And to think that a few years ago they pulled off the selling floor a T-shirt that said "Someday a woman will be president" because ONE customer found it "offensive."
Of course they still have that Nazi t-shirt as well:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/...k-29-
266774.php
Maybe they can have a 2 for 1 sale!
Wal-Mart gets NO money from me, Target and Costco get my patronage. They treat their people right, and Costco gives to good causes.
I go to CostCo as my first choice. Target's my backup.
Jesse,
Thank you for sharing this.
On a more mundane note, do you get EMS discounts at Costco on the West Coast? I only ask because Mom gets an automatic Union discount as a teacher--basically, they have three levels of pricing: Gold (restaurants/volume) Silver (smaller venues/biz) and Bronze (one man shops, EMS, firefighters, cops, Corrections, and teachers).
Thank you for sharing this.
Jen,
*nods*
It's for the sharing. These things have (most of them anyway) stopped hurting me. To the extent I can share them in a way which contributes to others... I don't ever kid myself about undoing the damage I did; it would be the height of arrogance to even try. But when I can say something which contributes to the discourse here and there, truly I have no fear left about what people think of me anymore in these domains. What is anyone going to do; tell me to jump off a cliff? *cracks up*
As for your CostCo question, I'm a retired paramedic. Have been since I lost my edge back in 89 while I was still working in Oakland and simply burned out.
Since then I've lived in New Hampshire (3 different places, all near Amherst), Washington State (4 different places, from way rural, to the suburbs outside of Seattle where I've lived since 96), to San Francisco and Hayward (in 94 with the family still back up here, running a seven-month Angel-backed start up.)
I've never tried to get discounts at CostCo, although they keep trying to get me to buy their Executive Membership on the promise I'll "get money back at the end of the year." The one time I did go there, the first year it came out, I think I got $4.75 back and I'd spent an extra $55 bucks for the stupid membership.
Although now that you've put the bug in my ear, I may check into those discounts. Discounts are different than membership fees, and I might possibly qualify for a discount. We'll see. I sure as hell spend enough there, especially on medicine. Heh.
I don't drive and don't have a car, so it's a good thing the big-box general store in my blue-collar neighborhood is a KMart. KMart was the king of the discount-retailer hill back in the 1970's. These days, they're lucky to still even be in business. Had they gone under completely back in the late nineties when they had to file for bankruptcy, no doubt a WalMart would have taken over the space where KMart was. It would really suck to have no choice but to shop at fucking WalMart.
I think I recall some psychologist on a daytime talk-show saying that it's men who stalk who are far more likely to turn violent. When women stalk, supposedly, they are usually just acting out some kind of internal drama and stop the stalking behavior once they have done that to their satisfaction.
Jesse, thanks for writing this. I just linked it over at Feministe.
My co-blogger Jill just did a post about how this shirt could be triggering for victims of stalking; it's helpful to see how it's also triggering for people who might be inclined to stalk.
One of the things that a lot of people don't *get* about feminism is that it is good for both women *and* men, in that it recognizes that patriarchy hurts men, too. This idea that you're supposed to possess the object of your affection (who remains an object and not a human being) is one of the things that feminism fights against. It does seem to be an issue still with Nice Guys™, though. But that seems to be sourced in the idea that women are some kind of alien species.
Alas, we don't have Costco or Target here in Lower Bumfuck, Arkansas, so sometimes I must descend into Hel-Mart.
Wal-Mart bashers: if y'all don't already know about it, check out www.hel-mart.com! 
My guess is some promising young exec is about to get his ass canned for approving this shirt. I don't think it was a tacit endorsement of stalking, though. Stupid and tasteless, but I doubt it was malicious.
Dude, no offense, but I hope to God you've sought some psychological help as well as help with the pain as you've shared before. Because that kind of thing -- stalking -- goes much deeper than just taking a handful too many of the wrong opiates or the wrong SNRI.
Thank you Brian.
Seriously, I appreciate your concern.
As I've said many times, I got immediate and extended help from one of the best therapists in the western U.S.
You're of course welcome to call what happened to me whatever you wish. But you should know neither the woman involved, my therapist, or I consider it to have been stalking. More of a desperate response to overwhelming pain.
