They laughed at a child being raped.
The Beginning
While I don’t believe in direct “karma”—-it’s actually Dharma that people mean when they talk about retributional energy/events coming back upon people—-I got to see it with my mother and stepfather.
So to shorten this to Dostoevsky length—-my mother had a small modelling business and won a lawsuit—-so I’d forestalled college to help pay the mortgage and was now entering into “freedom” phase after a few years—-at 21. My mother had man issues. By that when I look back over my bio father and 4 stepfathers my mother was often trying to recreate her parents 37 year marriage—-which was riddled with my grandfather’s alcoholism and abusiveness—-until my grandmother threw him out and he died a year later, falling out drunk, hitting his head having a heart attack.
So my mother met my father as they were both in college, had me a couple of years later, broke up due to his extremist political activities.
- Then there was Stan, the martial artist—-who experimented once with PCP and destroyed the apartment in a Bruce Lee fists of fury. They broke up.
- Then Terry, the gourmet/high end chef—-who made so much money he just gave it to my mother to manage—-so we lived a middle/upper middle class lifestyle. You just had to adjust to his alcoholic rages. They broke up after a few years.
- My father reentered the picture. They got married. A year later they broke up due to his experimenting with drugs.
My mother, on my grandmother’s urgings, then thought perhaps her indulgences was getting out of hand so she went to rehab—-after briefly getting back with Terry for that massive moolah—-who then was bounced out again by Jesse—-who screwed up all the money, while my mother was away at rehab. And doing a clean sweep, swept him out as soon as she got back. Really their marriage was summed by his babysitting me at the end for a month while she was away.
She went cold turkey off of men and focused on AA and NA. Which was good. Other than the first year, she was sober for decades afterwards. But she was lonely. She tried dating for several years—-unsuccessfully—-one marriage separated guy she really liked, another guy she really liked ,even online dating—-but none panned out because she had new standards.
Sha, The Good Guy
So she threw herself into starting her business and one of the managers she hired, Sha—-really liked her. She had managers, security, models—-male and female. So he’d modelled for a awhile but was responsible, trustworthy and attractive. (Ok, he was short—-like 5′6, but she was 5′2, so it was okay.) And he liked her.
No, you don't understand, my mother was a unique person—-a high energy charismatic person who was amazingly smart, conniving, manipulative, cunning, clever, funny, tough but to know all of her dimensions, consistently, was to perhaps not like her—-because she was also naïve in some glaring ways and anxious. Sha made clear his business and romantic interests and overtures but my mother was nervous that he was 10 years younger than her.
I pointed out, as well as my aunt, friends, models, probably the postman, that Sha was a good guy and LIKED her (a unique combination)—-he would make a good, maybe boyfriend/husband—-especially with business and large money involved.
She went to an AA meeting in a mink coat. (Yes, she was also flamboyant.) And that’s where she met Mike—-he was 10 days out of jail for selling crack to an undercover cop, homeless, jobless, rootless—-so of course—-she picked him over Sha.
We all watched in stunned silence because generally you don’t get to see dysfunction so glaringly displayed. Sha was beautiful, handsome, good teeth, in shape, a really good guy—-Mike was/is someone who looks a little used around the edges—-yes, her age—-but a little simpleminded/conniving—-he didn’t even have his GED at 40, wouldn’t get it until he was 45. He was floating through a life of handouts, addiction and mooching off of women. This is all happening from May to August.
(I would say her choice of Mike over Sha had to do with her self esteem and also her desire to have absolute control over a man. Money gave her power so she essentially, as I told her over the years, bought a man Though he was at a discount, a steep discount to be malleable to her dysfunctional control.
Further, I can safely say that my grandfather being an alcoholic, as was my maternal, and her maternal, great grandfather being one as well—-it created a pattern—-it’s called Imago by Dr. Harville Hendrix—-so that the traits she saw in her parents and grandparents were her pattern for love, being loved so what my father and stepfathers had in common were addiction issues. They were varying levels of “good men” from good to worse. Sha in many ways, wasn’t simply younger but he may not have set off my mother’s unconscious “addiction” reflection simpatico bells. I wouldn’t learn and teach Imago stuff until years afterwards so there wasn’t time or space to transmit this for her to absorb and make life changes and mate choice changes, as I have learned and done.)
