Marquesa Corpus (excerpts) of Too Close to Heaven

The following are several selections (actually only three, but "Whores" has several parts) from a large body of work I wrote between the summer of '96 and @autumn"99. They are examples of what may or may not be False Memory Syndrome. These are "recovered" memories, memories I had no idea of until they appeared when I was 38 years old. My case does not fit the typical False Memory Syndrome model. I started "remembering" these things long before I ever went into therapy where child abuse was a topic. Victims of False Memory Syndrome are generally led into their corpus of "memories" by a well meaning but zealous therapist. I had symptoms of child abuse, "body memories" unexplainable rectal and chest pain since childhood. I was available, in my large family I was often lost and unsupervised during my preteen years. In the summer, I would eat breakfast early in the morning, play in the fields and barns of the countryside or ride my bike into town (A small western town, 2500 people) and wander around all day. I would eat candy bought with change I swiped from my Mom's stash of tips (she worked as a waitress and/or cook for much of her life) I would appear at supper time, always the last one to the table, but for some reason my chair was in the corner so I would have to climb under through the legs of everyone else and pop into my seat. Little or no conversation. Repeat. I would be ravenous. All leftovers were simply put in my reach and I would dispose of them. In '98, when I was doing research on SRA, I found that my state had enacted a little known law specifically banning acts identical to or very similar to the content of my "memories" precisely at the time these events were supposedly occurring. I might possibly have picked this up somehow as a child, but we had no TV , I did not read the paper or listen to the radio. My family, in their silence on the subject, flatly denies any possibility of these events occurring. I'm am not saying these stories are true, I am just saying it is what I remember. I feel certain I was the victim of some kind of violent, transgender sexual abuse but I am unsure of any details. Most of these "memories" are of SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse, often the content of False Memory Syndrome. I refer you to the work of Elizabeth Loftus, who has made a career of debunking SRA and virtually coined the term False Memory Syndrome.

Suzzane

I met Suzzane when I was four and a half.
After Pastor Greg sexed me
he left me in the room.
She came in and held me to her chest.
She had little tiny boobs for a big woman.
She was pretty and plump and smelled perfect
and looked perfect and smiled at me so beautiful,
I felt better.
She never sexed me.
She would just hold me and talk to me and tell me it wasn’t my fault.
She said if I could just hold on I could have a good life.
She said she was just like me once,
all alone and scared.
She just held on tight and didn’t ever give up
and now she had a wonderful life, almost.
Well, at least she was alive and had lots of nice things.
Hold on, Mark, hold on to whatever you know is true
and good and right.
They want you to hate yourself,
to hate God.
Don’t let them change you that much.
They can do whatever they want to your body
but they can’t touch your heart if you don’t let them.
What do you believe is true, Mark?
Jesus loves me.
Alright then. You hang on tight to that every second.
Don’t ever let go of it,
no matter what happens to you, OK?
Every time they did me that year
she would be there afterwards and hold me
and tell me to hang on to my truth.
Whats your truth, Mark?
Jesus loves me.
Alright then, hang on, Honey, hang on.
She taught me all about girls clothes.
How fun they were,
how soft and silky and cool.
How they had their own little world I could hide in
when it all got to be too much.
One day they took me out in the country,
to a big barn out in the sun,
tied me up to a rock
where there were lots of dead birds and horses and sheep.
She came out in a white dress,
her head was down and she was crying a little.
She looked up and put her hair back from her face
and asked me,
What’s true, Mark?
I couldn’t talk, I just nodded my head.
They killed her,
on top of me like the others,
cut off her little breasts and her little weiner
and put them on me.
She bled and got cold and they sang
and I floated
like the other times.
Only she was the first.
They cut her into little pieces,
put her in wooden boxes,
and carried us to a truck.
We went a long ways.
It was really bumpy and loud and slow.
Don yelled that he liked it better when they did it on horses.
We went down a long bumpy hill until I could hear the river.
They took us out and we went down some steps.
They stopped and put rocks in the boxes.
We went out a ways in a boat
and they threw her over and dropped me into the water
on the end of a rope
that was tied to her.
The rope broke and they pulled me in.
I knew it, Greg said.
He’s the one.

When I dress up I take her name.
She was so good to me.
She saved my life
with what she taught me.
They tried to make me just like them.
Instead I stayed mostly like me
and a lot like her.
My truth became so much a part of me
I didn’t even know it was there,
I just knew it clear through to my soul
and the bones of my soul.
She was right,
as long as I held on to it they couldn’t touch me, not really.

