Kissing Ellen King

Foreword by Jack Chandler

Written in 2011

I don't know what will come out of this exactly, but I know I need to write it, to tell my story before there's no one left to tell it. I expect the format to be a little like a diary, with entire passages copied directly from the entries I wrote as all this was happening.

I've spent a lot of time trying to hide this away in my head, a lot of time trying to block it out, but I cannot. So I shall do the opposite in the hopes that it will bring a catharsis that hiding never could. I don't know what will come back once I start actively trying to remember. I expect many of the chapters will be vague, touching more on feelings and impressions than specific events. But undoubtedly I'll be able to focus like a laser on the bigger moments, at times recalling every word of every conversation. I don't know if this will be pleasurable to read, all I know is that it needs to be written.

Prologue

An Intro

Written in, Took Place in 2011

Today began like any other... I woke up this morning like I wake up most mornings, to several brightly colored flyers plastered over my door. They warn my neighbors about the dangers of living near me, about the dangers of raising their children around me, about the dangers of me simply existing. Danger...the word has been thrown out so many times it's lost all meaning with me. But there will always be bored activists in need of an enemy to passive-aggressively wage war against, and so there will always be flyers. It's become a ritual for me to scoop them off the doors of my floor and deposit them in the recycling bin in the lobby on my way to breakfast. There are more to be found in other places, but I've given up tearing down the ones that aren't convenient. Everyone I live with knows who I am and what I am, the posters have little impact. Each of the other tenants tries to add to their assault, tries to strike me down with a wall of silence as I pass them in the halls and as we ride in awkwardness in tomb-like elevator carriages. I've given up on them too.

It's kind of ironic because if they knew how I came to live with them, they'd be even more infuriated. The laws regarding someone who carries the scarlet letter I do are fierce and unyielding. The residency restrictions are damning and rather than lose track of someone as dangerous as myself to homelessness, the state would prefer to pony up money to help pay rent in one of the few places that I'm allowed to live.

Luckily on this particular morning the walk to McDonalds was a quiet and uneventful one. A few people stared, several more whispered, and some even ferried their children out, leaving their food half eaten, but no one got in my face about how horrible I am. I appreciate that more than they'll ever know.

If I still had a car, I'd use the drive-thru to spare myself the grief, but the last time that happened the people in front of me recognized who I was. Putting their large SUV in park and hemming my car in beneath the overhang, they got out and started towards me. I tried to put up the windows to avoid their onslaught, but I am poor and manual cranks are slow. Their recently purchased coffee found its way onto my face and chest as they forced it through the wide slit my window afforded. The burns have healed, but the desire to avoid repeating the incident pushed me inside.

The clerk smiled at me, which stopped being nice when I realized it was part of her job. Still it's one of the few moments in which my contact with the human race is pleasant and one of the reasons I continue to get shitty fast food breakfasts. Her smile didn't do much to blot out the frowns of those around me, but it did a little.

Get in, get the food, get out; my plan always remains simple. I made a quick trip to the local pharmacy before carting the warm Styrofoam tray back up to my apartment, finding that in the twenty minutes I was gone, the flyers had reappeared on my door along with a large black 'X' marring the already destroyed wood paneling even further. It's not the first time someone's marked me, and it won't be the last. Not for another several years at least.

While I sit and eat my breakfast, scrolling through job postings on the internet, a series of dull thuds hit my bedroom window. More eggs. It seemed like every tired clichéd method of showing displeasure wanted to rear its ugly head earlier today along with a few that crossed the line into absolute horror. Like with most other things, I've given up on avoiding them as well.

In spite of the terrible economy, there is actually no shortage of work in my area, not for what I do. Still, my employment has been sporadic at best. It's always been varying versions of the same occurrence. Once an employer finds out who I am, what I am, that's the end of the line for me. It doesn't matter that my field of work doesn't involve interacting with people outside the office. The specifics of my crime are irrelevant, as I've tried to explain to them many times. All that matters is that I'm a registered sex offender, which means I'm no good for anything.

I'm sure that in your head that term conjures images of rapists and pedophiles and that you're now reading this with what you think to be an appropriate level of disgust. This is the sad simple truth of our society even though you can be forced to register as a sex offender for crimes you committed when you were a child, or for more innocent activities like public urination or streaking. These are hardly sex crimes...but the state says they are. My story is not that innocent, not that simple, but I do know one thing: I do not deserve to be treated with the level of disgust that I see every day because of the list that my name lies on. This is my story.

Part I

July 2003 - June 2005

Chapter 1

The Beginning

Written in 2011; Personal History from Childhood to 2003

I grew up with two younger sisters four and five years behind me along with cousins three, four, five, and eight years back. It became sort of a family inside joke with me constantly hanging around several younger girls. With no end in sight to the comments, I had two choices: I could get angry, or I could let them roll off me and enjoy spending time with my family. I chose the latter.

