What Does "I'd Do Anything" Mean?

When It Don't Come Easy - Patty Griffin (mp3)

One particularly forgotten aspect of the Tonya Craft trial in North Georgia has kept me awake several nights in the last month, and it's this: Her parents have spent virtually every penny they possess and have taken on substantial debt, to finance their daughter's criminal defense. The costs of the defense, according to the trial, is in the range of $500,000. (I guarantee it's over $750k.)

I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents say to me, "I'd do anything for my child." Hell, I've said something to that effect a few times myself.

Maybe we all mean it. Maybe we don't. Maybe we don't even quite know what the words mean when we say them in the comfort of our philosophical bubbles.

Some of the hypotheticals are easy.

If your house is burning and your child is inside, of course it would take battleship chains to keep you from going back in to get her. If your boat capsizes, of course you'd risk your life, or even gladly sacrifice it, to keep them alive. In fact, anytime a parent must choose their life or the life of their child's, it's a no-brainer for most of us. Harsh as it may seem, sacrificing your life isn't nearly the toughest call a parent would have to make. In fact, it's probably one of the easiest ones.

But how about this one? Your daughter is charged with molesting not one, but three children. She swears to Sweet Little Baby Jesus and all his kinfolk that she's innocent. And of course you believe her, because she's your daughter. If found guilty, she will probably still be in jail when you die, and she'll likely never see her children again.

Sure, you'd die for your child, but would you put yourself into such a financial hole that you'll never be able to retire? Would you spend every penny, cast off every possession, for the best criminal defense you could obtain, or would you just hope justice is blind and numb to money, and that justice would be served with a more reasonably-priced defense?

Or what about a problem a family we know from church, where they've adopted five children over the years, and one of them has clearly become a problem they are incapable of reaching. Everyone who knows this boy feels confident that a juvenile detention facility is only a matter of time. Meanwhile, he steals from the house and terrorizes his parents and his siblings. But he's barely 13. Just a boy. Do you give up on him? Can you, as a parent, justify deserting one for the needs of the others? Or must the others suffer while the wild child steals all the parental time and energy and sucks the last drop of potential joy from a household?

What if your child is 18 and chose not to go to college because she was umbilically attached her boyfriend, who plays in a band in the local bar scene? What if she lives in your house, only works two days a week at Chick-Fil-A, and uses every last drop of her paycheck to buy... well, you're not sure what she's buying, but it's clearly screwing with her mood and her appearance. She's lost more than 20 pounds in four months, but she's not dieting. And if you kick her out, she'll move in with that boyfriend who probably dragged her into his shithole in the first place. Or, worse yet, they'll break up soon after, and she'll end up skanking herself out to someone even lower on the totem pole to continue doing God knows what to her precious body and mind. Do you let her stay with you, perhaps slowing but passively condoning the inevitable self-destruction, or do you risk alienation by taking a stand, under the auspices of LOVE?

And then it gets even stickier.

What if it's not your child, but your spouse? What if -- and maybe y'all didn't do it this way -- you and your spouse stood up in front of God and everyone and swore that you'd stay by their side through thick and thin and rich and poor and all that shit? What if you said all those things when you were young and believed in unicorns and leprichauns and happy endings? What if you woke up one day and realized that you never imagined the kinds of conflict and discord that could weave itself into a marriage?

Societally speaking, we would rarely if ever damn a parent who just can't give up on their kid. But we look down on spouses who won't leave their screwed-up husband or wife all the time, don't we? Because the kid is blood. The kid you can't divorce. It's a bigger duty. Right?

Ironic, no? That we say vows for a marriage that we probably don't understand and don't always expect each other to keep, but we don't say any vows when we become parents. We forge a bond with this tiny mewling, utterly vulnerable creature without any promises or proclamations. Saying "I'd Do Anything" is almost easier than saying "I Do."

Here's to hoping we -- you and I, dear readers -- don't ever find ourselves in a situation where we have to pony up and prove we meant what we promised.

A part of the Tonya Craft case that should not get lost on people regardless of their opinion of her guilt or innocence is this: she was found not guilty because she could afford an amazing defense team. Some frightening and unknown number of innocent people are wrongly convicted every year of any number of crimes for the simple reason that they couldn't afford 1/100th of what Tonya Craft had.

Oh yeah. This is my all-time very favoritest Patty Griffin song ever.

Kinky Sex Blog (Part Two)

Notorious - Loverboy (mp3)
Tied Down and Chained - BoDeans (mp3)

This is a continuation from Tuesday's Kinky Sex Blog (Part One)...

