WritingSexTrauma

I’m writing a memoir. It’s a slow, arduous, lonely process. I stop often to replay the same passage in various ways to make sure I have it right. I spend a lot of time finding a way to narrate my experience – first person? Third person? Dialogue? Collapse time? Embellish for literary sake? And once I figure it out I might change my mind and rewrite it all.

My book writing group told me to just keep going. Get it all down. This is a first draft. Edit later. I have never written like that. When telling a story, I ramble; but in writing I measure my words too closely.

I had a friend, a butch, who told the same funny anecdote over and over about how when you tell a femme she looks good, she says.... (and then the butch would launch into a hilarious monologue about makeup and beauty techniques). The punch line was, “Tell a butch she looks good, she says ‘haircut.’”

I talk like a femme and write like a butch. A professor once told me my writing was “breathless.” This was not a compliment. I’m too succinct; I don’t add enough details, or “flesh it out,” or “unpack,” or any of those literary things you’re supposed to do. Basically, I’m not a storyteller. I don’t read or write for the story but because I get a visceral reaction to certain kinds of writing and that’s what I aim for.

So I’m trying to loosen up. Stretch the ideas, feel what it is I’m writing about and not try so hard to be a good writer – at least in the first draft. This is a memoir I’m writing; it’s storytelling. I want to write a poignant story but I can’t do that by just narrating without feeling what it is to have lived my life.

I’m an emotions chicken. I’m a pain avoider. Making emotional pain a temporary inconvenience has been my survival strategy in life. I’ve never thrown myself on a bed crying. I used to never even cry. It took a lifetime to realize that feeling does not equal weakness. And when you run from pain instead of feeling it, understanding it, dealing with it -- pain reaches out her bony claw and pulls you back so you repeat the same idiotically painful things your whole life.

When I started writing a book, I narrated my life events as if they were someone else’s life. I explained things like I was sitting across from myself in the analyst’s chair. Then it wasn’t working. I was getting bored of myself. So I decided to go to people who knew me and ask them questions; maybe learn something unexpected.

My first experiences of seeking out sources were interesting. I’ve spoken to family members, found people from 30, 40 years ago -- but nothing really changed the way I was writing and I was frustrated.

Then through connections on Facebook I happened upon a photograph. It’s a black and white photo from 1971 in the San Fernando Valley of two musicians with shag haircuts. Both are 16. The one on the left is my old friend Danny and sitting with him is Guy. My blood ran cold.

That summer, 1971, Guy asked me out to the drive-in. It was officially my first date. I had just turned 14. Guy knew of me through friends but I didn’t know him at all when he approached me. He was quiet, sullen, dark-skinned, with a prominent nose and an interesting face. I was excited to be going out with an older boy from a different high school.

He pulled up to my house and honked the horn. I strutted down the driveway in platform shoes, a tube top and miniskirt, big hoop earrings, and lots of makeup. I got in the car, and without a word, Guy picked up a napkin off the floor and wiped my lipstick off – harshly, violently, scrubbing at my mouth. He said he didn’t like lipstick. I sat there, stunned, as we drove to the drive-in with the radio on, not talking. Once there, he paid, pulled into a space off to the side, didn’t bother to put the speaker in the car, and then he raped me.

I clicked on the name beneath the Facebook photo and saw what he looks like now: A middle-aged, shifty, salesman type – dark glasses, too-slick hair, jowly, puffy face, not smiling.

A couple weeks went by. On impulse, and because I needed to know something, though I wasn’t sure what, I went to Facebook and sent him a message: “just curious, Guy, do you remember me -- formerly Robin Modiano?” I left my apartment and didn’t think about it until the next morning. He responded with six messages. He told me he thought about me, was on his 3rd wife, worked at a Hollywood color lab, was the lead singer in an 80s heavy metal band (he sent me a link to the dreadfully stupid video). The last message said, “I remember the drive-in...I remember how wild you were and I loved it!!!!!!!”

I felt like I was punched in the chest. I paced. I gnawed at my nails. I doubted myself. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was willing and he never raped me and I’m just telling myself that all these years.

I waited a couple days, in a troubled state between self-doubt, and feminist awareness that self-doubt is a condition of my upbringing.

Then I wrote back. I asked, “Did we have sex other than at the drive-in?” We did. He described two other times in eight messages. His (grammatically stupid, misspelled) messages became increasingly more sexually graphic. He sent them over two days with hours in between as if he thought of nothing else for those two days. He described what I did to him, where we were, what I did afterward -- with such clarity you’d think no time had passed between 1971 and now. His final messages were about what he wanted to do to me if I came to LA. They were a rapist’s fantasies.

I knew what he wrote was true because I remembered it all. I remembered the settings and people and my provocative attitude. I don’t remember the sex, though I’m sure what he said was true because they were the same sex acts I was forced to do to men in my family when I was a child. Blow jobs and hand jobs were my specialty at 14.

I wanted to scream. I sent his messages to a couple confidantes. I asked if they were a turn on. “Yes,” was the reluctant response. I understand that. That’s what makes a sexual trauma narrative so complicated. There’s no way to tell the story without it being titillating. Sex, in general, is complex. It is riddled with insecurities, histories, cultural standards, religious decrees, repression, perversities, trauma, fetishes, displacements, wish fulfillment, identification, desire, self-hatred, self-delusion, desperation, need.

When incest is one’s first sexual experience it gets really murky. There’s no prior sexual self to get back to. It’s formative. That’s why I didn’t even have to ask myself why I had sex with him after he raped me. It’s what I knew. It was compelling.

I tried to turn the messages into a positive. I told myself that this is not new information, but grist for my writing. When I was a teenager, men thought I was a willing participant, why wouldn’t a teenaged boy?

Pacing, fretting, clutching my hands, standing in my pantry eating potato chips and staring mindlessly at the shelf of light bulbs and batteries, staring at myself in the mirror … these are the things I do, and I couldn’t write for days. I stared at the words on my laptop and none of it seemed to matter. I wrote and it was not good. I tried again. I didn’t care about what I was writing. I was really bothered.

Then my old friend Mark sent me an email asking when we could get together. Oh my god … Mark! Why hadn’t I called Mark! Mark is an author and a writing teacher. He is one of the people I trust most in the world. I’ve written about him in this blog. I told him I couldn’t write and I had to see him immediately. He asked me to send him what I wrote thus far.

He made me tea; I sat like the non-emoting emotional wreck I was on his white couch. He had read my book thus far. He told me I have to re-write it and not distract myself. He set a deadline for me of June 2011. I agreed. He said I have to stop writing my blog because it takes time away from writing my book. He’s right. I have to not be afraid. So Mark is going to be my writing coach and we’re meeting weekly. And until I have a first draft of my book I can no longer write my blog.

Censorship and my queer identity

Eleven days ago, John Boehner, incoming Republican House speaker, succumbing to a bully from the faux-pulpit, William Donohue, threatened the Smithsonian into removing a David Wojnarowicz video from a queer-themed, privately funded show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Boehner told Secretary Clough of the Smithsonian that the institution “be prepared to face tough scrutiny” by the new Republican majority if they did not remove the piece.

This makes me spitting mad and I take it personally.

Wojnarowicz created “A Fire in My Belly” in 1987 after the death from AIDS of his lover, the photographer Peter Hujar, and after learning he was HIV+ (d. 1992). It is a fierce, pain-filled montage. The images are layered with Diamanda Galas’ bone-jarring composition. Galas wrote the piece in 1986 after her brother’s death from AIDS.

I am a fan of both Wojnarowicz and Galas. Wojnarowicz’s art was intimate, revealing, vulnerable, beautiful, pictorial memoir. His paintings told stories about his life, literally and symbolically, always with poignancy no matter how disturbing the image. But that is beside the point.

Or maybe it is the point.