Another way to say it, well, I think Zuzu puts it very well over on Feministe with:
Jesse Wendel tells the tale of how he got pulled back from the brink of stalking, and why he thinks that Wal-Mart stalking shirt sends the wrong message not just to would-be victims but to would-be stalkers. Sort of a “there but for the grace of God go I” moment, which I’m sure we’ve all had in our lives.
*waves to Zuzu*
Yeah, precisely. Furthermore Brian, this really is one of my tamer stories. From my life during this time period, from my life in my teens & twenties, and from my patients as a medic -- I lived messy. If this story freaks you, wow, you'd really lose it if I ever decide to lay any of the really hard to listen stuff down. *shrugs*
Heh.
I like this life better though.
I do however, again, appreciate your concern for my wellbeing. I got prompt help, I'm in great shape and have been for a while.
Be cool.
*waves to Zuzu*
*waves back*
Thank you. Seriously. So much.
I wish more people would be open about the messy shit in life. It makes it less isolating and insurmountable when it goes on with you.
Jesse, glad you talked to a therapist about it, and if your woman friend, your therapist and you decided it was not stalking, so be it. Just so long as you dealt with it, that's good.
The story only freaks me because it involves implied threats of violence between humans and to yourself.
Drugs, drinks, stupid accidents, brushes with the law, jail time, property crime, even a bit of road rage, that stuff does not freak me out as much, even though road rage is insanely dangerous. But when it comes to implicit and explicit threats of violence between people and of violence to themselves, alarm bells go off. It's a fine line to have a death wish and to actually crossover into pursuing it. Once that line is getting crossed, people need help immediately before it is too late. I have had friends of friends where the warning signs were ignored and they are dead now. I have known people who were unable to extract themselves from certain violent situations and the scars remain with them for life. And I have seen the flip side as well -- the better side -- where people saw what was happening and intervened and no one got hurt.
So, somebody, anybody says they were calling their girl and slitting their arms and had access to weapons -- even razor blades -- and just needed to talk to that girl? Christ, that is scary, and anyone who thinks it isn't scary has clearly lived to sheltered a life. Glad you're getting better.
You're right; it was scary.
I got first rate help instantly. Literally I was on the phone to the therapist's number I'd had in my pocket all week, within 15 minutes of coming down off the edge (my best girl friend on the phone screaming at me to penetrate, demanding I call the doc.)
I called, and was at his office for my first appointment days later. *smiles*
The rest was process.
Thanks again for double-checking. *smiles*
Just so you're clear -- and everyone else as well -- I may or may not, share some of the really tough stuff at some point. People should breathe. It all turned out. Real people, people you know, go through stuff like this. We need to be able, I believe, to hear it.
Got to go. Kyle has a job interview! *grins*
When women stalk, supposedly, they are usually just acting out some kind of internal drama and stop the stalking behavior once they have done that to their satisfaction.
You know, I've often asked myself, about the girl who brought me to the realization, Everything You Really Need Can Fit in Your Car Before She Gets Home (TM)--was she strange? in the sense of 'odd', that is.
I've wondered for 15 years whether a man in the same circumstance, who had been subjected to the kinds of strange behavior I got in the year after I left her, would have responded by labeling it stalking or have just told his friends, Turns out this chick was crazy.
I felt like moving to another state and getting a new phone number was literally the least I had to do to be safe. But men aren't allowed to be scared of women, so would a guy have stuck it out hoping that she would get over it?
Yes, I know that most of the time stalkers are men pursuing women. But how much of that is because women who engage in stalking behaviors are transgressing femininity, whereas men are expressing the entitlement to possess the object of their affections?
The Group News Blog: explaining lesbian stalkers since 2007.
I've wondered for 15 years whether a man in the same circumstance, who had been subjected to the kinds of strange behavior I got in the year after I left her, would have responded by labeling it stalking or have just told his friends, Turns out this chick was crazy.
PhoenixRising -
It's a great question. Here's my riff.
I'm not going to tell the following story now in full detail (what follows is very much the bare bones; yes, it is the bare bones. Heh.) I may or may not ever say more, but we've had enough for this week at least of the full in depth front page stories. Let's give everyone time to breathe. *breathes*
The Summer of '98 I had to make a hard choice: My children or my reputation.
