On Dec. 4, The Green Bay Press Gazette posted a story on its Facebook page about Wisconsin’s Department of Justice plan to slash funding for its Sexual Assault Victim Services program by 42.5 percent. The program, established in 1995, provides grants to agencies that provide assistance to sexual assault victims.

Beneath the posting on the Press Gazette page, a woman named Nancy Butzlaff, took aim at Gov. Scott Walker with the following unedited comment:

“Another thing Walker has destroyed . . . well just more people that will sign for recall walker now . . . is he really that ignorant to even attack victims at their lowest . . . what a real prize, maybe someone should rape and victimize his wife and daughter if he has any . . . or even sons, then he will wish he supported this service a lot more.”

Sikma, who writes at MediaTrackers.org, a self-avowed purveyor of conservative news, quickly sniffed out a story and, with haste, began gathering facts, many of which were studiously culled from the Facebook profiles of Butzlaff and her husband, Robert. Early in his investigation Sikma made the foreboding discovery that Robert is a state employee.

Whoa!

His discerning eye then uncovered – through an online state court database – that a woman who “appears” to be Butzlaff was convicted in 2007 of misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Ouch!

Even more, using a different statewide database he learned that Robert, a corrections officer, “made over $63,000 – including overtime pay – in 2010.”

No way!

From Robert’s Facebook photo album Sikma pulled a snapshot of the smiling couple taken as they sat together on a patio swing so readers would know just what people who want other people to be raped look like.

Lastly, Sikma crafted a rousing headline for his hard-hitting story.

“Wife of State Employee Suggests Walker’s Wife, Sons be Raped?” it blared.

Zing!

As with most extraordinary journalism, others soon took note. Chief among them was Vicki McKenna, a talk radio host on WIBA 1310-AM in Madison. McKenna loves her some Scott Walker, so her outrage over Butzlaff’s comment was palpable.

Recognizing the gravity of this very important story, she posted Sikma’s screed on her Facebook fan page so that she and her 9,136 fans could bemoan what a horrible person Nancy Butzlaff was and how dangerous liberals in general are.

As breaking news often does, Sikma’s story grew legs. On McKenna’s fan page alone twenty-nine people liked it. Thirty shared it. And 144 robust opinions have been typed up about Butzlaff, her unfortunate rhetorical flourish, and even her very humanity. McKenna had given her droogs a whiff of blood.

Marcy Roozen (left)

Marcy Roozen, a Milwaukee Public School teacher, wrote, “this woman has no right to be called “a human being!” she is nothing more than the lowest form on this earth! how can someone be so awful ? i’m going to pray for her, she needs divine interventions in her life……obviously she’s been hanging out with the devil!”

Peter Weghorn, a specialist in back hair mitigation, says, “That woman is obviously very unsuccessful, bitter and unhappy in her life–and she richly deserves to be all three. If you brought as little merit into the meritocracy as she does, you’d be terrified and angry too.”

Peter Weghorn

Ryan Aubin took issue with Butzlaff’s husband claiming to be a Republican. “Strange that the husband says his political views are the Republican Party, yet he proudly displays the blue fist,” he lamented.

Emily Peterson

Emily Petersen, who studied corrections at Mankato University, really wanted Butzlaff to pay for her words. “Everyone should forward a screen shot of this to all of the local news stations…,” she wrote.

Barbara Ball, who calls Muslims “sickos” on her Facebook page, imparted this wisdom, “These are the true criminals. These are the people who cause rape and violent crimes by giving the criminals the ideas. This women is lower then trash… This is the difference between liberals and conservatives, liberals believe in violence on the innocent. God please protect our wonderful Gov. and his wife and family.”

At some point Butzlaff’s daughter, Terri, attempted to clarify that her mother did not wish for Walker’s family to be raped. As a victim of sexual assault and the mother of a daughter who’d been raped, Terri explained that her mother was trying to convey that the fund wouldn’t be there for Walker’s family should something unimaginable happen to them.

But the rabid droogs weren’t going to let a reasonable explanation diminish their outrage.

Jeffery Johnson responded, “Kind of sounds like your whole family is pretty disfunctional (sic) Terri. Crawl back under the rock you and yours came from, and I am guessing by the looks of your mother it is a pretty BIG rock!”

Fred Hack, owner of Fred M. Hack General Contracting, suggested they fight back by lynching the Butzlaffs. “This is truly sick!” he wrote. “Time to find a strong rope and a solid tree!”

Fred Hack and girlfriend

The Queen Bee herself had the last word before banishing Terri from her fan page forever. “honey, if this gal is your mom, she shouldn’t have posted these comments publicly. you got a problem with her getting the attention she sought? talk to HER. now, go away. your continued madness is not welcome here,” McKenna wrote.

By now, Sikma must’ve been very proud of himself. Not only had a local media star referenced his work, but it had sparked a lively discussion, too. His journalism was having an impact on the lives of many, including Nancy Butzlaff.

But Sikma, in his eagerness to rile up folks like McKenna and her droogs, forgot to do a basic journalism-y thing: He never offered Butzlaff, a private citizen, the chance to comment on his charge. Fairness be damned. Maybe his story wasn’t so great after all.

Had he called her he would’ve learned that Nancy Butzlaff, 49, lives in Green Bay with her husband, Robert, and their four daughters, one of whom is developmentally disabled and was raped at gunpoint several years ago, she says.

Butzlaff stresses that she doesn’t wish for anyone to get raped, but was angered to learn the governor she voted for wants to slash funding for a program that has been helpful to her family. She saw the Press Gazette post and rattled off something stupid.

“My daughter and I were victims of brutal rapes and we used the sexual assault center,” she tells The Feral Scribe. “We both wouldn’t be here without those programs. We both tried committing suicide. And without this program, a lot of women are going to take their lives. You can’t deal with this alone.”

In 2007, Butzlaff says she was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after authorities learned she had purchased condoms for her 16-year-old daughter (not the one who was assaulted). Though her daughter could have legally purchased the rubbers herself, the district attorney argued that the purchase encouraged the illegal sex her daughter was having with an 18-year-old man. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year of probation.

Butzlaff, who suffers from emphysema and a degenerative bone disease, says she was mortified after a friend told her about the things being said about her on McKenna’s fan page. “It was like eighth-grade bullying,” she says.

Upon learning that McKenna planned to discuss the comment during her three-hour radio talk show, Butzlaff says she called WIBA and begged them not to do it. She says the woman who answered the phone called her a “lard-ass bitch” and hung up.

On Tuesday, a Capitol Police detective drove to Green Bay from Madison to inquire about Butzlaff’s comment. She explained to him, just like her daughter tried explaining to McKenna’s droogs, what she really meant. She agreed, as the detective pointed out, that her comment could be interpreted in one of two ways.

Butzlaff assured him it was an unfortunate rhetorical flourish and promised she’d be more careful with her words in the future. Fortunately, the officer gave Butzlaff the benefit of the doubt, finding no reason to charge her with a crime.

That night, on her Facebook page, Nancy wrote, “Good night all, even my enemies, I forgive you, but I will not forget what you have done or said. Karma is an evil event that will bite you twice as hard than what i got hit with today. At least my name was cleared, more than what can be said about yours.”

The face of a maniac.

The problem with maniacs is that you can’t reason with them. They lack perspective and all sense of proportion. They dwell so hard on the small things that the bigger picture gets obscured. I know, because all summer I’ve been menaced by a lunatic who’s gone to extraordinary lengths to rain misery on everyone around him.

Meet Joe, a developmentally disabled alcoholic who’s spent much of his adult life in and out of prison for crimes ranging from multiple drunk drivings to burglary. Joe and my sister were dating and living at my father’s house when I returned from Philly in May. I planned on staying for only a week or two, but when a temporary opportunity opened up at a local paper my stay was extended. Consequently, I became Joe’s housemate.