I came out as a femme queer in 1995. I had a life I might have dreamed of if I were heterosexual: married to a wonderful man, an artist, whom I loved; living in a loft in Soho; two young children, a boy and girl; straight couple friends, all creative, edgy, interesting people. When I became aware that I was a dysfunctional heterosexual, my plan was to come out when I was 50 so my children would be grown and I didn’t have to ruin my family so badly. I didn’t make it past 37. I would have imploded if I waited any longer. Living a double consciousness is painful.

Two things helped me understand my identity and gave me the courage to come out – education and art. Let me back up: I am not a lesbian in the usual sense, meaning my desire is not sisterly or woman-centric. I am the woman. I want a female husband. My first revelation was finding the identities of “femme” and “butch” in books. Even though I fit squarely in the standard definitions of “femme,” I didn’t feel a politic around it. The myth of femme identity is that it’s about as antifeminist as you can get with its focus on the feminine trappings of makeup and frilly frocks, sexual submission, desire for the masculine, gendered division of domestic labor, and eroticizing old-fashioned masculine chivalry. My “The Personal is Political” politic was to say that, yes, all that is true but butch/ femme is a constructed, consensual dynamic between two females with no inherent State-sanctioned power imbalance…and it’s subversive, mirroring the dominant paradigm queerly, exposing it as unstable, blah blah blah. That’s where the education part came in.

When I was younger, looking at the 19^th c. Turkish bath paintings of Ingres and Gerome filled my loins with lust and my heart with shame. I thought it irreverent to look at these exquisite paintings and feel turned-on as if they were porn. But as I learned later, art has multiple interpretations and one can look at Robert Mapplethorpe’s well-hung men or Sally Mann’s children or Catherine Opie’s queers or the weirdness of Lisa Yuskavage or John Currin and be aroused by both the image and the craft. Art can evoke anguish, curiosity, identification, yearning, anger, etc. Art is commentary. It is related to time, history, geography, and technique. And that is what makes art so relevant to a society. When it’s not commentary, it’s not art; it’s decoration.

I’ll give it to Boehner and Donohue for recognizing art and its purpose, assuming they saw the piece. Their feelings were aroused, they understood it was a commentary on religion, and they knew it was important enough or they wouldn’t find it worthy of condemnation. However, they did not censor the piece because of its content. As Frank Rich wrote (following Blake Gopnik of the Washington Post), “Those [grisly] images are staples of all museums – even in Washington, where gory 17th-century sculptures of Christ were featured in a recent show of Spanish sacred art at the National Gallery.” They bullied the Smithsonian into removing it because the artist is a queer. This is not about imagery but about religious zealots and conservative lawmakers condemning queers and making AIDS their private penance.

Now this is where I come in again. I am a queer. David Wojnarovich is meaningful to my sense of who I am. Queer art did not tell me that I am a queer-- that was in the butch/femme books of Joan Nestle – rather it helped me understand, with beauty and pain and poignancy, that my queer world and my identity are multi-faceted, sometimes conflicting, and complex. And frankly, I feel fortunate to be who I am. If I believed in God I would believe I was blessed to be born a queer and to have lived the life I have. Being queer has made me a political person.

It took me a long time to figure this out. I spent the 70s not paying attention to lesbian feminism, and the 80s not paying enough attention to the AIDS epidemic. I feel badly about that now considering I was young and healthy and those were my queer people who died and I did nothing. I dropped deeply into my unstable heterosexuality, trying so hard to be a good wife and mother.

I came out of my stupor in the early 90s when I was a graduate student in Performance Studies at NYU studying performance and politics during the Bush administration. The Corcoran had recently cancelled Robert Mapplethorpe’s show; Senators Alphonse D’Amato and Jesse Helms condemned Andres Serrano’s photograph, “Piss Christ”; the NEA rescinded grants given to performance artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller and John Fleck; and Representative Rohrabacher told the House to end NEA support for David Wojnarowicz. I became an activist, a member of the Women's Action Coalition, a mighty group started by women artists, writers, and art dealers. We staged protests that were fabulous as performance pieces and always made me cry because of the spirit and strength behind what we did.

***

When I first read of the censorship on December 1 (World AIDS Day) I felt sick. Not again. No no no … not the Christian right again; not homophobic Republican idiots condemning without any comprehension about the meaning and purpose of art – or without even seeing it. I thought we had come further than this.

AIDS is part of United States history. Curators, archivists, historians and the general public should be humbled and awed by the volume of brilliant creativity in all mediums that came out of this epidemic. AIDS is in the U.S. legacy of not caring what happens to citizens who are deemed marginal. The great tragedies – slavery, internment camps, AIDS -- in which the United States is at fault for human rights violations, are greatly underplayed in the retelling of U.S. history. Censorship is obscene and dangerous.

This time I can’t be silent. I refuse to let MY right to bear witness to the pain and fury of AIDS, and to view queer art, be censored by Republicans and the Christian right. We – everyone with a conscience -- have a responsibility to manage the creative legacy of AIDS victims. These works are of historical importance and a testament to the incredible talent that died with an underfunded epidemic.

I'm going to Washington to protest.

******

“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. Man, Gentlemen, does not improvise. The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion.” ~ Ernest Renan “What Is A Nation?” 1882 (trans. French)

100 mundane sentences without punctuation beginning with “I” of things that I did between 6:15 am and 2:30 pm on November 29

On Facebook there are lists circulating asking details about a person’s interests, reading habits, memories, etc. with a request that they tag others to participate. Does anyone read the lists of anyone? Maybe someone they have a crush on for clues, but otherwise? I like questionnaires. I think they’re fun and ego gratifying to fill out but I don’t participate in the Facebook lists because afterward I feel like, “why did I do that?”

I like making lists. Here is my list of 100 mundane sentences without punctuation beginning with “I” of things that I did between 6:15 am and 2:30 pm on November 29.

1. I woke at 6:15 am
2. I leaned way off the bed to turn off the humidifier
3. I can take only so much of the humidifier noise
4. I know a humidifier is good for my complexion
5. I pet the dogs
6. I pulled my nightgown from beneath Roxy
7. I poured coffee
8. I use a Mr. Coffee-style automatic programmable coffee maker
9. I don’t care that there are advances in coffee-making techniques
10. I think Mr. Coffee is like having a servant
11. I got back into bed
12. I read a few wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times
13. I decided the gay marriage might last because they’re identical
14. I read the entire article about Coty buying OPI nail polish
15. I read this because I have a keen interest in nail polish and I was half asleep
16. I turned back to the part where it said it was for 1 billion dollars CASH
17. I learned that OPI was a dental product company Odontorium Products Inc
18. I read a chapter from a friend’s book
19. I turned on my office computer
20. I got more coffee
21. I made a mental note to water the plants
22. I read email
23. I responded to a writer who wants references for me as an editor
24. I played Lexulous
25. I went into my bedroom
26. I stared at my workout clothes
27. I got my client book and gym bag together
28. I walked past the barking dogs
29. I forgot my iPhone
30. I walked two blocks to the F/G trains
31. I had to wait through two F trains before the G train arrived
32. I noticed the train was unusually packed with post-Thanksgivingers
33. I got hit in the shoulder by a woman’s large bag swinging over me
34. I told her to move her bag
35. I said please
36. I tripped off the train at Fulton Street
37. I got my foot caught in a man’s suitcase handle
38. I yelled “Jesus Christ!”
39. I walked the two blocks to David’s house
40. I was 5 minutes late when I buzzed his buzzer
41. I walked past the dog statue and unpainted canvases
42. I turned on the lights in his gym and inspected my flyaway hair
43. I took weights off the bench press while waiting for him to come down
44. I had a conversation with him about the Baldessari show
45. I asked questions about who was at his Thanksgiving
46. I told him I saw Tiny Furniture and what Theo said about it
47. I listened to him describe an article about a 91-year-old woman athlete
48. I admired his pecs and triceps
49. I take the credit for how good they look
50. I took the G train
51. I got off at 4th Avenue and 9th Street by habit to go to the gym
52. I went to the gym before I had time to talk myself out of it
53. I read the article whilst on the Lifecycle about the 91-year-old woman athlete
54. I ran on the treadmill and almost skipped over Amoreena by Elton John
55. I then remembered Piper asking me when I knew I was a writer
56. I listened to Elton sing “living like a lusty flower” and “…puppy child”
57. I thought to tell Piper that words that hooked me made me write
58. I pushed myself harder on abs and upper body
59. I want to be an athlete at 91
60. I walked home taking big steps and not stepping on cracks
61. I walk faster that way if I make it a game
62. I said hi to my upstairs person on the stoop and the dogs barked
63. I put on the happy dogs’ leashes and we went out the gate
64. I walked alongside a man the size of a tree in a suit
65. I wanted to get ahead of him but the dogs stopped to pee
66. I thought he didn’t see me behind him on the narrow sidewalk
67. I texted Jenny a philosophical question about sex
68. I read her reply that it’s not that simple and she was on a conference call
69. I brushed the dogs teeth and gave them treats
70. I took a shower
71. I leaned against the shower tiles and several were loose
72. I thought of Young Frankenstein when Gene Wilder spun around in the wall
73. I didn’t put on eye makeup
74. I am only going out again to walk the dogs later
75. I put on lipstick because I can’t not wear lipstick once I start my day
76. I wore stay-at-home rather than hit-by-car panties
77. I don’t know if #76 makes sense to anyone
78. I looked at my ass in the mirror to see if it is heading further south
79. I made oatmeal with pecans, cranberries, and ginger syrup
80. I read another chapter from another friend’s book
81. I read a review of Steve Martin’s book but I don’t know
82. I thought apropos of nothing that I hate the concept of flash mobs
83. I think they are fascistic and conformist and militaristic
84. I told Theo that idea last night while we ate at Romans and he said hmmm
85. I paid ConEd and At&T bills
86. I debated whether to buy gloves online that let you use an iPhone in winter
87. I compared dog food prices online
88. I looked at artsy candlesticks that I want
89. I don’t use candles but maybe I would one day
90. I screwed around on Facebook
91. I wrote out a schedule for the rest of the day
92. I do this so that I will schedule writing and then stick to it
93. I sat down to write this list
94. I should be writing my book
95. I wrote “write 1-2pm”
96. I am writing but not what I’m supposed to be writing
97. I am bad at enforcing my own rules
98. I made coffee
99. I think this list is pretentious
100. I will ask Jenny

