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. 

Sleepers

Most of my friends complain about interrupted sleep.  As one ages it becomes less straightforward-- the biology of it, I suppose. And for those of us in New York City apartments, waking, we often hear our neighbors above-- more often now that they are aging, and sleep no doubt in separate rooms.. one walks around, whatever... we invent narratives.

When I was small I thought love meant you slept together in a bed; I'd imagine the scenario-- it was chaste and romantic. I was one of those children who tucked myself in at night with a menagerie of stuffed animals... giraffes and lions and Yogi Bears and Pinocchios-- Raggedy Anne and other squishy creatures with sad eyes.  Recently there was a piece in the Times about adults and their stuffed sleep companions. Not that I pass judgment. In fact the whole issue has become a major industry-- the way food is so complicated-- now it's customized mattresses and the science of blankets and temperatures-- sound machines and gourmet sheets.  It's a lot, as they say on television.

Many of my friends no longer sleep with their significant other. Together they toss and turn and worry; they blame their partner for insomnia.  Whenever I've had a long-term relationship, sleeping together was essential.  Break-ups meant re-acclimating to sleeping separately; this alone was difficult and occasionally the habit lingered and we'd 'cheat' and spend an occasional night together.  It was confusing and reassuring at once.  But it wasn't just sex, it was the intimacy of sleep.  Even the old one night stands... sometimes I longed to stand staring out of a hotel window, anticipating the strangeness of someone under sheets.  One night on the road I crawled in bed with one of the roadies and he told me things no one had ever told me.  It was like we enacted some scene from a play that had been written just for us; it felt significant and deeply affecting.  Neither of us discussed it afterward.  

Now that these things are mostly in my past, I rummage through them occasionally, to remember who I have been, where and with whom.  Sometimes I have these dreams, although I am generally sleeping with a book these days... and I awake listening to my neighbors who are sleeping alone in a common space, who live separate lives now, as many of us do.  My own father used to fall asleep with the television on; in those days the programming ended at a certain point.  If I were awake I'd hear the national anthem, and if I peeked in, the screen would show those horrid stripes until dawn. No one dared turn it off.

Being awake in the 21st century and checking programming in overnight hours, there are myriad reruns of old sitcoms and TV dramas.  Sex and the City repeats endlessly.  It occurs to me that this is calming for adults-- the way our kids would watch Thomas the Tank Engine videos hundreds of times... over and over. Stressed out people anesthetize themselves with familiar old shows-- memories, visions of New York when they were happier or younger.  Maybe this helps them sleep.

This afternoon, in the rain, I passed the new uptown Barnes and Noble store; the window is filled with pretty much the same childhood classics I read over and over at bedtime: The Hungry Caterpillar, Thomas the Tank Engine... there were dolls and stuffed animals of these same familiar characters-- Elmo, whose name my son pronounced with this very southern accent... the Wild Things, soft train cars with happy faces. Standing beside me was a young British woman from Manchester, with a little girl who was-- yes, holding out her arms to me.  I was surprised-- it was raining-- they were wet, as I was. English people are more accustomed to these drizzles and don't always bother with an umbrella. But children are not so friendly these days-- nor are mothers post-pandemic anxious for strangers to touch their babies.  This child-- maybe 18 months-- was smiling in the most extravagant way at me, and insisting I take her-- me with my terrible arm, I was unable to really lift her properly. She's friendly, her Mom explained, but not like this.  It was as though she recognized me-- there was this absolutely palpable connection and a kind of love I hadn't felt in so long, it brought me to tears-- this lovely little Irish face with sparkling eyes... too young to care about material things.. and there we were:  me, tearing up in the rain, feeling so connected to this child and my lost  days of baby-rearing. The mother, too-- she started to cry... maybe her Mom was overseas or had died... I thought of possibilities... and we looked in the window, and we repeated the names of the characters... as though we were family... and the child-- not quite up to speech, was just happily holding her arms out and trying hard to hug and kiss me as much as I could manage.

It was clear the baby did not want to stop this game with me... and finally I made an awkward excuse and left.  The entire window display imprinted in my visual mind, I went down toward the East River. On the way, I passed St. Monica's church which seemed to beckon; the glass doors were open and the music seeping out. It was the six o'clock mass... and I stood in the back while the priest read the daily passage and proclaimed that God is love.. and it made sense to me, having been lessoned by the little Irish girl.  This is it... the whole church singing and proclaiming, yes... Hallelujah, etc... all of us sleepers in various rooms, underneath the same celestial ceiling... receiving a kind of reprieve, a kind of love.  

Up in Smoke

I'm writing this to the accompaniment of the Spectrum hold-music from the earpiece of my heavy old landline phone-- the only one I own-- waiting once again to try and negotiate a reprieve from excessive charges for inconsistent service and the potential privilege of watching mediocre television on 4000 irrelevant channels I will never explore.  I am reminded of ordering multiple Happy Meals just to get the nineteen-cent toy for the kids which seemed to be exclusive in those innocent pre-internet days; and how can we be horrified by the habits of these TLC-channel reality-show hoarders when our lives are chocked with exponentially massive digital tonnage?  Mall-scaled stacks of unopened TV dinners defrosting in the global-warmed polluted air?  Does this give anyone even a fractional glimpse into the hourly generation of froth-data and marketing congestion? All you binge-texters and iPhone junkies-- no, you are not 800-pound obese and homebound but somehow morbidly bloated with nutritionally unsound brain-feeds.  Is anyone out there?  Back to my yellow lined pad and cheap ballpoint pen.  Does anyone remember Koko the Clown?  Back to the inkwell....?

