Regina Noctis

Another email from Pete the other day…

I should answer it, I suppose.

I’m not generally much at keeping up via email, as most of the people I know have learned.

When I was starting to feel somewhere unacknowledged but still there, deep inside, that Pete might be losing interest because of the way circumstances kept us apart, I made the effort to start writing email far more often than is normal for me. Even if all I had time for before running off to work or something was a couple sentences. I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want the “someday” we’d been talking about all that time to evaporate.

I didn’t want a future where I wouldn’t be able to wake up to that beautiful smile. The future I have now.

It is a beautiful smile, you know. Sylvan knows. He saw the same pictures I did that first showed that to me. And other people might argue with this assessment… but to me, Pete has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. I’d have walked over mountains and crossed oceans for that smile. And I’ll tell you, pictures don’t do it justice.

Gods, that smile in person… that I will never see again…

At first, after he broke up with me, he told me that he’d do anything for me. Anything except lie.

That changed pretty damn fast, didn’t it? When he saw what it was I wanted in this journal, and then I tried to talk with him about it, that door was closed. I wasn’t even asking for a guarantee. I’m not so naive to think that there could ever be a guarantee involved. All I wanted was a chance. A chance to re-arrange my sleep schedule so we could spend an hour or three talking and see if anything came of it. But it’s not something I could do without cooperation. It doesn’t work if I’m there and he’s not.

He phrased it as he didn’t want anyone to be shorting themselves on sleep. I don’t know what to think about that. Maybe he just doesn’t realise that for me, a little less sleep than otherwise, or breaking my sleeping time into naps, is far less of a misery than the hurt of being left by someone I love.

I’ve never dealt well with endings of any kind. And I would generally sooner put up with just about any amount of other misery as long as the primary relationships in my life continue.

Hell, if I’d known that changing jobs to get away from my micromanaging manager and the company’s insistence on fighting against giving someone a raise ever would lead to this, I’d still be working there. I’d sooner have those things, and them forgetting to have someone relieve me so I could take a break or a lunch, and the abuse over the phone, and the stress.

And, for once, being in love with someone who treated me like I was worth something… how could I not want that back? After the long cycle of abuse, I finally wound up with someone that made me happy instead of miserable. I didn’t have to convince myself that I was happy (a skill that I got far too good at in previous relationships.) I actually was happy in ways that I’d never felt before. I felt beautiful too, for the one and only time in my life. I know I’m no beauty, but I always wanted to feel that I was despite the realities, and couldn’t. I wanted to be beautiful to someone else, and got told such things as, “If you lost weight, you might achieve cute.” That from a guy who thought he loved me enough to ask me to marry him.

And Pete thought me beautiful. And for once in my life, I could accept that someone might, that he did, regardless of what anyone else (and most especially I) thought of my looks.

But then Pete wouldn’t even answer the question of whether or not he even wanted to try hanging out and spending time together, since I got the feeling from his actions that he preferred to avoid it. And of course, didn’t address the unspoken question of why did he prefer to avoid it. In the absence of any kind of response to those things, after a lifetime of being told what a horrible, worthless person I am by so many of the people in my life… well, it should come as no surprise that I fall back to feeling utterly valueless, forgettable, worthless. All I can do is guess that there’s something wrong with me that he avoided saying (to avoid hurting my feelings even more, of course) or that there was something deeply wrong in our relationship that drove him away. I tried explaining this to Pete to show him why I needed an answer. All I succeeded in doing was making him feel like he had to go on the defensive. So, of course, I have the added reaction of ripping into myself because I can’t even explain something without making him feel worse. I know that so much of that is the whole ACA thing. I have read and studied on it enough to know that this is very typical behaviour. And I just can’t seem to stop it.

After all…

From “I’d do anything for you. Except lie.”

To shutting the door when I tell him there is something.

I can see exactly what I’m worth. Or not worth.

Worthless.

My mom was after me to tell her what I want for Christmas. I couldn’t tell her.

There’s only one thing I want, and she can’t give it to me. Only one person can give me what I truly want (and more than that, still need in a desperate and very painful way.)