Things were okay for a minute. Though Joe and I had attended the same high school we didn’t know each other personally. We’re close in age, but he’d been held back several years on account of his developmental problems. I felt kind of bad for the guy. I gave him rides, bought him drinks and smokes, and indulged him as he spoke of his endless marathon of problems.

But the honeymoon was short lived. Within weeks Joe was back to drinking heavily. His friends who owned painting businesses refused to let him work because he’d show up so high on Xanax that he couldn’t hold a paint brush. He and my sister began fighting incessantly. He must’ve been manic because he hardly slept. In the mornings he’d come up from the basement upon hearing me come down from my room and before I even had a chance to wipe the sleep from my eyes he was in my space, inundating me with his many troubles. My patience soon wore thin so I explained that I no longer wanted to hear about his problems, that I make a point to avoid those kinds of problems and was tired of beginning my day with negative news that didn’t pertain to me.

To my surprise, Joe got angry and argued that by virtue of living together I was obligated to indulge him, especially when it came to his concerns about my sister. The more my father and I conveyed to him we just weren’t interested in his problems, namely because they were of his own making, the more Joe burdened us with them.

One day I mentioned seeing an old friend from high school who Joe apparently didn’t like. He thought I mentioned this person to taunt him. (I still don’t know what his beef is.) Then he got it in his head that this person was coming after him. Later that day, while I was at the kitchen table working, Joe became confrontational about this and threatened to “rip out [my] fucking throat.”

His eyes were glassy and lifeless, as though anything human about him had long ago died. There we were, standing in my father’s living room about to come to blows over the mere mention of someone’s name. My sister, in her own drug-induced confusion, basically got angry with everyone for picking on poor Joe and they moved out.

Once they were gone we found more than fifty empty vodka bottles in the basement that Joe had guzzled during his brief stay.

Though we worried about her, Joe’s departure came as a major relief, like finally killing the mosquito buzzing around your ear. But our peace was her nightmare. His drinking increased exponentially as did his paranoia. He became abusive toward her, dragging her from motel to motel convinced that people were after him. He ditched her in Milwaukee late one night, an event that led to his fifth drunk driving and to her being committed to a psych hospital.

The lovebirds reunited a week later. But soon Joe was drinking again and they were kicked out of his mother’s house. After making my sister drive throughout the night so he could sleep without fear of people finding him, they ended up in St. Paul, where she eventually fled into a hospital to escape him. He was taken to detox. Upon learning that I was on my way to pick her up, he threatened to murder her family if she left with me. For the next week my father and I were inundated with calls from Joe, who warned he was going to kill us for interfering with his relationship.

To our surprise, my sister was back with Joe a short time later, popping pills, drinking and shooting heroin. After getting kicked out of a bar one night, he returned with a knife and my sister again came home. Her descriptions of these latest episodes sound like some kind of nightmarish affront to humanity. While he showered Joe made her sit where he could keep an eye on her. When she wanted to call my father he threatened to call the cops on her. And he did, claiming she was threatening to slit her own throat. She came home terrified, having realized this person she cared about was in fact the monster everyone said he was.

The next day I took her to the motel to get her things. Joe was gone, out panhandling for booze money. But within hours I received a text from an old friend saying Joe was looking for a ride to Madison so he could kill me. In Joe’s version reality, he’s protecting my sister from her family. Over the next two nights the cops arrived at our house after Joe called to say my sister was being abused. When that plan failed, he showed up in a taxi expecting us to pay for it. My dad shut the door and called the cops.

The taxi driver told police that Joe said he was coming here to kill us. It was dark and he was dressed in camouflage. Police seized from him a knife and implored us to get a restraining order. The officer said that after speaking with him for five minutes it was clear to her that Joe is deranged. He told the officers he was there to protect my sister from us. Everyone, even his closest friends, have warned her she’s in danger by running with him.

My sister, whose drug addiction has left her unable to see not only her children but any hope of leading a meaningful life, landed in another psychiatric hospital a few days later. Her doctor had rescinded her prescriptions for the pills she abused which only aggravated her opiate withdrawal. But she seemed determined to pull it together, having narrowly escaped the dreadful outcomes of running with a mad man.

To help her stave off the institutional boredom, I brought her last night a book of puzzles that she enjoys doing. The nurse buzzed me in and paged my sister. I told her the nurse had her clothes and gave her the puzzles. When we turned the corner onto her hall there he was sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway.

As he grinned and waved at me I recalled what Albert told Bruce Wayne about the Joker in The Dark Night: Some men just want to see the world burn. Some men like Joe just want to see people suffer.

My heart sank.

It’s her funeral, I thought as I walked out, astounded that someone can so completely abandon her children yet care so much for parasitic loser like Joe. Perhaps she’s a masochist and relishes the abuse. Truth is she’s a vulnerable, lonely addict who’s being manipulated by a vindictive con man and career alcoholic.

It’s only a matter of time before he again terrifies her with threats and abuse. She’ll come running home and again my father and I will become the targets of his deranged thinking. She’s said so herself, “Joe doesn’t want me to have a family.”

She’ll pretend to feel bad about everything and offer empty apologies. And, because she’s family, we’ll play along knowing full well this is how it’ll be until one of them is dead or in jail or until the next loser comes along.

The guy in the white plaid shirt in the background was one of four people I caught pissing on my van.

Commerce City, CO – On our first day on the lot at Dick’s Sporting Good’s Park, a tall dready I’d met prior to the lot opening pulls me aside to ask if I want to do a bunch of coke. “Not really,” I reply. He seems a little surprised, a little disappointed. “Mind if I duck inside your van for a minute?” he asks, like he really needs a bump. “Ah,” I say, “I’d rather you didn’t.” No luck here, he darts off to find someone else with a van who wants to snort coke. Me? Well, I had beer to sell.

Owning a van is great, except for when it isn’t. It’s so large that I can’t get to parts of the windshield when squeegeeing off the evidence of an insect holocaust. Keeping the petro flowing in a big gas-guzzling V8 is an obvious money suck and environmental hazard. Negotiating tight places is a bitch and its weight and size do a number on my brakes. Coming down a very steep mountain in Maryland they began to smoke.

These are small aggravations compared to those aroused on the Phish lot. Over three nights at least six men pissed on my van as its size provided them perfect cover. This in itself ain’t all that surprising, but considering vendors set up behind their vehicles it seemed awfully brazen of them to pee on a vehicle whose owner is just feet away. But people are high and drunk and lazy and do dumb things. Understandable. But what irritated me most were their cavalier reactions when called out on it.

The vendor next to me chased off two people on the second night. The guy in the plaid shirt in the picture above was the first one I caught. “Hey!” I yelled, walking toward him. “Are you really pissing on my van?”

“Just on the tire,” he says, looking over his shoulder.

“Seriously!?!” I shot back, expecting him to dam the stream, but it kept on flowing. He must’ve though I was going to clock him because I was closing in on him with the hope he’d just zip up and go away, but he didn’t. He just stood their and kept pissing. “You wouldn’t fight a guy with his penis out, would you?” he asks.

His girlfriend, who had been twisting a joint this entire time in the car next to us, yells out to him, “Just piss by my car… not on it, next to it.”

He grumbled and cursed, but obeyed the woman.

Others, too, used the “just-on-the-tire” defense and seemed just as shocked that I didn’t appreciate their thoughtfulness. Is it just me or are people generally okay with others pissing on their wheels? What makes tires fair game and not bumpers? Does bitching about it really give off “bad vibes,” as one accused?

Some were more considerate than others. One guy was actually on his knees pissing under the van. I still called him out for the puddle he was making right where I’d step to get inside the vehicle. Not to mention I had to wait for him to finish before I could open the door. Security was trying to clear the lot and I needed to load the coolers. Like the first guy, he seemed to piss forever.  “Will you hurry up already?” I scolded, to which he replied, “Hey man, you don’t need to be rude about it.”

Anyone who has tended bar understands the role includes playing counselor to those sad souls who try to wash away their troubles with booze. This held true at The Shakedown Tavern where many came seeking sympathy in the form of free shots. On our last night in Chicago we were visited by several who’d been sold bogus tickets to the show. I poured a round of whiskey shots – on the house.