Friday night I had a midnight show.  We arrived at the bar and I was corralled by an attractive  youngish woman who in blunt verbal and body-cues let me know she wanted to hook up.  Yes, she was drunk... and if she'd been a man, I would have freely given her the fuck-off response... so I began to wonder, with the #MeToo history we older women have navigated, why I would give my own sex a free pass.  I do not find the aggressive come-on appealing-- even when it's a rockstar or celebrity; it's just not flattering to be flash-craved like a cupcake by a food addict.

Similarly, I met a man recently who seemed intelligent and interesting enough; we bonded over the book I was reading.   He is literate and musical; we had a coffee-- benign.   On the phone, later, he made a few lewd outside comments and references to his sexual superiority.  Jesus.. I am a senior citizen now?  Certainly he is.  Dealbreaker.  Are there people out there who respond to this?  Who like it? Apparently.

Of course, we rock and rollers are used to an entirely different behavioral code at the workplace.  Audience (and band members) scream, curse, strip down, fight-- throw bottles and themselves onto the stage, bleed-- we've seen it all.  Some bands instigate extreme behavior-- it's part of the experience.  Alcohol and drugs stir the pot to a quicker boil... and the music itself is both exciting and inciting.  We love it.  But I gave up going to hardcore and punk shows.  When ambulances park outside of a club waiting for customers-- well, I'm done with it now.  Does that make me a prissy-assed prude?

In the midst of teenage hell, a school psychologist told me I had not given my son clear boundaries.  Yes, at his worst gangsta-phase, he referred to me (and his teachers, apparently) as 'Niggah'.  We had worse battles and issues... but even he, who has emerged from the delinquency and acting-out a remarkable and beloved 'mensch',  told me I had failed to maintain disciplinary lines.  I am not the military type.  What does one do.. beat them?  I was a single Mom ex-hippy playing seedy rock-clubs in bands with less-than-stellar role models.  Admittedly, I failed the teenage parenting non-exam.

At this life-juncture, where way more is behind me than before me, I have much more clarity than I once did.  Musically-- it's a yay or nay.  I avoid things I once tolerated.  Personally-- it's fairly black and white; there is little time for people who annoy me.  We live in an over-populated city where there is limited width for individuality and attention, let alone a seat on public transportation.  I have grown more selfish about my personal latitude; I spend much more solitary time -- sometimes in crowds, but as an observer, not a companion or subscriber.  I have drawn those lines more graphically around me-- whether it is the nightmarish approaching white-chalk of my own imagined fatality, a sort of protective prison, or an adult time-out.  I have finally acquired a sense of boundaries.

Our clown president (back to the inkwell for him, if only...) is obsessed with the US/Mexican border... but has absolutely no awareness of his utter failure as a human to perceive or respect the concept of personal boundaries, and has crossed and violated every imaginable line of justice, decency, courtesy, ethics, acceptability, humanity-- we can go on forever.  He offends women daily, is bigoted, ignorant, intolerant--  embodies the antithesis of everything I believed as a child was 'presidential'.   How can I expect drunk women in bars to respect my personal space?

Last week I went up to Dyckman Park to watch my son's spectacular basketball team play a league game.  I was frisked by the police-women on the way in, and handed one of those blow-up plastic thunder sticks to taunt the opposite team.  The stands were filled with mostly twenty to thrity-ish spectators and fans, some kids.  There is loud music blasted through the speakers-- a DJ-styled announcer runs around the court during play.  It seemed everyone was lighting up cigar-sized spliffs.  They were passing them around-- even to me, by the guy in front of me who asked me if I noticed I was the only white person there... and was I nervous?  No, I am not... but the smoke was so thick... it was like eating a heavy meal; I honestly don't see how the players maintained their skills.

On the train downtown, afterward-- I kept smelling marijuana.  At the grocery store the cashier looked at me like I had facepaint on.  At last I ran into a friend who did a double-take and said.. woman-- what have you been smoking?  I went home and took a shower.  Next morning-- even my sneakers in the hallway smelled like a fresh-lit joint.  There I had been, watching a great game... minding my business-- an observer-- and the smoke permeated... I breathed it,  I wore it... even though my days of getting high are many decades away.

There is little we can do about some boundaries.  Smoke-- the dark-- the weather-- people in ridiculous states of dress in our visual field-- sirens-- overheard conversations.  Men and women in my gym... at all ages-- choose to display their naked flesh in varying states of youthful beauty or decay... we cannot change their choices.  Maybe the fashion police are out there, or the actual dress-code enforcers.  Our own friends will say things or do things that bother us... I care about people, but I care less and less what strangers think of me.

