300,000 mentally ill people in US prisons.

It's a figure I saw on 60 minutes tonight.

I left Uruguay because I was pretty sure I was going to be the victim of a violent crime in my own home. The news media never covered anything much like that, but it was interesting how my co-workers all had detailed robbery / home invasion stories where the phone line would get cut, one or a group of people got in, everything was stolen, perhaps a rape was committed. After I left the country I was chatting with an ex who lived in Montevideo. (He's not the one who I had the farm with, for those that are keeping score.) He was pretty shaken.

There had been a big winter storm and the gate on the front of their house had been damaged. His mother arrived home to discover she was not alone in the house. She was tied up and the intruders waited. His father arrived home and was jumped and tied up. My ex arrived home and he was tied back-to-back with his father - then his mother was raped in front of both of them.

It was sort of a confirmation, in my mind, that I'd made the right decision to leave. I mean, in my own country I was less likely to be a crime victim, right?

Wrong.

So long as I live I will not forget what happened on January 6th 2007. The guy I was living with moved in while I was still on the road all the time. I saw him on weekends and all was well. But around December 1st the woman whose consulting company I was working for turned into queen bitch of the universe and that was that for that job. Spending the month with this nut made me realize - damn, did you pick wrong. I'd somewhat done a background check and things that he said matched things I could independently find out. He'd told me that he was somewhat mentally ill and taking medication - but I told myself two things about that.

#1: Not everyone's perfectly sane all the time. It's just not human nature.
#2: I figured after all the crazy stuff that's happened in my life, what the hell more could happen? I've had a roommate look me in the eye and tell me he wanted me to keep him in a cage, another roommate who turned out to be a call-boy, I've played Nurse Diesel to an HIV-poz boyfriend who didn't want to take any medication, I subsequently dealt with his crazy family, had an Uruguayan girl try to claim I was the father of her child and (years ago) unwound after work with the all-male staff of a sitting republican state governor with tequila and coke in a scene that wound up in the bedroom. (And that would not be the type of coke made by an Atlanta-based company!!! What can I say, I've never claimed to be a perfect angel.)

#2 is not a comprehensive list by any means either. By day I play career guy, but someday a book is going to come out of me.

So lets just say that my capacity to look at a situation and judge it by saying, "That's weird," is a little less likely than most people. But that's not to say I'm not a little bit street-wise, even if it does come too late sometimes. When I saw the rainbow and variety of prescription drugs the dude had - holy shit.

By Christmas 2006 I'd decided that my erstwhile roommate/I don't know what (I don't deny there was a romance but it was more real for him than for me...) was bad news. He was obviously addicted to some of the medications he was taken and he had/has a doctor that'll call in damn near anything. After a couple of so-called "rage attacks" in which he claimed not to remember anything he'd said - yet if he really thought about it, it all conveniently came back - I'd had enough.

He bought more drugs through his doctor feel-good each week, too.

The morning of January 6th I told him to be out of my place by the end of March - more than generous. He flipped out and contrived to create a violent crime scene which he decided to blame on me. It was like a scene out of some crazy horror/drama movie. The cops showed up to make a long story short and he freaked out even more on them than he had on me - he left in handcuffs and I got a restraining order. The criminal case has yet to be adjudicated so I won't go into a whole lot more detail.

You may have heard the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It took two weeks for it to fully kick in. Most of my family thinks, "oh thats just more of his drama." I can't blame them, I seem to be a magnet for it. But I have one family member in a unique position to understand. He or she (I'm not going to be specific) was in a car on the freeway extremely close to the Pentagon when the plane hit it on 9/11.

So this person understands precisely what I'm going through. Granted my 1/6 is nothing compared to what they saw on 9/11, but the aftermath is about the same.

The guy who attacked me was mentally ill. Furthermore he kept really good records of his past. The local prosecutors don't give a damn that I can prove his past act of the exact same crime, so far. In Scottsdale, Arizona prosecutors obviously don't care much about a domestic violence case between a couple fags. It'd be a black mark against them in that annual Money magazine "best places to live" farce.

300,000 mentally ill people in US prisons. 1 more would make my day. I could sleep better at night with the knowledge that he's behind bars, and even better if I can locate where he's locked up so I can get a pen-pal and fill in his new roommates about just what a prince he is.

Yep, bitter, party of one. But the more I write and let it out the sooner all these seemingly inescapable PTSD symptoms will pass.