Author: geezersabroad

retired writer/actor/professor who is currently drifting around the world to little apparent purpose.

Lying for its own sake

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He had been lying for so long that telling the truth seemed unreal. When asked “what have you been doing all day?” his first thought was to make up a bunch of nonsense that would make him seem to be ambitious, inspired, and diligent. When he responded “not much,” it was as if a heavy object had thudded to the floor nearby. The truth is clunky. Not sexy. Not very interesting.

If it weren’t for the necessity of keeping his lies straight in his own mind, he would have an easier time continuing in his chronic dishonesty, but as he got older, he found it harder to remember his own bullshit.

So now, at this advanced age, he was going to try the straight and narrow. He would give it a try. He could always go back to lying if it seemed the only path. As soon as he announced is intention, he began a flurry of lying and exaggerating. If the real answer was two, he would say three, or one, if someone asked if he’d seen a movie he’d say “yes” even though he hadn’t, and before the words left his lips he would worry how he would get out of this one.

This was habitual lying with no motive of gain. Pure compulsion.

A beautiful evening

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It’s a beautiful evening. The sun set about twenty minutes ago. The sky still glows. Orange clouds. Birds are getting ready to sleep and making that sort of worried sound they do just before they nod off. It’s a holiday weekend and most people seem to have left the city. I don’t know where they’re headed. I know the highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Inthanon, witnessed a terrific traffic jam this morning, as people in cars climbed it at dawn.

This is the best time of year here in this normally hot country. The weather is spring-like. No need to use air conditioning. I can wear a jacket while riding the motorcycle and not wish I weren’t. When I swim, the water is so brisk that it makes me swim faster. I’ve broken my personal speed record every day this week. Now, in this chilly water, I swim 18 percent faster than I did a month ago, when it was still balmy.

Unfortunately, this is also the weekend when the number of traffic fatalities soar. Thailand already enjoys the dubious distinction of having one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world, but for this week from Christmas to New Year’s that rate almost doubles.

 

Sad Celebrity Breakups

 

It’s always sad when a couple breaks it off, but even more so when they’re celebrities. Then it’s a public tragedy, for we all feel a part of their celebrity family, and thus our kinship is diminished.

It’s bad enough when celebrities die, which they do all the time, because like us, they’re only human. We miss them. We honor them with tributes, pastiches of our favorite film clips starring these newly departed. But when a celebrity couple calls it quits, we lose hope in all possibility for them and for ourselves. We are fatally flawed. If talent, money and fame can’t hold them together, what can?

 

I’m thinking of that glamorous couple that just threw in the towel. She was that mixed-race woman who was once very cute but then gained a lot of weight at the same time she underwent some unfortunate cosmetic surgery. She lost the weight, but there was something permanently “off” about her appearance from that point on. He was a talented musician and writer, but had a substance abuse problem that kept causing him to be arrested and sentenced to a long string of treatment facilities. Every time he graduated from one he would hold a press conference where he would promise that this time he was done with drugs and alcohol for good. Within a few weeks he would be arrested for drunk driving, in possession of a pound of cocaine or methamphetamine, and carrying an unlicensed firearm.

 

Indeed, they had more than the usual amount of troubles that most couples have to endure, but their love could not hold them together. Now they still have their troubles, but not each other.

 

I know there must be something wrong or lacking in me that makes me care so much about people I’ve never met nor am likely to meet. It’s easier for me to care about their problems than my own. This misplaced empathy is what my psychiatrist calls “insanity” and is partially the reason she prescribed such strong medication for me to take on a daily basis. If I skip even one dose I go into painful withdrawal. I can’t sleep. My limbs ache, and if I do drift off I endure nightmares.

 

It is then that I focus on my Brad and Angelina altar. Even though they’ve been divorced for a few years now, the memory of their happy time together gives me hope. I have little plastic statues of them mounted in a landscape of flowers. The landscape is also plastic, taken I believe from a model train set. I mounted this and the figures inside a shoe box, and made a little window at one end so I’m looking through a portal and into their happiness. When I told my psychiatrist about the altar she changed the subject, but I could tell from the face she made she disapproved.

 

Brad and Angelina had been given so much, but even with all that they could not stay together. Now they have everything anyone could ever hope for, but not each other. That makes me deeply sad.

 

I know I should keep the focus on myself. What do I want to do with this wonderful gift of life that I have been given? The fact is, I haven’t got a clue. Deep down I have no ambition. No matter how hard I try, I can’t take an interest in my own life. Who can care what happens to me if I can’t be bothered to do so?