He’s not going to.

December 11 is close. Too close.

Can someone push the big Star Trek reset button before then, so I can go back to looking forward to the approach of that day and being happy about it?

Please?

Which Evil Criminal are You?

Arwen If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Arwen, Elf, the daughter of Elrond. In the movie, I am played by Liv Tyler. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Character Test with Perseus Survey Power

Does this mean I get to call Karlito Daddy? And Camille Gramps?

My mom was down at the social security office today to apply for SSI. I stayed behind to baste the turkey.

Her trip there proved that you can pick up gossip anywhere.

While she was there, the woman who was helping her said that since my mom and dad were married for more than ten years, he was entitled to some extra benefits based on mom’s income. The woman went to check to see whether or not my father was actually getting those benefits. It turned out he hadn’t been working and had been living on SSI, and had not been getting those benefits. They’re now in the system. However…

There’s always a however, isn’t there?

My dad’s SSI has been stopped. Halted due to incarceration.

Apparently, according to the records at Social Security, he’s been in jail for more than a year now.

I’m not sure how to feel about that.

Thanks to a some unexpected expenses, I had to decide that my ISP was a luxury I couldn’t afford for a little while. It went down about fifteen minutes after the last post I made, since the bill achieved past due that day. It’s still down. It will be gone for one to four more business days. So, I’m writing this at work.

I’ll be back around eventually, and catch up on what everyone’s been doing. Until then, you won’t hear from me. Sometimes, helping people out is more important than your internet connection.

Miss reading what you’re all up to!

Tomorrow (or tonight, really, since it’s after midnight) Locke and I are off to see the Harry Potter movie. We got tickets at the Mercado 20 for the last show. Hopefully, there won’t be many children going to a 10:45 showing of the movie. If there are, and they make too much noise, well, I guess I’ll just have to restrain my desire to go smack ‘em until they shut up.

Jim sweetie, only you will see this post.

I dropped the check in the mailbox at work tonight as I was leaving work. The mailman should pick it up in the morning, and it’ll be on its way.

I love you, sweetheart. Take good care of yourself.

Just got back into the Bay Area from ol’ Hellano about 1:30 this morning.

It was actually a good visit. No fighting with Mom, no fighting with Grandma, and psycho John kept his distance (as he has been for the last three years when I’m in town. I think I scare him.)

John’s out of jail. He served his sentence. Despite his history of violence, including a conviction for elder abuse, the justice system treated the case as a first-time case of spousal abuse. He got two weeks.

While I was there, I found out a few more things that have been going on with him over the last three months. It’s not anything that makes me any happier that he’s running around free. And my grandmother is still bent on protecting him. She got very offended with my mom and me when she walked in on us discussing the idea of John in a psych ward. I took that as my cue to shut up, since just about anyone can say things to her that would make her angry if I said them. Hell, I can’t say “Yup!” in response to a question without her deciding that I’m attempting to pick a fight with her.

She also said that while she thinks that 90% of what’s been going on between John and Becky is John’s fault, she figures 10% of it is Becky’s fault. It was so hard to keep silent, but I bit my tongue and I did it. She said it like that somehow excused at least some of if not all that John has done. And sure, I can buy that it’s not all John. There’s two sides to any story, and usually there is at least some degree of responsibility for problems in both members of a couple, even if the bulk of the blame rests with one person. But that doesn’t excuse any of what he’s done! Just because Becky has sometimes had a cold tone of voice when talking to him doesn’t mean that it’s okay that he’s broken her cheekbone on one occasion, or blackened her eye on another occasion after that. It doesn’t make it okay that he’s held a gun to the heads of all four of their children, and it doesn’t make it okay that he held his eldest daughter hostage. It doesn’t make it okay that he threatened my mother’s life on several occasions. And the other thing I wanted so much to say to my grandmother is that some of the coldness on Becky’s part was probably a result of John’s insanity and verbal and physical violence. Who wouldn’t let some of that creep into their voice sometimes?