In June, her and I went to the state where we had started vacationing on weekends at a country club and further up into the exclusive, high end houses and picked out a 3300+ square foot place. (I chose it because it had been built in love. The parents built it for their daughter, soon after it was finished, she died in a car accident. It was built with love; so heartbroken they decided to sell it. I still love that house.)
So now the plan is to commute back and forth between our Brooklyn co-op and house in PA—-I’d considered Univ. at Penn or John Jay in NYC then took a trip to Buffalo, actually got a notice—-voice and everything from God——that it was the next spiritual move (which it was) so I decided to shift and go there.
My mother goes her form of batshit. She immediately revokes my trust fund to pay for college if I wont’ go to Penn and live in the house with her (them—-Mike). The ironic part was that you can't live off campus the first year at Penn so I wouldn’t have been able to commute back and forth (didn’t have a car or license) but I wouldn’t back down. I was going to Buffalo and would visit and help with the business, but I’d paid my dues in the form of half the mortgage on the co-op for years, forestalling going from high school to college for 2–3 years. Now flush with cash, let’s be kind and say with interest and such, it would’ve amounted to millions today, 20 years from then, if she’d followed the plan set by the financial planner.
Yes, Mike moved in to the co-op and then to the house. But everyone was an adult right? what could I do? You buy cheap, you get cheap, I would remind her for years. She complained for years about how unequal they were, how uneducated he was (she even offered to put him through school—-he refused), how useless he was to her business, to her aspirations, that he had none of his own.
Mike didn’t work full time at all, at anything for 7 years. She footed all the bills BUT all he had to give up was his humanity. My mother treated him like a slave, a dog. Somewhere in there he thought if he were accommodating enough he could ride the gravy train. he didn’t understand that she was slightly resentful of (past/all) men and would take it out on him. He never had more than a few dollars on him, was expected to do all of the driving, she dressed him as she wanted and he had no opinions of his own—-she used him as sort of shill to nightclub owners because of the misogyny from them towards her as the owner but if she pushed him forward, they all buddy-buddy man bonded.
There relationship was an odd one, for years, until they insanely got married. I feigned being sick upstairs because it was all so ludicrous. Also having to pay for college myself (I worked 5 jobs at once) and being independent, I’d found that my mother used luxury-money as a trap. The house was beautiful——she actually had it professionally decorated for the first Christmas in white lights—-it was on top of a mountain, another mountain and then in a gated mountain/valley community. You could see it from the base of the 1st mountain.
Twenty five foot ceilings, white Christmas tree, grand piano, peach carpeting—-white leather sofa from Italy against the exposed wood that had been polished within an inch of life. It was like walking into a Dynasty set, including a 2nd floor balcony overlooking the living room; jacuzzi, multiple bedrooms—-each carpeted, cloth wall papered to individual color scheme bedrooms with their own terraces——it really was an awesome house. And honestly, extending from her fashion interests my mother had good taste, high end, she knew how to design a duplex apartment, a regular apartment and now this mammoth house. She’d even started having the basement excavated to pave for a third floor/apartment and storage area for her business supplies.
In initial blush, it seemed like a strong Upper Middle Class continuation from her marriage to Terry but there was one hinderance: Mike.
See, Terry was…..yes, an alcoholic….and mean when drunk….but he worked 20 hour days. He made over $100k in the 1980s—-often paid, by folks with broken noses in cash AND he moving from restaurant to restaurant, would bring home literally a hundred pounds of steaks, lobsters, shrimp, vegetables that were gratis from the back of a truck in Manhattan. So he was a massive provider—-which is why she had such trouble leaving him—-he actually bought them matching mink coats.
But Terry worked like a maniac and brought in so much cash that he lucked out when he met my mother, because she was in computers and finance and did taxes on the side so she understood money.
Mike was servile. To her. But had the work ethic of salt. he was in effect a burden, an albatross. But she had absolute control over him. And I left and eventually after games with the car I wanted (instead of a Bronco II–—-she bought a cheap, beat up Lincoln that even my aunt admonished her about. Then bought the Bronco and let Mike use it. To my face.) I learned that she was going to be spiteful and controlling with money even though I’d stalwartly stood by her and paid half the bills when she got laid off and was trying to launch her business. She would punish me.
That first Christmas when I came back to the house?
They picked me up from the airport, having flown me in to Allentown—-there is no direct airport to the enclave mountains. She’s wearing a mink, he’s in a shearling suede coat, in the brand new Buick Century (white) and we arrive to this blazing star of a wannabe mansion—-the house dazzling when I get in, the refrigerator and pantry stocked, a new enormous chandelier bought for the open concept dining room/kitchen.
