"It's Only a Song . . ?"

I suppose it’ll be all right if I first point out here that I’m a strong son of a bitch, a guy who stood up to everything the government of the most powerful and ruthless nation on the planet could throw at him.

But I cry sometimes. It isn’t often, and when I do, it’s almost always a song that does it. Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton singing “I Will Always Love You” does it every time. I heard the song again on TagWorld – I can never resist playing it – and I’m sitting here blinking to see as I type this.

You see, of everything they took from me, none was like, not even close, to Karen. Words always fail me when it comes to her, and this won’t be an exception. When I search for words, strange enough I always come to another girl. Beverly.

Beverly was my high school sweetheart, my first wife, and she died when we were twenty-three. A poet, perhaps, could describe pain like that, but I can’t. It was years, long, agonizing ones, before the memory of that sweet face and person didn’t erase my mind and awareness of everything around. I’m strong, like I said - disciplined by a German nobleman grandfather to a level you couldn’t possibly understand – and that didn’t happen often, either. The song then was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

Losing Karen was, I think, even worse. Our marriage pounded by IRS and the United States, my wife tormented daily by telephone calls from federal revenuers pretending to be all manner of creditor, she found sanctuary with another man, one with the kind of principles that would let him take advantage of my – and her - plight. You won’t understand sufficiently if I don’t also point out that I didn’t owe the government taxes or anything else, a fact determined years later in court. You probably need also to know that for some reason Karen and her paramour took particular delight in tormenting me with their relationship, flaunting their illicit affair – we were still married and his wife was in a hospital, dying of cancer – publicly.

And I acted very badly. Stalked continuously, almost relentlessly, by both the man and members of his family, I did everything I could to retaliate. The one honorable thing I managed was restraining myself when he forced me off the road with his car and attacked me with blows and kicks. Even then, I might have lost my head, done what the government was apparently hoping for, and given in to murderous rage.

I might have, that is, had I not learned of my son’s attempts at suicide, and gone to get him - to do whatever it would take to save him. I did that, and he recovered. But it cost me the last of everything the United States would take from me, take just because they can.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve heard it ad nauseam. “Unbelievable!” I’ve heard it and I know that it’s just the American version of the “German excuse” (after the war in Europe, Germans would tell interrogators, Ich habe nicht davon gewusst – I didn’t know anything about it).

It just happens that everything I’m saying is the truth, and among everything I lost were the only things I ever really wanted.

You see, to understand, you must know even further that I never in my life ever wanted anything more than simply to be a husband and father. In youth and as enamored of sports heroes as any boy, I would go to the anniversaries section of the newspaper even before the sports page, in order to read about the champions there. I would study the faces and expressions of the couples, even their clothes. I wanted to learn what it was about them that made them so successful at living. And loving.

Oh, yeah – I suppose that’s “unbelievable,” too. It just happens that it’s also the truth. Both of my parent’s parents were married for more than fifty years. I thought they were superhuman. Sometimes, these days, I wonder if they weren’t.

But I wasn’t man enough to accomplish anything of what I wanted most. Oh, I made staggering amounts of money – one million, seven hundred sixty-seven thousand, two hundred thirty nine dollars and seventeen cents in a single month, once – owned cars and planes, traveled, and did everything the very rich do. I rose to the top of my profession. My favorite sport, too.

And it cost me everything I really wanted. Internal Revenue Service and the lust for power and wealth of the military industrial corporations they serve wasn’t satisfied with having destroyed my businesses and marriages – not even with having taken steps to assure that I would never be gainfully employed again. Uh-uh. They wanted to silence me – for ever, if possible.

When relentless harassment – stops (more than a hundred in a few years) by police and law enforcement incited with falsified records and reporting, burglaries, run-down attacks (six) with motor vehicles, muggings, and more – had made it clear that I must, I broke off all contact with my family. “Conspiracy,” for instance, is the easiest crime possible to prove; prove one member of any group guilty of anything, you will have proved conspiracy by all to any jury today.

This, I had already learned, is a nation vicious as only capitalism – greed exalted to the highest possible degree – can make it. I knew it was only a matter of time before IRS took the war on my family to the next level.

So a song written by Dolly Parton says the rest:

“If I should stay
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go but I know
I'll think of you
Every step of the way.

“And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
You my darling you . . .

“Bittersweet memories,
That is all I'm taking with me.
So goodbye, please don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you need.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have
All you've dreamed of.
And I wish for you joy
And happiness.
But above all this,
I wish you love.”


And when I hear it . . . Well, I’m not a poet.