 

Maybe t by focusing so keenly on the lives of celebrities, I’m practicing an empathy that I could someday focus on myself. At least that’s what I tell myself. Of course, I don’t dare imagine myself with a partner. If celebrities can’t pull that one off, what hope is there for me?

 

I’ve considered finding a very needy person who might allow me to take him or her into some sort of domestic partnership because they had few options. A refugee, or an invalid. Someone with a terminal disease and no insurance. But then I thought, how would that raise my self-esteem? Wouldn’t their presence be a constant reminder of my desperation? Wouldn’t holding another desperate person hostage only make me feel worse about myself?

 

Of course it would. So I decided to let that option slide and seek instead more universally acknowledged ways to raise my feelings of self worth. I decided to acquire a certification that would make me an expert. I enrolled in an online school to become a Life Coach. That way I would teach others how to feel better about themselves and in so doing, receive the same reward. And they’d pay me.

 

Life Coaches can earn big money if they sell their services to wealthy clients. One of the first lessons teaches that wealthy people often feel worthless. Their secret shame can be a goldmine to the right Life Coach.

 

The training only took a few weeks of reading online materials and passing simple tests. The readings were like a lot of psychology and sociology…stuff you already knew just rephrased into jargon which made common sense seem scientific and profound. I didn’t mind because I could make that stuff up, too. The real skill came in presentation. You had to be decisive and emphatic no matter how obvious and banal were the things you were saying. You could never stop selling your expertise. You were the expert and they were the client. Both of you could never forget that, not even for a moment.

 

I was surprised to learn how many wealthy people were also hooked on celebrity worship. Many of them had undergone plastic surgery to more closely resemble the celebrities they admired. I met a woman who had endured several surgeries to look more like Heather Locklear. If you saw her at a distance, and her hair was dyed just the right color and she was wearing the right clothes, it was possible to mistake her for the troubled actress who recently had been in the news for mental health issues.

 

My most successful client was a man who thought of himself as a chubby version of Mark Wallenberg. He kept referring to himself as “Marky Mark,” which was the name Wallenberg used in his hip-hop days. Again, in the right light and setting, he sometimes resembled the action film star. When you got to know him, you realized the true depths of his self-loathing, and it made you sad and somewhat frightened, because the enormity of his shame became palpable. 

 

I was losing the ability to cheer myself up, so I stopped taking the medicine my psychiatrist had ordered, and stopped visiting her, as well. Instead, I began to buy costumes inspired by various television shows I fondly recalled. My first purchases were outfits that Florence Henderson wore as Mrs. Brady, avocado and canary yellow, lime green and light pink pant suits.

 

Although I am technically male, I consider gender to be an invented notion of little consequence. Dressing like Mrs. Brady made me happy and nobody seemed to mind when I went out in public. When heads turned it was often in approval, or at least surprise.

 

I was not yet to the point where I dared wear my “happy outfits” to work. It would disrupt the workplace and draw undue attention to myself. When you work in a bank, it’s best to keep a low profile. When in doubt, sit at your desk and pretend to be absorbed by a spreadsheet.

 

I was as surprised as anyone to see large photographs of me wearing the lime-green and pink outfit on the bulletin board in our break room. Some candid cameraman had been following me. Was it a chance encounter, or was I being stalked by a co-worker?

 

This led me to further introspection. Was I an object of derision or a message of hope? No one said anything to me, but I did encounter some whispered conversations which quickly ended as soon as my presence was known.

 

I continue to hold my head high at work or out on the town. Not all of us can be bona-fide celebrities, nor should we wish to be. We live as productively as we can, sure in the hope that integrity is its own reward. If we die alone, so be it. We all ultimately die alone. But the journey is the destination. Brad and Angelina know that. Now, so do I.

 

What’s My True Vocation?

 

 

Here in Chiang Mai Thailand, I’m a member of two choruses. It’s Christmastime, so we’re working overtime. In addition to the usual tunes, “Deck the Halls,” “Silent Night,” “The First Noel” there are a lot of lovely songs I’m not sick of hearing, and learning the bass part makes them more interesting yet.

I’m grateful to have so much to do along these lines, yet I look back on my life and wish I had not wasted three years at University trying to be a scientist, when all I really wanted to do was theater and music. Heck, unlike math and science I have real talent in those areas.