When Flying Tandem, Avoid Ropes: The David Jansen Story

Meanwhile, the story out of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, gets odder every day. The original story: an Atlanta woman was kidnapped by an acquaintance, taken to a cabin near Gatlinburg and allegedly raped. A pizza delivery man arrives (dude pictured at right), sees this woman bound on the couch as the man pays for pizza, and the woman mouths "Call 911!", and the rest is history. The latest, according to the dude's lawyer: The woman has filed multiple false accusations of rape in her past. She was a stripper. They were having relations. She asked him to abduct her, because it was a fantasy of hers. He has text messages and emails and surveillance footage to substantiate his story. A couple in the next cabin saw no indication of forced captivity, either.

Except around here, the only part most people know is the part where a crazy man kidnapped a woman and raped her. The follow-up stories all fall inside the paper and don't make the TV news.

The dude's name is David Jansen. His mug shot is available in print and on the web. He was married, and his wife has filed a restraining order and for divorce. Meanwhile, the woman in question remains under journalistic protection. It is newspaper policy; it is not a legal issue. If journalists so chose, they could reveal her name, but they won't so long as she remains a "victim."

First, I ask not that you pity this man. The man dillied where he shouldn't have dallied, and he did so with a woman whose chest was clearly more stable than her brains. Either is enough for plenty of folks to think he deserves to sit in jail for a while. The wackos would be fine if he was shot or had his tallywhacker lopped off, but I think most reasonable minds are just fine with the "you lie down with dogs, you get fleas" theory.

My frustration is not in his exposure per se, but by the injustice of our journalistic standards. This guy's face and name are all over. We even know he's a software engineer from Snellville. Basically, his life as he knows it is totally over even though it looks increasingly like charges will be dropped before he ever stands trial. Who really knows whether he'll manage to find another job? Who knows how much in legal fees this experience will cost him? Yet, did he commit any actual crimes? Did he do anything expressly illegal? Probably not.

This woman, on the other hand, has Glenn Close'd a man's life. She's accused people falsely before, to the point of being sentenced to psychiatric help. She looks to have been a willing participant in this particular game. Yet her name and her identity is protected because she's a "victim," because this man gave her money for cosmetic work, because he went along with her kinky tie-me-up wishes, and because ordering pizza during bondage fantasy role-play is apparently par for the S+M course. ("No anchovies! Noooooo, not the anchovies!!!" "Yess you bad boy, you're gonna eat allllll the anchovies!!")

I absolutely despise this rule of journalistic ethics: If you're arrested, your face and your name and your ass is fair game. Guilt matters not a lick. But if you're an accuser with a criminal history of falsely accusing, you're protected.

Basically, it's OK for our media outlets to rape someone accused of a crime and drag them through the streets like dead soldiers in Somalia. The best the accused can hope for is a fair trial and a forever-sullied name.

One of my relatives, whose life was admittedly a small-town soap opera already, was on the verge of filing child abuse charges against her ex-husband's new wife when she was arrested for sexually molesting a friend of her daughter's. The girl in question was the daughter of the best friends of her ex-husband and new wife.

Now, at the very least, all of that looks suspicious. Yet one name was revealed, and one picture was put in the papers, and all other names are protected by journalistic integrity. My relative has lost her job and every last penny. She's lost all visitation rights to her daughter and hasn't seen her in more than a year. She's only allowed to see her son once a week for a few hours under strict supervision. Her parents have lost their retirement and put down a second mortgage on their house.

Trust me when I say this: I really hope my relative is guilty. If she's guilty, then justice or something like it is being served, and all this misery and suffering is, in some sense, justifiable. But if she's innocent? If she never did these things? Sadly, I believe she is innocent, which means that the accusing family engaged in a very Abigail Williams small-town witch hunt revenge plot that has spiraled into something straight out of anyone's worst nightmares.

If you think people in small-town South are above involving their young child in a revenge plot against an ex-wife, then you really haven't lived down here very long.

But for now, this is our reality: if you're accused, you're fair game. You're bound and gagged and declared "probably guilty" in the public sphere, and by the time you've proven yourself innocent, no one cares.

If you're the highly suspect accuser with questionable motives or dubious explanations, you're protected. You're free to throw accusations behind a veil of privacy and protection like a caged monkey throwing shit at onlookers.

"Notorious" was actually written by Jon Bon Jovi, but apparently had too much synth and wacky voice machine for his own band (?). If both songs can't be found at iTunes and Amazon.com, mock those companies and demand they grow up and get some real music.

