ANAIS NIN'S BLOGETTE

Tie a Pink Ribbon round Wall Street

2011-10-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

Cancer is contagious. I don't mean like hugging. I mean like the pink matter spreading in my brain.

Those pink ribbons. First on postage stamps, then milk cartons, then paperclip packaging and potato chip bags. Those logos are making me loco! Even pink-ribboned stuffed puppies in the supermarket. They're targeting all the places women go. But women already know! We're just out doing our business, shopping for dinner, shopping for school supplies, trying to relax and not think about the "C" word!

Remember those scarlet fever blankets? They're planting an epidemic of worried women. Worry causes stress, and stress causes cancer. I know all about brain plasticity and new neural pathways. We're all being branded with a loopy pink fissure, but do we want it there? I just want to buy my carton of yogurt without thinking about getting cancer! I want to keep it gray and ignorant in there!

I have too much awareness already (TMA!). I don't have enough cash to match all that awareness! Because let's get real. Those logo-makers don't want your mind, they want your money. Well, I'm in favor of research funding. So how about we plant the logos where the dough is, and let all of us middle-aged hypochondriacs off the hook? It's bad enough having to do your breast exams without being reminded of it every time you buy a new pen.

How about they imprint pink breast cancer logos on corporate water coolers? How about private breast cancer jets? Let's hang pink ribbons from Alice Walton's dining room chandelier. Let's tie a hundred pink ribbons round the old Corinthian columns of Wall Street!

Lost in Logan

2011-10-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

A chirpy gal in the ceiling kept telling me all the things I would find lost in Logan: books! beer! dining! It sounded like a fun place to be lost in. It took me a couple hours to realize she was saying “Boston.”

The thing that was lost was my 22” by 14” by 9” carry-on roller, color burgundy, not actually "lost" but confiscated by the sheriff as suspicious baggage at Delta Gate A3, a suitcase standing upright like a sentry by my empty seat.

In my head I practiced saying, "I had to go to the women’s room, I was only gone for a minute, I was tired from travel, I was distracted, I was looking for chocolate but all the shops were closed." But, really, I was tired of dragging my 2 pieces of luggage around, tired of waiting around, I wanted to walk unencumbered, swing my arms, I wanted to have a beer, I wanted to test fate, I wanted a run-in with the TSA.

People have always warned me about kidnappers and thieves, but I have never believed in these as threats. The only thieves I have encountered have been the authority figures warning me about them, and then posing as imposters to teach me a lesson.

Many years ago, my husband and I stayed with my parents for a month while we were in between apartments. We had a cute little in-law unit, on the back side of their sunken house, in a posh community, at the top of a hill. To get to our unit you had to go down a little stone staircase, hidden behind bushes; you wouldn't even know it was there, and nobody walked by. One afternoon I came home from work and my desktop was gone. It was so bizarre that I just stood there, confused. Then my mother appeared like a stern shadow.

"You forgot to lock the side-door," she said. "Huh?" I said. She said, "This is what could have happened. You're lucky it wasn't stolen."

Then she made me follow her to recover the booty. We carried back the CPU, the monitor, the printer, the keyboard. In those days, everything was bigger; it was all quite cumbersome. Then we had to hook back up all the cables and wires and plugs; neither of us was very handy. Boy, did she teach me a lesson!

Years even before that, I'd gone on a solo backpacking trip to Europe. Everyone warned me about the pick-pockets of Rome: "Put your traveler's checks and passport in a pouch, under your shirt!" But I was really wowed by the Colosseum. I mean, Wow. I wandered around like a cinematographer, lost in beauty. Until some guy with a big, bulky, expensive camera ran up to me, yelling; he wouldn't let me ignore him. Oh, it was my Canon! Those Italian guys are so sweet.

When I got off the bus in Vermont I told my lover, "You've probably noticed that I don't have any luggage." He said, "I thought there was something different about you. I wondered if you'd cut your hair." I'd come on a red-eye, so I wore pajamas for two days. I was in my jammies, plus a flannel shirt, as we sat in the tea house with our monk. He was talking about letting go of attachments. It's true, I did feel lighter--a part of me wanted to forgo the hassle of retrieving my baggage, but I also wanted a cute dress to wear out to dinner tomorrow.

