It was probably about the middle of the eighteenth century.  I was called Kitty. As a young woman 14 or 15 years old, I
lived in a seaport city in England with my mother. My father was a sea
captain, partner in a shipping business in the West Indies. When my
mother died, I took passage on a ship to join my father in the New
World.

From the scenes I recalled, costumes, architecture, and culture, I think the city
was Kingston, Jamaica. When I arrived there, I found the shipping office and met
my father’s partner. I was welcomed, and told that my father had been
missing for some time and presumed lost at sea with his ship and crew .

The partner and his wife took me in and treated me as part of the
family. I often went down to the port and sought news of my father. On
one occasion, in a shop that sold junk and used ships’ furnishings, I
found a ship’s logbook with my father’s name on the cover. There were
missing pages, and the remaining pages were blank. My father’s partner
and others believed this to be evidence that the ship had been taken by
pirates, not sunk in a storm. That was the only clue I ever had to my father’s
fate.

My new guardian had a son a little older than I. His name was Danny.
I loved him at first sight, which is no surprise, considering that the
two of us had been together in many lives before that one. I never
wanted to be apart from him. When I learned that it had been decided he
was to sail in the crew of one of his father’s ships, to learn the
ropes and prepare to take over the business, I disguised myself as a
boy and obtained a berth as cabin boy on that ship.

I carried off the masquerade for a week or two, recognized only by
Danny. He was angry that I had committed such a foolhardy act, and
avoided my company. There was prudence in this, because the belief that
a woman aboard brought bad luck was strongly held among seamen. Women
were dealt with harshly whenever one was bold enough to stow away on a
ship. Exceptions were made occasionally for groups of women as
passengers, and for the wives of ships’ masters and mates, but a single
woman found on a ship could expect to go overboard. If I had ever known
this in that lifetime, I disregarded it.

When my menstrual period came, my masquerade was over. One day I
passed near a crewman on a ladder and my scent gave me away. I was
dragged onto the deck, bound with ropes, and a discussion of how to
dispose of me was begun. Danny tried to come first to my defense, and
then to my rescue. He was overpowered and tied to a mast, where I
watched him struggling and heard his pleas and threats to the crew.
Eventually after a discussion of how to deal with him, those who wanted
to dispose of Danny as they would get rid of me were overruled by the
loyal captain‘s vow to look after his boss‘s son. To quiet Danny, they
poured rum down his throat.

I was stripped and tied face-down over a rail. As the crew took
turns raping me, Danny’s voice became slurred and then quiet as he lost
consciousness. After a while, I was no longer in my body, but was
watching the scene from somewhere up in the rigging. When the men were
finished with my apparently lifeless body, they tossed it overboard. I
watched it go with a feeling something like, “wait, I’m not done with
that.”

Danny was kept drunk for most of the rest of the voyage, and I
stayed with him. I have no sense of time for the remainder of his life,
but my spirit was with him throughout. He behaved like the haunted man
he was. He drank continually and wandered from one seaport saloon to
another. One night, he saw one of the men who had raped and killed me.
When the man left the bar, Danny followed him, caught him in a narrow,
dark street, and gutted him with a knife.

He must have been in an alcoholic blackout, because in the morning
he saw the blood on his hands and clothing and didn’t understand what
had happened. Alarmed into caution, he got rid of the evidence and
tried to curtail his drinking. That effort failed, and eventually he
found and killed another of the sailors. After that murder, he began
actively hunting the men responsible for my death. Beginning with a
mission, he ended in a mad obsession. He decompensated just as modern
researchers have seen other serial killers do.  I remember at
least five murders, with Danny becoming increasingly careless and
sloppy about concealing evidence. The latter killings were random
targets of opportunity, drunken re-enactments to relieve bloodlust.

I don’t recall Danny’s end. Nor do I recall when or how it was that
I left him.  Maybe he just grossed me out.  I don’t suppose
he had the presence of mind to have me exorcised, but some African
adept might have sensed my presence and released my soul.  Logic
suggests that either the authorities, vigilante-style concerned
citizens, his family or a resourceful intended victim eventually killed
him, or he drank himself to death, fell off a pier or something. My
soulmate Greyfox,
the man who had been Danny, has never expressed an interest in
undertaking an in-depth exploration of that life, and I would not ask
him to undergo the regression sessions just to satisfy my
curiosity.  He is aware of and comfortable with his inner madman.

I was still in my teens the first time I heard a shrink say I had an “addictive personality”. So, I’ve had forty years to think about that concept and to study addiction. If the shrinks can expand their definition of “personality” to include neuroelectrochemical idiosyncracies, I’ll wear that label, maybe.