When I was ten years old, I smoked cigarettes but I didn't always inhale.  It made me feel like a teenager and I liked the way it looked in my fingers, the way the smoke curled up around me.  They became prohibitively expensive, and really bad for you; smoking is banned in public places in most countries because it's too hard to draw a non-permeable line.  Other seriously offensive, unhealthy things are duked out on sidewalks, argued in court,  debated in international forums, protested in human marches and on picket-lines.  These things are important... and time is too precious to get our feet stepped on and watch others helplessly violated by schoolroom or presidential bullies.  As far as intimate personal boundaries, I can still imagine the cigarette, sympathize with the smoker, refuse to inhale and walk away.

Biblical Sense

When I was in graduate school a girlfriend of mine convinced me to audition with her for a topless dancing job.  Just come and watch, she urged.  It was somewhere on 42nd Street; some nights I imagine it was the very stage where I have played bass guitar so many times.  I was maybe 22 and she was even younger-- still had baby fat, she did… but she was sophisticated and read Proust and Kafka, like I did, and she was very sure of herself.  Besides-- I was taking home $92 a week working 40 hours… and she assured me I could make that in one night.  No one would ever recognize me; it was not the kind of place our Dads-- Madison Ave. businessmen-- would prowl.  We went down on a sunny Tuesday afternoon-- but there was like a night curtain in the bar, the way Atlantic City casinos keep you time-blind.  We both liked to dance-- the music was decent… we were bold and bohemian and our boyfriends were bandmates; it seemed safe, in a way… like a sister-thing.  She was less shy than I was; afterward, while the manager was laying out the rules, I covered myself and she didn't.  But it wasn't about the dancing-- it was about getting guys to buy you an overpriced drink, which would actually be ginger ale or seven-up or water… and there was just something so sleazy about the cheap little scam of it… I turned it down.  She, on the other hand, took the gig.  Years later-- maybe 25 years later-- my guitar player went to a strip club in San Francisco, and there she was-- a little matronly but still working it.  No judgment-- I admire her, in a way, and if she writes the novel we both talked about when we were young-- well, hers will undoubtedly sell better than mine.  She friended me recently on Facebook.

On my first trip to Amsterdam, I went with the boys to the Red Light district.  I was fascinated: the working girls were in these little shadow box environments-- they reminded me of those doll-suitcases they made in the 1950's… where you'd open a mini-trunk and there would be this unclothed doll with her wardrobe and little accessories in a compact cardboard closet.  I selected an angelic looking blonde in aqua lace for them-- but the guys went for the slutty ones in red and orange.  I waited in a coffeehouse-- envying the girls, in a way.  No one looked worried or sad or lonely.  It was like a tiny stage-- and they were both the play and the actor.

Backtrack to my junior year in college.  I lived off-campus and our little flat was famous for welcoming transient rock musicians, writers, travelers… one of our regular guests was a prostitute from Manhattan who was hands-down the most fascinating woman I'd met up to that point-- built like a model, the face of a madonna--with style and taste, a razor sharp tongue and an exotic vocabulary of 4-letter euphemisms.  She smoked like a chimney, borrowed money from everyone--  perched herself on our living room sofa for days at a time, generally on an amphetamine-fueled binge-- preferred the company of my gay roommates.  One night a drunk psychotic ex-boyfriend threatened me with a gun, and she stood up and decked him.  It was incredible.  Then she called campus police.  Fearless.  Dignified.  Plus she had carte blanche at Max's and treated me to a few nights at the Chelsea when it was memorable.

I noticed last week's New York Magazine chose the subject of prostitution for their cover article.  Not sex trafficking, but the voluntary kind.  Seems kind of tired and overdone-- especially with lines of sexuality culturally blurring and the constant parade in New York City of old men with fat wallets and their much-younger well-heeled dates.  It's a bit of a yawn, the whole issue.  I was surprised recently to hear a friend of mine acting horrified that someone at our table was on his way to a late-night massage in what is effectively a brothel… I mean-- how many dates, dinners, boring conversations has he paid for-- anticipating… okay, so romanticism is not dead.

But really, what is unromantic about paying for sex?  It doesn't seem bad to me.  In a culture where every other storefront is a spa or hair salon or a specialty food merchant --a photography studio or gym or cosmetic boutique--- acupuncture, facials, massage-- colonics and manicures-- it seems a tiny leap to seek some essential physical pleasure or relief.. or variety.

When my son was a baby-- I struggled and occasionally took a few odd jobs-- painting or learning how to prep and tile bathrooms… the money was decent and I kept nursery school hours.  One day my 'boss' asked me to paint his dick.  I laughed-- but then I realized he was serious.  So I did it.  He gave me a $50 and I felt some kind of power.  Okay… it progressed.. no details… but I felt no shame and no  guilt.  I bought things for my son.  Clothes.  Nikes.  The guy was obsessed with me and brought me breakfast and overpaid me for my work.  It was a little fun-- we listened to music.  He had a wife.  I felt 'professional'.  Then after a while it began to feel a little desperate and needy and I was turned off.  Years later he tried to 'hire' me-- I thought about it--  but it turned me off.

Now I'm old.  The idea that someone would pay me for sex is absurd.  But the idea that anyone is paid for sex seems not only reasonable but obvious.  Plenty of women get the on-the-job harassment anyway-- why not put it on the table and get your end-of-year bonus in advance?

