a bunker on it. Because that sounded like just the craziness he'd be into, I took him at his word. When I told him how well the pills had been working and that I wanted more of them, he wasn't surprised. He said he was thrilled and handed me another bottle of pills identical to the first. This time, however, they had a price. But it was the kind of price that wasn't paid in dollars and that made my horny young mind spin with possibilities. Gerbil was organizing a series of orgies and he was giving me the pills in exchange for taking part in them.
Back to Jerry: disappearing for a few days wasn't unusual. He went on benders from time to time during which he'd unreachable and absent from class, but those usually lasted a few days, after which he'd show up groggy and with stories to tell. After a week, I started to worry, but even then it's important to remember the times, both in terms of technology and perspective. We didn't have cell phones you could call anytime you wanted, and it wasn't unheard of for people to "drop out" of society. I had a professor who suddenly disappeared for half a semester, and when he came back he told us he'd gone on a walkabout. Still, I expected Jerry to tell me if he was planning something like that. He'd said nothing and now he was gone. I started asking around but realized I didn't actually know much about him. From what I gathered, he was still enrolled in university and still living at the same address. He just wasn't there.
My relationship with Edna was falling apart at the same time. I was bored with her, and she was getting bored with life in California. She was honest about wanting to move back East, and we both knew I wouldn't be going with her. And although she never said a word about it, I'm sure she knew I wasn't being faithful. Hell, even free love has a cost. I can't say we broke each other's hearts, but I will say that as I've aged, I've imagined more and more often what my life would had have been if we'd stayed together. I went on to love again but I never found a true love. Edna, especially in those early times, may have been the closest I ever got. Ironically, we loved each other most when we couldn't be physically intimate.
The first of Gerbil's orgies that I attended was held in the middle of the desert. There was music, drugs and absolutely no inhibitions. It was the most exciting experience of my life, and I loved it. Gerbil himself was never at the orgies, but almost everyone seemed to know him, at least by reputation. I don't remember how many orgies I ended up going to, but it was over a dozen, each in a different location with new women, many of them intoxicatingly exotic to me. Foreign students, bored housewives, groupies, intellectuals, stewardesses, and wanderers from all around the country and the world: India, Russia, China, Europe, Latin America, everywhere. I still have no idea how Gerbil organized these things or convinced so many women to go to them, but he did, and I must have fucked nearly all of them. The pills were my fuel.
Sometime during this hazy period of hedonistic pleasure, the police found Jerry's body in New Mexico. Apparently he'd hitchhiked all the way down there, spent a few weeks living on a ranch and overdosed on a cocktail of drugs so strong he must have been halfway to heaven by the time his organs failed. Foul play was ruled out, and no one in New Mexico cared if a longhaired hippie had killed himself accidentally or on purpose. There was no funeral as far as I know. About a week after Jerry's death, I received a letter from him in the mail. Judging by the gradual degradation of his handwriting, it had been written in several sittings. Most of it was personal and there was a lot of pain behind the words, but it was the last sentence that has stuck with me because of it's plain brutality. Four words: They've fucked us.
I fucked away my breakup with Edna and the loss of my friend. Orgy after orgy.
It was while sitting in a bar on a hot Wednesday night in the middle of July that I discovered something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. I was down to my last pill and imagining the best way to take advantage of it, waiting for the perfect piece of ass to walk in through the door. I had a mug of beer in front of me, not my first, and I was absentmindedly walking the pill up and down the tops of my fingers, when suddenly I lost control and it fell straight into my mug. I must have been too drunk to react, because instead of fishing it out, I watched instead as it descended into the murky depths while giving off a spray of infinitely fine bubbles. I didn't know how a pill should react in beer, but something about this reaction seemed off. When it had settled at the bottom of the mug, the pill started shedding something other than bubbles: namely itself. Tiny pieces flaked off and floated to the top, and the pill began to tremble. Soon, dark spots became visible beneath the off-white colour of what I instinctively began to conceptualize as a shell, until the entire casing was gone, leaving only a trembling black insectous creature! Immediately I knew it was organic. Even more: alive! I watched mesmerized as it struggled in the liquid, scurrying towards the edge of the mug but unable to climb the glass sides. Finally, I put my fingers in and lifted it out. It was small but unbelievably hard between my fingertips. I couldn't crush it. I held it briefly against the overhead light, its body wholly opaque, before it slipped out, hit the unswept floor and scurried away. I scrambled after it, much to the cruel amusement of the other patrons, stomping forward on the floor before falling to my knees, but with no luck. It was gone. Returning to my seat, I thought, Just what the fuck have I been pushing into my urethra?
I had no pills and the only evidence of anything abnormal was my own boozy memory, so I had nothing. Except a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was horribly wrong. I tried contacting Gerbil in my usual ways, hoping to get more pills to experiment on and either put my mind at ease ("You hallucinated, idiot.") or get my hands on something I could send to a lab, but all my usual ways were indirect, like asking for permission to speak, and permission was being denied. Gerbil stopped responding. Eventually I grew desperate enough to visit the abandoned airfield, which was the only address of his I knew, but it was empty and unchanged. When I went to the land office and asked about ownership, the clerk told me the land belonged to a man named Beaconfield who was mostly likely long dead. Because I didn't know anyone other than Jerry who'd known Gerbil, I had nowhere else to turn. There's only so many times you can ask a stranger if they know a man named after a small rodent. Eventually you give up.
And so Gerbil was gone, my pills were gone, Jerry and Edna were gone, and soon the 1960s themselves were gone, metamorphosing into a sexless 1970s for me, then the 1980s, 1990s and the new millennium. All as if someone had snapped their fingers. To say my life was dull would be an understatement. I had work, and followed it around the country, but I had little else. Forged at a time when we all wanted to remake the world, I had remade nothing and found myself leading a life of comfortable insignificance. But despite my memories fading, they never completely disappeared, and I spent many evenings wondering, trying to piece together clues, and always unable to shake those four words of Jerry's: They've fucked us. Was I scarred by a friend's suicide? Sure. But it was more than that, often in the form of sweat-inducing nightmares about tiny black insects crawling around my insides.
In the early 2000s, I saw a political ad for a candidate vying for the U.S. Senate. There was nothing unusual about the spot, but a few seconds caught my attention. They showed a series of photos of the candidate as he was growing up, attending school, graduating, etc. In one of them, he was with his mother, and my heart nearly stopped when I recognized her as Edna. I don't know what emotion I felt first, but I settled on hesitant happiness as I jumped online to confirm what my eyes had shown me. Although I didn't find the ad itself, I did find an interview with the candidate, including one with a gallery of photos, and in one of them was the confirmation I was searching for. Edna's face, older but still beautiful, stared at me from behind her son's electable smile. I was breathless. My happiness became joy. It was wonderful not only that Edna had done OK for herself but that she'd done extraordinarily, because it takes a certain kind of success to raise a future statesman.
On election night, I made popcorn, drank beer and cheered on Edna's son as if he were my own. Shortly after the polls closed, CNN projected him as the winner. For one night, my own insignificance didn't matter. I shared secretly in someone else's relevance.
A few months passed in the afterglow of this beautiful discovery. Sometimes I even had fantasies about contacting the senator to offer my congratulations, which would be a reconnection with Edna, but I always knew this was impossible. I was nobody to her, a shadow from the past. She probably didn't even remember me.
The reason why I mention this is two-fold: because I want to write and relive the happy moments, despite their way of decomposing into dread; and because Edna was merely the first of many. Over the next year, I recognized the faces of three other women I'd had sex with in California in the 1960s. I may not have known or recognized their names, but I do have a memory for faces and I was certain about theirs. All three were the mothers or grandmothers of successful people: a politician, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, and a lawyer. What are the chances?
Over the next months and years, I started to actively research the background of anyone who had recently attained a high level of success, or more accurately, a high level of influence: of power. Most were guarded about their pasts, many enigmatic, but some made public just enough of a thread of information for me to pull loose, and whether in photos or on video, what I kept finding were the faces of my former lovers, women I had met while cheating on Edna or, more often, women I'd fucked at Gerbil's orgies.
In time, I realized that the web extended beyond America. I found world leaders, generals, economists, industrialists and policy makers scattered about the globe, yet whose foremothers had all been in California with me! It was insane. I felt insane, wacko like the worst conspiracy nuts I'd met in the 1960s. Yet, just like them, I was convinced I was right, and what was right was too weird to be coincidence.
Today, the people whose mothers and grandmothers I fucked rule the world, and the singular way in which they are all working toward the same goals terrifies me to the very core of my being. To everyone else, they are unconnected individuals. To me, they are connected, and it gnaws at my mind, this question that I know I will never be able to answer: What are they and to whom do they owe their allegiance?
