The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland

  MR. DOLAN: Were you aware that your husband had a sexual relationship with [Glenn Frendel] when he was below the age of 18?

  MZB: Yes, I was.

  MR. DOLAN: Can you tell me why you would publicly state that Walter was not a pedophile when you knew that he had been having sex with a minor child?

  MZB: Because, as I said, [Glenn Frendel] did not impress me as a minor child. He was late in his teens, and I considered him—I think he would have been old enough to be married in this state legally, so I figured what he did sexually was his own business.

  Glenn was 10 and 11 at the time in question. The lawyer also asked Marion questions about some things Elisabeth Waters had written in her diary:

  MR. DOLAN: Elisabeth Waters in her 10-8-89 diary, which was given to the police, indicates the following: Quote, “And I feel like a total idiot for not having said anything back when I thought Walter was molesting [Sterling Orser] ten years ago. I guess it was just another case of,” quote, “Don’t trust your own perceptions when the adults are telling you you’re wrong.”

  MR. DOLAN: I’m going to read to you from the 10-9-89 entry of Elisabeth Waters.

  “Marion always said she’d divorce Walter if he did this again. She seems to think that he molested both [Glenn Frendel] and [Gregg Howell], but she was rather startled when I told her about the letter to Dr. Morin about [Sterling Orser]. She said that she thought Walter thought of [Sterling Orser] as a son.”

  MR. DOLAN: Where did you have this discussion with David where he thought he was too old for Walter?

  MZB: When he was 15 or so.

  MR. DOLAN: So at the time that David was 15, David informed you that he believed that your then husband was not propositioning him because at that point David was too old for Walter’s tastes?

  MZB: I think that’s what he said. To the best of my memory, that’s what he said.

  MR. DOLAN: So you were curious enough to ask your own son whether your husband had made a sexual proposition to him?

  MZB: I wouldn’t say I was concerned enough. I would simply say the matter came up in conversation.”

  After all, doesn’t every mother discuss whether her new husband has molested her son, as a matter of casual conversation?

  Deirdre wrote to me and asked me for my perspective on the subject. I told her a very few details about what happened, and agreed to let her reprint my emails and my two poems.

  “Hello Deirdre.

  It is a lot worse than that.

  The first time she molested me, I was three. The last time, I was twelve, and able to walk away.

  I put Walter in jail for molesting one boy. I had tried to intervene when I was 13 by telling Mother and Lisa, and they just moved him into his own apartment.

  I had been living partially on couches since I was ten years old because of the out of control drugs, orgies, and constant flow of people in and out of our family “home.”

  None of this should be news. Walter was a serial rapist with many, many, many victims (I named 22 to the cops) but Marion was far, far worse. She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls.

  I wish I had better news.

  Moira Greyland.”

  I sent an addendum in a second email:

  “It should also be noted that Walter was convicted on 13 counts of PC 288 A, B, C, and D.

  Oral sex was the least of anyone’s worries.

  Moira Greyland.”

  Mother’s Hands

  (in “honor” of my mother, Marion Zimmer Bradley)

  I lost my mother late last year

  Her epitaph I’m writing here

  Of all the things I should hold dear

  Remember Mother’s hands

  Hands to strangle, hands to crush

  Hands to make her children blush

  Hands to batter, hands to choke

  Make me scared of other folk

  But ashes for me, and dust to dust

  If I can’t even trust

  Mother’s hands.

  They sent me sprawling across a room

  The bathtub nearly spelled my doom

  Explaining my persistent gloom

  Remember Mother’s hands.

  And hands that touched me way down there

  I still pretend that I don’t care

  Hands that ripped my soul apart

  My healing goes in stop and start

  Never a mark did she leave on me

  No concrete proof of cruelty

  But a cross-shaped scar I can barely see

  The knife in Mother’s hands.

  So Mother’s day it comes and goes

  No Hallmark pretense, deep red rose

  Except blood-red with her actions goes

  It drips off Mother’s hands.

  The worst of all my mother did

  Was evil to a little kid

  The mother cat she stoned to death

  She told to me with even breath

  And no remorse was ever seen

  Reality was in between

  Her books, her world, that was her life

  The rest of us a source of strife.

  She told me that I was not real

  So how could she think I would feel

  But how could she look in my eyes

  And not feel anguish at my cries?

  And so I give you Mother’s hands

  Two evil, base, corrupted hands

  And lest her memory forget

  I’m still afraid of getting wet.

  The bathtub scene makes me see red

  With water closing over my head

  No little girl should fear to die

  Her mother’s fury in her eye!

  But both her hands were choking me

  And underwater again I’d be

  I think she liked her little game

  But I will never be the same

  I’m still the girl who quakes within

  And tries to rip off all her skin

  I’m scared of water, scared of the dark

  My mother’s vicious, brutal mark.

  In self-admiring tones she told

  Of self restraint in a story old.

  For twice near death she’d beaten me,

  And now she wants my sympathy.

  I’ve gone along for quite awhile,

  Never meant to make you smile

  But here and now I make my stand

  I really hate my mother’s hands.

  © 2003 Moira Stern (Moira Greyland)

  —

  They Did Their Best

  By Moira Greyland

  The cry of our day is to smile as we say

  Something pat that sounds like understanding

  And those of us left who still cry when bereft

  Risk guilt trips upon our heads landing

  For the party line now Is to claim that somehow

  Everybody somehow did their best

  So the ones who did wrong Goes the new New Age song

  Aren’t to blame, we should lay this to rest.

  But it’s lies, there are villains who are still out there killing

  Or else for our courts there’s no need

  Our jails are not filled With innocents willed

  By a system corrupted with greed.

  My mother did her best, yes she really did her best

  To drown me for not being her willing lover

  My daddy did his best, oh he really did his best

  And forced his preteen boyfriends to bend over.

  Some people are sick, like to make people suffer

  Some people just turn a blind eye

  But pretending a monster is ribbons and lace

  May condemn a small child to die.

  My husband was a cop and much child abuse had stopped

  Like the mom who put her baby on the stove

  She threw him out of sight but the smell she couldn’t hide

  And she didn’t c
ome out smelling like a rose.

  Did that mommy do her best? Would you tell that little one

  “Forgive her dear, she must have been insane”

  Would you tell that to those burns, To that lie will you return

  And hurt those shining eyes so full of pain?

  A victim does his best, a victim does her best

  To love and live and give up grief and malice

  But when we had no love, but what came down from Above

  It’s surprising we have not become more callous.

  And how to learn to cope And not give up all my hope

  Is painful far enough without your lies

  But if you had seen me then With blood pouring off my skin

  Would you have turned a deaf ear to my cries??

  And told me “Mommy did her best, yes, she really did her best

  So stop crying and stop bleeding and forgive her

  To cut you she’s the right, and to throw you out of sight

  And not love you till you sexually deliver!!

  I had no idea how famous Deirdre Saoirse Moen was, and I didn’t really think that my reply to her would be read very widely. I had no idea that my words would travel to 92 countries around the world and provoke articles in many major news outlets, including The Guardian, Die Welt, and Entertainment Weekly. Since then, I have called Deirdre’s blog “The Blog Heard Round the World.”

  A great many comments on Deirdre’s blog were addressed as letters to me. Many of the comments broke my heart because they were from people who had been sexually abused themselves, usually by their parents, and many began with the words “I never told anyone about this before.” A lot of people were furious with my mother, and some even burned her books. You may recall that I had never spoken out about my mother before because so many people regarded Marion as having been so good to them and such a positive influence.

  I was, in fact, so intimidated by the thought of publicly criticizing my mother that when I recorded my album of harp music, Avalon’s Daughter, I only allowed myself a tiny jab of the sort no one would understand unless I told them. I dedicated the album:

  “To my mother, who taught me to follow my dreams, no matter what.”

  Only my friends could have an inkling of the misery and agony that was contained in that “no matter what.”

  Chapter 41: I Break my Silence (2014–2015)

  “And I remembered that I was Bagheera,

  And no man’s plaything…

  And I broke the silly lock with one swipe of my paw,

  And I have lived in the jungle ever since.”

  —Bagheera the panther, The Jungle Book Kipling

  “The Blog Heard Round the World” was read widely, and I was contacted by another child of gays, Katy Faust. Katy Faust was an angel. She prayed for me, and with me, and reached out again and again, so very gently. Now I was no longer alone in what amounted to the worst secret of my life, the thing I could never tell anyone.

  Katy introduced me to the rest of the COGs, or Children of Gays, the six people who had submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. They opposed the Obergefell case, which purported to legitimize gay “marriage.” When I talked to them and read their stories, I laughed. I cried. I felt both validated and devastated. I wanted to punch the wall and jump for joy at the same time.

  I was baffled and overwhelmed to discover that my experience was not unique and that I had many commonalities with other children of gays and lesbians. I found out that nearly all of us had tried to be gay or trans or both and that many of us had been sexually abused. I also found out that we all felt guilty for not being more like our parents. We also all had issues with the lax sexual boundaries in our homes, even if we were not directly sexually abused.