There’s so much I found out about the situation and circumstances down there while I was there. I may write about it sometime in greater detail, but for right now I just need to absorb it. Even though the conversation that brought all this up was more than 12 hours ago now, I’m still not done assimilating and accepting it all. I need to think about it and try to make some sense of it in my head before I can write anything coherent about it and my feelings about it.

There has got to be a way to put this psychopath away. I need to research what it takes anymore. I don’t trust the changes in the law, so that it’s police officers who do the on-site evaluation if you call someone in 5150. John may be insane, but he’s savvy enough to put it over during an interview like that. And Delano police have been less than cooperative, anyhow.

I almost hate to say it, since he’s family and all… but… In a way… In MANY ways… I wish that he’d just go crazy enough, alone, to take his own life. Rid us all of the problem he presents and the danger he is to everyone around him. I’m opposed to committing violence. I’d never go down and “help” him remove himself from the lives of all concerned. But still, I wish that he would do himself in for all of us.

It may be wrong of me to think it, much less say it. It probably is. Given the situation though, and the danger he puts everyone in Delano and Bakersfield in, I just can’t help but wish for a solution that would remove him from all our lives for good. I may be reasonabley safe from him up here in the Bay Area, since he doesn’t know how to find me here. But there are seven people in his range in Delano. And eight more just thirty miles from there. Not a difficult distance to cover.

Since he’s shown often enough over the last several years that he’s scared of me, I have been somewhat tempted to go down there for an extended period of time, just to give everyone a break from him. I know my mom would love it if I moved down there. But I just can’t resign myself to living in that godawful dead-end place.

Maybe everyone else just needs to get pushed past the breaking point where he’s concerned. That’s what got him to lay off of me. He pushed me to the point of violence despite my pacifism twice over the last thirty years. And those two times were insane enough that he doesn’t seem to want to see what a third one would be like.

It seems to be the only thing he understands. Random violence that’s as irrational and psychotic as his day-to-day life. He can do it to other people, but doing it back to him seems to keep him away. He can’t handle someone else going insane, even temporarily.

All of this was going through my head on the five hour drive home. It’s a good time to think, since so much of the drive is flat farming land with nothing to distract you from your thoughts. Not that thinking about it all has helped me come to terms with it yet. I still need more thinking time on it. Maybe I should drive somewhere else.

Driving over Blood Alley at night is certainly a different experience from driving it during the day. I think I prefer it. There is almost no traffic whatsoever.

I stopped and grabbed dinner at the nearest Denny’s when I got into the Bay Area, and tried not to mull over either the question of John or the absence of Pete. Not very successfully in either case.

And then, after all of this, I got home and had two messages waiting for me from a friend who sounded very upset. I’m all tied up in knots worrying now, and when I tried to call I got no answer, even though it said in the last message to call no matter the time.

When it rains, it pours. And honey, it looks like a huge thunderstorm is hovering around here right now.

He’s an unconventional pirate filmmaker in drag. She’s a time-travelling wisecracking lawyer who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!

or maybe this duo…

He’s a notorious gay dog-catcher with a robot buddy named Sparky. She’s a supernatural nymphomaniac advertising executive in the witness protection scheme. They fight crime!

And as an aside…

Sparky! *snickers and looks at someone in particular*

Originally posted so only one particular friend could read it

Okay, you’re the only one that’s going to see this. I figure that one of the better ways to have everyone screaming at me is if I post this publicly.

I most certainly don’t expect anyone to be able to magically take away the pain. I never said that I expected that. I just said that having someone to talk to, even if I’m saying the same things over and over, someone who can be sympathetic and empathetic, and who’ll hug me when I need it, helps me to start to get a handle on it all.

There’s a reason that I’m not willing to share it all with my friends around here. When my ex-fiance left me in October of 99, two days before my birthday, I tried to reach out to people. I tried to talk it out, because I hurt so badly it bid fair to drive me over the edge. And, really, it pretty much did. I should have been locked away as a danger to myself.

My friends, however, made me worse, not better.

I was living with Sylvan and Wolfie at the time. And a couple of other guys who aren’t on LJ and moved away before you came out here from Jersey. Of the four of them, one was supportive. The rest most definitely were not.

