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Everything to Live For

Jennifer Mendelsohn Washingtonian | June 1998 | 36 minutes (8,995 words)

Jennifer Mendelsohn is the “Modern Family” columnist for Baltimore Style magazine. A former People magazine special correspondent and Slate columnist, her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washingtonian, Tablet, Medium, McSweeney’s and Jezebel. This story first appeared in the June 1998 issue of Washingtonian (subscribe here). Our thanks to Mendelsohn for allowing us to reprint it here. You can also read a short Q & A with the author here.

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Stories From Writers From the National Book Festival: A Reading List

Surrounded by thousands of people at the Washington Convention Center buying books from the Politics & Prose pavilion, taking pictures with Clifford, moving downstairs to sneak into a panel by Dav Pilkey or Louisa Lim or Cokie Roberts, and waiting in line to meet their literary heroes, I felt like I could levitate. I thought: These are My People—these people shoving through well-carpeted hallways to get coffee before sneaking into the back of a panel on books in translation or patiently sitting with their enthralled kids at a packed storytime session. We went to the National Book Festival for different things, but also the same thing: books and our love of them. Here are four essays and excerpts written by the authors I was lucky enough to see.

1. “No-Man’s-Land.” (Eula Biss, The Believer, February 2008)

I screamed when I saw the “Creative Nonfiction Panel” on the Library of Congress website. Eula Biss and Paisley Rekdal: what a pair. I quaked with excitement as Eula said, “We don’t have a great vocabulary around truth. We need about 27 more words there.” I nodded and mmhmmed like I was in church, because, well, I was. This is Eula’s titular essay from her first collection. It’s about Chicago’s Rogers Park Neighborhood and the dangers of buying into the pioneer narrative. It is beautiful. (Oh, here is a picture of me meeting Eula and Paisley. I am the excited one.)

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‘Troll Slayer’ Mary Beard on Internet Abuse Against Women and Its Historical Context

In February, Mary Beard, a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture at the British Museum titled “Oh Do Shut Up Dear!” With amiable indignation, she explored the many ways that men have silenced outspoken women since the days of the ancients. Her speech, which was filmed by the BBC, was learned but accessible—a tone that she has regularly displayed on British television, as the host of popular documentaries about Pompeii and Rome. She began her talk with the Odyssey, and what she referred to as the first recorded instance of a man telling a woman that “her voice is not to be heard in public”: Telemachus informing his mother, Penelope, that “speech will be the business of men” and sending her upstairs to her weaving. Beard progressed to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Tereus rapes Philomela and then cuts out her tongue so that she cannot denounce him. Beard alighted on Queen Elizabeth and Sojourner Truth before arriving at Jacqui Oatley, a BBC soccer commentator repeatedly mocked by men who were convinced that a woman couldn’t possibly understand the sport. A columnist for The Spectator, Beard noted, currently runs an annual competition to name the “most stupid woman” to appear on the current-affairs show “Question Time.”

Finally, Beard arrived at the contemporary chorus of Twitter trolls and online commenters. “The more I’ve looked at the details of the threats and the insults that women are on the receiving end of, the more some of them seem to fit into the old patterns of prejudice and assumption that I have been talking about,” she said. “It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it.”

In The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead profiles Beard, who has helped confront the online and Twitter abuse that women face. (Beard’s full lecture is here.)

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Photo: YouTube

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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‘This Story Isn’t For Everyone’

Today, Matter published a story by reporter Luke Malone about a group of young men struggling with the realization that they are pedophiles and seek help to prevent themselves from becoming future offenders and from using child pornography. It’s a difficult story to read (warning: the story contains graphic details of child abuse), and raises questions about why there aren’t treatments for pedophiles who have not offended and want help.