It's Easter.  There's a well-believed myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.  I think the Bible nowhere states this; she was a sort of fallen woman, or maybe suffered from nerves or mental illness.  The image of a woman washing Christ's feet is compelling and pious and loving.  Maybe erotic in a chaste way.  Whatever-- in Saramago's version of the Gospel, they slept together.  Sometimes we love someone and the only gift we can really give is ourselves.  Sometimes they want this.  Sometimes they want to pay for it-- guilt, or gratuity.  The act of love is sometimes just sex… maybe the next best thing-- why not make it available… is it not a need?  Are these Craigslist posts and desperate online dating shoppers not looking for some kind of pleasure if they can't find true love and many of us never have this?  We have arrangements-- marriages, affairs, relationships.. a consensual contract and exchange of money seems to distribute the power equally.  And as any divorced man will testify, at least you get what you pay for… in some version… as opposed to giving away what you bought and didn't have.

Anyway, less judgment, more acceptance-- we're human; the lesson of Jesus is forgiveness and mercy.  We do what we do to survive and we are all accustomed to paying for food and shelter… if we could just as easily order take-out physical intimacy, there might be a lot less aggression and anger.  I'm sure Jesus wouldn't mind that.  And I'm not looking forward to debate or discussion-- just airing a bit of slightly dirty intimate laundry...

The Poet Winks (ogonblicken)

The death of Tomas Transtromer last week felt sad for me.  My Swedish friends had gifted me all of his books, and although I could never summon the passion he seemed to elicit from his countrymen, I also recognize that poetry suffers from translation.  He seemed an underdog for the Nobel prize, though a Scandinavian frontrunner for years, and beloved by a certain cult of New York musicians like Tom Verlaine.  His interviews were charming, and while I was living in Sweden I learned a stroke had left him without speech, but still writing poetry.  Perhaps this informed his work; he was also unable to use his right hand, but continued to play piano, which he'd loved, with his left.  My image of him, from what I've read,  is that he became weightless and papery at his end, and dissolved into the mystical landscape he evoked.  We mourn not the man, but the fact that there will be no more poems.  Yet the ones we have will grow;  the Nobel prize assures this.  I dreamed of him-- of my Swedish ex-boyfriend singing a song I think I wrote for him, in my dream… but of course all of this disappeared in the morning.

I've always been obsessed with bed art.  Paintings of beds, sleeping women… people at their most vulnerable and most 'open'.  The way you must trust, in order to sleep--- trust your partner, trust your surroundings, yourself.  You must not fear being apprehended in the act of dreaming, when you are most naked, when you are maybe most beautiful.  The intimacy of sleeping with someone the first time is much more difficult than the sex.  Passion crosses over into love while you sleep and dream.  It is like fresh, wet paint that becomes a painting.

Of course people like Tracey Emin choose to throw this in our face, to blow it up, as artists do-- because the act of betrayal, of abandonment, is maybe most flagrant in the context of beds… of coverings and uncoverings, of couplings and uncouplings.    I swear to f---ng God I never slept with that woman,  one of my drummers used to assure his wife, because he'd only had sex with some woman in a bed.  But it calmed his wife.

Lately I find myself more passionate about art than about men.  I seem to have outgrown my expectations of people, and find myself drawn to art like a kind of religion.  The pursuit of paintings obsesses me in my non--working moments.  At night I scroll through auction after auction, looking for my mate,  the way maybe some people are searching match.com and OKcupid for human completion.  At an art fair this weekend, I was browsing the wares in some booth and one of the senior gallery staff kept trying to start up a conversation.  Finally, as I left, he asked to see my necklace.  I'm trying to flirt with you, he explained.  But I very seriously told him the brief story of my simple jewelry.  I didn't answer that I was trying to meet the art.

Something I learned from running an art gallery years ago-- is how to make a decision.  Because nothing in my life was ever really clear cut--- except these paintings.  There was a budget, there was a price; there were things that were possible or not quite possible, and I had to deal with the boundary of impossible.  I learned how to trust myself to make a selection.  I learned how to separate things that were superficially beautiful from things that would grow on me, that would reveal themselves to me, with time.  It is a lesson that informs my life, and one I cherish.

So Friday night I did bring home a painting, after agonizing between mine and another with which it seemed to be having a dialogue on the wall.  I felt like I was interrupting a conversation, a relationship…. but to take both seemed greedy.  And the one I brought home spoke to me.  It somehow had something to do with the Transtromer landscape which I had never quite grasped, but there in its mystical moonlight, I could sense this transition.. between evening and night-- between life and death.  All night I was sleepless-- maybe longing for its companion, even though the artist himself had been present at the sale and seemed emotionless about whichever one I selected.   I awoke many times, went into the next room and turned on the light to see my lovely painting, but felt its solitude, its strangeness.  Saturday I emailed the painter; could I pay him next week, etc. for the other… and late in the day he apologized; it had been sold.  So I felt this terrible sense of betrayal, of disappointment-- that felt disturbingly close to that teenage devastation when some boy you are longing for, who you know, you KNOW loves your soul and your essence, even though you have never spoken-- is dating the girl who sits next to you.