wanted, objectified, exploited

“She had gone along with what the piano teacher wanted because she felt sorry for people who wanted things so badly.” ~ Alice Munro, Corrie

There was a time in my 20s when I felt obliged to respond to most anyone who was interested in me. If a man turned to look at me in the street, I checked my posture; if he smiled, I smiled back. This behavior was in contrast to how I was otherwise, which was pretty self-possessed. It was a closet behavior. I don’t think people who knew me knew that I behaved like this.

The irony is that I thought when a man was looking at a woman stranger lasciviously or he made noises or comments, that he was a weak man; infantile, responding to juvenile impulses. And so, like Alice Munro’s protagonist, I felt superior ... but still obligated to respond. This, of course, is crazy logic. Men who ogle women are just ill-mannered boors.

My feeling of power came from being sexually used by men when I was a child and teenager. You'd think that would make one feel powerless, but their lack of control made me feel in control. Underlying the perversions and desperation of unjust people is vulnerability from fear or from wanting something so badly. They seemed like simple brute animals to me. They could take my body, but not my mind, and I quietly watched myself being exploited, like a child sociologist gathering information.

Around 1980, while I was living in West Hollywood, I got an obscene phone call. It started with heavy breathing and “dirty” words muttered in a vaguely English accent. I listened quietly and then he stopped because I neither hung up nor spoke. There was a moment of silence and then I said, “What do you want?” He repeated, “cunt”… “fuck” … whatever he was saying. It was trite, run-of-the-mill. I said, “No, what do you really want?” He hung up.

A few days later he called back. Same thing: breathing, muttering. I greeted him with a cheery hello as if he were an old friend and asked again what he wanted. This time he was quiet and after a moment I hung up. Over the next year he called often and we developed a rapport. He said his name was Jeffrey, which I spelled as “G-e-o-f-f-r-e-y” in my head. Sometimes I’d say that I was busy and couldn’t talk. If I had a friend over I would hang up and casually say, “Oh that’s my obscene phone caller.” But other times I spoke to him for maybe an hour. Our interaction was thus: He told me his sexual interests and I would tell him how mundane they were and guide him toward more perverse, “advanced” interests. He’d give them a yea or nay and then I’d pry into why these things did or did not suit him. It was a power game in which I was the authoritative, confident woman and he was the weak, insecure man. I became the obscene respondent to what became an almost demure caller. He relied on me; I could tell.

I even went so far as to tell him to meet me in public. I chose Book Circus, a pornography bookstore patronized mostly by gay men, at the corner of the street where I lived. I told him we could play a game: we would guess who the other was and when he called next we would tell one another what we thought. I went to Book Circus but he didn’t and when he called again, he told me he was afraid. I felt sorry for him. I was the one in charge of this perverse exchange.

Recently I was reminded that when I was a teenager I had a group of friends who were boys who did not sexualize me (although I was having sex with other guys at that time). Our bond was over music; British rock to be specific -- Humble Pie, Small Faces, Slade, Manfred Man, etc. I was accepted as a person with music knowledge, rather than as a chick. A few of the guys went on to be in heavy metal or punk bands that had minor success and I eventually worked in the music business. The most successful friend was my closest pal, Kevin, who was the lead singer in a Billboard-charting heavy metal band, Quiet Riot. Before all that, before he was even in a band, Kevin and I would sit in his room afterschool listening to albums and studying the sleeve notes, or spend hours in records stores. We also got pretty good at stealing records.

One day Kevin told me he met a girl who said she put lotion all over her body everyday. He told me this as if I were not also a girl who perhaps did the same thing. There was something pantingly, pathetically sexual about his wonderment and it felt like a breach of our unspoken boundaries. It made me feel embarrassed as a girl. After that he paid attention to me differently and one day asked me to take off all my clothes so he could “just look.” This is what I think 4 years old do but he pleaded and I felt sorry for him so I obliged. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship; that, and also because he went to a psychic who told him he would become rich as a singer so he stopped dissecting records with me and spent hours learning how to sing. That was so boring. He died a few years ago of a drug overdose in a Las Vegas hotel room, as a rich singer.

I grew up in that generation in which women were supposed to be delighted and validated by male overtures. I found it really hard to rebuff an advance, or not respond to a hiss, a gratuitous smile, a muttered comment, a direct stare without feeling like I would be labeled a “bitch.” I can’t say why it mattered more -- not just to me, but many women -- what went on in the mind of a male stranger rather than my own peace of mind. Maybe it’s mostly uneducated women, or women who were sexually abused, or feminine women, or proletariat women, or heterosexual women -- but I know I’m not the only one who, in my 20s an 30s, responded to men with a culturally ingrained feeling that I was chattel despite my innate feminism.

In the late 1980s I had to make changes in my demeanor. I had a baby daughter who I was entirely focused on, I really wasn’t paying attention to boorish male behavior. I started feeling panicked about the way men responded to me. At the same time, I had a wonderful husband who I trusted, who treated me and other women as equals, and while I chose him as a husband because he was such a good guy and this is something I knew in my gut, I didn’t have a gut instinct for dangerous or predatory men. In the few short years that I wasn’t paying attention, I was the recipient of behavior that ranged from a man commenting, while I sipped coffee over a book in a restaurant, that he got vibes that I wanted to sleep with him, to being molested twice in stores in broad daylight.

It’s just a basic truth that New York City is a man’s town. Men move way more freely in the city than women do and they commandeer public space. It really is virtually impossible for a young woman to get from one place to another without having her thoughts interrupted by male attention. But that’s just the way of the city. My solution in the 80s, was to be on hyper-alert all the time and ignore every man who paid attention to me. This wound up making me angry. I’m a social person and I need to live socially with other human beings. When I came out in the mid-90s, I went through a spell of “man hating” although that didn’t feel right either because there are several men who I love very much, so I ditched that bad idea.

