Okay so i live with my dad who’s an alcoholic and my mum attends these groups called Al-anon and she says they really help her out and suggested that i go to one, but for teens who go through a hard time with relations to alcoholism. I just don’t know whether to go or not. I’m going to find it really hard talking and being sentimental about it with people i don’t even know. I dont know.. maybe it will help me? I’m a quiet person and i don’t want to look like some freak who doesn’t talk. :S what should i do?

When I woke up, I instinctively reached for Jack, and was shocked when the flat wrinkled sheets greeted me instead of his warm sleeping body. It took all my energy to push back the sheets and climb out of bed to go look for him. I padded down the hall in my now constant pose—one hand on my hips to support myself, one hand on my belly to support my baby. The baby’s kicks were coming more and more frequently; it made my pregnancy become real in ways a little plastic drugstore pregnancy test couldn’t. Jack loved to feel the baby kick. He, the big strong football man, always said, “Maybe we’ll make a punter out of him yet!” with an air of half-joking, half-longing.

Speaking of Jack: where was he? Not in the bed, not in the kitchen. It wasn’t until I reached the living room that I found him, passed out on the couch, one arm draped lazily over a pillow. That arm of his made tears spring to my eyes. He always did that when he was sleeping, though I usually took the place of the pillow. I had always been an emotional person, and with the baby and all, I was a walking bomb of tears. I touched him gently on the shoulder with one hand, while wiping my eyes with the other. He didn’t immediately wake up, and after a few more attempts, the tears turned to suspicion. Jack was never this hard to wake up unless…

I crouched over him, opening his eyes with one finger. Yep. They were bloodshot alright. His face was flushed, though from a night out or a cold he was developing, I couldn’t tell. My worst fears were confirmed when he let out a long breath, and the smell of alcohol invaded my nose, making me nauseous. He had been drunk all right. No more Mrs. Nice Wife. The hand that had moved me to tears fell to the floor as he shifted to his sleep, and I took the opportunity to step on it…hard.

He let out a string of obscenities, and then yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WOMAN?”

Oh, he knew how much I hated being called ‘woman’ (or was he too hung over to remember?). Two could play at that game. “You’ve been drinking!” I accused my voice as loud as his.

“Yeah, so?” he challenged, shoving himself off of the couch to tower over me. I was five five, and he was six two, so when he wanted to, he could really bear down on me. I guess he meant to intimidate me, but I would not be swayed.

“You swore you wouldn’t!” I said, shoving his chest. “I don’t want the baby to grow up with a drunk for a father! You said you’d stop drinking! You were going to be sober, remember? Or did the booze just wash your memory away?”

“I will!” he yelled. “I’m a grown man, and I’ll do what I want! I’ll stop drinking before the baby gets here!”

“Well, Jack, dear,” I screamed, my voice just dripping with sarcasm, “I’m eight months and two weeks pregnant! So you better start now, cause’ it’s gonna take you a looong time. If you won’t stop for me, stop for your kid!”

He rolled his eyes and matched my sarcasm. “The baby? What baby, Emma? Oh, the baby! I almost forgot you were pregnant, seeing as you NEVER mention it!”

“What do you want me to do? Completely ignore it? If you haven’t noticed, there’s a large bump protruding out of my body!” I gestured to my baby bump as I spoke.

“Well, you don’t have to freaking talk about it all the time!”

I burst into tears. I didn’t know whether I was crying about his alcoholism or his blatant indifference about his own child, but it was still enough to make me sob. He seemed unmoved by my tears. I wiped my eyes, tried to control my voice as I said, “You’re not the man I married. I don’t know who you are, but I know that I want that sweet, kind, caring Jack, not the angry, bitter, rude Jack. Get over yourself.”

Then I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore, and with my hand on my belly, I left the room.