I had a box full of CDs I’d gotten from one of those mail in clubs—-jazz for him and several books for her.
And I’m an only child, so I know the presents and possibilities and cash.
I came downstairs Christmas morning, gave them my gifts, went to the tree where there was one box. Unwrapped it and it was a VHS tape rewinder. In a faux model car. At first, at 21, I thought it was some clever joke—-I looked inside for a check. Nothing. (She’d given me a send off check of $1000—-postdated when they took me to school—-so for a month, I literally had a check and no cash—-while they shopped in the city for the house.
Oh, I forgot to mention, having been sexually abused as a child by cousins, I’d been attending Incest Anonymous meetings—-I’d come out and explained about the sexual abuse and the counseling I was doing. Then a few months later her and Mike got together and I made my school choice. Accepting that it might be a good idea to not have her pay for my college as an adult, I instead asked that she float me until I could get onto my feet with a small apartment off campus—-I didn’t think I could handle being thrust into a dormitory situation because of the boundaries and sexual abuse. Laying in bed together, her and Mike listened to me.
And laughed at me.
And then for Christmas the VHS tape rewinder…..and she and Mike came out of their room and she shrugged that she simply didn’t know what to get me.
I was beyond hurt, humiliated but I remembered the thought that seared through me when they’d laughed at me from the bed months ago: They lose everything.
I went up to my room and didn’t come out for a month. Based upon just time, the dorms, economics and such, I had to go back and forth a few more times but after awhile, I made sure that I always had my own carfare-tickets back to my places by the university. I didn’t do Thanksgiving or Christmases much——lots of jobs paid even more if you stayed in a college town during the holidays and I only briefly returned to launch from the house as I took jobs in Philadelphia and then moved fully back to NYC.
Karma (Actually It’s Called Dharma)
About 5–7 years later spending the principal of large cash sums and annuities they lost the house. Their pastor even told me when I returned after college, thinking I could help and they were out of control—-to go, to leave, to take care of myself—-they were adults. So I did. Best advice ever.
They raided annuities that would have set them up for life. Finally Mike started working. A big QVC deal fell through because by the time it came along, my mother didn’t have the capital that one needs to insure textile productions on apparel to their decision to choose you. Essentially they have a metric on every kind of item—-so QVC was like if we choose you, you have to show us that in a month’s time, you can produce 100,000 items because that’s what we’ll sell of your product. Spending so much time simply shipping, dilly dallying, not building the core business with sales—it floundered in NYC while they travelled, went on vacations, lived a life they couldn’t afford because there was no income just outgoing expenses.
In the last year, to heat such a massive house they had this huge heater stove in the center of the living room, powered by gallons of kerosene that they bought weekly. Yes, a fiery inferno waiting to happen. But the destruction of the house came ironically by opposite element. My mother Year 5 tried to salvage the financial mess—-move to the co-op rent out the house—-but her ego wouldn’t allow the tenants, paying a pretty penny (the mortgage) to enjoy the house so she bombarded them until they gladly moved out a year later. Moving back in, they weren’t cognizant people so the pipes froze with water inside, burst and destroyed the walls, living room etc..
It was like everything was simply crumbling.
They moved down south, staying with a cousin and his family—-that turned into several near fist fights.
They got an apartment and my mother moved in her boyfriend, with Mike, her husband—-and that turned into an accusation of rape/legal-police drama that to this day—-and I have the police report—-even I’m not sure from their versions what happened—-but I know they released the guy that my mother had lauded as amazing and the love of her life a year before, yes, he was 20 years her junior and in immaculate physical shape—-probably from some of his personality description also offering the dysfunctional Imago reflection she sought (just by the fact that he would move in with a husband and wife, interrupt their marriage, without the husband’s consent—-suggests his own personality issues) when she visited me (as she contemplated leaving Mike.)
They were stuck with one another, eventually buying another house, after she forced him to work 16 hours a day—-she couldn’t , as a studying Pastor, with the ability to heal with her hands, she couldn’t be in certain environments—-like offices. I kid you not.
Then somehow God intervened and gave her this position as an international paralegal for corporations (they were literally flying her in and out of the country) so not liking her parking space, my mother poured coffee into all of the office computers.