The Seductive Wink of Innocence

Speeding Up to Slow Down - Better Than Ezra (mp3)
Love and Some Verses - Iron + Wine (mp3)

All my attic posts have led me to these thoughts...

During my first relationship, at 17 years of age, I never saw a single bra. My hands never touched unfettered flesh. Our two bodies interacted less in seven dizzying months than most teenagers today interact physically during a single playing of Rihanna's "Umbrella" at a school dance.

But I knew her lips. I knew her mouth better than most dental X-rays. I knew her jawline and her nose and where her bangs fell on her forehead and how often she opened her eyes when we kissed. At the time, nothing could have felt more like love than kissing her over and over and over.

You can see the danger in my being a parent, of having two daughters a mere handful of years away from this tempest of adolescence.

The danger is that my stunted and slowed method of romance somehow became a kind of idealized path: I lived the Disney Channel version of teenage romance, scrubbed boringly clean of all inappropriate activity. While I was busy identifying 2,000 ways to French kiss, like Eskimos who can identify so many shades of white, my socially-advanced peers seemed so busy one-upping each other in some kind of harried Game of Life (& Sex) that I frequently wondered if they ever stopped to smell the roses, so to speak. They always seemed focused on the next conquest, the next achievement.

The same seems true of many teenagers today, maybe teenagers of any generation. They're so damned eager to cross lines, as if growing up is some kind of 110m hurdle sprint, or a scavenger hunt, that they sometimes forget to savor much of it. Scarf down a burger. Scarf down a video game. Scarf down a bottle of liquor. Scarf down a girlfriend. Next! What's next?! More more more!

The way food critics eat a meal? That's the way we should be living our whole lives, right?
I'm pretty sure we all have scenes from movies that served as a blueprint, a guidepost, for a particular part of our lives. Being a movie nut, I have so many of these cornerstone scenes that some are tattooed into my subconscience. I've frequently forgotten they're there, framing my thoughts. Such a scene came to mind following a conversation with an old friend a few days ago. The Scene in question is of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Bridges in the 1989 film "The Fabulous Baker Boys." This one scene, perhaps more than any other scene I can think of (and I've been chewing on it for a couple of days now), framed my idea of what defined steamy passion:



If memory serves -- I haven't seen it since high school -- the movie was so far over my head as to remind me that I had a lot to learn before I became a real man. But the scene where Michelle sings "Makin' Whoopee" on that piano, and THE Scene after, where Jeff Bridges showed me how a man who's intent and intense can properly seduce the hottest 1989 female on the entire planet... those two scenes told me what sex could be without showing any sex. Those scenes told me I had a lot to learn before I needed to dip my toe in that pool. I might one day be a man, but not yet, and not by a long shot.

And the thing is, I was mostly OK with that. Sure, I wanted to grow up and be the kind of guy who could pull that feat of Pfeiffer-seduction off, and the sooner the damn better, but no point in red-lining the damn accelerator, y'know?

It's tragic that most teenagers feel this unbearable pressure to rush into the next thing, to reach that next step, to get older and "better" as quickly as they can. Being a popular teenager becomes less about creating a careful and deliberate work of art than about social drag racing. Can parents in any way fight that tide? Am I completely wrong in thinking that this tide has one helluva vicious undertow, that this tide will pose a threat to my girls?

Once you're older and wiser and more experienced, you can't go back. Once you enter a door to a new experience, you shed a layer of innocence like snakeskin and no amount of cosmetic surgery can graft it back onto your being. And as much as we can tell our children this, can they ever really grasp it until after they, too, have passed through a good number of those doors, shed a good number of those layers of innocence?

Don Henley ain't my musical hero by any stretch, but the man has written some great songs that are mostly lost on the young. I was 12 when "The Boys of Summer" came out and 17 when "The End of the Innocence" hit the airways. Both songs seemed really cool and catchy to me, but only after a couple of years of college livin' and college drinkin' and college carousin' did I really start to appreciate the genius in that pop.

The general gist of "The End of the Innocence" is, Darlin', I'm sorry life is tough, and I'm sorry the adults in our lives are for shit, and I'm sorry that we can't stay kids forever. But how about let's go somewhere private and get laid, and then I'll tell you how you've now officially (but willingly and voluntarily!) cashed in the only innocence you had left? Might as well lose it on your terms, since you're losin' it no matter what.

It's the kind of heartbreaking cynicism appreciated only by those who've been there, done that. And few lines in the history of rock more succinctly communicate the disillusionment of adulthood better than "Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac."

