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CHAPTER SEVEN
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I arrived in court early, and proceeded to the front of the courtroom. There were two tables there: one for Prosecution and one for the Defense– just like in the movies. But because of my bad hearing, it was important that I sit at the one to the left, while looking at the bench. I thought it would be nice to be able to hear the judge. But there were books and papers all over it already, so I figured the Prosecutor had arrived even earlier than I, and had commandeered it first.
I went outside the Courthouse, and lingered in the fine air. After a minute a dog came around, and I bent down to greet him. Then, standing up, I saw Mark Fisher across the courtyard. He was speaking with another man, and the two of them looked over at me. Part of me wanted to go try to talk to Mark Fisher, but thinking better of it, I went back into the building.
As I returned to the Courtroom, I caught my first glimpse of the Prosecutor. I knew it was he because he was hovering over that table with the books. I had expected an older man, however: I’d imagined him as taller, and white-haired. But this guy was around 30, with a full head of brown hair. He was of medium height and build, and cleanly-shaven.
Even thought I suspected he was a complete asshole, I approached him, and asked if I might make an unusual request. He said sure, and so I asked if we might swap tables. I explained about my ear, and he agreed to change places. Then, after he moved his books to the other table, I sat at last, waited for Clayton there.
Clayton and Bonnie came in soon thereafter. He came up to the front and greeted me and sat with me, while Bonnie took a seat in the gallery. But immediately after he greeted me, the Prosecutor came over and summoned him aside. Then the two of them left the room. I assumed the Prosecutor was offering a more reasonable plea bargain.
Their absence seemed interminable.
While they were away, a woman entered through the Courthouse doors. She was middle-aged and plump. Our eyes met, and she smiled at me, and I at her. She intuitively struck me as a warm-hearted woman.
But Bonnie said something to me just then, and distracted me. So I turned my attention to Bonnie instead. And while I spoke with Bonnie, I felt the other woman’s gaze turn into an icy stare. It felt like her eyes were burning holes in my head, and I dared not return her look. I realized who it was then. It was Corissa’s mother. It had to be.
A minute later she went away, and soon after that I got up to use the toilet. But as I exited through those same doors, the woman was standing near my path. And beside her was an enormous man, who I feared was there to rip me apart. She spoke harshly to me, as I attempted to walk by: “I guess you know who I am”, she said. “Um Hmm”, I said quite meekly, bowing my head, and trying to hurry by. “I’m Corissa’s mother”. But I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t expected that encounter, and Clayton had sternly cautioned me about any contact with Corissa’s family anyway. “Anything you say they might use against you later”, he had wisely said. He meant that I could still be sued, and must neither antagonize them with denials nor give them any admissions they might use against me.
I also feared the big man and wanted to escape before being torn limb from limb. So I scurried by, and went to the toilet. Fortunately the man did not follow me into there.
Then I took my seat again. But Clayton still had not come back. Next a Sheriff came in and stood in the middle of the courtroom. He spoke to the Bailiff, then, from across the room- or else the Bailiff spoke to him. I don’t remember. In any event, one of them asked where Corissa was. The other replied that she was late. Then the first one asked who was driving her, and the second one answered “Leon”. Shit! Leon?
I didn’t know whether Leon was a common name down in those parts, and this Leon could have been anyone. But in my mind, they were talking about her Stepfather: the same Leon who’d committed the rape on Corissa. And apparently now he was driving her to the Courthouse, where she would testify against me. Oh God, what might he be pressuring her to say, I wondered. And were those circumstances things they had all planned together: by first enlisting Leon to help make sure they got me– and then staging that courthouse conversation to make sure I knew they had? So the juggernaut was rolling on– everything was against me.
Finally Clayton came back in, and then it was he who summoned me aside. So we got up and left the courtroom. Instead of looking triumphant, though, Clayton appeared shaken up. So I was concerned, and wondered what the matter was. In silence I followed him, as he led me into a private room, and opened up a book. There we sat, while he explained to me what the Eric Lind had done.
He had threatened to add another charge, called “Aggravated Kidnapping”. That was a first-degree felony charge, and it carried what was called a “minimum mandatory sentence” too. That meant just what it said: if convicted, I would go to prison. And the minimum mandatory sentence that it carried was “six, ten, or fifteen years to life”. That’s correct: to life! So now these goddam people were threatened to put me away for good. If
If would not accept the deal Eric Lind had offered me, they would make me face a harsher charge. I was being blackmailed–and every fiber of my body recoiled with doom.
Clayton was unnerved. I could see he had been blind-sided, and I didn’t like what I saw. Unsteadily then he showed me the statute, from the pages of his book. With his finger he led me slowly through the relevant statute, which said: “If, in the process of committing Kidnapping, or Unlawful detention, the actor acts with intent to commit”… and then it listed several different types of crimes. Forcible Sexual Abuse was among them. So sure enough, there it was: they had parlayed it into a first-degree felony, called Aggravated Kidnapping!
But could he do that– so late in the game? Was that blackmail really permitted, I mean? Was I still in America?
I was devastated.
Clayton assured me that that behavior was “allowed”. He then went on to tell me it was Mark Fisher who had thought up this gambit– and that he had thought it up just that very morning. He told me that the Prosecutor was justifying this action (to whom?) by claiming that the preliminary hearing would be too “traumatic’ for the girl. So what he was doing was aimed to save her from the trauma.
Oh the sleazy son-of-a-bitch! I was enraged. These people would stop at nothing! Corissa had come with me of her own volition: she had initiated the sexual contact– which was never consummated– and afterward she had defended me as her friend. She had also told me not to tell anybody. So where was all this goddam trauma? And what did these cocksuckers have against me? These people were diseased!
I raged, demanding that we go through with the Hearing anyway– but Clayton eventually calmed me down. He told me that I needed to think long and hard about this, and to pull myself together. After all, I hadn’t even seen the video-tape yet. And he was right- he had me there. Reluctantly I acquiesced.
He suggested that we try to meet with the Prosecutor. I agreed, so he went off to arrange the meeting. Succeeding, he returned, and so we went off to meet my nemesis.
We met with Eric Lind in another nearby room. Clayton introduced us there, and I shook his fetid hand. Ugh: (I still feel polluted by that touch.) Clayton and Eric started talking then, but I don’t remember the earliest part of the conversation. Meanwhile I said nothing at all, as Clayton had advised. But at some point, Eric Lind proceeded to cross his little arms so tightly around his chest that his fists were actually behind his scapulae. Then he crossed his legs, as well, and leaned upon a table. Next he spoke to both of us, in regards to sweet Corissa: “She will testify today, that she said ‘No, No- I don’t want to go’, three times”, he threatened.
That remains my most ineradicable memory of Eric Lind: a posing, phony little rodent, utterly willing to destroy my life, by promulgating lies, with crossed arms: listening to himself being tough. And I believed it was not mere bluff either– because I didn’t yet know they were allowed to bluff. I believed rather that he had suborned her perjury.