This may come as some surprise, but neither Sylvan nor Wolfie was the supportive one. As a matter of fact, despite Sylvan being my best friend, he made it worse.

That comment I made about being screamed at because I wasn’t over it in two days was no bit of rhetoric. Nor was it exaggeration.

When my ex-fiance left me, I wasn’t able to eat or sleep. If I did eat, I couldn’t keep the food down. Two days later, on my birthday, Sylvan and a couple other friends decided to take me out for my birthday and see if they could feed me.

It started out okay. But one of my friends hadn’t heard anything more than I got left. I managed to tell her about it without going nuts, and I managed to eat some and keep it down while I was doing it.

Then I made the comment that I wanted him back. Oooo, big shock there, two days after getting dumped. Unless it was really violent and destructive, who doesn’t want their ex back two days later?

Sylvan went nuts on me. In the middle of the restaurant, he started screaming at me. He tore me apart verbally for being so selfish as to want my ex-fiance back. And yes, he did call me selfish for wanting that. Because my spending so much time with my fiance was something Sylvan hated. It meant I spent less time with him. So, how could I be so selfish as to want back the guy I was still very much in love with then, when I knew that to have him back would hurt Sylvan? He went on and on, at the top of his lungs, until I was in tears. I got up and ran outside to get away from it, and once I was there, I lost what little bit I’d been able to eat.

This was typical of the next six or so months. In all that time, Sylvan was supportive and a good friend and shoulder to cry on ONCE. We talked and he was empathetic and sympathetic and caring for one hour, shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve. The rest of the time, he was either ignoring me or ripping me to pieces. He even chased me through the house we were living in, screaming at me, and when I tried to hide in my room, he barged in and kept right on going for an hour. Under the influence of him and Wolfie and Josh, I reached the point of being suicidal for a while. It seemed like the only way out from the combined pain of losing Jeff and the constant anger and abuse from the people I lived with.

My sister waited a week before she started in. Her thing was that since I wasn’t already over it after a week, I must have some kind of mental problem. She would tell me every time I saw her that, since I wasn’t already over him and moving on with my life, I had to have clinical depression and should go get a prescription for anti-depressants. Even up to just a couple months ago, she hasn’t let it go completely. She put a journal entry up that basically said that I refused to let go and move on and that’s why I wasn’t over it on the schedule she had in mind for me to be healing. I’m sorry, but you don’t get over a two year relationship in two weeks. The basic rule of thumb according to the psychological studies is about one month for every two that the relationship lasts. And I put it behind me in a little under a year. But she’s still convinced that I either was choosing that (like anyone would choose to be in that kind of pain) or have a problem that I should spend the rest of my life medicated for.

Camille avoided me. And the two times that she did show up to keep me company, she left soon after because I was too depressing to be around.

Ligeia decided that I wasn’t worth having around, and started excluding me from anything that she planned, something that she continues to do to this day. She only contacts me if I have something she wants.

All of this despite the fact that I have always given these people exactly the kind of support I needed most. I helped Sylvan deal with the ends of relationships, depression, his realization of his alcoholism, the death of his grandmother, fights with Wolfie, his dad’s surgery, and the death of his mother. I helped my sister deal with the guy she’d been in love with forever going off with some other woman (which, I would like to point out, she is still not over, and it happened a year before Jeff left me in 99) and the death of her mother. I helped Camille with the end of her long-standing relationship with Gary, her realization that she had an addiction, and the abortion she had to have. I helped Ligeia with memories of abuse and molestation from her childhood, things she’d blocked out that came flooding back one day.

In every one of these cases, I put aside whatever was going on in my life at the time, and I gave them the empathy and the listening and the love that was what I was looking for to help me through the breakup with Jeff. I have borne their weight, and the weight of just about everyone else I know, for much of the time that I’ve known them. If anything goes wrong for them, I’m the one they come running to, the pillar they lean on for support. But when *I* need to do some leaning, they react with either putting distance between themselves and me or with verbal abuse.

