Things I Learned Via the Amanda Marcotte Debacle

1. Bill Donohue has a thing for “silencing” women (Amanda Marcotte wouldn’t be the first one, oh no). Gag fetish, maybe?

2. Certain Evangelical Christians are only big on this whole “love” concept when it’s convenient; otherwise they call you a “worthless hag,” “stupid bitch,” and “racist whore.” Then they tell you that you ought to be raped.

3. I will never, ever go into any sort of actual work on any political campaign. I still might have to close off my original teenage wasteland-style blog. People will gleefully tear you apart any day of the week – but I’d rather not have that done to me over politics.

Nightmares:

Sometimes your mind is like a room with steel bars on the windows. You’re retreating into a corner, dragging your hand across the wall. There’s something at the door and it moves toward you. Sometimes it’s just a mass of pain – a tumour of pointed teeth, flailing arms, black claws. Sometimes it has a flat, almost-human face and a reptilian body. Sometimes it’s a beautiful, beautiful man – so beautiful that you really have to wonder whether or not you ought to begrudge him what he is about to do to you.

And then there are the other times – the times that you are balancing on a marble ledge. An entire city twinkles warmly below you, but you know, with horrible certainty that you will find no home in it. The city is surrounded by a wilderness, and that’s where the wolves howl.

Sometimes you’re in a shed behind a wooden izba. There’s warm summer rain drumming on the roof. A Nazi in a mud-splattered uniform is methodically oiling his gun.

But the worst is listening to someone drown in pitch-black darkness, and not being able to do anything about it.