He is allowed to suborn perjury too, by the way, I much later learned– but that’s a different chapter. In fact, as I have said, the prosecutor is allowed to do just about any goddam thing he wants to do. I told you that. He has immunity, as Clayton later explained to me. That meant I couldn’t sue him even if I could prove that he suborned perjury against me. But I didn’t know that yet there in the courthouse. All I knew was that I was being threatened with perjured testimony, and that the sleazy scoundrel Eric Lind was adding a charge based on something he’d made up. I was beside myself with rage. I hated those people intensely. But Eric Lind was evil incarnate– and I loathed him above all.
Clayton proposed to Lind a Plea-in-Abeyance, as I had suggested to him.
I had asked Clayton whether he thought he could get me one of those, during one of our several conversations. But at the time I proposed it I wasn’t sure Clayton had ever heard of such a thing. That had been another thing that had concerned me about him. In any event, I further wondered why Clayton had not proposed that idea sooner: between the conversation in which I’d mentioned it to Clayton, and this day in the court. Hadn’t there been ongoing negotiations, in the meantime?
But the Prosecutor wouldn’t hear of it regardless. ”I don’t think I can do that”, he spewed, without inflection. He said it twice, in exactly the same way. And as he said it, his limbs were still tightly crossed up, and his jowls flapped like Richard Milhouse Nixon. What a phony piece of shit that Lind was. What a slimy prick!
I was crestfallen, disempowered, stunned and traumatized, as we called off the Preliminary Hearing, and returned to the courtroom. Clayton assured me that we could have another Hearing later, but whether we would really go through it again depended on whether or not I took the deal. And now it seemed like I would have to take the deal. But I didn’t have to decide that right away.
All this time Judge Mower had been kept waiting, but that hadn’t been my chief concern. But now we had to go back into the Courtroom, to tell the judge what we had decided. And there the picture grew still worse, in my eyes, because there Clayton spoke to the judge with what seemed to me excessive deference. He was fawning and obsequi-ous as he apologized for the delay. He told the Judge that we had decided to postpone the Hearing– and that in doing so we agreed to waive our right to a speedy trial. All that was just what I expected. But as he said all that his demeanor betrayed that he had a terror of the judge. I think he even trembled. So I wondered if there had been a “history” there, between the two of them– that he should be so meek. I lost even more confidence in him.
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Clayton said that for the Prosecutor to add a late charge like that one time was not considered vindictive: that only if he does it more than once would we have a real complaint. Amazing! Then he added the chant that had become a mantra: it was “allowed”. Goddam it, where was the outrage that I needed to see? Well the answer, I think, was that he’d spent it all, on things like that before. Unlike myself, perhaps he already knew what it was futile to beat one’s head about.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
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After the aborted prelim I called Leslie’s house, and Jeff answered the phone. I was close to tears as I told him what had happened. My voice choked with emotion, and my whole body shook. Fortunately Jeff had a very good bedside manner, and was able to console me.
He confirmed for me what I already knew: that the odds are stacked against defendants: that all the resources of the state are brought to bear against the accused. So my perception was hardly an illusion.
He told me that the pendulum had swung: that the days of people getting freed by technicalities were over, and that the “machinery” of law now heavily favored the other side.
So why was that information consoling, you might ask? Well the information itself was not. But in the way he made me see that I was hardly alone in all this– that my plight was shared by legions of others, I felt some strange relief. It was something conveyed in his tone of voice: a deep sympathy, I think– and a sincere caring; the same quality that he exuded again right after that as he told me to “Come on home”.
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I did go home. But first I drove to Flagstaff, and stayed with Sean and Erin Kate. They had been my housemates, you remember, when I live at Lake Tahoe. Since then, they had lived in Costa Rica, Boston, and Turkey. I’d visited them in Boston, too, while
Sean was getting his ESL degree.
I had been through Flagstaff earlier that spring, on one of my radiations out from Kanab, and I’d been pleasantly surprised by it: it’s a vibrant College town, with a lot of things to do. It even has an Observatory! As a matter of fact, I had been smitten by the city, and thought I could even live there for a while. So it was funny that Sean and Erin Kate decided to move there too, just a short while later. They planned to dig in there for a while, and I vowed that I would visit them there. Meanwhile Sean would teach English as a Second Language at a Community College, and E.K. would pursue her own advanced degree. They were also planning to get married soon, but I’d known that for some time. That event would take place in Mexico, in November! I had assured them I’d be there.
I was happy for them, of course, but I was also happy for myself– that I had good friends in such a cool place. So I imagined that when this fight was over, I would put some roots down there myself.
Anyway, I went directly to Flagstaff from Kanab. I was a mental mess, of course, but I think I hid it well. And only after being for a full day did I tell them about my case. I didn’t want to dump it on them right away. They were stunned, and deeply sorry for my plight. They were also appalled by the legalistic machinations. But who would not be?
When I finished relating my tale, suddenly E.K. paused and looked off for a moment, as though to snare a passing impulse. And when she turned back to me she said: “I think this will be okay”. She gently nodded while she said that, too. Wow! I took that as an insight based on women’s intuition, and I was relieved beyond belief. To this day I feel grateful for her sharing of that vision– for it was one of the things that sustained me, when things were seeming hopeless.
That butterfly that landed on my tire helped me too. But for having taken it as a sign I was never sure I wasn’t just crazy. So to have another person sense something like that was truly a relief!
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Back in Oakland again I was a basket-case (or a “Kanab”-case, if you’re in the mood for wordplay). I could hardly eat, and I lost weight. I was back to not being able to read, or do a crossword puzzle, or watch TV with any comprehension again. I couldn’t even write in my journal, which was an activity I’d pursued for twenty years. So I was back to writing poetry, so as to express myself at all. Thank God I could still do that.
I feared for my very sanity. I was sure I would not make it. I had visions of the insane-asylum- and of the nice nice nurse, who would bring me fresh flowers every day. She’d medicate me and humor me– and pat me and say “okay dear”– in my padded cell.
My stomach seized up night and day. It squirreled and it heaved. It plunged and flipped. It pulsed and lurched without respite.
Fortunately Leslie and Jeff had a hot-tub on their big back deck. I spent hours a day in it, to keep my stomach quelled. The deck afforded a magnificent sweeping view San Francisco, and basking in its aura also helped to calm me down. Sitting there placating those stomach demons was the highlight of my day.
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Eric Lind came in with another offer, via Clayton. It was for a second-degree felony plea this time. So he had actually raised the stakes, in other words, instead of lowering them. But that was not all, for by it’s terms I’d have to be a Sex Offender too. He said it was what Corissa’s mother wanted. On that point he claimed he had no authority but to comply.
He would still stipulate no prison, he pledged, but there could still be jail time– and I would have to agree to register as a sex-offender, in whatever town I lived. That indignity would last for thirteen years. Thirteen years! And, naturally, that registry requirement wouldn’t start until after my jail term was completed.
I guess that now that I was looking at a 1st degree felony, that new offer was supposed to be a good deal. I’ll bet he crossed his little arms too, as he proffered it.