So the sheriff at Sacramento International had grabbed my bag and locked it up 30 minutes before I could board my plane to Boston. Everybody shrugged. It was late, the sheriff took off, the door was locked. I'd have to call in the morning.

Over and over, I heard safety announcements about "Unintended Baggage." Which made me think of an unwanted pregnancy.

At FedEx, a woman said, "I apologize that you lost your luggage." Then a new person answered at Lost and Found in Logan. I was all haggled out and resigned to shell out $100 for shipping. But this nice, sensible woman suggested, "Why don't I just put your suitcase on the CapeAir flight to Lebanon?" Free of charge, no lectures, and a quick drive over the Connecticut. Yeah! She wasn't afraid of the bomb in my bag!

I Know You're Gay, But What Am I?

2011-10-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

When did you first realize you were AROMANTIC? HOMORANTIC? BI-ASEXUAL?

OK--When did you first realize you were HETERO-CURIOUS? Okay, I was one-and-a-half years old, and my mom was babysitting. This kid had the most curious thing attached to his belly, it flopped around like a big earthworm. Then my mom hid it away with the diaper. Hey, where did that wiggle-wiggle thing go?

When did you realize you didn't like DUDES? I was riding around on my red tricycle and one of those boy-persons came into view. I stopped and covered my eyes with both hands. Yuck!

When did you first realize you were ASEXUAL? When I first heard about sex. You do what with what? Icky, icky, icky!

Describe some early EXPLORATORY PLAY. In the bathtub, I would open a square wet wash cloth and see if I could cover everything from my nipples to between my legs. This was a standard-sized wash cloth, to give you an idea of how small I was.

What was your first SEXUAL EXPERIENCE? The first time I got caught being naughty was in a dark closet with my sister. We had taken off our panties and were giggling with titillation. A warm wave rushed through my body. "I'm never going to wear panties again!" I announced. (We even went to bed with our panties on.) At this point the closet door whipped open--the jig was up!

Who was your first CRUSH? Suzanne Pedulla, in second or third grade. She was lanky and insouciant, with sarcastic, chocolatey eyes. I didn't think about kissing her or getting married to her--I just wanted her to come to my slumber party. I didn't think about kissing or getting married to anybody! Except maybe David Cassidy. No, what I really wanted to do was comb his hair. Me and Suzanne Pedulla would lean against the brick wall of our school and sing, I think I love you, I think I love you!

Did you ever like BOYS? They pulled out their weiners and peed in my backyard. And made those squirty fart noises with their armpits. Gross, gross!

Whom did you have EROTIC DREAMS about? There was this boy in my fourth grade class, Karl Schmidt. He was short, blond, and quiet, and the side-kick of Ernie Segundo, a tall, dark, and flabby kid. I thought of them as Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. In real life, I felt absolutely zero for Karl, and absolute revulsion for loudmouth Ernie. But I had some dream where I kissed Karl or went out with him or something. I woke up absolutely horrified! It was torture seeing him in class the next day. I was afraid the dream might show.

Whom did you feel SEXUAL ATTRACTION toward as a child? Nobody, because I didn't know what sexual attraction was. I had no visual or linguistic examples. In those days, it was easier to protect children from adult content on TV or in the movies.

How did you feel when you FIRST KISSED A BOY? Nothing much. Our lips touched. It was fifth grade and his name was Jimmy McClay. We had the same blond-moppy haircut and striped shirt.

Looking back, what were some symptoms of GENDER IDENTITY DISORDER? I didn't want to get my period. When I was twelve I discovered some rust-colored smudge on my sheets. I couldn't believe it was blood (it wasn't red) and I didn't tell my mom. This went on for some days until I couldn't deny it.

Like an airline stewardess, my mother gave a belt-and-pad demonstration. I refused to learn. Those pink plastic buckles and straps were not part of my identity. I did not want to grow up and become a woman. I did not want to wear a bra or wear a girdle.