LAWYERS, if any, please help.
Can they send you to prison for that? My dads a lawyer and says they will just give him a ticket, it’s a small ticket and no big deal, like J-walking.
He says in order for someone to really mess up and get sent to prison, you would need to commit a bad crime such as another felony or a DUI or something.
INFO:
My boyfriend is in jail right now because he got caught driving w/out a license. NOT on the street but just in a parking lot. THe jail website hes in now, online says its a probation violation but my dad also says its up to his PO if he gets revoked.
Anyone agree with my dad or can they really send you for a small traffic ticket like that?
Please DONT try to be all “goody goody” on me and say “anyone who spits wrong on probation gets taken to prison”, i want to know the odds of him going for real.
All I need is a straight up answer thanks.
Hes on probation, not parol, never been to prison.
Hes on probation for armed robbery and assault. Been doing everything hes supposed to be doing for the past 4 onths that hes been on probation. He has 2 years left to go. Never got i trouble while on probation before this.
AND also, so it IS up to his PO whether or not he needs to go to court? Or can his PO just say hes free to go w/out going to court?

I kill whole families- indirectly, that is, because I buy drugs.

Can men take Starflower oil? I know women intake starflower oil to reduce the moodyness during their peroids and stuff, but starflower oil can also help people with arthritis – My dad has a case of arthritis in his arm, and i told him to take starflower oil after finding out that it can help arthritis, but my mom thinks that men shouldn’t take them? I don’t think theres any reason why men shouldn’t take them.

Starflower oil can benifit lot’s of things, like arthritis, alcoholism, blood pressure, and many more! Aswell as helping during women’s periods. So they could hardly be restricted to only women with those problems?

I left my husband in Feb. because his alcoholism had gotten so bad that he finally hit our children. This had NEVER happened before, so the first time, I thought it was an accident (he said it was). The second time, I began laying my plans to leave, and he did it one more time before I could get out. I didn’t report it because I didn’t want to expose the children to interrogation or witnessing their father being carted off to jail. We lived in Illinois at the time, I now live in Tennessee with the kids. Legal aid here won’t help me because I haven’t lived here for 6 months and am not a legal resident, and Illinois legal aid won’t help me because I don’t live there, either!!! In his petition, he is trying to make sure that he can see the children, but I CAN NOT let the kids be with a man who drives drunk on a regular basis, and who hits them!!! What can I do to file my own petition and try to get him help (he admits he needs help), OR keep the kids from him until he sobers up?

Prologue
“Patron Saint of the Forgotten People,” Estella whispered hoarsely, her eyes dancing in a cocaine-infused frenzy, her lithe fingers twisting the rosary around her neck. “Because that’s what we are, right?”
Phantom shadows slithered on the ceiling of her dimly lit bedroom; sinister apparitions caught in the corner of my eye, but when I turned to get a better look, nothing was there. The muffled sounds from her father’s party on the next floor up floated down to us, music and laughter mingling with the clinking of champagne glasses.
Estella’s hair was an auburn halo of rambunctious curls, her lips formed a shifty half smile, and she stared intensely at me through dilated pupils.
“We’re just useless, pretty little dolls, aren’t we? Nobody wants to know how we feel or who we are. If we didn’t have each other, we’d have nobody.” Her voice broke and her eyes blazed with desperate fire.
I leaned onto one elbow and smoothed the fushia satin comforter on her bed absently. Cocaine made her confide her deepest secrets, the ones she normally concealed under her creamy skin and cocktail dresses. Cocaine made my thoughts accelerate and barrel through my brain faster than I could make sense of them.
Our eyes met; identical in pupil size and opposites in color, mine blue and hers a burnished chestnut.
The sapphire skirt of my dress rustled as I sat up and pulled the mirror covered in finely chopped white powder onto my lap. I saw a flash of silver and noticed Estella had taken the razor from her bedside table. I felt my heart migrate up into my throat as Estella drew the sharp edge of the razor over the tender underside of her pale arm. Her blood dripped delicately onto the emerald of her dress, rolling down her arm and staining her skin.
My stomach turned in revulsion, but how could I tell her not to? She wouldn’t have listened.
Her smile was wide and perceptive. “We’re all masochists in our own way, aren’t we, Iris?”
I nodded and bent my head to inhale one of the lines of cocaine I’d chopped earlier. Courage in powdered form.
My hair tumbled over my shoulders, a thick brown curtain, and I tried to shrug it back. Estella slid closer to me, so close we were nose to nose, and held my hair behind my neck as I snorted the thick white line. Moisture sprung up in my eyes, and I blinked furiously as Estella removed the mirror from my lap and gently rubbed her thumbs underneath my eyes, removing the smudges my liner had left.
“I can’t take you anywhere with smeared eye makeup, you know,” she said lightly, smoothing my hair and touching her own to make sure her energetic curls were still behaving. “Father,” she said the word in an attempt to sound regal and snotty, “will be wondering where we’ve got to.”
“Like he even notices,” I answered, waving my hand dismissively. The blue diamond of my cocktail ring caught the dim light and the reflection blistered all over the walls of her room. “You should change,” I told her, getting up and walking to her mirrored closet doors. “You don’t want your dad asking questions,” I added, gesturing to the blood stain flowering on the expensive material of the dress she’d destroyed.
“We should at least go back for more drinks,” she said, throwing her head back and laughing, her hair a river of reddish-brown curls as she tugged a slim-fitting, simple black dress over her head.
I reached out a trembling hand and did what I could with her self-inflicted wounds, dabbing at the cut and pulling a bandage out from a drawer in her bedside table. I looked up at her as I spread it over her ruined arm, my face hungrily searching hers.
Why wasn’t she getting better?
She looked happy; we both always did. How could we pretend to be anything but, when we had anything and everything we wanted? Nobody who looked at us could tell that inside, something awful festered. Nobody knew that inside, we were as cold and hard as the diamonds we wore on our fingers and our throats.