What I learned fairly recently is that I don’t belong to anyone other than myself. It took decades of lessons for me not just to know this, but to feel it. Starting over again here in New York City was about reclaiming my body, my personhood. I lost sight of that. For too many years I had been able to disconnect, dissociate and go along with being objectified and exploited. When I moved back here six months ago, I made a pact with myself to interact differently with people based on integrity, which I’ve always wanted to have so badly. I don’t let lovers and friends choose me, I choose them. Maybe that sounds callous but it’s about not feeling obliged to owe something to anyone who shows an interest. Basically, I’ve learned how to say no.

Italians, artists, professors, Brooklyn. (Postscript: To which class do I belong?)

When I lived in Manhattan in the '80s-90s I was not really aware of class but of living in New York City after a lifetime in LA, and how diverse NYC was. In 1985 I lived on Mott St between Houston and Prince in what was then Little Italy and now is Soho-adjacent. I found my apartment, with my then very Italian-from-Long-Island boyfriend of a few months, Michael, by passing myself off as Italian. I still had the last name of my mother's Sephardic Jewish husband, Modiano, and like he did when it was convenient, I could pass as a nonJew Italian. We found the apartment because I had the idea of going to an area that I liked and asking in the bodegas and delis if anyone had a place for rent. We didn't even talk about moving in together when we hit the jackpot in an Italian sandwich shop on Mott. They knew the building owners and said right up front that if we were married and Italian they'd call over and say we were coming. Of course we were married and Italian!

Michael and I lived on the 4th floor of a 4-story walkup with 8 apartments. The building was inhabited by old Italian women and one young family direct from Italy across the hall -- since we were the only ones who could make it up the stairs. One of the old women, Maria, still had a husband. His name was Mike. They owned the building with their son, who paraded around like a hit man with this 90-mile-an-hour haircut, cashmere trench coat, black suit and tie in the middle of summer, and spit-and-polish shoes. Mike and his wife got into rip-roaring fights that you could hear all the way up to the 4th floor in which he would accuse her of being a whore and sleeping with black men (though he did not say it quite like that). This is a 70-year-old woman in a housedress we're talking about.

My relationship with Michael turned sour after a few months and we were the ones in a rip-roaring fight. After I took his keys, threw him out and locked the door behind him, he returned through the fire escape making all kinds of ruckus. The next day I encountered the usual assemblage of old women in lawn chairs in front of the building -- Maria in her housedress and the rest in black, mourning the long dead husbands. The one in the apartment directly below said, "I heard you last night. I'll bring up some macaroni and gravy." (translation: pasta and sauce). I asked why no one called the police. Maria said, "we thought you were having a fight with your husband. DID YOU HAVE AN INTRUDER?!" No no, just a fight with my husband. sigh.

I found a roommate after running it by the women and Mike. Yes, they said, but no girls who date "n*ggers." I felt a little queasy about not telling him that he and his prejudiced ass are going to hell but I had to keep up my ruse as a good Italian Catholic in her 20s soon to be a divorcee.

I met Russell at the end of '85 -- on the street and because of a book. One day I stopped to talk to Fred, a contractor, who I met while he was building a new Agnes B. store on Prince St. He looked just like I imagined the contractor to look in the book I was reading, House by Tracy Kidder (who years later, coincidentally, I lived near in Northampton, MA) and I told Fred so. It was a great pickup line. Russell, knowing Fred already had a girlfriend, crossed Prince St to see who I was. In short time I moved the few blocks over from Mott St to Crosby St into Russell's loft. He is an artist and Soho was then not the swank shopping mecca it is now, but an artist's area of studios, lofts and galleries.

We were married about a year and a half later. I was 4-months pregnant. I met lots of women who were pregnant in Soho at that time, several who are still my friends. It was right during the baby boomers' baby boom. I had my personal training business and was doing freelance copyediting. My friends were all college-educated, though I was not, and were artists and writers mostly. I was happy. I felt like I belonged although it was being pregnant and married to an artist that gave me the in -- not my lack of education nor, as it turned out, my sexual orientation.

In 2000 I moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. I envisioned a place where lesbians roamed free and met for coffee everyday and had intellectual conversations about things that went on in the 5-college community. I knew my children would be happy and I thought so would I. Soon after I moved my relationship broke down and once more there was a lot of ruckus. This time it wasn't a bunch of old ladies in lawn chairs but a street of uptight New Englanders in perfect houses with manicured lawns who did not want to associate with someone as excessive and prone to trouble -- with my mannish-looking partners -- as me.

Ten years I was an outsider on that street. My lipstick was just a little too bright, my heels a little too high. I knew they thought I was lesser than but I so much did not want to be like them that I was okay being the femme queer in the small imperfect house with the poodles and dykes and the menorah at Christmastime and the daughter with a nose ring and the crabgrass lawn.

But man o man was I happy to get out of there.

So here I am in Brooklyn. I live in a garden apartment in a lovely brownstone. Above me are the owners of the brownstone, my "upstairs people" as I call them, a little Jewish guy and his gorgeous black wife. Two of my personal training clients are on this street. They are upstairs people. The upstairs people in north Park Slope are the gentry and us lowly renters are the proletariet. We're the personal service people, the struggling writers, artists, musicians. They're the lawyers, business retirees, doctor, executives, Writers Who Made It Big.

Like when I first lived on Mott St. it's not about class but about being in NYC. I love having access to art, music, performance; the amazing food; random humanity; anonymity among the masses; not being easily readable or transparent; not clearly wealthy nor poor; meeting strangers over dogs or food or on the subway; passing the dancing Cuban man while running in the park; walking through hundreds of school kids to get to the train; wandering through bookstores; meeting my son for dinner; going out at night in a little black dress and feeling pretty, not like a freak; being so close to the ocean.

To which class do I belong?

While walking the dogs through Prospect Park recently, I had an overall sense of gratitude. It wasn’t to anyone or for anything in particular but about how, after five months of floundering in Brooklyn, unsure of what the hell I was doing, reeling from the craziness of Northampton, and thinking I was pushing my luck starting over again at 53, I’m doing okay. Better than okay; better than I imagined. My work is steady and promising, I have uninterrupted time and peace-of-mind, my life has taken interesting turns, my body feels strong, I adore my old and new friends, my apartment feels like a home, my dogs are happy, even my plants are happy, and I’ve been able to write for the first time in years. And I’m in New York City again. Sometimes I can’t believe I made it back here.

So while I was wandering and daydreaming and thinking about where I’ve been and what I’m doing, I thought about what class I might belong to. I had an idea -- that now embarrasses me but I’ll say it anyway -- that I am a modern-day bohemian. I was pleased with this idea until I did a Google search and found that “bohemian” has strayed far from its 19th century origins and “modern bohemian” is now an aesthetic that reads something like “wealthy California faux-hippie neo-Republican.” I scrapped the idea.

Class is really a mess. And its applications are suspect. If I look at the charts that divide class, I’m closest to Lower Middle Class; however I have more of an education, less of an income, and more autonomy than the usual definition. I also refuse to be ordinary, complacent, normal, marginal, fade into the background, or work at something I don’t care about.

Freedom matters to me more than money. I can’t be a cog; I’m a terrible team player. I’ve tried it. It’s not that I’m an “I don’t take orders” kind of person. It’s not arrogance, it’s that I can’t follow what it is I’m supposed to do unless I have a personal interest, and boredom is something I don’t tolerate. I can’t remember the last time I was “bored.”

Oh, I do remember: It was with my mother when I was about 12 and we were on one of our jaunts into the city from the Valley. We were going to Fairfax, the old Jewish section (if anything in LA can be called “old”), to Canter’s deli and then to Farmer’s Market where they sold everything from fresh horseradish to moccasins. We usually wound up at Dupar’s for coconut or banana cream pie at the counter. But this day she wanted to stop at a furniture store. The store was the size of a warehouse and they sold the plastic molded tables and floral couches cheaply. It was a sea of beige. She flirted with the salesman, ignored me and I was left to wander this deadeningly boring place that offered absolutely no visual or mental stimulation whatsoever. I wound up sitting in the car, blazing hot from the California sun, and crying with fury. I displaced boredom with anger. After that I never went anywhere without a book.