Thankfully, I snapped out of it halfway through my junior year and snuck out with a degree in Russian, the foreign language elective I’d been taking just for the fun of it. Then I went to graduate school in creative writing. Playwriting to be exact.

When I squeaked out with a Bachelor of Arts in 1972, there were few jobs for Russian speakers,  especially for American kids who sort of spoke Russian. Within a few years, the Soviet Union would collapse and native Russian speakers would rush to cover the globe. In Argentina I met a Russian man with a doctorate in physics who was working as a motel clerk.

The idea of finding one’s “true vocation” is a lot like finding one’s “soul mate.” It’s wishful thinking meeting romantic nonsense.

They say when people are in hospice, they often share their regrets with anyone close enough to listen. Most have to do with remorse over having sold oneself short. “I always wanted to be a classical pianist. Why did I become a legal secretary?”

Democracy is Rare to Non-Existent

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I live in Thailand, a country whose last government was abruptly dissolved by a military coup. The current prime minister is the general who led the coup. When he learned that tourists would find their travel insurance voided by staying in a country under military rule, he had the parliament filled with yes-men and members of the military, who quickly elected him prime minister. He promised elections would come as soon as possible, but that was four and a half years ago.

Is the United States a democracy? Hard to tell. How about Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil. Guess it depends on whom you talk to. I would be more comfortable describing northern European countries as democracies than most African, Asian or Latin American countries. Money talks everywhere, but in some places it fairly screams.

The idea behind Democracy was a noble one. One person, one vote. Anybody could rise the top and be elected to high office. In the United States, it costs approximately twenty-five million dollars to secure a seat in the Senate. Senators earn $175,000 a year. Makes you wonder who they’re working for.

Maybe we should stop pretending and get real. We like to use the word terrorist to describe groups of people who don’t have well-equipped standing armies. We give Israel three and a half billion dollars a year in military aid. The Palestinians throw rocks. Guess whom we call terrorists?

Time-Out For Naughty Pictures

 

 

I tried to post two vintage 1920’s pictures of naked women on Facebook and was blocked from using that service for three days for violating their “Community Agreements.” A computer ratted me out, recognizing nipples. In my three day fast, I’ve been prohibited from sharing likes, posting new items, or sharing the posts of others. I feel like a citizens band radio addict who’s had his microphone impounded.

I wish I could say my time-out has fostered a mini-renaissance in writing and reading, but it hasn’t. I guess this proves that what’s left of my attention span is permanently fractured, reduced to fragile shards that cannot be swept up and reassembled. There’s nobody home anymore.

My menagerie of funny photos cries out from my desktop folder, demanding to be shared with the hypothetical thousands of “friends” I have. Since I post too much every day, no one has noticed my absence. This is what it will be like when I finally die. My Facebook feed won’t feel any different to most users, my blog subscribers will simply no longer receive emails about new posts, and it may take several years until anyone notices that I’m no longer at the helm. Pictures I’ve unearthed of silent era starlets and corny 1950’s ads will be discovered long after my ashes have been absorbed by the nearest palm tree here in sunny Thailand.

Almost No Regrets

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Regrets are Folly, but…

If I had to live my live over again, I would have found gainful employment early and stuck with a job long enough to save for retirement. I would have never borrowed money. Compound interest works in your favor if you let it. It works against you if you borrow.

I would have retired at fifty and spent less of my time working for others. I guess I never really felt like I was working for others, and others probably never felt that way either, which explains why so few of my work experiences ended on a high note. I’ve been fired a lot.

I would have never married anyone for “practical reasons” or because she wanted us to get married. Which means I would have never married. I’m definitely happy to have had the children I have, and would have taken care of them as well as I did, maybe even better, had I not married.

These regrets are minimal, not terribly important, because the good fortune I’ve experienced has far outweighed them in importance. My health is good, I’m living in an affordable place and want for nothing.

Going Solo

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The Internet has grown in power and sophistication, tracking potential customers for those looking to find them by linking ads and emails to searches and browsing history. The other day I came across an article about a new form of LSD, called LSD-1. that is not illegal. When I next checked my email, there was an offer from a Chinese pharmaceutical firm who could supply me with this product. I didn’t even have to search for it. They had monitored my browsing.

They also included a map showing my location and asked me to confirm that the blue dot was indeed floating above my house. It was. Then I was offered an overhead shot of my property. There was my motorcycle, right where I had parked it. Apparently, it was a live shot from a tiny drone.