So, that is why I said in my previous post that I’m keeping this mostly to myself and not talking with my friends about it all. That’s why LJ has to be the sympathetic ear that I needed. Because my so-called friends will only make it worse. Hell, if it hadn’t been for them making me hurt even more, I might have even gotten over Jeff all that much sooner. But they inflicted more pain on me at every turn, and then later acted as if I should be grateful for all the support they gave me then. I know for a fact that Sylvan sees himself as having been caring and supportive then. He claims to have tried everything he could think of for as long as he could to help me through it all. It’s a pity that he didn’t try being a friend during that time for longer than a single hour. It was the second time I tried reaching out to him because of a big disaster in my life, only to get burned. Well, I’m not doing it anymore.

I’ve learned my lesson.

Today (well, yesterday, really, since it’s approaching three in the morning) was Pete’s birthday.

I had to call in sick to work because of my knee, but then spent the day wishing I’d gone anyway. I’d have been concentrating on something. Instead, I wound up sitting around moping and even worked up to a good fit of tears a couple times.

We used to talk about him coming out here or me going out there so we could spend his birthday together. If not his birthday, then our one year anniversary in December.

Which, of course, will be another very sad day for me. I already know that.

I’ve been largely keeping to myself lately. I know that I’m not much fun to be around most of the time. I see people when I feel obligated to, or when I know I can keep a happy mask in place despite what’s going on under the surface.

Of course, the mask can slip unexpectedly sometimes, and I’ve found myself in tears at work on a few occasions. I hate that. I hate crying in front of people at all, and I hate it even more when it’s at work.

But if there’s one thing I learned last time I was dealing with a breakup, it’s that I need to keep most of it to myself until I get my equilibrium back. Don’t reach out for support, don’t cry on anyone’s shoulder, because I feel what I feel too strongly for people to be able to deal with it when it’s not held in some kind of check.

I don’t particularly feel like being screamed at because I’m not over it in two days, or told that I must be clinically depressed and should start taking happy pills because I don’t heal to someone else’s schedule.

I’ve always dealt with things better when I can talk about it, even if I’m just saying the same things over and over. Somehow, that usually helps me to get a handle on it eventually. In the past, I always thought that I needed to actually talk TO someone, someone I cared for who cared for me, who would be willing to just listen empathetically, and hug me when I needed it.

All I wound up doing was angering and/or depressing everyone, though. So, now I’ll just continue to ramble about it all in LJ, and see if that helps. Anyone who doesn’t want to deal with it can just skip my entries.

So…

I’ve taken to avoiding Empiriana. I’ve barely been there at all for over a month now. When I think I can handle it okay if I run into Pete again, then I might go back. For right now, even just seeing his character’s name scroll across the ticker is enough to have me fighting tears.

I began to feel a while ago that, though he never said as much, he most definitely did not want to take the chance to rekindle things. The closest he ever came to it was telling me that he didn’t want either one of us to be shorting themselves on sleep in order to have time together. I wrote to him, eventually, and asked him if that was the case. If he didn’t just drift away, but actively did not want to try to win back what we had, because that was the feeling I was getting. He didn’t reply.

Eventually, he did write me. He’d stopped by this journal, and read that I had a birthday, so he sent me email a couple days after, email that I never got. He resent it a few days later, when I didn’t reply.

Even though I know that some people don’t necessarily remember birthdays very well, it took me a little time to get the emotional equilibrium back enough to calm down about the email. My first reaction was to be hurt that I was so completely forgettable. I’d been feeling that at least somewhat for a while anyway, as I watched both our relationship in general and my trip out there to visit him get downgraded from “incredible bliss” to “fun.” Until I was able to get a somewhat of a grip, the birthday email just clinched the whole me not worth remembering conviction.

I eventually replied. I still wanted an answer to my question. In an effort to make him understand that it was important to me, I explained the kind of thinking I do, and can’t seem to stop, when I don’t get the feedback I’m asking for. I laid it all out for him, and hoped that I’d get an answer to the question. I’d given up hoping that he’d say yes, he wanted to try again. I was expecting a no. But I wanted SOME answer.

The answer I got still didn’t address the question. I guess that when I laid out the kind of supposition and conclusion I resort to in the absence of reply, it felt too much like an attack. He wasn’t angry, but he was defensive, and he told me several times to stop that.

