I arrived in Claremont CA to assume the job at Pitzer College teaching Chicano and American Literature. I remember when I was told by a politics professor and Alan Jones, the Dean, that the local K-12 schools were excellent.
They did not mention that there were about a half dozen men who daily hunted for ass on the Pitzer campus: Ntongela Masilela, Gregory Orfalea, Neslon Trombley (the President's husband), David Furman, Jim Marchant (Dean of Student Affairs). Leading the gang was the Dean Alan Jones whose major responsibility was that of punishing anyone who dared speak of these harassment rituals.
Venturing around the small campus was tantamount to being "An American in Italy." These men would feast on the very image of a woman and salivate at close range. They shared information with each other as was clear when as a victim, I was handed from one harasser to the next by the administration and in full and complete view of many so-called feminists who did nothing to change things but through tacit agreement, allowed and perpetuated sexual assaults.
I remember searching desperately for a way out of the situation, trying to get a new job, and taking on the major part of the teaching responsibilities for an entire department. At Pitzer they are called "field groups," which might better be called "jump ins." Each one of these field groups represented tactical units for punishing victims of the Evil 5 Fingers --the hard boys who did all the handling: Marchant, Furman, Orfalea, Trombley, Masilela, and Jones, their "guy."
I remember my days of constant fear, dread, revulsion, and pain.
In the beginning, my two sons were just 8 and 10 years old: Niko and Reggie, my heart and my soul.
In our private time I called them, "corazoncitos de mi alma," the little hearts in my soul. When things were normal, singing, reading, storytelling, and children's rhymes were daily activities I employed to get the kids to sleep at night, pumping their imagination with Spanish and English traditional lyrics, tales, fables, and some that I would invent.
By the time things got ramped up with the harassment at work, the kids were just entering early adolescence. My life had become a gruesome adventure; between staving off the men at work and teaching in the proximity of Laura Harris--the flesh-eating miniature raptor--and run ins with Laura Trombley, a so-called Mark Twain expert fixated on finding non-existing evidence of marital affairs by Twain while sharp-shooting at women her husband forced himself on including undocumented workers.
I recall my arrivals at home as finding my way back to a temporary safe zone. I stress the word temporary because as the years progressed, and Pitzer found out where I lived, the harassment would follow me home, too.
All I can say is that Niko, who had taken up guitar (first on his own) and later studied music at school, seemed in his empathic way to perceive that my soul was in deep and miserable pain and torment. Collapsing in my bed at night, I could hear him from the next room as he would take up his guitar and play the sweetest and softest notes and melodies that I had ever heard.
Instead of the other way around, he was now the one lulling me to sleep, and with the power that his healing touch brought down on the strings of the guitar, I was lifted up and away and beyond the pain.
They did not mention that there were about a half dozen men who daily hunted for ass on the Pitzer campus: Ntongela Masilela, Gregory Orfalea, Neslon Trombley (the President's husband), David Furman, Jim Marchant (Dean of Student Affairs). Leading the gang was the Dean Alan Jones whose major responsibility was that of punishing anyone who dared speak of these harassment rituals.
Venturing around the small campus was tantamount to being "An American in Italy." These men would feast on the very image of a woman and salivate at close range. They shared information with each other as was clear when as a victim, I was handed from one harasser to the next by the administration and in full and complete view of many so-called feminists who did nothing to change things but through tacit agreement, allowed and perpetuated sexual assaults.
I remember searching desperately for a way out of the situation, trying to get a new job, and taking on the major part of the teaching responsibilities for an entire department. At Pitzer they are called "field groups," which might better be called "jump ins." Each one of these field groups represented tactical units for punishing victims of the Evil 5 Fingers --the hard boys who did all the handling: Marchant, Furman, Orfalea, Trombley, Masilela, and Jones, their "guy."
I remember my days of constant fear, dread, revulsion, and pain.
In the beginning, my two sons were just 8 and 10 years old: Niko and Reggie, my heart and my soul.
In our private time I called them, "corazoncitos de mi alma," the little hearts in my soul. When things were normal, singing, reading, storytelling, and children's rhymes were daily activities I employed to get the kids to sleep at night, pumping their imagination with Spanish and English traditional lyrics, tales, fables, and some that I would invent.
By the time things got ramped up with the harassment at work, the kids were just entering early adolescence. My life had become a gruesome adventure; between staving off the men at work and teaching in the proximity of Laura Harris--the flesh-eating miniature raptor--and run ins with Laura Trombley, a so-called Mark Twain expert fixated on finding non-existing evidence of marital affairs by Twain while sharp-shooting at women her husband forced himself on including undocumented workers.
I recall my arrivals at home as finding my way back to a temporary safe zone. I stress the word temporary because as the years progressed, and Pitzer found out where I lived, the harassment would follow me home, too.
All I can say is that Niko, who had taken up guitar (first on his own) and later studied music at school, seemed in his empathic way to perceive that my soul was in deep and miserable pain and torment. Collapsing in my bed at night, I could hear him from the next room as he would take up his guitar and play the sweetest and softest notes and melodies that I had ever heard.
Instead of the other way around, he was now the one lulling me to sleep, and with the power that his healing touch brought down on the strings of the guitar, I was lifted up and away and beyond the pain.
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