But I no longer search for them. I have accepted reality, and I don't know what difference it makes to know exactly how many of them exist. I still have no evidence. I can't go anywhere with a story relying on an old man's memory of his own LSD-fueled sexual exploits. I've tried, and gotten laughed out of the room. The best reaction is sympathy for being a senile old man whose mind is playing tricks on him about his past. And that's without mentioning my own theories involving parasites, mind control or aliens.
Yet those words: They've fucked us.
How I wish I had been able to hold on to that tiny black creature!
Or stopped myself from putting it in my body.
But I couldn't and now I'm here, posting my story somewhere at least a few people will read it. Maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't. I don't know if I want to give a warning or a confession, but either way I've done it now. What finds its way to the internet stays on the internet.
I hope for your collective sake that when you find this years later, you'll be able to have a good laugh.
I know I'm not laughing.
I truly believe that in the 1960s I participated in something whose conclusion will be the ruin of mankind.
submitted by normancrane to DarkTales [link] [comments]
The story starts in California way back in the 1960s. For those unfamiliar with that period in history, the one word I'd use to describe it is turbulent. Just imagine the straight-laced world of the 1950s you know from television crashing head-on into what you probably associate with hippie culture, namely radical politics, protest, heavy drug use, rebellion against authority, and conspiracy theories, but also comradery, selflessness, and the genuine belief that it is possible to change the world for the better. I was a university student at the time, so you could say I was in the thick of it, but I wasn't at one of the true hotbed schools like Berkeley. That said, there was almost no way to be young and alive in California and to keep away from the upheaval. It was literally all around you, and it sucked you in. There wasn't a Friday night when you didn't listen to a speech by Abbie Hoffman, take LSD, or hazily conspire to take down the establishment to a background of folk tunes, and then go out to bar where long past midnight some guy in a black suit tried to recruit you for a plastics corporation or the CIA. Or so he said, or so you remembered the next morning.
It was actually at one of these bars that I met my first real girlfriend, whom I'll call Edna. Edna wasn't a hippie, she was in town taking typing classes and working part-time as a receptionist, but like me she had become infatuated with the scene. Edna was only the second girl I'd slept with, and after a few months of going with her I started having trouble maintaining, then even getting, an erection. Back then it wasn't like it is now, when even polite people talk about erectile dysfunction and you can get medication to help with it. Back then there was nothing except a whole lot of embarrassment. At first, Edna and I thought it might be stress or lack of sleep causing my problem, then we suspected alcohol, but despite taking a fairly systematic approach and eliminating the possible causes one by one, we couldn't figure it out. Within weeks, my sex life just stopped. You can imagine how devastating that was to a young man.
Let's rewind a bit. About six months before meeting Edna, I had met a guy named Jerry in one of my political science classes and we'd quickly become friends. Jerry and I would regularly meet up, talk about everything from music and world revolution to UFOs, and generally goof off together, and he'd always have a decent supply of weed for us to smoke and Grateful Dead bootlegs to listen to, which was fantastic. Although I've never had a truly best friend, Jerry was definitely my closest friend during my early student days in California, so he was the person I eventually turned to for help with my sexual problem. I remember that it was late at night after getting stoned immaculate, as Jim Morrison would say, that I told Jerry about my erectile dysfunction. He listened as I struggled mightily through the telling of it, and without laughing or making light of the situation told me not to worry too much, that it would probably go away on its own, but if I didn't want to wait and wanted help now, I should go see a man he referred to as Gerbil.
Gerbil was about ten years older than us, originally from New Mexico and had been studying chemistry at Berkeley until about a year prior, when he'd been expelled after being caught synthesizing hallucinogens in a school lab. Faced with the possibility of going back to New Mexico without a degree, Gerbil had decided to pursue the American Dream instead. He set up his own lab, kept his clientele, and expanded his operation. Drugs, incidentally, is how Jerry had first met Gerbil. And through Jerry is how I met the guy. That's one other unique thing about Gerbil: even compared to the regular paranoiacs, he was paranoid. You couldn't just see him. You had to be introduced by someone he trusted and he had to "vet" you, which included a brief interrogation and sitting silently while he "read your mind." My vetting lasted about half an hour. After it was over, Gerbil relaxed and I explained my problem to him. It was easy because he was like a magnet for deep truths. You wanted to tell him the embarrassing stuff. Long story short, he told me I was far from the first guy to be suffering from this type of condition and that he had a tried and tested solution.
I'll never forget the moment when he held out the pill bottle to me. His smiling, unshaven face, the sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows, and the pills themselves, oblong and delicately off-white in their little glass home. When I asked how much I owed him, he shrugged and said that for a friend there was no cost, then laughed and added that he had more than enough money anyway. After all, he said, he was making truth serum for the CIA. "Just make sure you follow the instructions," he said. "And remember: you were never here."
When I got home, I read the instructions, which had been typed out on a strip of paper and taped to the outside of the pill bottle. They were simple enough but odd: Insert one (1) pill into urethra at least one hour prior to intercourse.
I'll spare you the awkward details of my first time doing the insertion. What you need to know is that the pills worked. God, how they worked! Never before, and never since, have I had an erection as hard and for as long as when I used those pills. In the past twenty years I've tried Viagra and all the others, but nothing even comes close. It was like fucking with the world's most sensitive steel rod, and you could go for hours!
Edna and I sure made up for lost time, but pretty soon Edna wasn't enough. We'd go at it two or three times, she'd call it quits for the night and I'd still be raging to go. I'm not proud of it now, but I started meeting other girls just for sex. Any girls who'd have me, really. At bars, meet ups, between classes, at concerts, everywhere. There was no emotional connection but physically it was bliss. I loved it, they loved it, and I guess later they dubbed it the Summer of Love.
I wish I'd counted how many pills Gerbil had given me, but I didn't. All I knew was that I was going through them like a knife through reheated butter. From what I remember, one pill was enough to last up to forty-eight hours, but I was using them almost non-stop, and the supply was depleting. I was probably addicted. It was after I'd used about half of my initial supply that Jerry asked over coffee one morning whether my "problem" had gone away. I told him it had and more than hinted at how my sex life had exploded, and he told me that was fantastic news. Then he lowered his voice and told me Gerbil wanted to meet up. I agreed, he told me the time and place, and I never saw Jerry again. But I'll get to that in a bit.
Gerbil and I met a few days later in what remained of a hangar on an abandoned airfield. It was beyond city limits, and Gerbil seemed to make a big deal of that fact. He told me he'd recently purchased the land way under value and was planning on building a bunker on it. Because that sounded like just the craziness he'd be into, I took him at his word. When I told him how well the pills had been working and that I wanted more of them, he wasn't surprised. He said he was thrilled and handed me another bottle of pills identical to the first. This time, however, they had a price. But it was the kind of price that wasn't paid in dollars and that made my horny young mind spin with possibilities. Gerbil was organizing a series of orgies and he was giving me the pills in exchange for taking part in them.
Back to Jerry: disappearing for a few days wasn't unusual. He went on benders from time to time during which he'd unreachable and absent from class, but those usually lasted a few days, after which he'd show up groggy and with stories to tell. After a week, I started to worry, but even then it's important to remember the times, both in terms of technology and perspective. We didn't have cell phones you could call anytime you wanted, and it wasn't unheard of for people to "drop out" of society. I had a professor who suddenly disappeared for half a semester, and when he came back he told us he'd gone on a walkabout. Still, I expected Jerry to tell me if he was planning something like that. He'd said nothing and now he was gone. I started asking around but realized I didn't actually know much about him. From what I gathered, he was still enrolled in university and still living at the same address. He just wasn't there.
My relationship with Edna was falling apart at the same time. I was bored with her, and she was getting bored with life in California. She was honest about wanting to move back East, and we both knew I wouldn't be going with her. And although she never said a word about it, I'm sure she knew I wasn't being faithful. Hell, even free love has a cost. I can't say we broke each other's hearts, but I will say that as I've aged, I've imagined more and more often what my life would had have been if we'd stayed together. I went on to love again but I never found a true love. Edna, especially in those early times, may have been the closest I ever got. Ironically, we loved each other most when we couldn't be physically intimate.
The first of Gerbil's orgies that I attended was held in the middle of the desert. There was music, drugs and absolutely no inhibitions. It was the most exciting experience of my life, and I loved it. Gerbil himself was never at the orgies, but almost everyone seemed to know him, at least by reputation. I don't remember how many orgies I ended up going to, but it was over a dozen, each in a different location with new women, many of them intoxicatingly exotic to me. Foreign students, bored housewives, groupies, intellectuals, stewardesses, and wanderers from all around the country and the world: India, Russia, China, Europe, Latin America, everywhere. I still have no idea how Gerbil organized these things or convinced so many women to go to them, but he did, and I must have fucked nearly all of them. The pills were my fuel.