They sent me another email informing me that an attractive young woman who worked for their firm lived nearby, and would be willing to ingest this substance with me, serving as “tripmaster,” in case I wanted to avail myself of this service. They included a picture of a comely Chinese girl in her twenties.

I ordered the legal LSD, which arrived in a week or so in an unmarked black plastic envelope. There were enough doses for quite a party, but I decided to try this experiment alone, so I only took the medium suggested dose, chewing and swallowing two tiny squares of blotter paper.

I had recently purchased a video camera that I normally used to document my motorcycle riding. In case of an accident, the playback might prove useful to show to the police or an insurance adjustor. Once switched on, it ran for twelve hours and then recycled the memory, rolling over the beginning footage. I decided this might be fun to to document my psychedelic voyage, the first one I had embarked upon in almost forty years. Since it was permanently mounted to my motorcycle helmet, I wore that. I also felt the desire to be free of most clothing, so I wore a caftan I’d picked up in my travels to the Middle East.

After about an hour I was definitely tripping. It was a pleasant feeling. Colors were brighter, people seemed witty and kind. Even the most mundane scenes were photogenic. I was glad the camera was recording all this, so I could refresh my memory later, even though I didn’t expect the video to capture the profound beauty I was now witnessing.

I was sitting in a patch of weeds and flowers that grow near my house, when a man and woman appeared coming through a gate that led to a nearby vacant lot. They were dressed identically, in togas. I thought that odd, but since everything seemed odd at the time, it didn’t really stop me in my tracks. I was going with the flow.

As the day was hot and getting warmer, I invited them inside my house for a cool drink. All I had was water, which seemed perfect at this time, for anything sweet or caffeinated would have been too much. Too artificial.

We talked for hours. They seemed as delighted by my company as I was by theirs.

Later, when I viewed the video footage of that time, I could hear my voice clearly engaged in the conversation I remembered, but the field of view only showed a blank wall in front of me.

I guess LSD-1 really works. Maybe next time I’ll ask the Chinese girl to trip with me. I still have some of those blotter pieces left over.

Top of the World

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She had a child’s mind in a lush woman’s body and she reached for evil with both hands…

KITTEN WITH A WHIP!

I saw this and it reminded me of my youth. Ann Margaret was a few years older than me, and as I entered puberty in the early sixties, she was already a goddess on the silver screen. Like all pre-adolescents, I was morbidly fearful about being thought attractive and hence “popular.” None of those things came easy for me. I’m not sure even Ann Margaret had an easy time of it. I know Elvis didn’t. He was the pimply, friendless kid at Hume High in Memphis when he dared to sing “Old Shep” to a crowded auditorium of his classmates who were less-than-wowed by his presence. But he managed to turn that around within a few years.

I’ve done all right. It’s been so long since I was an early teen that I can’t remember what I imagined I would accomplish in the time I’ve been given. Probably I would have been shocked to learn that I’ve made it this far. Sixty-eight! Good god! Are you in a wheelchair? Do you hobble around using a cane?

The things I worried about the most, whether girls would like me and whether I would achieve any status at all, turned out to be non-problems. Yes, it’s easy to find a girl to like you, but the real question you should be asking yourself is “which girl?” Impressing other people with your capability or talent is never a complete success. For everybody who’s impressed there’s another one or two who think you need to be brought down a notch or two.

But, as Jimmy Cagney says in the seconds before he blows himself up while standing on top of a natural gas storage tank “Top of the world, Ma!”

Creepy Story

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The guards have assured me that I can stay up writing as late as I want. Even though the main lights have been switched off, the light from my laptop bothers no one, and I am at my most inspired when others sleep. It is finally quiet then. The hundreds of men who surround me make noise all day long, just because they can, I suppose, and because it makes them feel alive.

The sensor they implanted into my brain stopped working months ago, but I have not told them that. I pretend to be just as impaired as I was after they first installed it. It is designed to confuse me and make it impossible for me to follow a coherent train of thought. All I have to do to convince them it’s still working is act confused whenever they talk to me.

This latest story I’m working on is already novella-length and I still can’t imagine an ending. Nowadays that might be a liability, because thanks to social media the national attention span is a fragment of its former self. I love the fact that if you run out of inspiration, simply invent another character and let him or her take center stage for a while. How do you think Tolstoy got War and Peace to its massive bulk? Chamber pieces and short-short stories have small casts and only one location.