Were these FEELINGS ENDURING? Yes, as I grew older I did not want to accept my gender role. I did not want to be a housewife. I did not want to do the dishes. I did not want to make the beds. I wanted to make more money than a woman. I wanted to sow some wild oats.

As a girl, I did not want to grow up and BECOME A WOMAN. And now, I do not want to grow older and BECOME AN OLD WOMAN. I do not want to get wrinkled tits or gray pussy hair. Yuck! It's JUST NOT ME.

So now you have my entire childhood SEXUAL HISTORY. Could you have classified the sexual adult that I would become?

My personal ads list myself as a soft-kinky, bi-friendly librarian type who favors big boots, short skirts, and a lanky TD&H guy who likes to play games.

What GETS ME HOT? In this order:

1. Being topless on a sunny beach

2. Alcohol

3. Being topless in a hot tub

4. Quentin Tarantino movies

I don't know if you'd'a known this when I was six years old. Really, now!

"As if I didn't know my own head"

2011-09-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

A Review of Wishful Drinking

Here's how Carrie Fisher hooks you in. She's really funny. She gives you the juicy stuff up front--electroshock, pills popped, Hollywood inbreeding, a dead guy, gay, in her bed--all in the form of finely-tuned one-liners.

So you could be in the basement of a bookstore in New Hampshire, say, waiting for a guy to pick you up on his way back from the hardware store, and you see Wishful Drinking among Harlequins, and it's better than reading about country barn restoration or the art of making maple syrup.

So there you are, cracking up out loud, alone on an antique fiddleback chair, thinking, I wish I had a best friend who was this funny! Maybe if I bring her book home, I can pretend for a day!

You sit with Carrie on a blanket in the field, shooting the breeze, laughing with abandon, until the shade comes in and the mosquitoes come out. This is the hardest part of the day, especially as it is only 3:00 p.m. But today it's easier, because you're still only on p. 99. Today you don't think about starting a beer, and it's a good thing, cuz you're plum out--you gave up beer yesterday as a way to lose a few pounds.

Now you're inside and the chapter is entitled "Sadness Squared." But do you take heed? No. You and Carrie curl up in a dark corner and bond. You are craving chocolate.

So this is how it happens. She hooks you with her humor, then gives you a mood wash, and before you know it, you're in the middle of a fight.

By the time my guy comes in from the woods, I've had a three-hour soak. Maybe I'm just a regular California gal who's weaning herself of sun, and friends, and coffee. I've never been diagnosed with anything--or at least anything they would tell me. Once, when I was 13, I overheard a doctor ask my mother if I was "high-strung," but he was an asshole. When my mother was out of the examining room he told me that I could be beautiful if I let him give me a nose job.

By this time we're in the country kitchen, carmelizing onions, me feeling so peppy and punchy I can't see the danger coming. I know enough to avoid serious discussions while low on blood sugar, but this wasn't personal. It was theoretical! philosophical! This was my question: Without actual chemical confirmation, how could you know whether you were bipolar, or merely had a mood disorder, or were highly creative? Huh? Huh? This conversation followed us to the fireplace.

Where I proceeded to entertain my lover with witticisms from Wishful Drinking. He saw a picture of Princess Lea and made a comment about how fun it must have been filming Star Wars. "How would you know?!" I challenged, my voice rising. "You have no idea what it's like to be an insecure 19-year-old girl who thinks she's fat, working with a sadistic director and a bunch of macho men!"

My guy is smart enough to know when to bow out and feign sleep on the couch. I finished the book by the fireplace and then went to bed, wishing I had some sleeping pills.

In the morning I woke up, and my first thought was, "Hey, I'm not Carrie Fisher!" My guy was back in bed with me. "I'm done with the book," I said. "I'm normal again." Not only is my lover a great singer-songwriter; now he knows what it's like to be Paul Simon. "Thank god," he said.

How to be a Pop Star

2011-07-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

A Review of Faithfull

Be seventeen, blonde, big boobs. Be at a great party. Be willing.

Pose like a wallflower and spout non sequiturs when spoken to. Have sense enough to know who the big boys are. Be the last to leave.