My wife (now ex-wife) and I were about ready to call it quits. My girls were 11, 10, 7, my boy was 5. I was still sleeping with everyone. One of these women, was crazy. She had a reputation -- documented history -- of making false claims of sexual harassment in the LGAT where she was on Staff. She'd been ordered to stop following and leave alone a senior international course leader, a friend of mine, whose job sometimes bought him to the office where she was employed (and I volunteered), asking him out repeatedly, telling him they were going to get married someday, following him. She was fucking nuts.
Naturally, I took her to bed.
Those were the years I would have screwed a snake if someone would have held the damn thing straight for me. It was every bit as bad as it sounds. I'll spare everyone the details.
We'd had a bottle & a half of wine between us, over at a friend's office. I'd been interviewing her for a book I was writing. (The book idea has long since been discarded; the plan now is to shoot a documentary film; that's what the RED camera is for among other things. There are always many people involved in a shoot, so the following could never happen. let alone I'm no longer that guy. But also this is about making sure a crazy person isn't ever positioned to get crazy.)
The conversation that night with her, with her advanced consent, was about her sexual history and how that impacted the men she was attracted to and dated. "What's Your Pattern?" It was tape recorded. All of it.
Right after the tape went off, she pulled me to the floor and had at me. I saw her around over the next month. She hung out with my friend; nothing was different about her.
A month later I was told she'd told someone she'd been so drunk that night she'd not known what she'd been doing.
Fact. I have her on tape, giggly but clearly sober and in control, just before she pulled me to the floor.
Fact. She sent a fax to my wife, saying she pulled me to the floor as soon as the tape went off.
Fact. The fax says she told her husband she and I had an affair. (This fax sent before she changed her story.)
Fact. I've got sworn statements from lots of people of her behavior over the following month, namely that she never said a word to them, was her normal natural insane self, but never suggested anything improper happened between us.
Fact. I have a witness who saw her now ex-husband writing a list of things to do when this all exploded: Cut off _____'s credit cards.
Fact. A day after her husband was seen writing this list, she changed her public story of what happened.
Fact. She never once mentioned anywhere I know of, that this wasn't the first time she and I had been in bed together, long before she met her husband. I have witnesses to that also.
I had a decision to make: My children or my reputation.
(Cont...)
(Cont...)
Come after her for defamation -- my attorney said it was as open & shut a case as he'd ever seen -- or let it go.
Problem. I was in the middle of separating from my wife. Child custody was at stake; the judges who deal with these issues don't give a DAMN about the truth; they work off the best interests of the child, and they determine what those are. The woman in question was crazy enough that even though we had her dead cold lying, we couldn't be certain she wouldn't perjure herself and file a police report; she was trying to get what we assumed was a multi-million dollar payout in her own divorce settlement. I was a threat. And though we were sure we'd win in the end, the cost would have almost certainly been the permanent loss of my children to my ex-wife. "The best interests of the child."
Reputation (what others know about you) v Honor (what you know about yourself.) A distinction from the writer Lois McMaster Bujold, writing in Memory.
I chose my Honor over my Reputation, letting my reputation be smeared with many hundreds of people who knew of me, perhaps 25 of whom I truly gave a damn. I didn't fight back. I didn't say a word.
For years I hated that woman with a passion and fire. Spun stories in my head about how I finally forced the world to know I'd been right all along.
Finally -- a year ago, about the same time my docs and I got stone cold clear it was the drugs which had me not being me -- a full eight years after it all started, the whole issue just cleared up in my internal conversations, almost overnight. No, we hadn't made drug changes yet. Wait, yeah, yes we had. We'd lowered the dosages of what I was taking; the overall drug fog had lifted and there I was again, even if I wasn't yet fully myself by any means.
If I'd actually been stupid enough to fight her and she'd been as crazy as my attorneys and I think she was, I could have been forever tagged as "the guy accused of blah blah blah." Instead, if anything, I'm "the good father, a single dad who puts his children first no matter what" -- over the ranting of a crazy woman with a documented history of making up false harassment and sexual harassment accusations when she was in trouble, and stalking a senior corporate executive. Almost no one knows this even happened to me. Or cares. Which is just how I want it. (Not to mention, it finally got me the hell out of that LGAT for good. Heh.)