  All six of the COGs who had gone to the Supreme Court routinely received hate mail and harassment at work for having the gall to not fit in with what was expected of us and even more, for daring to dissent. We are supposed to adore being the children of gays and to live for the chance to be gay parents ourselves.

  Do I condemn gay people? No. Do I hate them? No. Do I agree with what they believe or what they do? No.

  But saying “No” is not allowed. In my family, the slightest dissent amounted to complete, unequivocal betrayal.

  I did not agree with the basic philosophy of the people who had raised me. I did not agree with gay marriage. I also thought that the whole “born that way” thing was ridiculous since so many of the gay people I knew kept turning into straight people when they got older.

  This puts us into a bind; we love our parents, and we are expected to support their lifestyle. If we cannot agree, we know we must not talk about it because it will break their hearts. However, we must find a way to be alive as well and to eventually, somehow, tell the truth of our beings.

  Would I expect my family to agree with my right-wing politics or regard them as evil betrayers if they did not? No, of course not. Tolerance only goes one way, says the Left. They have determined Truth, and for me to dissent makes me an evil bigot.

  Only among the right-wing is dissent acceptable and tolerance expected. One might notice the parallel between adults and the children. Patience is expected of adults and the right wing, and rigidity and temper is expected from children and the Left.

  In a normal family, children grow up and begin to disagree with their parents and even to rebel as they form their own opinions. The children of gays are not permitted to do this because it is too threatening to the adults. Since the adults have what amounts to protected victim-class status, any dissent from us would be morally equal to kicking puppies.

  Children of gays are parentified. We are expected to compensate for our parents’ inability to tolerate difference and expected to suppress our own growth so we do not threaten the reality our parents must uphold.

  For now, it is enough to know I am not alone. I am not the only child of gays who feels this way. In fact, many of us went through the very same things, whether we were molested or not.

  Rather than talking about what they said to me in confidence, I invite you to find out what they have said for themselves.

  Professor Robert Oscar Lopez is the son of two lesbians. He teaches English, and he recently was harassed out of his tenured professorship for daring to dissent from the orthodoxy about gay marriage. He is passionate about the rights of children.

  http://englishmanif.blogspot.com/

  Heather Barwick, who the book Heather Has Two Mommies was based on, has this to say about gay marriage:

  “Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not. A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.

  I grew up surrounded by women who said they didn’t need or want a man. Yet, as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy. It is a strange and confusing thing to walk around with this deep-down unquenchable ache for a father, for a man, in a community that says that men are unnecessary. There were times I felt so angry with my dad for not being there for me, and then times I felt angry with myself for even wanting a father to begin with. There are parts of me that still grieve over that loss today.”

  —Heather Barwick, http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/17/dear-gay-community-your-kids-are-hurting/

  Heather’s words really spoke to me because I wanted a real father every day of my life: one who would love me and protect me, not one who would judge me on my sexual compliance.

  Katy Faust offered to let me tell my story and to host it on her blog, Ask the Bigot.

  I have been asked to tell my story

  by Moira Greyland

  was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrot
e over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy, and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.

  What they did to me is a matter of unfortunate public record: suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrifeid at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3–12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it. If you want to know about his shenanigans with little girls, and you have a very strong stomach, you can google the Breendoggle, which was the scandal which ALMOST drummed him out of science-fiction fandom.

  http://breendoggle.wikia.com/wiki/Breendoggle_Wiki

  PLEASE do not click this link lightly. It is very distressing. I am not kidding.

  More profoundly, though, was his disgust with my gender despite his many relationships with women and female victims. He told me unequivocally that no man would ever want me because all men are secretly gay and have simply not come to terms with their natural homosexuality. So I learned to act mannish and walk with very still hips. You can still see the traces of my conditioning to reject my femininity in my absolute refusal to give in and my outspokenness, and my choice to be a theatrical director for much of my life. But a good part of my outspokenness is my refusal to accept the notion that “deep down I must be a boy born in a girl’s body.” I am not. I am a girl reviled for being a girl, who tried very hard to be the “boy” they wanted.

  Suffice to say I was not their only victim of either gender. I grew up watching my father have “romances” (in his imagination) with boys who were a source of frustration because they always wanted food and money as a result of the sex they were subjected to, and didn’t want HIM. (OF COURSE!) I started trying hard to leave home when I was ten, after the failure of my first suicide attempt, and to intervene when I was 13 by telling my mother and her female companion that my father was sleeping with this boy. Instead of calling the cops, like any sensible human being, they simply moved him into their apartment, which I called “The Love Nest” and they moved back into our family home. Certainly being in an apartment by himself gave my father ever so much more privacy in which to do what he wanted to do.