Sorry if it’s too long.
Anyway, if anyone wants to read the rest and help me out in the way of crtiques, you can e-mail me at melissa_simonson@yahoo.com and I’ll send you the rest I’ve got so far.

Thanks.
BTW- it’s supposed to be confusing. I want the reader to be confused and interested at the same time, and want to read the rest.

Okay, this is my first time renting a Car from Dollar Rent a Car. I want to know if anyone has used this company before using a Debit Card as a Credit Card. What are they looking for in my credit history? DUI’s, DWI’s??? I’ve seen my mom and dad rent cars with debit cards before, just unsure if they told the “rep” Credit instead of debit. I can really use some great advice now, I want to take my husband to FL to see his family he hasn’t seen in 35 years

Again..Why does this particular car company do credit checks or any other rental company…Also my credit is so-so..would it make a difference if I told the Dollar Representative Credit instead of Debit?

Again Please Help
We’ll I’m well over that age.1 more year to the big 30..I just want his birthday to be a special one.. I’ll be heart-broken if it doesn’t work out..
@Dick Car…Thanks I will tell him…lol
I live in the nyc borough Bronx…I am willing to use it as Credit instead of Debit,,there will be enough on the account trust me…The rental is 740.32 for 2 weeks unlimited mileage..they said 15% = 350.00 deposit, so I should about 1,100 in the account to qualify..Yes or No? Again I’m a rental car Virgin sorta speak..lol

Yugo & Super Dave DRUG Public Service Announcement

In a novel I have nearly finished, there is a happy family: man and wife, a 6 year old girl and 12 year old boy. Now, the man is late from collecting the little girl from school one afternoon, and she has to join the after-school club. While she is waiting on her dad, there is a freak accident and she is killed. Of course, it wasn’t her father’s fault, but it wouldn’t have happened if he had collected her on time.

My question is this:
1) If you were the mother, what would you do – both in the short term and in the long term.
2) If you were the father, what would you do – both in the short term and in the long term.
3) My current working scenario is this: the woman can’t help but blame the man for the girl’s death – even though she knows all the circumstances. She divorces the man shortly after the little girl’s funeral. She takes the 12 year old boy. She finds it too hard to have the man in her life again, and so tells him to stay away. To prevent the boy from seeking his father she tells the boy that his father wants a fresh start and finds it too painful to see her and the boy again. Of course, this is a lie and actually represents her feelings towards the man. The man drifts into alcoholism, and actually attempts suicide many years later.
Is this sequence of events believable – or what modifications to it would you suggest in order to be more realistic? I ask this as a single guy who has no children.

Many thanks for your help.

My father-in-law just had his second wife leave him because of his horrible excessive drinking (was married 30+ years the first time, 5+ the second), yet is constantly convinced that it was ‘all her fault’ both times that their respective marriages dissolved.

My wife and I have a great marriage with no such problems similar to this (both in our 40s, married 15+ years). We also admit that we’re nieve about how to understand alcoholism as well as knowing how to help him out.