Pastor Greg told me that if I just loved him and cooperated all the time,
the Cadre would take care of me for the rest of my life.
I could have all of the clothes I wanted and jewelry and toys.
I just had to stick with them and they’d see to it I always had nice things
and plenty to eat.
Two or three times a week I would stay
after bible school or come by after school
and we would play his games.
Sometimes there would be lots of people there
and they would all play a little.
I think I was the only little girl at these partys.
Sometimes he would be drunk and we would play
and then he would knock me down and spit on me.
I would want to go to my room and put on my pretty clothes and pretend
Suzzanne was still there.
He would laugh and yell and pee on me as I crawled across the floor.
I would remember what she said, though.
I don’t remember much about how I felt
when all this stuff happened.
I just know I cried a lot when no one was around
and I always felt like I was just watching everything from a long ways away.
After Suzzanne I always felt lonely
and sad.
Always.

Whores



Maria

She was my lover from the first moment I saw her.
A whore like me.
She wore white and lace.
A pretty white dress in the sun on the lawn by a tree.
Her skin a light olive and her eyes
were large dark ovals rimmed in black.
And her hair the shiniest, blackest black.
It fell just short of her shoulders, shimmering.
We were singing and I sang loud.
She joked the way her people do,
“Were you singing John,
I couldn’t hear because Mark sang so loud?”
She came to me later.
She touched her finger to my lips
and said come to me little boy,
I’ll be waiting.
She was Amy’s sister, she said.
Come to me.
I stood there in the back yard of her house
two hours later.
I tryed to stay away
but the call of the whore was too strong.
I stood there waiting,
knowing she was nearby.
She rose up out of her garden to my left and behind me.
Dressed in white again,
her blouse smudged with dirt,
her breasts older, more ample than Amy,
but with the same call.
She said nothing I could hear but moved toward me,
hands still gloved,
dirt smudged on her face,
legs and arms.
Her eyes never left me as she pulled of her gloves.
I backed up onto the steps and into the back porch.
Without a word she stripped me bare and I tasted the garden dirt
on her skin and felt it grind into my back.
Every day at three o clock for the rest of the summer.
Often on the porch, sometimes in her room,
always a bath after.
Until her husband came home one day and caught us.
He nearly killed her.
Me he just beat with his belt and stared at.
He was trying to understand.
Then she said,”He is the priest of Jude, the special one”
He unfolded his arms and cried out ,
“Praise the master, he has come to me!”
I was evil, he said and nothing but evil will come of this.
He was right.
He was glad.
He was leader of the cadre.
Six months later she was dead.



Me
I was a whore.
I was a female whore.
I had a voluptuous body and long dark hair.
I did not imagine this.
It was as true for me as the air I breathed.
I had all the sensations, emotions, and experiences of a whore.
I was six years old and a thousand year old whore at the same time.
I was to have been sacrificed at the equinox that year.
Maria died instead.
I killed her.
I made her cut her own throat and die.
I lay there under her
Choking on her blood.
And I loved her so much
I wanted it to be me.
But I had to live so I could tell the story.
She chose this way.
Someday people would hear me.
They would never have believed her.



