November, 1998.There are no easy answers. It was apparent that something had to be done, but perhaps an internal censor regulates the appearance of uncivilized means in my mind, resulting in sudden shock, fear, nausea. It was at night, a few hours later than this; a few degrees of latitude to the south, one day by car (but it's a hard drive) and it was at night that they were let into his house, burst into his room, subdued him and took him away. My cousin was stolen and I will never see him again.
There are no easy answers. When the youth terrorize their elders something is wrong. Children have to see their parents wield some modicum of authority to learn to respect them. This cannot be put off until later. Despite the thoughts of some, you cannot pay men to wield authority on your behalf later on. You can fool yourself, however, into believing this for years of faulty peace-of-mind until a stranger comes home for the first time, more malformed or deformed than reformed.
This is America, and in America there are no easy answers, only easy transactions of money. This non-crime (not a crime because it's not a kidnapping of a minor if it's done with the complicit consent of the parent, spawner of property not human life with all its troublesome attendant rights and freedoms) ultimately seen as a boon by the shareholder - my aunt - because the private radical christian reformatory destined to turn my charming cousin who really got away with too much (but not this time) into a strait-laced, clean-cut law-fearing God-fearing mother-fearing noise-in-the-night-fearing young man will prevent him from being forcibly taken to the public state-sanctionned legal reformatory destined to turn him into a hardened criminal, albeit a charming one.
There are no easy answers. There is little a parent can do to instil respect for society-as-we-know-it in a child which not only witnessed her wanderings with drug lords through South America In Search Of Jesus but was in fact an illegitimate byproduct of it. The child not only pays the sins of his parents but they've managed to fool the parents into paying for it too! There are no easy answers. These are not easy images. I want to believe that she kissed him good night before abandoning him to his tormentors. I want to believe that if I sent him a letter of support he'd receive it, which of course wouldn't happen because the location of the compound is kept secret, a counter-non-kidnapping preventative measure. I want to believe that this couldn't happen to me - I want to believe that it didn't need to happen to him. I want to believe that saner alternatives might have been valid. I want to believe that someone made a horrible mistake. I want America to be a bad dream, and I want some easy answers, damnit.