AN AMPUTATED ARM’S LENGTH

Part One

Good morning. I’ve been up since 5am writing my finger’s off and reading my eyes out. It feels good, but it also feels off. A bit of a trigger warning here… I am going to be speaking about a serial killer. I will not go into gory details though.

I’m back into book writing as the first “big edit” is happening and there is a lot to change and a lot to add. One of the things I needed to research in my own life was growing up in a corridor of serial murderers. The Green River Killer, Ted Bundy, Keneth Bianchi and the Pickton Pig farmer, just to name a few, all killed young women and girls during my childhood and on into my formative years. I did the math and there was never a time where there wasn’t a serial killer more than sixty miles from me at any time; existing, killing without limits. Some were less than ten miles away. What a trench of evil the I-5 corridor of Washington State is… I do think it’s as cursed as something can be. Washington will always be my true love first home, but even if I could afford it, I could not live west of the mountains there for this reason. I took the women’s deaths personally. I still think of them frequently. They are part of my DNA now as their deaths pulled it apart and re-braided it.

I was looking online to see the faces of the human beings killed by the Green River Killer. There is so much smiling and 80’s hair among them. These people were alive. Some were only represented by mugshots, but no less alive. No less important. There are so many I cannot commit all their names to memory. When I was in grade school these women and childrens’ faces were on the news nightly. From 5th grade onward. Unceasing as though there was a factory for killing them. Many of the girls were involved in sex work but some were not. The modern accounting of public memory lumps them all into that category though. On the news, which my dad insisted we watch every night durning dinner, they used “Prostitute” frequently in place of “woman” or “girl.”

I am a person who is vehemently pro-sex worker. I believe the GRK killings I saw in my grade school years were the beginnings of this stance. Sex workers deserve safety and dignity just like the rest of humanity. I have been so close to sex work, almost ending up there myself; I have worked the $3.25 per hour job I couldn’t make my rent with at times, I have been refused food stamps by Washington State on bizarre race-based technicalities, I have been really hungry and really scared and lonely and fucking vulnerable and unbelievably cold while having nowhere to go, spending the night shivering at a downtown bus stop. I did drugs to escape this reality when I could get them. I knew lots of women who were dancers, but I wasn’t old enough for them to put a word in for me. Somehow I managed, by fluke and/or intervention, to not have to go there. There’s no other way to say it other than I got lucky, as going into sex work or exotic dancing was not something I wanted to do at 15. I couldn’t have made a good choice about that at the time. I believe we should have the freedom to make a very informed choice about going into sex work as adults. The bottom line is there were plenty of Tacoma girls who died at the hands of the GRK and I would have served just fine.

There is no definitive book about the GRK where the victims are talked about except the bad “Green River Running Red” by true crime writer Ann Rule. It’s the only game in town. I tried other books but put them down half a chapter in for just being vile. While Rule does a service by actually researching these women and girls and speaking a bit about their lives and families she also makes bizarre distinctions. Some are “beautiful girls with their whole lives ahead of them…” and others are “homely and sad,” as if your perceived attractiveness will make or break you. This book wasn’t written in the 80’s so it’s just condescending and weird. She also fictionalizes scenes with the GRK and his mother which are abhorrent, assumptive and pretty much unreadable as they are just exploitation. She also speaks of the police as if they are saints who left no stone unturned. They let him kill SEVENTY-ONE WOMEN if the GRK himself is to be believed. I am sick about it. There isn’t a route to go online to learn more about the victims really, though I do find an article from 15 years ago or so proposing a monument to the women killed. I didn’t search to find out if there is one now as the next thing I run into is an image of a large tattoo on a man depicting a portrait of the GRK. “WTF!?” I yell out loud, startling the dogs. I make the mistake of reading the description which was actually a comments section where some asshole is commenting “Now THAT guy was a killer! Incredible hunter!” He was not. He was a coward who knew what people thought of “prostitutes.” He knew he could use people’s hatred of them as a pass for serial murder. He was right. He hated women even more than society does and he probably felt he was almost doing a public service. This view has been common since Jack the Ripper killed without interference in London’s Whitechapel district. 

I stop. What good am I doing bathing in the shadow of these darknesses? What am I contributing to the future lingering here in these questions? Just because the killers may be known and most of the victims are identified there still doesn’t seem to be real answers, I suppose that’s because there is no justice. I don’t care if the killers are dead or behind bars, that’s not justice. The murderer’s fates are just tiny tourniquets on a scant few of millions upon millions of other pumping arteries of homicidal misogyny. My solution(s) you wonder? I am coming up with nothing and I am ashamed. I’m trying to see a bigger picture and it’s not clear. To my eyes and my heart it’s a moving surface of ants, hip-deep and a mile square. Though I may fully understand the systemic problems and disease and where all this deadly woman-hate began I am left feeling like an amputated limb stuck on ice for the crucial minutes when it can still be re-attached. Time’s second hand pulses out a klaxon alarm. “Your species does not live long enough to solve this…” it blares. It’s a helpless place to see the world from and I cannot linger here. I am not going to read anymore of Ann Rule’s gross book, but I’ll be back. I have to.

I invite comments, BUT if you are not involved in or have never been involved in sex work don’t give your opinions on that topic. They are not yours to make. Thank you.