So, I haven’t replied. I will just have to assume that he is avoiding the question because he doesn’t want to say no. Maybe afraid of making me hurt more than I do now. Maybe a passive-aggressive return “attack” for my “attack.” I don’t know. And I’m going to try not to make suppositions and build an edifice of conclusions without facts this time (though I suspect that I’ll do it despite trying not to.)

All that’s left now is sealing away the good memories, for me a long and painful process, but necessary to kill my feelings for him. As long as those memories are as strong as they are, it will continue to feed my feelings and the yearning to have it back.

It’s times like this that I really regret the way my mind works. There are so many things I’m forgetful of. But if it’s anything to do with the people I care about, I remember it in such vivid detail that it’s like living in the moment again. It’s too immediate to let my feelings fade unless I make the effort to eradicate the memories as best I can. They may still be there, but when I’m done, they’re blurred. There are only fragments that I remember with any clarity at all, the ones that are too emotionally charged for me to get rid of.

The downside with Pete being who he is, is that when I’m done, there will be very little left that I remember clearly at all. With the others, there was so much mistreatment that I could focus on. Pete wasn’t like any of them, though. And that makes it all the harder now to do what I know I have to do in order to get past losing him. When I’m done, there will be nothing left, or nearly so. And I’m having a hard time convincing myself to do what’s necessary because of that.

I don’t know if I can kill off the piece of my heart that he still lives in. It will be gone in a way none of the ones before ever were.

Two months and a day.

Still not over it.

Not even close.

I scored 12 on the pervertedlogic.com CyberWhore Poll!

Werd up, yo! You’re a NET PIMP!

You’ve made your way onto one or two fucklists from the sheer dogged perseverance of your online flirting and constant offers to email pics of your wanx0r/boobage to anyone with an inbox. A heartthrob in AOL’s Cleveland singles rooms, you’re no stranger to, um, double clicking your own mouse in front of the computer.

Figbash and I were talking at work, and the subject of security in the Roman airport came up. I have a couple stories related to it, which I have told many people over the years since the last time I was in Rome. Somehow, I missed telling them to her, so I promised I would tell them sometime. I was in the middle of doing letters on a file at the time, and didn’t want to interrupt my momentum to tell the stories right then.

She and I wound up being variously busy through the course of the night, so I still hadn’t told her the stories when her shift ended at 9 and she headed home.

After I got home, it occurred to me that probably the simplest way to tell her the stories is to write them here. I know she’s one of the people crazy enough to put up with my fits of ranting, whining, and taking online personality tests and posting the results. Maybe a couple amusing (at least after the fact, they weren’t so fun at the time) stories would be a fair reward for putting up with all that has gone before.

So, Figbash, here we go. The stories of how Christophine almost got arrested for terrorism in the Da Vinci airport… twice.

Story the First: How NOT to Handle an Armed Guard

The first time was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. My final destination was Athens. My mom had loaned money to my Godqueen, and rather than pay her back, he’d bought her a ticket to Greece. He knew that of all the places she wanted to go, it was the one she most wanted to see. My dad, for once not reacting like a spoiled brat 12-year-old, decided that he was going to see to it that I could go too, even if it meant selling the Cadillac that he owned (a car that he often told my mom and me that he loved more than he loved us.)

We managed to scrape together the money for the ticket and spending cash once there. Because my ticket was bought a month after my mom’s, I wasn’t able to get onto her flight all the way to Athens. We would fly from California to New York together, but from there we had separate flights. She was flying straight to Athens. I would have to make a connection in Rome.

The night before we were supposed to depart, my Godqueen threw us a going away party in his cabin up in the redwoods above Scott’s Valley. The party went on all night. Finally, in the wee small hours of the morning, we drove to San Francisco airport and took off.

In New York, my mom took most of the things that might be questionable going through the security check when I got to Rome. The only thing she gave me was the bag that held the fourteen boxes of film we were taking. She told me to be sure not to put the film through the x-ray machine, so it wouldn’t get exposed. I was to ask for it to be hand-checked by the whoever was watching the flow of things through the machine. This worked fine in New York.

