Highly Esteemend Deputy DonHighly Esteemed Deputy Don Garbage Mouth
by Kathleen Hoy Foley
Highly Esteemed Deputy Don likes to brag. Maybe he swaggers, too. I don't know. I've never actually met him, but from how he writes, he seems like the kind of guy who'd fasten a thick gold crucifix around his neck, tie on a pair of fringed chaps, strap on his trusty six shooter, add a ten gallon hat and strut into a nursing home looking for the old lady with the garbage mouth. The old lady with the garbage mouth would be me. Though I don't live in a nursing home; not yet anyway. But when I go, Highly Esteemed Deputy Don will be heartened to know that my garbage mouth's coming with me.
Anyway, Highly Esteemed Deputy Don is closely connected to Catholic Charities, the folks who erect billboards degrading broken young girls turned old women. Okay, maybe not genuine billboards, but when you're on the hurting end of a nasty big mouth betrayal, that's exactly what it looks like, a huge neon sign with your name and all your dirty secrets flashing up there in gigantic red lights. And it may as well be, because once Catholic Charities squeals your secrets--that except for a burly man-nun's threat of damnation you'd never have given up in the first place--those secrets sizzle and zip like thunderbolts of gossip and soon enough you find the goings on of your personal, grandmotherly vagina hanging out on the internet being discussed and disputed by faceless strangers vaccinated with venom. Ouch. Speaking only for myself, I don't see the charity, Catholic or otherwise, in spreading the legs of young girls and letting the public peek; but that's just my opinion and I have a bad attitude about being stripped buck naked and paraded up and down city streets and boulevards.
I know. I know. God and Catholic Charities--buds forever; noble works trump all the butchered bodies dead-man floating in the wake of good deeds and all that. And an old lady spouting offending garbage against such Christian benevolence is selfish, evil and, damn it to hell, ought to know her place and stop beating up on the innocent people who burst through her front door and stole her perfectly lovely life. Highly Esteemed Deputy Don scolds that I hurt these people's feelings with my mean and foul rhetoric. Not only their feelings, but their families feelings; their friends feelings; the Catholic Church's feelings; the world's feelings; the feelings of God Himself bobbing around on a cloud somewhere up there.
Uh...ho... Me and my garbage mouth are starting to hear violins, the notes rising like a blushing sun over a tranquil ocean...oh my...I'm feeling woozy, overcome with sentiment...are those tears welling in my eyes?
Let me hum along with those aching strings as I confess now that I know I am supposed to suffer quietly for a higher good. For God. For Jesus. For the Catholic Church. But mostly because Highly Esteemed Deputy Don his own self demands it.
Oops, I hear screeching. Where'd the lovely violins go? What's Highly Esteemed Deputy Don going on about now? Oh...my debauched misbehaving ways. That trusty six shooter of his, ah...his keyboard, blazes flames, for sure. I've got the scorch marks right between my eyes to prove it. Highly Esteemed Deputy Don bellows that there are plenty of old girls who didn't complain, who don't mind having their crotches probed to support the sacred crusade of the Catholic Charities' Cunt Hunt. Fifteen years of mostly successes and then I come along and ruin it for everybody. Well, God damn me.
Highly Esteemed Deputy Don, who I can tell from his highly informed discourse enjoys an esteemed association with Catholic Charities, is not without sensitivity. My goodness, he actually owns up to causalities of their Cunt Hunt...ahem...Search and Reunion Program--the plan to pretty up all the catastrophic pregnancies in their files and match up the now old ladies with strangers looking to gnaw on their bones. With honorable friends like these...well, you know the cliché. Anyway, in the heart of my heart, I truly believe Highly Esteemed Deputy Don understands that there are bloodied women littered along the path of Catholic Charities' campaign to beget good: one woman's life devastated here; another woman's life destroyed there. But according to Highly Esteemed Deputy Don, ignoring those insignificant atrocities, their program is a rousing, inspiring success. Oh...