Of course, time is on your side when you are a teenager, and that boy eventually comes around… but the art--it is perhaps lost forever.  I briefly had a fantasy that one of my friends who craves my art had gone to the fair and stealthfully carried it off under their arm… but that was my teenage sense of betrayal, and I am adult and a professional.  I know when to stop bidding at an auction; I know about letting things go; I know that sometimes the dream is better than the possession, and my tiny landscape with the strange evening light and the one stroke of sky in the greenery will remind me of this, will suggest the longing, the unfinished question of solitude and the hidden mystery of Swedish night poetry and the left-hand-only piano melody soundtrack that will make it even more 'mine'.

Eating Rice

The Ray Rice elevator assault and the harsh career sentence have been on my mind today.  Ray was the huge star of my high-school alma mater.  His adorable Grandma knows my Mom.  I have watched football with quasi-maternal passion since he became a Raven.  At 5' 8" he was not born with the physique of a typical running back.  He developed his skills, he worked at his game with fierce dedication.

My doctor was a Big Ten college all-star.  He has explained to me many times the mindset of a linebacker-- the brainwave-warping, combat-style mind-fuck the coaches beat into their players so they come out onto the field ready to take bullets, to smash into defensive walls with the intensity and drive of human tanks, with neck-breaking concussional force and no fear.  Professional football is a rough sport.  The laxity of penalties for what looks to me like near-gratuitous violence in random play is baffling.  Players are paralyzed, even killed… and who is held responsible?  No one.  

I am not defending domestic violence.  I think physical assault by either men or women is not just a sign of dysfunction but a relationship death sentence.  I also think the line between aggressive passion and injury has been blurred.  How many of our punk-rock and hip-hop romantic couples have sported casts and black eyes?  Of course, there is a double standard for men and women.  It's rare that we condemn a woman for bullying her man, for inciting a physical response which might be acceptable between two men, but always deemed inappropriate when the inciter/victim is a woman.  This is one area in which inequality among sexes rules.  

Cut to the media-hyped image of that Columbia student carrying her mattress around as her senior thesis.  Don't get me started, our beloved Joan Rivers would comment.  First of all, in my day a thesis was something scholarly and important--- a major piece of research which prepares you for future theses and books-- something which makes a contribution to available literature and breaks new intellectual ground.  Granted what now passes as high art, performance art-- is a sad minor reflection of the intentions of the serious contemporary artists who established the 'canon'.  The fact that this is passed off as thesis material would make me think hard before I'd shell out the kind of tuition Columbia charges.  I wonder how desperately this girl competed for her acceptance to an urban Ivy League school-- the very one whose reputation she is now hell-bent on challenging.

Again, I'm not trivializing the trauma of date-rape.  But is her personal vendetta against this man really the responsibility of the University?  Should an institution be pressured to eject another student because this attention-mongering person can't legally handle her own affair?  Sex is an adult-ish activity.  There is always some element of personal choice in consensual sex; some boundaries crossed or loosened.  A college student is presumed to be mature enough to make some personal decisions.  Whether and where she failed to control the consequence of her action…. is another issue.  But how is an academic umbrella institution responsible for the stupid action of one of its students, based on testimony of a mishap which she'd declined to report for several months.  She certainly isn't shy.  Obviously a bit of a red flag there.  I just find her annoying and juvenile.  Why doesn't she take her mattress to Africa and demonstrate against serious violations against women?

Recently I was friended on Facebook by someone whose name was vaguely familiar.  He's a well respected music producer who had massive success in the 1980's.  I had a nauseating recognition when I looked at old photos.  In the mid 1980's, this same man had asked me to meet him to discuss my charming and original cassette of home-recorded songs which had somehow found their way to his massive desk.  Not only flattered but thrilled, I went to see him at his 5-star midtown hotel where he explained that because he was expecting an important conference call, we'd have to meet in his private suite.   The guy had a gorgeous wife and kids--- I dismissed any trepidation… and ended up, 2 hours later, with my clothes ripped and tattered, vomiting in the elevator on the way down.  I lost my keys, my wallet, and my musical innocence that night, even though I managed to fight him off.  I ended up moving to the UK and never again submitted my music or had any vision of pop-star or songwriting success.  Did I petition his label or his major company to dismiss him?  Did I file charges or even tell anyone outside of my husband (with whom he'd worked, the asshole!)?  I did not.  I vowed I would never again meet anyone in a hotel room without love or witnesses or body guards.  

This week I've been reading one of Vargas-Llosa's political novels 'Death in the Andes' and in a pivotal scene, a pedestrian young guard bursts in on one of the top military officers who is beating the crap out of a woman while she screams and begs for mercy.  The guard kills the officer, kidnaps the woman in a car where she proceeds to scream and protest that she loved the officer--- he was her lover and she begged him to beat her violently as sexual foreplay.   Irony.  

I don't know what happened in that Columbia student's room.  I do know my son had a few psychotic girlfriends in college who threatened to slit their wrists if he didn't spend the night with them, and then reported him as a deadbeat Dad because he failed to pay for a pregnancy test for one of them who happened to be on the pill.  It was trouble.  Especially when two of them teamed up and went to his Dean.  But it was trouble for us-- the family.  I dealt sympathetically with the girls and chastised my son appropriately.  I didn't take it to the University.  Hopefully, given this generation's short memory, the facebook world has long dismissed charges, and the girl, after a few other dramatic incidents, changed schools and moved on.  But in general--- expecting your parents, or your affiliated parental-designated institution, to take a position in your personal misfortunes--- seems not just juvenile but absurd.  