Malone talked to Choire Sicha at the Awl about how he reported this story, and why he thought it was important to tell:

Luke: I agree that this story isn’t for everyone. And that’s fine. No one is under any obligation to learn more about how pedophilia develops and is managed by this group of well-meaning guys, and I’m referring solely to the people in the piece here. Though if it’s an area that you feel strongly about one way or the other—which, to be fair, is most of us—then I’d recommend it. The story of the young, non-offending pedophile is one that hasn’t been told before and if you want to talk seriously about preventing child sexual abuse then bringing them into the conversation is vital. They’re not boogiemonsters, they are kids who want to have sex with younger kids. It’s a sad reality, but they are going to grow up to be men who are attracted to little kids. It seems insane to me that they are brave enough to put up their hands and ask for help but we, as a society, essentially tell them, “Nope, no therapy for you! Go away and rape a child and then you will enter the criminal justice system and then we can deal with it.” By then the damage is done. We need to start intervening before abuse occurs, for everyone’s sake. Despite the child porn and the ugly truths that this story details, there is a lot of optimism coming through. These are young guys who want help, and there are therapists and researchers who want to help, they just need policy and funding that allows it. In fact, a radio version of this story appeared on This American Life a few months back and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Not only did all these teenage pedophiles contact me asking where they could get help, there were a lot of abuse survivors who reached out and said that while it was hard for them to listen to they were grateful that the topic was being addressed in a way that signaled real change. A much more logical interventionist approach to reducing the incidence of child sex abuse.

1. “You’re 16. You’re a Pedophile. You Don’t Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do Now?” (Luke Malone, Matter)

Malone’s story today for Medium.

2. “Behind the Story: The Pedophiles Who Didn’t Want to Hurt Children.” (The Awl)

Choire Sicha’s conversation with Malone about how and why he reported this story.

3. “Help Wanted.” (This American Life)

Malone’s radio version of his story for This American Life, which aired in April.

Illustration: Simon Prades for Matter

You’re 16. You’re a Pedophile. You Don’t Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do Now?

Longreads Pick

Reporter Luke Malone talks to a teenager who, after realizing he is a pedophile, seeks help and starts a support group for people like him. “I asked them if they knew anyone like that, and a few weeks later I received an email. ‘My name is Adam,’ it read. ‘I’m 18 and non-exclusively attracted to boys and girls of all ages (particularly very young ones). I am the leader of a support group for non-offending pedophiles around my age… I would be very happy to talk with you.'” Warning: This story includes graphic details of child abuse.

Additional reading: The Awl’s Choire Sicha interviews Luke Malone about how he reported the story.

Source: Medium
Published: Aug 11, 2014
Length: 31 minutes (7,911 words)

Call It Rape

Margot Singer | The Normal School | 2012 | 23 minutes (5,683 words)

The Normal SchoolThanks to Margot Singer and The Normal School for sharing this story with the Longreads community.
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Still life with man and gun

Three girls are smoking on the back porch of their high school dorm. It’s near midnight on a Saturday in early autumn, the leaves not yet fallen, the darkness thick. A man steps out of the woods. He is wearing a black ski mask, a hooded jacket, leather gloves. He has a gun. He tells the girls to follow him, that if they make a noise or run he’ll shoot. He makes them lie face down on the ground. He rapes first one and then the others. He walks away. Read more…

The Skies Belong to Us: How Hijackers Created an Airline Crisis in the 1970s

Brendan I. Koerner | The Skies Belong to Us | 2013 | 25 minutes (6,186 words)

 

‘There Is No Way to Tell a Hijacker by Looking At Him’

When the FAA’s antihijacking task force first convened in February 1969, its ten members knew they faced a daunting challenge—not only because of the severity of the crisis, but also due to the airlines’ intransigence. Having spent vast sums on Beltway lobbyists, the airlines had the political clout to nix any security measure that might inconvenience their customers. So whatever solutions the FAA proposed would have to be imperceptible to the vast majority of travelers. Read more…

When Gamers Assumed the Role of the Antihero

At Gamespot, an excerpt from David Kushner’s book Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, which details the origin of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Initially, designers devised a game where the player would assume the role of a police officer who had to obey traffic lights and avoid hitting pedestrians. Players found the gameplay boring. Everything changed when the designers decided to let the player assume the role of a bad guy:

One day a new build of Race ‘n’ Chase arrived for Sam and the others to try out. At first, it seemed the same. With the top-down perspective, the gamer felt as if he were hovering over a city in a balloon, looking down on gray and brown rooftops. Puffy green trees poked of out of green parks. Horns honked. Engines roared. When you tapped your forward arrow on the keyboard, you saw your unnamed character, a tiny guy in a yellow long-sleeved shirt, stride across the street.