I think there were some advantages to my situation then. Often boys and girls grow up with very rigid stereotypes of what someone in their gender should be. With my older male influence, and the sheer quantity of their female influence, we had to bridge that gap between us if we wanted to get along. It was good for all of us because it introduced a wide variety of likes and hobbies that we might not otherwise have seen. Over time our gender identities became somewhat blurry.

It only took a few hours spent at my Little League games before they decided that they wanted to play too. And that wasn't the only thing in which they tried to follow in my footsteps. As my sisters grew up our closeness only increased. I offered a helping hand in coaching their softball teams as a way to spend more time with them. Of course this resulted in more comments regarding younger girls, especially when a few of the other players developed crushes on me, but like everything else, I just let them roll off me and tried to be the best role model I could.

It helped that I've always been a unique person, unwilling to follow social norms. I like to think that my utter contempt for peer pressure has been a positive influence on those that have looked up to me. I've often found that when a large percentage of people feel one way, it's a good indicator that those feelings are in error. I was sixteen at the time this all started, and unlike my peers, alcohol and sex (and the combination of the two) were far from my mind. I never felt the inclination to smoke cigarettes or experiment with drugs and I think I'm better for it. There is something to be said for living your life with a clear head and sharp senses. I was always the first one to head for the door at a friend's birthday party once someone broke out the beer and those that looked up to me knew it. Neither one of my sisters drank or partied much when they went to college, something I think I can pat myself on the back for. Even at a small school or a rural locale, there are almost always better things to do than head for the bottle or the beer pong table.

With all the hours spent hanging around family members younger than myself I started to develop a rapport with kids, sometimes without even realizing it. At work picnics and barbecues put on by my parents' companies, I always found myself besieged by children wanting to play with me, whether they knew me or not. It got kind of funny after a while as someone far more inclined to spend time with children would wander over and try to take them off my hands. I'm not sure which is better, the utterly honest contempt when a child turns around and says, "I don't want to play with you," or the look of shock on the faces of those women who thought that fawning over little kids automatically made them the most capable of interacting with them.

That skill was advantageous as I headed into my first year as a camp counselor, but I think it ended up being damning as well. Many of the other counselors were girls with a variety of majors devoted to the care of children. They'd grown up loving them (a trait that seems to be predominantly female) and were learning things at school that should have made them model counselors. They were anything but. I think there was some jealously in watching someone like me effortlessly connect with the kids and achieve a popularity that they couldn't touch, and in that jealousy, the desire to spread nasty rumors about me and bring me down a few pegs. Those thoughts never lasted long in my mind as I focused on the incredible fact that I was basically being paid to play kickball and dodgeball all day.

Chapter 2

Ellen King - The First Day

Took Place in 2003

I was the first one to arrive on my first day which produced a bit of a conundrum. I hate being the first person anywhere because there's always that paralyzing fear as you look around and see no familiar faces that you've come to the wrong place. It probably didn't help that the uncertainty of what to expect coupled with the desire to prove myself had me relatively on edge before I even pulled into the parking lot.

Luckily the head counselor Mary, a wiry college basketball player during the school year and a generic pony-tailed brunette during the summer, arrived a few minutes later. I was grateful for the opportunity to transfer the burden of the year's worth of supplies from the trunk of her tiny Honda to the marginally bigger office just off the cafeteria that would act as our home base. It gave me something to do and gave her a sense early on that she could rely on me.

The two of us were early enough to get most of it packed away before kids started pouring in. The layout was pretty basic and the daily routine simple. We'd let the kids into the cafeteria by the front door, simultaneously taking attendance if there was enough staff on hand. In addition to the cafeteria we had access to the gym and bathrooms inside and the playgrounds and ball fields outside. Each day saw about a hundred kids so we'd give them three choices of activities at any given time, two sporty, one arty, and usually had a pretty even split with at least two counselors on hand in each location.

There were ten counselors in all including Mary and myself. Most of them were late, even that first day, and more than a few didn't look thrilled to be spending time with a bunch of unruly children at nine in the morning. Since camp always started right after the Fourth of July, I suspected that a few were shaking off hangovers as well.

Because Mary and I had spent our time packing away the supplies, we hadn't gotten a chance to take attendance as the kids walked in. As names were rattled off a few minutes after nine to the restless crowd, a few caught my attention. There was one in particular, not only for the name itself, but for the reaction of the counselor next to me. Ellen King, Mary called. Ugh Ellen King, God, complained one of two Jennifers (who would later become known as the mean Jennifer to kids and counselors alike).