But as a bar owner you can’t help everyone forget their troubles for free. With me, the quality of my charity corresponds directly with the quality of their approach. In Commerce City, I kicked down a few free shots to a guy who’d just gotten out of jail. Arrested the day before for selling drugs, he was released just before the next night’s show. But then an officer who recognized him wouldn’t allow him into the show. The story was worth a few shots.

But those who come expecting a handout likely won’t get one. One gem vendor wanted a free drink because his sales were slow. Sorry, bud. Another wanted to pay $2 for two drinks because he’d been following Phish since 1996. Maybe it’s time to get a job. Sometimes the pitch was as trite as, “Can I get a free shot?” Um, no.

On the second night during the show, when the lot becomes a virtual ghost town, we were visited by an older black guy who mumbled something fierce. He pulled a Stella tallboy from the cooler. “Hmchdisiz?” he asked. Four-dollars I told him, but his buddy, a wispy dude with a cracked out countenance, only had two dollars that he didn’t want to part with. I pointed him to the cooler with $2 beers. “Gmetodlrsz,” the mumbler demanded. They quibbled a bit until the mumbler got his way. He throws $2 on the table and walks off with the Stella. “I need two more dollars for that,” I said. But he just smiled and walked off.

The next day I saw the guy at a nearby gas station. He comes up to the van and asks, “Yallsllnlqur?”

“Not here,” I said.

I couldn’t decipher what he said next. I didn’t really care as I was still stewing about him shorting me on the Stella the night before. But I ask him to repeat himself anyhow. With remarkable clarity he screams at me,  “I didn’t stutter muthafucka!” and storms off.

By the end of the last night of Phish’s 2011 tour things were getting a little crazy. A steady breeze whipped up a storm of red Colorado soil that coated everything and stuffed up your sinuses. A Gallagher impersonator smashed melons, while vendors gave away what they hadn’t sold. After selling our last beer I noticed a pair of sketchy dudes leaning against the back of my van. their backpack tucked behind the rear wheel. Not only do I dislike people pissing on my tires, but am not too found of people stashing drugs behind them, either. A similar thing happened in Chicago when some knucklehead cracked open a nitrous tank using my van for cover.

But it the lot was closing down and the tow truck drivers were shouting through their megaphones that vendors had 10 minutes before they began towing vehicles. The sketch pads left without any encouragement from me. With Purple Thunder loaded up we rolled toward the exit but were obstructed by a fistfight that erupted in front of us. To the rear, a vendor was screaming at a car full of people that they were “going to get theirs.” Trash was everywhere and people were stumbling all around. Event staff and police were losing patience with the stragglers.

It was clear that the party was over.

Commerce City, CO – When hashing out the logistics of big projects I can always count on one thing: forgetting something important. Halfway to Denver I realized I’d forgotten several important things. First was a jar full of silver change that I save to pay meters, tolls and other small expenses. Next it occurred to me that I’d forgotten the folding table, which necessitated us having to purchase one in Colorado. I also left behind our drink cups and shot glasses as well as our extra cooler. In all, my forgetfulness set us back $100.

D’oh!

These were small things in the grander scheme, but these missteps compel the worry that the stage is set for disasters to come. The only way to mitigate potential pitfalls and make known the unknowns is to diligently gather intel beforehand, something only the most enterprising of the Shakedown vendors do.

The day before Phish’s first show we drove out to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, about seven minutes from Denver, to peep the lay of the land. Driving the grounds we observed there were multiple parking lots with just as many entrances and no way of knowing which one would be used. This made it impossible to determine where the vendors would gather prior to the lot opening at 3 p.m. sharp. In Chicago we staged on a street opposite the lot entrance, but being so close was no guarantee against becoming trapped in the gridlock and losing a spot on Shakedown. With nearly $500 tied up in beer and booze in addition to the expenses of travel, landing that spot was imperative.

But no amount of planning can minimize the biggest risk of all: the possibility that event staff or police will put the kabash on your operation. Unfettered vending is typically permitted because the band, as a courtesy to its fans, leases the lot on their behalf. This arrangement helps the venue recoup revenues siphoned from their concessions, while giving fans the freedom to do mostly as they please. Still, rules vary and are often enforced unevenly. Some venues crackdown on bootleg t-shirt merchants. Others hassle those selling alcohol. Sometimes the local health department will inspect the food vendors and require them to purchase a health permit. The Verizon Wireless Center charges a $150 vending fee. At Red Rocks, because it’s technically a city park, no vending at all is permitted.

Because Phish had never played this venue no one knew what the situation would be. Naturally, with so much cash tied up in this affair, the uncertainty spurred considerable anxiety.  In the hour leading up to the lot opening the vendors gathered on a street leading straight into the venue. During this time we double-checked that we had everything we needed, namely enough ice for drinks. My sidekick wrote up The Shakedown Tavern’s menu, while I tallied our inventory, counted out our change and calculated what we need to bring in to cover expenses. As three o’clock drew near, the vendors fired up their engines and at precisely 2:59 p.m., the caravan, with much fanfare, snaked toward the lot.

That first night was nearly a disaster. The parking staff directed us to a gravel lot instead of the grass lot the band had leased. In the absence of clearly designated stalls and staff to ensure vehicles were parked in an organized, symmetrical fashion, people abdicated their common sense and parked wherever and however they saw fit, claiming as much space as they could. By the time event staff realized they’d made a mistake Shakedown was already open for business. With lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ they tried unfucking the clusterfuck, but with people pouring onto the lot it just wasn’t going to happen. An egregious few were made to straighten their vehicles, but staff quickly gave up trying to tighten up the space. Instead the greedy bastards saw in the mess an opportunity to milk more money by charging each vendor an additional $15 for the space wasted on account of their mistake.

As event staff made the rounds extorting vendors the sky grew ominous and gray. The temperature dropped rapidly and the wind whooshed in formidable gusts that sent EZ-Ups and merchandise a-flyin’. Above us was the very edge of a large slow-moving storm that, from the ground, appeared to abut clear blue skies. Shakedown, up and running not even an hour, was a ghost town as people took refuge in their vehicles or camp sites on the other side of the venue, even though no rain was forecast for the area. Vendors nonetheless secured their EZ-Ups against the wind and began draping tarps over their merchandise in case of rain. I didn’t bring our EZ-Up so we loaded our stock in the van.

When the sky finally opened up it dumped on us a heavy rain that blew sideways for a solid 30-minutes. Then just as abruptly as it began, the rain stopped and the sky cleared. In the blink of an eye Shakedown went from ghost town to a bustling hub of commercial activity. A line that never seemed to shorten had formed at our tavern before completing our post-storm set up. A few other vendors peddled beers and mixed drinks, but our variety and prices were not only unrivaled, but unbeatable.

To supplement our standard beer selection I brought along a few select cases of beer from Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewery, which produces some of the best beers known to man. Because New Glarus Brewery only distributes inside Wisconsin, I was quite shocked by how many people were familiar with the brewery and its flagship beer, Spotted Cow. Along with a case of Cow, I also had on hand several cases of the brewery’s latest concoction, an utterly fantastic black IPA that garnered high praise from those lucky enough to score a bottle.

If business was brisk from the start it picked up in earnest once event staff began enforcing a strict no-glass rule. Beer vendors were told that unless they had plastic cups to pour bottled beer into, which none but us did, they had to shut down. Had the others done a little pre-show research they’d have seen this policy spelled out in big bold Arial type on the venue’s website. Anticipating this crackdown, I limited my bottles to the New Glarus beers. Everything else I had was in cans.

For three hours we moved beers and mixed drinks at a furious clip, our tip jar so stuffed with bills that people simply walked away without their change. In Chicago, no matter how much beer we stocked we never seemed to have enough. I made a point this time to double-down on inventory but before the show even started we were down to less than a dozen beers. And the no-glass policy caused us to burn through more cups than usual, leaving us without anything to serve drinks in. With nowhere nearby to re-up, The Shakedown Tavern packed up for the night to the disappointment of many, including us.