I google her name now and then. She seems to have vanished into the dust bin. Got her big payout from asking for a divorce after being married less than a year to the rich geek who fell for her. The divorce came through, she did a little of this, that and the other thing, and was gone. Oh, if she were ever stupid enough to attack me and mine, I'd put her under oath in a flash. I've purely love to let my attorney get her in discovery. *smiles sweetly* Not to mention, leopards don't change their spots. Of course I don't know but I've got 10 bucks at 10:1 says she's been up to her old tricks with someone. (She's just not worth more to me than a ten buck bet. As for the story, I'm telling it 'cause this is the week for getting all this old shit out there, even in abbreviated form. Plus it fits with PhoenixRising's question. This woman was both crazy, and ignoring her turned out to be the solution. But ignoring her in a very specific and calculated way.)
I've still got everything we prepared back then to prove she was lying, including: the audio tape, sworn testimony, witness statements, court documents, and more, all stacked away, multiple copies, different locations including some not at all under my direct control. Any attack on my reputation today would end quickly in a very short take-down, followed by her and any co-conspirators serving time (hopefully) for perjury, extortion and stalking. My children are mostly grown now and I simply am not a target.
But it all turned out fine. Knowing you have your Honor while some people have been told by a crazy person you're blah blah, is frustrating. But as Bujold says, trading your Honor for Reputation, that is lying in order to have people think well of you but you know the real truth; that's soul-destroying. Which in large part is what the suicide attempt in 2002 was about, discovering I'd traded my life for lies which hurt people.
These issues which were so important at the time, which possess us so deeply, at least for me, have a way of working themselves out if I just give them enough time.
The trick is to live through them, while not letting them settle into a fixed public story. Afterwards, years later, then as you mature and come into yourself, you can articulate a story which acknowledges the facts -- you always want to tell the absolute truth on the facts -- but which allows you space to bring forth publicly an identity consistent with who you now know yourself to be in your private identity. This matching up of the two -- taking ground privately, then bringing forth your identity publicly, reinterpreting and articulating themes in your life, some of which likely are a story which makes sense only in retrospect, but which propels you powerfully forward into the future you are both creating and living in with others, will (hopefully) be an ongoing process throughout one's life, and a necessary competency for people in the coming generation.
Call competency at this, competency in the Age of Shifting Identities. I believe it will become part and parcel of what our children will know in their bones, and what you and I can learn. By 2020-25 it will become a necessary part of how everyone lives in the world of networked public trust & identity grounded in a world of everywhere always ubiquitous computing infrastructure, the multi-generational successor to what we now call the internet, which will simply sink completely into the background of living life.
Enough.
I've spent 54 years seducing women, thousands of them. Oh, I'm no cad, I've married anyone of them and every one of them who indicated, by word or gesture, even the slightest desire for a more permanent connection. Once, in what seemed to be dire straits, I married an entire 757 fuselage full of likely lasses, but we landed safely, and a mutual annulment seemed the best course. But I acted the honorable gentleman in every particular, they all still say that!
Many of them still keep in touch, and an occaisional gift or bouquet comes in the post.
I would, if possible, court, fall in love with and marry the entire female race, romance and a lifetime committment being no more than any woman deserves, just for being such.
But my present wife would object, she has a certain charming self-centeredness.
The Nazis have invaded my Haloscan!
Why?
Mooser -
I'm not sure, but it's funny enough and kind of on point, sorta -- especially with your hysterical follow-up question -- even with it's signature, that I'm letting it stay.
My comment on it, as funny as it seems, is if people aren't allowed to change -- genuinely change with all that implies, not some bullshit to avoid accountability and responsibility -- then we have a world I don't think most of us would want to live in.
From Dr. King to Gandhi, to every great religious practice, Do Onto Others has been the basis of the whole thing. Or as Hillel responded. "No problem! The main idea of the Torah is 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything else is commentary. Now, if you're really interested, go and study the commentary."
I concur. We have to allow for the possibility of deep authentic change in others, because most of us have experienced it in our selves. Similarly, we know when we're just bullshitting ourselves, and we can tell when others are full of shit and are simply trying to avoid accountability for their past. Except for people right on the bubble -- which is a special case and needs to be handled I think mostly by professionals -- the difference between the two is fairly obvious to those of us who have eyes to see and ears to listen.
So while I find the up-thread comment funny, it's not so funny in its implication the whole thing is a con. I reject not just the specifics; I reject that approach to life.