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For the moment Corissa’s mother’s name was Cora Singer. But before that she’d been married to Leon Wilson– the man Corissa had accused of raping her. Before that, she was married to a David Mumford, who was evidently Corissa’s father, and the man from whom she’d gotten her surname. His full name was David Wayne Mumford, which kind of cracked me up. You see, it had often amazed me how often criminals have the middle name of Wayne– just as it always surprised me that so many convicted killers have the middle name of Lee. But David has not been accused of anything untoward, or at least not in this account. Nor do I mean to suggest he should have been. But at some point Corissa said that “David” was in jail. I assumed she meant David Mumford then, but I cannot be sure. Nor do I know why he was there, nor care, at this point.
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I just could not believe it! Me: a Sex Offender– the lowest class in our society! And that stigma could only ruin my life. I mean, shit: even convicted killers get more respect! But the registry was what Cora Singer wanted. And I would be walking onto it willingly– if I were to take the deal. But I knew I could not do that. Agree to it, I mean.
All this brings us to another legal boondoggle, called “Megan’s Law”– the justification for the sex offender registry itself. I won’t go into that travesty now- but I will devote a special section to it later.
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The days turned dreary. And the misery that was my life was especially dreadful on those overcast or rainy days. And there were lots of overcast and rainy days that winter. It was a metaphysical twisting of the knife, in that winter of my dismay. It was like a prolonged glimpse of hell. And in that hell, I felt like I had transformed overnight- from an easy-going eternal adolescent– to a dour middle-aged loser!
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I complained to Clayton about the new deal. I liked the old one far better. “And don’t we wish that we could have that back”, he lamented. I did too, but at the same time I didn’t– because if I’d had the old deal back, I might have had to take it!
“He cited a new Utah law”, Clayton said, in defense of Eric Lind, “that said he has to pay attention to the wishes of the victim’s family”. Apparently some families had been left feeling ignored, in other prosecutions. They hadn’t been consulted, I guess, or respected in their zeal. But it seemed to me that allowance enabled “Mom” to be the real prosecutor. It enabled malicious prosecution. And it seemed to sanction a sort of vigilantism too…it seemed to me that a part of the reason for a legal process is to ameliorate the persecutorial zeal of familial rage.
But a “new law” was supposedly why the Prosecutor had upped the plea-deal ante so. Okay- but what new law was that?
Cora had further claimed that that family had moved to a place called Hannibal so that Corissa could get some special counseling- related to the abuse. But I thought they had really done that to make me look even worse: because they’d had to uproot themselves like that, I mean.
Another time, Clayton told me that it was both the cop and the mother who were “driving” the Prosecution. That is to say, both Mark Fisher and Cora Singer were pressuring the D.A. So I couldn’t know what was true. Maybe I was supposed to think that Eric Lind was not so utterly rabid after all: that he was just responding to the dictates of the other two players. But I didn’t buy it. And in any event, it seemed to me that the responsibility rested with the D.A. himself: he had to make the decision about what to charge, without passing the buck. He was the one who signed off on the prosecution. He alone had to answer for his acts. And beyond the fact of that hypocrisy it seemed to me that the little law-and-order nazi was breaking laws as well.
Clayton said that part of their collective zeal flowed from the fact that I was “an outsider”. I was “Atticus”, he said, pedantically citing a character from “To Kill a Mockingbird”. But isn’t that exactly what I should have expected from him?
I asked Clayton if it would help if I moved to Kanab: if I’d be an “insider”, then, and not treated so poorly. He said it might help– but that the police would probably harass me all the time.
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I asked Clayton about that new charge again. I was outraged. In the Court House, he’d only said it was “allowed”– of course. But I still couldn’t believe that such a thing was legal in my country. It seemed to put the lie to every ideal of justice I’d ever heard.
On this occasion Clayton answered it a little differently, though. He explained that the Prosecutor can add a new charge for “any reason”. But to me that was not any clearer, so I pressed the point again. So he answered it again: “He can add the charge for any reason”, Clayton enunciated, with a slightly different stress. And the way he said it that time carried the implication that it couldn’t be any clearer. So that was that: the Prosecutor could wake up in the morning and says “I really hate that guy– so I think I’ll add another charge today”. That was all that was needed.
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Clayton related that Eric Lind had told him that child abuse was the one thing about his job that he lost sleep over– and that for that reason– because of that issue– he would not seek office again. That passion might have even made Eric Lind seem human, to me– if indeed, I could believe him. But why would I believe him? Hell, I’ll bet any Prosecutor would declaim about his passionate commitment to children. So I figured it was just more phony posturing: that the County Attorney was a slime-ball, who would pretend anything to get his way.
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After that new offer came in the anxiety got even worse. The agony engulfed me even before I got out of bed. And getting out of bed itself was n enormous chore, because it meant I’d have to deal with my hopeless life. It meant confronting what I envisioned as my life to come– life as a felon, that is: working some toilsome job, in a place I could not stand- and where I would be treated like shit all day. It meant having myriads of options shut down to me forever too: things I’d wanted to do, like teaching. It meant I’d never be able to teach any class– at any form of school. I probably couldn’t be a river guide either- let alone be entrusted to lead a hike. And it meant much more than that: for it meant that no woman would ever want to get involved with me again. It meant eternal social pariahdom, as a sex-offender, if I were to take his deal.
I figured being a sex-offender in any town would probably include being spat upon and having golf balls thrown at me by disapproving neighbors. And it would mean being unsuitable company at any dinner table. Hell: who would even want to be my housemate anymore? Where would I live? I certainly couldn’t live at the Burton-Wurms’ house anymore. Oh, they probably would have let me stay– but I could not disgrace their home that like. I couldn’t make them a target of abuse.
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Thank God for Melissa. Without her I wouldn’t have made it through this.
Thank God for Leslie, Jeff and Chelsea too. I am certain I would not have survived this without them either. I think they wondered whether I would survive it too: for early on, I suspect I was on a sort of suicide watch there. And such a watch would not have been misplaced. I thought about death on a daily basis. The agony of being had be-come unbearable. And for my future I saw nothing but despair. So I thought about how I might best achieve my end.
There are a lot of ways to go. I couldn’t imagine employing any violent methods, though. I did not have access to a gun, but if I had, I’m sure I couldn’t have ended it that way. Nor could I have hung myself, nor thrown myself from a high place. Or jumped in front of a train…
I did think of gassing myself in the garage. But their old garage was just too full of holes. I thought about drowning myself too. Of course, the prospect of drowning in the hot tub for was too ridiculous for words. Nor did I think I could lie still there long enough to finish it. Of course I could have weighted myself down with stones and gone to the nearby lake…but what if I got down there and then changed my mind? So my options were quite limited.
I narrowed my choice down to a cowardly death by pills. Yes, I would take an overdose– that would be painless, and gradual. But I didn’t have any pills. And in the end, I didn’t really want to do it anyway- or I probably would have.