Then she decided due to diabetes she was too ill to work and hellaciously fought for years and finally got SSD, Then spent a lot of time eating herself to obesity and eventually a 5 way heart bypass, then strokes, then a leg amputation.
The End
I sat in the diabetic rehab hospital The State had put her in over their home, because the State deemed she and Mike incompetent to live together—-he was several months behind on the mortgage, eating turkey necks and noodles (which look like severed floating brown penises in a crock pot—-no, I never had any) and a financial mess.
(I’d been visiting monthly and then my cousins insisted I stay longer, they were worried about her/them. I was there for 6 months initially when Mike called saying it was the end/terminal time. She rallied to, his chagrin, and I was there on sabbatical for 2 years. To Columbia’s chagrin. lol)
The house they’d bought was 1/3 in value underwater but it had been priced at twice as much as it was worth, so they were in debt that would take by my estimation 7 years to simply get to even value of the house. My cousin the mortgage broker, owner of a handful of cash generating properties suggested they sell to me and I rent their house back to them, particularly for Mike before my mother’s demise. He refused fearing I would throw him out. Ironically, he was such an asshole while I was there that I threw him out, not even owning the house.
I was willing to help financially, but wouldn’t sacrifice myself for them so I stayed on the periphery. And watched.
Eventually she knew he was cheating on her and begged me not to leave her. And then eventually I couldn’t keep pincering him in to pay the bills, as he tried to sue me—-it failed—-though I got to spectacularly cross examine him in court! the highlight of the trip) and I moved her back to NYC as she requested, and she died here weeks later.
I’d offered to help him renovate expand the house, to increase the value in a few years—-he refused because my cousin said he was too stupid. So a couple of years ago on a house that they’d paid $110k for, he sold it for $116, after 10+ years. But wait for the kicker—-the old couple—-knew the appraised value was $165k—-so they made a 50k profit on his ignorance. He lives in a ratty apartment on the bad side of town, a security guard making a little over minimum wage.
He often pestered me while I was there and she was terminal—did I have an insurance policy on her? Probably having known about the discussion and insurance agent between her, I and an insurance agent for a policy worth close to $1 million.
I told him no, several times.
In the hospital bedridden, due to obesity, she asked did I hate her? I told her no. I pitied her. That both of them were anti-mentors of what not to become, how not to treat people—-their children.
No, wait for his ditty.
My cousin lived in a Social Services sponsored building in lower Manhattan. Her neighbor a single mother with a daughter is a friend but dies of AIDs. My cousin in a panic contacts my mother who has lawyers and legal knowledge and money: can we help the little girl, 11 years old. Her name is Ivy and she’s going to go into foster care.
Overhearing the conversation, Mike asks the mother’s name. it’s his ex-wife and daughter.
My mother says, this is about Year 3, that she’s got the money and this big house, they can legally scoop the daughter up.
He says let her go on to foster care. They do.
I told my mother then—-that tells you all of who and what he truly is. Ivy went to foster care and eventually found his other daughter who was estranged form him because he didn’t tell her when her grandfather died, buried him, funeral over because it was her school Finals week. She didn’t talk to him for 10 years. Though in contact with her half sister, Ivy refuses contact with him BUT was smart enough to get herself onto an insurance policy for when he croaks.
I confronted him with all of this when I threw him out of his house. lol I then threatened in court to drop a dime to the Feds on his misspending of my mother’s SSD money so he rushed to use his secretly hidden 401k cash to pay off the nursing home she was in on Friday. $9000 in arrears.
Oooopsie, I forgot to tell him I was taking her out on that Sunday. And the court refused to make me liable for any monies for staying in the house but he had hired a private attorney—-who soaked him, court fees and even a Marshall to come evict me on that Monday. Again, I mention that I had students come down, pack up the whole house and my mother and headed back to NYC….Sunday. He’s still rocking back and forth trying to figure out how I engineered all of that to hit. Oh, and mysteriously somehow the bank that held the mortgage wondrously got access to his hidden bank account and deducted a handful of mortgage payments a few weeks before. It was literally comical seeing him trying to explain in court that somehow I must have arranged for his bills to be paid. There was a silence through the court as we all digested that somehow someone engineered his paying…his won bills on a property he was co-owner of.