If this were a personality disorder, I would tend to think I might easily have become an alcoholic or opioid addict after repeated exposure.  But I loathe the way alcohol makes me feel, and every opioid I’ve ever been given has caused some sort of allergic reaction.

After two exposures to cocaine, I decided that the sensation of my heart stopping and then racing to catch up was uncomfortable enough to outweigh the euphoria. No problem saying no to that one from then on. My emotional responses to the way prescribed barbiturates deleteriously changed me and my life were enough to impel me, against medical advice, to break that addiction. I’m so sensitive to common liver- and kidney-toxic painkillers that I chose to train myself to use a mind-over-matter pain control technique rather than take the pills. Maybe all this is consistent with “addictive personality disorder.” I’m not qualified to say. Diagnoses must be made by licensed professionals.

I find it interesting that I’ve avoided and escaped addiction to so many common highly addictive drugs while being so wretchedly strung out on simple food substances that don’t cause any problems at all for many people. The only drug that ever tempted me to full-blown addictive excess was methamphetamine, and after a three-month run on that I quit and never put another needle in my veins. But since childhood I have been uncontrolledly addicted to casein, gluten, starch, sugar, and probably [although I've yet to find any scientific work even hinting that it is addictive] albumen.

Some patterns in my behavior are obsessive. I study obsessively, and sometimes I work at a project with rapt intensity until it is all wrapped up. I become fascinated with a question or a mystery, and I can spend sixteen or eighteen hours a day chasing the answers. When I first met the old fart, he seemed to discount these obsessions, calling them “positive addictions.”

After living for over a decade with dinner conversation telling him more than he ever wanted to know about serial killers, or about cannibalism in Chaco Canyon, often fixing his own dinner and slipping a sandwich under my nose so I don’t get famished and faint at my worktable, he is less likely now to take these obsessions lightly. For the last few weeks, he has been forced to keep his own counsel even more than is his custom, because I keep hunching over this keyboard and only glancing up, when he manages to get my attention, long enough to ask him, “Can’t you cut to the chase and let me get back to my writing before this idea evaporates?”

If there is any hope at all for me to transcend these persistent food addictions and regain a bit of physical health so that this quirky-but-fun mind can enjoy more geographic mobility and useful longevity, then it surely has to come through the power of Will. And where is that Will? Well, I think it is coming, growing inside me. I’ll just have to turn those concentration skills and obsessive tendencies to the pursuit of health.

My first Xanga blog was all about the idea of the “extinction burst”. Right at this moment, my mind is open to the thought of bringing it to a halt. My body is rebelling against the abuse I’ve been handing it. It wants to clean up, straighten out, and dance again. Body/mind still feels the pull of the cinnamon rolls and triple chocolate ice cream, the coffee, and all that crap. I’m still going around and around, but the carousel seems to be slowing down.

It started with the AR-7. I was headed out of Anchorage on a backpacking trek after my first year of living and working in that city that lies only a few short highway miles from the real Alaska. The man in my life at the time, whom I had not yet then married or divorced, Mr.X, advised me to carry a firearm.

He grew up in this great land. It molded his philosophy. On boyhood wanderings in the same area where I’d be hiking, his rifle had brought down hares and grouse for his campfires, and one time when for days nothing else could be found, a seagull made a wholesome but distasteful meal.

I carried rice, beans, trail mix, and some fishing gear, but he said it could take weeks to walk the Stampede Trail and to keep up my strength I’d need meat. Besides that, he said, although a .22 wasn’t much good against bears, it was better than nothing.  Okay, that made sense to me. He’d never steered me wrong before, in matters of long johns and such that first winter when I’d frostbit my kneecaps walking to work in parka and mini-skirt at 25 below zero. I let him give me this slick lightweight rifle that broke down and stowed in its own buoyant plastic stock. It fit in my pack and didn’t weigh much. The trip was a trip, but that’s another story.

We married, had a kid, moved out of the city, and divorced. Still the best of friends then, almost twenty years ago, we are friends and neighbors even now.  When in his absence from here I started getting insistent unwelcome attention from my horny bachelor neighbors, I asked his advice on how best to turn them off.  He said he would think on it.  On his visit the following weekend, he brought the .357 magnum.

I said to him, “But I don’t want to shoot anyone, I just want the bozos to quit following me when I walk down the road, and stop coming by late at night knocking at my door.” He, as he often does, said, “Don’t worry about it, come on,” and he led me to the gravel pit between here and the lodge, where most of the neighborhood goes for target practice.