When I tire of my characters, I kill them off. Helps make wrapping up loose threads easier near the conclusion. Today I just had an especially annoying supporting role drift off into outer space in a leaking space suit, with an amoebic organism crawling around inside his helmet, attempting to eat his brain. At this point in the writing, it’s a toss up which will finish him off first.

Dramatic monologues by evil characters are the most fun to write. I admit I have probably gone on too long with some of them. It’s the old “since you’re going to die anyway, I might as well tell you the Master Plan I hatched years ago and which is now coming to fruition.” It’s always a mistake to assume the person you confess your master plan to is actually going to die before you do. My villains make this error frequently.

It’s gotten so I’d rather write a movie than watch one. The kinds of movies they show here on Inmate Movie Night are either action movies or crude comedies. These are the entertainments where the soundtrack involves a lot of someone hoarsely urging others to “go go go!” or lots of cursing and ghetto talk.

It would be easier if I were more alike my neighbors, but on the other hand, they leave me alone, calling me “The Professor.” No one wants me to teach them anything, but they offer me a certain amount of unearned respect simply because I’m not like them. If they only knew what I’ve done and what I’m capable of doing, they would not simply respect me, but fear me.

No, I am not a cannibal, nor a mass-murderer in the traditional sense. My nefarious plans are so subtle that they are never uncovered. My victims never know what hit them. We all die eventually anyway, right? What does it matter if I accelerate the process?

Most people are waiting around for instructions. I have never done so, for if I did where would my advantage lie? If I’m not running the show, who is? Powerful, intelligent, far-seeing men have always risen to positions of power and influence where they could direct the flow of historic events. I am one of those men, though I am strictly self-appointed and secretive.

I do not believe in democracy. Enlightened despotism has always proven to be the most favorable system of governance. Fools gladly elect despots to rule. Nothing is ever learned from such a debacle. Blame is freely tossed and promises to not repeat the same mistakes freely made. In the long run, nothing ever changes. Fools remain fools, and their leaders despise them for it.

They say this is a maximum security prison and I am one of the most isolated prisoners. When in doubt, they elect to keep me apart from the general population. Sometimes I see the guards photographing me when I am allowed to move about, and I think that is probably being done to provide a defense for the management if I were ever to sue them for cruel and unusual punishment. Funny thing is, I don’t consider being kept apart from these others to be anything less than VIP treatment.

I didn’t used to be so unusual. It was my wife who started me down this path. Nothing was ever good enough for her, because she hated he normal. She craved unusual people and situations, so once we became a couple we became a self-fulfilling prophesy, surrounding ourselves with oddballs, freaks, weirdos and perverts. Our home life was not placid. We were always either highly aroused, or terrified.

The drugs didn’t help. She fancied herself a witch and would concoct potions of herbs that nobody had ever heard of. They came in the mail from places like Bulgaria and Indonesia. They all smelled like something that had died a long time ago. I learned how to drink tea while holding my nose.

People either loved or hated her. Those same people either envied or pitied me.

I’m not saying we weren’t sometimes happy. You can learn to get used to anything. Certain adaptations might be convenient in the short-term, but not good for you in the long run. You can become a monster without noticing your descent. One bad idea leads to another.

I began to imagine that I was the leader of a movement, a vast, secret movement of like-minded souls who depended on me. If I were to abandon this path, they would suffer. No one could or would take my place. The longer I harbored these thoughts, the more I believed them.

Child sacrifice sounds like a horrible concept in the abstract, but in reality it can be a gentle way of bringing a group of people together. How else could we maintain school teachers and social workers, doctors and clerics as members of our secret army. No one person knew how many of us there were, because we kept our cell meetings small. Only I knew, and I never let on about it, because there were no other cells. The fifteen or so who formed our core group were it.

They, however, imagined along with me that we were but one division in a vast army, an international movement with chapters in a hundred different countries. I have the ability to make people forget about their misgivings and become whole-hearted about an idea, no matter how novel.

Speaking of novels, I’ve written six in just the last four months. Nobody’s buying them yet, but I figure as soon as I become a prominent person, sales will take off. By now you’re probably wondering if I have any regrets. I didn’t end up here by being a saint. It was never my ambition to be “good.”

The kids we disposed of were almost universally whiny, unattractive, clingy and friendless. Nobody wanted them around. Sure the rituals were hard to perform and even harder to stomach, but in some ways I think it was harder for us than for the kids. We had to bring in some Spanish priests who could teach us the ceremonies and rites of passage they used back in the Inquisition. We bought frankincense by the barrel, razor-sharp stilettos by the score. The priests wouldn’t let us use surgical scalpels. They had to be fire-hardened stilettos, the kind they still use in Spain.