Sometime during this hazy period of hedonistic pleasure, the police found Jerry's body in New Mexico. Apparently he'd hitchhiked all the way down there, spent a few weeks living on a ranch and overdosed on a cocktail of drugs so strong he must have been halfway to heaven by the time his organs failed. Foul play was ruled out, and no one in New Mexico cared if a longhaired hippie had killed himself accidentally or on purpose. There was no funeral as far as I know. About a week after Jerry's death, I received a letter from him in the mail. Judging by the gradual degradation of his handwriting, it had been written in several sittings. Most of it was personal and there was a lot of pain behind the words, but it was the last sentence that has stuck with me because of it's plain brutality. Four words: They've fucked us.
I fucked away my breakup with Edna and the loss of my friend. Orgy after orgy.
It was while sitting in a bar on a hot Wednesday night in the middle of July that I discovered something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. I was down to my last pill and imagining the best way to take advantage of it, waiting for the perfect piece of ass to walk in through the door. I had a mug of beer in front of me, not my first, and I was absentmindedly walking the pill up and down the tops of my fingers, when suddenly I lost control and it fell straight into my mug. I must have been too drunk to react, because instead of fishing it out, I watched instead as it descended into the murky depths while giving off a spray of infinitely fine bubbles. I didn't know how a pill should react in beer, but something about this reaction seemed off. When it had settled at the bottom of the mug, the pill started shedding something other than bubbles: namely itself. Tiny pieces flaked off and floated to the top, and the pill began to tremble. Soon, dark spots became visible beneath the off-white colour of what I instinctively began to conceptualize as a shell, until the entire casing was gone, leaving only a trembling black insectous creature! Immediately I knew it was organic. Even more: alive! I watched mesmerized as it struggled in the liquid, scurrying towards the edge of the mug but unable to climb the glass sides. Finally, I put my fingers in and lifted it out. It was small but unbelievably hard between my fingertips. I couldn't crush it. I held it briefly against the overhead light, its body wholly opaque, before it slipped out, hit the unswept floor and scurried away. I scrambled after it, much to the cruel amusement of the other patrons, stomping forward on the floor before falling to my knees, but with no luck. It was gone. Returning to my seat, I thought, Just what the fuck have I been pushing into my urethra?
I had no pills and the only evidence of anything abnormal was my own boozy memory, so I had nothing. Except a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was horribly wrong. I tried contacting Gerbil in my usual ways, hoping to get more pills to experiment on and either put my mind at ease ("You hallucinated, idiot.") or get my hands on something I could send to a lab, but all my usual ways were indirect, like asking for permission to speak, and permission was being denied. Gerbil stopped responding. Eventually I grew desperate enough to visit the abandoned airfield, which was the only address of his I knew, but it was empty and unchanged. When I went to the land office and asked about ownership, the clerk told me the land belonged to a man named Beaconfield who was mostly likely long dead. Because I didn't know anyone other than Jerry who'd known Gerbil, I had nowhere else to turn. There's only so many times you can ask a stranger if they know a man named after a small rodent. Eventually you give up.
And so Gerbil was gone, my pills were gone, Jerry and Edna were gone, and soon the 1960s themselves were gone, metamorphosing into a sexless 1970s for me, then the 1980s, 1990s and the new millennium. All as if someone had snapped their fingers. To say my life was dull would be an understatement. I had work, and followed it around the country, but I had little else. Forged at a time when we all wanted to remake the world, I had remade nothing and found myself leading a life of comfortable insignificance. But despite my memories fading, they never completely disappeared, and I spent many evenings wondering, trying to piece together clues, and always unable to shake those four words of Jerry's: They've fucked us. Was I scarred by a friend's suicide? Sure. But it was more than that, often in the form of sweat-inducing nightmares about tiny black insects crawling around my insides.
In the early 2000s, I saw a political ad for a candidate vying for the U.S. Senate. There was nothing unusual about the spot, but a few seconds caught my attention. They showed a series of photos of the candidate as he was growing up, attending school, graduating, etc. In one of them, he was with his mother, and my heart nearly stopped when I recognized her as Edna. I don't know what emotion I felt first, but I settled on hesitant happiness as I jumped online to confirm what my eyes had shown me. Although I didn't find the ad itself, I did find an interview with the candidate, including one with a gallery of photos, and in one of them was the confirmation I was searching for. Edna's face, older but still beautiful, stared at me from behind her son's electable smile. I was breathless. My happiness became joy. It was wonderful not only that Edna had done OK for herself but that she'd done extraordinarily, because it takes a certain kind of success to raise a future statesman.
On election night, I made popcorn, drank beer and cheered on Edna's son as if he were my own. Shortly after the polls closed, CNN projected him as the winner. For one night, my own insignificance didn't matter. I shared secretly in someone else's relevance.
A few months passed in the afterglow of this beautiful discovery. Sometimes I even had fantasies about contacting the senator to offer my congratulations, which would be a reconnection with Edna, but I always knew this was impossible. I was nobody to her, a shadow from the past. She probably didn't even remember me.
The reason why I mention this is two-fold: because I want to write and relive the happy moments, despite their way of decomposing into dread; and because Edna was merely the first of many. Over the next year, I recognized the faces of three other women I'd had sex with in California in the 1960s. I may not have known or recognized their names, but I do have a memory for faces and I was certain about theirs. All three were the mothers or grandmothers of successful people: a politician, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, and a lawyer. What are the chances?
Over the next months and years, I started to actively research the background of anyone who had recently attained a high level of success, or more accurately, a high level of influence: of power. Most were guarded about their pasts, many enigmatic, but some made public just enough of a thread of information for me to pull loose, and whether in photos or on video, what I kept finding were the faces of my former lovers, women I had met while cheating on Edna or, more often, women I'd fucked at Gerbil's orgies.
In time, I realized that the web extended beyond America. I found world leaders, generals, economists, industrialists and policy makers scattered about the globe, yet whose foremothers had all been in California with me! It was insane. I felt insane, wacko like the worst conspiracy nuts I'd met in the 1960s. Yet, just like them, I was convinced I was right, and what was right was too weird to be coincidence.
Today, the people whose mothers and grandmothers I fucked rule the world, and the singular way in which they are all working toward the same goals terrifies me to the very core of my being. To everyone else, they are unconnected individuals. To me, they are connected, and it gnaws at my mind, this question that I know I will never be able to answer: What are they and to whom do they owe their allegiance?
But I no longer search for them. I have accepted reality, and I don't know what difference it makes to know exactly how many of them exist. I still have no evidence. I can't go anywhere with a story relying on an old man's memory of his own LSD-fueled sexual exploits. I've tried, and gotten laughed out of the room. The best reaction is sympathy for being a senile old man whose mind is playing tricks on him about his past. And that's without mentioning my own theories involving parasites, mind control or aliens.
Yet those words: They've fucked us.
How I wish I had been able to hold on to that tiny black creature!
Or stopped myself from putting it in my body.
But I couldn't and now I'm here, posting my story somewhere at least a few people will read it. Maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't. I don't know if I want to give a warning or a confession, but either way I've done it now. What finds its way to the internet stays on the internet.
I hope for your collective sake that when you find this years later, you'll be able to have a good laugh.
I know I'm not laughing.
I truly believe that in the 1960s I participated in something whose conclusion will be the ruin of mankind.
