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.

My first gay boyfriend

Mark took me to Fairway yesterday, the fabulous has-everything supermarket located in a huge pre-Civil War coffee and cotton warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn overlooking the Statue of Liberty. He didn’t need anything but took me because I wanted to go, he wanted to see what I raved about, and he had his boyfriend’s car. Actually, the car belongs to the parents of Mark’s boyfriend and it’s a Jeep festooned with Republican, America this-and-that and pro-war bumper stickers. When I see a car like that on the highway I glare with utter contempt, willing someone in the car to look at me. When they do glance my way I often get a blank stare since people are not thinking of their bumper stickers at all times. But still, I feel I’ve done my civic duty by being a miserable liberal staring down their buckaroo conservatism.

So here I am, a 53-year-old femme-who-looks-straight, in a car-of–the-enemy with my handsome shaven-head manly-read-as-straight former high school queer lover driving through Brooklyn looking like a retired Marine and his wife.

At Fairway, Mark held the door for me, pushed the cart, I gave the order at the deli counter, fretted over which cookies to buy. We laughed at a devilish red-haired toddler in a cart and his mother smiled at us. He unlocked the car door for me, put the bags in the back …

…wait ….

Everything about this scenario is so strange even as it appears so normal.

Let me tell you about Mark and me.

In the spring of ‘72 I was at my desk in Miss Patruski’s English class when I looked up to see Mark at the door gesturing wildly. Patruski let me go “to the bathroom” although she had to have known Mark was there.

The teachers loved Mark, and I was mystified because they hated me. He was a tall beautiful golden boy with great posture, a loud deep voice, a self-possessed easy laugh, and exquisite green eyes. He was queer, self-confident, high most of the time; completely campy but never queeny in his platform shoes, skin-tight ass- and cock-hugging high-waisted pants, and Hawaiian silk shirts. He was irreverent and disregarded rules, but maybe it was his intellect and charm that won over teachers. He’d greet the Spanish teacher in the hall in perfect Spanish, and she be thrilled even though he skipped class that morning; he told Miss Patruski that he and I call her “the dove” because of her beautiful skin; he’d smile and say hello to Louella Rebd, Principal Bitch Extraordinaire with her downturned mouth and upturned bob, and she wouldn’t ask for his hall pass, just mine.

We found one another amidst the 900 or so students -- in our grade alone -- at the San Fernando Valley high school overpopulated with privileged Jewish baby boom teenagers who had nose jobs and cars and realtor mothers and lawyer fathers. We were kindred spirits; outrageous clothes, queer, transfixed by beauty, decadent, smart, from completely fucked-up working-class Jewish families. In the afternoons we’d go to Mark’s house more often than mine because he had a single mother and she worked and we’d lie on his waterbed and listen to Joni Mitchell’s Blue album and fuck and draw pictures – we both loved the film Lady Sings the Blues and drew Diana Ross in various gowns – and fuck more and he smoked pot and I was into pills and often we’d hitchhike and get picked up by a guy and go to his house and I might fuck him for money or maybe Mark did or we would hitchhike to the beach or over the canyons meeting people who would take us to fancy homes where we could have fun. It was the 1970s, pre-AIDS, a hedonistic time.

I left Patruski’s class thinking we were going to smoke a joint or maybe hitchhike to the beach, but instead Mark grabbed me by the hand and pulled me, running, through the hallways, out the side of the high school, across the parking lot, and into the community college adjacent. We ran through the college, through the art department, into the women’s bathroom. We were panting and laughing and he said, “Take off your clothes; we’re going streaking.” It was his idea to put our underwear on our heads, which didn’t work because a crotch is wider than the space between your eyes – hopefully -- so it’s impossible to run and see out both leg holes at the same time.

A photo appeared the next day on the second page of the Los Angeles Times captioned, “A young couple streaks hand-in-hand through Valley College.” Oddly enough, I’m a very modest person when it comes to being naked. It doesn’t seem to go with my personality or aesthetic so you might be surprised to know that. I’m the flat-chested one with the bikini top on the topless beach, or a hospital gown with the opening in the front at the doctor’s office with every possible tie tied. Running naked through the college was one thing but being discovered as the streaker on page two of the Times was another. I was the object of awe, but so embarrassed.

Mark and I were called into Miss Rebd’s office and we were put on probation and they kept their eye on us. Within months, Mark was arrested and I was expelled because he was seen putting marijuana in my locker. We used one another’s lockers interchangeably. I watched as he was taken from the school in handcuffs and I remember feeling bereft. I was sent to a tough high school in a Chicano neighborhood where I met my first girlfriend. He was sent to a school in a nicer part of town.

That was the last I saw of Mark until my mid-20s when I moved to NYC. I worked for Island Records and he was an editor at Interview Magazine. We met at a lunch for Grace Jones. We had little in common. He was one of Andy Warhol’s denizens and I was determined to live a straight life -- hell-bent on finding a husband and having children. Several years later we ran into one another at a gym. He was HIV positive and I had two small children. He asked if they were from the same father and I was insulted.

It was in my late 30s after I came out that I wanted to find him. I wanted to make sure he was still alive. I learned that his long time boyfriend died but he was okay. He was publishing book after book – memoirs, biographies, spiritual books. It was through Facebook that I found him again.

We met in a Village coffee shop last year. And this time we had a lot in common. We’re both writers though he’s far more advanced in his career than I. He’s a butch man who goes for nelly men and I’m a nelly femme who goes for butch women. He’s still so incredibly handsome and we both admitted, in a way that was more poignant and funny than romantic, to having passing thoughts of what sex might be like together. At the time we were both getting out of our second crummy relationships with empty charmers and we formed a pact not to jump into another relationship but to listen to what we know is right and not just follow our loins (at least I stuck to the plan).

Then of all funny and wonderful things, on June 1^st I sold my house in Northampton and moved to Brooklyn and he sold his apartment in the Village and moved to Brooklyn. We're about a mile apart. And now, 38 years later, we go to the movies in the afternoon and to the supermarket and to dinner, and to parties where we sit and talk while his adorable boyfriend wanders off to work the room. And age has softened us. We know without having to talk about it that our difficult and dangerous young lives formed patterns that still resonate within us, but at the same time we present to the world a very cohesive, very centered self. Sometimes, when we're together, we're both presenting the polished version of ourselves but I don't have to look too hard to find the golden boy beneath.