The Blind Vampire Hunter (4 page)

Growing up, I developed an old-fashioned
attitude toward women and a man’s treatment of a woman. In my first
year of junior high school, apparently there were enough of us
students coming out of “special education” that some county school
brain thought it was a good idea to combine all of us into our own
special class of retards. This class consisted of mental misfits
like Jack who did not talk much, but if asked a direct question
would answer by clucking like a chicken, or Betty who didn’t know
much, except that she was easy on the eyes. She spent a lot of time
messing with her hair and her clothes. Then there were the mental
delinquents like the James Gang (as in Jesse James gang). This
“gang” consisted of Jose, who was mostly mouth, and James who could
protect Jose from his big mouth. Then there were students like
myself, who had come through the “special education” program as a
way of making up school years due to health or a physical
handicap.

One day, the teacher, who looked as if she
were young enough to have come right out of college, could not find
the book of poems from which she had planned to read. With the
school library right outside the door, she decided she would trust
the class to behave long enough to get another copy of the book.
This lack of judgment just shows that she probably was just out of
college and this was her first class.

After she left the room, one of the guys
proudly showed off his possession of the missing book. While making
a big deal of putting the book back from where he temporarily stole
it, Jose (a real moral degenerate with a big mouth) commented to
Betty, a real shapely, blue-eyed blond, how nice her outfit looked.
He finished his discourse with on her attire, “but it would look
even nicer on the empty chair beside you.”

Betty responded, “Like you’ll ever see
that.”

“Bet you I will,” Jose retorted. He then got
out of his chair and made a big deal about walking up to Betty, who
was not very bright. She supported her challenge by getting out of
her chair to face off Jose.

Betty was wearing a white blouse with a dark
blue vest that matched her skirt. Once in front of her, he started
making a big production of unbuttoning her vest.

Betty just stood there, looking incredulous,
and the class looked on.

After Jose had Betty’s vest unbuttoned, in
show-off fashion, he flicked the vest off her shoulders, and it
fell to the floor.

The class looked on, in silence.

As Betty just stood looking shocked, Jose
this
rape
was going too far, and I started looking for the
return of the teacher, meanwhile Jose continued unbuttoning Betty’s
blouse. Betty, like a deer in headlights, just stood there looking
shocked, and the class just looked on.

When Jose had her blouse more than
half-unbuttoned, and Betty’s white bra was making an appearance,
things, in my opinion, had gone too far.

As the class just looked on, I looked toward
the doorway for the expected re-appearance of the teacher. Since
her re-appearance was not yet forthcoming, I made my move.

I charged out of my seat, rushed up beside
Jose and, feeling full of moral fortitude, grabbed a handful of the
back of his shirt and pulled him off Betty. With rapist and victim
separated, I stepped in between them. While I just stood there
quietly daring Jose to make a move, Betty stood behind me, just
crying.

Three girls jumped into action. While two of
them got Betty back into her seat, the third grabbed up Betty’s
vest and the three girls went about redressing Betty while trying
to calm her down. They were failing. As Betty continued crying, the
girls got her clothes back on her. Meanwhile I just stood there
feeling full of holy righteousness, waiting for Jose to make the
wrong move, any move, and they would be cleaning him off the walls
and ceiling.

The very mouthy Jose just stood there staring
back at me, too wary to even say a word. I guess he was not totally
stupid (just sounded totally stupid a lot).

The teacher finally walked in and ordered,
“To your seats, everyone.”

As “everyone” obeyed, she marched back behind
her desk, slammed the book in her hand down onto the prodigal book
and announced in her best demigod voice, “Nothing happened. I was
not here so nothing happened,” and that was the last of that—I
wish. (But that’s another story.)

While in high school, I had one girlfriend
that lasted one date. Christina and I not only went to the same
high school, but also attended the same church. I turned a youth
church outing into a date for the two of us. First, we went with
the group to a Rock-n-Roll Christian band concert, and then we
ordered pizza at the neighborhood Pizza Pub.

After placing our order at the register and
getting our dinner number, Christina followed my lead to separate
from the rest of the group for our date. It was just my luck that
two young under-aged drunks took a shine to Christina and followed
us. After we found a seat and the drunks tried to join us, I
politely asked the two to leave, “We like it right here, don’t we
Bill?”

So we tried to move back within the safety of
the group with whom we had arrived, but there were no seats
anywhere near them, so we sat where we could, and the drunks
followed.

At a new table, I sat down across from my
lovely date to enjoy her beauty and the two drunks moved in, one
standing on either side of her. The mouthier of the two set his
pitcher of beer and his mug down on the table between us. Following
this, he placed his mouth close to Christina’s ear and, between her
eyes widening and his hand holding his crotch, I could guess what
he asked her.

In one fluid movement, I shot out of my seat
and planted an uppercut that sent the mouthy drunk backward so hard
that he landed on top of some family’s dinner, on their table. I
quickly picked up the half-empty pitcher of beer and flung the
contents at Bill the Drunk. I then changed the position of the now
empty pitcher of beer so that the side of the pitcher could rudely
smack Bill the Drunk up-side his face. I stopped when his hands,
one with his beer in it, went up in the universal sign of
surrender.

This conflict brought every male employee in
the pub into action. The one I assumed to be the manager ordered
some of his employees to throw the drunks out, and then he turned
to us. “What happened here?” he demanded.

I told him and while doing so, I observed and
overheard what was most likely the assistant manager apologizing to
the family for the drunk falling onto their table. He assured them
that they would receive a new pizza, without a drunk topping. When
I finished telling the manager what happened, he got huffy and
ordered, “Finish your meal and leave.”