I’m a noisy sleeper. I admit it.

A lifelong snorer and teeth grinder, my restless, racket-inducing sleep has been a flashpoint in many relationships, spurring many nights on the couch. More times than I can count I’ve sprang awake gasping for air after the chick next to me pinched closed my nose in a futile bid for peace and quiet. Once while at a conference in Minneapolis my buddy actually got his own hotel room after being unable to sleep through my snores and teeth grinding.

Surely I feel bad about robbing people of their sleep, but there is little I can do about it. I’ve tried all the tricks: vapor rub, breathe-easy strips, sleeping on my side. Short of an electronic air splint used to treat sleep apnea, nothing seems to work.

It’s estimated that 30 to 50 percent of the U.S. population snores. Of these it’s estimated that 85 percent exceed 38 decibels, the equivalent of light traffic. These “heroic snorers” can be heard up to two rooms away, costing those around them an average of two hours of lost sleep per night. So problematic snorers are that a multi-national hotel chain has taken radical steps to eliminate the disturbances snorers cause for other guests.

Crowne Plaza Hotels has established ‘quiet zones’ in ten of its hotels in Europe and the Middle East, replete with snoring monitors who patrol the halls ensuring all is quiet. Guests who disturb the quiet zone with their snores will be forced to relocate at whatever hour to an ‘anti-snoring room,’ with special sound-proof walls, pillows that are only comfortable when sleeping on one’s side and white noise designed to drown out the snores and keep everyone else happy.

Representatives from the hotel chain say that if the program is successful they’ll install these anti-snoring rooms in all 234 U.S. Crowne Plaza hotels. It’s also reasonable to expect other chains to follow suit.

While the anti-snoring rooms must be a relief for partners of those who snore, the snoring monitors seem a tad excessive if not creepy. Do you really want some stranger with their ear to your door listening for snoring? What if you’re having sex? Or making a phone call? Sounds like a bad idea.

And for someone like me who has slept through fire alarms, ambulances, fights and all manner of discord, would the snoring monitors have authority to enter my room when I don’t wake to their pounding on my door? Will they be allowed to physically shake me awake?  Can you imagine the fright of waking to a stranger in your hotel room?

Certainly non-snoring guests have a reasonable expectation of getting a good night’s sleep. And those aware of their snoring now have the option of being less of a nuisance to their neighbors and partner. But the idea of snore monitors raises all sorts of privacy issues and potential for abuse. As a snorer, I won’t patronize any hotel that has a policy of policing snoring. I suspect there are millions of others who feel the same.

For those of you wondering what I’ve been up to in Madison, here’s a sampling. It’s an article I wrote for Isthmus newspaper about a guy who, after a series of misfortunes and unfornunate decisions, decided to check out of life. Enjoy!

The first letter to Fundamental Pete’s Ass-Jammery arrived in late September, but sat in the WSUM studio’s mailbox for several weeks before the show’s host, Pete Hnilicka, got around to opening it. It was a response to a choose-your-own-adventure bit that the college radio talk show had recently aired. The adventure left off with Hnilicka and a co-host in their old dorm room with two dead hookers.

“Dear Ass-Jammers,” wrote Rajib Mitra, an inmate in Dane County jail who was allowed to have a radio because he was in a low-security area. “I was sorry to hear about your dilemma involving the dead hookers. Having been incarcerated for the last 6 1/2 years, I’ve overheard several conversations about disposing of hookers’ bodies, and this is what I learned…”

Mitra then weighed the pros and cons of the fictional adventure’s suggested plotlines, including one that involved dumping the bodies in Lake Mendota. Mitra, 32, cautions that no matter how well weighted down, the bodies would invariably float back up, arousing the ire of the Badger men’s rowing team. He suggests they dump the bodies instead in Lakes Monona or Wingra, as the rowing team “is sick and tired of having to circumnavigate floating hooker corpses.”

Mitra’s dark humor resonated with Hnilicka, 31. “We thought it was the coolest thing that there was this guy in jail listening to us,” says Hnilicka. “He was certainly our most engaged listener. He’d write letters to us and bits for the show.”

From last September until his death in April, at age 33, Mitra wrote a series of letters to Hnilicka, and to Annie Nüggett, a frequent guest on the show. The letters, copies of which were obtained by Isthmus, were written as Mitra awaited trial on eight counts of possessing child pornography and two counts of child exploitation.

The charges, filed in December 2009, came as Mitra neared the end of an eight-year federal prison sentence for hacking into Madison’s police radio system in 2003, causing periodic blackouts. Mitra maintained that the interference was unintentional.

During that investigation, encrypted files on Mitra’s computer suspected of containing child pornography were discovered, but authorities were unable to access them until 2009. Normally, the statute of limitations would have prevented Mitra from being charged. But when he moved out of Wisconsin, due to his federal imprisonment, the limitation’s clock stopped ticking.

In his letters, Mitra, facing an additional 53 years in prison, claims the charges were a big misunderstanding involving a girl he’d dated who lied about her age. “In all seriousness,” he wrote Hnilicka, “your show brings me joy at a time in my life when little else does.”

The letters mine the depth of Mitra’s despair, revealing a gifted man who felt pinned beneath the unrelenting motions of the justice system. “It’s a sad, sad story,” says Hnilicka. “It’s disturbing that I’m a part of it.”

But some who knew Mitra best have little sympathy. “Everything bad that happened was the result of bad decisions [he] made,” says his ex-girlfriend “Paula,” who asked that her real name be withheld. “Who was Rajib Mitra? … Rajib was both a funny, clever individual and [a] horrible person.”

A federal offense?
Rajib Mitra was a quiet child raised in Brookfield, an affluent Milwaukee suburb, in a home with two parents who indulged their son’s insatiable interest in computers and radios. At 18, he published a paper on security pitfalls in the widely used Unix computer system. His mother doted on him and his father paid his way through college.

“He was not a party man,” says Rajib’s father, Samir Mitra, 77. “I don’t remember him having any close friends, except for that girl.”

In 2000, Mitra graduated from the UW-Madison with honors and a degree in computer science. In 2002, he enrolled in a master’s program at the university and began dating Paula, who he met online. It seemed that if anything stood between him and professional success, it was his crippling shyness.

“When it came to computers, he was brilliant,” recalls Paula, now 24. “He was fully capable, but underdeveloped emotionally. I don’t think he knew how to connect with people. I don’t know that he knew how to be a person.”

Mitra’s bright future dimmed on Nov. 13, 2003, when police raided the 23-year-old’s North Orchard Street apartment, arresting him for interfering with police radio transmissions. On Halloween night, police, fire and paramedics were prevented from communicating with each other on three occasions due to blackouts. On Nov. 11, someone began attaching sounds of a climaxing woman to police radio dispatches. Police traced these transmissions back to Mitra.

During the raid, police seized radio equipment, manuals, proprietary Motorola software downloaded from a Russian radio hacking site and audio files from sexsounds.org.

Mitra quite likely expected a slap on the wrist. He hadn’t stolen anything or damaged critical infrastructures. And twice in the late 1990s, he had been charged with similar offenses in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties. One case was deferred; the other drew a fine.

But in post-9/11 America, the FBI treated the interference as an act of domestic terrorism. Mitra was indicted under federal computer hacking statutes, recently strengthened by 2001’s Patriot Act and 2002’s Cyber Security Enhancement Act. In February 2004, a jury rejected Mitra’s claim that the radio interference was accidental and a judge sentenced him to eight years in federal prison.

“They treated him very harshly,” says Simar Mitra. “They made a mountain of a molehill. The judge had no understanding of being human.”

And in fact, many did see Mitra’s actions as a prank gone awry, not terrorism, and questioned the government’s rationale for indicting him on such a serious offense. The government reasoned that because the radio system used by police contained a computer chip, federal law applied. Experts testified Mitra’s interference wasn’t possible without first overriding the chip. An appellate court affirmed the government’s position and Mitra’s sentence.

