The Teacher and The Comedian (part 1)

I learned to communicate just so I could tell you a bad joke!

Let’s talk when we hit the bottom!

In Arabic there’s a saying: ‘let’s talk on the floor!’ It means, let’s speak directly and honestly without formalities. For addicts, hitting bottom, means that life has gotten the worst it can possibly get, and there’s no more illusions about what’s going on.

Let’s take in both of those ideas; hitting bottom, and talking on the floor, as I talk about communications, rumors, the truth, and misunderstandings in this piece.

All my life, I struggled to communicate with the people closest to me. Poor communication often leaves others to draw their own conclusions about what you’re saying, doing, and who you are. In my case, those faulty conclusions led to a lot of trouble. Back then, while I was teaching in classrooms, I didn’t understand the importance of addressing these misunderstandings.

For a long time, I believed that false ideas, erroneous conclusions, and defective thinking were all self-correcting. I thought people would naturally find the right answers about me given enough time. As a teacher, I always tried to guide people’s thoughts, and redirect bad energy into good directions, but it’s much easier to do this when you’re not the target of those faulty assumptions.

Over recent years, thanks to my experience teaching English, I’ve become a much better communicator and I now have the skills to tell this story. And I have nothing to lose.

Who watches the Watchmen?

To understand me a little better, I want to introduce you to The Comedian from The Watchmen by Alan Moore. The Watchmen is one of the most important graphic novels of the 20th century. It satirizes superheroes against the backdrop of US politics and world domination. I wouldn’t want to rob you of any of the joy of reading it yourself, but let's just say that the Comedian, as flawed as he is, discovers a hidden plot so upsetting that it haunts him.

The Comedian’s story shows us that even the most flawed faux-hero, awash in vice and arrogance, can’t accept mass-manipulation or misinformation for the population at large. He’s the Comedian, and he discovers that his entire life's work has been the butt of someone else's joke.

This is how I’ve been feeling for the last 10 years, putting the pieces of my past together. In solving this mystery, I feel as if I’m in the process of uncovering a plot against me so pervasive that it calls into question everything I believed in.

How was someone with white supremacist, far-right leaning affiliations was able to manipulate feminists, liberals of all stripes, and children’s rights activists into furthering an agenda of defamation against me?

As I go wandering through the years, I realize that much of the unfair treatment in my public school career, and the loss of my relationships with friends, and my personal life, wasn’t based on my behavior or performance, but influenced by rumors, orchestrated by a sinister character who entered my life 20 years ago.

Don’t Say It, Spray it.

He was the ex-husband of my ex-partner. They were married when he got into a relationship with a high school student. My ex told me the story: She’d discovered that her ex-husband was having an affair with a sixteen year old who went to the local high school. By the way, since I’m the Comedian in this story, we’ll call him the Joker from now on.

Apparently, the Joker met this teenager smoking weed with class cutters and drop outs in the square. He had a full time job as a financial analyst but only needed to show up to work about 200 days a year, so he had plenty of free time to look for trouble.

When my ex discovered them she was furious and flew into a blind rage. She took a can of spray paint and wrote I f**k high school girls on his car. She’d tell me imagining him having to go to the body shop and get it removed made me laugh. This is the kind of rage my ex had. It would come in waves, and fits, and sometimes it was actually well placed.

I was with my ex for almost a decade. I came into the picture a few years after they were divorced so I knew her ex-husband also. My ex told me that the girl was blackmailing him, and threatening that, if he left, she would tell the police she was actually fifteen when their relationship began. Sixteen is the age of consent in the state, which was horrifying in and of itself. It’s appalling that any blue state could have such backward laws, but that’s another story for another time.

He needed to use me to cover up his own scandal. So, with the help of a little cyber-hacking, he made me out to be something I’m not. He used his daughter as a trojan horse to plant, well, a trojan, on my computer, and when I had relapses, he got the data to manipulate as he pleased. No, there was no child pornography - that’s illegal, but let’s face it, plenty of stuff on the internet can be embarrassing if your search history was read out loud.

These rumors came out against the backdrop of my teaching career. In my early days of teaching, I was a force to be reckoned with. Because I explored my own upbringing and the failures in my development as a child, I was deeply attuned to creating an environment that fostered growth. But little by little I was rebranded by rumors, and made out to be someone that didn’t belong in the classroom. Many of the artists I once knew in Boston heard the rumors he started. Some of them thought they were protecting children by spreading the word, when in reality they were just covering up for a real pedophile.

Sinners, Saints, and Snake Oil - The Church Story

Here’s a story that shows how manipulative my ex’s ex-husband was. When I met my ex, she’d been searching for a new spiritual home. She’d been raised catholic but after graduating from the Ivy leagues, she needed a church that fit her liberal values and strong sense of social justice. She found it! The right church for her was there in one of the most liberal towns in America. The Vineyard Church in Cambridge.

She loved that church so much for its welcoming atmosphere and friendly people. Religious communities can often be places of judgment and shame, but at this church she finally felt welcomed and accepted. Even as a single-mom divorcee, she’d found a house of worship where she could be honest and open with everyone. She’d finally found her church.

That was until her ex-husband followed her there, dragging his new teenage fiancée with him. Soon the welcoming environment she craved was gone, replaced by one of discomfort and polarity, where my ex was wondering which church friends would stick by her side. This was his special brand of psychological warfare. He infiltrated her safe space, presenting himself as a reformed soul seeking community.

He was a sinner who saw the light— hallelujah!

The ex-husband and his teen fiancée volunteered to be church greeters and showed up together every Sunday, in the church lobby, shaking hands and grinning like Cheshire cats. You just can tell when someone’s showing way too much teeth for an honest Sunday morning.

I have no doubt that he bad mouthed his ex-wife in hushed tones behind closed doors and used phrases like “I’ll pray for her” to make her look small in the eyes of the community. He joined lots of volunteer groups and committees, ensuring that wherever she turned, his bespectacled face and gilded dome would be there.

The church, in its eagerness to be a welcoming space for everyone, invited inauthenticity into its halls, and its church goers couldn’t discern the difference between a genuine soul in need and a stalker masquerading as a good Christian.

I think that because the church felt they had to welcome everyone, they weren’t comfortable saying no to someone who doesn’t really need to be there.

More importantly, the church folks shouldn’t be afraid to look under the hood and ask questions. Did no one ask the ex-husband why he was really at Church? Did they ask if he was really trying to get into the kingdom of heaven, or if just trying to make it harder for others to find heaven within?

Happiness stained by a tainted reputation

Continued in The Teacher and the Comedian Part 2.