Ellen King had spent some time playing softball with my sisters, though it was with a tournament team that I did not coach. The reaction surprised me because in my limited observation she was a fairly stereotypical young girl of eleven years old. Perhaps she contained more rambunctiousness than most, being an athlete, but I never saw her as a problem player and didn't envision her as a problem kid at camp.

I've always been ripe for a challenge, something I'd learned from my dad. As my Little League coach, he'd frequently taken to drafting the kids with attitude problems that no one else had the patience to deal with. He figured that just by showing them that they were wanted, he'd be coming out ahead from the start, and if he gave them just an ounce of respect, something they hadn't gotten from other coaches, they would probably give him the same in return.

It was clear, even within five minutes, that most of my fellow counselors didn't respect the kids they were tasked with looking after. They just saw them as little burdens and the kids responded by treating those counselors like slightly larger burdens. I never thought that doling out respect and acting from a position of authority had to be mutually exclusive. In my experience I'd found that I could get much farther with kids, even the difficult ones, by trying to appreciate who they were and the way they looked at the world.

I didn't know then why Ellen King was a problem, and I didn't know what she was seeking that she hadn't been given. Amid the sea of smiling faces waiting for attendance to finish, I couldn't even pick her out. But I was determined, at the very least, to put more to my memory than vague impressions of a brown haired girl who'd swam in her softball uniform a couple years previous, and hopefully learn what made Ellen King such a difficult camper...so that I could fix it.

Chapter 3

First Meeting

Took Place in 2003

I wish I could say that I remember my first encounter with Ellen King with perfect clarity, but I do not. Some things are clearer than others, but the specifics of the first words we exchanged are lost to me. Ellen gave every impression of her youth with her physical stature, coming in well below five feet (a benchmark she never topped) with shorts and a t-shirt that were comically large on her, another mainstay. Even at age eleven, Ellen was very in tune with her tomboyish nature, a confidence that I envied. I think that some of her resolute acceptance of herself and rejection of girlier stereotypes bothered the female counselors. The only one she ever got along with was our equally tomboyish leader Mary. While I never really saw it myself, I suspect that this made up a large part of Ellen being considered a problem camper. With more male counselors around than in recent years, myself in particular, Ellen at least had a few of us she could identify with and stuck to us like glue.

My theories went unproven; Mean-Jennifer's initial reaction to Ellen continued to mystify me as she was not only a model camper, but also a good influence on the younger children. In fact she became a liaison to the rest of the kids, including a few that were legitimate problems, able to elicit compliance out of them where the counselors could not. Rather than take these things as a threat to my authority (like Mean-Jennifer), I accepted them as a blessing. While our goals of ensuring the kids' entertainment and safety were clear, the best method to arrive at them was never set in stone.

Right away it was obvious that a couple of the counselors were devoted to interacting and connecting with the kids and the rest were there to collect a paycheck in the laziest way possible. I never wanted to limit myself to one activity or one group of kids so I could just as easily be found playing board games with the five year olds as I could playing dodgeball with the twelve year olds. One little girl in particular always took perverse pleasure in mopping the floor with me at Candyland and was always eager to challenge me to a game.

I think the reason I had such broad appeal is that I didn't differ my approach based on who I was talking to. I could always see the female counselors slowing their speech and faking excitement with the younger kids, treating them as cuteness commodities rather than human beings. I think kids can pick up on a lot of that, and they don't like it. I talked to the kids the same way I talked to most adults and they were not only able to understand me, but appreciated it all the more.

Chapter 4

The First Year

Took Place from July to August 2003

As the camp year went on, I grew close to several of the kids, both male and female. I was an avid baseball player then so it wasn't rare for me to run into campers and parents alike at the Little League fields. It always amuses me to recall that I kept pace with our fun and energetic leader Mary as the kids' favorite counselor even though several of the other counselors were majoring in education.

I had a widespread appeal because, unlike the other male counselors, I would occasionally take a break from playing sports to indulge in arts and crafts. One of my favorite activities involved one of the three by a hundred foot rolls of paper we had laying around, a lunch table, a bucket full of crayons, and a dozen campers.

One day Ellen, another girl Ellie, and myself sat down to reproduce the American flag. There was one just off the stage at the front of the cafeteria that we could use as a reference and Ellie was all too eager to run back and forth checking it constantly to make sure the colors were right and the stars were all in the correct places. It took the three of us hours to hand draw everything and fill in the blank areas with the right shades of blue and red, but the end result was rather impressive, coupling the grandeur of the American flag with the glorious imperfections of paper and crayon. It still hangs on my wall today.

It might have been the first time anyone convinced Ellen to take a seat and tone down her energy. As the much younger Ellie flitted from lunch-table to stage and back again, Ellen and I took the time to talk and get to know one