Donelle Mae Flick Paullin
Donelle was never able to speak out against the abuse that she experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased family, where the mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of her young children, and the mother’s poor relationship choices that resulted from her own brokenness, led to the conditions of sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old. Her mother Marlene was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954. Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed and leased out, as well as being a full time worker at the Camas Washington Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that period of time. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage.
Because of her traumatization, and resultant mental illness, she could not enjoy her sexuality. And she was my first lover, and I felt quite inadequate in the face of this disease. My sexuality was severely compromised, and I wondered where my joy was to be found, if ever.
Donelle, and the mentally ill in general, suffer from extreme isolation, and are insulated from emotionally satisfying and connecting relationships. Donelle desired such connections intensely, yet did not have the capacity to make them happen due to the chaos and distress that her mental illness brought to her. A person will never know a greater heartbreak, than to know and love a mentally ill human being who cannot or will not respond to therapy, medication, and treatment. Yet, there are some who are considered extremely mentally ill, who have actually connected with the higher truth of life, creativity, self-expression, and spiritual awareness. It is a dangerous road to travel, the one where insanity and mental illness is one of the fog lines, and spiritual enlightenment is the other. To bounce back and forth between those lines creates a turbulence unknown to ninety-eight percent of humanity.
Cindy Dahl
I met Cindy Dahl, a letter sorting machine clerk, in 1983. I was invited out to Lung Fungs near 82nd avenue, and another letter sorting machine clerk introduced us one night. This was during the period of time during the final nervous breakdown that I could tolerate of Donelle’s. It is a funny thing, I had no intention of going to bed with Cindy, but that night, we hit it off so well that she came home with me that evening, and we had a wildly great time together. We slept in the same bed, and bedroom, that I shared with my estranged wife, who was now going out on her own, and not coming back some evenings. I never asked where she was, because I did not want to face one of my Toxic masculine internal stories that I told myself, that if my wife ever cheated on me, I would kill her. Well,Donelle walked through the door that very next morning, while we were still in bed, and grabbed some clean panties out of the top drawer of her dresser, smiled, said hello, and left. That old toxic need to punish a cheating wife just miraculously disappeared, when I saw that we both appeared happier by our final separation from each other.
My relationship with Cindy did not last long, however She tried to get me to hook up with both her and her very attractive female roommate, but I was too insecure to even consider threesomes and the complex possibilities of interrelationship. After getting an assignment to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for three weeks more of training, Cindy told me that she was getting her breasts enhanced during the period of time that I was gone. She was warm to me before I left, but when I came back, she wanted nothing to do with me, and I did not even get a chance to look at, let alone feel, her new chest ornaments. The Candy land: Eventually, after several weeks of contact with Donelle, I was encouraged enough by her progress to want to resume our marriage. On the night before I was to move back in with her, my friend Paul, from the letter sorting machine gig, and I went out and really tied one on. While in a bar near his home in northeast Portland, we came upon two female co-workers from the LSM’s, Candy and Lorna. Candy was six foot tall, attractive, but outweighed me by forty pounds. Lorna was a redhead, of reasonable dimensions, but very plain looking. Paul had partied with both of them in the past, so he knew them quite well. I had no idea what was about to ensue, however.
In a near blackout state, I accompanied Paul, and the two women, over to Paul’s house, where we continued drinking, smoking pot, and playing some video games. I was ready to go to sleep, when Paul took off into the kitchen with the two women. When he returned, I asked him if I could sleep on his bean bag chair. With a big grin he proclaimed
“Why hell yes, you can. But first, you get to pick which woman you are sleeping with tonight!”
“Umm, Paul, I am not really prepared for this one. Uh, uh, uh, Candy, would you like to stay and talk with me until I fall asleep?”
The truth be known is that I had no desire for either woman. They were not appealing to me in the least, yet I selected Candy out of some sort of need to protect the woman’s feelings. Candy was quite pleased to join with me in Paul’s living room, where the bean bag chair was located. Lorna accompanied Paul into his bedroom, and they closed the door behind them. I was still quite drunk, yet I felt a little self-conscious. We could hear laughter and raucous activity coming from Paul’s room, and we figured out what must be going on. Somehow, without me remembering exactly how, my pants disappeared off of my body, as well as all of Candy’s clothes.
