The Witch of the North.

[Exhibit: one college blue book, 16 lined pages. Written on cover are the words "Sue T., Exercise 3A, May 26, 2000" in longhand. Interior transcribed below.]

I hate these exercises. "Tell the Goddess who you are! Tell Her why you came to Her!"

Jeez, She knows. She doesn't need me to write it down in a blue book for a bunch of strangers to read. But I'll do it anyway. It'll help me, I know that much.

I was born Zuzanna Franciszka Tyszkiewicz on April 17, 1976 at 7:07 am. I know, I might as well have had a "Kick Me" sign tattooed on my forehead at birth. Gratefully, my parents, Charles and Dora, only gave me the traditional Polish names to make my grandparents happy.

So, yeah, I'm a Chicago Polack, what's it to you? It's one of the richest cultures in all the United States. There's New York Eastern European Jews, Boston Irish, and Chicago Poles. I think the heavy (and I mean, *heavy*) exposure to my ancestry as a kid eventually put me in place to study anthropology, but that's a story for another time.

I grew up in Naperville, Illinois, outside Chicago, where my family had fled after the South Side was overrun by, well, insert racial slur for African-Americans here. My older siblings (all 5 of them, I'm the baby) hated moving, but since I was 2 when we did, I couldn't complain. The suburbs were my home. My dad still went back into the city every day because he's been a Chicago police officer for 30 years. When he came back from Vietnam he had 6 kids with his sweetheart in rapid succession.

The day Pope John Paul II became Pontiff in 1978 is my first crystal-clear childhood memory. Granma (that's my mom's mom) spent weeks in her bedroom (they came to live with us early on) before John Paul One died. When she came out, the proverbial smoke went up from St. Peter's and voilą, a son of Poland was the Vicar of Christ. Always thought that was a little fishy.

Granma went into the hospital one day back in 1987 with chest pains. Turned out to be lung cancer. It took her a long time to die, but she did She whispered something to me in Polish when she passed, a long sentence that I, with the little knowledge I had of Polish at the time, couldn't even begin to translate. I got my first period right after we put her in the ground three days later. We were close. She was old-country and despaired to see my short hair and skinned knees. But we had something that she and my mother never had. Some sort of connection. I miss her almost every day.

The rest of my childhood? Well, I was the baby. And a tomboy on top of it. With four brothers I couldn't help it. My older sister, Hanna, didn't suffer like I did. She was girly, and had dates, and by the time I was in junior high, I knew something was different about me. I mean, I didn't hate boys. I hung around with lots of them. But I didn't like them the way they were starting to want to be liked. That became real clear real quick.

Oh yeah, something else about my childhood. My dad was a domineering bastard. Sure, you're thinking, typical. How else would she end up a Slut for the Goddess without being some sort of damaged daddy's girl. Well, I'll say this much. He never laid a hand on me in anger or any other warped emotion, except once. And the day that happened changed my life... for the first time.

The whole family went to Comiskey for a Sox game. Now, you know, you grow up on the South Side, you're a Sox fan for life. It's in the by-laws. Fuck, my Dad didn't even call it Comiskey, he called it "Sox Park," like the real South Siders do. We all went into town (probably seven of us, since Mattie was off at Iowa at that point). Anyway, who can remember, I did something to piss off my dad. That's the funny thing; it was this huge event, and I can't even remember how it started. Maybe I dropped his Old Style when he handed it to me to hold. Maybe I lost my ticket. It's a blank now. Anyway, he got angry and he hit me. In front of God and everyone at the ballpark. I cried, I remember. And that night, I took an old beaten-up Cubs cap out of the basement where it was sitting, mildewed, probably from the people who owned the house before us, and put it on my head. I've worn that cap ever since. And every day my dad saw it, I think he knew.

High school. Let me tell you something. Kids these days (I know they're only nine or ten years younger than me, but still), kids these days have everything in high school. Safe zones. LGBT clubs. Same-sex prom dates. When I was in high school, I was closeted. Deep. Because I knew if *They* knew, it'd be all over for me. I went to a public high school, because by the time little Sue went to high school, there wasn't enough money to send a sixth Tyszkiewiecz to Catholic school. My grades were great, but even the scholarships weren't full rides.

Anyway, it would've been worse at Catholic school. My Confirmation classes were bad enough. I chose Magdalena as my Confirmation name. I'd researched Mary Magdalene for my class; she was a whore, but she was Jesus' favorite disciple. I got some snickers in class for that revelation, and Sister shot ""me"" the dirty look, not the smirking boys in the class. But she's a saint! She was the first witness of the Resurrection! They couldn't deny me that.

