Rape was common on my reservation. But it was rarely discussed. And even more rarely prosecuted. In that way, my reservation is sadly like the rest of the world. But I think there are specific cultural reasons for the injustice on my reservation. I would guess it has something to do with the strict social rules of a tribe. White folks love to think that Native American culture is progressive and liberal. But it is often repressive. Indians are quick to socially judge one another. And even quicker to publicly condemn and ostracize. I wouldn’t realize it until I read more widely in college, but living on an Indian reservation was like living inside an Edith Wharton novel—a place where good and bad manners were weaponized. One could choose to abide by social rules or flaunt them, but there would be serious repercussions for any social misstep. But why was this the case? For thousands of years, we Spokanes had endured and enjoyed subsistence lives. We’d lived communally. Every member of the tribe had a job. And each job was equally vital. So, inside a subsistence culture, a socially disruptive tribal member would have been mortally dangerous to everybody else.
But there is a logical problem with that, isn’t there? First of all, we were living in the twentieth century and not the fourteenth or fifteenth. And if that were still true—if socially disruptive tribal members were traditionally punished, no matter the century—then wouldn’t it make more sense for the tribe to ostracize and even expel rapists? Not if the rapist was a culturally significant figure. Not if the rapist, however economically poor, was socially rich and powerful. Not if the rapist could put on an eagle-feather headdress and make a beautiful and powerful entrance into the powwow arena.
In many ways, a powerful Native American leader can operate inside his tribe and reservation like the repressive dictator of a Third World country.
And, in any case, what would happen inside a small tribe if every minor or major crime, if every small or large transgression, was made public? Could a small tribe survive that unveiling of secrets? What if we Natives practiced the same kind of justice inside our own communities as the justice that we demand from white society? Of course, centuries of genocidal acts by white Americans have certainly helped teach us Natives how to commit genocidal acts against one another. But at what point do we Native American victims start demanding more justice and freedom from our Native American oppressors?
And what happens if those indigenous oppressors happen to be our fathers and mothers?
51.
Bullet Point
I JOKE THAT I could be blindfolded in a room filled with strangers and I’d still be able to sniff out the people who have the same mental, emotional, and physical ailments as I do.
“Bad-back people smell like hot ointments,” I say. “Bipolar people smell like that grease they put on the wheels of roller-coaster cars.”
It’s not true. At least, I don’t think it’s true. Well, bad-back people certainly smell of liniment, but bipolar people smell like every other person—that same bouquet of hairless groomed primate. But, then again, each of us has our own scent, right?
“If you hung forty dirty shirts on a line,” my sister said once, “I could smell which ones had been worn by my brothers and sisters and mother and father. By everybody I love.”
“That’s a fairly useless superhero skill,” I said.
My sister laughed.
“Might be useless in saving the world,” she said. “But it means I know my people are close before they turn the corner.”
“Your superhero name is Psychic Nose,” I said.
“Or maybe,” my sister said. “Maybe it just means you guys don’t use enough soap.”
I don’t think I could recognize my friends by scent, not even the dudes I have played basketball with for two decades. Not even though I’ve been heavily marked by their sweat. I have arrived home in hoops gear smelling so heavily of athletic endeavor—like an odiferous sonnet of fourteen men—that I’ve undressed on the front porch and left my shirt and trunks draped over a railing. Maybe you think that’s sexy—and I suppose it would be for folks with a very particular kink—but, for me, it’s just the smelliest part of the game.
But could I find my wife and sons in a crowded room using only my nose? Yes, yes, I believe I could perform that trick.
But that’s all subterranean, right? That is all about the animals we truly are and not the civilized people we pretend to be, correct?
Do we choose our friends based on primal shit we don’t even understand?
I knew a woman who smelled exactly like Campbell’s vegetable soup. It was hilarious and maddeningly erotic. I couldn’t stand next to her for any longer than a few moments before I went dumb with sexual arousal. So, yeah, that meant I was always walking away from that platonic friend. She probably thought I didn’t like her. I haven’t seen her in fifteen years. I am okay with that.
Or, hey, let’s get really weird. Do I choose my friends because they smell like my mother or father? Have I chosen friends because they smell like absence?
More specifically, do I choose female friends who are like my mother? Or do I choose women who are the opposite of my mother? Do I choose the anti-mothers?
I asked some of my friends to write about their mother—to let me publish their words and my responses. A highly unscientific experiment. “Tell me about your mother,” I said. “Good or bad memories. Just tell me what you remember most. Tell me something that you think defines your mother. Curate your memories.”
I also told my friends that I’d keep them anonymous. I told them that I hoped I’d gain some deeper insight into the process by which I have chosen friends.
“Maybe it will bring us closer,” I e-mailed one friend.
“Or maybe it will drive us apart,” he wrote back.
“You pessimistic fucker,” I wrote.
“I talk pessimism,” he wrote. “You live pessimism.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you, too.”
“We need to get coffee soon,” I wrote. “You fucker.”
“Not until school starts back up,” he wrote. “Summer is fucked for parents of young kids. I love my kids, but sometimes I just go sit in my car in the driveway, turn on the air conditioner, and take a nap.”
“Okay, see you in September, October, or November,” I wrote. “Or never.”
But, wait, I got distracted. That busy dude is funny—and was too harried to send me a memory of his mother. And I had been wondering if I have chosen my female friends based on how much they subconsciously remind me of my mother. And it would have to be subconscious because I have never met a person who reminded me of my mother. Well, that’s not exactly true. I had a therapist for six years who distinctly reminded me of my mother. But that therapist wasn’t my friend. She was a mental health professional who helped me understand some of my behavior.
“I don’t know that I’m like your mother,” my therapist said. “Or if I’m just a woman of your mother’s age who pays close attention to you.”
So I wrote a female friend. I will call her Miss Orange. I already knew she’d had a difficult relationship with her mother, but I was surprised by her e-mail back to me:
Sherman,
I used to let my dad off the hook for being a drunk,
for raging, for forgetting to come home and leaving
me and my brother with no electricity or burst
pipes. I can’t let my mom off the hook for her focused
cruelty.