So how does this relate to class? While I’m not a team player, I’m also not an entrepreneur. Well I guess I am in the sense that I’ve started two businesses 25 years ago – personal training and freelance editing – and they’ve sustained me since, but I don’t have the “entrepreneurial spirit.” I’m terrible at self-promotion and I’m not an opportunist. If I make it big it will be because the book I’m writing is a hit, not because I am a Professional. None of the things I am or do fall into a particularly class.

As a personal fitness trainer, I don’t work in a gym, am not "certified" (a marketing scam started about 15 years ago; the field is unregulated); nor do I work with just anyone or many people in a day. I don't make videos or sell products. I started my business 25 years ago when there was no such thing as a “personal fitness trainer.” I was offered money to teach a recording artist what I knew about exercising. Since then I’ve taught others what I’ve tried out on my own body. I know how to reshape a body. I love the challenge. Exercise is a passion for me. I take the “personal” in personal training seriously. That is always what it has been to me. I’m not an industry. I’m not a guru.

Then there’s my education. My skills don’t add up to expertise in one area and my education is unusual: BFA in Dramatic Writing (playwriting) and an almost-PhD (missing a dissertation) in the theory field of Performance Studies. I did all this schooling at NYU in my mid- to late-30s and while the degrees are fairly useless since I’m not a playwright nor a professor, the education made me a more scholarly and well-rounded person. That’s why I went to college. I wanted to learn how to see the bigger picture: how to make connections between concepts; the difference between the disease and the symptom (institutionalized poverty and crime, or sexism and prostitution); the difference between sex and gender, how hierarchies function. I was always a smart person but I grew up in vapid surroundings and just eked by in high school because I didn’t pay attention and never went. (I still don’t know enough about the branches of government or wars or great literature.) I always wanted to go to college.

Early in life I belonged to a transient class: Jews moved into neighborhoods of poorly constructed tract homes in the early-60s San Fernando Valley. There were blocks and blocks of us. The vibe was “fake it ‘til you make it.” Everyone wanted to be something more than they were. We were Jews! The Chosen People! It did not feel like a community of settled people. Maybe it was still soon enough after the end of WWII and the birth of suburbia for Jews to feel like assimilating to an ordinary non-persecuted life was enough of a goal. The feeling in my neighborhood was that one should aspire to be of a better status – though things like integrity, values, ethics, were secondary. Status was about having enough money to look rich regardless of what you did or how you got it. It was all about girls marrying well and boys making money. So instead of being pushed toward an education, I was pushed toward May Co. department store. I learned how to be of use for a man, but not how to balance a checkbook or support myself.

revisiting my childhood home in 2004. The window behind me was in my bedroom.

But class is about access too. My mother has a curious, lively mind, and she took me to plays, dance and music performance, museums, galleries, strolls in Beverly Hills where we could pretend to fit in – but she also took me to ethnically-marked neighborhoods to eat, look in shops, observe people. I’ve lived that way since – with access to culture both high and low, to homes I could never afford to live in, to wealthy people, to restaurants and vacations I couldn’t afford unless I was taken, and so on.

Some things from October

This isn't much of a blog entry. I've been writing about class -- What Class am I? is my question -- and also about sexual justice in the US based on a conversation I had with a friend who boycotts Woody Allen movies (and probably Roman Polanski). I boycott neither. I've been having a hard time writing and I have to think about it and get out of my rut. So for now, these are some things that happened in October -- great, weird, and other -- that have shifted my consciousness:

*My personal training business took off. One of my clients is a former client. We were in our 30s when we worked together last and we’re now in our 50s. I know his body well and it’s all very poignant and self-reflective to see a body that I in part constructed, age. He’s also one of my favorite painters and to be around his work again, and the work of other creative clients, makes me feel I’ve returned from a long exile. (Though at the same time, I loved my Northampton clients. They were what made me feel connected to a bigger world of ideas and experience while I lived there.)

*Old friends and people from the past keep popping up, especially from Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. Those were sybaritic times in a hedonistic place. Everyone was young, self-absorbed, and fucked up from drugs or fame or the glimmer of it. Now we’re all a little vulnerable. Less interested in the next pursuit and more interested in knowing and being known. And far more interested in love.

*My childhood sexual perpetrator cracked. Suicidal wishes and possibly a suicide attempt put him in a psych hospital. I’ve been informed that he talks about me obsessively to psychiatrists and anyone who will listen. He’s haunted. This new revelation made it hard for me to write. I have a tendency to depersonalized people who betray me. They stop in time. I refer to them by a term rather then their name. I don’t imagine their personhood. I don’t give them humanity. With other people this ended when I reached a point of indifference, but that never happened with him. This new information reanimates him. I don’t like it.

Northampton again

Thursday 10/7: I’m back in Northampton for a few days. I thought I would be anxious, panicked even, but I’m okay. After four months of being back in NYC, my work, my writing, my daily habits are taking shape and Northampton feels like a far away place where I led a strange life. This was a great place to raise my children; a fabulous place to have a personal training business; there were good editing jobs; pretty fall leaves. It was also a lesbian/queer/trans community weirder than I ever could have dreamed. Bucolic meets sinister. It was like a David Lynch film of a Stephen King book.

The thought of coming back here so soon seemed as likely as, say, skydiving or being hooked to a 2000-feet-long metal cable and speeding over trees at 60 miles per hour 250 feet above ground.

I’m staying at L’s house, my dear friend whom I’ve missed. She picked me up at the train and when we rolled into Northampton, I had an odd but pleasant sensation: Everything is familiar but it’s no longer mine. Sort of like what new grandparents say about being able to play with the baby and then hand it back when it needs a diaper change.

L.'s adorable dogs P.(etey) and L.(ulu)

Friday, 10/8: I’m borrowing L’s car for appointments. My health care is still based in Western Massachusetts, so I’ve crammed in the dermatologist, gynecologist, and a mammogram. Today I get squished, laser burned, and probed.

Before my appointments I drove past my old house. I did what I think people tend to do – drove past nervously, turned around, drove back, stopped and looked. I felt nothing. The giant 150-year-old maple in front was gone. Granted, it was weak and M.T.B. and I paid thousands to have the branches cabled but they took it down because they’re women riddled with drummed-up syndromes and the tree had bees (that never bothered me in 10 years). I could see inside the house. They painted every paintable surface inside and out, white. It looks awful to me. Like a little house turned into a sanitorium.

I drove away thinking about what is "home" anyway? Was it in that structure? Is it in a person? Place? Both? Neither? (My Buddhist friend, M.M. says, "in oneself.") That was my home for a decade and although I can navigate it and I know what it feels like to have the hot afternoon sun coming in the SW corner window while trying to meet an editing deadline – there is no longer a me, nor my children, in there. The house has been a house since 1898 but it holds no ghosts or remnants of us, nor the people who came before us.

Ironically, if I go on anymore about the house being just a structure, it makes me sad for the house. Maybe I do believe in the soul of a house. I have to think about it.

After my second appointment I met L. for lunch. We didn’t go to any of the regular places because I want to remain incognito here, so we had a hamburger at the Friday outdoor grill at a little independent grocery store on a side street. The usual suspects were there – the elderly and mentally ill from nearby residences, and the "Hamp" folk; people of farming stock, often Polish in origin, who’ve lived in Northampton for generations. Many are civil servants and tradespeople in the area.