Blow all your money on great clothes. Blow all your money on blow. Look great with his coat.

For thirty years live life as a movie. Think "Weekend at Bernie's" with Bernie played by Marianne. Come out of your coma with a mystique rather than a reputation.

It only took me a chapter to see how I'd blown my chance. At seventeen I had all the same stuff, but let's face it, I'd never be at the same party with Michael Stype, Jello Biafra, and Prince.

So I spent my youth teaching school and raising kids, and Marianne spent hers on smack. But she's lived to write about it, and she's not looking too bad. Still got most of her stuff, and she's got a generation on me.

I've got a great hat, and a hot set of go-go boots. Nowadays it's not so hard to run into Jello.

Please Don't Stop!

2011-07-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

A Review of Slicklight by Matt Dean

First there was Snowcrash, now there's Slicklight. Or, should I say, first there was smack, then snow, then slick. And it's lit the streets of this salty harbor town.

Slick is easy: no snorting, no shooting up, just a drop under the tongue.

It's a mysterious futuristic drug--a psychedelic X, and it's great for sex, if you like to fuck for four thousand years with an 18-foot cast iron pipe. Yikes!

This is not chick-lit, girls, it's dick-lit. Hot and heavy as lead.

Slicklight is the first chapter of a serial e-book for young dudes. The author, Matt Dean, is bringing in a new tide of literary genre, "Young Dude Serial E-rotica," or YDSE.

Dean, an ironic socio-political blogger and Lambda Literary Award finalist, best known for his novel The River in Winter, has switched gears from earnest yearnings to the cutting edge of slippery time. All the women who love the novels of Matt Dean, Armistead Maupin, and Stephen McCauley may be left longing. But young, queer and curious dudes of the 21st may already be reading Slicklight on their iPad and waiting for the next installment or the next train out of town.

The action moves fast; in fact, it gallops, rattles, and rolls. Nael's a frizzy-haired, super-cool chode who says stuff like, "This ain't my first rodeo." And Barnaby's a young, game, skin-head top who likes to use a belt. They're stuck in the brack-waters of some forlorn shipyard, but all is well is Nael's bed.

A quick word search, by the second screen, will bring up "pickup," "clench," "thrust," "fist," and "just large enough for a man to slide through sideways."

But it's not all briny nihilism; a flicker of Dean's romantic side comes out in Barnaby, like when he spies an extra pillow in the mechanic's shed, or finishes Nael's phrases like they're show tunes. They may tackle instead of hug, but it's because they have so much energy!

Like Dean's new readership, the ADD generation. So, we want the next installment already! We're ready. We can't wait. You can't stop writing. Don't fucking stop!

Aether Or ...

2011-06-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

A Review of the Introduction to
Swami Panchadasi's Clairvoyance & Occult Powers

Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the hoax of an Englishmun!

Oprah's been had again.

It turns out that her new Oprah's Book Club selection of 2011, Clairvoyance & Occult Powers, is riddled with secrets, pseudonyms, and far-fetched fabrications. This could prove a new embarrassment for Oprah, after the very public flap with James Frey, her underdog darling of 2006, whose inspirational memoir, A Million Little Pieces, proved to be a fake.

In this latest miff, Oprah had been a big champion of the hardscrabble Hindu who overcame his hardships with a regimen of positive thinking. Panchadasi had self-risen to the status of Swami, and published two books before his discovery by Oprah. Everything might have gone along swimmingly had not Weiser Books decided to print a new edition, and hire an investigative journalist to write the Introduction.

The journalist, Clint Marsh, who had a mild curiosity of the occult, was apparently drawn in too deep after discovering a rack of dusty mystical occult pamphlets by Panchadasi and others at the Psychic Eye in San Francisco. He'd stopped in during his lunch break, and after returning to his cubicle, the Psychic Eye turned back into a deli, never to be seen in the City again. But the pamphlets remained in Marsh's pocket, and thenceforth, strange and inexplicable "coincidences" began to occur, and thus began his life-long investigation into aephemeral phenomena.