I also don't know what happened outside of Ray Rice's elevator; there were unfortunately no cameras in mine.  But what I don't understand is why this is the jurisdiction of the NFL.  Domestic abuse is all too common among football players, partially for the way they are programmed to compete; partially because they are often victims of women who pursue athletes the way they pursue rockstars-- -for money, for the thrill of being next to the limelight, for the drama.  Some of these players are boys who have spent so much of their lives learning plays and practicing, adopting a 'violent' competitive mindset-- -they are relatively unequipped to deal with relationships.  I have read umpteen psychologists' assessments of the financially dependent abused woman refusing to testify against her mate.  But Janay is the mother of their child.  She is his wife, as well as the designated victim, and she is in his corner.  I feel she has been denied a voice.  I am not condoning his behavior, but I am condemning the public 'stoning' of what I consider a private affair.

Just as we all have our constitutional rights, we have the right of choice.  If Rihanna loves Chris Brown after all, so be it.  If we all listened to our mothers and married that nice boring boy next door at 21, what guarantee is there that he will not become an alcoholic or a wife-beater?  Besides, there would be a lot less great sex in our world.  And without instagram and youtube, we might have retained our constitutional right to Privacy, and maybe, just maybe… Ray Rice would have learned a lesson, managed his affairs, and his wife and daughter would have kept their VIP stadium seats and happily witnessed a winning season.

As for the Mattress Girl, she needs to re-read The Princess and the Pea… and when she describes with great poise to the media how she shakes in her bed every day… I give her an F on her thesis, a D in Drama, a C for acting, and I quake in my chair here realizing I have spent precious minutes on her pathetic vendetta when there are serious social and human problems.  Since the priorities of higher education have apparently evaded her tiny petty world-view… perhaps a 2-semester suspension would better serve her here.  Let her eat Rice.

Crosstown Traffic

Last week I found myself in front of the television-- not just once but twice-- watching the film "Traffic".  This is a hefty investment of late-night time… and it's not the first time I have re-viewed it.  It is not the acting or the story per se, although the treatment is intriguing and Benicio del Toro has always been one of my favorites (ditto the Brian Eno soundtrack choices).  I have to be honest-- my favorite scenes are those of Erika Christensen and her friends getting high, getting fucked up, in that sort of innocent high-school way you discover drugs…and it is not just a world you enter, but a kind of baptism-- a conversion.

Sex in high school can be awkward and ambivalent and there was the threat of pregnancy or commitment or infuriating your best friend by hooking up with the boy she loves who really loves you even though you love some college boy who is unattainable.  The temptation of letting someone's passion spill over you is irresistible and you let it happen.  But drugs… it's the ultimate Hall Pass.  No guilt, no fear, no lines to blur.  You push a button or pop a pill, and you are inter-planetary.  You can fly… you can float-- you can  dance-- you are your own future-- you are everywhere and everything.  Music is 3-D, 3-D is 4-D.  Boys are sexy and sex is slow and loose the way you dream it.

Drugs when you are young are like freedom.  They are recess, they are unlocked doors and windows and no rules.  But most of all--- they let you love yourself, or they let you let someone else love you in the way you can't in regular teenage life because you hate looking at yourself in the mirror some days.  You hate your life and especially your parents and you haven't yet realized this will have absolutely nothing to do with your adult life if you are smart and brave.  But when you are high, for just a minute, your room is not your world and your face is so not your face.

And I apologize to my niece and my son and all the kids and adults I have seen struggle to manage the massive attraction of substances, and I have not used anything for decades and do not necessarily have the desire.  But watching this film-- -and others-- does not leave me with a message of relief or wisdom.  And of course, like a permanent vacation, Cancun or Paradise gets boring; witness Adam and Eve and just about every fairytale and Biblical parable where reality wins.  Even Hollywood angels have chosen to return to earth and suffer mortal torments.  Not to mention that the mechanism of addiction leaves a user little choice; it is get high or be sick.

Some days the pain of sobriety-- if you happen to be a sensitive person--- is brutal.  I am one of those people who get flagged by Seventh Day Adventists and street hustlers.  Beggars smell me coming.  I can't refuse them.  I feel pricked and guilty and sheepish and human.  I curse my good fortune even though I can scarcely fill my pantry these days, have gaffers tape on my boots.  I come home from a 4 AM train ride feeling smaller-- a little beaten up and with that teenage mirror-angst.  Who the fuck am I and why should I give money for food to people who smell like alcohol and body rot?  Is it superstition?  A test?  Fear of meeting the Indian goddess of luck who stalks the earth in various disguises and should you refuse her will curse you with bad fortune until you die?

As an adult, Love was maybe my drug of choice.  Music--- playing at a volume that challenges all your senses-- almost pushes you across the border… but not quite.  The song ends, and you return.  You are left with a little aura-- maybe a little more attitude-- that Fuck You thing if you play rock and roll.  You jump off a stage and feel no pain.  But it's not the same kind of high.

So I watch this film and the teenage daughter getting fucked up with what I confess is a kind of fascination or envy.  Of course former users or addicts will never recreate their first innocent experiences, no matter how much we fantasize.  And the fictional girl in the film doesn't have to worry about college loans or car insurance or parents that don't love her, like most of us… and on the surface, she hasn't really ruined her life the way some of us have.

