LADY GODIVA: The Naked Truth

Growing up as a child there were some strict arbitrary rules I was obligated to abide by - no makeup, no pierced ears, only white underwear.  We had a secret knock when I was left home alone and was too short yet to peek through the spy-hole, various code words exchanged to be used in a variety of circumstances (specifically, on the phone , this will become important again later), and there was an antique ladies hat pin, an extremely deadly type of hat pin , a literal hairpin dagger about 11 inches long my father instructed me how to use in the living-room of Mentor Square Apartments, when he was still employed at Ohio Rubber, he showed me how to use it as a skillful weapon. All afternoon in the living room.  Teaching me to stab testicles, eyeballs, and windpipes.  With an antique hatpin.  I was maybe 6 years old?  7?    As soon as my dad got custody of me, he put what was basically an extension of himself, because he's a Malignant Narc...

Just got done reading Nancy Kilgore's book 'Girl in the Water', it's about sibling abuse.  Her sister Sherry sounded awful and so many parallels were present between them that were present between my father and I it was a discomforting comfort.   Someone once told me to read 'A Child Called It', I did and it struck me as a very insincere memoir.  I didn't identify with that person in the manner I did with Nancy Kilgore (excluding her descent into insane-o fairyland) and unlike Nancy, I did ultimately assert myself and stood up to my father.  But I did that about 12 years too late. I don't recall being molested.  I know I had a real fear that it could happen, mainly because of my mother.  Her angle in the divorce proceedings was the--false--accusation of child molestation against my father.  But you can't really blame my mother for thinking the way she was, quite frankly, there was some compelli...

Geauga Lake closed in 2007 but I had gone there when I was still quite little, like, in the 80’s little, and had gotten to be the first batch of humans that got to experience their new amusement park feature, called ‘The Wave’. Aptly named, it was basically a humongous pool and every 15 minutes or so an automated, machine generated wave would convalesce its way through the pool.  But there was sure to be one.  The Big One.  That WAVE that would knock you on your ass and if you didn’t want to get caught in that particular wave, you needed to get your ass outta of the pool stat.  I’m vaguely remembering the aura of fear, alarms even.  Terrified over-weight moms in neon tutu swim dresses, with fully made-up faces struggling to climb up out of the pool in time.  Just in the nick of time to get out of that wave’s way.    But there I was. In the shallow end of the pool.  Of ‘The Wave’ and I remember that like the instant was more ...