Will (Not) Tell On You

One of the first tasks required of all entering Princeton freshman is the signing of the Honor Code. In my day, it stated something like 'I will not cheat (or a euphemism)' on exams'.  The second part-- the corollary-- was, simply stated, 'and I will report anyone who does'. Being the philosophical and slightly rebellious student that I was, I questioned the necessity of the corollary, assuming everyone adhered to the 'not cheating' oath.  Otherwise, what good is a signature? 

So I had to have a conversation with the Dean of Academic Affairs... it wasn't like me to ruffle the waters, but maybe like me to think about what I signed up for.  I took things seriously. It was hard to believe no one had had issues with this before; presumably they were so glad to be embarking on their Ivy League privileged journey that they just agreed.  In the end, I crossed out the second part and swore to the first.  I had never and have never cheated academically.  I have always tried to be original and not to lie; it's an unspoken covenant with some higher power, or a terrific sense of guilt instilled by my strict father.

Cheating, as it's commonly known in our culture, seems to refer primarily to relationship violations. There's a reality TV show dedicated to this, and in fact, the highest-rated episodes of most reality shows deal with this subject.  People are shamed, smeared, maligned, interviewed... everyone seems to know the score.  But this is greatly exaggerated.  Unfortunately, infidelity is more common than its opposite.  I noticed it as a child--- before I was fully aware of the meaning-- I saw people's fathers with women, people's mothers flirting with the gardener or their tennis instructor.  

We all know, biologically, humans are not monogamous the way penguins are.  We don't mate for life; we're adaptable. Reproductive biology is biological; love is something else.  There are even cheaters in the Bible, multiple wives (Jacob, for one-- Thomas Mann elaborates on this); it is part of the Genesis narrative. The damn President of the United States has historically had lovers... Monica Lewinsky made a career out of Clinton's indiscretion; Hillary maybe gained greater political access because of her loyalty.  Former President Trump fabricated an entire political brand based on cheating, lying, infidelities, disrespect, narcissism... his romantic infidelities don't seem nearly as heinous as the rest.  Except maybe for Melania, but she's not stupid... she made a marital contract.

Still, even when I married a rock musician, knowing the occupational hazards, I had a certain belief in the institution of marriage.  Our hip little wedding was in a church; we took vows and and exchanged rings; it mattered.  And then things wear... the bonds after multiple washings become threadbare... you try not to look, not to digest toxic rumors. But at a certain point, you weaken.  You question-- is it your own insecurity that caused this?  His insecurity about you? There seems to be no emotional answer.  And it hurts.  It wrecks you... it implodes the oath, the sanctity of this thing in which you believed.  So you make a choice-- either you weather the instability... or you leave.  More pain.  Or, as many couples do,  you cheat.  Yes, you... you mimic the same behavior as your spouse-- you even the score.  

I came of sexual age in the 70's.  Fidelity was not generally on the menu, lol. But we chose marriage-- the whole covenant, the tradition.  I loved my ring. I knew my husband had cheated; I tried to look away, but after a time, I grew apart-- and the first time I actually 'cheated'... well, the marriage was close to dissolution.  But I also slept with someone whose marriage had similarly disintegrated; we felt a commonality... it was like one step further away, because we were both victims of an unhappy arrangement.  For me it was a temporary narcotic... I felt better, I felt amazingly adored... and I felt like I'd taken a step back.  It slowed the emotional hemorrhage to a very slight drip.

But the fact is... the reality of discovering a cheater is jolting.  It's painful-- rejection, abandonment... and the scenario of one's paramour being intimate with a stranger is disturbing.  It exposes part of us, too; we are involved.  Cheaters don't always consider this-- the way we are forced into an intimacy with a third person we might hate... with someone who has disrespected us and weaponized our emotions. 

Do we heal from this?  I don't know.  I do know one can't unsee what one has seen.  And in this culture-- is digital cheating, or emailing or meeting up without actual sex... is this cheating?  Is it not 'your cheatin' heart' in the words of Hank Williams, that really kills us? 

My second husband seemed to fall madly in love with me.. .and while I'd sworn off marriage, I gave in.  It turned out he'd been living with someone else... so we started off on the wrong beat.  Were we doomed?  I'm not sure.  We even went to counseling where I was told that minor infidelities were super common in newly engaged couples... it was sort of a growing pain.  But I realized-- we all have a different tolerance for this stuff.  Some people keep their relationships going with extra partners, or fantasies... they watch porn, they act out little dramas.  

