On Kathleen's Sofa

a poem I wrote for International Women's Day.

On Kathleen's Sofa

On Kathleen's sofa, beyond the Social Housing hall which drips with damp, This entrancingly beautiful, fascinating, elf-like creature; beneath ribbons-trailing, showy antlers, whey-faced, hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, with reeds-like arms poking through thigh-length hair, of mixed flaxen and auburn. Medieval dress, glittered boa. Talk so engrossing you could sit and listen to it for hours.

On Kathleen's sofa - trailing transparent taper fingers across her brow, while sighing; clutching hands to her stomach with cringe of pain. Wheezing, while complaining, of that horrendous stomach ache. Of the spasms in her legs. Voice so plaintive, weak and feeble.

Thirty years ago, a near-identical creature swooned too on that sofa. Only the sex, it seems, was different. A bi-polar, gaunt celiac self-medicator; ex-micro-preemie, covered in scars; coughing out his lungs with tuberculosis on the streets of Bristol. The son of a sex worker and a gangster, descendant of pirates, Bohemians and Irish rebels, with no experience of normal advantages or conventional life; socially alienated, life-long downtrodden. Until Kathleen rescued him and healed him. His lung x-rays, miraculously turned to normal from fatal in three months. Drug abuse stopped; weight put on. Then came the day that Kathleen's husband re-appeared. He and Fogbow talked all night, and fell in love. In the morning Kathleen's husband opened his chequebook. The rest of Fogbow's success was assured.

She has vivid memories of his stays during her childhood. Sighing on the sofa, pitifully complaining about how ill he felt, and fishing for compresses, nursing and sympathy. Or, always raging, crying, violent, in the middle of his never-ending mega dramas. If she'd wanted to, she could have visited his Porn Baron's fortressed mansion. But she wouldn't even have received her bus-fare home. Sometimes they hear news of him from his other wives, or their numerous children; or, in the newspaper, involved in another phenomenal money-making scam. Kathleen chortling with amusement at the vast amounts he'd conned from other people. Even now, she would go running to his side.

While her tough, Kathleen-like sisters, and female friends, all got involved with healing, and propping up damaged men, she'd struggled to cope with all the illnesses inherited from Fogbow. With his extreme, genetic psychological fragility. Without the romance, Kathleen couldn't and can't heal her. Attempts at finding a female nurse, then revealed a world of persecution by lesbians for women like her. No place for her, but on her mother's sofa.

Her louche brothers " equally sickly " have had the same start; outside-Babylon surviving; no formal schooling; no much-needed medical care; neglect and abuse. Busking on the streets as 9 year olds, after days of not eating. Sleeping for years on Greek beaches; in old railway tunnels; freezing under snow-collapsing canvas, and old begged-for charity-shop dog blankets, at The Nine Ladies,   while Fogbow drank cider on the beach in sunny Barbados. Working as child rent boys to eat, while Fogbow played Mein Host to all the male unfortunates of his district. Always Kathleen; “Fogbow's okay though”. But, always, with girlfriends propping them up from the age of thirteen. As magnets for male sympathy, care and money. And so they were rich Psychics, minted Cult Gurus, successful screen-writers; musicians of all types; happy Publicans and DJs.   Rags to riches, they'd mostly rose shooting-stars-like.

In Kathleen's culture, she was allowed to be an invalid or a healer, at home. Brothers, male cousins, snared up into Puritanical sects, when their mothers got ill, had their “Only charity work is allowed!” But, everyone aided and abetted their double lives! Starship, with everyone lying to The Brothers for him while he went to art school. All his music equipment at the nearby commune, besides his Meth lab. A girlfriend's bedroom to move into. Advice on bursaries. “Everyone thinks the world of him”.

Then, her brother Spiral, who took food down to a homeless camp, then lived there for months. For the camaraderie. For the people, asking him what help he needed. Food and hotel rooms from businessmen. Jobs and courses. The pathways to a life.

For all their common trials, her life so different; contempt for her fragilities, and for being trapped within a religion. Desperately needing a nurse, and household help, she discovers a world of hostility from lesbians, defining women who love women as excluding women like her; hatred for soul femininity, polyamory, and atypicality. No protective company, to brave the vicious streets of pimps and rapists. No floors to sleep on. No one to talk to. No understanding or concern. And so, equally beautiful, and equally talented; equally intelligent, and equally charming, Kathleen's sofa became her prison.

As time goes on, and her health deteriorates so much, she has to get paid home carers; to invade her privacy, and linger untrusted in her personal space; with never a relationship, or live child at forty years old, while her brothers enjoy their multiple wives, their numerous children, and homo-romances of the century, she hears of worldly change towards her dreams. Polyfidelity, happening outside her culture's gaol-house. Communal living, not solely focused on helping very wounded men. Of poor women, as well as poor, Celtic, homeless men, having their Right Brain gifts fostered and risen. She grieves, knowing that's it's too late for her.

As the prospect of Residential Care looms, (the horror!), she has a visit from a female friend. Who talks, as she often does, of the charmed lives their menfolk lead. She listens to that woman tell of recently, staying at her brother's lucrative spiritual community, within the wilds of Ceredigion. Describes his being waited on, hand and foot, by his three resident wives, and healer. Lying, in his fantastic threads, upon his sofa. Preaching, to kneeling around his feet, a spellbound multitude.

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This is based on the real lives of several woman I’ve known and deeply feel for, including real live events, (sadly, I know quite a lot of Kathleen's daughter). It's dedicated to “Kathleen’s daughters” everywhere. And to all women sufferers, (#survivors or not), of #femmephobia, #ableism, #biphobia and #polyphobia.