But Rome… ahhhh, Rome is another story.

There were delays leaving JFK in New York, and I was tired when I was on the plane, but I couldn’t sleep despite the all-night party and not sleeping on the flight to New York. By the time I got to Rome, I’d had no sleep in 52 hours.

These days, with the sleep disorders I’ve got, I’d still be functional. Then, while I did have problems sleeping, the sleep disorders weren’t so severe. I wasn’t accustomed to going so long without sleep. When I got to Rome, I had two brain cells left that were still operational. There seemed to be only enough room in them for one thought each. Both the thoughts I had room for were parting words from my mother.

“Don’t miss your connection.”

“Don’t put the film through the x-ray machine.”

Neither of these thoughts, you’ll notice, made any mention of how to deal with an armed man. Even my sense of self-preservation was asleep by the time I got to the security check in the Da Vinci airport.

I thought it was a little strange to have to go through security when I was changing planes. I had flown often in the US, and made connections there without having to go through x-ray machines and metal detectors every time. But Rome had been hit very hard in previous years by terrorist activity. By the time I got there, they took no chances.

At the security check, I pulled the plastic bag out of my backpack, dropped my backpack and purse on the conveyor belt, and held out the plastic bag to the man behind the counter. I explained that it was film, I didn’t want it to get exposed, and asked him if he would hand-check it.

“No, put it through.” (You’ll have to imagine the heavy Italian accent. I’m not going to attempt to type it the way it sounded.)

“It’ll get exposed if I put it through. Please hand-check it. It’s film.”

“No, it’ll be fine. Put it through.”

“I can’t do that. It will be exposed.”

“It will be fine. Put it in the machine.”

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

Over by the metal detector was a Da Vinci airport security guard. Airport security in Da Vinci is nothing like airport security in the states. I hadn’t noticed this man at first, so I didn’t know how different. I was absorbed in my argument over the film, ignoring both him and the ever-increasing line waiting behind me.

Then the guard decided to take action, and made his presence known.

I can still remember quite clearly how he was dressed. Army boots. Khaki pants. Camouflage jacket. Green beret. Sub-machine gun.

This man marched over to where I was causing my little scene, listened, and then pointed the gun at me. He interrupted the argument, barking at me that if I didn’t put the film through the x-ray machine, I could be arrested for attempted hijacking. Apparently, they figured I could be hiding weapons or plastic explosives or something in those boxes.

I turned and glared at the man. And, let me remind you of the scarcity of brain activity at the time. Because, after a good glare, I promptly told the man with the gun pointed at me, “Fuck off!”

It was only then, as I watched his face turning a dark red, that I began to wake up enough to realize what I’d just done. I figured he’d either arrest me and then shoot me later for “trying to escape,” or else shoot me now and call it a summary execution.

Instead, to my relief and rather shocked amazement, he spun on his heel and marched back to his metal detector, where he continued to keep my covered with his gun.

To this day, I still don’t get that. Not that I mind, of course.

So, I looked back at the man behind the counter. He was openly enjoying that scene. You could see how amused he was by the stupid American tourist who told a man with a gun pointed at her to fuck off.

I tried to hand him the film. He still wouldn’t hand-check it. We went back to arguing.

Finally, an announcement worked where arguments and guns didn’t. Final boarding call for my flight to Athens was announced by the overhead speakers. I gave up and put the film in the x-ray machine.

After all, the other brain cell said not to miss my flight, right?

We discovered later that we did lose some pictures. One here, two there. As many as five on a roll. And some of the pictures that did come out fine otherwise have strange streaks like lightning bolts going across a part of the picture.

Story the Second: On the Dangers of Reading Mail

In the winter of my senior year in high school, I joined a school-sponsored, chaperoned trip to Europe. It was a whirlwind tour. Nine cities in ten days.

We arrived in London, and would be departing from Rome.

The day we arrived in London, there was a terrorist attack on the Da Vinci airport. A large number of people were gunned down. Some of the terrorists were caught. This is the point at which I got a call in my hotel room from one of my fellow students, and turned off the BBC.