Next to the grill was an ice cream freezer and a Hamp ice cream monger who told me it was locally made in small batches and he wanted to get the store to carry it. I joked with him that in Brooklyn they’re packing up the ice cream for the year and in New England they’re promoting it. (I always found that to be a weird New Englandism, ice cream in winter). He gave me a huge "sample" -- a toppling over ice cream cone. I took it to be polite and tried to keep it upright with my tongue when up the street, lo and behold, was my ex, M.T.B., smiling at me and shaking her head. I gave her a slight smile – not because I’m really that polite, but because I knew that she knew that I don’t eat ice cream and I make fun of New Englanders who do once summer has past. It was a frisson of recognition.

Now this brings me back to the topic of home. M.T.B. is like the house I lived in. I no longer know her or her interests or friends or pastimes, but at one time she was as familiar as a person can be. I might have thought of her as home. I know the landscape, the footprint -- but now she is, well, painted white and the big tree is gone.

Maybe home is a free-floating concept, ephemeral, not something reliable that you can go back to or that is waiting for you. Maybe as a metaphor it’s a resting place for mind, body, and soul and it can be anything, anywhere, anytime. It can also be the place where your bed is, though my last house and this town were never quite home.

If I do see someone from long ago or who knew me well, I know there’s a little of me there. Something intimate that they know. On the other hand, I’m not nostalgic or sentimental and I don’t walk down memory lane. This makes some people crazy because "reminiscing is like comfort food of the soul" -- and I hate reminiscing as much as I hate what I just wrote. I don't have time to go backwards, there’s way too much I need to catch up to in life. A 102-year-old swami with whom I once took a yoga class on 59th St. said in his age-shaky voice, “never go to a yoga retreat; you need to advance not retreat.” Right on, Swami B.! But back to the ice cream encounter: Just to contradict myself, that was a moment of nostalgia and it was kind of funny. It was a memory shared across time and the length of a sidewalk. I’m also glad I had that surprise encounter. It made me feel easier about being here. I don’t live here. I can leave. I can have fun. Mostly I was glad I looked cute when she saw me.

After my final appointment I met former-client-now-friend, N., for a coffee in the mob-owned deserted pastry shop with awful squishy faux-Italian pastries that are really there as props for a money laundering outfit. It was her idea since she knew without me saying so that I wanted to be incognito. I adore N. I miss seeing her every week. That’s a hazard with my profession as a personal trainer. I love my people. I don’t know how therapists let anyone go. At least we can be friends after I cut them loose to exercise on their own (or I move to Brooklyn).

That evening, my butch friend D.-aka-F. took me to dinner at a little place in the next town. I like that she wore a pink button-down shirt. It’s one of those subtle butch/femme things – that two females can wear pink but the waiter knows who gets the check. (Not that I can’t pick up the tab [at some point in my lifetime]! It’s a commentary on masculinity and tradition.)

Afterward I met my daughter, R.-formerly-M.R.-or-M., for dinner, again. She ate and I had dessert. I met her right in the middle of town. She is home. There is no question.

Saturday, 10/9: I was up at 6am and M.C. arrived at 7:30am to take me zip-lining in the Berkshires. I don’t know what compelled me to do this but I trust M.C. and I have to stop turning down offers of high adventure. She convinced me that the tallest, fastest, longest zip-line would be great for me because I am athletic. (Though she didn’t phrase it as the “tallest, fastest, longest…”.) That appealed to my inner jock’s ego which is separate from mine, like a little tomboy living inside me, so I consented. The athletic part was actually the hike up the mountain. Once there, a guy with broken front teeth and a "yo dude" attitude like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High hooked me to a metal clothesline, the end of which I could not see, and told me to run and jump off a cliff and curl up into a ball in my little nylon harness as I held on to a rope that was strung through a giant hook connected to a pulley that catapulted me down down down FAST over a ravine through a valley and over trees in their gold, red, yellow plumage.

That was the fourth of the 6 zip-lines. I did it. And the next one, higher up the mountain, and by the time I got to the last one, I was terrified at the drop and the distance but I did that too. And about halfway across I started to enjoy it and wanted it to go on a little longer so that I could drink in the scenery along with the wind-induced tears streaming from my eyes. M.C. took lots of photos of me smiling a smile that says, Help Me. She was trustworthy and reassuring as I knew she’d be. Thank you, M.C. That was a special and wonderful treat. :)

The last zip-line. It started at the end of the line that you can't even see in the background.

Afterward, we grabbed a bite to eat and she dropped me at L.’s. I had a couple hours to kill before the train. We went to the Paradise City Arts Festival. Lovely. I saw people there that I like, such as my favorite sexy femme dance partner, M. and her doting partner G. L. and I shlepped 'til I dropped.

By the time I walked in my Brooklyn door later that night I was glad to be ho… in the place where my bed is.

Authenticity

"There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity." ~Helene Hegemann, 17-year-old best-selling German novelist accused of plagiarism.

"Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important." ~ Jeanette Winterson, Weight.

What is authenticity? I’ve been thinking about it for years. I could say, “I know it when I see it,” but that’s lazy and I really don’t know it when I see it, so that would be a lie. I’ve been tricked by what I’ve thought is authentic. I’m susceptible to being fooled. My therapist said before I left town, “you have a good bullshit meter but you override it. Start trusting it.”

Now I’m writing a book. A memoir. As I go along, writing slowly, laboriously, editing and reediting despite what my book-writing group says about not doing that, I think about how memory works. You have to fill in the holes to create a story because memory is not linear nor is it narrative. I have to allow myself to do this hole-filling freely because anyone who disputes my memory based on their memory is no more or less accurate than I am. But I worry about the holes because I am caught up in truth and then I circle back around to authenticity – which is more human than just truth/lies -- and I know that I have a story that is real, sincere, not torqued to please others. I’ve never written to please.

The story I’m telling is the truth of me. It is authentic. It’s about the betrayals that formed me and that I’ve railed against and broken away from and reenacted and finally found freedom from. And in writing the story, I’ve come to rely on the memory in my mind and in my body. My body holds the information from my lifetime that my mind couldn’t manage, or I’d override.

And when I’m writing and my mind says no, don’t write this, this is too hard, don’t go there, this is a secret, this is shameful, this is perverse, this is exposing, people will hate me, this is too old; and my mind wants to explode and I can’t sit and type another word and I pace or walk or if the timing is right, I go for a run. Until I get some sort of body release, I can’t sleep, I can’t sit still. And when my body is in motion, it seems to say: you know what you know; trust yourself.

My body has a honed "bullshit meter." My mind is not so great with that. I don’t have a scam-oriented mind although I was raised with scams and lies, betrayal and deception. As a child I had an acute sense that something was fishy, but I didn’t know how to make sense of that sense. I was confused. I’ve known since when something is wrong but I haven't listened to myself, and I lived with turmoil and confusion as if it were manageable. It can feel like a normal state when it’s what you’re raised with.

Since I’ve moved back to NYC, met new people, seen old friends, and started writing, I’ve been more interested than ever in authenticity. Authenticity is not static. It is not as simple as honesty. As sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out, we are different selves in different settings. We perform differently in different contexts. The Internet has made this performance even more fragmented than in Goffman’s time. We can now practice online becoming an idealized persona in a dehumanized setting without even being perceived. But in order to be authentic, a person has to have a core. That’s what I’m on the lookout for. There has to be a "there there" for a person … or a memoir … to be authentic. It doesn’t mean we have to be anchored to facts, or reportage; we can recreate ourself as we go along, but please make it about you, don't become something you're not for the sake of another, don't use your persona to deceive anyone, and don’t construct yourself or your story to be impressive. Authenticity requires humility.

Confinement

I woke up thinking of a class I took in grad school called, "Imprisonment and the Dramatic Imagination." We read texts by prisoners, e.g. Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, texts written from the "prison" of a mind gone mad, such as Antonin Artaud; as well as other interpretations of what it means to be imprisoned. I wanted to be careful not to romanticize imprisonment but at the same time I found the concept of being locked up --dependent on another for basic support -- really appealing, and in a way, freeing.