I seem to be the same idealistic person who refused to sign the flawed honor code.  I've been equally disillusioned, academically, by reading about plagiarisms, data crunching, scholarly truth-stretching even among venerated professors.  I'm also realistic about the person I am.  I love my son unconditionally.  His biological father abandoned him as a baby; today we celebrate me, the sole cross-gendered parent.  But me as a wife?  I've been jaded and spoiled... I don't know what's expected of me, or even what I expect.  There are times in my life I've had two lovers, or many... or times when I disconnected from someone who maybe truly loved me. The bottom line is-- people fall out of love.  For some, there is enough 'residue' to sustain a family. For others, they crave passion, and you can't, as Bonnie Raitt sang, make someone love you. I think in our hearts we sense this... and it's painful... it's also human... but it's breaking.

So for me Father's Day has a few meanings.  It's about my father who was unhappily faithful to his family... but who knows where his emotional meanderings took him?  It's about other people's fathers who were and weren't role models.  My son's father no longer exists except as a broken romance memory, and a set of divorce and custody papers from long ago.  And for me-- I toughened up, as a parent, and took up the reins.   Having some sympathy for people in unhappy situations, do I judge?  Children suffer and I tried to prioritize mine over my attraction to passionate entanglements. And like most of us, I made a ton of wrong choices.  But did I lie?  I did not. I adhered to my own honor code.  And one thing I do know... no matter who wins this election, no matter how the court swings, no matter how great or lousy America may be, cheating is here to stay. Amen. 

(Do Not) Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor...

This is painful, Hillary Clinton announced at the beginning of her concession speech Wednesday morning, her emotionless voice nearly cracking at moments.  Young women were weeping; her staff and volunteers were exhausted, feeling the pain of failure, of deep disappointment.  One day and hours later, the ugly reality of our American election has spread like black slime.

Walking back from the hospital this afternoon where my friend is experiencing another kind of pain-- the relentless, unstoppable agony of late-stage cancer--  I don't dare weld the metaphor here, but it made Hillary's words just a little less poignant.  It surprises me on these days that Central Park is as dazzling as ever in the crisp fall sunshine; the skyline is buoyant and proud.  I stopped also by a building on West 69th Street where a woman I'd only met months ago had jumped from her window just a few weeks ago.  I've heard it was her heart that was broken; nothing else.  Another version of pain.

The doctor's aide wears a hijab and is lovely.  She confided that she is terrified about her immigration status and about the xenophobic sentiment of our President-elect.  You mean his bigotry and ignorant hatred, I replied?  She nodded, looking around her as though she feared being lynched.  She is feeling another kind of pain, as was the young African woman who shared my path back to the east side.  She works for a church downtown, has a limited visa, was enchanted by the beauty of the Reservoir; it was her first visit to my neighborhood.  She'd escaped a hard life in West Africa; she was orphaned, raised her siblings and was looking for a better life in the US; she'd been sponsored by a LES Christian community.   She wanted to go to college but now she was afraid and discouraged.  This was not the version of American she'd understood.

I can't make excuses for my country; I'm a New Yorker and we are Democrats for the most part.  We are disappointed, we are frustrated, we are angry.  But pain?  I'm not sure this is the correct description. Anyone who has suffered a serious wound, an accident-- even the experience of childbirth.  No pain, no gain, the sweatshirts used to say at my gym.  I've never loved that expression.

Late nights I admit to watching this program called Versailles which is sort of a glam-erotic series shown last year in Europe about the excesses and vices of Louis XIV.  His ultra-lavish spending on the palace became a symbol of the unprecedented power of the Monarchy.  I am trying not to draw silly  parallels between the Trump empire and the decadent elitist pomp of the 18th-century French court.  Of course, like all addicting television, there are plenty of women-- sequential and multiple mistresses.  His extra-marital intrigues are maybe criticized, but overlooked.  Those who fall out of favor are disposed of-- some painfully.  But speaking of pain, even the King suffered during these times.  Few medicines, no anesthetics, no antibiotics.  Childbirth was risky, illnesses were difficult and life-threatening; poxes, plagues, infections and fevers were agonizing and fatal.  There was a scene where a medic warned the King that a proposed treatment would hurt.  "Good," said the King.  I can't imagine Donald accepting such a pronouncement.  I can't imagine him fighting a war for his country or even his children, or making any kind of sacrifice for any kind of principle.  I doubt he has sympathy or empathy for anyone's suffering and I'll bet his tolerance for physical discomfort is low.

