[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]

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Order this iTunes track: from the Chaotic Collection ...Or order the entire 5 CD set from iTunes: CD:

Listen to the DMJ Art Connection, off the CD Indian Flux

Listen: (2:56) to this recording from Fusion

Watch this YouTube video live at the Winking Lizard in Ohio 10/10/08

Watch this YouTube video live at the Café in Chicago 07/20/10

Watch this YouTube video of the intro 2 the open mic @ the Café in Chicago 07/20/10, w/ Kuypers reading this poem & the Julie Kovacs cc&d poem “When Daddy Comes Around”

Watch this YouTube video 12/04/10 from the TV camera in Lake Villa at Swing State, live in her show the Stories of Women

Watch this YouTube video 12/04/10 in Lake Villa at Swing State, live in her “Visual Nonsense” show the Stories of Women

See Kuypers’ full show video with this & more from the TV monitor in the the Stories of Women show, in Visual Nonsense, live in Lake Villa 12/04/10 at Swing State

See the full show video of Kuypers reading this & more in the the Stories of Women show in in Visual Nonsense, live in Lake Villa 12/04/10 with this writing at Swing State (last line of last story cut off)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ 4 poems walking home from school, Hancock Suicide, Chicago, December 1994, a woman talking about her rapist friend and Last Before Extinction at Elizabeth’s Crazy Little Thing (with a “darkness” theme) in Wicker Park, Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ 4 poems walking home from school, Hancock Suicide, Chicago, December 1994, a woman talking about her rapist friend and Last Before Extinction at Elizabeth’s Crazy Little Thing (with a “darkness” theme) in Wicker Park, Chicago (Canon Power Shot)

a woman talking about her rapist friend He was my friend, and we had been through a lot together, our psychological ups and downs, but he mixed drinks exceptionally well at his college frat parties, and his ice-blue eyes always spoke the truth to me. It’s amazing to think that the only reason we ever met was because one day he wore a turtleneck that prefectly matched his eyes, and I had to tell him. I don’t know why he put up with my mood swings, with my self-destructive social life and man-hating, normally he didn’t care about women, never gave their opinions much thought, just tried to get them drunk at parties, maybe he knew that and that’s why he listened to me. Then for a few years our friendship drifted, we didn’t see each other much, I heard through the grapevine that he was failing in school. Then one day, out of the blue, he comes over and he has two black eyes. And he says to me that when he was in the parking garage two guys came and beat him up, and one of them said, you raped my girlfriend. And then he looked at me and said, and you know, looking back, he was right. I raped her. And I know he wanted sym- pathy, he wanted to hear me say something, but I couldn’t. And he said, I know this has to be hard for you to hear, but I wanted to tell you. I know it was wrong. A part of me wanted to hate him. A part of me thought that if he was my friend I would be condoning what he did. And a part of me thought that our friendship made him realize what he actually had done. I tried to be there for him. I wasn’t much good at it. Eventually, he moved away. I didn’t try to lose touch with him. But it’s just that a part of me is still trying to figure out if I can be his friend. Sometimes you just lose touch with some- one, sometimes that’s all you can do. Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.