As he researched the pamphlets, some mystical and aethereal, some practical and austere, the consistencies unnerved Marsh until he uncovered a big hoax--the Hindu mystic Swami Panchadasi was none other than a pen name for William Walker Atkinson, a businessman from Baltimore, Maryland. It turns out that Atkinson published under several other pseudoynms, including Swami Bhakta Vishita, Baba Bharata, Theodore Sheldon ("Vim Culture"), Dr. Seuss ("Horton Hears a Who"), Dr. Bronner ("All-One-God-Faith-Magic-Soap") and Yogi Ramacharaka. Most surprising, Atkinson had managed the Yankees baseball team under the pseudoynm Yogi Berra for years without a leak. Yogi Berra is famous for the sayings, "It ain't over 'til it's over" and "I shall change our vibrations in an inning."

Clint Marsh asked me to write a review of his Introduction, and a fine one I had written, with highflung praises and highlighted phrases. The intro was so enticing it drew me in deeper, and by a strange coincidence, I found myself in the Psychic Eye bookshop picking up a copy of Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy," which Wikipedia describes as "meta-detective-fiction" and "mysteries about mysteries." The protagonist is a "writer become private investigator who descends into madness" as he investigates a character's identity. The trilogy "explores the layers of identity and reality."

And that night, in an eerie dream, a red dwarf said to me, in backward talk, "Retsua Luap si Hsram Tnilc." And thus, the mystery of the Introducer's identity was solved, and this time, the hoax is on Weiser Books.

She Could Hear the Highway Breathing

2011-06-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

A Review of The Mentalist's Handbook by Clint Marsh

One day, as a pre-teen watching an after-school special on TV, I saw a scene in which an adolescent girl, in the throes of a tantrum, sent the contents of her room swirling about, lifting and crashing violently in her own private tornado. I was titillated and electrified. This was my introduction to psychokinesis. If any girl had enough emo to send things flying, I did.

Watch out, house! I willed curtains to flutter, frames to fall, mirrors to crack, and chairs to rock. Was that me, or a breeze? But nothing bended, rolled, or flew into my hand. Maybe my problem was, as my mother always said, that I thought too much. Maybe "mentalism" worked better without the mind.

It did seem true, as I grew older, that my telekinetic talents lay in feeling, not in trying. And with throwing people, not things. And, like Carrie, the presenting subliminal motivation seemed to be Vindication. There was The Unfortunate Face-Plant of the Snarky Dog Woman, the Mean Girl Who Turned into a Skeleton, and the Fatal Hex Sign. Don't worry, Dear Reader, I would never try to hurt anyone. Just be nice to me.

My powers never extended to the teleportation of my own person, however. As a young girl, I'd read "No Flying in the House" by Betty Brock, and been lead to believe that, with a bit of practice, I'd be able to lift off from a kitchen stool and swoop around. This was how it happened in my dreams. It was only a matter of removing the scrim between REM and reality, right? But 30 years is a long time to wait. Imagine my intrigue, then, when I came to share offices at Bonita Hollow with none other than the author of The Mentalist's Handbook, Clint Marsh.

Bearded and droll, this scholar of "practical esoterica" was elusively mysterious with his guidance. Once I cornered him in a mushroom patch, smoking an antique tobacco pipe with a visting wizard. "All is aether," he said, handing me a copy of The Mentalist's Handbook. It was in French.

The English edition, however, is beautifully illustrated by Jeff Hoke, with pictures of lost souls, fish bowls, ascending astral bodies, and aether (looking like a Pokeball) collecting around one's sex organ link. One pen-and-ink of a woman flying above a subdivision, entitled "Tamquam Alter Idem," could be an album cover for the Talking Heads' And She Was.

The Handbook is part encyclopaedia, part instruction manual, and perhaps better bathroom than bedside reading. The Dweller is too spooky! I'd be afraid to dream after looking at the wraiths and the raptured nihilists.