One thing the royals often did-- was to import their wives for better breeding and political reasons.  I guess Donald did the same.  Few American women outside the Stepford wife prototypes would put up with his brand of macho husbanding.  I can't figure out whether Melania is a saint or a talking Barbie.  But for a man who married non-Americans, the hypocrisy of his policies seems that much more absurd.   What if he were to seriously purge New York, for example?

The kitchen staff at half the clubs where I work--- the kind Mexicans who sneak me care packages for my starving neighbors-- they'd be sent home.  Who would cook, who would wash dishes for our hungry audiences?  The Pakistani man who sells magazines on Lexington Avenue and talks to animals like a happy wizard-- where would he go?  What waits for him and would he be allowed to bring along the feral cat who lives in the shop and bites?  The construction team in east Harlem who work at night, who sit outside and eat their 4 AM lunch on the stoops of dilapidated tenements they are renovating for sleazy landlords-- with their headscarves and home-made dust-masks-- what will become of them and their families?  They speak some strange language among themselves, they laugh and sing and smoke during breaks.  Their clothes are thick with dust-- in summer their skin is covered with grime and paint and sweat.  Their bodies are beautiful and sinewy like athletes.  The hotdog vendors-- especially the one who sold me a pretzel today for $1.50.   I would miss him. The ladies who collect cans at night--  the Mexican and the Chinese women who amicably divide the massive piles between them.  Their work ethic-- rain, snow, extreme heat-- they are out there, on hands and knees-- teaching us things-- recycling, to keep their children fed and clothed-- heroes, they are, of their young families who rely on this difficult, tedious dark labor for survival.  Will they all vanish?  Will I not hear the musical variety of uptown like a colorful marketplace opera in multi-lingual counterpoint?

Concession for Hillary is 'painful', she claims… but she will have some consolation-- she has money, she has a foundation… a husband, a legacy… For the rest of us it may mean something else; we're not certain.  Surely this has been a misdiagnosis of some sort-- missed symptoms, bad medications-- poor management of a societal disease or lack of preventive care here…  and the prognosis? Will all these protests, the voices who spoke too late-- will they have any bearing on the outcome?  Will the ailing patient of America survive a round of toxic Republican treatment?  I'm afraid the pain is yet to come-- with or without gain, with or without cure.  God Bless America.  We've never needed it more.

Connections

About 20 years ago, after several failed pregnancies, one of my friends was able to adopt a baby.  I took my son-- who was maybe in kindergarten-- to visit.  The baby cried the entire afternoon, as babies often do; my friend kept looking at me quizzically; she was still learning the skills of parenting, and held her tiny new daughter with a bit of anxious awkwardness.  But my son blurted out, after a couple of hours-- 'She's crying for her real mother'.  Out of the mouths of babes….

Of course, science and psychology tell us there is no valid basis for designating a biological parent  preferable to a loving, doting caretaker; but most new mothers will tell you they can pick their baby out of an incubator line-up-- even when they are meeting for the first time over a hospital bassinet.  There is some indescribable empathic biology that connects us-- helps us distinguish one cry from another, identify their little discomforts; or maybe it is our physiology or scent they recognize from their time inside us-- they sense we have maybe just that much more capacity to comfort them.

I've been taking care of a friend who has a truly heinous strain of cancer that seems to resist all treatment and is subjecting her to inhuman episodes of pain, discomfort and physical challenge.  She has no living family; in fact, she was adopted, and I can't help visualizing somewhere a mother walking into her treatment room and, like an angel, bringing relief and comfort.  But she has no inclination to search, and even less inclination to just let out the kind of emotional wail I imagine building up like a crescendo of despair.  Me, I have that gene; she does not.

