Chapter 1: Leaving is not a verb
If you look closely there is a tempest hidden beneath his eyes. I can read temperature from a distance. I can hear it in his tone or see it in his countenance. A cold front doesn’t always appear in the forecast. A hurricane can suddenly materialize on a whim.
From the outside, everything looks normal.
A gilded cage on close-cut grass. Landmark, elite, secure. Street appeal, high fences, no hawkers allowed.
As I arrive a real estate agent hands me a brochure, it reads: “Where heaven and earth meet”.
Buttons in vivid red are placed strategically throughout my home, sterile, stark, and modern against tranquil tones of bamboo, cream, and beige.
Since moving here, he has changed the costume he wears. A Greg Norman uniform. He wears a collared microfiber golf shirt, bright blue plaid shorts, loafers, and a disingenuous grin. His clothes look identical to almost every other man in the estate. Yet he does not play golf, he does not own golf clubs.
He can’t watch the movie Catch Me If You Can. He says it reminds him of someone but he won’t say who.
He straightens his shoulders, and grins a smarmy, toothy smile as he waves at a neighbour as he speeds past in his golf cart, golf clubs in tow. He removes his mask and regains his usual expression after the cart passes by.
At the golf club, the maître d’ can detect his inauthenticity; like a springer spaniel digging for truffles, his 20-year tenure can detect a phony. I hide my secret delight.
He is constantly in my thoughts. What does he think, not what do I think. His choice, not my choice. Will he like this or will he prefer that? I’m too fragile to have a confrontation. Any confrontation with anyone.
There is a red button on the wall. I moved cities to be close to this red button and I threaten to press it every time it starts. A panic button for emergencies.
I have high gates, security guards, and flashing lights. But …. “Will security get here in time?”
Before the gates and the guards and the red button, there was another house. And I wondered, even then, would this be the house? Like a haunted house on a hill. A turret, thick hedges, steep driveway. Gingerbread.
I imagine my neighbour being interviewed on the steep driveway outside my home. Aromatic gardenias and jasmine flowers scent the air.
Would they say:
“But they were so quiet. We had no idea.”
This would be a lie. I am certain they can hear. His abuse is worn on my countenance. You can see it wherever I go. Hunched shoulders, eyes downcast, outfit of whatever-is-clean. Survive. Keep going. It will get better.
Once I had a dream. I saw faint streams of light from high windows, but they are just too high to reach.
*
I have taken a vow of self-imposed silence. We are at his friend’s coffee shop. I want to speak. But as I start to speak I see him shift in his seat. He gathers me in his gaze. He grins. It looks like love, or at least companionship. The glance is meaningless to anyone who is watching us.
Laughing melodically, she tips my glass, pouring cooled French champagne. I despise champagne. I take a generous sip. Painted beige nails clutch at the glass. I can see a little bit of light.
At first, she’ll have a tiny voice. She will be but an echo.
Leaving is a verb without meaning.
Pregnant with rain, the water in the atmosphere has long since evaporated. The denouement is long overdue. Is there safety in its delay? Or the opposite of safety.
There is a small red button in my bedroom. Cedar, rattan, bamboo. The double doors to my bedroom are locked. My dogs are sleeping on the cool timber floor.
I can feel the barometric pressure rising.
It is 3am. Adrenalin wakes me.
Furious fists fracturing locked double doors. Screaming expletives, a storm cloud of anger as he thunders towards me. I do not know why I am on my feet. I press the red button.
Let it rain.
Chapter 2: Megachurch
Old school PR.
Get rid of the figurehead.
And there, folks, is your issue.
That old PR trick.
People celebrate that the old king is dead and the new governing authority will now take the reins. Nothing to see here folks. There were no other issues. What issues?
Vestal virgins pirouette down the aisle, leading a procession bringing the head on the platter down to the altar.
We have lopped off the head of the leader. All fixed.
Hopefully, that will satisfy our detractors.
There is a power vacuum, there has been a change of leader.
Let’s make a spectacle of it.
It’s a distraction.
Nothing to see here folks.
Look over there. Well, it was all his fault.
Everything else there was just peachy.
Even at locations that he has never visited.
We just fixed the culture. Old leader bad, new leaders good.
Don’t change anything but give the outward appearance of change.
Give the media something to focus on. Where is that scalp again?
Ta-da, look over here at this, it is all a quick fix.
But this is PR old school. 1970’s PR.
Change the leader, and there are no issues.
That’s all, folks; no one else has been harmed here.
The Faith under Trial podcast tells a story of gaslighting and that harming people is endemic to the point of people considering suicide. They have gaslit everyone until right about now.
Management have been inuring people.
In short, they always side with the man.
There is no accountability. They wear their good staff out, with their genuine smiles and intentions.
But you can’t butt heads with anyone. The person who has done something wrong is always right. Even if they are wrong. How can they be right when they were clearly in the wrong, you know, when a law has been broken, or what is generally accepted to an HR rule in wider society, if that is broken they are still right.
Why are they right. Because they are higher up the pecking order.
Don’t ever disagree with anyone here unless you are the most powerful person there.
You see the things with some churches is, it doesn’t matter what happens as long as you repent.
It took one childless female atheist to do what all the good Christian men in parliament could not seem to do. Make people obey the laws of the state in a church. It’s not enough to take it before God and to repent.
This is different, but too many people in large churches “just repent in front of God” instead of observing laws and laws of what is reasonable behaviour. Simple apologies and the like. Care for people and duty of care. You don’t want your staff broken or wanting to take their lives.
They are more intent on “covering the church legally” than doing the right thing. Then there are more things to “cover the church legally” for because few people were showing duty of care.
The staff member who is bullying, slandering or running around trying to get the “church covered.”
Absolute power corrupts, and there is no recourse against those in power. No one is accountable. Years later people are still leaving in droves. It’s probably not new management’s issue, it was just never the old leader’s issue. It was an endemic church-wide issue, and that culture doesn’t change overnight.
This place is a grab for power.
The famed front row forwards.
People in power will tell you just how important they are and race each other to the reserved seats in the front row.
They have the secret keys and their name on a piece of paper in the front row. The organization is known for its green room antics and people clambering to get into a Green Room. It’s a church guys.
There is such an issue with the front row that green room antics and the front row are news worldwide. These are our “voice-raising” mums. The little piece of paper with your name on the seat is like a reserved car space at a company that pays you for qualifications. The Faith on Trial podcast is rife with stories of staff bullying. There is only one episode about the Houston’s and we took care of them. Look, look, look, we put a head on a platter.
She is a front rower, and her friend is a ruckman. The ruckman has been married four times and ended up messaging everyone I knew with defamatory messages; she even messaged people I did not know. The police want to press charges so does my lawyer. Come in and have her charged, show us the messages to 30 people in your circle defaming you to them. I have quite a bit of evidence about defamation. But the woman with four husbands, is after every husband there, she doesn’t want people to know that she needs to marry for assets.
These are all laypeople. Some who can’t get their hands on power in a company reign supreme on the weekend. Everyone wants to be in the Green Room. Famous pastors have been in the Green Room.
Vestiges of power.
They have total power and power to dominate.