And speaking of dreams, the illustration of Ascension gave me shivers, looking so nearly like the form that hovered over me one dark night of my childhood. As I lay on my back there was no question that it was the Devil himself floating down from the ceiling to annihilate me. Is it still called astral projection if someone else (Satan) astral projects onto you? Can you feel an astral projection smothering your chest? If I'm astral projected into a forest, does a tree know I've been there?

In addition to listing everything you would ever need to know to show off at a Goth party--Secret Masters, Phantoms, Astral Hounds, and Devas--with illustrated costume suggestions, the Handbook provides 23 daily exercises to guide you through the astral planes and help you perform your first feats in mentalism.

For example, Exercise 8 involves bringing a plate of dirt to the dinner table and staring at it. If you can ponder the dirt on your dinner plate for over 5 minutes, your consciousness will come closer to the "submaterial vibration of the elemental kingdom of earth." Oh, wait. Exercise 9 looks more fun. It's called "Inky Flares." It's about the gestalt of consensual reality.

But the exercise I've been looking for is in the Ascension section, number 21, part b, Astral Flight. (I hope I can skip Exercises 1-20.) It's recommended that I practice with scuba diving and peering out airplane windows to get the feel. And before I leap off the astral cliff, I must learn how to make a psychic residue trail, or I'll never find my way back to my body. Kinda like Gretel with crumbs in the forest, that proverbial material plane. Time to go buy some glitter.

Dysfunctional Fan Clubs

2011-03-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

She wouldn't give it up--the criticisms of The Corrections kept coming. And I now knew too much about neuroscience to trust my memory--we condense, we conclude, and then we package up our opinion for posterity. "It was great!" wasn't enough to win an argument with my persistent literary pal, so, damn it, I had to buy it again and read it again, unlike certain neo-cons who picket outside movie theaters showing secular humanist lesbian thrillers!

The heavy hardback was $7.98 used, perhaps unread, with Franzen's name bigger after 10 years and the Oprah circle obscuring some of the artwork (Oprah's name being the stain that incited the pre-hate, I believe). I had read The Corrections before the whole ladies' book club debacle, when Oprah, in my mind, still resided in The Color Purple. My friend, however, had read it after... and I wondered if that made the difference. By 2004, Oprah had a net worth of $1.3 billion, and yet somehow (incongruously) represented the hardscrabble. How this media-savvy billionaire came to be pitted against a former starving-writer type, and came out the victim, I don't know! Better marketing? (It's a meta-motif, the author scrambling to make corrections after his verbal blunder.) It's true that the introverted cave-dweller came off as a dolt, but the pudding's in the pages.

And it was butterscotch! -- with fresh funny phrases like "lickspittle hellhounds." Smart, painful, insightful ... I was laughing and cringing and page-turning all the way to 500. The characters were distinct, authentic, and deeply felt, with gut-wrenching life-crises. Although I do have to say that the "Denise" section was the least compelling. Franzen really does do guys best, although his observations of the mother are so groaningly, recognizably, spot-on. But he's got a male mind, after all, and can't quite get inside a gal his own age. After reading Freedom I see that he has two types of women: the pretty blond jock (Caroline, Patty) and the dark stylish ice-queen (Denise, Lalitha).

Lest Franzen protest too much, I should point out that with Chip's script titled The Academy Purple, it seemed obvious to me that he was making a play for Oprah's attentions. (The Color Purple? But in an academic setting? get it?) And another Oprah's Book Club connection: did James Frey get his title from page 309? "I do feel crazy sometimes. All my work is in my head. I'm moving around a million little pieces of nothing..."

Oh, and to all you critical studies professors, how do you pronounce "Foucaultian" if you can't pronounce the "t"? Just wondering.

Anyway, on to my friend's last gripe...that Franzen's family wasn't "dysfunctional" enough, in that it "functioned" better than hers. But "dys" doesn't mean "un" -- it means abnormal or impaired. It's a family that functions with pain, shame, and secrecy. And all of the Lamberts were hiding their individual shame--about their drinking, their sexual orientation, their mental health, their financial means, their failures, their coming undone. We knew, of course, that they would all come together at the end for Christmas, but imperfectly.