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Convinced of my untenable condition, and sure that they were sending me to hell, I started to think about all the ways to lie– as surely as I’d earlier thought of all the ways to die. But not knowing what was in the rape kit sent a lot of those lies to their own untimely deaths. The possibility of “evidence” in there complicated my every scenario. For if there was any evidence there, then I would have to take the stand to explain it. I would have to testify, I mean, in order to save myself. And to do that, I would surely have to lie. It seemed so unfair, too, that some evidence might have gotten there that way. By Corissa dabbing her own vagina, I mean. It seemed like it had been divine intervention too: that God himself had ordained that circumstance to damn me- and that the rest of my time on earth would be a living hell. That ultimate abandonment by God himself rendered me half-crazy. I think that I was flirting with insanity itself!
Even worse: the law itself seemed to have been written to accommodate this very situation– as though it had been penned with my incident with Corissa in mind. And it had been penned in such a way that there seemed like no way out. My mental state and perceptions under that law didn’t even seem to matter.
Therefore, only some alternative scenario could provide my escape hatch. So I constructed countless variations, countless lies, to attempt to secure deliverance.
Early on, and with the rape-kit notwithstanding, I worked out a couple scenarios that I truly thought would work. But when the video-cassette finally arrived, it upended them too. For on that tape she’d said some stuff I hadn’t heard before. How easily a new claim can queer the whole soup.
As a result of the cassette tape I had to dream up new and more complex scenarios: like that she had in fact driven us up to the tower herself. Like that I had masturbated in the front seat, and that she’d climbed on top of me. Like that I was drugged by her, and was therefore insensate. Like that I had only invited Corissa to sit on the back lawn– or that she’d invited me. In any event, I decided she wasn’t coming with me, so I had started for my car: that she had burst outside, asking if she could drive- and that on that basis I had quickly formulated a change of plan. (So far, so good: that wouldn’t even damn me for responding to the “obvious sexual suggestiveness” of her touches in the library”– as Clayton had asserted that they were)
Yes, that could explain the impetus for our outing. But it still left a lot of my story unexplained. So I hatched more lies: that she tried to start my car, so I had leapt into the passenger seat– where I lightly, inadvertently– touched her breast. Yes, I touched it- the lie-detector is quite correct- but it was an accident. After all that damned lie-detector didn’t say a thing about intent.
But why was I on her side of the car to begin with? Well… because I guess I had just changed my shirt, which was in the back of the car, or because I was coming to get something on that side of the car, or….
Eventually even that scenario got too complicated, and I had to abandon it too. The problem with lies is that you have to remember very complex scenarios.
A variation on that scenario held that as she’d come out from the library she had asked me where I was going: that I’d said a hike, and that she’d asked if she could come too– and that as soon as we got to the trailhead, she’d attacked me. But why would I have driven only a couple hundred yards? Why wouldn’t I have left my car there by the library to take a nearby hike? Well because after the hike I was sure I’d take a nap. Hell: Corissa could walk back to the library…and also because I wanted to change my clothes. I mean, really– would you have me change my clothes on the street, in front of the library? But why would I want to change my clothes in front of her? I didn’t: I had my shorts on beneath my long pants…
In yet another scenario, she had whispered something perplexing in my ear: she wanted to tell me something important: that I had perceived her urgency there– and that once outside she directed me to drive behind the water tower, which I did, to hear her story there. That one didn’t seem very good though.
In another, once we got to the water tower we had immediately gotten out of the car– but that she had changed her mind and said she would walk back– so that I had commenced hiking by myself…that I walked to the water tower and back, and upon my return she was still waiting there: that nothing “bad” had gone on at any time.
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I can’t even remember all the lies I thought I’d have to tell. Nor am I even sure, anymore, of why I thought I had to tell them. Any specific one, I mean. But at one time or another I’d thought of a dozen different versions. And in each of them I got hung up, on one detail or another. There was always a problem: with chronology, or about taking off my shirt, or about where we were– and why, or about who said what, and when, to whom.
It was always in the details. Yes, the details. Truth is in the details, just as God is in the details. And the truth, by God, was that my stories didn’t cohere.
But that truth gave rise to another recognition– one of Biblical proportions too: that “the little ones shall bring down the mighty.” Something like that. And bringing me down was exactly what that little had done. I really had felt mighty, before I’d sinned with Corissa. But maybe in God’s eyes I was merely mighty of hubris: I was too big for my britches, so he’d sent her to bring me down.
As I said, some scenarios were better than others– but none were good enough.
Then I remembered that secret compartment in my dashboard- the one that had been mysteriously revealed in Wasco, when my car had broken down. For in that “revelation” I recognized a cosmic delivery– and I thought another metaphysical dynamic had unfolded there. It was a gift from God, in other words. Yes, just as he had earlier aligned the metaphysical cogs to crush me, now he had similarly sent down my deliverance there!
It meant we had an “understanding” after all– God and I. And he would show me the way out! I was actually being given divine permission to promulgate my lies!
In that God-sent scenario, we had in fact engaged in some “touching”, but it had all occurred in the front seat. Yes, she had initiated it. The way in which she’d done that, though, was that while reaching across my person to grab my cell phone– kept in that newly punched-out recess– that she had lost her balance, and to arrest her fall, had put her hand onto my crotch. Yes, that was it. We would show the jury my car, of course, and I would show them that recess. And Corissa, with her uncongealed alibis– themselves still a hash of her own multifarious intents- might even agree that it had happened just like that…and if it had happened in that way, then there would be no disagreement there– nor any fault, you see: it would have been an accident– and by admitting to that accident, she’d be held blameless, while at the same time not contradicting me– her friend. Yes, I touched his penis, would be her admission there– and initiated the events…but it was not intentional. It was misunderstanding, at best.
Then I’d bring in the mechanic from the shop in Wasco, to swear the punched-out compartment had not been there at that time: that it was created only after the event– and that Corissa, therefore, could not have reached there for my phone. At that point it would be too late for her to take it back. So she would have admitted to the inaugural event, and the subsequent events would appear to have been of her own volition!
Yes, that admission would show that Corissa was willful: that I had not coerced her somehow. She would have been caught in a lie– and then my other assertions might not fall upon deaf ears. It was a brilliant and outlandish plan! But it came from heaven.
Okay, but what other assertions would I make? Well that then she had pulled her own pants down, for starters- and that in response to that, I’d exited the car, and merely masturbated. (Yes, “merely”: on the scale of possibilities there I’d say that was among the tamest) Because she’d unexpectedly excited me, you see- and I thought that the best resolution– to the urges she’d unleashed. Then, unfortunately, after I had cleaned up she’d grabbed one of the napkins– and dabbed herself with it. Yes: that was it!
But why had I thrown the towels in the bushes? (I told you: the area was already a monument to trash) And why hadn’t I driven back to the library, straightaway? (What– with a young women sitting half out of her clothes? Besides, she’d taken my key out of the ignition– yeah, that’s it– and had refused to give it back!)