Walking down the street today it seemed the scent of marijuana is everywhere… even in Central Park in the secluded little uptown copse where I write songs occasionally.  Smoke always made me dull-- not my drug of choice.  Thinking about the exits and near-exits I've witnessed this year-- inconclusive suicide, self-euthanising, and then the ones desperate to hang on who were just dropped by the universe…  and passing my local junkie 'clique' enjoying their late-afternoon 'nod', one of them hovering on the curb like he's about to dive off-- eyes closed, mouth open… I'm more than middle-aged…I'm lucky to have a couple of quarters to give the guy who sleeps on the church steps… my local homeless guy knows where I shop and what I buy and he stopped hitting me up long ago.  His hair is perfect, by the way; he could play himself in a film.  He shows me a wrinkled tabloid photo of the new Wonder Woman.  She's dressed in black now.  Even the name doesn't sound right anymore… Wonder Bread, Wonder Boys, Wonder Wheel.  Heroin(e).

Sisters.net

Last night some featury not-quite-coherent bit of news surfaced on my radar, alleging staggering statistics of on-campus rapes among Columbia freshman.   So I read a little further, with my own prejudices and skepticism, and learned the alleged perps are not predatory intruders but matriculating Columbia athletes and students.

As a mother, I know freshmen don't have the best judgment.  They are prone to the excessive drinking and partying that is part of the 'independence' declaration of college life.  Suddenly kids are forced to  set curfews and boundaries and I remember occasionally wishing I could blame my mother when I lacked the courage to say no to one thing or another.  Sex?  Pretty much a passionate 2-thumbs up, but another generational can of worms back then.  It wasn't until I was a young adult, pursuing a career, that I really encountered tough boundary issues and power ploys.

My son at the age of 19 was accused on Facebook of being a 'deadbeat dad'.  This by another sophomore who had skipped a day or 2 of the pill and wanted him to pay for her over-the-counter pregnancy test.  She used to call my house at least once a week in a coke-induced panic-- her apartment was on fire, someone was trying to break in-- -anything to require his presence at 3 AM, and to spend the night.  It was like gender-reversed rape when he'd arrive, exhausted and emotionally bullied by her threats and schemes.

In no way would I ever suggest that any of these Columbia women had not been assaulted; what does confuse me, in most of the cases I read--- is where is their head, their thinking, their 'sisterhood'?  I grew   up in an era where pervy uncles and drunk friends of our parents would cross lines and make suggestions.  Pediatricians touched us inappropriately and told us 'the boys are going to love this' when you get a little older.  Our bosses and mentors in our first jobs pressed their suited groins against us and groped us under the desk.  Did we tell our mothers?  Our teachers?  We did not.  But we told each other.  Our friends, our cousins--- whomever-- we told each other-- we confided, we confessed, we exchanged  humiliations and nightmares.  And we grew collectively stronger.  Once we shared our fears, we could look at them and decide what we could do.  We developed a collective jury of our intimate female peers.

We all knew who liked rough sex, we all knew who kissed and told and who disrespected our preferences.  And we knew what to do about it.  Of course there was always a girl among us who was attacked or assaulted without warning.  But we backed her.  We went to the police if we had to; we held each other's hands for abortions, we raised money and protected each other.  We navigated the free-love era with our hearts and brains and one another.  We learned to give love and take love, to try things and not fear them, and to trust our instincts.  I'm not sure, in this Kardashian age, where my son and his girlfriends had seen the Paris Hilton tape a year or two after Bambi,  that there is the sense of a 'net' among women.

Mothers in 21st-century New York City are pretty protective.  We interview and interrogate and hover.  No one is going to touch our baby with impropriety.  Doctors are required to have a female PA present during exams.  We have discussed sex so much our kids don't want to know what we knew.  They want to do it and have it and they want to act like rappers and ho's when they feel like it.  For all the soft porn and T & A & P everywhere we look, sex and love seem just a little cheap.  Girls are desperate and often date the B list.  Women my age are lonely and court guys they wouldn't have given a light at a bar in 1985.   Most guys who take advantage of women do so because no one stops them.  No one confronts them.  Not a tribune of Columbia administrators, but the girl they dissed and her girlfriends.  In my day, that guy wouldn't have lived to tell the tale without a beating from someone…and he wouldn't have dared repeat his offense.  Not in the same geographic hub.  For all the face booking and internet gossip and instagram posting,  how the f--  is the sisterhood failing women?

I am about to do a 'women-in-rock' fundraiser for anti-violence and domestic abuse.  We conscious warriors who have often waded through catcalls and ass-pinching to play our music with pride. We swam upstream to survive the sexist prejudices in a male-dominated musical world.  We support each other, we share, we talk, we rock and we are loud.  My message to the Columbia freshman-- stop blaming the administration for failing you, and start showing up for each other.  Use your brain and instincts and avoid men who are assholes.  An ounce of prevention, etc… protect your assets and stop spreading yourselves so thin.  You are not victims-- you are smart enough to manage your life.  You have a goddam voice and you can arm yourself with a few lessons in self defense.  Be generous with your sisters and see where you are and get out while you are safe.  And don't be afraid to love the ones who love and deserve your righteous body.  That is our legacy and our just dessert.  Amen.

