Michelle and I are sitting at the bar, she is drinking her Bud Light and I am drinking my favorite seventeen year old Scotch. It is a few months after Patricia’s arrest and my relationship with Michelle is about to end in a few minutes.

     I am not sure if our relationship ever recovered from the night of Patricia’s arrest. See, I was with Michelle while Patricia met with the ‘hit man’. Michelle left my house a few minutes before the sheriff deputies arrived and told me of Patricia’s arrest. A week earlier, Patricia observed Michelle and I at Jessica’s basketball game. Patricia watched Michelle occupy ‘her’ place with the children, and my mother. According to what Patricia told the police, she went out on the internet a few hours after seeing Michelle and placed the ad for a hit man.

     Believe me when I tell you, it was not a jealous rage, at least not a typical one. Patricia’s rage was over Michelle’s access to Patricia’s possessions—me, the kids, and the money.

     This aside, Michelle and I are arguing about Parental Alienation. A judge in New York had removed two five year old twin girls from their mother and sent them to their father because a psychologist and a Guardian Ad Lietm testified that the mother had taught the kids that their father’s contact with them was inappropriate. This is Parental Alienation, where one parent turns the children against the other.

    The only thing new about Parental Alienation is the Machine’s (Divorce Court) recent obsession with the issue. Parents have been turning their kids against the other parent since Electra. Indeed, modern psychiatry began with the exploration of this issue by Freud.

     The Machine is obsessed with Parental Alienation because it is a new finding the Court can employ to interfere with a family. 

     But, more about this later, back to the bar at Quarters, the beautiful lady, and the Scotch.

     I argued that the truth may never be known, especially given the age of the children. Michelle made one simple statement, after which I took her home and we did not go out again.

    “You know he did something”.

     Jump ahead a little over a year and to my next girlfriend, my last girlfriend. We had been broken up for several months and she wanted to meet with me. I obliged.

     Rachelle and I broke up after I spent several hundred dollars on her son’s birthday party and she decided to blow off my own son’s birthday party. Initially, I accepted her decision to stay at home and decorate the Christmas tree with her son as the excuse, because it was only one of the few nights available before she left town for the holidays.

     I got annoyed when she subsequently told me she had gone to another party instead, abet with her son and after decorating the tree. I did not hit her, I do not think I even yelled. She wanted to break up with my daughter and her son present and when I declined we did it over the phone. She later told people that I stated that she had no clue about how to have a relationship.

     At our subsequent lunch, Rachelle still did not understand why I was annoyed. She told me at the time, she decided that the monster Patricia described was finally coming out. When I questioned her on this, she agreed that the ‘monster’ had not come out, she had just decided it was lurking there unseen.

     Needless to say, Rachelle and I did not get back together. Subsequently, Jessica has forbidden me to date women whose name ends in ‘elle’.

     So, I have a monster that no one has seen but my ex wife that lurks beneath the surface and is there to spring out and behave violently at the drop of the hat. The poor guy in New York is guilty of sexually abusing his daughters simply because his ex accuses him.

    I remember Patricia’s social worker calling me a rapist in front of my son, my parents, and the media based on nothing other then Patricia’s representation.

    I remember telling Rachelle that the one thing Patricia took from me was my reputation.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am not focusing on gender issues. This is a human issue.

    I belong to several domestic violence groups on MySpace. The groups touch not only violence between partners but also child abuse. The members seem to break down into three major types –

         • “I wonder if what is going on is abuse”
         • “I know I have been abused”
         • “Everything is abuse and everyone is to believe or be convinced of this”

     And guess which members are the most vocal?

     I argued with the DA that Patricia deliberate decision to seek my death in the house with the children present was child abuse or at least child endangerment. They did not agree. Now a father or mother shoplifts with a child present and the DA charges child abuse.

    The damn truth of the matter is in the vast majority of cases the truth is known only to the parties present. There are people accused of domestic violence that are guilty and it is never proved. There are people who are accused of domestic violence who are innocent and found guilty.

     The Machine does not know, the Machine can not know. The Machine swats at domestic violence the same way a kid swats at a the mole popping out of holes in the arcade game – swing enough times and you are bound to get one.  And the Machine, like the kid, believes that the act of swinging scares the moles and is good unto itself for this reason.

 I do not have answers, but I know the Machine does not.