Even all that would not of itself let me of the hook, though: for there were still questions– about my having taken off my shirt (as she’d claimed on that video-cassette), and about the bicycle coming out of the back seat. The shirt problem was easy, though: I’d taken it off to change it– just as she had said. But when and why had I proceeded to remove my bicycle from the back? Shit.
Well hell: I did remove the bicycle– and why not? At that point I still thought Corissa was eighteen. Why would I have thought it wasn’t okay to let an eighteen year-old woman touch me anyhow? But that question was sticky: if I claimed I thought she was fifteen, and therefore stopped her at once, then that would open an other Pandora’s box. Or I could have said I thought she wasn’t okay in the head, but then the question of our initial motive would be brought back into play. Even saying I thought it was okay, but didn’t welcome it regardless had its own problems too.
************************************************
I still thought the hike itself could be rendered as innocent enough to explain, though. After all, there was another young woman I’d hiked with in Kanab. That was Osha. And Osha could truthfully testify that I’d been a gentleman each time.
But the point was that every scenario got complex beyond recall. And I was sure that a shrewd interrogator would trip me up with it: I’d be nervous, or transpose critical facts. There were far too many minute details involved to subsume with a simple story: for it would have to account for incongruous physical movement, a plethora of physical objects– and a seminal dab as well!
I’m a bad liar anyway. And I hated the very idea of it. I think lies are death.
*****************************************************
Just leaving Leslie’s house after that required a major marshalling of will. (Or was it a marshall majoring of will?) But when I did manage to leave, it was usually to start the day at a local coffee house. That was the Royal Grounds, in Montclair Village– down the street from where we lived. Later I discovered Gaylord’s coffee spot, in another part of town. Then that establishment quickly became my favorite. There were other lovely places to discover in Oakland too: Lake Merritt, for example– or the Observatory on the hill. So I learned that Oakland is a very livable place!
Other times I ventured down to Berkeley, and to Café Strada, by the University, where I would write my poems. Or I’d go to Moe’s Bookstore near there, where I’d get great deals on used books. I bought a lot of books, then. I still couldn’t read them, though.
I took to writing poetry, as I said. After years of being a dabbler, suddenly it was the only outlet I had. Those and my legal arguments, that is. That was a good thing, too, for looking back at some of my output, now, I am pleased with the results. It seems the trauma which had plunged me so deeply within myself also allowed me to dredge some tasty nuggets there. So poems, being my only means of self-expression, fell right off my pen. Here’s a couple of them:
GOD AS AN ADVERB (IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE WORD)
“JUST doing my job”
Like patriotism to the scoundrel
Another hideout for cowards
A refuge of nefarious intent
But just what does this “Just” word do?
Does it parlay the ensuing claim
Into some sacred realm
Onto some fawning plateau
Beyond critique?
Beyond reproach?
Does it transform someone’s righteous zeal
Into a moral crusade?
An imperative, perhaps?
Yes, look at him:
He’s “JUST doing his job”
And look at you too-
With your enabler’s chant
As you excuse and immunize him
It’s just his job, you say: Hush hush,
I guess he is appointed by a god.
Oooh.
And you?
You’ve given up on the world
You’ve let the scoundrels slip
Into our exalted chambers
You have enabled their intent
They mean to desecrate our icons
And it is you who have ushered them in,
On the backs of little words
Cancerous words
By which you’ve been seduced
Riding piggy-back
On all-that’s-decent’s DNA?
But take heart, do not cry:
You need no sacred icons now
For you have elevated an adverb
Into your very god
_____________________________________
UNTITLED
I:
My better eye
Tore loose from its mooring
Seeks escape velocity
Adrift and lurching
The optic nerve
Left kicking in its wake
Writhing, and collapsing
It crimps now
Like a tube too long maligned
Starved for beauty
The emaciated eye evokes evil now
And mirrors the opacity
Of the soul it betrays
This too, is upon my face
My cheeks, examined
Drooping and fatigued
Speak quite loudly too
A gooey matrix there
In a guilty configuration
Betray my cowardice
Have they turned to jelly, though?
In another cruel literality
Inscribed upon my face…
(I’m still searching for poetic ironies
As though that quest can even matter)
Even my gait becomes a shuffle
Its easy, carefree command
Yields to the apology
Of an excuse-me carriage
My bounce-step forcibly retired
By coup has been usurped.
II:
Oh that it were just my arrogance nicked:
Only my smug gloatings
weighted down by so much lead
Or by a lead that didn’t efface a window
(And cast it “imaginary”-to reveal myself in)
If only it did not describe that mirror
The jelly isn’t only for the cheeks, though
It’s for the gut as well:
That squiggling mass that heaves and pulses
With turbulence that kneads itself
Like a malevolent sea
Or a plasma of cancer cells
My heart has sickened too
I fear it is besieged
With corporeal decay.
It rasps instead of breathes
Its decline being thus christened
We can witness the descent
Of that betrayed’ vessel
Revealing its falseness, now:
Its inadequacy as the temple
Of who I wanted to be
(And of who I thought
I was destined to become)
Worse than that
It shows who I have become
Instead
What can be done here, Lord?
What can restore the crumpled temple?
Can its grandeur ever be glimpsed, anew?
___________________________________
ALSO UNTITLED:
My levee has surrendered,
Shrugged
(And) Stepped aside
In down-cast (resignation)
It has sundered its last teardrop
Worldweariness seeps in now
Tiredness camps out in my hollowed cheeks
Like a permafrost
(Staking out this new domain- I fear
Never to be relinquished.)
A manacle holds fast my elephant foot
So grievously re-weighted, thus,
I live in my temples now:
A serious mien, descended
Circumscribes my (very) head
Holding course by a single star
My rage is tempered now,
reined into that narrow band
(More Sisyphus than Damocles(?)
For Sisyphus has quit his rolling
sat down, and traded in his rock)
Taut of (resolution)
And long of visage
I am anchored for the long descent
resignation has replaced elation
(endurance has unseated) my joie de vivre
Each smile now
Is just a brief reprieve
A momentary allowance-
To live again-
And to remember having lived
Alas, and at last
I have become a mere spectator
To my own ordained decline
(a journalist)
witnessing my own decay
(Ensconced in a front-porch rocker
I stave off the final portal
in hopes I will be needed one more time)
My poor eyes (much sharper now, but also fuzzy)
Have borne (keen) witness
to the fated accident.