At the time I took the class I had two very young children and my creativity was restricted to whenever I could catch a moment to write: at 5am; or if both miraculously napped; or if I could keep my eyes opened past their bedtime.... Most of my academic and creative work sat in my mind and I held on to it, playing it over and over until I could get it down on paper. I was confined by the demands of motherhood, which I took very seriously because I was a nervous mother, with no real understanding of the maternal instinct, and certain that if I didn't construct the meaning of "mother" as I went along, I would fall down on the job.

That was also the time I came out. I did not come out as a lesbian because I did not desire sameness; I came out as a femme who wanted a butch. That was after spending years in the NYU library, from the confines of heterosexuality, figuring out what exactly I was.

If one could choose moments to do life-transforming events, my moments have been the most impractical. That's true when I moved to NYC from LA (no place to live, tenuous job); got pregnant with my daughter (4 months before my wedding so that I had to buy another wedding dress); started college as an undergraduate (with a baby and toddler, ridiculously expensive college); came out (right after I started college, couldn't afford to live on my own, had two young children); moved to Northampton (gave up a college teaching job with a future, left NYC to write a dissertation that relied on being in NYC); got married to a butch partner and then divorced (too complicated to sum up in parentheses); sold my house in Northampton (the worst seller's market ever, so broke I had to sell to greedy wenches); moved to NYC (in June -- can't re-start a personal training or freelance copyediting business when all of NYC is in the Hamptons).

There is a reason I've done things this way. Partly it's impatience. Partly it's waiting until I have to do something fast and then my choices are limited. And partly it's because I've had a fairy tale desire to be taken care of, to be dependent on another, to be submissive to a dominant person. I never played out this fairy tale with men. With men I was pragmatic, in charge of everything from the bank account to sex.

But from the time I was a child I wanted to be enveloped in female flesh while being kissed at the door by a boy. I wanted chivarly and breasts; machismo and cunt. These desires eventually merged in the form of butch lovers, and it was in a butch that I looked for a caretaker, a dad/mom/lover/husband.

Some might think this desire is imprisoning. It is. It's about giving up freedom for a never-certain trust. It's the core of sadomasochistic relationships, a willingness to put aside autonomy for a moment of rapture. Though I would not characterize my relationships as s/m because degradation does not appeal to me, I have been submissive to another person while turning a blind eye to the dangers lurking. I've handed over my body, my heart, my wordly goods, my peace-of-mind, for the deep deep wish that I would be enveloped in safety and be loved and be known.

I have come out of it feeling like a sacrifice. I've given up a lot and finally, finally understood that everyone is looking for someone they can lean on. There is no dominance there is no submission there is no daddy mommy father caretaker god; everyone is vulnerable, fragile, frail. There is only pretending, and then you get up and put your clothes back on.

I am Isaac. He did not defy Abraham and leave the altar. Rather he followed him, who he trusted and loved, and was willingly led right to danger. And in the end everyone is vulnerable. No one is in charge. Not even the character of God and his ridiculous game. Everyone is motivated by their narcissistic needs. And everyone is fucked. God is a pricktease not giving Abraham the thrill he seeks; Abraham is a sociopath; and Isaac will lie down for anyone, as long as he is adored. That is an erotic story; biblical pornography.

There is still some part of me that craves the confines of dependency, but I know it's a myth. I've learned after all these decades of crawling out from under bad or just the wrong decisions and starting again and making it work, that the person I can depend on most is myself, as cliche as that sounds. I'm still a femme, still submissive, still a bottom, but I've found that when I impose my own restraints, my own framework for how I want my life to work, I am the most creative and productive and free.

The windows and doors of my apartment

Tornado

(photos follow)

At 4:15pm yesterday I took Weetzie and Roxy for a walk. Thunderstorms and a tornado were predicted but it just seemed like a continually gloomy day. Anyway, I'm no longer afraid of thunderstorms and a tornado sounded like more media weather sensationalism.

We walk the half block to the park and Weetzie, stubborn femme poodle, pulls toward the 9th St. entrance. I prefer the 5th St. entrance since it's prettier, but because I am the consummate bottom I let Weetzie have her way, at least today. Roxy does whatever I do. She does not have the lofty desires of Weetzie. Weetzie likes 9th St for the grills, picnics, e.g., random bits of food on the ground, and the dog beach. (yes, I know this paragraph is making you roll your eyes, reader)

In a moment we're in Long Meadow, the enormous area in the center of the park. Long Meadow is one mile long and the "longest stretch of unbroken meadow in any U.S. park," according to www.prospectpark.org. I find it breathtaking and go there everyday with the dogs. I'm a fan of Frederick Law Olmsted, history's most brilliant park designer.

The dogs and I meander about. I let them off their leashes to tear after a Yorkie while his owner and I chat. "The sky ...," she says with a furrowed brow. The horizon had taken on a greenish tint but the air doesn't feel damp or heavy like it does with a thunderstorm. We put our dogs on their leashes and say goodbye.

It's almost 5:00pm. I continue to walk down the center of the meadow, looking at the sky. I am determined to never let thunderstorms alter my path. I'll do what's practical, but not what's driven by fear. I will not run home, nor panic, nor start making phone calls looking to be calmed.

I developed several fears in the last 15 years and I'm set on conquering them now that I'm back home in NYC. My fear of thunderstorms started in Bellport, Long Island, with the squalls, hurricanes, and violent thunderstorms. It ended in 2006 at the start of year-long divorce proceedings (from my female spouse) in Northampton that left me an exhausted zombie who was about to turn 50 with a life in financial turmoil. One afternoon in the early summer, I took the dogs out for a walk with a darkening sky and thunder in the distance and thought, "eh, so maybe I'll get hit by lightning; it can't be worse than the fresh hell I'm going through." That was the end of that fear.

Yesterday we got home in time too. The sky turned a strange yellow-grey-green. I walked down my street and stopped to say hello to Mary, an 80+ year old who lives with her daughter and calls my dogs, "the beautiful babies," as if they were a vision from heaven rather than two ratty poodles who are overdue for their overpriced grooming. I like Mary. One day I was strolling by in shorts and a tank top during the NYC official heat wave and she yelled out from the stoop of her brownstone, "hey, you've got a good body." I said, "what?!" (what 80-year-old says "good body"?) Since then we chat about Brooklyn, dogs, clothing styles.... Mary was getting ready to sit on the stoop and go through her mail.

I got in the house about 5:15pm to the sound of thunder. I gave the dogs their treats and sat down to write my requisite two pages a day of my memoir. Barry and Viv, my landlord and his wife, came downstairs to say goodbye before getting in their car to go to JFK and Europe. Within minutes, there was a strange yellow glow outside. The wind picked up. I closed the front windows a little. The dogs got up and came over to me. They were stock still and staring out the window. Then, in a second, there was nonstop lightning out both the front and back windows, the wind and rain were so harsh all I can see was a grey screen in front of me as I struggled to close the windows and the front door, opened behind the iron gate. As I ran into the back to close the bathroom window, I could see that the trees in the back were blowing in opposite directions at once. I knew something was terribly wrong. I heard an incredible boom and the house shook. I ran into the basement and Roxy followed. Weetzie, the ever viligant one, waited at the top of the stairs. It was only minutes before I came back up. It was subsiding. The following are some photos:

5:45pm My backyard

Tree down up the street on 7th ave.

6:15pm Brooklyn Industries on 7th ave and 9th st. All the windows and door were blown out. A young woman standing outside looked stunned and said to anyone who would listen, "I pushed the door opened to take shelter in the store and the door blew out of my hand."

Trees down on 8th st and 7th ave; car smashed on 7th ave

The remains of a table in front of my neighbor's house

11am, this morning: Entrances to the park between 5th and 9th streets 1/2 a block from my home.



My friend, the albino squirrel, posed for a photo (at left on log); and later the black squirrel made an appearance in my neighbor's yard (on the fence)

And in Long Meadow, the middle of the park, down a short path from the destruction, not a leaf is out of place. A tornado cuts a very selective path.