William Stevens, a Michigan attorney who handled Mitra’s appeal, says his client’s troubles were also compounded by rigid sentencing guidelines that don’t distinguish pranks from sabotage. “The feds had no sense of humor about it,” says Stevens. “Once you’re caught up in the system, the possibility of forgiveness isn’t good.”

‘My soul isn’t dead’
The first time Mitra tuned into Fundamental Pete’s Ass-Jammery last July, he heard Annie Nüggett read one of her dour poems. The tragicomic absurdity of Nüggett’s prose amused and captivated the inmate. In December, Mitra asked whether Nüggett was acting when she told listeners her tales of woe were true.

“If not, I don’t know if I’ll be able to laugh at the girl’s sad poetry anymore,” he wrote.

Nüggett, 26, was touched. “I try to read my words with a sense of humor, but he heard them for what they were,” she says.
“I couldn’t believe that he’s sitting in jail feeling sorry for me. We bonded over the ways we suffer.”

Aware that Mitra was listening, Nüggett did what she could to lift his spirits. She dedicated a song to him and often began her Poetry at 11 bit by telling him “hello.” She expressed fondness for his meticulous penmanship. One night, Nüggett read “This Mother Nazi,” a poem about breaking free from negative influences. At the end, she briefly paused before asking into the ether, “Mitra, if tomorrow you woke up in Hawaii, free on the beach, would you cry?”

Mitra responded with a letter that, unlike those he wrote Hnilicka, was filled with anguish.

“On each of the last 2,490 nights, I have gone to sleep wanting to wake up in Hawaii,” he wrote. “And on each of the last 2,490 mornings I’ve awakened a little more heartbroken to find myself still trapped… just hearing your question made me burst into tears. That’s a good thing, because it proved that my soul isn’t dead after all.”

Mitra wanted his story told, but discouraged his radio friends from discussing the child porn charges on-air, assuring them, “I am not sexually attracted to children… When I first met [Paula], she told me she was older than she actually was.”

He suggested he’d been threatened after they had discussed the charges. “As I learned early Monday morning, people do listen to your show… even people in my sleeping area,” he wrote. ”In the rumor mill of jail, a story that starts as “16-year-old girlfriend” can morph into “8-year-old nephew.”

Mitra instead urged Hnilicka to resume the choose-your-own adventure series that had prompted his initial letter to the show. “After all, it has been a couple of months now, and if you don’t do something about those hooker bodies soon, they’re really going to stink,” Mitra wrote. In December, Hnilicka used Mitra’s scripts, giving him a writing credit.

As his trial approached toward the end of his federal sentence, Mitra was optimistic that, come spring, he’d be vindicated and free. In a letter dated Jan. 3, Mitra thanks Hnilicka for visiting him in jail.

“With any luck, I hope to meet you again in a couple of months under more comfortable circumstances,” he wrote. “If there is any sense, any balance, any justice in this world, I am going to win this trial.”

‘In his own way he loved me’
Mitra met Paula online in January 2002. He was 23 and she was, he believed, 17. Soon he was driving eight-hour round trips to visit her in Steven’s Point. He showered her with gifts and paid for their dates. On at least two occasions, he snapped naughty pictures of her. At one point, she promised to love him forever. But while planning their Hawaiian vacation, Mitra learned Paula was actually 16.

“He nearly broke it off with her at that point,” says attorney Jon Helland, who represented Mitra during his child porn trial. “It was she who told him that age doesn’t matter. Both of their parents were aware of, and had no problems with, the relationship.”

Paula admits all this, including having lied about her age, but says there were bigger problems with the relationship. Mitra, she says, once spit on her and was often verbally abusive. “Some days he loved me more than anything, on others I was a pain the ass.”

When a friend of hers died in a July 2003 car wreck, Paula accused Mitra of being indifferent to her grief. He responded, via email, “I care but I think you would be used to your friends dropping dead by now. You need to learn to deal with recurring issues.”

Miraculously, the relationship rebounded when Mitra went to prison in May 2004. He and Paula wrote each other love letters and talked frequently by phone. In December of that year, Paula quit the relationship for good, but kept in touch until 2007, when she met her future husband.

In prison, Mitra did his best to keep tabs on her, having another girl he’d met online mail him copies of Paula’s blog posts. In 2006, he sued her over a financial matter. After she gave statements to police in 2009 that led to his child exploitation charges, Mitra demanded his mother call her and find out why she had betrayed him.

“I know in his own way he loved me,” says Paula. “I know I was on a pedestal. Despite my best effort, Jeeb never hesitated in reminding me… how I was a liar through his eyes. I had told him that I would love him forever. He hung onto that until the very end.”

In prison, Mitra also obsessed over the computer seized by police in 2003, writing several letters demanding that it be returned to his mother. Madison computer crimes detective Cynthia Murphy made a bit-by-bit copy of Mitra’s hard drive, wiped clean the original, and returned it.

Convinced that Murphy was out to get him, he sued her personally in 2006. He also wrote Police Chief Noble Wray asking if Murphy was investigating him. Wray wrote back, “Rijib [sic] Mitra is not currently under investigation by the Madison Police.”

At the time, he wasn’t.

Murphy declines comment because the investigation into Mitra’s death is ongoing. But during a hearing last December, Murphy testified, “If there hadn’t been so much constant attention, [the case] probably would have disappeared into my caseload and been forgotten.”

Guilty as charged
At his trial in January, Murphy explained how, in 2009, she learned a technique that allowed her to decrypt the files in the folder Mitra had labeled “\porn\bad.” She also accessed two sexually explicit photos of Paula, who Murphy remembered was a minor when questioned about Mitra’s radio hacking. She contacted Paula, who confirmed that Mitra had taken the photos.

“I didn’t even care about the pictures,” says Paula. “It was the other stuff they found that made me look at things in a new light.”

In addition to the photos, Murphy accessed eight files with titles like, “Preteen Girl is Raped by 16 yo brother” and “daddy rapes drunk sleeping daughter.” She recognized the “Dee & Desi” file as originating from a known child porn series.
The state offered a plea deal that included 18 years imprisonment, which Helland rejected. “He got slammed the first time,” says Helland. “To slam him again for something that happened eight years before wasn’t fair.”

His parents didn’t attend the trial. “He stopped talking to me, because he was embarrassed,” says Samir Mitra.

The state argued that Mitra knew the files were illegal because he had segregated them in a folder labeled “\porn\bad.” Helland countered that “bad” meant that the files were corrupted, that Mitra couldn’t access them, either. But computer data revealed that some of the files had been opened not long before his 2003 arrest.

On Jan. 12, Mitra was convicted on all 10 counts.

Mitra, in his next letter to Hnilicka, assailed the judicial system, accusing all involved, even his attorney, of conspiring against him. He thanked Hnilicka for reading a news article about his conviction. “Though the words ‘up to 53 years’ are weighing heavily on my mind,” he wrote.

In a letter to Nüggett, Mitra is unusually introspective. “Shyness is a horrible affliction because it robs one of the potential friendships and opportunities that make life worth living,” he wrote. “For people such as … me, who have already lost so much due to forced isolation, the isolation caused by shyness is even more pernicious.”

While being escorted into court for his sentencing on April 28, bailiffs scolded Mitra for glancing sideways at those seated behind the defense table. After an emotional plea for leniency, Mitra was sentenced by Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi to 6 1/2 years in state prison, five of which were for taking the pictures of Paula. Upon his release, he was to register as a sex offender and would be prohibited from using computers.

But Mitra had had enough and made plans to check out of the Dane County jail.

“I’ve been sentenced to 6 1/2 more years of heartbreak,” Mitra wrote Hnilicka hours after the sentencing. “If you can imagine that – 6 1/2 years of heartbreak on top of 7 years of heartbreak – you’ll never have to wonder what was going through my mind.”