My personal one, that is
(The one which stalks us all
but caters to each one of us)
It’s careless foot has splayed into the aisle
And found my distracted frame
oblivious to its intent
My party tray has been upended
My carefree romp de-railed
And so face down
I recumb upon the path
(The cackling thief came in the night
And bagged what he has sought)
Relentless in my losing cause
It’s finished now- it’s done:
Success goes to the conspirators
Though ever-fiercely fought against
They have won, they have won
******************************************************
I visited the local Catholic Church each morning too. I need that spiritually, but going there also forced me out of the house– even if I didn’t want to go for coffee. There I prayed to God for my deliverance. There I would offer my earnest petitions, and confess my every sin. I vowed to devote my life to the betterment of man. I promised to be good, to be selfless, to be a conduit of mercy. I prayed my heart out. I was humble, and I was contrite. But through it all, I did not understand why God had dealt me such a card. What purpose was I called to? What sin I must remit? And I rued that this trial wasn’t the one that I had offered up, so many times in the past. Not even close. For what I had offered, in my prayers, was that he take my life– so that someone else might live. That had been my wager. this had not been it. Oh why couldn’t he have honored my more exalted offer? Why had I been forsaken? Why was my sincere remorse so meaningless?
I made another promise to God then: That I would not take an oath that invoked his name and then lie– even if it was the only way out. I decided I could lie short of that, should that be necessary– but I would not lie under oath, to God. I figured it was better to rot in prison than to lose my very soul! Next I asked God to help me find another way. But I was certain that lying was to be the only way. So I felt hopeless.
I asked Clayton what the oath is in Utah. He wrote me back and told me: it included “under penalty of perjury” but it ended with “…so help me God”. Darn. A person doesn’t have to take an oath, of course. But who will believe them if they don’t?
***************************************************************
I thought of running off to join a monastery: to devote my life to God, and to doing anonymous good deeds. I even did some on-line research, to find out where monasteries were. I looked for ones in Europe, mainly, because I figured that if I went to a monastery it would be as a fugitive, and I’d have to leave the country. Then after locating a handful of them- in agreeable countries– I even sent them emails. To my surprise I promptly got a response from one of them, but the retired monastic talked me out of it!
I also researched what countries have extradition treaties with the United States, as I further planned my flight. For there was no way I was going to go to prison for this offense– for this felony that can be committed by doing so little. Sure, I could go to prison and rot while on appeal. But in the meantime I’d probably die in there. Or be raped and killed. So it wasn’t going to happen.
In that penitential mood, I even pondered whether it would satisfy the Prosecutor if I were to move to Kanab anyway- but to wear sackcloth and ashes, and go door to door for years– confessing my depravity and begging for forgiveness.
I didn’t even know what sackcloth is– but I sure would have found out!
*********************************************************
CHAPTER NINE
******************************************************
The next court date had been set for October but I requested a delay. I could not make up my mind whether I should take the deal. Fortunately Clayton got the delay for me, and bought me time to think.
October rolled through, and yielded to November. But I was no less incapacitated.
Between the hot tub and the church, and forays to cafes– and to Melissa’s– it was all I could do to pay my bills. And I didn’t even pay those at first. I suppose, though, in retrospect, that when my sister saw me paying them, she was sure the worst was over: that I would not kill myself!
But let us not just so headlong into November. Let in instead hold November in abeyance, and consider these two months as one– October and November. For many important things happened then, for which I do not know the order. You must cut me some slack here, for my mind was near deranged. I think I was on the brink of insanity itself, and mere chronology was fleeting. Besides, every day seemed like every other: miserable. They only brought dark visitations of my life to come in hell.
But I did manage to do several things, important to our story, and all of them in here- in this eight-week corridor: this ——– monument to my bleakest days.
******************************************************
I got a viable copy of the video-cassette, for one thing: the crime-day interview with Corissa. And I watched it several times, of course. Of course I scanned it with a searching eye each time: terrified, amazed and appalled– and searching for new clues. One time it got stuck in the VCR, though, so I had to take it to a repair shop, where a repairman was able to remove it. When I picked the damned thing up, later in the day, he asked “Is that girl okay?” I felt humiliated.
The actual interview had taken place in a room in which I could see some maps upon the wall A video-camera had been set up for the occasion, and pointed at a table. Corissa sat at that table, with Mark Fisher, and another man. That other man was Alan Orton, the ————–(?). So Mark and Alan conducted the interview together.
The first thing I was struck by was Orton’s opening remark. It was “Hello Corissa– it’s been a long time”. So he knew her! I figured he had interviewed her after the incident with her father. What that suggested to me was that the rape had indeed been known about– and had been dealt with legally. And it confirmed that it had all happened a long time ago.
There’s a small point here, but one that I must make: before Alan started the interview he made reference to some of the questions he would ask as being about “bad” stuff that had happened. But I didn’t think that kind of suggestion promoted his neutrality
Early on, just as the interview was starting, Alan asked her to agree to tell the truth. She said she would, and then they shook hands about it. She readily extended her right hand in order to do that. Then she shook hand with Mark Fisher too. She also said that if she did know the answer to anything she was asked, that she would just say “pass”.
They started out asking Corissa to write down the names of her family members, and to draws some circles and some stars. After completely those tasks, Alan gave her some illustrated pictures, and asked her to identify the body parts on there. She did that as well. Alan also asked her to give some alternative names that she might know to any body parts, “so that we can all know we were talking about the same things”. He used an example of the elbow, and said that for example some people might call it a funny bone. She chuckled at that. Then she gave an example of her own, citing “dick” for penis. But she never substituted pussy for vagina, as she had done with me!
Then Alan and Mark moved on to the specific events that concerned them that day. Doing that, they repeatedly queried her, and often backtracked from her replies.
As the interview unfolded, I observed that Corissa seemed quite calm (not the
least bit “traumatized”, as Eric Lind would later have us believe.) She also, unfortunately, came across as more challenged than I recalled: she stuttered at times, and fidgeted, and couldn’t get her story straight. That was obviously bad for me. But I had not seen those behaviors when I was with her– not the stuttering, at least. In retrospect playing with my cell phone might have been fidgeting.
I also noticed that she was wearing a one–piece swimsuit then, under her clothes. That suggested that there was at least one thing I had been correct about: that a family–outing of sort had indeed been afoot– that she’d brought her swimsuit that day so that she could go swimming.
What else? Well, she exhibited that determined sociability that I had never doubted. She seemed to have a real liking for Mark Fisher, too: a crush, you might even say. She referred to him as “my good buddy”, and as she did that she slapped his arm. She also amused me once when she momentarily diverted her attention to him, and asked him “Is there anything else you’d like to say, before we move on?”
Her reporting, in any event, as I said, was confounding, and confused. She seemed to have a hard time pinpointing where we’d been in the car. She kept claiming conflicting locations, I mean, for where all the activity had occurred: now we were in the front seat, now we were in the back. But she made it sound like we’d been mostly in the front. And that made for some rather difficult to comprehend gymnastics.
But even while with me she’d made a bunch of claims that were contradictory.
In addition to being confusing her story was embellished quite a bit. She reported that I had said “Hey, Baby”, for example, and “Come on, baby”, and that I’d called her “gorgeous”, too. Well I don’t believe that I had said any of those things– and they don’t even sound like things I’d say. But when she claimed I’d said she had pretty eyes, I was sure that that was true. She did have pretty eyes– and I’d be surprised if I had not said so.
Along those lines, she asserted, that when I touched her she said “Buddy, you’re going too far!” Hearing that claim there amused me once again.