Brooklyn to Berkeley

Jenny and I have been very dear, very close friends since 1996. She met her current butch spouse, Em, when I met my now ex-butch spouse and we all occupied cyberspace together for a long time. We've stayed connected across 3,000 miles with occasional visits whenever we can swing it. We've been through some of the saddest and also most joyous times in these years and we've consoled and comforted one another, and criticized when needed (more Jenny to me than me to her) :) . I cannot imagine my life without her.


So we started a blog together since neither of us have any time and it's entirely impractical but sometimes you have to do what matters even if it isn't practical. Jenny works fulltime at a demanding job in the Bay Area, she has two small children, and a helpful and handsome butch. On any given days she's writing a book, walking her dog, cooking dinner, driving the kids to a zillion places, getting her hair colored, her eyebrows done, a pedicure, taking workshops and courses, studying a new online application, explaining my iPhone to me, paying bills, figuring out what to wear, writing a blog entry. Me; I'm exercising, running around Prospect Park, writing a memoir, looking for work, joining networking organizations, taking a zipcar to Fairway, cooking, walking the poodles, going on a date, writing essays, trying to figure out Brooklyn by bike, doing my nails, visting Manhattan friends who won't come to Brooklyn, submitting essays, going out with my son and his girlfriend, talking up my personal training business, paying bills, fretting about bills...


So here's our blog. My first entry is Doubting Jew from here but it was a jumping off place for Jenny and also it includes one of our many funny text conversations.


http://brooklyntoberkeley.blogspot.com/

Doubting Jew

I’m a doubting Jew. The first time I doubted my qualifications to be a member of the tribe was in 1987 when I married Russell. We did not belong to a synagogue, in fact it didn’t even cross my mind to belong to one, so Russell set out to find a rabbi-for-hire to marry us. When the day came and the rabbi met with us to sign the ketuba (Hebrew marriage certificate) my hand quivered and I blurted out, “My father was not Jewish.” The rabbi fixed me an amused, world-weary look and said, “It doesn’t matter. Sign.”

I was raised as a cultural Jew rather than a religious one. "Cultural Jew" is shorthand for lover of good deli, cruise ship vacations, suburbs, nose jobs, and rushing through the Passover Haggadah so you can start on the gefilte fish and matzo ball soup. It’s about being true to the Jews, i.e. Us: Don Rickles, pastrami on rye so tall it could choke a horse, having the (fill in the blank: best, smartest, most gorgeous) child ever born; Them: John Wayne, bologna on white, German Shepherds; we don’t know from camping, bungie jumping or polo ponies, and the only guns we see are on cops – who are gentile, of course.

I had my doubts about cultural Jews early on. I was a principled young thing and the hypocrisy of claiming to be the Chosen People while leading a shallow life was not lost on me. Religious Jews were not my people either. I’m not a believer in God and the few times I was taken to a synagogue on high holy days or for a bar mitzvah, I had no context to understand what was going on. The other kids knew when you could go outside during the rabbi’s sermon and when to run back inside to sing Adon Olam with the bar mitzvah boy. I was lost in the world of ritual and prayer.

So I turned my back on Judaism for decades thinking it was not where to find my home nor my people.

In 2001, Russell phoned to say that Theo, who was then 11, had to start bar mitzvah preparations and I had to find a synagogue and a tutor. I could barely deal with this. I had just moved to Northampton, Massachusetts the year before; my relationship with Mary had crashed and burned; my dissertation director at NYU resigned, leaving her minion stranded. I was dealing with a breakup, researching a dissertation without guidance, looking for work, yearning to move back to NYC, making sure my two children were happy in their new home. I was a wreck. I was unmoored, ungrounded, in turmoil.

I joined the handiest synagogue – a conservative** one around the corner -- and Theo entered Hebrew school with kids who had been at it since they were 5. He’s an easygoing person, my Theo – he’s not a doubter like his mother – and he picked up Hebrew and Torah study quickly, plus he seemed to like it.

Part of his bar mitzvah training was to go to Shabbat services, and I went to see what he was up to. I was not prepared for what I felt. The melodic liturgy, the Hebrew, the ancient chants, the beautifully adorned Torahs in their ark, the elders, the rituals, the overwhelming number of women and lesbians (this being Northampton), the restless children who were not hushed or made to sit still – it all felt deeply familiar to me in a familial way although I had rarely been in a synagogue. Soon I enrolled in a two-year adult bat mitzvah course with seven other women. I learned Hebrew, Jewish history and ritual, studied Torah.

(** Conservative Judaism is not a politic but a denomination that “conserves” the original texts, prayers, and traditions in practice but interrogates meaning and questions viability in modern times. It’s considered the most intellectual of the denominations [Orthodox follows without question, and Reform updates ritual and practice to modern times.])

I am neither a religious nor a spiritual person, but I am a communal person. I need to belong to something bigger than what I can create by myself. I never found this sense of belonging in an ethereal god nor in nature but rather in being a part of a vibrant, diverse humanity (which is why cities appeal to me). Living in the middle of New England, far from the oceans, in a town in which I never felt quite right; living among reserved, polite people who counted pilgrims as their ancestors – this was not my thing.

When I was a young person wandering, this is how I felt about libraries: No matter what city, what state, the library was home with the same books, the same Dewey decimal system. I belonged because I was a reader. And entering the sanctuary of the library with the smell of books and the desks and chairs of polished wood made my body and mind slow down and feel safe and protected and at peace. Now I was part of a small but enduring population of Jews all over the world reading the same passages on the same day and being linked through ritual and tradition. I had the same sensation as I did in the libraries.

I don’t feel like an outcast in Brooklyn like I did in Northampton. Here being a Jew is commonplace. So much so that it didn’t occur to me to join a synagogue until Rosh Hashana was around the corner. My friend Shelly took me to her congregation a few weeks ago. The services were held in a Brooklyn church borrowed on Saturday. The congregants and rabbi created their own practices because they did not feel addressed by the other denominations of Judaism. I appreciate this impulse but I felt lost and sad and longed for the familiar.

I’m not seeking a new understanding of Judaism, nor a connection to a god that might be a woman, or a determiner of fate, nor punitive or rewarding. Judaism is about the people who came before me, whose struggles and sacrifices and pride and unwillingness to ever give up created a home for me to understand my own struggles and identity. My religion is this: Humans are frail and vulnerable and construct gods and heavens because love and belonging can be tenuous, fleeting, malleable, and we can only rely on one another so much. It’s in this human vulnerability that I know I can find strength or falter. That is what makes me cry in synagogue, the rituals and beliefs that are, at their most raw, a longing for protection and love.

On Rosh Hashana I wandered up the block to a Conservative shul led by a lesbian rabbi. The synagogue is beautiful, 100 years old and built as a synagogue; the place was packed with Jews in their finery. I sat in the smooth wooden benches and chanted, listened, cried, thought deeply about my past year, and knew I found home again. Later, I went to Taslich – which is where you throw pieces of bread into a body of water and reflect on your misdoings of the previous year and hope to live the next one with more awareness and thoughtfulness.

I wandered through the park filled with Jews on their way to water. Hasidim, people in jeans, women in dresses, yarmulkes everywhere. I saw the cultural Jews checking out one another’s outfits and the religious Jews with their shofars. I found my new rabbi, who was excitedly endorsed by my old rabbi who was thrilled that I’d find not only a great home in this synagogue but a great rabbi who happened to be a lesbian. I spoke to her and was greeted by kind people who had seen me in services.

I threw my bread to the swans and ducks and thought of what I won’t do to undermine myself in the next year and said each thing twice. I don’t know why I did that but every Taslich I let myself know what I need to do to move on to the next year. This is my year to come home to myself.

Afterward, as it was getting dark, I walked home through the park by myself. I texted my dear friend Jenny in Berkeley. We share every profound experience. I told her about what I was seeing -- the pockets of Jews near the lakes, the trio of young Lubavitcher men excitedly rushing through the park looking for Jews who had not “heard the shofar.” (I assured them I had.) The exquisite sunset. The Hasidic baby in the stroller pretending to blow the shofar, the drunk on the bench muttering “Jew holiday” over and over. We made each other laugh as we always do.