In the past we’ve attended support groups for families of alcoholics. The problem now though is that hes 1000 miles away across the country and refuses to come and live with us even though we have the financial means to take care of him.

We’re just feeling lost without this man in our lives, and when hes not drinking is a very good guy. Hes on the verge of losing his job and its killing my wife.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.
We’ve tried to get him to attend an AA meeting but he just says ‘I dont need those dam things, those are for drunks’.

I’m just looking for feedback…typically I think everything I write sucks, the whole thing is boring, who cares, etc, but I’m not sure if that’s just my negativity or if it’s true.

I’ve copy-pasted the prologue here for interested parties…if you think it’s something you’d be willing to while away some time reading, let me know. I always like comments, feedback, maybe pointers on what to fix and where to go from where I’ve left off. Thanks guys.

Prologue
“Patron Saint of Lost Causes,” Estella whispered hoarsely, her eyes dancing in a cocaine-infused frenzy, her lithe fingers twisting the rosary around her neck. “Because that’s what we are, right?”
Phantom shadows slithered on the ceiling of her dimly lit bedroom; sinister apparitions caught in the corner of my eye, but when I turned to get a better look, nothing was there. The muffled sounds from her father’s party on the next floor up floated down to us, music and laughter mingling with the clinking of champagne glasses.
Estella’s hair was an auburn halo of rambunctious curls, her lips formed a shifty half smile, and she stared intensely at me through dilated pupils.
“We’re just useless, pretty little dolls, aren’t we? Nobody wants to know how we feel or who we are. If we didn’t have each other, we’d have nobody.” Her voice broke and her eyes blazed with desperate fire.
I leaned onto one elbow and smoothed the fushia satin comforter on her bed absently. Cocaine made her confide her deepest secrets, the ones she normally concealed under her creamy skin and cocktail dresses. Cocaine made my thoughts accelerate and barrel through my brain faster than I could make sense of them.
Our eyes met; identical in pupil size and opposites in color, mine blue and hers a burnished chestnut.
The silvery blue skirt of my dress rustled as I sat up and pulled the mirror covered in finely chopped white powder onto my lap. I saw a flash of silver and noticed Estella had taken the razor from her bedside table. My heart migrated up into my throat as Estella drew the sharp edge of the razor over the tender underside of her pale arm. Her blood dripped delicately onto the emerald of her dress, rolling down her arm and staining her skin.
My stomach turned in revulsion, but how could I tell her not to? She wouldn’t have listened.
Her smile was wide and perceptive. “We’re all masochists in our own way, aren’t we, Iris?”
I nodded and bent my head to inhale one of the lines of cocaine I’d chopped earlier. Courage in powdered form.
My hair tumbled over my shoulders, a thick brown curtain, and I tried to shrug it back. Estella slid closer to me, so close we were nose to nose, and held my hair behind my neck as I snorted the thick white line. Moisture sprung up in my eyes, and I blinked furiously as Estella removed the mirror from my lap and gently rubbed her thumbs underneath my eyes, removing the smudges my liner had left.
“I can’t take you anywhere with smeared eye makeup, you know,” she said lightly, smoothing my hair and touching her own to make sure her energetic curls were still behaving. “Father,” she said the word in an attempt to sound regal and snotty, “will be wondering where we’ve got to.”
“Like he even notices,” I answered, waving my hand dismissively. The blue diamond of my cocktail ring caught the dim light and the reflection blistered all over the walls of her room. “You should change,” I told her, getting up and walking to her mirrored closet doors. “You don’t want your dad asking questions,” I added, gesturing to the blood stain flowering on the expensive material of the dress she’d destroyed.
“We should at least go back for more drinks,” she said, throwing her head back and laughing, her hair a river of reddish-brown curls as she tugged a slim-fitting, simple white dress over her head.
I reached out a trembling hand and did what I could with her self-inflicted wounds, dabbing at the cut and pulling a bandage out from a drawer in her bedside table. I looked up at her as I spread it over her ruined arm, my face hungrily searching hers.
Why wasn’t she getting better?
She looked happy; we both always did. How could we pretend to be anything but, when we had anything and everything we wanted? Nobody who looked at us could tell that inside, something awful festered. Nobody knew that inside, we were as cold and hard as the diamonds we wore on our fingers and our throats.