I awoke the next day, naked, and laying beside Candy, who was still asleep. I got up, wrote a note apologizing to Candy, and stated that I had made a mistake, and to please accept my forgiveness for having sex with her while drunk (while sober, I NEVER WOULD HAVE CONSIDERED SUCH A PARTNER FOR LOVEMAKING). I felt diminished somehow, for having sex with her. For the next two months, she chased after me at work, called me at home, and eventually gave up, when I never returned her calls, and continued to spurn her. Some disparaging writing ended up on the walls of the bathroom stalls in the Post Office women’s bathrooms about me and my penis, which brought huge laughs to the janitorial core, and, eventually, to the maintenance core, who shared the same locker room. The joke was that Candy might be better suited to maintaining the Postal Service’s equipment, where blowing the dust off of equipment was a nightly endeavor. Ouch, emotionally, for both of us. I felt quite embarrassed, and it took way too long to live that one down. I also felt bad, because even though I did not technically cheat on my wife, I was feeling like I had. Alcindia Ford: Alcindia represents an era with great overall darkness in my life. I met Alcindia at “Bannisters”, a bar in Beaverton, after Randy and I moved into an apartment near 117th avenue late in the summer of 1984. I danced with her one evening at the bar, then I brought her back home to the apartment that I shared with Randy. She was a cute younger woman, who worked at the Aloha Intel Fab as a chip maker. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, other than I was a lonely man, and Alcindia might be a good short term friend. We hooked up that first night, and there were no strings attached, at least not initially. As fate would have it, Alcindia also had sexual abuse issues in her background, which definitely impacted our 16 month relationship in various ways. But, these issues did not lead her into the psychosis like it probably did with my ex-wife. Unlike my sexually unresponsive first wife Donelle, Alcindia at least found a way to experience an orgasm, and she brought the fruitage of that exploration into our shared sexuality. On a physical level, she was a small step up. On an emotional level, it remained an often times confusing, stimulating, sometimes happy, but mostly challenging relationship. When we hit an early “rough patch” in our new relationship, In a shameful moment of weakness, I gave to Alcindia a copy of Di Di’s poem. I did not ever tell her that I had not really written the poem for her, and that I did not even love her. I tried to fool myself from the very start that this woman was worth my time and effort, but we were BAD for each other. Have you ever heard of the term “slumming”? It was an unholy match, compounded by my own selfishness, loneliness, lack of integrity and honesty, and drug addiction and alcoholism. On a spiritual and emotional level, our relationship did nothing to enhance a shared vision of wholeness, instead, gradually becoming a source of pain and suffering for the two of us. How a one night stand turned into a dark 16 month relationship is anybody’s guess, but my poor self-esteem, loneliness and need for female friendship sure played into it. Diane (Di Di) McCloud I wrote my first love poem in 1984, when I became lovers with a woman by the name of Diane (Di Di) McCloud. I had first met Di Di while she was running with Gary, a cocaine dealer and friend to both me and Randy Olson. Gary and I became friends, and Gary eventually stored his money and cocaine in a safe house, which happened to be the home that I lived in. How unlucky was that for me! I got the privilege of running with the same important people that Gary did, including prominent local rock and roll DJ’s, as well as the best local rock and roll bands. And, during this time, I started to fantasize about someday hooking up with his sweetie, but I never had any intention of having an affair with her. Somehow, she stayed with Gary for over two years. Di Di was quite the free spirit, as well as a drug addict, so Gary’s appeal may have been enhanced by his constant supply of drugs. Randy and I were living near downtown Portland at the time We lived on the 22nd floor of the Panorama Tower, and it was at this home that Randy first brought Di Di, who had recently broken up with Gary, into our shared lives. She hung out with Randy for a few days, then lost interest in him. Somehow, we hooked up after that, early in the summer of 1984, and this most beautiful woman professed her love and willingness to stay connected with me shortly after that. I was blown away, as she was the most attractive, sexy woman I had ever seen. I was so inspired by my relationship with Di Di, that I wrote my first love poem in 1984. She treasured the poem, and actually sought another copy of it shortly before her own death early in 1987. She was to become the first person that I felt I had ever truly loved, but we had to let each other go after a short period of time.
