Lawsuits, etc.

Ted called me from Key West this morning. I liked that since I just got a call from someone who wanted to talk to my youngest son. I asked who it was since I just put the phone on the charger and I knew my son was still asleep. I said I was my son's mother. He said he was my son's grandfather. I ran to the other side of the house since the only grandfather was my ex-husband's father and I was afraid something had happened to my oldest son who is a state policeman. My son ran and answered the phone and it was his father who had disguised his voice. I breathed a sigh of relief. My son gave his father his correct phone number for future reference although his other brother has it. I have no idea why he needed to call me.

Of course, Ted, was full of espresso and not feeling well as he had just been served a summons. He was ready to release a book in a few days in which he describes a rape that happened to him when he was nine years old. The rapist had read an advance copy of the book that he got from Ted's mother and he felt that people would know who he was from the description. He was suing Ted for damages and an order to stop the release of the book.

"It just brings up all of the things I felt back then," he said over the phone. I could hear the hissing of the espresso machine and people talking in the distance. "He told me not to tell anyone although I was injured. My mother saw the blood on my shorts and took me to the hospital. I told her who it was and she didn't tell the police either. None of us did."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because he was my father's brother and he was supporting us. Dad was somewhere trying to make a big killing or something. My mother said if he was arrested or people knew he raped a boy, he would harm him as a doctor. And we would not have any money to live on. "

That part was not in the book. I had read the advance copy of the book already. It was his best and did not want to see it stopped although I had no idea if his uncle had enough to do that. I asked him about that.

"No, the publisher always makes sure I have plenty of evidence before we start a run of a book. I have a notarized statement from my mother and from a cousin who was raped by him too. He does not know we have that. I support my mother now so he does not have the power of the purse anymore."

I thought about the many writers that did not have that and how many of them have been sued some for good reasons and some for speaking the truth when someone did not want the truth out there. I heard an lawyer at a League of Women Voters say that the worst thing you can do to a public official was to embarrass him or her. I think that goes for anyone. The doctor in question was now retired. I wonder why the cousin did not sue him except that it was beyond the statue of limitations or men still find it embarrassing that they were raped by men. Ted is not one of them, thank goodness.

Ted said that although he knew he was gay before he was raped, but he had nightmares from that experience for years. He had told his uncle that he might be gay and was scared with that knowledge and the good doctor told him that he gave him some lessons on what it was like to be gay. Ted wrote about being powerless and starring at the mattress as he was being held down and for a long time he thought of sex as painful and degrading. He found out it was not that way at all although he has not been able to sustain a long lasting relationship with anyone, but that is another book he will write someday. He did not want to tell me about it as it would ruin the book if he did.

What he did want to talk about was a discussion that he had with another writer who said writers are not what they write about and Ted had disagreed. Another writer who wrote about writing meditation and novels as well was there in Key West for a writer's workshop and she agreed with Ted. She said she had different parts of her self in her novels and that she was her books but in metaphor form. I had to think about that for a while. Am I my books, stories, these blogs? Yes and no.

Ted said that several other writers were of that opinion. Sometimes the stuff they wrote were not of themselves but from somewhere else outside of self, almost a spiritual bonding of the writer and of the Cosmos. I liked that and agreed to it in part. Sometimes when I am writing, something takes over and I am writing with something else I can't identify that writes with me. Sometimes, it is not there. Ted said he never has that feeling but works on uncovering the layers of experiences that is him so he is what he writes. The writing meditation teacher agrees although she feels a spiritual connection it is still her writing,her words.

I am sure the debate continued after I got off the phone. Ted was there with the other writers for the same conference on writing. He is always amazed that people pay so much money to just hear them in person. Sometimes when it is not far from where I live, he sends me tickets to those conferences. I go when I can. It is the transportation that is the problem. Still, he did raise some interesting questions as he always do. There are no definite answers.