2023.06.04 03:14 normancrane I think I've screwed us in the 1960s
 | I've started writing this hundreds of times and never gotten to the end. The first few times I tried, I did it on paper in a notebook because the internet hadn't been invented yet. I burned the notebooks. This is the first time I've finished and not destroyed what I'd written. If nothing else, this act of creation without destruction is a small victory to me, but I know you hardly care about that. Nor should you. You should care about what you're about to read because if what I say is true, your generation may be in some serious shit. I'm in my late 70s, no wife or kids, not many friends, and although I'm not quite on my death bed, I'm certainly nearing the end of my life, so my personal stake in this is low, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't weight heavily on my soul in an existential kind of way. We all keep secrets, some darker than others, and this has been my darkest. submitted by normancrane to normancrane [link] [comments] The story starts in California way back in the 1960s. For those unfamiliar with that period in history, the one word I'd use to describe it is turbulent. Just imagine the straight-laced world of the 1950s you know from television crashing head-on into what you probably associate with hippie culture, namely radical politics, protest, heavy drug use, rebellion against authority, and conspiracy theories, but also comradery, selflessness, and the genuine belief that it is possible to change the world for the better. I was a university student at the time, so you could say I was in the thick of it, but I wasn't at one of the true hotbed schools like Berkeley. That said, there was almost no way to be young and alive in California and to keep away from the upheaval. It was literally all around you, and it sucked you in. There wasn't a Friday night when you didn't listen to a speech by Abbie Hoffman, take LSD, or hazily conspire to take down the establishment to a background of folk tunes, and then go out to bar where long past midnight some guy in a black suit tried to recruit you for a plastics corporation or the CIA. Or so he said, or so you remembered the next morning. It was actually at one of these bars that I met my first real girlfriend, whom I'll call Edna. Edna wasn't a hippie, she was in town taking typing classes and working part-time as a receptionist, but like me she had become infatuated with the scene. Edna was only the second girl I'd slept with, and after a few months of going with her I started having trouble maintaining, then even getting, an erection. Back then it wasn't like it is now, when even polite people talk about erectile dysfunction and you can get medication to help with it. Back then there was nothing except a whole lot of embarrassment. At first, Edna and I thought it might be stress or lack of sleep causing my problem, then we suspected alcohol, but despite taking a fairly systematic approach and eliminating the possible causes one by one, we couldn't figure it out. Within weeks, my sex life just stopped. You can imagine how devastating that was to a young man. Let's rewind a bit. About six months before meeting Edna, I had met a guy named Jerry in one of my political science classes and we'd quickly become friends. Jerry and I would regularly meet up, talk about everything from music and world revolution to UFOs, and generally goof off together, and he'd always have a decent supply of weed for us to smoke and Grateful Dead bootlegs to listen to, which was fantastic. Although I've never had a truly best friend, Jerry was definitely my closest friend during my early student days in California, so he was the person I eventually turned to for help with my sexual problem. I remember that it was late at night after getting stoned immaculate, as Jim Morrison would say, that I told Jerry about my erectile dysfunction. He listened as I struggled mightily through the telling of it, and without laughing or making light of the situation told me not to worry too much, that it would probably go away on its own, but if I didn't want to wait and wanted help now, I should go see a man he referred to as Gerbil. Gerbil was about ten years older than us, originally from New Mexico and had been studying chemistry at Berkeley until about a year prior, when he'd been expelled after being caught synthesizing hallucinogens in a school lab. Faced with the possibility of going back to New Mexico without a degree, Gerbil had decided to pursue the American Dream instead. He set up his own lab, kept his clientele, and expanded his operation. Drugs, incidentally, is how Jerry had first met Gerbil. And through Jerry is how I met the guy. That's one other unique thing about Gerbil: even compared to the regular paranoiacs, he was paranoid. You couldn't just see him. You had to be introduced by someone he trusted and he had to "vet" you, which included a brief interrogation and sitting silently while he "read your mind." My vetting lasted about half an hour. After it was over, Gerbil relaxed and I explained my problem to him. It was easy because he was like a magnet for deep truths. You wanted to tell him the embarrassing stuff. Long story short, he told me I was far from the first guy to be suffering from this type of condition and that he had a tried and tested solution. I'll never forget the moment when he held out the pill bottle to me. His smiling, unshaven face, the sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows, and the pills themselves, oblong and delicately off-white in their little glass home. When I asked how much I owed him, he shrugged and said that for a friend there was no cost, then laughed and added that he had more than enough money anyway. After all, he said, he was making truth serum for the CIA. "Just make sure you follow the instructions," he said. "And remember: you were never here." When I got home, I read the instructions, which had been typed out on a strip of paper and taped to the outside of the pill bottle. They were simple enough but odd: Insert one (1) pill into urethra at least one hour prior to intercourse. I'll spare you the awkward details of my first time doing the insertion. What you need to know is that the pills worked. God, how they worked! Never before, and never since, have I had an erection as hard and for as long as when I used those pills. In the past twenty years I've tried Viagra and all the others, but nothing even comes close. It was like fucking with the world's most sensitive steel rod, and you could go for hours! Edna and I sure made up for lost time, but pretty soon Edna wasn't enough. We'd go at it two or three times, she'd call it quits for the night and I'd still be raging to go. I'm not proud of it now, but I started meeting other girls just for sex. Any girls who'd have me, really. At bars, meet ups, between classes, at concerts, everywhere. There was no emotional connection but physically it was bliss. I loved it, they loved it, and I guess later they dubbed it the Summer of Love. I wish I'd counted how many pills Gerbil had given me, but I didn't. All I knew was that I was going through them like a knife through reheated butter. From what I remember, one pill was enough to last up to forty-eight hours, but I was using them almost non-stop, and the supply was depleting. I was probably addicted. It was after I'd used about half of my initial supply that Jerry asked over coffee one morning whether my "problem" had gone away. I told him it had and more than hinted at how my sex life had exploded, and he told me that was fantastic news. Then he lowered his voice and told me Gerbil wanted to meet up. I agreed, he told me the time and place, and I never saw Jerry again. But I'll get to that in a bit. Gerbil and I met a few days later in what remained of a hangar on an abandoned airfield. It was beyond city limits, and Gerbil seemed to make a big deal of that fact. He told me he'd recently purchased the land way under value and was planning on building a bunker on it. Because that sounded like just the craziness he'd be into, I took him at his word. When I told him how well the pills had been working and that I wanted more of them, he wasn't surprised. He said he was thrilled and handed me another bottle of pills identical to the first. This time, however, they had a price. But it was the kind of price that wasn't paid in dollars and that made my horny young mind spin with possibilities. Gerbil was organizing a series of orgies and he was giving me the pills in exchange for taking part in them. Back to Jerry: disappearing for a few days wasn't unusual. He went on benders from time to time during which he'd unreachable and absent from class, but those usually lasted a few days, after which he'd show up groggy and with stories to tell. After a week, I started to worry, but even then it's important to remember the times, both in terms of technology and perspective. We didn't have cell phones you could call anytime you wanted, and it wasn't unheard of for people to "drop out" of society. I had a professor who suddenly disappeared for half a semester, and when he came back he told us he'd gone on a walkabout. Still, I expected Jerry to tell me if he was planning something like that. He'd said nothing and now he was gone. I started asking around but realized I didn't actually know much about him. From what I gathered, he was still enrolled in university and still living at the same address. He just wasn't there. My relationship with Edna was falling apart at the same time. I was bored with her, and she was getting bored with life in California. She was honest about wanting to move back East, and we both knew I wouldn't be going with her. And although she never said a word about it, I'm sure she knew I wasn't being faithful. Hell, even free love has a cost. I can't say we broke each other's hearts, but I will say that as I've aged, I've imagined more and more often what my life would had have been if we'd stayed together. I went on to love again but I never found a true love. Edna, especially in those early times, may have been the closest I ever got. Ironically, we loved each other most when we couldn't be physically intimate. The first of Gerbil's orgies that I attended was held in the middle of the desert. There was music, drugs and absolutely no inhibitions. It was the most exciting experience of my life, and I loved it. Gerbil himself was never at the orgies, but almost everyone seemed to know him, at least by reputation. I don't remember how many orgies I ended up going to, but it was over a dozen, each in a different location with new women, many of them intoxicatingly exotic to me. Foreign students, bored housewives, groupies, intellectuals, stewardesses, and wanderers from all around the country and the world: India, Russia, China, Europe, Latin America, everywhere. I still have no idea how Gerbil organized these things or convinced so many women to go to them, but he did, and I must have fucked nearly all of them. The pills were my fuel. Sometime during this hazy period of hedonistic pleasure, the police found Jerry's body in New Mexico. Apparently he'd hitchhiked all the way down there, spent a few weeks living on a ranch and overdosed on a cocktail of drugs so strong he must have been halfway to heaven by the time his organs failed. Foul play was ruled out, and no one in New Mexico cared if a longhaired hippie had killed himself accidentally or on purpose. There was no funeral as far as I know. About a week after Jerry's death, I received a letter from him in the mail. Judging by the gradual degradation of his handwriting, it had been written in several sittings. Most of it was personal and there was a lot of pain behind the words, but it was the last sentence that has stuck with me because of it's plain brutality. Four words: They've fucked us. I fucked away my breakup with Edna and the loss of my friend. Orgy after orgy. It was while sitting in a bar on a hot Wednesday night in the middle of July that I discovered