But in addition to the mere embellishments, there were several obvious lies. But that was no surprise either. For one thing she claimed she’d told the Librarian she was going outside “for fresh air”. She also claimed we’d walked out together– and that I’d told her I wanted to take her picture then. And she claimed I’d said “let’s go” to her, in the library, and that she’d suggested that we go look at books instead. “Let’s go” didn’t sound like me either. I think I would have said something more like “Are you ready?”— which was what I had done. She also claimed she’d recognized Mark Fisher’s car as he drove up, and said to herself “Thank God– Officer Fisher’s here”. Finally she said she’d gone into the Children’s Room, while we were in the Library.
Alan Orton asked her where she thought we were going, as we drove off. There she really threw me for a loop. Her reply was a glib declaration that “I thought he was going to hurt me like Leon did” I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO HURT ME LIKE LEON DID! FUCK! To that, Alan asked how Leon had hurt her, and to that she drew a breath. Then she exhaled. But it didn’t seem so much like pain being revisited as exasperation to have to talk about it again! She never did answer the question, though.
She said that before we got into the car I’d said “Here, let me move some stuff”. That sounded correct to me as well.
But onward now to the more prurient things:
She claimed I had touched her breast and her vagina- but she never said that I had touched her ass. But even those contentions emerged as piecemeal compilation– of activities claimed for different times. I mean that her tale was not linear. It did not cohere.
More specifically, she said I’d touched her breasts with my hands. She repeated that claim several times. But it wasn’t clear whether she’d meant I’d touched her breasts once, or whether several times. It also wasn’t clear whether she meant one breast, or two. Or whether I’d used one hand, or two. For in those oft-repeated contentions was revealed a potpourri of contradictions– rendered even more confounding by the fact that each time she claimed that touching she demonstrated it as well– because each time she demonstrated it she did it differently: now with one hand, now with two; now the left breast, now the right!
Several times she repeated the claim that I had unfastened her bra. Meanwhile she demonstrated that action too– in several different ways. First she reached around her own right side, which would have been the side away from me! Then another time she reached behind her back, and simulated undoing it herself. When she did that one, I exulted: for I saw that her unconscious body language there had finally revealed the truth!
I must tell you– for whatever it’s worth– that I listened to that tape a dozen times before I made out this next part: she said I started “sucking on her boobs”. Then I had to rewind it again to make sure I’d heard that right. SUCKING ON HER BOOBS! But I was sure she’d made that up. I wondered if she’d brought other memories into our encounter.
And she claimed I’d touched her vagina with my penis. First she said I hadn’t done that, though, and then she said I had. And of course that disclosure was the truth. I had indeed contacted her vagina– and with my penis– but it was really she who had touched me like that, when she had tried to straddle me. I’ve told you all this twice. All that had happened with no encouragement from me either. I mean that I did not suggest it to her or even see it coming. And at the time it happened, I was not even wishing for such a thing.
She said that had happened in the front seat too. Asked again, though, she said that it had happened in the back. She said I’d taken the mountain bike out of the car, so we could get in there. Just the mountain bike, though, which helped me, I was sure.
Mark Fisher asked her whether I had attempted to penetrate her vagina with my
penis, and she said that I had not. Thank God for that much! She also claimed– at first–
that all of that had happened in the front seat!
She said she had taken off her shirt, and she claimed I’d taken mine off too. On that point it is odd, though, because I don’t remember doing that either– yet I know I did. That’s because when I left the library I’d had two shirts on, and when I was arrested I was wearing only one. She asserted she’d seen my chest as well. Oh shit! But she demon-strated that maneuver for them too: recreating the way I’d taken off my shirt, I mean. She said that I was wearing two shirts, and that I had complained about the heat as I shed one of them. So she made that shedding seem quite innocent. But when exactly did I do that?
Alan Orton asked if I had any tattoos that she’d seen. She indicated that I did not, which is true. Then she volunteered that I didn’t have any piercings either.
She claimed that I told her to take her pants off, and for them she vocally recreated her response. it was a sort faux-resigned “all right”. No, not like she was resigned to her fate, but more like a concession that of something she’d wanted to do. That was an interesting claim- but it had not happened like that anyway.
Later in the tape she disclosed that her mother had deliberately broken something of hers once, to punish her for lying. Hearing that disclosure evoked two simultaneous thoughts from me. One was a specter of family violence, in her home. It proved nothing, but it sure raised my hackles. The other was that she had given us even more evidence to believe she lies– and that was good for me. I recalled that the librarian, in her statement, had all but said Corissa lies. So I was sure that trait of hers was known to all concerned.
******************************************************
So her testimony was a strange and muddled blend of these different types of representations: of truths, embellishments, inconsistencies, and lies. The problem was in sorting them all out– and in ascribing motives to her efforts. For her inconsistencies did not appear to me to be merely confused.
To the uninitiated, watching that tape– and after seeing all the stuttering too– it might have seemed that it was only because she was challenged that her story lacked coherence: that she was incapable of recreating events, from the stew which was her mind. But I saw something different there, again. In part, I saw a well-intentioned but clumsy effort to maintain the spirit of our agreement– the one she had belatedly proposed, before she ran down the hill… that she was striving for a middle ground, you see… and that that was one of several considerations she wanted to promote, in the telling of her tale.
Another consideration was to deny the idea that she’d taken any initiatives, sexually. Another was to diminish the severity of the situation, so as to show that even though this situation was not to her credit, that it had not been all that bad. Yes, really. I proffer this theory timidly, however, in fear of losing any sympathy I’ve won from you. But I proffer it nonetheless: that she was also posturing, as she testified, to appeal that whatever level of freedom and trust she’d garnered from her guardians– to conduct her own affairs, I suppose– should not be taken away. Something like that: that she’d handled the situation deftly, more or less– and through her eyes– I even dare to say… and that things had not really progressed to the point that she should be in huge trouble. Yes, that was why her story was surrendered only piecemeal as it was. Her account was not muddled because she was… confused!
Yet another consideration of her was an effort to portray me as one who had not done her wrong… so that in that consideration she was trying to protect me too: trying hard to “not tell anybody”, that is, perhaps. Yes, I have the audacity to postulate all this.
Yes, it’s also true that that “rape” cry lent no credence to that theory. But she was pretty agitated when she’d made that claim. And remember that she never repeated it. Maybe she really didn’t want to tell those people anything at all. It’s just that she was a bad liar, and easily tripped up… and she wanted to appease her old friend Mark
Finally, that interview was conspicuous for something else she did not say. For she did not claim that she’d objected to my driving her away. I mean that she did not claim to have cried ”No, no– I don’t want to go!”– or anything else like that!
****************************************************
Clayton alerted me to something I had missed. It was that in relating her tale, on that video-cassette, she claimed she had rolled down my car window. And by way of explaining her reason for rolling down my window, she’d said she felt “dehydrated”. He honed in on that because of her vocabulary usage there: he thought that using such a word showed she was actually quite advanced. And that may even be true– but to me his attention there was just a grappling at straws.