By word of mouth from another student who’d watched the entire news broadcast, the terrorists eventually said under interrogation that a group of American students would be going through the Da Vinci airport in a week and a half. They were the targets of the next attack.

This story was probably lies. I was, after all, travelling with a bunch of adolescent drama queens.

However, word of it spread through the group, and caused a minor panic the entire time we were in Europe. And that panic got worse the closer we got to our day of departure.

While we were in Paris, I picked up a letter opener with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. A small, cheap, cheesy gift to give to my cousin John. It was shaped vaguely like a sword, but of course much smaller. And it was so dull I didn’t even know if it was possible for it to do the job it was supposed to do. I’d have had doubts about its ability to cut warm butter. But I bought it, dumped it in the bottom of my backpack, and forgot about it.

Finally, the day we were to fly home arrived. We were taken by our tour bus to the Da Vinci airport, we checked in, and then we headed to the security checkpoint.

I put my backpack onto the belt to go into the machine. I’d learned a lesson from my previous experience, and didn’t bother trying to get them to hand-check the film. Instead, I’d gotten an x-ray proof bag to keep it all in.

The belt rolled, my backpack went into the machine, everything seemed fine. Then the guy at the counter reversed the belt. My backpack came back out. He sent it forward again, my backpack disappeared into the machine. He reversed the belt and my backpack re-appeared. He did this a couple more times. And then he called over to someone in Italian.

An older co-worker of his started going through my backpack while the first guy made a call on the phone at the counter. I figured it was the x-ray proof bag they didn’t like, and I’d have another song and dance about film. After all, it was film that caused the problem last time, right?

I watched the second guy pull out the snack I’d bought for the flight… the bottle of water under it… the two folded sweatshirts I’d bought during the trip and then didn’t have room in my suitcase for.. the bag of film… and he kept on going. I didn’t understand. I was so sure it was the film.

Out came the journal I’d been keeping, the map of the London Underground, and finally, the letter opener.

By the time they got to the letter opener, six ( ! ) armed guards had arrived. The second guy handed me the letter opener. I was promptly and silently surrounded by armed guards. One nudged me in the back with the stock of his sub-machine gun, and I was marched away. No one on my tour group, not a student or a chaperone, said or did anything about it. They were all in as much shock over the whole thing as I was.

I had no idea where we were going, and I was too shocked by the whole thing to be scared yet. What I felt more than anything was confusion. I was taken into parts of the airport I didn’t recognize at all. Fortunately, not to some “back room” to be interrogated or something.

Eventually, we came to a counter. One of the guards spoke in rapid-fire Italian to the woman at the counter. I didn’t understand a word, it was all too fast. I’d been getting by on Spanish, since it’s similar enough to Italian that I could kind of figure out some things. But this was far beyond me.

Finally, the woman at the counter held out her hand, and I was nudged in the back with the stock of a gun again. I handed her the letter opener, “hilt” first. She took it, mummified it in packing tape, and put it into a box. She then taped it even more thoroughly to the bottom and then closed the box. She mummified the box in half an acre of more packing tape, and then covered that in bright yellow security tape. Finally, she taped paper around the box, wrapped a couple more strips of security tape around the paper to hold it in place, and wrote “KNIFE” in black marker on every spot where any paper showed. She stuck a baggage sticker on it, asked for my ticket and affixed the baggage claim sticker to the ticket folder, and walked away carrying the mummified box.

When she left, so did my armed guards. They practically evaporated. I was left alone at an empty counter with no idea of how to get back to my tour group.

After much wandering and asking people with questionable skills in English, I got back to the security checkpoint. Spanish was my friend during my quest to find my way home. The chaperone for the California contingent was by the metal detector, waiting for me. The whole thing had taken so much time that, even though we’d had two hours to go until the flight when I got marched away, final boarding for our flight was being called. I rushed through security as quickly as I could, and we barely made our flight home.

So, there you have them, Figbash. My stories about being a terrorist in Rome. :D

Now that I’ve rambled at rather great length, I think I’ll go read. Night night, whoever has bothered to read this far. ;)