something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. I was down to my last pill and imagining the best way to take advantage of it, waiting for the perfect piece of ass to walk in through the door. I had a mug of beer in front of me, not my first, and I was absentmindedly walking the pill up and down the tops of my fingers, when suddenly I lost control and it fell straight into my mug. I must have been too drunk to react, because instead of fishing it out, I watched instead as it descended into the murky depths while giving off a spray of infinitely fine bubbles. I didn't know how a pill should react in beer, but something about this reaction seemed off. When it had settled at the bottom of the mug, the pill started shedding something other than bubbles: namely itself. Tiny pieces flaked off and floated to the top, and the pill began to tremble. Soon, dark spots became visible beneath the off-white colour of what I instinctively began to conceptualize as a shell, until the entire casing was gone, leaving only a trembling black insectous creature! Immediately I knew it was organic. Even more: alive! I watched mesmerized as it struggled in the liquid, scurrying towards the edge of the mug but unable to climb the glass sides. Finally, I put my fingers in and lifted it out. It was small but unbelievably hard between my fingertips. I couldn't crush it. I held it briefly against the overhead light, its body wholly opaque, before it slipped out, hit the unswept floor and scurried away. I scrambled after it, much to the cruel amusement of the other patrons, stomping forward on the floor before falling to my knees, but with no luck. It was gone. Returning to my seat, I thought, Just what the fuck have I been pushing into my urethra? I had no pills and the only evidence of anything abnormal was my own boozy memory, so I had nothing. Except a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was horribly wrong. I tried contacting Gerbil in my usual ways, hoping to get more pills to experiment on and either put my mind at ease ("You hallucinated, idiot.") or get my hands on something I could send to a lab, but all my usual ways were indirect, like asking for permission to speak, and permission was being denied. Gerbil stopped responding. Eventually I grew desperate enough to visit the abandoned airfield, which was the only address of his I knew, but it was empty and unchanged. When I went to the land office and asked about ownership, the clerk told me the land belonged to a man named Beaconfield who was mostly likely long dead. Because I didn't know anyone other than Jerry who'd known Gerbil, I had nowhere else to turn. There's only so many times you can ask a stranger if they know a man named after a small rodent. Eventually you give up. And so Gerbil was gone, my pills were gone, Jerry and Edna were gone, and soon the 1960s themselves were gone, metamorphosing into a sexless 1970s for me, then the 1980s, 1990s and the new millennium. All as if someone had snapped their fingers. To say my life was dull would be an understatement. I had work, and followed it around the country, but I had little else. Forged at a time when we all wanted to remake the world, I had remade nothing and found myself leading a life of comfortable insignificance. But despite my memories fading, they never completely disappeared, and I spent many evenings wondering, trying to piece together clues, and always unable to shake those four words of Jerry's: They've fucked us. Was I scarred by a friend's suicide? Sure. But it was more than that, often in the form of sweat-inducing nightmares about tiny black insects crawling around my insides. In the early 2000s, I saw a political ad for a candidate vying for the U.S. Senate. There was nothing unusual about the spot, but a few seconds caught my attention. They showed a series of photos of the candidate as he was growing up, attending school, graduating, etc. In one of them, he was with his mother, and my heart nearly stopped when I recognized her as Edna. I don't know what emotion I felt first, but I settled on hesitant happiness as I jumped online to confirm what my eyes had shown me. Although I didn't find the ad itself, I did find an interview with the candidate, including one with a gallery of photos, and in one of them was the confirmation I was searching for. Edna's face, older but still beautiful, stared at me from behind her son's electable smile. I was breathless. My happiness became joy. It was wonderful not only that Edna had done OK for herself but that she'd done extraordinarily, because it takes a certain kind of success to raise a future statesman. On election night, I made popcorn, drank beer and cheered on Edna's son as if he were my own. Shortly after the polls closed, CNN projected him as the winner. For one night, my own insignificance didn't matter. I shared secretly in someone else's relevance. A few months passed in the afterglow of this beautiful discovery. Sometimes I even had fantasies about contacting the senator to offer my congratulations, which would be a reconnection with Edna, but I always knew this was impossible. I was nobody to her, a shadow from the past. She probably didn't even remember me. The reason why I mention this is two-fold: because I want to write and relive the happy moments, despite their way of decomposing into dread; and because Edna was merely the first of many. Over the next year, I recognized the faces of three other women I'd had sex with in California in the 1960s. I may not have known or recognized their names, but I do have a memory for faces and I was certain about theirs. All three were the mothers or grandmothers of successful people: a politician, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, and a lawyer. What are the chances? Over the next months and years, I started to actively research the background of anyone who had recently attained a high level of success, or more accurately, a high level of influence: of power. Most were guarded about their pasts, many enigmatic, but some made public just enough of a thread of information for me to pull loose, and whether in photos or on video, what I kept finding were the faces of my former lovers, women I had met while cheating on Edna or, more often, women I'd fucked at Gerbil's orgies. In time, I realized that the web extended beyond America. I found world leaders, generals, economists, industrialists and policy makers scattered about the globe, yet whose foremothers had all been in California with me! It was insane. I felt insane, wacko like the worst conspiracy nuts I'd met in the 1960s. Yet, just like them, I was convinced I was right, and what was right was too weird to be coincidence. Today, the people whose mothers and grandmothers I fucked rule the world, and the singular way in which they are all working toward the same goals terrifies me to the very core of my being. To everyone else, they are unconnected individuals. To me, they are connected, and it gnaws at my mind, this question that I know I will never be able to answer: What are they and to whom do they owe their allegiance? But I no longer search for them. I have accepted reality, and I don't know what difference it makes to know exactly how many of them exist. I still have no evidence. I can't go anywhere with a story relying on an old man's memory of his own LSD-fueled sexual exploits. I've tried, and gotten laughed out of the room. The best reaction is sympathy for being a senile old man whose mind is playing tricks on him about his past. And that's without mentioning my own theories involving parasites, mind control or aliens. Yet those words: They've fucked us. How I wish I had been able to hold on to that tiny black creature! Or stopped myself from putting it in my body. But I couldn't and now I'm here, posting my story somewhere at least a few people will read it. Maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't. I don't know if I want to give a warning or a confession, but either way I've done it now. What finds its way to the internet stays on the internet. I hope for your collective sake that when you find this years later, you'll be able to have a good laugh. I know I'm not laughing. I truly believe that in the 1960s I participated in something whose conclusion will be the ruin of mankind. |
2023.06.04 02:29 Right-Mixture-2445 AITA for 'controlling' my gf?
Throwaway Account
This happened last night. So I (25M) share my house with my gf (27F) "Jane". I had told her 2 weeks prior that I was going out of state for a while to go to the funeral of an old friend. Jane expressed her condolences and said she'd wish she could come with me but she'd be busy that week. However, Jane had offered to drive me to the airport and collect me when I got back.
We stayed in touch during the week I was gone; things felt like they were always and nothing changed whilst I was there. After I got my flight back, Jane greeted me warmly and expressed how much she missed me. Things were going well and it was as if I never left. At least I thought so.
For context, Jane is a freelance artist. She keeps some work and sells some. When we first moved in together, we had a large empty room. Ever since, Jane has used that room to paint and store all her work. On occasion, she paints fully nude paintings. Jane finds it difficult to paint people from scratch, so she pays people online to come to our house and model for her. I've never minded as she'd always tell me when these people are coming over and we agreed it wouldn't be anyone we personally know.
About 2 days after coming back, I stepped into the gallery. I saw a fully nude image of me. I was quite startled at this as I'd explicitly said I wouldn't be comfortable being depicted this way in her paintings. Jane would always say she respected my choice and wouldn't pressure me to if I didn't want to. After seeing this painting, I confronted Jane. I didn't want to make the situation any more awkward than it was going to be so I playfully asked her how she'd gotten my entire body and face so accurate without having any reference photos.
Without hesitation, she explained she had my identical twin brother "Jeremy" model for the photos. Initially, I started chuckling in response to this. However, Jane's deadpan face told me she was not joking. I asked her if she was being serious and she'd reassured her last statement flatly. I was absolutely stunned. I had so many questions, now I can barely remember what I said. We argued for a while but I recall her saying it didn't matter and that I was overreacting. Her main point was that nothing happened between them and everything could continue on like normal. Jane specifically said she had only painted a picture of him to pretend it was one of me. Regardless, I expressed that I felt violated no matter how I pictured it. I could either: accept the fact it was Jeremy and feel physically sick, or feel awkward in my own home knowing there's a picture of "me" nude. She: still ignored how I felt; called me controlling; told me I was making a bigger deal out of it than it was.
As of now, I'm staying at a friend's house; I told him we were arguing but I didn't tell him the real reason. I didn't want to make a bigger ordeal out of it. However, I'm still not sure if I reacted the right way. Am I an asshole for this?
submitted by Right-Mixture-2445 to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
This happened last night. So I (25M) share my house with my gf (27F) "Jane". I had told her 2 weeks prior that I was going out of state for a while to go to the funeral of an old friend. Jane expressed her condolences and said she'd wish she could come with me but she'd be busy that week. However, Jane had offered to drive me to the airport and collect me when I got back.
We stayed in touch during the week I was gone; things felt like they were always and nothing changed whilst I was there. After I got my flight back, Jane greeted me warmly and expressed how much she missed me. Things were going well and it was as if I never left. At least I thought so.
