Posted by Ryan on September 5, 2005, 10:03 pm, in reply to "Part 3: The old lady who happened by: " The policeman took me down to the station, fingerprinted me, took all my stats, then told me he was going to release me on my personal recognizance until the court date. He also told me the court was going to want to know if it was merely a case of a youth swimming naked without exercising much discretion, or if it was a compulsion he has towards the behavioral deviation of exhibitionism. If it was, the court was probably going to require sessions with a therapist; and either way, they were going to require me to submit to a psychiatric evaluation to determine what it was. He told me it would look better in court if I had already taken the evaluation. He gave me the address and phone number of a psychiatric clinic, advising me to get in touch with them before that time. I made an appointment, then went in to speak with one of the therapists. One of the first things he asked me was if the court had referred me. I explained the situation to him. He asked me what it was I had done. I related to him my arrest for public indecency. He asked me, among other things, what I did for a living. I told him about the charity organization I worked for. “So,” he responded, “you work for a charity organization and you present yourself as a good, wholesome young man, but on the contrary, you don’t even seem to have any concept of the seriousness of this thing—of indecent exposure—and how what you’re doing is going around sexually assaulting innocent girls.” At first it was hard for me to imagine how what I had done was “sexually assaulting” them. Usually it was just a matter of being with the rowdy crowd and peeing in the bushes in a way the girls could see, or skinny-dipping in front of them. When the only thing they did was snicker and smirk and act as if the whole thing were funny and entertaining, I wondered how it was that they felt like they were being “sexually assaulted.” When I told him something to that effect, he replied, “You’re in the stage of denial. Denial,” he said, “is the first stage of an addiction... or a compulsive behavior. First, you’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that you have this problem. The next step will be to begin treatment with me.” (And when had I ever said I “presented myself” as “good” and “wholesome”? That was him making an assumption about someone he had only met right then. He had asked me what I did for a living, and I answered his question, that was all.) I waited till the court date came up. I was sentenced to 90 days jail time on the charge of public indecency, suspended on the condition that I receive therapy, the frequency and duration of which would be left to the therapist’s discretion. So, as it turned out, school time was not interrupted, my studies were able to continue as before, as was my job, but now I was attending sessions two nights a week with the sex therapist. It took quite a bite out of my not-very-high paycheck, but I had to resign myself to the fact that it was one of the necessary expenses that sometimes hit people in life. After all, I had to admit, I did commit the act, and the emotional compulsion behind it really did exist inside of me, and needed to be dealt with. At school, I was getting to know some of the students there who were from the country I had talked about going to, and I would often converse with them about going there, asking them what it was like, among other things. They were always happy to talk to me about it. I learned a little from them about what things are like there, and some of the ways in which their culture is different from ours. But I tell you, I honestly had no idea of one thing that was to come, as far as that goes—in fact, if I had, I might even have considered canceling the whole idea just because of it. It never occurred to any of them to mention to me anything about the issue that would most have caught my attention, because what for? To them it doesn’t seem like what it seems like from our culture’s point of view, so what reason would they have for mentioning it to anyone? It’s just a minor detail to them. And as for the few people from our country who had been there that I talked to, although they had to have noticed it in the country too, apparently it didn’t catch their attention the same way it would have mine, for it to be anything worth mentioning. It was just one of the concepts I grew up with in our Anglo-Saxon culture, which was originally established by Puritans (and others with similar mindsets): bodily decorum is one of the things at the top of the list of priorities for everyday life. There may be some people who don’t care about it, but too bad for them. Even those people are required to conform to society’s strict requirements of making sure there is never any contact in public between the eyes of one gender and the private parts of the other. There are rooms provided for taking care of one’s physiological needs, and these rooms are separated between the sexes. Inside public restrooms there are two barriers blocking you from sight from the outside world: first the outside wall of the restroom—with the door closed—then inside, just in case the door were to be opened by someone coming in or going out, usually there was also a wall you had to walk around to get in that would block the view from the outside, as well as the wall of the toilet booth with the door closed while you were using it: two closed doors and a wall to walk around. The only exception to that I had ever experienced—at the keggers—took place with everyone having a mentality of mutually defying the norms of society, kids who felt like they were misbehaving on purpose. But other than in cases of people purposely misbehaving, it was considered, in our Anglo-Saxon culture, something that absolutely must not happen under any circumstances, ever. And in our country great pains were taken, in designing buildings, to make sure of it. A completely, totally, thoroughly watertight society we live in, as far as the idea is concerned of any unsolicited seeing of private parts of the opposite sex. All of these things—one of the top priorities of life in our culture. And until I traveled to a Third World country, I used to think that was the way it was around the whole wide world too. Boy was I an untraveled person. Link: Post a response
Message modified by board administrator September 6, 2005, 9:50 am
(Originally posted November 7, 2003, 6:47 pm)