They beamed the announcement around the world that there would be no front row in the future while the front row held frozen smiles about the disingenuous nature of it.
Watching from the back, almost all were caught red-handed. They seem to go red in the race. Oh, this is a church-wide issue. The people who can’t make it elsewhere salivate over that front row. Like it is the front row at a fashion show. Everyone sees them sit down and bask in it. I am always down the back. But not near Jarod Hayne.
The women hate that Mother Dove is in on the call. She is wearing a baseball cap on the video call.
New management indicates how the church should feel about old management. They learn how we should now think about what has happened and that the shiny new and bright will ensure that all blame is placed on the former management. They shame the former management but don’t mention all the people in the Faith on Trial podcast.
They are scared of all journalists and writers.
The people there are nice, but they view anyone with a bad experience as a possible media issue instead of someone who would like to be heard before telling anyone about it.
“We’ve got to make sure that we do everything right in coffee shop or Channel 9 will be in here with a camera secretly filming us making the coffee.”
They won’t allow me to be a barista or to work in the coffee shop.
The church keep the “cycle of abuse” going for four years after I left DV. Silly me, I thought I would try a church after 22 years of DV. The sad part is that they contacted my violent ex to find out how to control me and to get my money.
I was defamed when I walked in.
That woman could be trouble as she just sent another church a defamation letter. The defamation was sent because my violent ex-partner who didn’t want to go to prison or have people believe me told them how to control me. So they find out all the defamation he needed to spread to not be put in prison and spread it for four years, at the mega church, even after I leave.
It’s called a cycle of abuse.
After four years, someone who is unhinged who has DV charges against her, messages every family member, friend, everyone at the office of the family business. Until then there was no proof I was just being gaslit.
Just like everyone else in Faith on Trial. People who I haven’t met or seen in years. The Hillsong stalker contacts them all with the same defamation that they say wasn’t ever repeated, four years later. This woman was on staff and it was her job to keep get contact details and keep tabs on people. She bizarrely tells me when she is doing it that she was put in hospital for 9 months as a young mother when she pushed her baby’s pram in front of a car deliberately. This woman has been divorced 4 times and has worked her way in to a position where she is “on team”. She likes the power she has to control people. I don’t like her but I am told that I must give her access to my Facebook the day I sign up to a group.
So why go? It has a concert with grammy award-winning music with an 8-piece band at 10 am on a Sunday. After 22 years of DV I wonder if church will fix it. There are all the bells and whistles here. They have slick TV style packages filmed about worship leaders and charities. There are professional people here and smiling friendly faces.
Simply walking in means that you have agreed that they can film you for the purposes of promotion. You can be drifting away listening to music and there they are, with a camera in your face.
The structure is at fault because no person is ever at fault or accepts blame. There is zero accountability. In this mega-church, the person with the issue against someone becomes the issue.
The dangerous and controlling man who followed me in, the one who turned up unannounced at my home unwanted 7 days in a row, no, he is not the problem. The man is never the issue. The person in charge is never the issue.
I later quip that perhaps you should sit him down the back next to Jarrod Hayne. Yes, sit him down the back next to Jarod.
This man was harassing me, and now you are listening to him. A penniless loser, with a rubber band car, who had followed me and continued the cycle of abuse that had been forced upon me in my previous experiment with attending church during domestic violence. He had nothing to gain by trying to move into my house or to date me. Their leader, a spiritual narcissist, was like my new controlling partner. She asked him to let this new church, “let them know what they are in for.”
The spiritual narcissist wanted my car, wanted to redecorate my house in colours that she liked and not me, and took lashings of gifts of cash, jewellery, automobiles, clothes, and lots of gift cards. I gave her a Mercedes Benz. They wanted my house. Well everyone has the ridiculous “tapes of control”. The tapes that say, No, it’s condemnation from the devil that kills people. No, don’t get any medical tests, no don’t take medical advice. No just fight the devil. If you became sick it’s because you didn’t fight devil well enough. Only they could. She hadn’t been sick in 12 years. Because she fights the devil better than anyone can fight the devil. She told people not to have chemotherapy, or to have medical procedures.
It’s perfectly legal to run a cult in Australia at the time. Roll up, roll up, roll up, if you want a tax-free cult, start in Australia. Once you are in control, you can make people give you their money and their assets. It’s ok, you can break the laws of the country there. They don’t have a real board and they don’t double count their “offerings”, the pastors themselves count the offering and bank it.
How dare you treat him as though he has been a boyfriend or my love interest. This man has been harassing me and defaming me, but believe the man. She later tells me in a condescending voice, “It’s hard to find a man isn’t it for women over 40.” There, there dear, this man just told me he rejected you and now you are saying that he harassed you.
Yes, I was technically free from violence but they kept his abuse going for him, the cult leader and this new abusive man.
Goodness what did they tell them to say so that no one reported them to the charities commission. A blustering fake Christian in a cheap suit driving a rubber band car. Watch out for the polished little hussy. You were not allowed to make friends with me. I wasn’t even allowed to make the coffee.
Churches are for families only. There is a husband stealer among us. Families are welcome. Defamation about me abounds there. I’ve been othered. I didn’t big fish myself when I walked in.
Gaslit, Breadcrumbed, Stonewalled.
Gaslighting. Are you really sure that happened?
Let me tell you what happened missy.
She raises her voice at me when I report a violent and angry man.
Hemorrhaging money and parishioners. I hear a few years on, they still can’t get it right. Good management leaves or is embattled. Everyone is a little flummoxed about how to handle things. It’s a good idea, but on the whole, it doesn’t translate. Even the good people with stellar reputations grumble about management. Even though things don’t run smoothly anymore, good people are still hanging in there because it is a business network with a 8-piece band at 9 am on a Sunday. I never feel welcome there. I hear it from lots of people.
A number of normal people I know are excluded from the ridiculous power cliques or are also defamed and disempowered; they are reductive if a person has more worldly acclaim than they do. Jarod Hayne is welcomed, but ordinary people with degrees, and held in esteem have to big fish themselves when they walk in the door or be overlooked for deeper pockets or more acclaim.
They are still worried that I will sue them. I have 30 text messages as evidence of harassment and what the police term stalking.
It is extremely common for management at this church to be accused of defaming, belittling, and fostering disrespect when they are accused of doing something wrong. In the Faith on Trial podcast multiple people have come forward saying that when they have complained they have been targeted by management they have been called crazy, and difficult, and have been red-flagged and not the person about whom they are complaining. It’s never the member of management who has allegedly groped, harassed, raised their voice to, or otherwise targeted a church member. Numerous examples of this are given in the Faith on Trial podcast, and anecdotally, unless in the clique, it’s not a friendly place to be, even for the most generous
The woman who I was told to give my Facebook details to, watched me online for four years and decided to try to seduce a family member after seeing family assets. She later admitted that she was seeking to marry someone for money. When I shut her out of my life going no contact, I received over 30 texts harassing me in one day. They were pulling a scam. They found everyone on Linkdin, even people I haven’t met in our family company, and sent them long messages of what was said by the person who originated the defamation. It was terrifying. A decent person in church management told me to call the police, and the police said to have both people charged with stalking and to investigate whether either had a history with the police. The other people were just as worried about being sued for defamation, so they support the person who keeps them clear of legal action.