Whenever someone is down there shooting, everyone else in the neighborhood with ears to hear knows what’s going on. We burned about a hundred rounds of ammo, until I was familiar with the action and sure in my aim. Then we went to the lodge for refreshments. Amid the usual Saturday crowd, I dutifully handed my heavy gunbelt over to the bartender for safekeeping while Mr.X bragged to all present about what a good shot I was with my new weapon. The bozos never bothered me again.

A few years went by, and the old fart and I hadn’t met yet but were courting through letters and long distance calls, when abnormally heavy snows created problems for the moose and everyone else in this valley. The moose were starving because they could not get around in the deep snow to browse on the willows and alders. Stuck in the plowed roads, along the railroad tracks and in our driveways, maddened with hunger, the normally shy and harmless moose became dangerous. We were advised by Troopers and Fish and Game officers to avoid confrontations if possible, but go armed just in case.

One morning, coming home the long way around after walking the kid to the bus stop, I was trying to avoid a cow and two calves who had staked out a claim in the road north of my house when a bull charged at me out of a neighbor’s driveway a block south. When an evasive move up a steep and deep snow berm only got me mired to the hip, I resignedly fired the .357 and my fourth shot finally discouraged the bull and he turned.

After making my shaky way home, I called on a neighbor who guides hunting parties for a living. He collected Mr. X and another friend and they tracked my wounded bull and finished the poor beast. Then the three of them did their best to convince me that a four-inch revolver lacked the power, accuracy and punch to put down a moose. Their joint recommendation was a pump shotgun, at least twelve gauge. The following winter, my new husband the old fart, bought me the Remington.

When our son turned thirteen, Mr.X presented him with the .22 Marlin, a thing of elegant beauty. The kid had been shooting my AR-7 and various other pieces since age 5 and was ready to be trusted with one of his own.

Most of the other guns around here were either left for safekeeping or just passing through as weapons do when one is married to an arms dealer.  The rest were that flatulent old arms dealer’s prized personal possessions. One particular piece I left out of the inventory I made for Dane Bramage was the old fart’s sentimental favorite, a Saturday night special of the same make and model as the one John Hinkley used to shoot Ronald Reagan.

Now I’ve answered the question of why I have all the armaments, but that leaves the, “What am I afraid of?” question hanging there. That is easy to answer. I can do it briefly, too. I’m not afraid of much of anything, really. When I give it a lot of soul-searching introspection, I must admit to some occasional vague apprehension lest I make a big mistake of some kind. That’s just part of being a perfectionist, I guess. I want to get it right, all the time. But fear is a thing of the past. What do I fear? What do I have to fear? Nothing at all.

Addendum:

I was doing a final edit of the above after posting, when chastityrose left this comment:

“Ok, LOL, but now I’m curious as to who “old fart” is, why you refer to him as only that and is he deceased?  It sounds like he’s either dead or very far away.  LOL

No, I think I’m more curious about why you got married!  At all.  LOL  Sorry, but you just seem too together and mature to need anyone else.  No, that’s too stupid a statement too. 

‘Never Mind’.”

I’m sorry, dear, but “never mind” will never do.  I can’t let such great questions go unanswered.  I just hope I can do them justice without going over novella-length.

The infamous old fart is my husband, business partner, soulmate and co-conspirator, Greyfox.  I started referring to him that way here on the advice of those who don’t think we should be putting our real identities out there for all the world’s stalkers and spam artists to see.  That particular epithet is how he occasionally refers to himself.  My son and I, irreverent to the end, picked up on it with delight.

“It sounds like he’s either dead or very far away.  LOL”  Honey, this is funnier than you will ever know.  I just read it to Greyfox and he got a good laugh out of it, too.  In a very real sense, the man I married is dead.  The one who is here now is a walk-in [and that is indeed a very long story, which I will reserve for another time].  With his absent-minded nature and his preference for solitude, he is usually “far away”, even if it’s only in another room of this house.

Each of my marriages was for what (to me at the time) seemed like a good reason.  The first, in Bible-Belt Texas of the ‘Fifties, when I was fourteen years old, was for sex.  My mother thought my boyfriend and I were getting “too serious” and tried to break us up.  I was very serious and unwilling to give up sex once I’d managed to find a young man willing to relieve me of my virginity.  With his complicity, I pretended to be pregnant, and Mama signed the consent for underage marriage.  It wasn’t a good match; he was an abused child who turned into an abusive spouse and parent.  I swore to myself I’d never wed again.

Lying to oneself, BTW, is a bad habit.  The next two marriages were to military men.  I lived with each of them in my own digs off-post until their first-sergeants learned of the arrangements and ordered them back into barracks.  Legal formalities were a means to get them back into my bed and to get the perks and benefits of a military dependant.