He’d been secretly trying to get my mother’s ownership rights severed but the judge refused with the explanation to him several times that if he tried to short sell the house, he’d still owe the balance—-about $40k—-but would no longer live in the house. it made better sense to sit in it, pay on it until it evened out (as my cousin and I had said to him.) But because I petitioned the court back, they combined the dates so his secret court attempt came to light—-in my simple petition to have the SSD taken out of his mismanaging hands and sent directly to the rehab——again, i had no interest or desire to financially manage, control or touch anything.
While my mother may’ve been malicious to me in some ways, I was still raised by her and my father Robert, I told him, as I threw him out of his house, he never had a chance.
She asked me, in constant physical pain from a host of complications, in diapers, teeth broken and rotting (him shambling and shuffling like a zombie trying to revive himself——after she’d been sick in the home for 7 years—-nailing black covers to the windows—-frightened of eyes watching her, calling him incessantly, not tending the house—-it looked like a frat house when I visited and I did a massive cleaning, purifying and opening of doors and windows to nature, light, air when I stayed there)—— did I hate her? She felt a lot of guilt and remorse for what I came to understand was two addicts transferring their addiction to drugs and alcohol to money.
I told her that both of them in constant physical, mental, emotional agony and financial ruin got exactly what they deserved for that day—-laughing at me about being traumatized by sexual abuse as a child, needing help in my first apartment. While I didn’t take gleeful pleasure in watching her (and his) demise, hers faster—-she in the end, the brain, the engine, abandoned him, which was why he was such a shit show at 60, I was gratified to see the Universe, karma, dharma, God, working hard to grind its heel into their neck—-they deserved every ounce of pain and misery—-if not for me, then Ivy, or Demetrius (the boyfriend she lied about and got thrown in jail.)
My work, was to be a loyal son, an only child and make her death as comfortable as possible, make sure she got the best care and comfort, she had never abandoned me as a child, cared for me as a child. Eventually I changed her diapers twice a day, fed and medicated her and she died in my arms saying her last words—-that she loved me.
So that chapter, those chapters, the chapters where Patricia was a character on my life show—-are over. For a year I simply relaxed, went to the beach, meditated, worked part time here in NYC, wrote books, did my TV show, and honestly, reconciled that I didn’t deeply miss/mourn her (or eventually him)—-I was relieved she was dead, gone.
And I admitted to myself that in self-preservation, though it hurt at the time, and I tried to rectify it when she was dying and he was a mess (I felt a fealty to him for his staying with her, caring for her) and honestly—-taking the bullet of her that would have destroyed my life if I’d not gone away to college, lived with them, eventually, as she planned supplanted him.
She admitted years before that that his mother dying when he was 13 meant that he would overly psychologically attach to her and never leave her; and he never did. Did I mention she was a Psychology major? I told her she was Darth Vader when she told me that and hung up the phone.
She admitted in the hospital bed that she often tried to play us against each other but that I stayed away, out of reach, that she and my father should've built more “trapdoors” into my psyche for her to manipulate. This was in response to his inviting one of my rapists to her birthday party at the hospital and telling me, ten minutes before the party, as we got her ready in her room.
Yes, that’s the level of vipers they were.
I told them both then that they were amusing, like dullards. I’d detached, deactivated those buttons years ago for them to able to touch, activate, manipulate me through in therapy, counseling, spiritual work. But they were welcome to continue their games, it was fun to watch two people—-with no teeth-dentures, no money, both diabetic, with HPV and dimming futures play pitiful games. I’d write about it one day, write about them, in more of the books—-I’d brought to show them. And make a profit off of their pettiness. Thanks.
“Oh, and no, I didn’t have a near million dollar policy on her. Nope. Never. Not all Uh uh. No sirree bob. Uh uh. I couldn’t be that smart……..could I? Now let’s go to that room full of good and bad folk, distant family, friends and rapists, who in no way on any level mean anything to me, and have some cake, it will probably be your last party together.”
Then I smiled and next to him wheeled her 250lb+, amputated, obese, titled wig, Baby Jane made up face, and him shuffling alongside, constantly worried about every inch of his steps and day for lack of money in my Emporio Armani suit, with my degrees, all paid for by me, being the dutiful, present, loyal son and stepson to tell the assemblage about my published books, TV show, teaching at an Ivy League university and even suggest the weight gain was from NY steaks (I’d had the Xmas meal there catered from Morton’s Steak House), life butter and lazy, delicious sex, and spending my own earned, hard earned, resources money from my small but successful and profitable companies.
They self destructed from their own avarice and greed.
Karma, karma come back on you hard….
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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