It took three attempts for the defamation to die when I got there and I eventually settled uneventfully down in a Business Connect Group. So yes, a long, uneventful four years later, there they were, back with the same defamation that didn’t ever happen. I was treated like a little child and infantilised. I did not know about any of the women’s meetings for two years or more as she had taken a dislike to me.
Are churches about power?
In a corporation, they would be admonished or stood down or have their pay docked, but so few people are being paid; they volunteer to be in power. Sometimes the vestiges of power don’t attract the best people.
They have free reign to unleash every toxic religious belief unchecked. Bible verses are spun into toxic platitudes. You get a bible verse if you’ve been a victim of a violent crime.
Some of the worst hate speech I have ever heard has taken place in a church and has been said in dulcet tones in well-chosen discreet language by Anglo-Saxon women in large floral dresses and prim shoes.
If these women take aim at you, you are levelled, defamed, flattened. Under a bevel. Oh my goodness what if people were to find out.
They say bad things about nice people, in a nice way with nice words.
Large grotesque florals and frills. Good woman’s clothing to make a show of being “the good people.” A bit like The Good Place, I can’t help but wonder where their morality might take them.
The show-offs are there for a show of religion. I call it “church face”, I love it when they adopt a pious and disingenuous face during a worship song.
They practice their worship face in the mirror like a model or actress practices her angles. Is this devout and godly enough? Some of the good ones, the Grammy winners, are known for getting caught up in worship on their knees; it is quite moving. Their creative conferences addressed issues that creatives face. They have ballet dancers in white tutus, people suspended from the ceiling with angels’ wings dancers, and writing workshops. They were spectacular. Great fun for creatives. That’s why I left the sect. They admonished true creativity.
If you complain and say please don’t defame me, on repeat, you become a “nuisance,” and angry mums raise their voices at you to let you know to ‘cut it out’ with your complaints about being defamed.
“I’ve had enough of you complaining about that man.” They red-flag people for complaining. The dangerous man, the botherer, with a history of bothering, no, he is a good Christian man “in a suit”. He is not red flagged. He is sitting down the back trying to find someone rich to date.
In a workplace, or any other organisation you would be heard, a boss would be called, the law would be adhered to, regrettably you could sue for defamation. They were not worth suing and are like quicksilver doubling down on any person with a complaint.
She tells me that out of all her husbands, she has not managed to get assets out of even one, out of even one. She has remained penniless and is now looking for number 5, and will start dating the first man who will let her move into his house.
I was told to let her follow me on Facebook by the organization; when I joined. For years she watched me go the Whitsundays for a landmark birthday, out on the family boat, in my home, so when her 4th husband reported her to the police, she wanted to make her way into my family to try to marry wealthy family members.
Two psychologists tell me that some people at this church end up in a cycle of abuse. My cycle of abuse continued from a 22-year domestic violence relationship; she spoke to a small, outlier religious sect of 30 people who knew my ex and “loved him and listened to my violent ex” because it helped them to get some assets and money via controlling behaviour. The sect like “rich people” and thought they could meet them or get in with my family to convince them to give them assets. They boasted, “look how many children of rich people there are here in OUR church.”
Now, people are coming forward in droves with complaints that the head on the platter and the head in the cap had nothing to do with. The very same management about which both later complain. The same management empowered bullies who toe the line. Church, what it has become, must be protected at all costs. Church can never be wrong. No apologies people who don’t have people skills to make decisions? How did this church culture prosper? Corporates admit failures. Churches don’t. PR old school. Thrown out by his own management.
There is no one to complain to, no one but God is above them. They say ‘leave it to God’ “we are nice people”, they back up passivity with verses about inaction and not justice.
God works through the hands of people on earth. But the wounded keep coming forward. Justice comes via people sometimes. No person is above the law.
The church must obey the laws of the state. It is not enough to ask God for forgiveness if people have been harmed, or laws have been broken. God might forgive you, but no church member is above the law, nor should they make up the rules.
Every location has a scrum over the front row.
I reported an abusive man 11 times. I counted. It was definitely 11. Before I walked in, I would sit in the car and say, “time number 9”. Then, one day, the person I was reporting it to raised her voice. “Enough”. She was trying to demoralise me back into the little place I was permitted to have for her convenience. Perhaps the evil man said something that made her feel good.
We always believe the man over a woman.
Church. Church. Church. Protect the church and not people. No duty of care.
Don’t apologise for anything or anyone who is hurting. No, just keep on harming, gaslighting.
Stonewall. Breadcrumb. And nothing will be done. In God’s name they say, our will be done.
Transference. Projection.
We won’t fix anything. Deny it and the media won’t go looking. They are looking at the baristas for a bad coffee experience.
We can’t afford to do anything wrong in the cake shop. I am not allowed to volunteer to make coffee because I am trooouuble. The sect warned them about that.
The Big Eagle says: “Holy Spirit does not make you weird”.
You weirdo.
Let us not discuss that every church is having issues that are unrelated to them.
Breadcrumb. Stonewall. Gaslight. Once an opinion is adopted or someone does something wrong they just run with it and hope that media don’t cotton on. What if they see us making the coffee in the wrong way, what if they sneak a camera or a journalist into the congregation? Mmmm. Um. Ok don’t worry, no one will find out.
Get rid of the figurehead. Show them where to direct the hatred.
Then they add some ice cream, more cream, and sugar to their coffee.
They are sweet like saccharine.
Before London
New York, New York, New York. Then, little tennis shorts. Spaghetti straps, walking out of the ocean in one piece. The cameraman is on the beach. Florida, beachside, it’s Spring Break. I don’t like being on camera. Your body is fine, why are you at this spa? Raw vegan food, Swiss style. It’s not easy here. They make it difficult here. This is not an frills spa. I have body treatments daily. My body is smooth and brown, I don’t have any cellulite. I inspect my body daily trying to see if there are any imperfections that I can treat.
I am shy and retreating as I walk past the cameraman towards the beach. I am the only in the water. It’s a vast stretch of beach in Florida.
Lots of New Yorkers, Bahamas, oh I could live here. We do excursions together to the boardwalk, to the bookstore, to the health food store. It is very simple accommodation. I decide that I want to live the rest of my life that way.
I have curves I say to the journalist, she tells me curves are ok, that’s just my body type, that I look fine, but why can’t I see it. 57 Kilos is too big, I say. The interviewer suggests that I have body dysmorphia. I grab my legs to show her the unnecessary flesh. The superfluous part of me.
I love the USA I think I want to live here one day. In the best shape of my life. Love working out every day. Venezuela, meeting up with family. We take a trip to a bar in the middle of nowhere, on a river, there are piranhas in the river.
Rome, Paris, and Florence again and again and again. Paris, shall I stay in Paris? Always Paris. Where did I go wrong? When was the right time to leave. I didn’t go wrong, they were always going to smash down everything I did. It’s my move, their move, my move, their move. One step forward, ooh she’s dangerous, smack her back 9 steps with abuse.
I make a move, they smack me down. It was a set to fail scam, just a rort, in a rort or steal. Do anything that is required to win.
London
Brixton. I only know two Kiwi’s. We are not Earl’s Court Australians and Kiwis. We don’t go to the pub with the stuffed kangaroo on the counter. We don’t drink beer. I am with people who are trying to finagle their way into the entertainment industry. They want to “make it big” in Britain. They are the very bottom of Antipodean society, they are the scum and they act as so. Here people do not understand the Antipodes, they find the lack of class system baffling. The accents all sound a bit similar. So these two grafters, grifters, people of few ethics, and who have already committed quite a few crimes to stay in the country, quite a few. From solicitation, to brothel work, to drug trafficking, a little bit of light fraud, American Express fraud. Of course, they don’t want people to know that when you meet them. When you meet them, they just look like to hipsters from the Antipodes. They their banter, they fake backgrounds. They both say they are upper class citizens from the Brisbane riverfront suburb of Teneriffe. Blue chip, top schools, was it Grammar or Churchie? There is no internet, so they just get to recreate themselves in Britain. It was unsafe to be the only one not fabricating a new back story. Or to be well-heeled and to call out the charlatans. To say, “I don’t think you should be listening to that guy.” They always get rid of the messenger. They wouldn’t allow me to bring anyone over who could put a pin in all the rubbish. We only wanted disreputable people around us in the music industry. No Antipodean of good repute was allowed into that room. They shunted the Mosman’s and Toorak’s out of there, lickety-split. This was no place for a nice girl. These were the big leagues. It wasn’t impossible for people to come out of this room and land at centre of a worldwide stage. That actually happened. Do you think they all helped each other get there. No, the opposite, they all fought each other. To use the expression, it was a room of big swinging …it wasn’t a place for the feint of heart.
They should have both been kicked out by now for “signing on” for Australian’s who have long since returned to the Antipodes. That is fraud against the government. That means fraudulently finding an Aussie passport and collecting dole money. Well, it was better than trafficking drugs, or late night hooking. Of course, I just needed a place to stay, I just broken up with a boyfriend, an Australian. He went back home. They both didn’t want me to have that boyfriend, or the one that I lived for a year in Brighton. A new back story was fabricated. Ingenue. Not a rich girl, pedestrian, rank and file, poor little suburban background on the outskirts. They couldn’t have a female Alpha saying he No’s and her Yes’s as though she meant them. Even a woman, who is wealthy could trump a man, even back in those days. It was a little more dangerous.
I can’t believe that they told me. They appear to be nice and cool. But they aren’t a bit nice. They are narcissistic. One is shipping drugs back home. I never want go any of the same destinations as him. I won’t travel with them. When they invite me to Thailand I say, politely, no thank you. He says he is searched at every airport and that he makes a big deal about racial profiling. He shames them. Shame on those police cops. Nup, he doesn’t send the drugs that way. Why do that? Just send them via post. He has bagmen all over the world. Just buy a big magazine that isn’t sold in Australia. Like a W magazine, better still a gay magazine. I don’t think the airport cops will look at that. Buy two, knife the cover off, and then stick the sheets of acid in between the fake cover and the actual cover. The bagmen have to show their licence to get a post box. They do the pick up, he is the brains, but they take all the risk.
Always drama, they were kicked out of every decent home and shunned by all decent people. Always on the lamb, always in with the scam. People don’t like them but in England they can’t detect that they are not of the right ilk. They slip through the gap. Kicked out of a nice house in Brixton. The nice woman says I can stay. I am not staying long I say. I might be home next week. A roadie smashes his guitar but he says it is me. I am the scapegoat. It is right here that I understand it’s him or me baby, he can’t fight this. They start creating a new identity for me. I am not a groupie, I don’t like musicians. I like men who are of a similar type or creative, men with degrees. Stay, you are nice, ditch those two losers, says the owner of the house in Brixton. I am a bit lost. I don’t know anyone. I have little money coming in so they adopt me. She could be handy. Scammers. I see her adopt wealthy americans in India, or Isreal. We end up at some place at 3 am with nowhere to stay. You. Aren’t. Fooling. Me. We have to stay up all night. We find a dodgy restaurant that is open at 3am.
Camden Council Flat:
Temporary accommodation. 10 pounds per week. Clothing money, day spa, women’s gym. Wanted to join the Sanctuary to swim everyday but he said he couldn’t have a paper trial, if he did, I could ask for all the royalties he owed me. I have to sleep on a yoga matt on the floor. You know what, it had a hole in the floor, thinking back now, I think it could have been a squat. I wonder.
All on a scam. All with work they had stolen. All by extorting famous people, artistic people, people from there, who are good enough. The are the not good enough, they just blackmailed the good enough. They made things up and extorted famous people with lies.
I went to another women’s club, but they saw the Kiwi and waved her on. They asked her to leave Harvey Nichols when I was shopping for makeup. I was wearing a 90’s slip dress with white piping, and polished black block heel mules. They allowed me to keep shopping, to keep charging my card, while she was forced to wait out on the street after she was moved on by security. I took my time shopping. It was nice to just breath air that they were not taking up space in.
I am a little scared of her, she keeps calling me Princess. Why not go and swim at the Sanctuary every day. I have 500 dollars per week to live on. I shop, I walk I browse and dream of the lingerie chain or skincare I will open when I return home to do my MBA. I am just back from the USA, the Middle East and South America. But they tell them that I don’t like skincare, beauty products or makeup and that I don’t believe that women should wear lingerie.
The man from Humptydoo
He can’t be here. He can’t be here. I just saw his client’s flat. I wonder if there has been a murder in that room. The energy isn’t good. It feels a little like there could have been. You can sniff the violence in the air. It is broad daylight it is bathed in light that is stark against colours in the room. It has bright yellow serial killer shag pile carpet. The sunshine makes it brighter and it makes the scent of urine worse. There is a long human-sized cage on the floor. It’s not very high, the size of a dog. It’s prison bar material. There are dog tags and a dog bowl with his name on it on the floor. It’s terrifying. When did we leave SW1?
I want to get out of here. I start to begin to wonder if he is a sociopath. Do I know this person at all?
At home, he works at the hole through the wall in the Cross. Could be a judge he says, or somebody wealthy. He eats out of a dog bowl. Old man client. Bestiality. He says he will do anything for money. He can’t be here. Not a good person. Not a good background. Now don’t believe him. Even his mother snuck into a mansion at Bellevue Hill, not a relative, not a mourner for a wake, but to see how the other half live, you know. He says. A sightseer at a funeral. Then when I call him out he makes up a story that he is a relative. Is that what you are doing here at this harbourside apartment. A friend and I are living there while we go to Sydney University. Um, his jaw dropped when he saw the view. The yokel. Then he got a little plan in his head. I said, “Is that what you are doing here, are you seeing how the other half live?” Lady Susan Sangster Renouf lives in the penthouse. You can’t get past the doorman here. So I call the doorman on him.
Just leave my apartment, please. My flatmate and I, we don’t like you. You are a low life. Stop sneaking into the homes of the wealthy to see how the other half live. Stop sneaking into funerals. Stop sightseeing at funerals. He later tells me about the big celebrity names at the funeral of the producer who died, he was the patsy, he was the scapegoat, he was the alibi needed to deny that he stole my lyrics. Don’t be a fool anymore, it was deliberate.
He is still a bit confused about sex. And starts groping me. I tell him to stop but he won’t. Get off me you creep. Leave my place. Out of the Quay Apartments. I won’t let him touch me or sleep with me. Nothing there. Because he likes the other side. There is no penetration. Only please leave me. Alone. Creeypy.
Free at last, life of luxury
My beautiful black car. SUD.
Off the plane from Heathrow.
I love SUD. Freedom, beaches, peaches. Bikinis.
It’s a manual. Love it when women can drive a manual.
Drinks at sunset. Loving being back. It is grey and cold and wet in London. I am missing people but not the people they say I should miss. Not the people who want to be missed. I haven’t seen a real beach since I was in Florida earlier that year. I only like the ones who aren’t famous. But don’t check on me again and see what he has done to cover his tracks.
Surely, they would want me to be free, enjoy being back free from harm. The harm I wasn’t permitted to tell them about. Only I am not ever free of harm again.
Within a week I am on the family cruiser owned by our new step-family. It’s not a boat it’s a ship. It’s classed as a small ship, they say. We take family portraits. A blended family on the marina, yes, like the Brady Bunch. Three girls, three boys. Cruiser, stepmother in the galley. It’s a large galley for four, four births behind it. Always dining. Dining at the dining table. Full lunch service. Dark timber. No red wine is allowed because it stains the wood. DVD’s from the racing industry.
Ah, why did I ever leave? I am safe. It all feels a little new.
Then a blind date, a roller coaster, Law Ball. Perhaps I should study law, I like those law students. I have landed on my feet. This allows me to be me, no need to ask for permission for who I am allowed to be. Not permitted. Not permitted. Not permitted.
Well, he doesn’t know anybody important does he. A Master of Law. Yes, but I don’t say. That’s his business not your business. I don’t tell him who he knows, because he is the inferior person. It’s his business, and only his business and I won’t be sharing. How much money does he have? What! That’s more than I have. I can’t believe that you have replaced me with a more powerful man. Yes a 100 times more? He growls at me. He is seething. How can he be expected to get away with this, if all the people here can’t be controlled? He can’t control people anymore. He calls back with menacing little growl.
“I asked around, and no one important has ever heard of that guy. I asked all the important people that I know.” I don’t quantify, I don’t double down. I just request that he stop calling me. I don’t need in my life. I don’t want him in my life. He makes everything bad. He forces everything to go pear shaped. He forces everything to be ruined. He forces every friendship to break. He forces ruining, cruelty and harassment to ensure that he alone, has the credit and money from his lyrics. He confides that he has to go to extreme measures, not limited to but including that he can’t have any powerful people, or anyone who knows people around me.
He says he is worried that he is a lawyer. That I live in a house full of lawyers. Could be more. But I don’t say that. He is angry that I have found a man better than him. Is it game up? He says to me, YOU CAN’T BE WITH HIM. “Nothing good for you love, nothing good for you.” If I had told him the name, he could have tried to reach out or to social climb over me. I was like roadkill, a bump in the road for a celebrity. But I know what he did last summer. We all do, and everyone has to keep the secret or they are extorted and there are lies and standover men. There are bad people involved in this. There are bagmen.
My brother asks, is someone calling you to threaten you? Do you want me to tell them to stop calling for you?
“I can’t have you around people who are powerful anymore, or people connected to the legal profession. I told you what would happen to you love. I told you that I will tell everyone you are crazy. I’ll have you thrown away. You won’t like what happens love if you try to tell people.
It was the greatest fraud in modern music industry. Other people would have been embarrassed to do an extensive creative fraud like this. Not him. He can own people if he likes. What like Milli Vanilli I quip. At least you do your own singing. “I don’t want to be Milli Vanilli love.” “Everyone will laugh at me.” I have to hide that this happened. I will do anything to hide it.
I’ll be a laughingstock forever if people know I stole my words.” He can’t use the word stole he prefers the word “took”. If they realise they are not mine, it won’t be good.” “I lied to people at the label, I said they are mine. You can’t have your life now. You gotta have the life I say you can have.
If you just go away, don’t talk to any famous people or any powerful people, it’s all going to be my work forever. No one needs to know. I don’t want to have take any more measures love. Just leave it where it is. I’ve told you what will happen to you. You won’t like what will happen to you.
I tell him I am studying journalism. He says journalists are the enemy, but we tell what we want to think. He has made sure he has lots of friendlies, he knows how to do that he says. It’s easy to get around a journalist. He says he has friends in high places, but that I can’t have any of my old friends in high places or my new ones, or any of the men here. I have to forget my childhood days. Forever now, I am not to do my hair, I am not allowed to do makeup, to have surgery or injections, to wear designer clothes. He needs me pilloried. That is the ugly woman, people don’t care if you steal from ugly old women, who aren’t sexy, like him.
He said that he thought he was going to get away with it. He’s a bit daft, the internet is already here. I am already joking about the white pages. He says as long as he controls the information and I stay away from powerful men no one will ever find out. He says he doesn’t want their lives destroyed, that he doesn’t want to have to do that.
I don’t recognise him when I see him on TV. The person on TV and the person on the phone are strikingly different. It’s just an act for the cameras. My blood runs cold when he tells me not to “even think” of becoming a journalist. Because I have seen inside. He says that day if I tell he will have someone tell them I am crazy and he will deny it. Don’t reach out through your friend’s love. Don’t tell anyone. “Everyone wants me now love.” “Everybody loves me love.”
Please. LET. ME. GO. Well, you can’t tell him. Why? You. Will. Ruin. His. Life. But why? I have moved on. I have a sick feeling. Why, what are you planning? Why won’t you end this. I want my life too. PLEASE. Let me go. Please stop calling me.
Another time I hang up in despair. Please stop calling me. I want to move on and have a life. I, I, I am dating. Don’t call. Exasperated. I say. He calls to tell me I am ugly, and that I shouldn’t date. He says that I should never sex again with any man. He has chosen me as the “unsexy one” the target of lies, “the target of sexual humiliation”, no good rape victim, because I won’t sleep with he doesn’t know. He asks men who have forced to have sex with them, what I like in bed.
I am looking for Mr Darcy, and you my dear, are Mr Wickham. I gently put down the receiver. I take his little phone number note and cinch it between my fingers. I screw it up. I watch it hit the trash can. I set myself free. He calls to complain that I never call him that he always calls me. Yes, I don’t want to be complicit, but the real reason is why call someone who makes you feel sick. When I heard the phone ring, I felt ill. Not again. And I was having a such a good day. I was in such a good mood. I was happy. I have a date later. I am going to casino later. I have a new man. Get out of my head. Stop telling me I can never date again.
Will I be needing that? I don’t want to keep the complicit in stealing number. If I called him, then I have complied. If I say yes to any man in that room, I have complied. I am could be held as complicit in creative rape. Creative humiliation.
Surely this man can’t reach me thousands of kilometres away. I never, ever call him. He complains that I never call him. There is no way that I would willingly make contact or be in his presence. He is not the one I want to call me. Why don’t the others see how I am? Why not, I liked the ones who were not famous. But they don’t check on me to see if I am ok. He is the conduit. He sends the dog man but my dogs in Sydney not at university.
Are they ok? How is it going? Are things going well? What’s the weather like? Are your dreams coming true for you? Couldn’t stay that way. Not even if they were the best people in the world. You couldn’t pay me to stay there. They were harming me.
Taking things for free had every cost for me. Secrets like this can cost lives. This is a horror story, with serial killer yellow shag pile carpet. Thank you for fighting for me to have it be my work. Please don’t disrupt your destiny for me. I want it for you. I want you to have what you want for you. What if the world missed you? Can’t have that on my soul. Oh, the conversations you didn’t hear. The ones you aren’t hearing now. No way to tell you. Should have taken that email address, and found the Batlabs.
He rings back with swagger. I have asked around, and he doesn’t know ANYBODY. ANYBODY. I am more important.
I worry unnecessarily about control via money. I think that is exactly why he does it to me via my family. I explain to him in London. I want my own money so I can make my own life and my own decisions. He won’t let me have my own money as any of “his money” I earn for him, he says, “no love, you will just use it on other men.” I’ll get you an apartment, but no other men are allowed to come over. You are not permitted to go outside.
You can’t hide what people have done on his behalf, the crimes, the cruelty, the helping him to fool people. You can’t hide the assaults, the please commits suicides. It simply is the truth, and the truth is the truth. And the truth can set everyone free. Even the right tropes do. You can’t hide it in tropes, you can’t hide it in give her enough rope for she has done nothing to hang herself. I have secrets but nothing to hide. 1000 recordings say the truth, date stamped, not this year, not a reaction, just history now. Can’t change them. I don’t think inanimate objects feel emotions. They don’t get scared. They won’t scare easily. If circumstances change, if the appearance of things change, they will stay unchanged. They sit there waiting. Not destiny, but forcing. Messengers forcing. Messengers harming. All things have a consequence. Taking writing has had many, many unintended consequences. When you said you wanted people to study your writing at university, pray tell, how did you think that would happen when you left school at just 15.
Please don’t end up like him. Wouldn’t they in fact be studying my writing. Your writing didn’t get better. It was panned by the critics. Wasn’t it? The things that were not stored up for years that were cowritten but not disclosed and then denied. I remember your threat in the doorway after he walked out. You know what is going to happen to you if you say anything. Now I don’t want it to love, I really don’t. But you do know what is going to happen to you. I feel things in my soul. Call it a sixth sense. Like a psychic but not. Its normal. We get it. Impressions in the soul, not a voice, premonitions spill out of my mouth.
What is the first rule of this fight? The first rule it is not a fight it is a peacemaking. He can’t get away with passing work off not as his own. On the whole, no one likes a Weinstein or a bully. Is this just common thievery from a guy who wants to be in livery. The truth cannot be changed, and crimes cannot be hidden, even by accidental co-conspirators.
Ah how the truth still comes out. You can’t hide a secret forever. Secrets can kill people. Because he is not God we see his work, once not written by me, and the man who lost his life to help you steal, how the great fall around you. Did you really get away with it, didn’t your career go down the tubes because you didn’t actually write your own work. What a big thing to hide. Heroin.
Miss Fix it. Can’t fix it if he keeps making it worse. More crimes. More abuse by proxy. More get her for me. More anti-depressents for me making me put on weight. Missed out on my life for the lousy lyrics. It’s not even my good work. He sold the good ones. Not even the good ones for the good artists. Oh, tell me do? Does he get a blank cheque of harm from them? Does he say, “Well she would do this or that of course, anybody would.” Ah, don’t let him mislead you. Only the crime doers need to fear. The abuse by proxy women, the old sad narcs who can’t get things to go there way anymore. How many of the indie label, DJ’s used my hooks? How many songs did they put them into. It makes me feel ill to think about how cruel it is to gaslight. It will never be a good story for me.
For the popular guy, Everybody loves me love. I can do anything I want. Have any woman I want. Then why, did you say, the good women don’t want me anymore? Only this one and that one don’t want me. May it be on them forevermore those who offer blank cheques to harm people. May it affect their life and not mine. I just want out of this reticular situation.
People in entertainment are just crazy people who can do something. It is up to their people to handle their level of crazy and to hide it from their fans.
Here he is again hiding what he is doing. He keeps calling. I tell someone industry, Australian industry. He keeps calling, even though I ask him not to. Later he says, love you can’t speak to that guy again. I don’t want people to know what I have done.
You can’t have a good life love. Nothing good for you. He rings me to tell me that.
I am dating someone I say, leave me alone, stop calling me. What does he do? Law. He swallows. Law? Law could be an issue. He says don’t tell him about me. Oh, I would not want him to know about somebody like you, you I say, have a reputation. You shoot up heroin, you sniff cocaine, you have a hooker. What should I say about I say, hookers, the drug issue, the drinking issues…. which thing exactly will a man of that stature find so threatening about you? What, and by the way what are you reading at the moment?
Why is it Ok to harm me?
I don’t like that a refugee has money. That’s Australian money for Australian people, not your money, you come in and take all OUR money, where is our money. Why do you have money? You have dark hair, and that horrible, olive skin, mine is lily white. She asks me why my horses eat hay and why they have treacle. Why. She doesn’t sound like me. I ask a neighbour, she neighs and says we don’t like the way they carry on here, how loud they are, their friends and family. They are loud, it is the house at the bottom of the creek bed. They don’t do as we do, and they want to drag us down. We mind the company we keep. We just don’t want to associate. If they were nice people.
We are refugees like the Ukrainian who gives me language lessons and piroshki on Friday afternoon. My ponies find her horses when they are on the run when we are away in Europe. Nana finds the ponies and finds a Ukrainian friend. Out of all the horses on all the properties they find her daughter’s horses. Later a little Welsh Mountain Pony that belongs to my sister, learns to lift his tail, learning to run free like an Arab and canter away. All 3 lift their tales, and turn and canter away, 10 acres to run on agistment.
I don’t know but they break bread. In Dural, a Ukrainian! How wonderful and her gardens are famous gardens, a botanist lived there and has written a book about her grounds. Sabachka.
She just needs to know about the treacle and the hay please and the straw they eat at their feet. Maybe I will just pretend to be youse. No word has an ending. My horse kicks my dog, border collies are impossible to keep locked up when on a ride. Even when all four stable doors are locked, he tracks me down streets away. How does he get both swinging doors open, always the top one. A little brown escape artist with piercing blue eyes. Good for acreage.
Learn to be kind one day kid and you will have a friend I say. That’s when you will make friends at school.
She is there source of information on me. She is the girl no one wanted, the outsider, the outlier with a grudge, because everyone ignored them. The stalker who was banned from the house for spitting, for swearing for hate speech all directed at my grandmother. The girl who had nothing better to do than to sit at the top of our driveway trying to stop me cantering past on my Arabian horse, revving her engine to spook him. She didn’t like that the daughter of a refugee had horses, when all she had was a quadbike. It’s a narc tanty.
Ever after
It’s because what he says is deplorable. It sickens me. When are they both stealing, I am sitting with the producer and with the artist, who is singing backing vocals at the time. My skin feels clammy. I am sick to my stomach. I can’t wait to leave the room and see the others. When I do I am in fight or flight, I need to calm down, I feel sick. I smile a wan smile. I am being coerced and it doesn’t feel good. Most of us can relate to that sick feeling we have when someone else is in the act of stealing from us. It feels like a thief breaking into your home in the dead of night. You feel sick.
Look how he dragged everyone into it. Secrets? No secrets. Do we all know the secret movements of every heart? All the secret things they thought were secret. Not a secret. All levelled. Bevelled. And others jewelled. I said.
Next act, baby. Don’t want to know you.
Chapter 4: There is a monster in my house
There is a monster in my house.
Most of the assaults happened in her bedroom.
She claims domestic violence isn’t a real. You walk off. She says you just throw them off you. Domestic violence isn’t real.
She lives in my old home. My old house. She wanted my Balinese Palace, it’s a cool house.
The house saves my life. The previous owner tells me, “This house will love you back.”
But she missed out on it. So she hisses about it. She belittles me, she belittles my house. They try to damage my property value.
She keeps track of me. She tells me I am not allowed to go into my village anymore.
She follows me after coffee group, I am a bit scared of her by now so don’t tell her where I am going. She starts harassing the other women in the coffee group. They get abusive texts too. She demands to know where the next meeting is. This isn’t a group that she wanted to be in until I joined it, and started having a good time, going to all the parties, all the events.
At one point, after I got my Protection Order, I could walk into a restaurant, and 8 blonde heads would all turn to look at me and they come in close, and discuss the terrible egregious things that my ex fabricated so that he didn’t have to go to prison, and couldn’t be charged with rape, with physical violence, with coercive control, and with financial abuse.
Everybody knows she doesn’t want me near anyone. She tries to take down my social network. My therapist helps me through it. She sees all the texts.
She doesn’t know where I am going but when I leave the day spa she is waiting there for me in the buggy parking space. She blocks my little golf cart with her 6 seater cart. I can’t move or escape. I am slight at the time, and she shakes her arm at me and her fists. She hurls abuse. She has just yelled at me at coffee after I have asked if she is Ok. I had written a text, a strong one, a leave me alone, I need a break from you please. I rewrite it 4 times, from blunt to scared …I am terrified of her and whimper in her presence. She says terrible things to people. I am on my toes saying, don’t bully me in a little voice. Then she takes aim at any person who is standing up for me or still communicating with me. It’s a network takedown.
You cannot go there anymore. I won’t let you. Who does your brows. Your hair. Your blow dry’s. I am going to tell them “all about you”. Well, you can’t go there now because I say so.
I have lived in a domestic violence situation for years. I live in fight or flight for years. Has she asked my ex-partner what the best techniques for control are? I am not unfettered. I am controlled. It’s fight, flight, fawn or freeze. I try all four with her to get her to leave me alone.
She’s a civilian. Not in entertainment.
I have been here twice as long as she has.
The latest monster is from Melbourne again and has been commissioned to bully me. She is curmudgeonly. Here I am in the photo next to her. She returns from Melbourne scoffing. Me size 6 USA, her a size 20. She scoffs and spits “You are too ugly to be paid.”
She announces she is going to be on a show. I say, oh, are you an actress? She has never taken a dance class, singing, acting, music…she is a bully for hire. I ask. Recompensed with a bit of glamour. It’s a reality show she says so acting, dancing, singing is not required.
She interrupts my Melbourne Cup lunch with a manufactured emergency. “I have to keep you away from the village and away from people she hisses,” later at lunch. I let the other women down, I see photos of my empty seat at the table. There was no emergency. As she hastily eats her food, she eyes me sceptically, she says she has spoken to a psychic about me. That she is psychic too. She says there are spirits in her house with whom she communes. She claims the house is haunted because I lived there.
She tells me it would not have happened to her. She tells me that she has heard that I was too ugly to be paid for my work and writing in the music industry. A producer starts portraying my lyrics as his, he won’t allow me backstage as people will know they are my lyrics and not his. If could make my own contacts he says and sell my own lyrics. He has 4 or 5 lovers and is sleeping with the gay male gay hooker. He also has 4 or 5 girlfriends and trans lovers. I don’t want to be with him and shake my head when he kneels in front of me alone one night.
He exposes himself in broad daylight to another woman from Mosman.
She tells me as she is not ugly, she would have been paid. It’s a shock. It is smack bang in the centre of Me Too. I am thin, I look the best that I have in years. It’s traumatic for women who have been through the celebrity coercion, forcing, harassment, to watch brave, brave women, be attacked by the big male monsters. Very few come out unscathed. They need to cause a few wounds.
I have been told that my gender, my race, and my looks have all been good reason to not pay me. I was told to look more Anglo, that dark hair is unattractive, to lose my hourglass figure, that 57 kilos at 5’7 is too big. Every single day in England he mentions that I fall short of his beauty standard, he makes it my issue, I am consistently criticized for not looking like a model.
I am not interested in him as he is not able to discuss literature and makes chauvinistic comments about women. I am criticized for the very crime of being average, like billions of other women in the world being ordinary slim is not good enough. He can’t comprehend why I keep giving him the slip. But I don’t want to be in the celebrity world. I want to be journalist, a politician, an advocate. I don’t want to look like a model.
I need to meet impossible beauty standards that only 20 or so women in the world can. But that is just an excuse. The men make up pen names. I am not allowed a pen name. He blameshifts. They victim blame. The goal posts keep being moved. My looks are not really the issue at all. It is just an excuse. He begins to make jokes he can. He makes jokes about my vagina and my breasts. He makes puerile little toddler remarks, little narc barbs, and theres toilet humour in between vagina jokes. My blood is cold here. There is metal in my head.
I work out 5 days per week as I live in a flat with no hot water that I pay a pittance for, so I shower at the gym. I ask for money to move out but instead am offered an apartment that he would pay for with an allowance, and a flatmate he selects. I can no longer run to the safety of the other men, he says no other man will be able to visit me at the apartment. That I can’t go outside. I ask if they can visit, not even the producer is allowed to visit. I ask again for payment so I can get my own place that I select, so I can be safe. That I chose my own flatmate as that woman is also controlling me for someone who pressures me to tell the celebrity that he sounds just like George Michael. He didn’t make it. No one knows who he is. But that’s another story altogether.
I completed my MBA but have one subject remaining toward my MA, so I hope to have a feature writing subject completed at Macquarie University in 1999 added towards that degree. He doesn’t want to pay my student loans for my degree in poetry when I ask.
He refuses to pay me but criticises my clothes and shoes. It is not my appearance or my clothes, these are excuses, he can fabricate ways to get away with it because of my gender. I am not allowed to wear my good shoes, my good clothes and makeup. He buys the hookers and the racist trash new clothes. I browse at Armani every few days. If they pay me I will buy that dress.
The men aren’t required to be pretty, the producer isn’t a sex symbol. He is very overweight. He claims he wants ‘his’ lyrics studies at university. No one stops him or corrects him. I mention that he should listen to Bob Dylan and he scoffs and laughs. I say he will make him a better lyricist. His lyics invite co-dependency and compliance, they are lyrics of obedience and how to worship him. They are an exercise in narcissism. They will never be studied by English departments anyway.
We all know other people are incentivized by meeting D List Celebrities and hanging out backstage, or a little appearance on a reality show …they are incentivized to assist with non-payment, and to fabricate excuses for why I should not be paid. To make me appear unattractive, unpayable, unbae-able, even at 25. When I am 25 I am doing my MBA. It’s not the first time, and it’s not the last. It is happening even now which is why I want it to stop.
It becomes harassment. I email my lawyer. This is not her first gambit, not her first lawyer. In Melbourne when she exhibited similar behaviour she told me QCs were called. But they couldn’t do anything, you can’t successfully sue for defamation she says, so on she continues making other people’s lives a living nightmare with total impunity. My lawyer emails back how rude, with exclamation marks. He doesn’t usually use exclamation marks. He has never used one previously. He uses 4. She is in contact with my abusive ex too and uses his fabricated stories to spread and harass me. It’s a cycle of abuse.
All I can hope for is that these particular lyrics are never studied at university. They weren’t be, they were fit for purpose. As branding. Other men in that room wrote English Poetry Department worthy lyrics. But not the three of us. I gasped when I saw another mans words. Better than anything I studied, and any Poet of 68. They are a little like the Beat Poets.. I don’t think they are my best work. I don’t know if he won awards for them or for his voice. He also had assistance with his music, the producer wrote his guitar solo. All he had to do is sing.
She keeps me contained, belittled, and small with these tropes. When living in her house I commence a four-year plan to leave. It’s not easy. I encourage him to see other people, he sees people of both sexes as he did at university where we met. He has told people he was head hunted by our family company but we had met years earlier during our MBA. Right around when the cycle of abuse started.
My ex has many men and women for new supply. I move to her house due to the little red buttons, 24 hours back to base manned security. I put in a four-year-long escape plan. No one believes me. So I have to put up with the violence. When we move, after a year so, she is jealous of my house, my ex tells her that we didn’t want hers. In the new house I finally press the red button. We know each other when I am with my violent ex. We go out as couples. I don’t tell the village or the coffee group, the details she told me about her marriage. That is not a class act. It’s just not cricket.
She tells me you can bully and belittle me with impunity. No one will stop it.
She meets with me and I am trying to convince her to stop spreading Abuse By Proxy. She issues me with a list of demands of where I can no longer go. I have been going to the spa for 5 years longer than you I say. She issues an edict.
Not this café.
Not this restaurant.
Not the day spa
Who does your lashes, who does your blow dries, who does your nails.
You can’t go anywhere in the village.
In an act of Karma, I know the universe has my back, within a year or two every place she names goes bankrupt or has to move away.
She harasses people who maintain contact with me. They fear her too. It’s not worth it. Eventually everyone else moves. It’s a transitory place for some. Most of her work and bullying and belittling has resulted in nothing. She is not well liked. I decide the safest thing is to keep to myself. Yes, my bully has trained me. She helped me to retrain after violence. My life now consists of socialising outside the village. I have to find a gym outside the village.
We go out with a group who knew my ex who I am attempting to explain abuse by proxy to. I want to tell them about the violence. Surely they are good people and they don’t really believe my violent ex. She yells at me before they arrive. I can’t breathe or speak. She says vile things when no one can witness it. I go white and can’t think straight. Every bully knows to do that. By the time they arrive I am falling silent, one person says what’s wrong. She looks over and glares at me and shifts her bulk her in her seat.
She laughs. She sleeps in the rape room.
She points at me with lies from my ex as I walk in. My therapist says to stop going to the gym. So, I can’t go to the gym. She is not the only one harassing me…he has an Abuse by Proxy group. They are deaf and numb. They have been inoculated. They scoff when I correct them and say that we met at university so the story about him stalking me for 9 months and that it was a university joke doesn’t land.
He has indicated to a number of woman that they are superior.
The very day before I had given him a lecture on consent, because I didn’t want to sleep with him. Plus I felt the need to be protective of younger women who might not realise that they can say no to a big star. That they don’t have to just because he asks. He mumbles “Oh sorry, I forgot to ask.” He had walked into the room; I am sitting with other men and he issues a command. “Be at my place at 8, I have decided I want to sleep with you.” I am a little confused as he has asked me the day prior which prompted my little feminist lecture on the importance of obtaining verbal consent. Belittling me in front of those very men is his own private game. They both demand I be paid, they even show me lyrics. We discuss lyrics and song names, things I don’t repeat but I am not writing for them.
It is not ancillary, it is done in a separate room, line after line after line, but I am not permitted by both men to hold the pen. I am in shock and in fight or flight all the time. How he portrays that to people isn’t my business.
“What if my fans find out she knocked me back. He is mortified. Perhaps he has never heard no before.
She does the same thing to a Lord’s wife, she is jealous and says after the defamation spread about her, “she just can’t look at her the same way.” She is a Size 0, thinner and a lot more glamorous.
It started when the celebrity started belittling me over a gang rape, repeating the things the men who assaulted me said. Yes. The celebrity used to belittle me over the things the gang rapists criticised me over during a group sexual assault. Much like him they rated every part of my body. They said I wasn’t good enough to be assaulted. It is extremely triggering to have your rapists words repeated to you by someone you have never slept with.
Studies show that bullies attempt to affect your external environment (what people think about you), and your internal identity (how you feel about yourself). They attempt to make the external and internal match up. It is an attempt to change who you are. It is a violation of your identity. We should never tell people who they are or should be. I think it is something that trans people and LGTBIQ people understand, never mess with someone’s identity. Messing with identity or having identity problems and attacks is a main cause of suicide. Bystander Theory, a domestic violence term, is the only way to stop Abuse by Proxy and bullying. The studies show that schoolyard bullies go on to bully in the workplace, or
Abuse comes through so many forms, financial, physical, sexual…reputational…they need you to either not believe them or to tell you things to make you not care. Abuse By Proxy is used as a domestic violence and a bullying threat. It is reputational abuse. I had a fine reputation before I had the misfortune of having my lyrics stolen. My family all still bring up, London, saying I should never have gone. That is ruined my life.
He has told me to kill myself 15 times or so. I sometimes muse…how far would he have gone to not be caught out. Could it be him? What is the difference? Tell someone to kill themselves, is it the same thing as attempted homicide…it is a stretch, but people don’t realise how many people are jealous and why, they have no reference to what that is like, they haven’t been exposed to top celebrities, no one ever has a point of reference. They are not sure why people have hounded me.
You were not paid due to being too ugly. She laughs a loud harsh laugh. A wood chuck laugh. Her tongue clacks when she laughs.
She says she left Melbourne because all the women turned on her. When the group turns on injustice, a bully. She says she doesn’t believe in forgiveness. She believes it’s a dog-eat-dog world and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. She is not like me.
It is inconvenient for her when I am in a new relationship. She can’t control that group of people. My social life is outside the village. She has her own little fiefdom. Of waitstaff who will maintain a relationship with her.
As I have been around the music industry in London. I neither confirm nor deny. I am cagey. I am my own person. These are not my stories. Not anyone else’s so I don’t tell them. 95% of people don’t know. It’s not my story. 4% of people know 2% of the story. I never dine out on
They choose their monsters well.