For context, Jane is a freelance artist. She keeps some work and sells some. When we first moved in together, we had a large empty room. Ever since, Jane has used that room to paint and store all her work. On occasion, she paints fully nude paintings. Jane finds it difficult to paint people from scratch, so she pays people online to come to our house and model for her. I've never minded as she'd always tell me when these people are coming over and we agreed it wouldn't be anyone we personally know.
About 2 days after coming back, I stepped into the gallery. I saw a fully nude image of me. I was quite startled at this as I'd explicitly said I wouldn't be comfortable being depicted this way in her paintings. Jane would always say she respected my choice and wouldn't pressure me to if I didn't want to. After seeing this painting, I confronted Jane. I didn't want to make the situation any more awkward than it was going to be so I playfully asked her how she'd gotten my entire body and face so accurate without having any reference photos.
Without hesitation, she explained she had my identical twin brother "Jeremy" model for the photos. Initially, I started chuckling in response to this. However, Jane's deadpan face told me she was not joking. I asked her if she was being serious and she'd reassured her last statement flatly. I was absolutely stunned. I had so many questions, now I can barely remember what I said. We argued for a while but I recall her saying it didn't matter and that I was overreacting. Her main point was that nothing happened between them and everything could continue on like normal. Jane specifically said she had only painted a picture of him to pretend it was one of me. Regardless, I expressed that I felt violated no matter how I pictured it. I could either: accept the fact it was Jeremy and feel physically sick, or feel awkward in my own home knowing there's a picture of "me" nude. She: still ignored how I felt; called me controlling; told me I was making a bigger deal out of it than it was.
As of now, I'm staying at a friend's house; I told him we were arguing but I didn't tell him the real reason. I didn't want to make a bigger ordeal out of it. However, I'm still not sure if I reacted the right way. Am I an asshole for this?
2023.06.04 01:55 throwAwayyy0100 Can't tell if my bf is making excuses or genuine
He's the aquarius
Up until 2 weeks ago, I would see him about 2-3 times a week. In the last 2 weeks, Ive seen him once and for 15 minutes. We still talk everyday though and he has a reason as to why he hasn't been able to see me.
He lives over an hour away and works at a restaurant which means he gets off around 11pm most times. I go to work a 9-5 so if we both work on the same day, I usually wouldn't see him. If he has the day off, he would come to see me for a bit.
The 1st week I didn't see him, he worked every single and the one day he worked an early shift, he ended up working a double. He had one day off and I asked if he was spending the night since he usually spends the night on the weekends if he has off work the next day but told me he needed to help his friend out in the morning. His friend mom had a terminal illness so I didn't even try to convince, I understood that was more important. He promised me he would see me soon and it wasn't until the day after Memorial that he came into my town to give his brother something (he lives in my city) and told me he was going to stop by. I didn't even know he was planning on coming, I woke up from a nap to him saying he was 30 away.
When he got here, he didn't even get out the car and I could tell he was off. I asked him how he's been as we didn't talk too much the days prior and he told me his friends mom passed away on Memorial Day and that he went to say his last goodbyes on Sunday. He didn't full on cry but there were tears and that was probably the first time I seen him truly open and exposed. I consoled him, offered my condolences and just listened to what he had to say. He changed the topic pretty quickly after that and we only talked for maybe an extra 15 minutes before he said he had to go home to be with his friend.
That was Tuesday. Wednesday he had to work and called me me about how he had a dentist appt to take a tooth out and put in an implant on Thursday. He smokes weed so I warned him about how he can't smoke or drink out of a straw etc bc of dry socket. He brushed it off and I told him to eat edibles instead but he said he didn't have any. So I told him I would make him some. He laughed and I told him I was serious and to pick them up that night. He got happy and it made me feel good. His love language is acts of service so I like doing little things for him because his quiet excitement just makes me happy. I spent hours in the kitchen making him brownies just for him to say he couldn't come (he did get out at 11pm) and when I got a little attitude, he told me he was going to see his friend. I just couldn't keep mad after that. He promised me he would pick them up on Thursday even after his procedure. Guess what, he didn't. Of course he didn't and I knew he wouldn't. He was in pain and on pain medication and slept the whole afternoon away.
Friday he had off work but it was the funeral. We talked throughout the day but after the funeral, he got silent which I expected. Im starting an art project for my house and asked him around 8pm that if he didn't have plans, if he wanted to come help me out. He asked me what project so I showed him bc I know he would like it and was hoping to get his mind of things. He told me he couldn't Friday night but possibly Saturday and he wants to help me out.
It's now Saturday and I'm actually kinda mad. Im also on my period lol so I'm a little more sensitive. We talked a bit today but then he made a comment about his dental nurse and how they had a "moment" and it was a stupid joke I know this lol and I'm not a jealous person with him, I usually just go along with the joke but I was already having a stressful day and just said bye go have another moment with your nurse. I think he realized I was mad so he didn't answer for about 2 hours then just went "chill out" and I got mad all over again. I haven't texted him since and he's currently at work. He hasn't brought up coming over or spending the night and the damn brownies are still just sitting all wrapped up in Tupperware for him.
I know he had a busy and stressful 2 weeks and I have his location so everything he says checks out and I haven't brought anything up to him, just been going with the flow but today is literally 2 weeks since Ive hung out with him (not including the 15 min I saw him). I know that's nothing but talking over text vs in person is different and I looked forwards to our days together so much.
I miss him but don't want to seem clingy asking him if he's finally coming over. It's like I'm begging for his time when I never had too before but he's also had a lot of things going on that doesn't have to do with us. Its not like he's ghosting, we still have constant communication, Im just sad and also kinda mad that I made the brownies and he's had me since Wednesday with the "ill try to come tmmr"
I don't want to reach out so he gets the hint I'm mad but then the other part of me says its not that serious and to just ask him if he's coming but I just have a feeling hell say he can't or that hell "come tmmr"Usually when he knows he's in the wrong, hell just come over but idk, I feel like his head isn't in it at the moment bc of everything else going on and I've been nothing but supportive. Everything I'm ranting about, I haven't said to him bc what he was dealing with is bigger than me not seeing him. I just reallyyyy don't want to snap but don't know what else to do. I don't know how to tell him I want his attention without sounding selfish or clingy.
submitted by throwAwayyy0100 to aquarius [link] [comments]
Up until 2 weeks ago, I would see him about 2-3 times a week. In the last 2 weeks, Ive seen him once and for 15 minutes. We still talk everyday though and he has a reason as to why he hasn't been able to see me.
He lives over an hour away and works at a restaurant which means he gets off around 11pm most times. I go to work a 9-5 so if we both work on the same day, I usually wouldn't see him. If he has the day off, he would come to see me for a bit.
The 1st week I didn't see him, he worked every single and the one day he worked an early shift, he ended up working a double. He had one day off and I asked if he was spending the night since he usually spends the night on the weekends if he has off work the next day but told me he needed to help his friend out in the morning. His friend mom had a terminal illness so I didn't even try to convince, I understood that was more important. He promised me he would see me soon and it wasn't until the day after Memorial that he came into my town to give his brother something (he lives in my city) and told me he was going to stop by. I didn't even know he was planning on coming, I woke up from a nap to him saying he was 30 away.
When he got here, he didn't even get out the car and I could tell he was off. I asked him how he's been as we didn't talk too much the days prior and he told me his friends mom passed away on Memorial Day and that he went to say his last goodbyes on Sunday. He didn't full on cry but there were tears and that was probably the first time I seen him truly open and exposed. I consoled him, offered my condolences and just listened to what he had to say. He changed the topic pretty quickly after that and we only talked for maybe an extra 15 minutes before he said he had to go home to be with his friend.
That was Tuesday. Wednesday he had to work and called me me about how he had a dentist appt to take a tooth out and put in an implant on Thursday. He smokes weed so I warned him about how he can't smoke or drink out of a straw etc bc of dry socket. He brushed it off and I told him to eat edibles instead but he said he didn't have any. So I told him I would make him some. He laughed and I told him I was serious and to pick them up that night. He got happy and it made me feel good. His love language is acts of service so I like doing little things for him because his quiet excitement just makes me happy. I spent hours in the kitchen making him brownies just for him to say he couldn't come (he did get out at 11pm) and when I got a little attitude, he told me he was going to see his friend. I just couldn't keep mad after that. He promised me he would pick them up on Thursday even after his procedure. Guess what, he didn't. Of course he didn't and I knew he wouldn't. He was in pain and on pain medication and slept the whole afternoon away.
Friday he had off work but it was the funeral. We talked throughout the day but after the funeral, he got silent which I expected. Im starting an art project for my house and asked him around 8pm that if he didn't have plans, if he wanted to come help me out. He asked me what project so I showed him bc I know he would like it and was hoping to get his mind of things. He told me he couldn't Friday night but possibly Saturday and he wants to help me out.