Dismembering someone, even a child, is no picnic. Fortunately, we learned to crank up the church music and that made it easier to keep going, no matter whether the child was screaming or not. Palestrina at high volume, Gregorian chant in a constant drone provided an acoustic floor that supported our ceremonies.

We all felt it was worth it. Well, those who remained with the group felt that way. True, some of us left. That’s how I was singled out by the police. My wife, the one who got me involved in the first place, named me as the High Priest. I guess they offered her a plea bargain and she took it.

All that seems so long ago I can hardly believe it really happened. I’m a different person today. Far less likely to take amphetamines and hallucinogens in order to converse with dark spirits. Far less opinionated. I like that Sly and the Family Stone song, “It’s your thing…do what you wanna do. I can’t tell you, who to sock it to.”

But I’m having trouble sleeping. I can’t shut off mind. I wish they’d reactivate my probe. Even though I couldn’t keep a train of thought for more than a few minutes, it would still help me let the past go and start anew. A guy like me deserves a second chance, even if I have to be locked up here. Even if the books I write make no sense, I still enjoy writing them. And who knows, maybe somebody out there will one day enjoy reading them.

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He was an especially weak man, prone to whining. For some reason, I seem to attract such men, and they are hard to get rid of. Simple hints don’t work with them. One needs to be direct and blunt to the same degree they are evasive and delicate. Listen up, Mister!

He would pretend to listen and feign understanding, but his own neediness drowned out any direction I could offer. He only pretended to follow. This is why I finally had to let him go, to release him from the ranks of my cadres. A movement like this can tolerate no duplicity.

We have no room for cowards. The abduction and killing of children is serious business. It is not for the faint-hearted.

My greatest error is in thinking I can fix these weak men, give them some spine, some steel in their rubbery souls. Even if I could, there would be no benefit to me. I do not lack spine. The art of ritual sacrifice is not vague in its demands on us, those fortunate enough to practice it. In this field there are no suggestions, only demands.

When I was merely a girl, I found myself sickened whenever I witnessed weakness. Something deep inside me would curl in revulsion when a man refused to act like a man, and instead pretended to be a woman or a child. I’ll never forget the time I saw some children crowding around a birds nest that had fallen from a tree. “Oh, the poor things. Let’s take them home and feed them milk from a dropper.”

You should have seen the looks on their faces when I snatched the nest away and stomped on it. Now these tiny creatures were free not to die a slow death at the hands of well-meaning wimps.

My actions horrified the weakest of my peers. They complained to parents and teachers. They gossiped about me at school. And where are they today? Fat housewives watching television while I go about the task of building a better world.

If you have chosen a narrow path, you must expect to leave the bulk of humanity behind. They will never support you. Democracy is for sheep. The crowd has no wisdom to share. For some reason, I knew this early on, but others are just coming to the realization and I must practice patience with them.

But it is difficult not to become impatient with weakness that celebrates itself as compassion.

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Mom and Dad, I want to go home. Can you come get me? I wish I could tell you where I am, but they drove me here inside a van with no windows. The woman said you were waiting for me here, but she was lying. I know that now.

There are a lot of us children here. I’ve made a few friends, but some of them have already left. Gone somewhere else, but they won’t tell us where. They just say they’ve gone to a “better place.”

I don’t like this place very much. Some kind is always crying because everyone misses their family. They give us things to do, but they don’t ask us if we want to do them or not. I guess they don’t care. A lot of the men are older priests, and the women who feed us seem to be afraid of the priests. A lot of the women don’t speak English.

I thought priests were supposed to be good people, but these ones don’t seem very good or kind to me. I get the feeling they don’t like us. Maybe they don’t like kids in general and that’s why they became priests, so they wouldn’t have to marry and and have families.

Sometimes at night they make us go to a big ceremony where we hold candles and worship a statue they call “Ball.” Most of the kids don’t know what this is about, but one kid told me that if we follow their directions and really worship Ball, then we’ll burn in hell for all eternity after we die, which might be sooner than we think. So we pretend.

I wish I’d never left our house that day they picked me up. My plan was simply to walk around the block. When the van stopped and said there had been an accident and you wanted me to come home right away, I believed them. The lady in charge was an ugly woman with a crooked smile. Her teeth were large, pointed and yellow. When she smiled it made me sick to my stomach.

When are you coming to get me?