With a few more taps of the arrow keys, you maneuvered the character toward a stubby green car with a shiny hood, then tapped the Enter key. That’s when it happened. The door flew open, and the driver–some other little dude in blue pants–came flying out of the car and landed on the pavement in a contorted pile. He got jacked. As you held down the forward arrow, the car careened forward, supple to the flick of the side arrows–left, right–with a satisfying vroooom. You headed toward a flickering traffic light. Why stop? This was a game, right? A game wasn’t life. A game takes you over, or you take over it, pushing it in ways you can’t for real.

So you drove through the light, squealing around a corner. As you took the turn too wide, you saw a little pedestrian in a white long-sleeved shirt and blue pants coming too close, but you couldn’t stop. Actually, you didn’t want to stop. So you just drove. Drove right into the ped–only to hear a satisfying splat, like a crushed grape with a wine-colored stain on the sidewalk, and the number “100” rising from the corpse. Score! This wasn’t the old Race ‘n’ Chase anymore.

The moment that DMA let players run over pedestrians–and be rewarded with points, no less–changed everything. Instead of cops and robbers, the game became robbers and cops. The object was to run missions for bad guys, such as jacking cars, the more the better. The leap was radical. In the short history of games, players had almost always been the hero, not the antihero. You were the heartsick plumber of Super Mario Bros., the intergalactic pilot of Defender, the glacial-paced explorer of Myst. One obscure arcade game from the 1970s, Death Race 2000, let players run over virtual ghosts, and it got banned. Nothing put you behind the wheel to wreak havoc like this. As Brian Baglow, a writer for DMA, said “You’re a criminal, so if you do something bad, you get a reward!”

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The Real Life Injuries in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'

It’s been 40 years since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hit theaters and shocked moviegoers with its violent scenes. Texas Monthly has resurfaced their story from 2004 by John Bloom about the making of the film, which was made on a budget of $60,000 (about $290K, adjusted for inflation). Here, Bloom describes the injuries the cast members suffered through while making the film, especially by Marilyn Burns, who had the lead role:

Almost every cast member suffered some sort of injury. Neal had his face burned by hot asphalt. Partain had a bruised and cut arm after rolling down a hill in one of the early scenes. For Partain’s dying scene, Hooper and makeup artist Dottie Pearl stood on either side of the camera lens, spitting red Karo syrup into the air, attracting flesh-devouring mosquitoes. Hansen had no peripheral vision while wearing his mask and had a heart-stopping near miss when his boots slipped while he was running and the chain saw flew up in the air and crashed to the ground, inches from his body. But no one was beaten, cut, and bruised more than Burns. By the end of production, her screams were real, as she’d been poked, prodded, bound, dragged through rooms, jerked around, chased through cocklebur underbrush, jabbed with a stick, forced to skid on her knees in take after take, pounded on the head with a rubber hammer, coated with sticky stage blood, and endlessly pursued by Hansen with his chain saw and Neal with his constantly flicking switchblade. “I was afraid to hit her at first,” Siedow told me. “I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t hurt her. But they kept telling me it looked fake and I needed to really hit her. It took me several tries, but by the end of it, I was really hitting her. It actually got to be kinda fun.”

In retrospect, there’s reason to believe that Hooper was manipulating many of the details, to an almost obsessive degree. The heat, the miserable conditions, and the sheer pain of it all undoubtedly added to the atmosphere Hooper was trying to create. He wanted the actors to feel irritable and off-balance. He probably knew $60,000 wasn’t enough money to finish the film but didn’t want Parsley and the other investors to know that. He was doing whatever he could, day by day, moment by moment, to get as many images on film as possible, because he knew that Chainsaw, like any successful horror film, would be perfected in the editing room. “Tobe really did have a vision,” says Bozman now. “He knew exactly where we were at all times. But the rest of us were flying blind.”

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