It's now Saturday and I'm actually kinda mad. Im also on my period lol so I'm a little more sensitive. We talked a bit today but then he made a comment about his dental nurse and how they had a "moment" and it was a stupid joke I know this lol and I'm not a jealous person with him, I usually just go along with the joke but I was already having a stressful day and just said bye go have another moment with your nurse. I think he realized I was mad so he didn't answer for about 2 hours then just went "chill out" and I got mad all over again. I haven't texted him since and he's currently at work. He hasn't brought up coming over or spending the night and the damn brownies are still just sitting all wrapped up in Tupperware for him.
I know he had a busy and stressful 2 weeks and I have his location so everything he says checks out and I haven't brought anything up to him, just been going with the flow but today is literally 2 weeks since Ive hung out with him (not including the 15 min I saw him). I know that's nothing but talking over text vs in person is different and I looked forwards to our days together so much.
I miss him but don't want to seem clingy asking him if he's finally coming over. It's like I'm begging for his time when I never had too before but he's also had a lot of things going on that doesn't have to do with us. Its not like he's ghosting, we still have constant communication, Im just sad and also kinda mad that I made the brownies and he's had me since Wednesday with the "ill try to come tmmr"
I don't want to reach out so he gets the hint I'm mad but then the other part of me says its not that serious and to just ask him if he's coming but I just have a feeling hell say he can't or that hell "come tmmr"Usually when he knows he's in the wrong, hell just come over but idk, I feel like his head isn't in it at the moment bc of everything else going on and I've been nothing but supportive. Everything I'm ranting about, I haven't said to him bc what he was dealing with is bigger than me not seeing him. I just reallyyyy don't want to snap but don't know what else to do. I don't know how to tell him I want his attention without sounding selfish or clingy.
2023.06.04 01:27 DanishVampire I'm stuck at a crossroads where both paths lead to unhappiness
Few months from now I'll get a promising intern job at another state, and I plan to start from there and go out and never come back home.
Home to me, is one parent not respecting everything you do, and another being judgemental on everything you do. The former drives me crazy with his unhygienic habits and loud eating noises, both of which I have repeatedly asked him to change, but we never even reached a compromise. The latter always criticize everything I do, one time I was cleaning up my room of every minor spots because I kept thinking my father never washes his hands after using the bathroom and he touches almost everything and it spreads out, so the least I can do is make my room a safe haven from his habits, but then she said I'm the one that's unhygienic which is why I'm cleaning up my room. I'm tired of arguing with them. They were almost always at home but one time they were at a relative's funeral in another state, so I was home alone and I took that day to cleaned up my room. It was really tiring but I truly felt peace. Not five minutes after they came home, I have a mental breakdown.
I vividly remember when I was a kid, my mother would always ask me will I take care of them when they grow old. And I always answered of course, because I don't want to be an ungrateful little prick and I still think that it's the right thing to do.
Couple of years ago, I always knew that it will be the eventuality that I will grow to hate my parents, so I planned to get a job in another state, whether or not I make it in the end, I will have inner peace, at least for a couple of days. Which is the first option for me. The second option for me is to just suck it up and stay, work in the same state and take care of them when they grow old.
The first option seems like the right answer to me, but I'll be breaking one of the first promises I've made to my parents. Which makes me feel guilty, therefore making me unhappy, even if I'm living the best live I could've ever lived. But the second option seems like the morally correct one, where I sacrifice my own mental health for my parents who raised me, fed me, provided me shelter and sent me to school.
I think I eventually will choose the first option. Get a quaint little apartment, whether or not marriage depending on luck, definitely no child because genetic lottery is kinda fucked up to me. But that will forever make me a bad person in my mind according to my moral compass.
I understand there's a lot people having it worse than me but I just want to let this out.
submitted by DanishVampire to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
Home to me, is one parent not respecting everything you do, and another being judgemental on everything you do. The former drives me crazy with his unhygienic habits and loud eating noises, both of which I have repeatedly asked him to change, but we never even reached a compromise. The latter always criticize everything I do, one time I was cleaning up my room of every minor spots because I kept thinking my father never washes his hands after using the bathroom and he touches almost everything and it spreads out, so the least I can do is make my room a safe haven from his habits, but then she said I'm the one that's unhygienic which is why I'm cleaning up my room. I'm tired of arguing with them. They were almost always at home but one time they were at a relative's funeral in another state, so I was home alone and I took that day to cleaned up my room. It was really tiring but I truly felt peace. Not five minutes after they came home, I have a mental breakdown.
I vividly remember when I was a kid, my mother would always ask me will I take care of them when they grow old. And I always answered of course, because I don't want to be an ungrateful little prick and I still think that it's the right thing to do.
Couple of years ago, I always knew that it will be the eventuality that I will grow to hate my parents, so I planned to get a job in another state, whether or not I make it in the end, I will have inner peace, at least for a couple of days. Which is the first option for me. The second option for me is to just suck it up and stay, work in the same state and take care of them when they grow old.
The first option seems like the right answer to me, but I'll be breaking one of the first promises I've made to my parents. Which makes me feel guilty, therefore making me unhappy, even if I'm living the best live I could've ever lived. But the second option seems like the morally correct one, where I sacrifice my own mental health for my parents who raised me, fed me, provided me shelter and sent me to school.
I think I eventually will choose the first option. Get a quaint little apartment, whether or not marriage depending on luck, definitely no child because genetic lottery is kinda fucked up to me. But that will forever make me a bad person in my mind according to my moral compass.
I understand there's a lot people having it worse than me but I just want to let this out.
2023.06.04 01:26 singingthesirensong Recalling trauma, connecting dots
I have been struggling through the past few months and just need to vent/process I guess. I lost my emotional support dog of 16 years last November and have such a gaping hole in my heart. Over the past ten years I have dealt with the loss of both my parents, brothers and home. My mental health has been in the gutter for a while. Hospitalization isn’t an option as I live in the states and cannot afford that type of care.
I’ve had time to myself over the past month to do some journaling. As I’ve gone back and detailed memories from my past, the hurt I managed to stuff down as a child is hitting me. I grew up being SA’d by a family member. My mother was very controlling and narcissistic. I tried my best to be a good kid, but trouble would often find me. Wholeheartedly I cannot recall doing the things my mother would say I did then punish me for. One of the worst things I was punished for was breaking a glass lamp - something that I should remember, right? The only recollection I have of it is her flying into a screaming fit, holding my baby brother and threatening to send me away. My belongings were packed into a paper grocery bag as I waited, crying and trying to tell her it wasn’t me, while she called a service to come get me “out of her sight”. I was called a liar. I was spanked and hit as I waited. Finally I confessed to make it stop. I was grounded to my bed for the rest of summer, even into the first few weeks of my 1st grade yr. When school came, I was dressed in long dresses or my older brothers hand me downs to cover brushing from the spanking. To this day, at 33, I do not remember playing around or even knocking the lamp. This memory is a core memory that haunts me. It was around this same time that SA began at the hands of another relative outside of the home. I’ve never really recovered from either.
As an adult my heart hurts for the child that was. I battle with a guilty conscious and apologize for things beyond my control. I have never felt comfortable dating and have been single by choice most of my life. I struggle with trusting others. I am learning that trauma that happened to me as a child has played such a massive roll in shaping who I have become. From being afraid of embracing femininity to remaining isolated to never feeling I have been enough for anything or any one - even myself. I have battled chronic depression since I was 7 or 8. I have done so alone for the most part. While I did seek help when feelings of taking my life peaked in more recent yrs, drs and counselors would help me complete “safety plans” and ask who I would reach out to if things got bad again. There is never an answer.
Neither of my brothers endured the punishments or wrath of our mother. Both were praised for being good boys and then good men; despite the fact they used our parents for money and only came around on Christmas Eve. They weren’t there when our father passed. Nor were they there for her during the six yrs after. Their only contact came when they needed something from her; financially or emotionally - I know this because I was there when she’d fall apart after those calls, feeling used up and forgotten. She was all I had, I was all she had. In 2020 she suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed and in a nursing home. My brothers would then show up asking about her will and wanting to help get her affairs in order. She had no will or grand estate. The “good men” she loved so deeply couldn’t even be bothered to come to her burial. I stood alone with the staff from the funeral home as she was laid to rest with my father. The infinite loneliness that is with me now settled in that day. Over the last 3 yrs I have lost my brothers, not that I ever really had them. One to an overdose, the other in a car accident. The only joy I had was my sweet dog. Everyone loved him so very much. He is laid to rest with all of them.
