7th Inning Stretch

a pause to stretch, breathe, and reflect on the story so far

Sing with me: Take me out to Saturday Morning Serial, take me out to the memoir…

NEXT TIME: a strong woman under the gaslight

(7th inning stretch)

~

Whew, Chapter 7 was kind of a doozy, wasn’t it? Let’s take a breather for just a bit after that one, yeah? We’ll call it a 7th Inning (or Chapter) Stretch. There’s only so much poignant gut punchy stuff one can consume week after week, after all, am I right? Here, tell you what I’ll do:

As a pause point and debriefing reflection before we plunge forward into Chapter 8, let’s look at some of my readers’ most thoughtful and rich commentary on the memoir so far. We’ll make it a Magic 3: two of these appeared in the comments on the pieces in question, and one was a response in Messenger from an old friend who was actually there to witness the event I described. I thought it’d be nice to share with you how thoughtful, intellectual, empathetic, and observant my readers are. Respond here in these comments, too, with any further thoughts you have on these comments, chapters referenced, or on any of the chapters or accompanying pieces so far. Sound fun? I think so.

What I’ll do is I’ll put down who said the thing, and link to the chapter they were saying it about, along with the comment. I’ll edit them for length and typos but otherwise leave them intact with the commenters’ voices and styles. I’d recommend reading the chapter itself before the comment, so you have context and such, but I’m not the boss of you. 

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On Prologue:

[

Martha Nichols

]

What’s so ironic about the scene is you, master of stage combat, prepared to do battle, and they instead did the equivalent of shunning you - a social strategy far more deadly to the individual spirit.

Martha nails it here (and earlier in the full original comment) when she talks about the deadliness of the silence that was dealt to me in this situation. Group silence as a projectile weapon aimed at me as I sat there for three whole hours. Her comment reminded me that it did occur to me after writing this section, that my ‘Friend’ Tenured Jim may have squealed: that he’d told everyone I’d be quitting after he and I had gone to lunch the week before when I confided my plans to him. The cold silence, and the fact that only two of the attendees (who knew who I was) seemed shocked, and Jim’s additional silence and distancing added on to that, makes me reconsider this memory in that light. Did he tell? And for what? A tenured position in the humanities at a state school that was in no danger from my presence there at all, that pays…well the TT jobs I’ve applied for in that same department listed $45K a year, so. Man, the smallness of the cowards of the world, am I right? And how does a warrior expect to fight off such mean rottenness? Martha’s right: the clean bright active sword has no moves against such petty rotten tarnishments and silent rust.

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On Chapter 6:

[

NickS (WA)

]

Thinking about it, I would say that the idea of "safety" is a clear theme of this post (and some of your other posts as well) -- both the sense of why people are attracted to unsafe things (which you foreground) but also why it can be hard to compare different types of risks -- as it turns out Ninjaboy was more dangerous than the trapeze, but the latter is the one that causes you to freeze in the opening paragraphs.

WOW how thrilled I was to read NickS’s thoughtful and involved comments (go to the chapter to read the whole thing—he recommends a documentary and ties it in with this—it’s dead good), and be regaled with a LITERARY THEME he found present in this work of mine! I love this; after all, not only did I write the thing, but I actually lived these stories in real life, too. That doubly means I’m not able to read the work for cool English professor stuff like theme.

As regards this theme he’s unearthed: well I obviously wasn’t thinking about that as I wrote this or any chapter, but man did he hit it on the nose, methinks. Variations of safety, danger on a spectrum, and how difficult it is to spot some kinds of danger over others. Oh hey, hang on—this theme is directly related to Martha’s comment above on the Prologue, isn’t it? That deadly silence that’s so much more damaging than what a fighter ready for battle expects, paired with that aerial dance position that was so much less dangerous than the sweet talk of a gaslighter? You guys are so smart, I can’t even…

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On Chapter 7:

[ ANONYMOUS ]

I remember that night.  And yeah, I started having some pretty serious doubts after that happened to you. … I remember, in particular, a level of shocked wounding that flashed across your face before anyone noticed that I’d never seen before. I gotta be honest: that’s what unnerved me the most in its implications. … Ego, I firmly believe, has no place in the dojo.

This is a clip from a very special comment I received through private message, as I mentioned: This friend of mine (who has requested to remain anonymous) was one of Ninjaboy’s students since the beginning, and when I shared this chapter with him, he was kind and generous enough to recall his own perspective and his own memory of that event. It’s a rare gift, that—to be able to chat with someone about a traumatic event, who didn’t cause it but was there to see it, as an eyewitness. It tickled me to hear what things he (an empath and an emotionally engaged person himself) saw and remembered from that day, to see this memory of mine from a different angle than my own off-angled broken elbow. 

In the original uncut private message he also extended regret, saying something to the effect of being sorry he didn’t see the warning signs clearer or didn’t do more at the time. But I want to emphasize this here, and throughout my whole memoir: When it comes to hindsight being 20/20, it’s so very easy to look back after… sheesh it’s been more than 20 years now since this happened, and go Gahhh! if only I did fill-in-the-blank at the time. That’s not how this works, and that’s especially not how narcissism and gaslighting work. I hate to bring up the proverbial frog in the pot of water on the stove analogy again, as I feel like it’s been a little overused lately, but boy is it illustrative when it comes to expressing how it feels to be in this situation. Even when you’re just a good friend to both parties and not directly involved in the abuse, look how narcissists like Ninjaboy affect everyone around them, like a rock dropped in a pond. The ripples extend to every bank, and every fish feels them.

As a side note: I, too, find no place in a martial arts practice for ego. Problem is, that’s where most egos flock to go feel even better about their sorry selves (and often to punch down on those perceived weaker). Ah well. 

~

Thanks, everyone here and also those I didn’t quote, for engaging so profoundly with my work like this. Especially when it comes to this memoir—I really appreciate it and can only hope that my experiences recounted here will help more of you improve your own lives, or at the very least, understand you’re not alone.

Next week? Chapter 8: ‘So This is How it Feels.’ Stay tuned!