Bruce with a 1984 look (Randy suggested the pure blond look for Bruce for the summer)
Di Di became a part of myself and my consciousness, and I had one profound dream with her in it, shortly after her death. In the dream, I am confronted by a man exhibiting aggressive, unkind, abusive behavior. In the dream, I am appalled, disgusted, and threatened by his manner. I call out to a policeman, imploring him to arrest that man, and protect all of us from his violence. Di Di then walks up to me in the dream, taking the policeman’s place, and states quite plainly that for love to reappear in my life, in all of its fullness, I must first “arrest” all of these negative qualities within myself, and rehabilitate my own passions, then love will reappear. The dream ends, but the journey continues. Claudia of Randy . I continued to live with Randy, while still working the graveyard shift as a maintenance electrician. Randy had a live-in girlfriend at the time, by the name of Claudia. Randy thought that she might have psychological issues, noticing that she might be manic/depressive, or something along those lines. She had come from another relationship where she lived with three guys, at least one of who was bi-sexual, and, according to Randy, she may have had relations with all three men over a period of time. I rarely talked with Claudia, not knowing exactly what to think of her, and my schedule kept me away from Randy and her the vast majority of the time. The week following Alcindia spending the night at our apartment, Claudia became “interested” in me and my life for some reason. I did not think much of it initially. One morning, I came home from work, showered and went to bed at about 8:30. Randy had already left for work, so it was just sleepy me and Claudia. I was just falling asleep when my bed bounced, and a naked Claudia appeared next to me in bed. Not knowing what to think or what to do about it, nature somehow knew what to do, and did so three times, and left me wondering how the hell I was going to explain this one to Randy. I did not tell Randy right away, feeling shame and remorse. . I continued to see Alcindia, who came over on my weekend and spent one more night with me at our apartment. Since we were just “friends” there was no need to tell her about my indiscretions. The next day I was visiting with her and and her friend Baby at their apartment, trying to get to know Alcindia better. Out of the blue, she starts telling a story to Baby about another girlfriend’s boyfriend who slept with his best friends’ girlfriend while his best friend went to work. As she told her story, she repeated back to Baby, and to me, some of the language that was used during my soiree with Claudia, even recalling that there were three sexual interludes. I was to learn, at a much later time, that she had placed a voice activated recorder under my bed. I had my suspicions, but never confronted her about her “story” to Baby. Search For Truth My intention was to bring harm to no one, and to practice the 12 steps of AA, even while still avoiding recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism, which I had totally given up on ever successfully completing. My AA book, which I carried in my car wherever I went, would later come in handy, but not in the way Bill Wilson, the originator of AA, ever had in mind when he co-wrote it.. My first “realization” was that I needed to avoid sex. I committed to no new relationships with women, including no sexual encounters (pretty easy decision for me, as I was so beat up by my history of misadventures with women over the previous 14 years). I don’t remember exactly when I first met Barbara, but Steve had introduced us in the late summer. She kept turning up at after hours parties and other supposedly spontaneous happenings around se Portland that I had been invited to, She was to become an emotionally unavailable running mate for several exciting weeks in the fall. She was a pettite woman, and had a outgoing personality that attracted others to her as much, or more than, her physical appearance. Barb wasn’t interested in sex, as her focus was to be lighthearted, to have fun, and to use drugs, to excess, if possible. I attended one party in NE Portland with her where we were with fairly high class, normal looking people, and I felt safe with her, probably one of the only two times I ever felt that way in the underworld. Like most time with her, at the end of the evening, she discarded me like an empty potato chip bag. She was an unpredictable person, and my kind of gal for these times! One of the best times of my underworld life was on Halloween. Her girlfriend, Joanne, and Barb invited me to go out on the town with them, as long as I dressed up as a pimp, and them as .prostitutes. Barb and Joanne wore skimpy skirts with stocking and exposed garters, and the look was NAILED. I still had a pair of leather pants, a nice expensive suede leather jacket, velvet hat, fake gold chain necklace, and cowboy boots, so I had the look down. it covered up my emaciated body to near perfection. I also got the first, and only, complement about my sexy appearance in my life so