‘He deserved a second chance’
After lunch on Friday, April 29, the day after his sentencing, Mitra kicked a doorstop from beneath a janitorial closet door, which closed, but didn’t latch. The closet had been opened for post-meal chores. Forty-five minutes later, Mitra slipped into the closet undetected and hung himself from an exposed pipe.

It was only the second time in the last five years that a Dane County jail inmate has successfully committed suicide, in 278 attempts.

A sheriff and medical examiner visited Mitra’s parents in Brookefield. “It did not surprise me,” says his father. “He could not live without the computer.”

Paula learned about Mitra’s death from her victim’s counselor. “I cared about his well-being,” she says. “I don’t know if he had changed, but I didn’t want him to kill himself. There’s no joy, but it’s nice to know I don’t have to be afraid when I’m out with my kids.”

That Sunday, a sheriff’s deputy phoned Hnilicka, but wouldn’t say why he wanted to take a letter Mitra had mailed Friday morning into evidence. But then Hnilicka saw an online bulletin about an inmate who had killed himself. Hnilicka broke the news to Nüggett before that night’s show.

“At his sentencing he looked so desperate and empty,” she says. “He suffered so much in his life. The way they treated him in court was sick. He deserved a second chance.”

Mitra’s four-page letter arrived Monday. “Dear Pete,” it began. “By the time you get this I’ll be beyond the WSUM listening area… There are a lot of people in this world who seem thoughtless, heartless, cruel and oblivious to anything I try to say, but you are not one of them.”

His heartbreak over what he saw as Paula’s betrayal was palpable. “[She] suggests that because I spit on her one time during sex, I must not have really cared about her,” he wrote. “It’s called lubrication, and most women would appreciate it.”

If happiness visited Mitra during the final hours of his miserable life, it came when he disobeyed the bailiffs and snuck a fleeting glimpse of a certain someone at his sentencing, a moment he describes in the postscript to his final letter.

“They wouldn’t even let me look to see who was sitting behind me,” he wrote. “I wasn’t able to find my parents or you, but a young woman with brown hair and glasses did catch my eye. I hope Annie Nüggett can find lasting happiness in her life.”

A wax depiction of a technique developed in ancient China where rats are encouraged to eat people alive.

Wisconsin Dells, WI – Normally I’m not keen on tourist towns, with their bubble-gummy aesthetic and overpriced fare, but there are exceptions, of course. Wisconsin Dells, where I spent my Fourth of July, is one of them. And though I’ve visited dozens of times over the years, it still holds a secret or two.

Located about 50 miles north of Madison, along Highway 12, the city, along with nearby Lake Delton, attracts more than five million visitors annually. Famous for its massive water parks, themed resorts, boat tours and natural beauty (glacially-formed sandstone gorges along the Wisconsin River), the Wisconsin Dells is a remarkably laid-back spot, having lured visitors seeking an escape from city life since the mid-1800s.

We left Madison early, hopping in Purple Thunder and heading west along Highway 12, which cuts northwest across idyllic Wisconsin farmland prior to meandering through the forested hills south of Baraboo. I always encourage visitors and newbies eyeing a trip to the Dells – as its locally known – to forsake the Interstate for this route instead. Not only is Highway 12 a peaceful and scenic drive, but it also offers an array of unique sights and destinations of its own, including Devil’s Lake State Park, Ho-Chunk Casino, the Baraboo Candy Company (home of the Cowpie), and Dr. Evermor’s fantastic steampunk-esque metal sculpture garden.

On this trip, however, the only stop we made along Highway 12 was to buy discounted fireworks – firecrackers, Saturn rockets and other exploding goodies you can’t buy in Madison.

I had to school some punk-ass kids in the proper ways of putting the pedal to the metal.

We arrived shortly after noon, without any itinerary. Naturally, on such a gorgeous day, the water parks teemed with people, but we failed to bring with us any swim gear. Instead, we started things off with a visit to Big Chief Go Karts, where, for $3, we raced around a state-of-the-art go-kart track.

Despite their small engines, the go-karts really go. I had one of the faster ones, which seemed to irritate a trio of young boys to the point of compelling them to try and slow me down. Twice I cruised by a kid in a red t-shirt. On my third approach, I saw him glancing to his rear. When I attempted to pass him a third time, he began to deliberately obstruct my path. When I swerved left, he swerved left. When I swerved right, he swerved right. How was it that this pipsqueak was besting me, The Feral Scribe, a road warrior who has clocked thousands of highway miles and negotiated traffic in America’s biggest cities? I was chagrined.

This game of vehicular brinkmanship went on as we sped up a large incline, our little engines roaring, and continued as we began our descent. Bu I’d had enough. This little punk was no match for my road superiority. When he again glanced back at my position, I cut left ever so briefly. When he, too, cut left, I put the pedal to the metal and cut hard to the right. Realizing he’d been out maneuvered, the kid cut hard to the right before I could pass him fully. A collision was imminent.

A lesser driver may have fallen back, but I was determined to pass him. As he rammed me against the curb, I let off the accelerator a bit, and broadsided his back end. He sped up and as he tried to straighten out his vehicle I saw an opening. Hitting the gas full throttle, I rammed his front end with enough force to spin him so he faced oncoming traffic. With no reverse, he was out of commission until the attendant turned him around.

His buddies then came after me, each deploying similar tactics. In both instances, they failed to keep me down. But just as this rat race was becoming fun, we completed our final lap and were routed back into the pit.

Legendary Dells dive bar, Nig's Bar, a name that many find off-putting.

After road warring with children, it was off to have a swig at Nig’s, a very old bar that’s been serving drinks in downtown Wisconsin Dells since 1947. Commentators on several travel adviser sites say they find name, which may have been that of its original owner, inappropriate. “Completely inappropriate,” wrote a visitor from Ohio, “especially in a town that caters to families and children.”

The bar itself isn’t anything special, though maybe night hours are a different story. After sucking down a pair of pretty crappy strawberry margaritas, we perused the gift shops and t-shirts stores that line the strip. We stopped to watch a street magician do tricks for tips after firing off more than a hundred rounds at a paintball shooting range.

We toyed with the idea of riding roller coasters at Mount Olympus, but having just gone to Six Flags a week earlier, the admission seemed a tad high for the parks limited options. So we kept up our stroll, looking for place to grab a beer. One of the drawbacks of the Dells, is the complete lack of outdoor seating. I’m not sure if the city prohibits it, but along the strip there wasn’t any. During our search for a suitable watering hole, we turned onto a cross street and were greeted with a pleasant surprise: the Torture Museum.

What possibly could be more incongruent in a town whose economy is driven by families and fun than a museum dedicated to torture throughout the ages? But that is exactly what you’ll find if you go off the strip and onto Eddy Street. More stunning, at least for me, was that I had never heard of the five-year-old museum, which has been featured on the History Channel. With admission only $7, there was no doubt about what our next activity would be.

The first thing you see upon entering is a fake electric chair. For $1, you can electrocute yourself amid lots of loud buzzing, flashing lights and a dial that measures the rising voltage. It’s not real electricity, of course, but vibrations similar to the Magic Fingers in old motel rooms. The chair’s noise and lights scared a little boy who, upon our arrival, was being coaxed back inside by his parents. When their efforts failed, they left and we went inside.

Exhibits consisted primarily of torture devices and execution techniques pioneered by the Chinese, the Romans and others across midieval Europe, each device accompanied by a brief description of how and why it was used. The Shrew’s Fiddle, for example, was a wooden “fiddle” that was locked around the necks and wrists of German women accused of nagging or gossiping. Other items included a guillotine, an electric chair, a heretic’s fork and crucifixion spikes. One particularly gruesome device, the Iron Maiden, is described in this eye witness account from the device’s 1515 debut:

A forger of coins was placed inside and the door shut slowly so that the very sharp points penetrated his arms and legs in several places, and his belly and chest and his bladder and the roots of his member and his eyes and his shoulders and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him, and so he remained tortured, making great crys for two days, after which he died.