Right now I'm lolling around in dreamland picturing how beautiful the development stage of the Catholic Charities Cunt Hunt Program must have been. Rich with the divine visions and euphoric highs of saints on the march. I imagine bowed heads, devout, whispered prayers as the faithful soldier social workers gathered in the official war room, right beneath the eyes of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and strategized their vaginal expeditions. Back then could you score cheap rose tinted glasses from Ebay along with cases of rubber gloves to keep fingers fresh and clean during body cavity searches?
Let me think. Where was I fifteen years ago when Catholic Charities was riveting the final nuts and bolts into the bulldozer they would use to crush my life into a few handfuls of pulverized dirt? Oh, I remember. Phil and I were outside in our backyard lounging beneath a towering Sycamore. The sun was dappling through the wide leaves and the iced tea I was sipping was cool and sweet. Despite the heat, Phil was drinking hot coffee from his #1 Dad mug. We were laughing, enjoying reminiscing about the fleeting years of raising our children--did we ever have a fun family vacation? No!--and planning our future. Our nest was just begging to empty. A new life was about to begin for us. Oh, it sure was.
Clearly instead of yakking on about the Carolinas versus the dirt hills of Tennessee for retirement, I should've been figuring out how to worm our way into the Witness Protection Program. Though I don't think Phil ever locked up enough drug kingpins to qualify, so that wouldn't have worked anyhow.
What did the witches do back in Salem when the hunt began? Hide in the woods? Drown themselves? How about the communists back in the 'fifties? Change their names? Defect to Canada? No, that was the Vietnam war protestors. Oh, right...Canada probably wouldn't offer asylum to a woman running from the Catholics.
Well then, what about Miranda? How'd he get all those rights? You know, the right to remain silent, to have a lawyer present during questioning. Couldn't he have shared a few of those rights with me? I could've used the help when Catholic Charities came around threatening my knee caps if I didn't answer their questions.
All right, forget Miranda. What about the It's None of Your Fucking Business Rights? Oh, that would be in the constitution under privacy. Well, who worries about that? The constitution's only a list of suggestions anyway.
Just curious...what would have Highly Esteemed Deputy Don, probably all of twenty back then, advised me to do about Catholic Charities' Operation Cunt Hunt bulldozer, heaving and lurching my way, the stalker they created on board, dragging my skeleton on a rope behind? Run? Hide? Pray? Lob a firebomb at their building hoping to incinerate my records before a snoop found them? Lift up my skirt and give the good charity what they wanted because they were going to rip it off me anyway?
What would have Highly Esteemed Deputy Don done if it was his mom standing in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on a Christmas celebration dinner when that dozer smashed through the front door and flattened her under its steamroller? Hmmm... Well, I suppose that's the good thing about pious vultures, bless them--how easily they turn roadside kill into a consecrated feast. Let's eat.
But what if all the women in hiding surrounding Highly Esteemed Deputy Don stepped forward and revealed themselves? Friends who were raped. Relatives who had abortions? Parishioners who were forced to breed? Eucharistic Ministers who as girls were coerced into doing things Highly Esteemed Deputy Don cannot imagine? Kids' teachers who as adolescents had things done to them, things that if they were done to a daughter of Highly Esteemed Deputy Don's, might have him planning a fine murder. Colleagues frightened because their names and secrets are recorded in official files and they know sooner or later...
And what if all those beautiful, courageous women stepped into the light and claimed their dignity? Demanded exclusive rights to their pasts, sort of like how authors are automatically granted copyrights. Imagine if Highly Esteemed Deputy Don's mom was one of those sweet, brave women? I can picture it now...her slapping her boy up along side the head, warning him to drop the sanctimony and listen. Maybe you'll learn something.
Look, I'm not holding out any hope. Women in hiding have endured severe, crippling personal situations. Facing the condemnation of the likes of Highly Esteemed Deputy Don and his allies after you've been stripped of your privacy or choose to fight back is staggering. But hey, even a naked Garbage Mouth has a right to dream, goddamnit. |