my self esteem in the underworld was at a record .level, to be sustained for about 8 hours before collapsing back into the self-hating ruins that I had grown accustomed to.. We drove downtown, and started bar hopping early in the evening. Everywhere we went, it was ELECTRIC, the three of us stunned others and we got all sorts of attention, though it was mostly the unwanted type by guys with their needs. Up The Down Staircase, The Last Hurrah, Jakes, and several other stops made for an exhilarating evening. Barb finally tired of having me around, and discarded me around 2:30 am. She could be quite blunt at times and I always knew that I was around her only when she wanted the company of someone who had no expectations of her. She could be demeaning, and was to me several times, but who was I to complain? I sensed that someone, or something, or a combination of the two, had an iron grip on her soul, and limited her freedom. Loneliness and loss of desire to keeping living were two acquaintances that had their grip upon me. Welcome to the club, Barb, there is open admission, all comers welcome!. .Marsha (Masha) Feldman Marsha (Masha) Feldman was a beautiful Jewish woman, of Russian descent, who sat directly across the aisle from me at the Jack Boland talk. For some reason she came over to ME after Jack’s talk, and began a friendship with me that was to last for over one year. She had lived quite the life, hanging out with many of the most beautiful people that Portland, Oregon had to offer. She had hung around rich men with their fancy cars, homes, and clothing. She had told me that she spent much time with weight lifting men, many of whom worshiped their own bodies. Some were bi-sexual, and she was a little concerned that she might have made contact with the AIDS virus. She was suffering from an unspecified auto-immune deficiency, and she would not tell me what it was. She was a princess of sorts, and expected to be treated that way. Why she latched onto me is anybody’s guess, but I am sure that there was an underlying spiritual reason for this connection.
Masha was troubled and had recently visited her rabbi for some support. Her rabbi had informed her, in the interests of her own personal happiness and sense of well-being, that she should give up on understanding “GOD”, and to instead pursue more ‘grounded’ approaches to her physical and emotional health and welfare. She certainly had the physical aspect mastered, as she worked out daily, and kept her physical energy and beautiful appearance at as high of a level as possible. Masha, my new friend, was an amazing listener, and such a good friend, that we struggled through the teachings together. We talked endlessly about our spiritual experiences, discussed the enlightened masters of the day, traveled and explored through the Columbia Gorge together, attended recovery meetings, slept under the stars together, slept in her apartment together, yet we never made love, as I was not to be her prince charming, as she related to me fairly early on. I continued to see Masha as an extension of my ‘search for truth’ process where I remained celibate, so I was not too disturbed for that to continue (for most of my life, sex had not been all that satisfying for me). Yes, this was yet another rejection of me on a pretty basic level, but I was relatively unaffected by it. This rejection did not darken my life because of all of the other light that was being let in.
We continued to hang out together, and spent lots of quality time with each other in platonic, yet blissfully loving, situations in various settings around our area. On one of our tours through recovery meetings, in which Masha hoped to find a girlfriend for me, we were introduced to Laurie Hartmann, a woman claiming to be an adult child of an alcoholic. We had a pleasant conversation together, and i secured Lauries phone number. Masha noted that Laurie was her exact height and weight, had the same blond hair, and appeared to be physically fit, and happy. Sheesh, something did not feel quite right, but she looked just fine. Two of our favorite areas to visit were in Mosier, near the Tom McCall overlook at the Columbia River, and Washington Park, near her apartment in southwest Portland. I continued to struggle to make sense of the three spiritual upheavals, or revelations, that happened over the period of May 24 through July 21, 1987, and attempted to understand other available teachings.
Looking back, everything worked out just fine, I think. Pursuing a woman overly concerned with appearances could not have brought long-term happiness to me, and there was little reason to hope that a love relationship with Masha would have worked. Masha was 10 years older than I was, which did help open me up to the possibility of dating older women (hello Sharon, my beautiful wife and love of my life, and, yes, an older woman!). Prior to this, it seemed only younger woman had even the remotest of interest in me. I always considered myself too immature for older women, anyway. The search for Truth and love continued in new ways, yet I was not fully convinced that I had found my own unique path towards it .
