are you protag or antag?

"In blood and change, began my childhood." (Empire of the Senseless)

Has been a minute. today I watched t.v. with mom all day and I am filing this under: time. quality time does not exist on this plane, but it does in the plans. Acker had me hooked from the first line, describing the narrator as "part robot, and part black" (3). It does not seem important that early on, without contextual clues, or descriptions that the reader finds out the protag's race or if she is made out of flesh or steel. The chapter is named Raped by the Father, and I feel it is a trope, I have a story I'm not proud of to tell:

I think I was about 13? It was not May but June, and probably July, because I felt sweatier than usual, and it hadn't rained in a while, and the summer camp excitement was non-existent, even though I was the one who always begged to go to camp all 8 weeks, because that's what H and J and A did. And to this day, those people aren't even letters, are not contacts, don't have me under "friends" on facebook, I don't know that H's instagram is a palindrome, like her name, and I didn't know until last fall that J goes to the same college as my friend. My friend knows them all, but not like this, not with wet stains on their t-shirts from after pool-time, not with my cheeks turning dark like cocoa before it has sugar, not like hiding from an older 'counselor' who we called by their first name, who I sent a letter to in a grey envelope a couple years ago, apologizing to an address found on one of those backwards 'find out where they are now' websites, which was probably sent to a stranger, who probably did not even get it because mail is lost more often than not, or that's what waiting feels like.

Watched, Snowtown, on Friday late into the night, or maybe it was Thursday? Well, I deliberated between Snowtown and sleeptime, and stared blankly at the red mark my screen gets when it's black before the opening credits (I think my computer is just giving up on functioning..i can respect that). This boy, who I later found out does look like Heath Ledger to people, plays a man-child..we never get his age, any of the kid's ages. And is based off of a true story, but I thought the children were fabricated, like what if a serial killer was the only "man" in a boy's life, would he also then kill? And swallow that, or watch, or stop him, or get killed? One point in the story a possible suitor to this boy's mother makes eye contact with him at church, and this man has a young son, who gets killed, but before that has a job, so this boy is basically coming of age with a serial killer. And the only thing running through my head towards the end was wikipedia it, see why this man was a killer, the why is comfort, then you can fall asleep. It said he was abused, and took an interest in gore after working at a slaughterhouse.

Should I talk about how I've probably seen every clip used ever in vegan/vegetarian conversion propaganda..borderline peta...borderline green peace...with pork, poultry, beef, and dairy slaughterhouses..they never do show fish..or seafood. funny how it's called seafood..like earlier on this week I got mad at the word 'tunafish' because as a child it was the can of pale pink, packed in oil (even though it advertised water) chewed-up and spit out looked filaments of a TUNA. Like I only knew what the 'fish' part looked like when shows like "atlantic tuna fisher's" became popular on Discovery and the like, after ratings went down when Sharkweek ended.

Anyways, I could smell tuna in the word tunafish..and because I doubt a real fish smells like a seafood fish..albeit they are the same, bare with me, I cannot understand the use of the word 'tunafish' or 'fish and chips' or anything else. I don't eat meat,but I'm not bias, because I make meat for my family, and have eaten it in the past, I just no longer like the taste. It's strange. Like how I stopped drinking soda for lent, one time, and then I didn't even want anymore, when I finally drank one, I felt like shit, and was worried I had heart palpitations and stayed up all night, and belched very loudly in the morning, and thought all my teeth were rotting out. Anyways--circumstance.

The story I'm not proud of from summer camp..as you can see my mind tried not to go there..it is gross.

So we were in computer class, which was one component of the day at camp, and we were getting bored with playing educational games, such as clicking some keys to make a green animated snake eat apples and get longer. we we're getting bored of the long talks about internet safety, and pedophiles who went online, we were old enough to not have a *real* computer expert, but somebody hired to make $20/hr, babysit us in front of CPU's.

The three of us, me, H and J, went to E-Harmony, which around this time had started the aggresive rounds of television advertising on channel's like MTV and VH1, that H, J, and I had to either hide or be in one of the 'cool' parent's houses to watch, to even know what e-harmony was.

We created a profile, to see who these creeps were, to manipulate, to be the backwards pedophile, their goal..our goal to interrupt their goal. To see what FREAKs are really out there.

E-harmony, makes users pay to find other users, unlike okcupid, or tinder, or something. Which for some reason did not feel like a scam to the other's as much as it did to me. We created a black female, laughed when deciding she should be 30, and christian, said we were looking for a nice man, and liked *insert some rapper* and micheal jackson..i think? We added, maybe I added, maybe J or H added that she had been raped as a child, and didn't trust people...maybe we had to stick to a storyline off of Flavors of Love, or whatever with New York, and then that Rock of Love show, and The Real Life, and I remembered the MTV special on AIDS and I wanted to watch it and my mom caught me, and punished me. It was porn to her. Maybe I'm adding this part because I care, maybe I'm camping out in the park that is ashamed. SHAME. Should I watch that film again?

If it was based off of a true story, I would look up the wikipedia page, it also came on MTV I think, when I was younger and I watched it, thinking...wow sex is weird, but wow sex is cool! And when I watched it maybe 2-3 years ago, okay I'm being dramatic like 1, I thought sex is gross, sex is gross, sex is gross, sex is gross. I wrote on various social media that I was asexual, I felt like I had been abused in some way, by the media around me.

If only the counselors at camp that eventually found out and punished us, had known that this wasn't the first time, that a few years before that our whole class got in trouble for visiting a porn site, which we all claimed was by accident. When girls watch porn or boys watch porn, do they get punished the same way? It all ends with crying, shame, guilt, mercy, knowing that you need to cry because it blurs everything the voices, the faces, the incident, it blurs EVERYTHING.

Anyways, I don't know why this mattered, why it mattered that Kathy Acker was writing from a 'black' voice..why it mattered that this particular character felt like an instant trope because of the words RAPE BY THE FATHER. Why it mattered that our eharmony profile be a black, christian, woman who had been raped as a child. Why it mattered that a counselor who did not even 'counsel' us came in to ask what we did, and to 'discipline' us. Why did it matter that J and H cried and I didn't. Why did it matter that eye-contact became rough after that for me, and is only letting up now. Why did it matter that I really did not feel remorse at the time, why did it matter that when I was punished during this teen-age, my mother always sighed before leaving and said, "you don't even have a conscience!"

Why does it matter that the serial killer was raped/abused, why does it matter if the story is true or not. but it's not why, it is who. and it all matters to me, and mom I have a conscience now, and she won't leave things alone. she masturbates the hell out of meaning and kills the joke, and bides her time, and surrounds herself in the same old songs, and this is a self-diagnosis, and I still haven't said what I wanted to say.