The Sons Of judas
My brother Dan was intended to be their sacrifice.
They knew him from Amy’s talk of my “sexy little brother”
He was four.
They wanted an innocent.
I was not.
They came for him one afternoon
when Amy was in bed with me.
They walked by our room and the heat and the dirt and the dark of them
woke me up.
He was sleeping in the next room and I got up.
They gathered around him in their dark clothes and flashed their eyes down at him,
they reached for him and I shouted “Stop!”
I told them they could have me instead.
Take me, I’m all you need.
They needed a boy right away,
“One dirty little trailer house urchin is as good as the next”
They grabbed me by my arm and shot a needle in it.
They took my knife
and stuffed it inside my pants.
In front of my penis.
They drove me to a barn on the south end.
They told me I was the One.
I said “Go to hell”
Gregory said, “Thank you”
and hit me in the back of my head.
They put a robe of black clothe on me.
Then they dragged me to the alter.
After much shit-smearing and gutteral chanting
in my direction they tied me to their cross.
The whore was alive in me now
and she loved me.
She was braver than me and she stood up to them.
She took me in her body and held me quietly through the horror of the sacrfices.
Animals of all kinds til the floor was slick with blood.
The whore whispered in my ear.
“I have seen it a thousand times.
This time will be different.
We shall live.”
She said.
“You will free me
And I will save you”
When it came to my murder,
they raised me on their cross
at the end of their bloody alter
and chanted out love of evil.
Maria came out from their midst,
Naked but for a blakstrap around
her shoulders,neck, waist and crotch,
carrying a bloody sword by her side.
She quickly and quietly mounted the alter
and tore open their robe and pulled off my pants.
My knife clattered to the alter.
She laughed and picked it up with her other hand.
She turned and gave the sword to the Second,
took my knife and carefully circumcised me.
My hood she took and chewed for a moment
then cried out like some kind of wild dog
and placed my little penis in her mouth.
And sucked my blood til I got dizzy.
She took the knife and cut her breasts
so they dripped blood from the nipples.
Slowly and carefully they lowered me to the alter.
The Second who stood behind her gave her
the jewels of the Cadre
and she placed them on my chest.
“You shall be the whore of the temple
of Jude and Prince of the Cadre,”
she said.
The cadre grew tense and she raised my knife.
The Whore raised up from the slab through Maria’s
dripping blood.
She reached out to Maria and touched her lips and said,
“You are mine.
Awaken the true love you have for this child.”
Maria smiled her big beautiful smile
and swung the knife in a wide arc
around and around and down
toward me and up above her head.
She whispered to me
“For the love of God”
With both hands she struck a blow
that missed me by the width of my hair.
Her face was close to me now.
I said,”You can kill me if you want,
its OK. She reached for the knife,
pulled it out of the wood,
smiling the old Maria smile from before.
She turned around and yelled something at the guy
who still stood behind her with her sword.
She stood up and looked toward him
and stood there staring at him.
She yelled again and he swung.
Her head bounced off my chest
and fell to the floor on my left.
Her headless body jerked and sqirted blood
then slowly and softly slumped on top of me.
I just lay there beneath her,
not sobbing but
tears running red down my face.
The cadre fell silent for what seemed like hours.
They suddenly began chanting as one
They were both ecstatic and fearful.
They said I would be their Prince.
The whore stood up and told them I would be their ruin.
They wouldn’t look at me but couldn’t leave me alone.
They all touched me and ate her drying blood.
I remember the whore kissed me and softly
placed her hand on my cheek.
“I love you little boy child”
She said.
And entered into my heart.
And the other one came.
The pretty blonde one.
Not Amy but Grace.
She’s not a whore.
She’s an angel.
I like her a lot.
She lets me be.
And when they come to me
she carries me up into the sky
and we sing and play and dance.
They cannot touch me.
The whore is below
and I am above,
dancing with an angel.

Day and night
I have dreams.
And in these dreams
they are now the ones who pray I will wake up.

And I am their ruin still.
I live.
I scatter them night and day by living a decent life.
I am the only one who can defeat me.
And God knows I have tried.
But I’m worn out from that paticular battle and won’t be at it any more.
I’ve turned to loving each and every one,
something I’ve done all along
but now I know it
and it makes it, Oh, so much better.


It seems I’m not as brave as I think
I still don’t like going to bed.
I’m not even so smart,
I can’t figure out my own wife.
I can’t fix anybody
but maybe I can help.

I love the whore.
Marquesa Martinez.
It seems the whore leaves my body sometimes
and resides in my mind.
She works with me now.
The two of us,
we have a strong influence on people and places.
But certain ones seem to be beyond us
and that is a saving grace.
I sometimes fear that I’m missing Jesus.
But he is the lake and I am a minnow.
He tells me he makes himself too subtle to sense
because I had been through so much in his name.
They had made me be him for them
so now he would gently be everything for me.
He so thoroughly imbues me
surrounds me
and supports me that I cannot sense him
unless I should somehow step outside of him
and real life strikes me again.
And so I will be still as I can
and walk,
not knowing where the next step may fall.

Woman

Sometimes
I feel like a woman even now,
now that its all behind me.
but I’m not, I know,
The spirit that made me a woman
is mine now,
she gave herself up freely for me, remember.
I wear the clothes and create the illusion to satisfy the great loss.
A very real person, a part of me,
is gone now.
I miss her terribly.
She saved me from satan and Sandy and myself,
and then she gave up her life.
She gave her Yaqui spirit
to the one Jesus Christ.
For my sake.
She did not completely understand.
She did not need to,
she knew it was right.
She still dwells in my heart
but does not speak
nor will she ever come forward
to take me away again.
I may not ever be whole.

Thank you, woman.
I love you.


As I said, there is a large body of such work on my computer, available at request. I have been experiencing rectal pain from the time I sat down to write.