My fourth marriage, to the speed freak and dealer known as The Hulk, was a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to skirt some probation restrictions and stay together and out of jail.  “Unsuccessful” says it all.

The fifth and sixth, to Mr. X and the old fart respectively, were for the flimsy excuse that they talked me into it.  I lived with Mr. X for several years before we married, and he was regularly bringing up the marriage question.  I think he wanted some assurance that I wouldn’t wander off with the next sexy man who walked by.  When he had convinced me that I could get out of it whenever I wanted to, I consented, but on the condition that I could write the vows.  There was no “’til death” business in there.  By that time, I’d stopped making promises I didn’t intend to keep.  After eleven years, he and I split up over issues of honesty and secrecy, but we remained friends.

Then along came my soulmate, Greyfox.  This story deserves a lengthier treatment, which it will get, eventually.  For now, the short version:  he found me through an ad for psychic readings by mail.  He was blown away by my insights, and then both of us started recalling past lives we had spent together.  First he came to AK from PA for a visit, then decided to take early retirement and move here to join me so we could work together and BE together.

I was contented with that, but for his own reasons he wanted to marry me.  He said  it was for reasons of his “upper middle-class values”.  *ROFLMAO*  He, too, was insecure and wanted to stake a claim on me, not unlike Mr. X.  He had other reasons for wanting to move here as well.  He was going down from alcoholism and reached out to me for a lifeline.  I’m a healer by vocation and preference.  After extracting a promise that he would bear the paperwork and expense of a divorce if I asked for it, I married him.  I should have gotten that promise in writing.  And I’m going to leave the rest of that story for a later blog.

Thanks again for asking.

He asked me if I have a gun. We had been exchanging emails a couple of times a week for a few months, after running into each other at Yahoo. I’ll call him Yahoo for short, but his real name is Dane Bramage.

We had some things in common, most notably initiation in Kriya yoga and connections to Leadville, CO. Just enough in common to prolong the correspondence enough to reveal a lot of differences. In about his third email, and again periodically over the course of these exchanges, he professed his intent to marry me. I told him the first time that it wouldn’t happen and over time I repeated, “no”, backed up by several good reasons.

Most people don’t know what it’s like to have a brain that’s lacking some of its higher functions. Even with professional training and experience it is hard to sort the psychological aberrations from the effects of organic damage. I had some compassion for this guy with his challenges and setbacks, but those very same unfortunate quirks, tics and fetishes that aroused my sympathy were causing him to creep me out.

The final straw came for me after I included him with half a dozen other recipients of a little email blurb about a haircut. He unloaded all over me. Apparently his religion considers the cutting of hair to be an abomination. Not one to dump even a casual friend without a farewell, I politely asked him where the hell he thought he got off trying to dictate to me on personal hygiene and grooming. I said I didn’t see any reason to continue our correspondence. Good bye.

Then he wrote back and said he thought he would pay me a visit. I didn’t answer. I blocked his address so I wouldn’t keep seeing his name and those bizarre, vaguely ominous subject lines in the inbox, but when I was ready to deal with the nonsense and crap I’d go through the trash folder and see what he had to say before dumping it all. Psycho-neuro-pathology isn’t just part of my professional turf, it’s sort of a hobby of mine.

But enough is enough, so when he asked if I own a gun, I decided to answer him. Thinking, “I have nothing to hide,” and knowing that the pure unvarnished truth would serve me best in this situation, I let him have it with both barrels, so to speak.

I said that from where I sat at the keyboard, the kid’s Marlin .22 cal. semi-auto rifle and my pump-action Remington 12 gauge were within reach, and an absent friend’s Mossberg was just a further step away. I mentioned the derringer the old fart keeps on his night stand, the .45 cal. Ruger Blackhawk under the edge of his bed, and the Charter Arms .22 target pistol on the shelf in his closet. I told him about the other two Rugers: the scoped thirty ought six that hangs over the PlayStation, and the stainless steel Security Six .357 mag. with a 4″ barrel under the edge of my mattress.

Just for fun, I added that hanging from the same shelf where my AR-7 survival rifle rests, is the kid’s collection of edged weapons. That son of mine sifts choice specimens from the old fart’s stock of knives and swords the same way I do with the rocks. With our family discount the collections have, over time, grown kinda impressive. I brag a bit sometimes. So, shoot me. Anyhow, I thought that would get rid of the yahoo for good, but the very next day there was one more email, asking me why all the armaments, what I’m afraid of.

Anyone interested in the answer to that?