My ex and I are in a heated custody battle over our two children. My daughter, who is 15, wants to live in LA with her dad. My son, who is 11, wants to live with me in MI.
The marraige and divorce was horrible. All I can say is at least I’m not getting beat anymore. However, the mental and emotional abuse continues through my daughter. While the dad was visiting last week, he allowed my daughter to call me (on his phone) to call me a F***ing w****. All because my boyfriends truck was backed into my drive. The abuse continues when I don’t allow her to have her way. We sat with one of her teachers and he told me that I simply traded one abuser for another.
Last year, he took both kids to live with him. When I finally got them back, my daughter ( at that time was 14) had 2 STDs, almost failed the 8th grade, smoking pot and cigarettes, and only God knows what else. My son failed the 4th grade. My ex is convicted of domestic violence, currently serving probation for a DUI and yesterday was put in lockup for violating the terms of his bond (for malicious phone use). He has an 11th grade education and I’m not sure if he’s working or not. He still lives with his mother, smokes like a train, and still drinks like a fish. He continues to berate me to them, lies to them, and puts down my relationship with my boyfriend.
What am I going to do? I can’t let her do this to me but I can’t let go of my daughter. I can’t let her turn out like him but she hates me so much and hurts me so much…..how much of this hate is her and how much of it is her dad feeding to her?

First off, I want to make it clear that my boyfriend is not an alcoholic. YET. But I feel like he could be well on his way. Almost every day he comes to my house, he goes and buys beer. It’s usually a six pack, but he almost always drinks every single one of them within just a few hours. He doesn’t drink at his house because of his uptight dad, so I understand the want to drink when he actually has a chance to, but all of a six pack within a matter of two or three hours?

And today for example. I had to go to the hospital for a procedure and was sedated, so I wasn’t allowed to drive, and I was pretty out of it. He brought me home and everything was fine, until I woke up and went to the fridge. Lo and behold, he’d bought more beer. A twelve pack. Nine of them were gone. Now, I was only out for a few hours. He killed NINE beers in maybe four hours. If it was that long. I’m afraid he may be on the verge of alcoholism. I’ve tried talking to him about it, but he laughs it off and tells me not to worry and that he never drinks enough to actually get drunk. That may be true, but he certainly drinks enough to feel it!

I’m starting to wonder if he has to drink when he comes here to enjoy himself or something… What do I do?
Oh, he comes to my house usually once or twice a week.
As a matter of fact, he’s asleep (passed out, pretty much) on my bed. He’s been out for at least an hour.

He’s been depressed since i’ve known him (about 7 years). He’s gone through drug abuse, physically abusing his girlfriend (even while she was pregnant), prison, alcoholism and serious self-esteem and love issues. His mother is a real piece of work who is pretty much the reason he is who he is. His father and step-mother claim to be there for him, but are on the ‘he’s a big boy and can take care of himself’ page.
He doesnt seem depressed at all to most people, but i’ve always been the person he’s confided in. More recently (last 6+ months) he’s been scaring the sh!t out of me. He calls (like last night) me real late and talks to me about how numb he is and how he has no desire to live.
He doesnt complain about anything in specific, he has no real gripes. He just doesn’t want to be alive.
He doesn’t have the money or time to go to a counselor and wouldnt want to see one anyway. I feel like i’m the only person who can help him.
What can I do? I’m terrified for him.
He’s never threatened to kill himself. I make him promise that he wont and he says “I would never do that. I promise.” but continues on about how little he feels. And I actually recognized this in him before he came to terms with it.

I think i’m going to start looking for some low-cost or free counseling. Maybe i’ll drive him and make sure he goes and always has a means of getting there.

Only 2 years my senior
You were my best friend
We used to play Barbie
Then Super Mario Brothers

We grew up like one person
One complicated soul
Compacted in two separate individuals
Where you were, I went
Where I went, you were

You got a DUI on your 20th birthday
I drove 3 hours
I bailed you out
I cried the whole way back
But you were not a good drunk
So you punched me
And I told dad

Because of me
You left because of my tears
And left me here
Alone. In a broken home.