I’ve been so very lost since losing him. I disassociate for days at a time and have no recollection of getting anything done. I am so drained mentally, emotionally and physically that it’s extremely difficult to function. I’m so tired of hurting. I’m so tired of being disappointed by people.
submitted by singingthesirensong to ptsd [link] [comments]
I’ve had time to myself over the past month to do some journaling. As I’ve gone back and detailed memories from my past, the hurt I managed to stuff down as a child is hitting me. I grew up being SA’d by a family member. My mother was very controlling and narcissistic. I tried my best to be a good kid, but trouble would often find me. Wholeheartedly I cannot recall doing the things my mother would say I did then punish me for. One of the worst things I was punished for was breaking a glass lamp - something that I should remember, right? The only recollection I have of it is her flying into a screaming fit, holding my baby brother and threatening to send me away. My belongings were packed into a paper grocery bag as I waited, crying and trying to tell her it wasn’t me, while she called a service to come get me “out of her sight”. I was called a liar. I was spanked and hit as I waited. Finally I confessed to make it stop. I was grounded to my bed for the rest of summer, even into the first few weeks of my 1st grade yr. When school came, I was dressed in long dresses or my older brothers hand me downs to cover brushing from the spanking. To this day, at 33, I do not remember playing around or even knocking the lamp. This memory is a core memory that haunts me. It was around this same time that SA began at the hands of another relative outside of the home. I’ve never really recovered from either.
As an adult my heart hurts for the child that was. I battle with a guilty conscious and apologize for things beyond my control. I have never felt comfortable dating and have been single by choice most of my life. I struggle with trusting others. I am learning that trauma that happened to me as a child has played such a massive roll in shaping who I have become. From being afraid of embracing femininity to remaining isolated to never feeling I have been enough for anything or any one - even myself. I have battled chronic depression since I was 7 or 8. I have done so alone for the most part. While I did seek help when feelings of taking my life peaked in more recent yrs, drs and counselors would help me complete “safety plans” and ask who I would reach out to if things got bad again. There is never an answer.
Neither of my brothers endured the punishments or wrath of our mother. Both were praised for being good boys and then good men; despite the fact they used our parents for money and only came around on Christmas Eve. They weren’t there when our father passed. Nor were they there for her during the six yrs after. Their only contact came when they needed something from her; financially or emotionally - I know this because I was there when she’d fall apart after those calls, feeling used up and forgotten. She was all I had, I was all she had. In 2020 she suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed and in a nursing home. My brothers would then show up asking about her will and wanting to help get her affairs in order. She had no will or grand estate. The “good men” she loved so deeply couldn’t even be bothered to come to her burial. I stood alone with the staff from the funeral home as she was laid to rest with my father. The infinite loneliness that is with me now settled in that day. Over the last 3 yrs I have lost my brothers, not that I ever really had them. One to an overdose, the other in a car accident. The only joy I had was my sweet dog. Everyone loved him so very much. He is laid to rest with all of them.
I’ve been so very lost since losing him. I disassociate for days at a time and have no recollection of getting anything done. I am so drained mentally, emotionally and physically that it’s extremely difficult to function. I’m so tired of hurting. I’m so tired of being disappointed by people.
2023.06.04 01:05 Civil_Preparation934 [16/M] Cant say how the days will unfold...
Anyway about me, I am a huge, huge romantic. Seriously might be the biggest romantic here. Challenge me. I dare you.
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
Goodnight and Goodmorning
submitted by Civil_Preparation934 to friendship [link] [comments]
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
- The Nights - Avicii
- Future Days - Pearl Jam
- My Person - Spencer Crandall
- Hurt - Johnny Cash
- Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
- Stand By Me - Ben. E. King.
- If The World Was Ending - J.P Saxxe feat. Julia Michaels
- Hey Soul Sister - Train
- Running Home To You - Grant Gustin
- Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
- You Were Meant For Me - Jewel
- All The Faces - Creed Bratton
- Drops Of Jupiter - Train
- Photograph- Ed Sheeran
- Tenerife Sea - Ed Sheeran
- You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry & The Pacemakers
- Perfect - Ed Sheeran
- Rewind - Goldspot
- The Funeral - Band of Horses
- The Wind - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
- How I Met Your Mother - 19 watches
- The Office US - 7 watches
- Brooklyn 99 - 4 or 5 watches
- Peaky Blinders - currently watching for first time (S6 E2)
- The Big Bang Theory - 3 or 4 watches
- Skulduggery Pleasant - 39 reads
- Percy Jackson - 17 reads
- Harry Potter - 8 reads
Goodnight and Goodmorning
2023.06.04 01:00 Civil_Preparation934 [16M] [friendship] cant sayyy how the daysss will unfollld...
Anyway about me, I am a huge, huge romantic. Seriously might be the biggest romantic here. Challenge me. I dare you.
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
Goodnight and Goodmorning
submitted by Civil_Preparation934 to MeetPeople [link] [comments]
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
- The Nights - Avicii
- Future Days - Pearl Jam
- My Person - Spencer Crandall
- Hurt - Johnny Cash
- Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
- Stand By Me - Ben. E. King.
- If The World Was Ending - J.P Saxxe feat. Julia Michaels
- Hey Soul Sister - Train
- Running Home To You - Grant Gustin
- Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
- You Were Meant For Me - Jewel
- All The Faces - Creed Bratton
- Drops Of Jupiter - Train
- Photograph- Ed Sheeran
- Tenerife Sea - Ed Sheeran
- You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry & The Pacemakers
- Perfect - Ed Sheeran
- Rewind - Goldspot
- The Funeral - Band of Horses
- The Wind - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
- How I Met Your Mother - 19 watches
- The Office US - 7 watches
- Brooklyn 99 - 4 or 5 watches
- Peaky Blinders - currently watching for first time (S6 E2)
- The Big Bang Theory - 3 or 4 watches
- Skulduggery Pleasant - 39 reads
- Percy Jackson - 17 reads
- Harry Potter - 8 reads
Goodnight and Goodmorning
2023.06.04 00:59 Civil_Preparation934 [16M] cant sayyy how the dayss will unfollld...
Anyway about me, I am a huge, huge romantic. Seriously might be the biggest romantic here. Challenge me. I dare you.
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
Goodnight and Goodmorning
submitted by Civil_Preparation934 to MakeNewFriendsHere [link] [comments]
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
- The Nights - Avicii
- Future Days - Pearl Jam
- My Person - Spencer Crandall
- Hurt - Johnny Cash
- Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
- Stand By Me - Ben. E. King.
- If The World Was Ending - J.P Saxxe feat. Julia Michaels
- Hey Soul Sister - Train
- Running Home To You - Grant Gustin
- Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
- You Were Meant For Me - Jewel
- All The Faces - Creed Bratton
- Drops Of Jupiter - Train
- Photograph- Ed Sheeran
- Tenerife Sea - Ed Sheeran
- You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry & The Pacemakers
- Perfect - Ed Sheeran
- Rewind - Goldspot
- The Funeral - Band of Horses
- The Wind - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
- How I Met Your Mother - 19 watches
- The Office US - 7 watches
- Brooklyn 99 - 4 or 5 watches
- Peaky Blinders - currently watching for first time (S6 E2)
- The Big Bang Theory - 3 or 4 watches
- Skulduggery Pleasant - 39 reads
- Percy Jackson - 17 reads
- Harry Potter - 8 reads
Goodnight and Goodmorning
2023.06.04 00:58 Civil_Preparation934 [16M] CANT SAY HOW THE DAYS WILL UNFOLDD
Anyway about me, I am a huge, huge romantic. Seriously might be the biggest romantic here. Challenge me. I dare you.
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
Goodnight and Goodmorning
submitted by Civil_Preparation934 to TeensMeetTeens [link] [comments]
I love music, heres my top TWENTY!
- The Nights - Avicii
- Future Days - Pearl Jam
- My Person - Spencer Crandall
- Hurt - Johnny Cash
- Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
- Stand By Me - Ben. E. King.
- If The World Was Ending - J.P Saxxe feat. Julia Michaels
- Hey Soul Sister - Train
- Running Home To You - Grant Gustin
- Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
- You Were Meant For Me - Jewel
- All The Faces - Creed Bratton
- Drops Of Jupiter - Train
- Photograph- Ed Sheeran
- Tenerife Sea - Ed Sheeran
- You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry & The Pacemakers
- Perfect - Ed Sheeran
- Rewind - Goldspot
- The Funeral - Band of Horses
- The Wind - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
- How I Met Your Mother - 19 watches
- The Office US - 7 watches
- Brooklyn 99 - 4 or 5 watches
- Peaky Blinders - currently watching for first time (S6 E2)
- The Big Bang Theory - 3 or 4 watches
- Skulduggery Pleasant - 39 reads
- Percy Jackson - 17 reads
- Harry Potter - 8 reads
Goodnight and Goodmorning