TW- 1) homicide adjacent 2) talk of predatory behavior towards minors 3) holiday wishes

1. Am witnessing the real-time nonfiction version of a murder house turning into a haunted house. Standing empty, it’s been broken into three times this year, probably by the same people, because each time they stick around longer and take more.

Despite several family members getting divorced since (Is it Covid? Or perhaps a murder in the family makes you reassess your life happiness… or makes you wonder what you are truly capable of if someone pushes your buttons too many times), nobody, but nobody wants to stay there to keep the burglars away, and for legal reasons it cannot be rented.

There has been talk about putting in an alarm system, but some voters on What To Do committee have suggested, “Just let them rob it until there’s nothing left.”

Having enjoyed my fair share of horror flicks, I told them next comes stripping the copper, breaking the windows for fun, teenagers going inside on a dare and pissing in the corner, some  adventurer setting up an indoor campfire, and eventually someone sleeping there getting murdered in the murder house.

I did not add the part about the psycho breaking out from the insane asylum and setting up camp because the People Who Must Deal With Installing an Alarm System in a Vacant Murder House Out of State did not have the energy to put up with my bullshit.

2. Last year (Or maybe even more than a year ago, what is time?) my high school sent out this real cautious email like, “We just got a report a teacher this year was sexually inappropriate with a student, and when that happened, the police got involved and some alumni mentioned other stories/rumors. So just to make sure, anybody who has a story of a teacher being sexually inappropriate let us know. Cheers!”

There was a long pause where I heard nothing.

Some time after that, and email came roughly titled: “Oh dear god, we are setting up independent counsel to do an investigation. What the fuck?!”

Followed by a few, “We cannot give any details, but if you have any complaints, here’s the number.”

And then last night: “Here’s the Independent Counsel’s full review of all the teachers/faculty with credible accusations of being sexually inappropriate with students.”

Which was a pretty wild read, especially since it was a small school and the years I was a student were heavily weighted in favor of perverts (Holla, growing up in the 90s!) and so even though some of the accused were not named due to insufficient ability to confirm accusations (like in one case, the alleged offender was dead) the school was so small, I could guess pretty easily who some of the accusers and most of the accused were. Also, a fair number of teachers who actually taught me and drove me around in their cars and took me camping were named with credible accusations.

So chalk that up to one of the most fucked up trips down memory lane I’ve ever had.

Things I hadn’t thought about in decades! An odd retrospective on skeezy behavior which was blind-eyed/boys-will-be-boys then and now would make people shit a brick to hear about.

It was weird to straddle both worlds. When I read other people’s accounts of creepy things that had happened, my adult self was like, Oh Yeah, that is really fucking gross and messed up, but also the kid part of me was like, Oh yeah, I remember that happening, and it was so normalized at the time, I honestly wouldn’t have thought about reporting it, even though thank god, someone with better sense than I did.

For example, I remember being in a teacher’s home (normalized) and he was drinking (hey, it’s his house) and giving backrubs to students (NORMALIZED OMIGOD) and he put his highball glass pretty near me and walked into the kitchen, out of eye line. I remember the very strange sense we were playing a game, and the game was I should drink the booze when he wasn’t looking. Except I knew I’d get caught in the same way I knew it was a game. So didn’t drink the booze. When the teacher came back into the room, I got the sense he was disappointed, and the game was over. It was very strange to feel like there had been no right answer, and that I’d been invited to play some game I didn’t understand and then got rejected for not playing. But I never would have thought about mentioning it to anyone because all the teacher did was leave the room for a moment.

Anyway, I had lots of nightmares last night, and I’m sorry I read the report, and with out a doubt, Worst Reunion Ever.

3. Ugh there is so much more going on, but I am exhausted from typing this far. Fucking happy holidays, hope you are well.

ETA: Damn it I cannot put this photo in comments, but this one’s for you, Gretchen: