Music

I guess I can say at this time I learned of the dark recesses in a person's mind. It's quite frightening as a child especially. Your mind takes you to a dark place where everything is black. There are no trees, no sunshine, no laughter. A place where you can visualize your body and mind a mangled wreck. What happened in my life in about the sixth grade was that I realized my mind had not taken me anywhere. This was my life. I would recoil like a snake into my room and hide inside my stereo, and let Bonnie Tyler and Spandau Ballet spill my guts out onto my pink carpet. My battered heart and soul was liquefied and slowly seeped out each pore of my speakers and gave me a momentary release. Music was my first true love, and I fell deep and hard. I wrapped my every emotion into it, and no matter what I was doing, I could think of a song to identify the moment. To this day, music has been my solace. My dad was especially bad during my sixth, seventh and eighth grade years. The beatings were relentless and I told no one. The verbal abuse was just as potent from him. I could only be called fat so many times before the tears soaked my pillow. My dad had a very sick sense of humor as well, and made jokes about me regarding feminine issues as well. I hated him. I literally saw myself killing that bastard. It was at this time that "My name is Luka," was released on the airwaves. A touching song about child abuse that wrenched people's hearts and stirred up anger in many parents. I just laughed. I was Luka. I was Luka at home and school. All their anger was for show. I was right there. I was right in front of their eyes. No one saw me. Everyone looked right through me.

Reality

Realizing at this time in my life that I was neither wanted at home nor at school became a huge dose of reality for me. Although school was like a second prison to me, I refused to miss a day. Anything was better than being at home with my dad. My outlet in school was learning everything I could and daydreaming about my favorite teacher adopting me. I also dreamt of Bob Zaremba taking me home too, but that was a little different! I had no friends, and was picked on constantly. School was an extension of my home life, yet sometimes felt even more brutal. The bruises my father inflicted on me would fade, but the kids' verbal bashing remained in my head. Truth be told, it remains to this day. It never goes away. The memory may dissipate, but once it's refreshed in your mind, it pierces just as bad as the first time it happened. I can instantly be transported back to fifth grade in one fleeting thought. I hated every single one of these fuckers. When I hear about these kids on the news going into schools and shooting the place up because they were bullied, I feel sick. Sick for two reasons. One, the loss of children's lives. Two, and probably the source of my feeling ill, I understand why they do it. I do not condone this by any means, but my inner being feels a compassion for these people that others may not be able to. This is a difficult cross to carry. It is but one more scar the little pieces of filth left on my battered heart and mind.

Ninja Lisa

Seeing the joy in my dad's eye when I handed him "the board" was a sickening feeling. As a young child, I lived the cliche. I pretty much assumed all the other kids lived like this as well. What I couldn't grasp, was why they seemed to be happy and carefree, and I felt like a boulder the size of Texas was on my shoulders. A few different things would go through my warped mind at this age. I would say I was about the age of 10 or 11 now, and had lived with dad's abuse constantly. First thought was handing him this board. I saw myself sliding down the banister of the stairway, summer-saulting through the living room, crouching tiger hidden dragon through the dining room, spinning with the board in the air until I made it into the kitchen and whacking him across the face with it until he laid on the ground! At this point I would yell, "wax off, wax on" and stand over him with 'the board" against his throat. For those of you confused by wax off, wax on, it's a reference to the movie Karate Kid. However, as you may have guessed, this was in my magical land and it gave me the courage to bring that wooden weapon to him.
Second thoughts for me at this time were these other kids who seemed so damn happy. How could they be going through what I was and still act the way they did? As if being a kid is not already confusing enough, this really did me in. I would envision these little boys and girls as demons in this world and it was my duty to destroy them all. In my faltered mind, I assumed they deserved their punishments, knowing full well that I was being beat for no damn reason. I saw myself with this magical board zapping each little Cretan with a smile on their face. They would just, POOF, disappear! If they looked miserable like me, they could join my side, the dark side so to speak. This obviously was child's play. There was never going to be MY TEAM. In the real world, these little happy people formed a malicious army, and I was their enemy.

The Board

The worst part of "the board" was having to go and retrieve it from my closet when my dad told me to go get it. I can equate it to the "dead man walking" scene. That's how I felt at the time. I would slowly make my way up the fourteen steps to my bedroom on the second floor, turn right into the first room and sit on my bed for a moment. This is when I would ponder for a minute running away, and most times, killing myself. I knew how much it would hurt the minute the cold wood made contact with my ass. My eyes would gaze over to my window, complete with the TOT Finder sticker in case of fire. This was so the firemen could find me in the event this occurred. I tried many times to peel that thing off the damn window, to no avail. I don't know what they make those with, but that shit to this day is probably still stuck half-assed to that window. However, I saw myself many times just leaping out and plunging to the earth. In my young mind, I would fall to my death and oh how my dad would regret what he had done. Looking back, or as I got older, I realized that it was only two stories so I would have just broken my face or something, and been screamed at for being an idiot and letting the neighbors in on the "little secret" of our family.
So inevitably, I would get the fucking board and take it back downstairs and hand it to my dad. As he took it from me, I swear I could see a glint of joy in his eye, a smile evolving on his face, like a kid on Christmas Eve.

My Closet

Even though I had hoped for this closet to take me away to a magical place, this was not to be. What my closet became was a safe haven from the endless barrage of beatings that I took from Sonny. You might think that I hid in my closet, but this was not the case. Sonny was a sadistic man. His form of abuse varied on whatever moved him for the day I suppose. His good old standby and his favorite tool of the trade was "the board." "The board" was a piece of wood about 2 feet long that had a handle. It was about 3 inches thick and it said, "96 tears. Lisa and George." My brother George will tell you that he did not experience the wrath of "the board" as I did, but he knew what it meant to hear dad say, "go get me the board."
Just seeing the board evoked a fear so deep to my core that I sometimes thought I would vomit. When I would hear my dad yell for me to get it for him I physically became ill. I would bring him the board, already crying as I handed it to him. This is when he would say, "stop the tears or I'll give you something to cry about." The sick bastard knew all the while he was gonna pound the shit out of me with the board, so why he spoke those words I don't know. "The board" saw many days in the way back of my closet, hidden under old shoes and clothes, hoping that it's master would forget somehow that it ever existed. Just like that magical Lisa land did not exist, nor did this fantasy.