I got through high school with excellent grades. Didn't have one kiss of anyone of either sex, though. College, though... college was different.

Freshman year at Northwestern I joined every possible gay-oriented club. And wow, did I get militant. I was a little Valerie Solanis out there. I was out to everyone, well, everyone except my family. When I came home for Christmas and summer, I took the rainbow triangle off my backpack and was good straight Sue.

As college went on, my rage just kept boiling over. It wrecked more than one relationship, let me tell you. And I'll admit it, I was abusive a couple of times. Nothing physical, mind you, but man... those poor girls. Forget that. I've forgiven myself of those years. And I did it with the help of the Goddess.

Ah, I guess you were wondering when She'd come into it. I graduated and didn't know what to do with my life. My degree, obviously, since I went to Northwestern, was in Communications, Radio and TV to be precise, and I drifted around several internships in Chicago. Got my own place in Evanston and worked at a couple of different radio stations. Then I got a job at Chicago's flagship, the Tribune Company. WGN-TV. I worked in News and got to know a girl named Andrea. We got to talking over lunch breaks first, and then we'd go out to dinner a couple of times. I wasn't scamming, it's just that when she'd talk, or, more accurately, after she'd talk, I'd see all these things I didn't notice before. I'd go into my pocket for change for the bus and I'd see seven nickels all with the same date. I'd see seagulls in the air over the Lake circling in the same pattern. I'd listen to songs on the radio and just weep uncontrollably because it was me in those songs. And Goddess knows, I didn't cry in those days in and after college. I'd break stuff instead.

It was all too much to take, and I knew Andrea was the cause. I don't know how, I just did. And while this is all going on, I'm going to Barnes & Noble every week after getting paid and buying all sorts of books on anthropology and sociology, two subjects I'd loved at Northwestern. I saw all these similarities in world cultures. What a small tribe in the Amazon did to organize their society was the same as what we college queers did in our own micro-society. Ostracization, favoritism. Banishing the bisexuals, embracing the lesbian soap opera and ritualizing social contact and hooking up. I saw similarities everywhere, and I just wanted to study them. That was the day I downloaded a admission form to University of Chicago's Ph.D. anthro program. And it was also the day I finally gave in and went to Andrea's weekend "seminar" out in Palatine.

Oh, I expected New Age bullshit, no question. All that hinting around that Andrea'd done at work, and I expected either a big "sharing feelings" circle-jerk or me being hooked up to an e-meter. With any luck, I'd come home alive and unprogrammed. But when I got there, it was a chintzy little porn production office. I mean, just silicone tits everywhere. So now I'm thinking, they need some chubby college-age dyke for some fetish movie and Andrea thinks I'm getting paid just little enough at 'GN to go through with it.

That's when they led me into the room.

You remember _1984_, Room 101? That's what it was like. From Friday night to Sunday morning I stayed in there. And while I don't remember much of it, much like that afternoon at Comiskey with my dad, I know I was subjected to the very worst that humanity has to offer. Degradation after degradation. I tried to crawl out a few times. The words "Basic Perinatal Matrix 3" echo through my memory as I try to recall it. But when I came out, I was just different. I was free. Free of the anger towards my family and my self, free of the shame over my sexuality, and free of the psychic pain I'd borne for years. The equivalent of 20 years of therapy in three days. And free. Not bad. But I had one small debt to pay.

A conference with Daphnee was the final step. She said that what I'd been through was an experimental and new form of healing the Sect had been using for a few months and that Andrea thought I was a prime candidate. They also explained what the Goddess and her worship was all about. Here I was, a prospective anthro student, and they wanted me to be part of their little microculture. What could I do? I saw what power the Goddess had. I had watched the tape at the beginning of my time in the Room. It triggered it all in me. I had the power now.

Like I said in Daphnee's little film, I fuck the Goddess. But it's with reverence and love. I've outgrown and shed my anger towards everyone around me. I can love, finally. I can choose. I came out to my parents last year and nothing happened. Dad didn't even bat an eyelash. In fact, their reactions were a little... muted, to say the least. They just sat there, blinking, while I explained the last six years of my hidden life to them. I think the Goddess reached into their brains and flipped a switch like She did in mine.

I smile a lot more now. I can drink without getting drunk, I can fuck without getting angry or despondent. I can enjoy a spring day like a normal person might, without thinking about the darkness around me. So, yeah. That's how I came to the Goddess. And that's who I am.

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