It's been 10 years, and memoirists are writing about crazier and crazier families, but I have a renewed faith in my own memory--The Corrections still holds up as the contemporary tome of dysfunction.

Browsing for Franzen

2011-01-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

A few months back I read a humor hit-piece on the Williamsburg scene, which dissed, among other hip-spots, a trendoid bookstore where you could pick up all three Jonathan authors … Franzen, Lethem, and Safran Foer, I presume. My first thought was, been there! But upon further reflection, the bookstore I had in mind was Three Lives & Co. in the Village. It was my second Jonathan Franzen, the memoir with the map-brain, used paperback, and the bird parts were boring in that one, too. But what was intriguing, in a creepy cautionary tale sort of way, was how he and his wife had gone years without a social life on the outside.

I of course read The Corrections when it came out...I could swear it was the '90s, and I bought it at The Booksmith on Haight Street, but that's impossible...according to Wikipedia, I was living in the mountains, hmmm...that's weird. Anyway, the consensus was we all really liked it. It seemed like we weren't yet weary of Dysfunctional Families, that communal processing topic, more restrained than the current brand of ramped-up marketable insanity which might involve kitchen knives or pooping under the piano.

I mostly remember thinking it was smart. Kind of how I thought of Obama as smart, one of us, although he hasn't really changed the world much. Funny how now that I'm thinking about it I can't really remember any details from The Corrections. Like, nobody's name. Was there some old father or a bottle of pills or a worn sofa?

After the map-head one, I picked up How to be Alone at Powell's on Hawthorne St. in Portland, not as crazy about essays. I was attracted to the cover, but L. thought it was posed; the woman with the glasses was too cute to be alone; she was definitely being cruised in the bookstore (which looks a lot like Dog Eared on Valencia St.) It's true, her lipstick is freshly applied, and her eyebrows are too perfectly plucked for someone who would so recklessly bend back the book pages. But I guess a photo of an unkempt guy in the basement wouldn't sell.

I wouldn't have noticed Freedom but for my friend, the writer Laura Joakimson, who was, I was surprised to find, a hater. There it was stacked on a table at the Bookshelf at Hooligan Rocks in Truckee, looking like the next thick Harry Potter book. More of a Tweezer than a Twitteratus, I had been blind to the blog-gossip about Franzen. As Matt Dean assured me, "Didn't you know? Franzen-hating is the new black." Feeling disloyal, I made the illicit purchase, even though I had bragged to Laura that I would order it at the Berkeley Public Library--THAT would show Franzen (whom I still secretly liked).

Unhappy Wife, Unhappy Life

2011-01-14T17:47:00.000-08:00

A Review of Freedom, Get Me Out of Here, and Anna Karenina

All unhappy families are alike. At least two of the wives are borderline, attractive and raging, unhappily married to corn-fed good guys who put up with bad behavior. Two of the families are midwestern gentrifiers, working to restore a historic house in a crumbling urban hood (get it, Freud?) All three have 2.0 kids, a boy and a girl. The two midwestern wives have pretentious, socialite mothers; drunken fathers; snotty sisters; low self-esteem; and an object of obsession who is not their husband. One slashes tires; the other leaves stalker threats under the wipers. Neither can find joy in her good life.

All three books are supposedly narrated by the wife, but one of the wives sounds like Franzen, who is supposed to appeal to women, but, come on--women do not secretly like the smell of their own farts! Tolstoy is the only author of the three who understands a woman's heart. There's a reason Franzen's book wasn't entitled Patty. The female lead must truly earn her title, like Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, or Sibyl. It's hard for a main character with no original thoughts to sustain a novel.

So Franzen knew a borderline to a T, and Tolstoy married Kitty. But Franzen couldn't have had a thing with a hot, smart Indian babe. Whereas I felt every mortifying misstep in Levin's awkward courting of Kitty, I felt a big fat nothing when Patty's hubby's young thing drove off a cliff or whatever. (Just like in The Corrections, there had to be a car accident right at the end.) Seems to me that since it's no longer the 19th century, we could allow the only confident female lead to escape an inevitable death and let a nice guy have some sugar. It's like Franzen ran out of juice, maybe 7 years in, and could no longer inhabit the emo, and so resorted to melodrama. Well, he could have ended the book before then.