The self-guided tour concluded with an exhibit showcasing John Wayne Gacy, complete with an original painting by the modern torturist and serial killer who was executed in Illinois in 1994. In all, it took about 15 minutes.

It being the Dells, I should not have expected too much, but I left the museum feeling a tad disappointed. Not because it was brief or because all of the exhibits, save for the Gacy painting, were replicas, but because it dealt so flippantly with an issue we’re still debating today. No mention of waterboarding, modern execution methods or even how ideas regarding criminal punishment have evolved. It’s shock without substance. Even the Gacy exhibit, though unique, had an unsettling shrine-like quality that verged on the celebratory.

Jenny Lewis once sang, “Any asshole can open up a museum/Put all the things he loves on display.” She could have been singing about the museum’s founder.

I think the crying little boy was on to something.

Many stores in the Dells have co-opted the more stereotyped aspects of Native American culture.

We didn’t stick around too long following the Torture Museum. After stopping off for another drink, we hopped back inside Purple Thunder and headed back to Madison to wait for night to fall so we could explode our fireworks. Pop! Pop! Pop! Then they were done, too. And so was I. I drank a beer, ate some pizza, and called it a day.

One day in the mid-1990s, Marcus the Karcus, then 16, was flipping through a magazine in an underground bookstore when he came across some pictures of people hanging from hooks. Having always been drawn to the macabre, young Marcus was instantly mesmerized by the photos. “This is the world I wanted to be in,” he recalls thinking. “It seemed like one of those things that only went on in big cities, not something that was accessible to me.”

Nine years later, Karcus, as he’s generally known, began exploring body modification. One day while getting pierced, he noticed a picture on the wall of a shop employee hanging from hooks. In that moment, his life changed. “It was like I’d found the Holy Grail,” he says. “I asked, ‘How do I do that?’”

Now 32, Karcus runs a body piercing business, and performs pullings and suspensions, practices pioneered by certain Native American tribes as a spiritual ritual, but done today more as performance art. Having now been suspended with flesh hooks upwards of 50 times, he still recalls the thrill of his first time. He found it so enjoyable that he didn’t want to be unhooked. “I remember everyone looking at their watches and being like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to go,’” he laughs.

Each month, Karcus hosts a fetish night at Club Inferno in Madison, Wisconsin, called Sabbat de Sade or Sabbath of the Sadist. His gruesomely themed events, which riff on taboo subjects such as necrophilia, have been a staple of the city’s nightlife since he began them five years ago. On July 17, his long anticipated Serial Killer Night will feature an array of activities, including a class on bondage ropes (more specifically, what to do once you’ve got someone restrained). He’ll also be doing play piercings and, of course, suspensions.

Karcus recently sat with The Feral Scribe to discuss flesh-hook suspensions, the people who seek his services and why he was once asked to sew shut a person’s eyes.

Tell me about your first pulling or suspension?
It was set up in someone’s backyard. There were two hooks in my back and two hooks in my girlfriend and we pulled against each other. I’d get into the zone, then she’d break and I’d have to stop. I’d get into the zone again and then she’d break. I was like, ‘Cut me away from this girl and tie me to a damn pole!’ So they cut us and tied us to poles. From the start I couldn’t get enough.

Chicago resident Mistress Maya is hooked.

Are the hooks painful?
The initial piercing is like a pinch. Then, as you start doing it, that first initial separation of subcutaneous tissue is like a little sting-y. But once you get off the ground, surprisingly, it all subdues and then you’re just like, ‘Weeeee!’

It’s possible that my brain doesn’t process pain the same way other people do, but if you look at it as just an intense sensation, some sensations are happier than others, but they’re all just sensations. Once you stop looking at it as pain, it works a little different. A guy once told me, ’It’s not the pain that’s the problem, but the avoidance of pain.’ Once you accept it and incorporate it, you can get through anything. I keep that as a motto if things do start to hurt.

Do people generally find the experience enjoyable?
There have been a couple of people who did it and were like, ‘I did it; I’m done.’ One guy wanted to do a pulling. So I put in the hooks and he took them just fine, and he gets up there and tugs on the strings three times. He looks at me and asks, ‘Is that it?” And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s all it is.’”

This other girl I did, I put two hooks in her and I was there for like three hours. This girl couldn’t get enough. Her legs were hurting before her back got sore, so I told her to get down on her knees and pull that way. She kept pulling for like three hours. She couldn’t get enough, so I pulled out some play-piercing needles, so I’m piercing her all over and she’s got blood all over her face and obviously having a really good time. But of the two people, I was really surprised that this guy was like, ‘eh,’ and the girl was like, ‘I want more.’

It seems like suspensions are becoming more embraced by the mainstream. Do you see many soccer moms?
It’s definitely getting more popular. There are suspension crews popping up in every city.  I have gotten some people you wouldn’t expect: people who sell insurance, people who work in research labs, all types of different people. I think it’s people who are looking for an alternate path, who are looking to break out of the everyday life type of thing.

While you’re suspended, what’s happening mentally? Is it like a drug euphoria?
Different people get different things out if it. I think it tends to attract adrenaline junkies, just by nature. I don’t think any one is really conscious of what’s going on chemically inside their body. I know a lot of endorphins are released and a ton of dopamine is released, but you don’t necessarily go into a trance.

If it’s a particularly painful one, where you kind of have to relax the whole time, you’re probably not getting as into it. I find it’s harder to do a suspension when you’re not moving around. The more you kick your legs and move and swing around the easier it goes.

How much weight can skin support?
A single hook, placed properly, will hold up to 300 pounds. I’ve seen people suspended from single hooks. The skin can hold a lot, which is strange since the skin is just a bunch of itty-bitty cells touching each other.

Click to enlarge

Is there any physical damage that occurs?
Different layers of skin start to separate so that the fatty tissue area starts to open up a bit. We don’t know the long-term ramifications of constantly separating that tissue. Some people, at the end of a suspension, end up getting air inside that sort of leaks in through the pierced hole, so you have to burp that out. We’re not going through muscle or anything. Sometimes scar tissue builds up under the skin.

What’s the craziest thing someone has asked you to do?
Of the fun interesting things I’ve done, sewing peoples’ eyes and mouths shut is probably on the top of the list of extreme things. We had Malice in Wonderland, a band that is no longer together, that wanted to do a music video. And a girl suggested we sew her eyes and mouth shut. It took us a couple of hours, but we dressed her up as a cute little doll and then she was put inside this cistern that looked like a little cave and she was pawing around. Another fun thing I did was sew zippers onto a guy’s forearms.

Tell us about Sabbat de Sade and the upcoming Serial Killer Night?
Sabbat de Sade is a fetish night that I’ve been running for the last five years. I started the night wanting to do a highly engaging and interactive fetish night. Before this one, I’d gone to a lot of fetish nights, but they always seemed to be centered around a stage performance, where someone was on stage doing something and everybody stopped to watch the stage show. I thought ‘Why is everyone watching the stage show when they could be doing that stuff?’

[An early theme] was a cops and robbers and night. We got dressed up in police gear and had handcuffs. I built a little jail cell inside the Inferno and I had a girl walk around with a Polaroid camera and she’d ask people if they’d want to be arrested and take their picture. She gave me the stack of Polaroids and we went around the club, like a little manhunt, and asked people, ‘Do you know who this person is?’

Once we’d find the person, or if someone pointed them out, I’d be like, ‘You’re dressed like a cop. Lets go get this person.’ We’d march up to them, shine lights in their face and throw them to the ground…

Some nights I go for the light and fluffy, but other times I like over-the-top themes. One night that was really over-the-top was the necro-night. People were like, ‘I can’t believe you did a necrophilia night.” I’m like, ‘Of course I did!’

Serial killers is another theme that I’m attempting to go overboard with, to get some shock value out of it. I started doing short classes at the opening of the events, because it’s usually dead early on in the night. What I’ve got lined up for this one is a class on what to do to a person while they’re restrained, which is fitting for a serial killer night. I noticed there are a lot of classes on how to restrain people, on how to do knots, and how to do safety, but no one ever talks much about what you do once you have someone restrained and on the floor. What do you do with them?