What makes us who we are?  What makes that woman in my Latin dance class bare her midriff like a 16-year-old even though she is 50-something and no one wants to see this kind of thing?  Or that lovely girl in the front row who has tattooed herself so extensively she looks positively reptilian?   Or the man on the uptown 3 last night, with the wifebeater and the white shorts and flip-flops in the fall chill with his gut hanging out and his legs spread like he was home alone on his sofa on a hot night having a beer before bed?  Last Monday, waiting for the crosstown bus, a man with a deformed hand beside me was scrolling through violent pornographic images on his phone.  Who did this to him and why does this disturb me?

That 6-year-old who was beaten to death by his Mom's boyfriend-- there was a gruesome description of him being hung by his shirt over the door-- like laundry, like a garbage bag.  This child who was so neglected by a broken system that favors abused dogs over children; and like the poor angels they are, when they are removed from terrible homes, these children weep for their mothers; it's natural.  I was homesick for my Mom and my home when sent away, even though my father was only nice to me when we had company, and ignored the highly inappropriate behavior of some of his friends.  Like most children, I wouldn't dare tell on these people; no one would have believed me had it even occurred to us to do so.  I could hear the Catholic boys down the block being beaten by their father at night.  They'd come out and sneak a cigarette while I held icepacks on their swollen face; sometimes they snitched a little whiskey.  They sniffed back tears and acted tough while we sat on rocks and smoked and it made me feel better.  Most of them grew up and became fireman and cops; they had nice wives and loved their kids.

In the city there are people who are hard to read-- men who live alone and are strange and maybe hurt and toughened-- children who grew up missing parts-- disappointed adults with bitter hearts and secret habits.  People who fantasize about things.  And people who are rough and not kind who seem to have regular lives and market themselves as something else.  Pretenders.

I missed most of the debate Monday night; I was working.  It was difficult to imagine a contest between two people who seem like candidates for entirely different jobs.  Despite her flaws, Hillary is a fairly typical high-achieving woman; her daughter grew up in the public eye with her awkwardness and her teenage issues.  She even called Bernie Sanders 'President Sanders' in a recent national faux pas which gave her a certain charming disingenuousness.  Donald Trump's daughter is a professional.  She's a manufactured princess.  I'm sure all her lumps and bumps and flaws were long ago repaired and she is his best PR.  She seems self-assured and skilled; one can only imagine what her Dad might have done to a black-sheep child-- a child with issues.  But who is he?  There should be some kind of tool or device so that we can decipher people the way tax returns or birth certificates give us a paper trail of evidence.  But there isn't.  We can't always tell Hitler from Nixon.  Still, there are signs here-- clues.  What is wrong with people?  Are they going to hand their babies over to someone who has no clue about handling children-- about values and comfort and love?

My friend's adopted daughter has every advantage-- she sings and dances and has beautiful clothes.  Who knows if one day while she is rocking her own baby she will feel some hole inside of her and begin to disintegrate with sadness.  Or manifest some genetic inclination to addiction or madness or early dementia.

A gypsy once told me I inherited the curse of my Grandmother.  She died young and tragically and I used to look at her beautiful wedding dress with the tiny satin waist in a box in my attic which I imagined came alive and rustled through the dark hallways of my old creaking childhood house while we slept.  I read somewhere she had a poet's soul and wept for some young lover during the war and died of grief.  At night I took her old rag doll to bed and imagined her watching over me with love and wisdom.  Her legacy is unspeakably mine.  We have many things in common-- including single motherhood and her dark hair.  Her goodness and understanding informs my life and heart in a way that has sustained me like a kind of personal goddess.

We grow up and parent ourselves, they say.  The genuine of us try to 'feel' who we are, to know our own heart and follow our own dream.  Navigating the staggering choices of life today is difficult.  Our culture pressures us to subscribe to things that have no essential importance to our core and yet have eclipsed most of our humanity.  The truth is so dressed up and cosmetically altered and perverted… there is no bible or manual to help us, no religion or even a parent or lover to answer our needs.  But we can try, like Kachina dolls of complexity, to remove the shells and see ourselves as we are, and see others as they are, and reach out and maybe save someone from a terrible catastrophe or even just a lonely night, or a bad decision.  A shared moment-- a compassionate 'ear'-- a mirror.  And the map of this world is so huge and complicated-- but right through our wall, next door-- there may be something we can change, and we must try to take the tiny but crucial initiative toward some version of human goodness.  Amen.