Its real significance for me lay elsewhere, however. But explaining that significance to you, dear reader, I’m afraid will have to wait- and for a very long time.
But I will share this at this time, lest you feel betrayed, by being led down some primrose paths: it was that her claim to having rolled down my window was obviously wrong. My Subaru had electric windows, you see! She could not have rolled it down!
Oh yes: on the video-cassette she also said she’d felt afraid of me– and that her “legs were shaking” Shit! That claim hit me right upside the head. And that claim also came to have greater significance later. But when I first heard it, I wondered whether that was what was happening at the bottom of the hill– whether that was the real reason she could not climb!
I raised the hypothetical issue of Corissa having touched me with her vagina. But
Clayton didn’t think that that situation– if indeed it had happened that way- would make a damned bit of difference. His opinion was that I was splitting hairs. In his mind, it was up to me to make sure Corissa didn‘t do any such thing– and that if she had, I was still to blame: that her touch was equivalent to my touch, in other words!
Great: so just as surely as her invitation was really my coercion, now her touch was really my touch.
************************************************
I thought about that tape obsessively. I was still aghast in thinking about the implications of what she might have said. If she had repeated that “rape” accusation, for example- or if she’d claimed I had attempted penetration– then I would have been facing
another very serious charge. If she had done that, I suspect, I’d still be in jail!
And I figured I was lucky that that interview had been conducted so soon after the
fact, before anyone had had a chance to coach her– before anyone thought of things to tell her she should say: like that I had had intercourse with her, for example. Can you imagine the legal charges then? …Or what the bail would have been? On the other hand, coached lies could be double-edged sword too, because if she lied badly after being coached, well, we’d have those on tape too!
In any event, Corissa had not come across as angry, in the interview. In fact, she had not seemed very upset at all- with anyone. She was pretty matter-of-fact, really: not even marginally disturbed. And all that suggested that her reportage was not maliciously intended. The stuff Corissa embellished in the tale did not seem designed to hurt me.
But if she was not inventing, then why did she say that I had touched her breast?
Had I? And why did she say she’d taken her shirt off? Had she? Or had she brought that detail in from some other encounter?
Obviously just because I didn’t remember doing something doesn’t mean I didn’t do it: and she wouldn’t have to have had her shirt off for me to have touched her breast. Nor would I have had to see them– bare or clothed– in order to have touched them.
Later I realized it wouldn’t have been a problem to my defense if I’d taken my shirt off at any time. But why would she have seen my chest– if I’d only removed my outer shirt? Well perhaps I’d taken them both off, and put the thinner one back on. Or maybe I’d pulled the lower up while taking off the outer? …
Or maybe I did take my shirt off too– at the same time as she– but don’t remember either of those events: which is odd, because that means I clearly remembered taking off my pants– but once again couldn’t remember a more benign act– like taking off my shirt.
*************************************************
Clayton implored Eric Lind not to make me have to face prison over this thing. He pled with him not to destroy my life– and to keep me off the sex-offender list.
So Eric Lind agreed to put together another deal that would keep me off the list. Then Clayton phoned me to tell me about it: he said they were putting together a new deal that he thought I would like. Then he added that I would not have to be on the sex-offender registry unless I caused “any other problems”.
But his voice dripped with faux exasperation as he said that phrase. He drew the words out: separating each of them and letting them expand in his mouth. And he accented them with a poetic diction too: a (trochaic bimeter?), I suppose– stressing the first syllable of every word. But the accent on “prob” was especially heavy– and especially drawn out. So the phrase sounded like either a paean to irony or an existential lament. The effect was as if to paint me as having some sort of history of trouble-making: like I have repeatedly tried everyone’s patience– and that I were somehow– by the grace of God– getting yet another chance. And I resented that– coming from my own attorney.
Then he told me what the offer was. But it was another terrible offer, from that vindictive son-of-a-bitch. It called for a second-degree felony settlement to replace the AK charge, and for another second-degree felony– but in abeyance– to keep me off the offender list. So now he wanted two felonies! Well at least the one in abeyance would turn into an A misdemeanor– after three years. But the other would remain a felony. So I’d have a felony on my record, at the end of all of this– and a misdemeanor too.
In addition, I would have to undergo three months of Psychosexual evaluation, in a Utah State facility. But aside from that stint, he would agree to stipulate “no prison”.
Oh: there could be fines too, of course: up to $10,000 worth. And there could be a year in jail– or maybe less. But maybe I’d just be able to get electronic bracelets, instead, Clayton said– and do my time at home.
ELECTRONIC FUCKING BRACELETS? Was he out of his mind?
Clayton clarified that part would be up to the Judge.
Then there was the fact that I could still get sued…
Not that I had anything left to take, that is. But I still thought that I would some-day. Getting sued meant my whole life would be screwed until the furthest reach of time.
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The rape-kit posed a very nagging problem. I kept agonizing about it too, of course. Wondering what was in it. Well it was standard procedure to do a rape-kit, of course, for any circumstance involving rape accusations. I knew that already– so it didn’t surprise me that they’d done one. But it ate at me that nothing had been said about it yet. Nothing had been claimed, I mean– about what was found inside. So I was scared to death.
At first I thought it was just more of their deviousness, that they had made no claim about it: that they were just delaying things again. But the fact was that they hadn’t opened it yet. I learned that from Clayton. You see, in order to find out what clues it might yield, someone would have to pay to process it. And processing it was expensive.
Since then, I have learned even more. Like that most rape-kits never get opened: that they are powerful weapons for a Prosecutor to wield– even while still sealed. That’s because the fear of what the kit might yield often drives accused men to take a plea– lest opening it becomes necessary, and their guilt established! So the guilty man sweats and worries and then generally folds. On the other hand if Prosecution opens the kit and there is nothing damning in it– then a big part of their case gets shot to hell! And then Prosecution would have to “fess up” about that finding too, because of that obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence: they would have to admit that nothing was revealed!
Well Eric Lind was all about bluffing and fucking around anyway. So he wasn’t gonna’ open it. He would never risk it– especially since no claim of penetration had been made. In other words, whatever evidence was in there would stay there, unless one of us paid to see it.
Not that Eric Lind needed to prove that particular contact anyway, as I have said. But obviously, if they found my fluids in there, then that would be quite damning: It would show a more egregious contact than just touching her breast would be. And it would be a “proven“ contact too, instead of an alleged one. Or that was how a jury would see it, anyway. But that tormented me, because she’d dabbed her own vagina. If there was any evidence of my fluids there, it was because she’d put it there herself. My fluids wouldn’t prove a contact at all. But who would believe that? And who would even care?
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Eventually I asked Clayton to ask the Prosecutor what was in the kit. So he did- albeit reluctantly. His reluctance had shown itself correct, however, for doing that was a mistake. “I’d like to know what’s in there too”, the dick-head Prosecutor said. And I’ll bet he smirked as he said that. Our mistake was that just by asking we’d showed that we had fear.