After that, I’ll be doing play piercings, so I’ll be putting needles in people. I know there’s a few people in the area who like to do play piercings, but I get a little nervous about random people doing it, so I try to contain it a little bit. And after an hour or so of play piercings, I’ll be getting into the suspensions, so the people who come for some of the extreme stuff can do some of that.

Residents wait in the brutal heat for the fire department's okay to retrieve belongings from their apartment.

Madison, WI – Yesterday morning I received a text from my friend Nick Mortensen telling me that his apartment complex was on fire. After waking to a knocking on the door, he saw the the fire trucks outside, but didn’t hear any smoke alarms. No one even yelled ‘Fire!’ Nonetheless, he grabbed some things and went to the club for a workout. By the time he returned, flames had engulfed the roof of the building.

One of the things I like most about Nick is that he doesn’t sweat the small shit. By the end of the day, after he’d lost everything, Nick was already plotting and scheming ways to parlay his loss into opportunity. And frankly, I’m kind of glad he lost everything. Some of the most liberating moments of my life came after I got rid of my belongings, unchaining myself from the burdens of being weighed down by things. Even things that seem irreplaceable really, at the end of the day, are just dead weight. But not everyone sees it this way. People get awfully attached to their stuff. There were a lot of long faces when firemen told residents the building was too damaged to allow them in to salvage what they could. But situations like these rarely are the tragedy they initially seem.

They have their lives and an opportunity to start from scratch.

Yesterday, as firefighters battled the blaze, I met Nick at Genna’s Lounge and we joked about the situation. He’s a comedian who has managed to piss off every other comedian in town. In fact, he once was surrounded by an angry mob of funny people outside of Genna’s after one of the comedians performing that night roused the crowd into a frenzy against him. More recently, a guy threatened to stab Nick when he refused to leave a comedy open mic. All he had done was arrive to see the show. A lot of this started when I quoted Nick in a newspaper article trashing the local comedy club. He was promptly blacklisted and other local comedians have warred with him since.

We joked about gathering the comedians here in town to roast him as a benefit to raise money for the other residents. Get it? Roast? Ha. Ha.

People here in Madison are woefully sensitive. It’s annoying. Once, one of the local papers brought in a music critic who had some real shit to say about the local music scene. It seemed like every musician in town was in tears over what an asshole this guy was rather than believe he might have an opinion worth considering. Nick is like that. He calls it how he sees it and is dutifully punished for it. That’s how this town is. Everyone wants to be patted on the back, even when they suck at what they do. And more often than not, people are more than willing to pander to those sentiments. I’m not. Neither is Nick.

Because Nick wasn’t feeling bad about losing everything and being homeless, I didn’t have to feel too bad about it, either.  Today, he invited me to come with him while he retrieved some things from his apartment, namely his stash. I was going to take some pictures of the damage inside. By late afternoon, the heat index was well over 100 degrees. Nervous residents paced around the block as city engineers assessed the damage. Finally, word came that the damage was too extensive for people to safely enter the building. Some began crying. Others leaned pensively against the buildings. Nick seemed a little bummed about his stash.

But then the firemen offered to retrieve some items for residents, who wrote down what they wanted and where it could be found. They did the first floor first. One woman was able to retrieve a crate full of soggy personal papers and a couple of purses. A hair stylist got his cash box. And yes, Nick got his big black stash box back, hand delivered to him by a Madison firefighter. It was one of the slickest moves I’d ever seen.

The contents inside the box weren’t wet at all. Among them was a very expensive Volcano vaporizer. He used to have two, but some chick with lupus stole one from him. He’d let her borrow it, and after six months he asked for it back. He wanted to loan it to a friend of his who had cancer, but the chick refused to hand it over. So Nick sued her to get it back. The court ruled in his favor, but the chick disappeared and Nick had to write it off. He’s probably the only person in U.S. history to file a lawsuit for the return of paraphernalia. I admire his gumption.

I’m sure Nick will make the most of his new freedom. With a robust renter’s insurance policy, and a sizable bank account of his own, he’s going to be all right. As will everyone else. I’m excited to see what direction his life now takes. He’s made sure to get some good media coverage. One of the local papers linked to his Twitter feed as he live-Tweeted the blaze, and he won a bunch of new followers. Today he was interviewed by one of the broadcast news stations. He’s talking about returning to comedy. After the stabbing threat, maybe that’s not such a hot idea. But then again, I can see Nick making the most of being impaled, too.

Wow, it is really hard to stay motivated in this place. You’d think that, with all the time I have that I be cranking shit out no problem. Not so much. I am trying to get better at that. I hope I’m successful.

Before I talk about anything else, I want to say a little more about the compound itself. I realized that I haven’t told you how many people are here. There are about a thousand, give or take. In terms of the actual set-up it is like an old western shanty town, except only the sheriffs have horses. But instead of horses they have hybrid SUVs.

Now, I’ll tell you about my job. I am the vegetable prep guy for the P.M. shift in food service. Quite the dream job, I know. The job is actually two parts, both of them shitty.

The first part is during the day, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. During this time I actually prep the vegetables that are going to be in that night’s dinner and possible lunch the next day. There is a lot of rotted food to deal with as they do buy the cheapest of the cheap. If you’ve never been around rotten potatoes, let me tell you, they’re no fun. I deal with dozens of them everyday. (I prep about 350 to 600 lbs. of potatoes daily.)

The second part of my job is a little different. Two nights a week I work the dinner salad bar or, as I like to call it, the “Insult Brent Bar.” Most of you on the outside might be surprised that a prison would have a salad bar, but the guys in here. They’re constantly pissed off by what we don’t have, specifically dressing.

For example, once I was forced to put out only blue cheese (yes, that’s how it’s spelled here) and was repeatedly called things like “cocksucker” and “faggot” when my fellow inmates saw it was their only option.

It’s hard not to think about what a waste of money it is to have a lot of people locked up. I hear it’s about $52,000 annualy per inmate. I take full responsibility for my crime, I just think there are better ways to spend $156,000 than to keep me here three years. But what do I know? I’m just a criminal.

You wouldn’t believe how fast information gets around this compound. It seems like people know shit before it’s even done. We call it “inmate.com.” The problem is that usually only 10 percent of anything someone is telling you is true.

I hope I don’t offend anybody with this, but there is nothing more irritating that the guys who come to prison and find God. Don’t get me wrong, whatever gets you through the day is cool. However, the operative word is “you,” meaning you keep it to yourself. Everyday I have to hear about how I have to also find God or risk an eternity of damnation. And my question to them is, “If you’ve already found God, why do I have to as well?”

I think I mentioned a little about the showers in a previous dispatch, but I had this creepy experience that I want to share. Before going into the shower area, you loudly ask “shower clear?” This is to avoid the uncomfortable encounter with a strange naked man. So, the other day I go in to take a shower.

“Shower clear?” I asked.

The response was, “No, but you can come back if you want to.”

I left and showered later. I’m sorry, but that was weird.

My room situation has changed a little. Aragorn has been removed and replaced by Gary. Gary is kind of dull and not too bright, either. The other day he asked if I’d gone to breakfast.

“Yeah,” I said. “The oatmeal was all right.”

“That’s nice,” Gary replied. “What did you eat?”

“Um, steak.”

To wrap it up, I want to tell you about a game I have to play almost everyday. It’s called “poop roulette.” Poop roulette states when you are on the way to one of the two bathrooms and, as you approach, you hear the flush of a toilet but enter the bathroom too late to see which of the stalls was exited. Now you must make your choice. Losing is unpleasant.

Okay, that is about all for now. I really appreciate being given the opportunity to do this, as I need some kind of outlet to express myself. To anyone reading, I hope I’m not too boring. Feel free to write me. I love getting mail.

Sincerely,
Brent

Brent Delzer
06737-090
Federal Prison Camp
P.O. Box 1000
Duluth, MN 55814