drink the kool-aid

for many years i complained that I wasn't invited to an upscale halloween event.i got an invitation this year to a costume party thrown by millionaires and a member of the aristocracy.i went to the dentist for another root canal, then sauntered to the mcdowells pop up restaurant. later my costume hung unworn on my closet door and I stayed at home to watch american horror story: cult.

now i knew this was coming so it should not have been so shocking. evan peters as jim jones is on the screen. black people are dying and my stomach starts to hurt.the scene looks too familiar.this post really should start when I was a teenager and barely listened to the rambling adventures of my father."Lee Harvey" had an amazing life (think auntie mame set in the 1970s with more heroin and a stronger pimp hand).one of these stories involved his bff jim and how everybody thought jim was a cool cat because he was one of the few white people to treat them with respect. or the other story about how jim asked "Lee Harvey" to help make a paradise in the jungle aka jonestown.

when I was younger i would watch every jonestown documentary,read every book but now it's too painful.what started as a cool story to tell my friends turned into the tragedy it has always been. the "drink the koolaid" jokes that were never funny now upset me.i think of all those innocent women and children who were killed for no good reason and the fact that the only reason my father survived to tell the tale was a little twist of fate,the only luck he ever had.