Macy Blue

One night last year after an unusually well attended show, I was approached by one of the It-girl clothing designers… I would never have known, but she left me her card, and I looked her up.  ‘Come see me,’ she said, with a convincing handsqueeze. ‘I want to dress you.  You must come.’   So on a Thursday afternoon I wandered by the shop which was cavernous and under-decorated and very sparsely ‘spersed’ with grey wool jumpers (it was fall), garments with perfectly executed asymmetric cuts, minimal vegan-dyed tops, jackets and coats that draped mannequins with grace and unique style.  A modelish girl asked if I wanted help… then the designer herself--- the one who had kneeled at my feet in a dark club—gave me this quizzical look as though I was not only not ‘customer-esque’ but interfering with the ‘flow’ of the space… so I left. 

That was the closest I came to ‘shopping’ since I’d taken the single-parent oath of self-abnegation so many years ago, when I was young enough to pull off the grungy thrift-shop thing.  Outside on West 14^th Street I had a skin-pricking moment as though I’d just been mugged.

So last week I did some enormously simple charitable favor for a woman who turned out to be gracious and rich and insisted on buying me some token of gratitude.  Balenciaga?  Coach? And when I startled, she said…Well, YOU pick it out, … I’d never get you…. And she gave me an ultimatum and a deadline… and began calling every day to remind and inquire…until…with that blues line going over and over in my head (I’ve got a mind to give up living… but I think I’ll go shopping instead)…the Peter Green version--- I went down to 34^th Street--- maybe because one of my UES neighbors had just informed me that the absolute worst people in New York are in Herald Square.  I had to see.  And there was Macy’s.  My Grandmother worked there- during World War II-- the beautiful one who died so young… and  I thought I might invoke her ghost to find me a leather bag (It’s not in my personal ‘culture’ to actually try clothing on).

Downstairs where the clearance items were strewn around and the bags weren’t padlocked to the display, there was a motley crowd… Brazilian tourists piling things into a huge bag… cute bulgy Spanish girls buying things in pink, fat women from Queens holding bags up to the mirror with their heads tilted… a black winking transvestite whose opinion was to become crucial for me in the end…sales girls of all shapes and varieties… and even a coatcheck where the attendant discouraged me from leaving mine… behind which a man in an intern’s green shirt and no pants was lurking.  I though I was hallucinating. 

I could still distinguish leather from whatever… the smell, the vibe…  and I managed, with the transvestite’s head shakes and nods, to acquire something he approved of.    I completed  the transaction feeling like Rip Van Winkle making his first payphone call.On the way back, I became sort of ‘high’ and chatty to my fellow N train passengers and realized I was acting like some kind of psychotic housewife—like I was trying to ‘feel’ normal.   Back home I felt kind of Christmassy—and when my son came home he saw it and started laughing--- well, I said, I can put my laptop in it, and my books, and my gym clothes… It is kind of huge…  

Twice now I’ve tried to put things in it and leave the house-- -and I can’t quite pull it off.  Maybe I’m just warped and so used to this deprivation thing…but I feel sort of ridiculous.  And it’s not pretentious-- -after all it was Macy’s and it was on sale and it’s just a piece of an old cow that died of natural causes, and now it has a home and doesn’t have to be poked and critiqued by fake interns with no pants and other perverts and shopaholics.   But I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m nearly compulsively drawn to return the thing--- Still, I’m toughing it out.   I’m keeping it.  It’s burning a hole in my closet.  Everything feels absurd. 

Most of all, I keep thinking about my kids--- my son is difficult and moody these days.  He is working and being a man and succeeding and ambitious--- but something is not there---something essential—something that loves even Herald Square.  Sometimes I store up all of this stuff—like I need to tell him about my heart, and about how I feel… that life is going by so quickly--- and about 34^th Street and seeing the fake snow and the Macy’s reindeer in the 1950’s and how he himself sat on Santa’s lap and didn’t really want anything in his 3 year old head and he was ‘trusting Santa to bring him a toy’…but we end up just shrugging at each other. 

My niece is struggling too.  Sometimes I want to tell her about a moment—when I was maybe 23 and high in a room with cool guitar players and someone was playing Pink Floyd or maybe even David Gilmour himself with that beautiful mouth was actually there in the room…playing for you… and everyone was in love but you just wanted to sit with your eyes half closed and your cigarette falling out of your hand and the smoke thick and sweet everywhere and the music perfect and your clothes are maybe on or maybe off and there was no future or past but only the perfect weightless present of all-possibility and your mind is perfect and the sex was perfect and you are just where you should always be…

But it’s Sunday and I will go for the few groceries I can afford, because I am, after all, a pumpkin and the leather bag unlike the glass slipper doesn’t fit, and even if I wore it to the designer’s store, she would still not associate this badly dressed woman with the music and the night and the margaritas and the way she needed to tell me something...the way she whispered…

Maybe I’ll just give the bag to my niece and she’ll politely take it and then leave it on a train where some homeless person will find it and use it to shoplift meat from the supermarket whistling the BB King song perfectly and they’ll look the cashier right in the eye as they hand over 82 cents for a can of cherry coke and leave with $170 of ribeye in the expensive leather satchel still whistling.