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The Coldest Home Is Memory

October 20, 2019 in Age Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Past Matters, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

I woke on a whole river of sadness–an ocean, even. My apartment cold, my permakitten anxious, my heart heavy. Still not cast ashore.

In October we are capsized by abruptly cold weather no matter how much we long for it. The veil between this world and the next lifts just as abruptly.

I’d been dreaming of all the couches where I perched in my childhood–all the family homes where I briefly ingratiated myself, not because I craved the companionship of peers or the comfort of uncomplicated adults, but because I’d craved order and cleanliness. Coziness.

Even now, though my mother and I rarely speak, I hesitate to write about the disorder of my family home. It is sexist that the blame landed so resoundingly on her shoulders but the truth is it was mostly her fault. She and my father had one of those fucked-up divisions of labors that a creative person like her should never have attempted–he made money, she kept house. I knew she was bored, I knew she was unhappy, I knew she was profoundly ill-suited to this suburban pathology masquerading as mythology. I also knew she couldn’t think of anything else to do so she sat at the kitchen table day in and day out, drinking cold coffee, slowly reading the paper, looking out the window.

And, you know, not keeping house.

Keep in mind it wasn’t the 1940s but the 1970s. Women’s liberation was happening all around her. It just came too late for her purposes. Continue Reading →

Fool on Tap

September 13, 2019 in Age Matters, Astro Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Past Matters, Spirit Matters

Don’t Look Now, it’s elementary school Liser

Like many oddbot children, I spent my formative years absolutely convinced I was meant to be a superstar. I considered myself a quadruple threat–writer, actor, dancer, singer.

Dancing was the first category to go. Mind you, it wasn’t by choice. I spent most of first and second grade leaping, twirling, and boogying through grocery aisles, playgrounds, the living room. After school I took ballet and disco, the latter held in the school cafeteria, tables and benches pushed back so we’d have room to really dig into the classics–you know, the funky chicken, the bus stop, the hustle. The hot lunch special heavy in the air–I still associate Donna Summer with sloppy joes–I wore a sparkly tam o’shanter I was convinced wouldn’t be out of place in Studio 54. (Then as now, my imagination was overactive.) Though micro-movements eluded me, hip-waggling has never been a personal deficiency so I got by.

But when it came to ballet I was the pits. A tall, gangly child clad in dirty pigtails and coveralls, my outsized hands and feet could not be coaxed into first position, let alone fourth and fifth. I kept tripping over myself and the other girls, neat as pins in their perfect leotards and hairbuns. Worse, I kept nervously joking –“position, huh? What’s your position on the gas crisis? How about the Iran hostage situation, badabumpbump.” A daddy’s girl saddled with an unfortunate preciosity, I was like a mini Jerry Lewis rather than a singularly uncoordinated second grader. Continue Reading →

Change the Record, Change Your Life

July 24, 2019 in Age Matters, City Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Past Matters, Queer Matters, Sabboytical, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

I woke wanting to listen to Aretha. No big surprise there, though I haven’t been listening to my queen lately; it’s still too painful. What I really wanted to hear was new music by her, but this is no small feat when you’ve been obsessed with a now-deceased singer since you were a child.

It was a desire sparked by seeing Malcolm X at BAM last Saturday. It’d been so swampy that weekend, and R and I had been casting about for something to do that would diffuse the intense awkwardness of feeling like strangers after having been lovers for years and then not speaking for years after that. So it wasn’t just the prospect of seeing the Spike Lee biopic on a big screen that had dragged us three neighborhoods from our own as temperatures climbed into the 100s. We’d had to balance the prospect of sitting in pools of our drying sweat against the promise of a hefty distraction, and the latter had won.

The joint was packed, and not just because of that AC. Everyone in attendance was agog over the choreography and catharsis and craftsmanship and charisma and certitude. This was a 3.5-hour film, yet there was none of that BS chatter and smartphone-checking you find these days at a public screening. In the last 10 minutes, the late, great Ossie Davis delivered his eulogy for Malcolm, and all around me people sat silent except for the occasional nose-honking.

Over the credits sailed an Aretha recording I’d never heard before: “Someday We’ll All Be Free.”

Until the last credit R and I sat still. At the beginning of the film he’d reached for my hand and I’d been stiff, like a child afraid to disappoint a needy elder. Always sensitive to rejection, he’d dropped it after a bit and I’d forced myself not to soothe his ruffled feathers by reaching back. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t initiate any physical contact I didn’t desire. He’d done that enough for us both. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy