www.deadspin.com has a running series called "Stories that Don't Suck" where they link to well written articles (often having to do with sports) which can be found in their entirety somewhere on the web.  It is by far the best thing about their website (even better than Drew's Funbags, which kick a sizeable amount of ass themselves) and has never failed to provide at least one piece per posting that has furthered my appreciation for the written word more than anything since turning on the subtitles during The Lord of the Rings in blu-ray.  I think it's high time we here at www.thebaltimorons.com (tell your friends) stole the idea and occasionally put up links to writing that challenges you in a way our mindless drivel could only dream of.

Feel free to put up any links to pieces you've read in the comments section, it doesn't have to be sports related.  I promise you I will read every single one of them, so long as they aren't links to purchasing a full book somewhere.  Don't feel rushed though, any of the three of us will probably post one of these whenever we stumble across something particularly inspiring.

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved by Hunter S. Thompson

  A take on the most decorated horse race in the world by one of the craziest sons of bitches the universe has ever known.  Much more of a commentary on the pagentry surrounding the derby than the derby itself.  Seriously, there are over 7,000 words and only ten of them are "horse".  Also, Hunter S. Thompson may have had a drug problem. 

Gareth Thomas... The Only Openly Gay Male Athlete by Gary Smith

  This is a great piece of writing because it focuses on what we can't learn ourselves (the incredible story of Thomas), less on what we should be thinking about ourselves (what this means for sports in general) and no time on trying to force morality down our throats.  To keep something incredibly complex simple enough to feel; that's why writing can be gooder than television.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I love The Wire.  I love it.  It is certainly the greatest drama ever to appear on television (sorry The Sopranos but you were torn in too many directions by the end, many away from the Sopranos), probably the greatest TV show ever (sorry Mystery Science Theatre 3000 but I needed the name of another incredible show after blowing my Sopranos load on the previous parenthetical), and will stand forever as the most realistic portrayal of the decay of the back alleys that are Urban America at the dawn of the century (sorry Sesame Street).

It didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Show Ever Made for three reasons: (1) It was slow developing and required the audience’s full attention, (2) The accuracy of the inner-city slang was so spot on that subtitles only further confuse an already pigmentation-ally challenged HBO audience, and (3) The majority of the cast was black.  While the last statement was a loaded one, hopefully we will be able to get into discussions of The Wire during the offseason.  For now, let’s talk about the show’s creator: David Simon.

I’m not going to go into a biography of the man and his history as a Baltimore Sun reporter because Wikipedia is only a click away.  Literally this click.  The current Sun crime reporter spent a week abroad on a reporter swap with The Independent (a national newspaper in the United Kingdom).  Simon, on the other, much more manly hand, put on his big boy pocket protector and decided to spend a year following the homicide detectives from the Baltimore City Police Department.  (Author’s Note: As Alex just informed me, the aforementioned exchange was initiated on the other side of the pond, coincidentally because the British want to know if Baltimore is really like the way it’s depicted in The Wire.  I told you, it’s the greatest television show ever.)

The result of his 365 days of continuous journalism is Homicide, one of the more fascinating books I have ever read.  I have mentioned before that I am a big fan of documentaries; Simon’s writing style is the closest one could possibly get in literary form.  Compositionally, the book is divided up into chapters that are further partitioned by dates.  While much of the text is an account of what happens, Simon intersperses what amounts to research supported diatribes that describe what the characters are going through on a grander scale.

I use the term characters because that is how the book reads.  Unless you knew the story behind the book, you would have no idea you weren’t reading a work of fiction until you reached the Author’s Note close to six hundred pages later.  Simon, and by extension the reader, are privileged to be flies on the wall (be it of the office, the interrogation room, the cruiser, the crime scene, etc.) with a level of access that could only have been available in a time before spin control and contracted PR firms (the year in question was 1988), as the result comes across as anything but police department propaganda.

As a quick example of what I am talking about, there is a passage where two larger detectives are leaving a crime scene where a Jane Doe was run over repeatedly by a car with no witnesses.  You quickly come to find out that in the world of murder police there are two types of cases: dunkers, those with a clear suspect, a confession, multiple reliable witnesses, etc., and whodunits, those crimes that are going to rely on good police work which, even if done impeccably, result in a less than 50% prosecution rate nationally.  This case was from the latter category.

Having just exchanged cigars and lighters as a peace offering, and gained the unspoken understanding that they were in for a tough solve, the two begin their trip back to the station:

They are both large men, both squeezed beyond all dignity into the cramped interior of a two-door economy sedan.  They are flush under pressure in that car, a vision of cluttered humanity that somehow increases the comedic possibilities.

“They say it takes a big man to carry a pink lighter,” says Brown. “A big man or a man familiar with alternative lifestyles.”

“You know why I need the bigger size, “ says Worden, lighting a cigar.

“Because you can’t get them fat stubby fingers around one of the little ones.”

“That’s right,” says Worden.

…

“Thanks for the cigars,” he (Worden) says after a block or two.

“You’re welcome.”

“And the lighter.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m still not helping you with this one.”

“I know, Donald.”

“And your driving still sucks.”

“Yes, Donald.”

“And you’re still a piece of shit.”

“Thank you, Donald”

I WANT THAT! That camaraderie that comes through from the pages, that pungent aroma of frustration that wafts forth as you thumb through the various trials and tribulations of the BPD; it’s all so real.  The grittiness in this book will have you fishing pieces of departmental politics out of your teeth for weeks.

For some reason what comes across to others as an unenviable Gordian Knot reads to me like a hell of a cause to devote ones life to.  Maybe it’s the same honor in the fight mentality that drew me to be a social worker in the inner city.  Simon balances the equation very simply: the book is full of the frustration and inequity that serve as the invisible hand for the entire department, but the detectives are the best at what they do.  No one else could make an arrest out of some nameless dead yo in an alley; it’s not clear that anyone else would want to.  These men suit up every day because it is the good fight and they are the only shield Baltimore’s got.

As I mentioned before, these vignettes read like a novel (note how we aren’t aware of Simon’s presence at all) and are satisfying in their own right.  The real intellectual payoff however, comes from the author’s researched observations that give the lives of his characters the perspective they deserve.

The tone of these asides come across as casual, but they hit on topics whose relevancy only seems to increase with time.  For example, in a section describing the judicial process, Simon talks about the unreasonable expectations held by Baltimore juries based upon their experience watching legal shows on television.  After describing the jury’s search for motive despite motive not being a determining factor at all when deciding if someone has committed a crime, and their horror if the prosecution can’t produce fingerprints matching the suspect despite fingerprints being recovered in less than 10% of criminal cases, Simon discusses murder weapons:

A good defense attorney can blow ten minutes of smoke by glaring at a detective who tries to explain that weapons have a nasty habit of leaving the crime scene before police arrive.

You mean you never recovered the murder weapon?  This jury is supposed to convict my client without a murder weapon?  What do you mean, it could be anywhere?  Are you trying to tell us that after committing an act of murder, the defendant might have actually run away?  And taken the gun with him?  And then hidden it?  Or thrown it from the Curtis Bay Bridge?

On Columbo, the gun is always in the liquor cabinet behind the vermouth.  But you didn’t check behind the defendant’s vermouth, did you, detective? No, you don’t have the murder weapon.  Your honor, I move that we unshackle this poor innocent waif and send him back to his loving family.

These passages aren’t pieces of journalism like the ride-alongs with the detectives. They are unfiltered, though occasionally comical, takes on the various elements working to the decay of our city, as well as inner cities across the country.  Publishing this book in 1991, David Simon could have had no idea how much worse a situation like the one he detailed could become. 

Now we have so many Law and Order type shows that implant into the minds of the citizenry (who happen to also be the only pool from which to pick jurors) that a case is not solid unless the accused breaks down and confesses on the stand in a fit of grief or rage while their state provided attorney slowly shakes his head in the background and we zoom in on the Emmy-nominated closer who for some reason irks people enough that they are willing to spend twenty-five to life in prison as opposed to another episode in the interrogation room with her southern charm.  I just looked back over that chunk for capital letters and found none.  Can you believe I wrote a seven-line sentence and, even more amazing, that Microsoft Word doesn’t have a green squiggly line running underneath that leads to a pull-down menu simply saying “WTF”?

Speaking of the interrogation room, I have one more passage I want to quote from.  I understand that if you weren’t going to read the book before, adding a few hundred more words onto this review isn’t going to help, but I know some of you are interested so I want to keep your appetite whetted.  Simon does an incredible job of discussing the purpose and methodology of an interrogation in the real world, but offers a little bit of harsher sarcasm when trying to understand why, despite the way he detailed the desperation-born ingenuity utilized by detectives, suspect don’t just keep their mouths shut:

The detective offers a cigarette, not your brand, and begins an uninterrupted monologue that wanders back and forth for a half hour more, eventually coming to rest in a familiar place: “You have the absolute right to remain silent.”

Of course you do.  You’re a criminal.  Criminals always have the right to remain silent.  At least once in your miserable life you spent an hour in front of a television set, listening to this book-‘em-Danno routine. You think Joe Friday was lying to you?  You think Kojak was making horseshit up?  No way, bunk, we’re talking sacred freedoms here, notably your Fifth F***ing Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and hey, it was good enough for Ollie North, so who are you to go incriminating yourself at the first opportunity?  Get it straight: A police detective, a man who gets paid government money to put you in prison, is explaining your absolute right to shut up before you say something stupid.

“Anything you say or write may be used against you in a court of law.”

Yo, bunky, wake the f*** up.  You’re now being told that talking to a police detective in an interrogation room can only hurt you.  If it could help you, they would probably be pretty quick to say that, wouldn’t they?  They’d stand up and say you have the right not to worry because what you say or write in this god forsaken cubicle is gonna be used to your benefit in a court of law. No, your best bet is to shut up. Shut up now.

If you’ve made it this far into my perspective, you’re either interested or you’re my mother (Author’s Note: Hi Mom!), so let me take a moment to hit you with some real talk. This book is not by Dan Brown; it doesn’t pick up going 85 and keep hitting the gas while running point on a convoy of 5-0.  This isn’t an episode of SVU; police officers don’t draw their guns in real life, if they do something went terribly wrong.   Like any good documentary, Homicide rewards patience and open-mindedness with something much more meaningful than explosions and 360 degree pans (Author’s Note: Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Bad Boys II ranks slightly above Citizen Kane in my top movie list).

Also, and here’s the kicker, I believe that I got even more out of my experience because I have seen The Wire before (see how I bring it full circle?).  Not only are some of the plot points similar, but you spend the first half of the book figuring out which characters inspired which and basking in the familiarity of a great drama canceled too soon (anyone who got excited at the quotation that used the term “bunky”, this book is for you).  It’s not that Homicide doesn’t work as a standalone piece; I just think it helped make it one of the better books I’ve read over the past few years.

As I said at the opening, there will be opportunities to talk about The Wire next year after football is over, but for now check it out.  Give it at least four episodes, it’s only four scattered hours of your life and you owe it to yourself, especially if it means four less episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.  If you’ve already seen it, or if you just happen to be a “book person”, pick up Homicide.  I guarantee it will stimulate your bro-ner for all things David Simon enough to provide adequate overnight shelter for an entire Boy Scout troupe (Author’s Warning: It’ll last way longer than four hours).

Alice Sebold was forced to the glass-covered ground in a tunnel outside of Syracuse University.  Jennifer Schuette was thrown away in an overgrown field on top of an anthill.  Both women were raped and savagely beaten.  For Alice: punches and kicks to the face, for Jennifer: a knife slash across her throat, leaving her for dead.  Before the attack, Alice was an eighteen-year-old freshman celebrating her last day of finals.  Jennifer was an eight-year-old girl asleep in her bed.  Though the incidents occurred nine years apart, both women emerged from their nightmares with a label that will celebrate their strength yet mask the years of pain hidden beneath.  Alice and Jennifer are survivors.

According to the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every six American women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime (Author’s Note: Does the use of a clinical term like “completed” make anyone else’s stomach drop slightly?).  While cynics may claim, “there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics”, there is no denying the one in six can’t account for all the cases that go  unreported.  After all, what must the pressure be like for the 73% of victims raped by someone known to them, 7% of which are violated by their own family members?

The same studies suggest that one in thirty-three American males will be similarly victimized in their lifetime.  As a male who has not experienced anything like the pain described above, I can honestly say I have no f*ing clue how it feels, what to do, or where to go.  I just have no f*ing clue about any of this.

In the improvisational theatre troupe I help direct, I describe the feeling of being raped thusly: that moment during an arm wrestling competition when you can’t possibly win. There are less than forty-five degrees separating your forearm from the table.  Your opponent has dominated you, may even be toying with you.  No matter what, you are going tolose.  From a structural level your arm is not designed to respond to what your brain is signaling, pleading for it to do.  The brain stops fighting a second before it receives the painful sensation of knuckles being driven into the ground.  It’s over.

See?  I told you I just have no f*ing clue about any of this.  I can type it up in a dramatic fashion but at the end of the day I will never understand the horror. I use metaphor and sentence fragments to disguise my inability (not my lack of desire) to truly empathize.  Just because I can type up my thoughts convincingly doesn’t mean they’re worth a damn (Author’s Note: This is the Internet).  The typical treatment for someone like me, therefore, is to split me off as a member of the group who simply “Doesn’t Get It” (made up of men everywhere), existing separate and apart from the victims of the crime, that elite fraternity who “Get It”.

Then something happens that forces the issue into everyone’s consciousness, like the breaking news story of an arrest in the nineteen-year-old case involving Jennifer Schuette.  The link gives you the opportunity to learn about a brave young girl who, despite being left for dead with her vocal box cut through, fought hard enough to not only survive, but to regain her voice and use it to speak out for victims silenced by the evil that exists in this world.

After reading a story like that the concept of moral absolutes tugs violently on the loose string at the center of my liberal ideologies.  Some things are just evil; wrong is too soft a word for it. The accused is said to have mended his “old ways” referring to his actions (with this accusation they could be better described as proclivities) involving kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and slitting the throats of young women.  No matter your left stance, it’s tough to argue that rehabilitation is something reserved for the young woman, not the perpetrator.  He doesn’t get rehabilitation in my book. He gets prison, he gets the chair, he gets…

And therein lies the problem.  All of the passionate dialogue over rape concerns the perpetrator while the victim is left to become synonymous with the charges.  She exists only in terms of the details of the case, potentially her demographics if they make for more interesting copy.  There is no discussion on how to see her through the aftermath, we feel powerless in that area.  Instead we speak of revenge, something we can externalize to rid ourselves of the guilt we feel inside.

A case like Jennifer’s is unique.  We learned her name because she came forward and asked for her story to be told.  We see her face because she has bigger balls than ACDC.  Her story came up in the newspaper again because, nineteen years later, they caught the bastard.

In a more ideal world the nineteen-year delay would be the most extreme oddity in this situation (Author’s Warning: More statistics coming up.  Last ones, I swear).  However, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis (Author’s Note: See, told you), a reported rape has a 50.8% chance of arrest, if arrested there is an 80% of prosecution, if prosecuted there is a 58% chance of conviction, if there is a felony conviction 69% of the convicts will spend any time in prison.  All of these numbers seem fairly respectable, yet the percentage of perpetrators in a reported rape case who survive the statistical gauntlet long enough to see prison time is a terrifying 16.3%.  Not quite two out of every ten.  As a son, a brother, and, God willing one day, a father I can’t even begin to fathom.

So as someone who “Doesn’t Get It” but isn’t Captain Barbossa (Author’s Quote Because I Can’t Find a Youtube: “I feel… Nothing”), what can I do to reconcile these things?  I’ll never understand what this woman went through but how can I get just a glimpse beyond the article and into the Hell that must have been the last two decades of her life?

Enter Lucky, the memoir of author Alice Sebold beginning with her rape during her freshman year of college and ending before the completion of her best-selling debut novel, The Lovely Bones.  I love memoirs for the same reason I love documentaries: every once in a while you get to witness a piece of the truth.  Not a commentary on some larger, deeper meaning behind human existence, just a simple piece of the truth from a subject too exhausted to hide it anymore.  Lucky has a few of these moments hidden within a tight narration that can range from captivating to frustrating.

Consisting of less than three hundred pages, the main story of Lucky can be, and was in this writer’s case, a single-sitting affair that keeps you up into the wee hours of the morning.  Sebold in no way buries the lede (Author’s Note: It’s spelled correctly.  Ask Alex, he lives for that sort of thing) as she launches into a no-holds-barred account of the events of that night, complete with graphic descriptions of the acts themselves and their effect on her body, the body of a virgin.

For anyone with a weak stomach for such imagery the introduction may be difficult for you do get through.  For anyone who felt a little uncomfortable when the third sentence of this post revealed it’s topic to be rape, the introduction may be necessary for you to get through.  Another memoirist on the subject, Patricia Weaver Francisco, believes that many people view rape as a form of particularly bad, particularly hurtful sex.  Sebold’s account demonstrates with frightening clarity that, even though sexual organs are involved, no element of sex as we understand it survives the savagery of rape.

She intersperses the internal thoughts of the reader who, either through their own denial or through the hope that this will eventually turn into a fiction novel where someone, anyone comes to save the day, wonders why she doesn’t keep fighting tooth and nail.  She presents herself as shutting down to the reality of the situation stating, “I would die by pieces to save myself from real death”.  She did whatever it took to survive.  Alice is a survivor.  It’s just one of those things that the people in my group will never understand.

Survivor.  It’s why friends and family generally discuss the incident in hushed tones, as though not talking about it would save Sebold rather than isolate her.  Those who don’t get it only focus in on the results, “She made it, she’s alive so let’s not make her go back to that place”, while the victim is left alone in her view that survival was a choice rather than a gift.  Gifts come free; choices have consequences.

We see those consequences throughout the remainder of the book as the narrative goes chronologically through her return home and the accompanying interactions with her family, her return to Syracuse and the interactions with her friends, the legal proceedings surrounding her case, and finally her life after college.  It’s in these environments that the truth sometimes sneaks out, often during her interactions with other characters and their inability to cope with the powerlessness that washes over them in her presence.

The most frustrating parts of the memoir are when Sebold, for lack of a better term, is being a complete jerk to anyone trying to help her.  While one could comment on the honesty required for the author to paint her friends and family in a positive light while presenting her own bitchiness unfiltered, you just can’t help but want more of her as a character. She is clearly an enlightened woman, capable of articulating her thoughts, she simply… can’t.  It’s just one of those things that the people in my group will never understand.

Perhaps that complaint is one of the things that makes the book so compelling; there is no heroine, just a woman trying to deal with her own survival.  She is as raw as her writing style and the need for warm fuzzies is satiated by her depiction of those who became closest to her during her trials.  I guess the reader just craves that transformation in Sebold because of the aforementioned powerlessness.  Bad things happened to Alice so we want desperately for good things to happen to her. 

Lucky is ultimately successful because, when confronted with an overwhelming subject matter, it chooses to focus on the people.  We learn Sebold’s thoughts not through numerous prolonged diatribes as can sometimes be found in memoirs, but through her interactions with others.  For those who have ever had an English teacher worth their spit: Sebold doesn’t simply tell us about how the rape changed her life, she shows us.

She shows us that you don’t escape from Hell; you claw you rway back one day at a time because, according to Sebold, “you save yourself or you remain unsaved”.  It’s just one of those things that people in my group will never understand.  I pray to God we never have to.