I won't know what is fair to expect of my girls. Ultimately I can't protect them or their innocence. I only want them to place some proper value to it, to sacrifice it with purpose and conviction rather than by mere accident or, well, innocence.

But then, maybe I've just been seduced by an innocence that was never what I've cracked it up to be.

I Wonder Where My First-Grade Classmates Are

Pretty Babies - Dishwalla (mp3)
What's the Matter Here? - 10,000 Maniacs (mp3)

Billy is on sick leave today. In his stead is a column he wrote for the Warner Robins Daily Sun in the spring of 1995.

I Wonder Where My First Grade Classmates Are...

I didn't learn everything I needed to know in Kindergarten. Or first grade, for that matter. But I always tell people I wish I could stay that age. I wish I could be in first grade forever, because nothing was wrong with anyone. Everyone looks at me like I'm weird when I say this. I don't understand why.

My cousin Cathy was in my class. While me and Timmy Burkhalt were busy being Bo and Luke Duke, driving around the playground in our imaginary General Lee, Cathy was sitting on the monkey bars with Mason Jenkins.

Mason was black, and Cathy used to tell me she was going to marry him. One day, Cathy told that secret to her parents. Cathy and Mason never talked to each other after that. I don't think I ever heard Cathy call him that bad name until after she told her parents. After that, though, Cathy called him that word all the time. But not to his face, because she knew it would get her in trouble.

Mason moved to New York in the middle of the second grade. I think his father got a job trading on Wall Street. They were rich, and his father was a genius.

Cathy's married now. To a white guy. Her husband likes fishing. I hear he especially likes to fish for bass. And women.

Last time I talked to Cathy, she asked me if I remembered Mason, if I remembered how she used to say she'd marry him. Back before she noticed the color of his skin, before she knew how bad black people were.

Bill Robertson lived down the street from my aunt, the aunt I stayed with after school until my mom could pick me up. My aunt knew Bill's mom, so they always made us do stuff together in the afternoons.

Bill loved cartoons, and he was a little strange. We usually played with his Superfriends dolls, but sometimes he'd start shaking and banging his head against the floor. His mom would come and get him and put him in bed and tell me Bill couldn't play anymore that day.

One day during show and tell, he got up and said he was the Incredible Hulk. He started growling and hitting the chalk board with his fist. Then he peed in his pants. Bill didn't return for second grade. I never told anyone I used to go to his house.

Bobby Fields was pretty popular. He was pretty smart, if second graders can be smart, and nobody ever talked bad about Bob. He was a politician even in first grade, always saying the right things to the right people.

Bob and I used to talk about baseball, because his uncle was a pitcher for the Astros. I changed schools in third grade, and I lost touch with Bob.

Five years ago, Bob was away at Texas Christian University, where he had been voted into the student council as a sophomore, and he was coming back home for Christmas Break. Unfortunately, Bob stopped at a gas station that was getting robbed. He was back at the coolers getting a soda when the masked guy came in with a gun.

According to the papers, Bob tried to talk the guy out of robbing the store. The robber didn't take any money. Bob died from the gunshot wounds before they could get him to the hospital. Bob's murderer never got caught.

Nikki White was the most gorgeous girl. Even in second grade, our classroom of guys, who usually didn't admit to liking girls, battled on the playground for Nikki's attention.

I never knew Nikki well enough, because I wasn't the most impressive playground competitor, and Nikki only allowed the best to court her.

A friend of mine told me Nikki lives in a trailer park outside of Rossville, Georgia. She has four children from three different fathers and lives alone, on welfare. Nobody competes on the playground for her anymore.

Rachel Russell was shy. She was always sitting under trees and wouldn't really talk to anyone. After I learned Nikki would never be interested in my advances, I spent quite a while trying to impress Rachel. Maybe because Rachel was the one girl harder to reach than Nikki.

Rachel made good grades, and Rachel dressed for school like most of us did for church.

Rachel moved away just after Valentine's Day. Her mother took her away, and we never found out where. I learned later that Rachel's father loved Rachel more than a father is supposed to. But he didn't ever beat her, if that's a concession. Funny how she never looked anything but pristine in those Sunday dresses.

I was the only person she gave a Valentine to. I still have it. I miss Rachel, and I wonder if I should have tried harder to talk to her under that tree.

I don't understand why people look at me weird when I tell them I wish I was back in first grade. I wish it all the time.

The only thing I wish for more often is for Rachel's father to trade places with Bob at that gas station.

"Pretty Babies" is from Dishwalla's debut album, Pet Your Friends. "What's the Matter Here?" is from the MTV Unplugged album. Both can be hunted down on iTunes and Amazon.com.