Captain Lou – in partial Mario getup – implores kids not to use drugs. It’s a very passionate and strong speech that seems like it was recorded in a spare room with bad acoustics. I’m also not sure whether the bouncy kids music fits here.

I’m 21 – I live with my dad and used to visit my mom and stepdad on most weekends. However, one weekend about 2 years ago, my stepdad had too much to drink (he’s an alcoholic) and very seriously threatened me. I was petrified and scared for my safety. This is not the first time he’s done it. He smashed furniture and hurled nasty verbal abuse at me (swearing, yelling, calling me names etc). I’ve had to go through 2 years of counseling because of that one night in particular (along with years and years of (verbal and psychological) abuse). My mom and stepdad split up because of his alcohol issues but then got back together about a year ago. My mom insists that he’s a ‘recovered’ alcoholic and he’s a completely different person now. He might be, but this is the third time he’s ‘recovered’ from alcoholism – I’m not convinced it’s permanent. My stepdad has apologized to me countless times through birthday cards, text messages and the like and wants us to go to family counseling. I know he’s feeling pressured to do this by my mom because I’m no longer going to family events (e.g. my half-brother’s birthday, Christmas celebrations) and it’s killing her that I barely see her side of the family any more. The thing is, I’ve seen this pattern of behavior in him all my life, it’s just this time I finally took a stand and stopped seeing them (except my mom alone maybe once every few months). What should I do? I know he won’t hit me or anything, but I don’t really want to confront him. Am I being unreasonable?

I’m nearing the end of my novel and i can’t think of a plot twist. I want one that’ll make the reader totally shocked. Can you suggest some ideas? Plot:
At 17 Calli has had less than the ideal life. Ever since her prostitute mother brought home her first sister at age 3 the kids and the house have been her responsibility, protecting her siblings from her mother’s highly abusive fits of rage fueled by alcoholism and drug addiction. Now her mother is gone; spontaneously left town with out even leaving a note, and left Calli to take care of her 7 brothers and sisters ranging in ages from 2 to 14. She begins taking the legal procedures to adopt her siblings as her own children and fight her mother in court for them. But what happens if she doesn’t win? Will they end up in foster care, split up? Or worse, back with her mother?
Her deep romance with Ethan is intertwined throughout the book. The book is told with flashbacks of her childhood shuffled in between her present day life.
A little bit about her and her siblings:
To Calli, her siblings are everything to her. Ethan proposes to her towards the end of the story. Calli wins the court case and is granted full and permanent custody of her siblings. Her father left her when she was 4.Her siblings are ages 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 16. Her mother ran off with her boyfriend. I think that’s all the info you guys should need.
Oh, and I don’t want the twist to alter her relationship with Ethan. Thank you so much to all the answerers! The person who comes up with the best/most creative,surprising idea will get 10 points!
Alright, i don’t think you guys are getting it. I don’t need an ending, i need a plot twist. Something that makes the reader gasp in shock and almost faint when they read it. Something totally unnexpected and unbelievable. Keep answering though!
She is 17 when the book first starts. It is over a two year time period. Her oldest sister is just turning 16 when the book ends. And she starts filing for custody when she is almost 19, Mr. Know-it-all. She has money from when she sold their big house and moved into a tiny apartment and her boyfriend whom she lives with is rich (ish).

“By his own admission, Obama spent his final two years in high school skipping classes, playing basketball, doing cocaine and getting drunk.”

“Similarly, his admission to Harvard Law School is highly questionable. Where are his LSAT scores? And how does one graduate from Columbia without honors and yet get accepted at Harvard Law? Lastly, his ascendency to the Presidency of the Harvard Law school would appear to have also been a case of blatant affirmative action, since the student Obama had only written one legal paper — and that was quite short and remarkably undistinguished. So where are his grade transcripts?”

From Dreams of My Father: “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

From Dreams of My Father: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother?s race.”

From Dreams of My Father: “There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”

From Dreams of My Father: “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

From Dreams of My Father: “I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.”

From Dreams of My Father:The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart. [92]

From Dreams of My Father: To avoid being mistaken for a [racial] sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.

Not me, I don’t associate with Communists or Marxists or racists, leave that to the supporters of Obama and his twisted agenda, don’t try to indoctrinate my children with your filth.