“I beg your pardon.” Now it was my turn to
get huffy. “Who do you think you’re talking to? We were just
unpleasantly confronted by two under-aged drunks in
your
establishment. Tell me,
sir
, who sold them their beers? You
or I? Who do you think you’re giving attitude to?” Looking a bit
shocked, he just walked away. Coming home on her first date,
smelling of beer that had splashed off Bill the Drunk might have
had something to do with Christina’s parents deciding she was too
young for dating and would not be dating again until after she
finished high school.

I did not date much in high school. It is
hard to develop self-confidence when you have a large number of
young gorillas on your back on a daily basis. These young gorillas
also hung out around town, not just in school. Later, when these
same young gorillas got car keys and I, the vision freak, still
used a bicycle, well I just cannot tell you how many times a car
full of laughing young gorillas drove me off the road, to their
highly vocal, humiliating, delight. These young gorillas usually
got their way because we were on school grounds and they were
always in numbers. I had to be a “good boy.”

Years later, I discovered traveling by Metro
bus. During a trip back from visiting the National Zoo, as we
neared the Maryland/D.C. line, the bus was so full that people were
already standing. I was sitting near the front so I could keep
track of the bus’s progress within the abilities of my weakened
eyesight.

At one stop a very pregnant woman who looked
ready to pop got on the bus. Being taught to be a gentleman, I
asked the woman, “Would you like to sit?”

As I got up, a punk whom I had not noticed
standing by, jumped into my vacated seat before the pregnant woman
could sit down. I heard him move into my seat more than I saw him.
When I looked at him, he smiled like the Cheshire cat, and thought
he was sooo cool.

I reached down, grabbed his vest, and in one
move yanked him back onto his feet, standing next to me. As I
stared at him, daring him to make the wrong move, I said to the
pregnant woman, “Would you like to sit down now?” I heard her sink
down to the seat as I continued to stare this jerk down. He just
melted within my glare like butter on a hot frying pan. Within the
tight environment of a public bus, where riders mostly just mind
their own business, the strangest thing I have ever witnessed as a
rider occurred. About half or more of the riders applauded their
approval of what had just taken place. As we came up to the next
stop, the punk still under my glare said very politely, “This is my
stop. May I get past you?” I stepped to the side. As the punk
carefully moved past me, I overheard a woman say, “That’s not his
stop. He never gets off anywhere near here.”

As the bus continued, I felt a light tug on
my pants, and looked down to see the pregnant woman wanting my
attention. “I really needed to sit down and get off my sore feet. I
must have done too much today.” With real feeling she added, “Thank
you so much.”

Addressing the pregnant lady, I replied, “No
problem, ma’am.”

During my junior high and high school years,
I was seeing a low vision specialist. It was during these years
that I started reporting a growing difficulty seeing moving objects
like basketballs, volleyballs, and footballs. The specialist just
put it off as oversized blind spots. Don’t get me started on my
“oversized blind spots” and my physical education classes during
these years. You think guys can be cruel. I still have nightmares
of my boy/girl volleyball games in PE.

I graduated in 1974, while the very unpopular
Vietnam War was still underway, and so was the draft. My mother
took me to the local draft office, where they looked at my medical
records, particularly my eye doctor’s reports and without even
giving me a physical exam or another additional thought, they
handed me my “4-F” draft card and went on to the next person. [4-F
classification. unfit for military service]

My mother was so happy that her boy could not
be drafted and forced to possibly die for his county that she
wanted to go out and celebrate. She could not understand why I did
not feel the same. Puzzled by my lack of joy, she said, “Honey,
don’t you understand? You can’t be drafted. You don’t have to worry
about possibly going to fight a war where you could get hurt, or
worse. So why are you looking so down?”

“All my life my peers have been telling me
what a retarded freak I am. Now I have an official card from the
government, making it official. I AM A FREAK.” For my mother’s sake
I left out the word ‘fucking’ that my peers usually had preceding
“freak.” Being a card carrying four-eyed freak was not sitting well
with me.

Two years after I graduated from high school,
the low vision specialist discovered his error in calling my eye
problem “oversized blind spots” and sent me to Johns Hopkins for
verification. There I spent a long day of eye tests. Some were so
painful that (some years later) when they tested my family, my
father was amazed that I kept coming back, and my sister passed out
during her testing.

At the end of my first day of hard testing,
my mother and I ended the day in the head researcher’s office,
where the eye specialist looked me over and turned to my mother and
announced, “Your son has RP. He is going blind, and it’s all
your fault
.”

Chapter
Two

Going Blind

After a dramatic pause, he continued, “Your
son is going blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa or RP. He has black
spots or pigmentation forming in the back of his eyes. Eventually
the pigmentation will cause all the rods and cones to die, and at
that point your son will be totally blind. At this point we don’t
know much about RP, except that it is highly hereditary only
through the woman’s side, so he must have gotten his RP from
you.”

My mother was no fool and she kept her cool,
until we got out into the parking lot. Once we were in the car, she
put the key into the ignition and sat back. For the first and only
time in my life, I witnessed my mother cry. She had just been told
her son is going blind and it was all her fault. Can you blame
her?

Retinitis Pigmentosa

In the 70’s when I was first diagnosed with
RP only two basic facts were known. The first fact was that RP
formed dark spots or pigments in the back tissue of the eye (the
retinas). Hence the name Retinitis Pigmentosa (Latin for
pigmentation of the retinas). How clever. The second fact was that
RP ran rampant through the family and was carried only by the
females of the family.

Those basic facts were only half-right.

Years later, after many scientific studies
and the various RP studies using computers to correlate the data,
it was discovered that while many victims of RP had it running
strongly through the family, there were many (like me) with no one
else losing their sight to RP. Possibly a nonhereditary strain?
This brought about theories and conjectures that there are possibly
two or more types of RP.