All of us who have ourselves transformed in some area, grown beyond our bad past in a radical way, and simply are not that person any more... If forgiveness is not possible, more, if it is not possible to say out loud and in public these tales from our past without being destroyed for them, then how is anyone ever to learn?
Hi Jesse:
Hoo whee... Such a story. Such heart ache and anger.
And I keep coming back to the point: We are, ultimately, for better or worse, our brain chemistry. I find that realization to be both horrifying and liberating at the same time.
The woman who was and is "trouble" probably has very little understanding what is "real" and "not real." And while her behavior is utterly despicable and loathesome, I do not envy her life.
You're a walking miracle, my friend. To have things so far out of kilter to be set straight (for wont of a better term), is the result of lots of hard work by you and your support team. Not everyone gains the sands of health to make the concrete to rebuild their lives upon.
Peace.
Dear Brat -
Yep. You said it good.
You really want to get a sense how totally (100%) as you said it, "We are, ultimately, for better or worse, our brain chemistry", then read what I think is the most important book in biology in the last quarter-century, The Tree of Knowledge by Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela.
To quote the Amazon Editorial Reviews
Library Journal:
This book was originally a series of lectures by the Chilean coauthors, sponsored by the Organization for American States. It applies science, especially what is known of neural systems, to philosophical questions about human perception and understanding. The arguments are built up methodically, beginning with the origin of life and continuing through the the development of language in humans. The main virtues of the book are its logical approach and its use of examples.
Contemporary Psychology:
"A book with great breadth and ambition . . . In the age of specialization, it is refreshing to come across a book with conceptual breadth and originality."
Journal of Religion and Psychical Research
"A refreshing and new approach to cognition—one which has dramatic cultural, social, and ethical ramifications. . . . While stimulating the imagination of readers it has, however, not received the scholarly acclaim it richly deserves."
In my view, I think ultimately Maturana's view of biology will win out, at which point he should win a Nobel in Medicine if he is still alive. I believe what he is saying is clearly right. Its worth is not obvious or apparent, and takes time to work one's way through. This of course pisses off the professionals in biology and medicine who don't expect to have to learn anything new and reject anything which makes them feel genuinely like a student again.
It is worth having to grapple with the recursive language, and accessible to the committed layperson.
Highly, highly, highly recommended.
I'm currently reading Maturana's latest book, From Being to Doing. The Origins of the Biology of Cognition. By Humberto R. Maturana (Author), Bernhard Poerksen (Author), Wolfram Karl Koeck (Translator).
It is a conversation by Maturana with a renowned German Ph.D. science journalist who, over weeks and weeks of conversation, is able to engage deeply with Professor Maturana, in a way which is accessible to the rest of us, and then take the recording of their conversations and shape it into an extraordinary document, complete with diagrams and illustrations of their conversation.
I now understand what Maturana is saying at a level I never did before, and I understood him pretty damn well previously.
This is a revolution in biology in the same way, Einstein, Heisenberg, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen, and others have revolutionized physics.
I can not recommend this book highly enough. If biology, thinking, or what it means to be human matters to you -- that is, if you think about these issues seriously -- BUY THIS BOOK NOW. One of three authors out of the entire world I consider fundamental to my core understanding of what it means to be a human being, what are Homo sapiens and how do they cognate.
From Amazon:
Today biologists are radically transforming our understanding of the processes of life and cognition. Probing the mysteries of the mind, they have been able to prove that, in the act of knowing, the observer and the observed, subject and object, are inextricably enmeshed. The world we live in is not independent from us; we literally bring it forth ourselves. One of the protagonists of this new kind of thinking is the internationally renowned neurobiologist and systems theorist Humberto R. Maturana who was interviewed for several weeks by Bernhard Poerksen, journalist, and communication scientist.
From a description of Maturana's first book (not nearly as accessible):
What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to themselves. The consequence of their investigations and of their living systems as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that the two questions have a common answer: living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. The result of their investigations is a completely new perspective of biological (human) phenomena. During the investigations, it was found that a complete linguistic description pertaining to the "organization of the living" was lacking and, in fact, was hampering the reporting of results. Hence, the authors have coined the word "autopoiesis" to replace the expression "circular organization". Autopoiesis conveys, by itself, the central feature of the organization of the living, which is autonomy.
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