The Sympathy Vote

For about a month now, this homeless lady has been sleeping in our vestibule. She somehow has sussed out that when the doorman-for-show leaves at 10 PM, my building turns back into the funky pumpkin it is, was and always will be, and the homeless lady slumps in the heated little entry rectangle with her stack of suitcases-on-wheels, like a living urban lawn-jockey reminder.

The first couple of nights I asked her if she was waiting for someone. She made me feel like I was copping some superior attitude and was letting her know I belonged and she didn’t. She told me she was waiting for a bus which was maybe a plausible 3 on a scale of 10. The crosstown as I well know comes every 40 minutes in overnight hours and on frigid winter nights I am often forced to log some time in the all-night deli on Broadway comparing phone cards. Okay. Maybe she’s got some strange overnight job in a yarn shop or pet store. Kind of the cat-hoarding vibe, actually. Definitely a closet knitter.

But on the second night she was obviously napping. I offered her a bagel and she snapped out a negative. Where did I get off, anyway, patronizing, giving her a hard time? I don’t own the frigging place. Oh, but I do…at least a tiny piece of it…But not the piece she’s sleeping in, her attitude implied. Besides, I have sympathy for the homeless…especially this middle-aged woman in black with the hat and red 70’s style glasses who by night #3 is definitely giving off the subtle smell of the minimally washed. That could be me, I always think… the ‘there but for fortune’ thing. Especially in these ominous economic times where not only am I circumstantially living beyond normal means but in line to lose some of the meager opportunities we musicians never take for granted.

I did the laundry last night, and at 5 AM I went down to check. There she was, slumped over on the radiator. Our badly dressed sentinel. The night watchman. Should I rat her out? Maybe she is an angel. For this possibility alone, I’d never disturb her. Not me. Too sympathetic. The stray dog lover. The sucker who puts a coin in the cup of every con-artist with an arm out. Superstitious, I am. Lucky, in my way.

But the last few days have sucked. My bathtub is leaking into the apartment below. The zipper on my favorite jeans is broken. I have laryngitis and a brand new raging toothache in a back molar. My unbreakable titanium glasses I splurged on snapped in half at the bridge. My guitarist cancelled 2 gigs and having a qualified plumber look at the bathroom is out of the question.

So maybe this woman is like some kind of gnarly, bad-spirited presence. A street-level gargoyle with an evil eye. Maybe no one else can see her. My son saw her, though. He doesn’t have sympathy. In fact he doesn’t have any feelings except hunger and anger. He doesn’t care that Hillary Clinton cried, even though it made me feel a little better. Oprah cries, too, he informed me. Apparently women in his world are like those Betsy-Wetsy dolls we had when I was a kid. You turn them over and they cry. Or they wet. Tears have about the same rationale. The same effect on him.

He has no sympathy for the rich people beneath us because despite my pleas, he took a shower just as usual and caused more of their ceiling to cave in. Of course, they have insurance, but that won’t stop them from sending me a bill for $20,000 to repair their gilded moldings or whatever was damaged, even though they are planning a massive renovation anyway. They have sympathy only for other rich people. My son will have no sympathy for me when they serve me with this lawsuit. He will curse my cooking and the thinness of his hamburger because my food budget is eroding and prices are going up.

I hope Hillary will reward her voters and have sympathy for the struggling Americans. I hope she will have sympathy for those children of Darfur who lack the strength to play or blink. I hope she will have less sympathy for the drug company lobbyists and the healthcare companies who have no sympathy for the sick. I hope she will have no sympathy for the Bear-Stearns fixed equity sub-prime mortgage lender who has no sympathy for the homeless and will have them removed when he finds that one of them has been sleeping in his vestibule where they might leave a bedbug or germ which could contaminate his perfect children on the way to private school.

Before I go to bed tonight I’m going to try to leave an offering for Our Lady of the Vestibule. Just in case. I'll be very careful and not wake her. Something subtle, like bread or a flower. For luck. For sympathy. Maybe a Vote Obama button, pinned onto a scarf. I wonder if she’ll vote. I wonder if she had kids like mine who don’t write her or worry or thank her for all the diaper changes. A husband she nursed to his death along with all her resources. A breast cancer diagnosis. Forget my bathroom and the zipper, the taped-up glasses, the root canal and the empty wallet. I am a Democrat. From me, she has the sympathy vote. Hillary will understand.