Just Skimmed Through STORMS

[Iktomi]

Originally Posted by michelej1

With the incident at Christine's house, Carol does not say that Lindsey dragged her by the hair. She says her hair got caught in the window of his car as he was driving away. Christine told him to stop driving. It's not clear that Lindsey knew that her hair was in the car, she had been chasing him as he was leaving.

I've had that happen to me with the belt from my coat getting trapped in the door as someone was driving off. Neither of us knew that the belt was in the coat until the car started to move and I started to be dragged, but luckily the belt got pulled away from my coat and I wasn't caught behind the moving car.

As for witnesses to her story, generally, when you are writing a book you actually have comments from the witnesses to verify your story -- at least two if preferable. I mean you don't have to do that for an autobiography, but when people write biographies they have two verifying sources to be considered credible. You can say anyone saw things and that doesn't put the onus on them to come forward and say they didn't see it.

If things happened the way Carol said they did, it's criminal behavior which would not only have warranted censure, but jail time. But I find her an unreliable narrator and I think there's some truth to her story, but I don't know how much. To me, you really have to seem believable on the small things to be credible on the big ones. I know the reverse logic goes, she might lie about little things, but she wouldn't lie about something major, but I look at it the other way around. I need to trust the small steps, before I make the big leaps.

Michele

Although true that it isn't on the witnesses to corroborate and discount her account, she puts her account out there to be potentially challenged, which can provide for some readers a certain amount of credibility. Mileage varies and some people need more than that. Although, even if she wanted the band members to provide a comment on the abuse, I don't know if they would or could? On one hand, if her accounts were accurate, they'd be admitting that they saw a woman being abused and they remained silent and looked the other way. I'm not really here to speculate on those aspects, but I think in her situation, even if they wanted to comment on it, it wouldn't have been without political and personal baggage. I mean she was talking about domestic violence, which was punishable by law, had anyone bothered to report him (and of course, it was a slightly different era, and abuse was even more less likely to be reported then than it is today).

Personally, I'm not invested in him enough emotionally to be affected by these allegations (in other words, it's not like when I found out my childhood idol Michael Jordan wasn't a very nice guy). Truthfully, I look at this moreover through the lens of my experiences and career, and approach her story the same way I would with anyone similar to her situation, and accept her experiences as true to her. I've read stories and met people where I've seen obvious lies and exaggerations, but in this instance, I found her greater points on being in an abusive relationship as credible. Unlike many of you, I likely don't know enough about the band to be able to discredit her finer details anyway, so maybe that skews my view? Would non LB/FM fans give her as much credibility as me? Give her more credibility? Less? We could go back and forth on that, but she hasn't really given me any reason to think she's outright lying in her greater narrative. And again, it's not just her book. It's his own words in describing himself back then. It's others' description of him. In cases with abuse, you're never going to see the actual abuse, you're not always going to have witnesses, and you're not always going to see the marks, especially if the abuse isn't physical. So you have to learn to be very intuitive about certain behavior patterns when it comes to all forms of abuse - child abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, etc. (And it goes without saying but nonetheless: intuitions can be wrong, and patterns can be misleading and I'd most wholeheartedly and sincerely welcome being wrong on this issue. Regardless, it seems to me that he's gone through a lot of positive changes, and you can especially see that in his lyrics. I'm still an enthusiastic fan of his music and his history doesn't change that.)

Edit: so I found that passage, and the way I read it is that Lindsey did pull her hair and purposely dragged her, and while you may disagree, I think Carol is indicating that Christine did see this happening.

Pg. 222
"...Before I could say another word, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and floored the gas. Jerked forward, I desperately tried to hold onto the car door as I was dragged by the hair down Christine's driveway. I could hear her screaming, "Lindsey, stop the car! Stop! Stop!" over the sound of Lindsey's voice muttering unintelligible words as I stumbled to my knees still trying to hold on.
"Then as I was falling as Lindsey finally let go...I felt hands helping me to my feet and through blurred eyes I saw Christine's startled face as she asked me over and over if I was ok..."