Laurie and my grandmother, Christmas 1988
I made a sincere effort to establish the “perfect” relationship with Laurie. Alas, my efforts were not to come to a long term fruition. We did enjoy each others’ company for several months, but I had to experience some real trauma and drama both early on in our relationship, and at the end of it. In the interests of practicing safe sex, Laurie insisted that I get an AIDS test, due to my past choices for drug use and sexual activity. At that time, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, so it was pretty normal to have reservations about both the disease, and getting tested for it. I went to the public health clinic, and submitted my blood sample for the test. It was handled in an anonymous fashion. so as to protect the individual who is tested, and keep their results secret. My health department contact was a friendly gay man, who tried his best to help me find peace around the whole process. Yet, in the three weeks it took to get my results back, I developed death terrors, and experienced anxiety unlike anything I had experienced before. It was so much easier for me when I held the gun to my own head, figuratively speaking, than when the potential for a fatal illness took over that role, and potentially removed my freedom of choice in how I should have to die. My test came back OK, of course, so I was able to continue on my new path of life with Laurie, and share in the joy of a more liberated sexual expression. Yet, there was something amiss within Laurie. She was in the midst of a spiritual crisis, where she no longer believed in the power of her “God” to deliver her to her own promised land of fully expressed human potential. She was depressed, and she needed anti-depressants to sustain her. She made poor choices around maintaining her independence, and the direction that she was heading was to become a dependent bride, and, ultimately, a mother to several children. We shared eight months together, got engaged, and then broke it off while still remaining lovers. The story bends back to my relationship with Masha for a moment. Masha called me about a year after I had last seen her, in November of 1988, to wish me a happy birthday. I was already sensing the potential end to my relationship with Laurie, and I told Masha about that (yes, Laurie was my “replacement for Masha”). She reported to me that she was now engaged to some Christian leaning dude who was quite a bit homelier than I was. (Oh, was that supposed to feel good to me?) She regretted not having released her prejudices earlier, so that we could have had a deeper relationship. She thanked me for teaching her the value of the spirit, versus those who over-valued money and appearance. It was a bittersweet revelation to me, and I never heard from her again. Thank you, Masha Feldman Sharon White I eventually joined in relationship with Sharon, after being reintroduced to her at a Living Enrichment Center gathering around the Twelve Steps of Recovery, a several week presentation by Mary Boggs, the minister of LEC. We both scheduled our attendance at a Course In Miracles weekend retreat that LEC was sponsoring over the weekend of August 4, 1989. When the retreat was cancelled, I offered to Sharon that we create a retreat of our own. I chose Cultus Lake, a mountain lake in Central Oregon, which my family had camped at several times when I was a young person. We had a great sexual connection, umm, the best ever for me (and it continues to get better even after 36 years of relationship) and proceeded to hit it off so good together that weekend, that we knew we were right for each for now, and for a long, long time to come.
LEC Course In Miracles Weekend handout
Come September, though, I could see that I was becoming quite involved in Sharon’s life, and if I did not travel to Boston soon, and research a powerful dream that I had, I would have no opportunity to do so in the future. So I arranged a week trip to Boston, not knowing what in the heck I was going to find there. I knew that the Mother Church of the Church Of Christian Science was located there. Joel Goldsmith’s teachings had some of their origins from Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings, so maybe I was supposed to go there to see or hear something Ms. Eddy related. I did go by the church, and sat in on a few sessions. I was asked by one of the ministers what I was doing there, just visiting, or did I have a desire to learn more about Christian Science? I told her that I was a student of Joel Goldsmith, and that I had also read some of Mary’s works. She immediately escorted me to Mary’s private study, which nobody had access to, save a special few individuals. She told me that I probably would like to sit and pray and meditate there, and for me to take as much time as I like. So, that is what I did. I found my sense of the sacred and profound, and felt blessed by this exposure to the Church, and to Mary Baker Eddy’s private study. I will never know for sure if this is what the dream wanted for me to do, but that is what I did. I wanted to make sure to honor the energy, and its revelations, as best as I could. .
I moved in permanently with Sharon later that year, and her daughter Hayley lived with us until July of 1990, when she struck out on her own, to find her own truth and healing. I was having some difficulty communicating with Hayley. Sharon and her daughter had some unique mutual control dynamics that were not healthy or satisfying to witness, or to participate with. Sharon ended up signing up for a class from Diana Martha Clark, who was teaching a twelve step recovery course on co-dependency, which Sharon ended up benefiting greatly from. Hayley had a lot of growing up to do, and I became disturbed by her need for chaos, need to hold her mother as an emotional hostage, and her lack of respect for my need for peace and honest, loving expression in communication.