The first chapter of Freedom was a really good story in The New Yorker. I even found myself responding to gossip, "That's weird." I cringed through the awkwardness of the teenage son moving in with the trashy family of the girl next door, the hushed-up daughter of a politician's kept ex-mistress, who flicks her ashes into the kiddie pool from the second-floor window. Brilliant!

But when you pay, like, $30.00 to breathe in new ink, and the first chapter is a give-away, and then you get to the second chapter and it had also been a story in The New Yorker, well, you start to feel gypped. (No slur intended....I learned that word as a child without associations.) It was all choppy deja vu. As a novel, it didn't seem to hold together as one piece, as The Corrections did.

What's novel about Rachel Reiland's book, as opposed to Oliver Sachs or Irvin D. Yalom, is that it's a therapy tell-all from the patient's perspective. Normally it's the other way round, with the therapist on top, the recorder of history. But novelty aside, like the Patty Berglund character, you can't stand to be in this woman's head. Unlike Anna Karenina, the story's not compelling enough to go through the torture.

Speaking of which, I'm two-thirds of the way through Lit, and now Mary Karr's gone on all Anne Lamott on me! They both started out hardscrabble and funny. Both drunks, with crazy mothers. I loved Operating Instructions and The Liar's Club. I used to go to Anne Lamott's readings with other edgy hipsters in S.F. Then Annie got God, and her books started to read like my mother's Readers Digests, and then she got the "Nervous" to boot. The last reading I went to, at Jack London Square, I was mortified to join the audience of scarf-wearing middle-aged church ladies.

Single mom, one son, Mary & Dev, Annie & Sam, having playdates with crazy recovering drug-addicts and pushing their kids into church. Why when you get religion do you become such a bore? I'm afraid I've already read the ending of Lit -- Annie wrote it!

Is Jesus really the only cure for alcoholism? Why does sobriety make you lose your sense of humor? If Mary Karr's next book is called "Further Thoughts on the Cross" I'm not picking it up. But others will. The recovery movement as a genre is big right now. Maybe that's what her agent advised her.

I felt not one iota of sympathy for Patty the ingrate or Mary the raging young bride. Your sensible, handsome, hardworking, faithful husband told your 20-something self that with his grad school and job, and your level of mental health, it wasn't the best time to have a baby. You've got 10+ good years, but you go ahead, and blame him whenever he's at said job or grad school? Did you expect buy-in from the reader? Really, now, is he really the problem? Or could it be Satan?

What's happening to make so many women so uptight, neurotic, nervous? Stop overthinking everything. Same goes for Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project. Which didn't seem to make her husband any happier. My blood pressure was rising before I'd finished the first chapter. Instead of taking a year, she could have taken an afternoon off to set up a hammock. Women, can we just chill the fuck out?

Now Anna, she had a reason to be unhappy. It was the 19th century. She wasn't allowed a divorce. There was no such thing as joint custody. She was passionate and she had needs. She had no alternatives. But these other wives ... nothing was stopping them from gracefully bowing out, doing what made them happy. Why marry for security and then blame your husband for not being hot?

Nobody's husband has ever been as cold as Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin. And no leading lady has ever been as sympathetic as Anna. And no author, male or female, has ever written a woman like Tolstoy. Sigh.

Proposition 8: Coming to Theaters Everywhere!

2010-07-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

Mr. Cooper Pitches the Apocalypse on 6/16/10

Dear Diary,

It's the latest in a spate of blockbuster disaster movies: Apollo 13, Ocean's 11, District 9, and now Proposition 8.

Here at the big press conf. in Hollywood North I sat with my fellow film critic Dolores Flores as producer Chuck Cooper (with a bald center part-job) pitched his new movie concept to studio exec VR Walker, head of Federal Studios.

It's an apocalyptic plot--set in a parallel future 2012, in an era of "pre-marital fertility testing" where society is glued together with a security device called MRIG. The USA is hit by a fast-spreading virus from the EU, called SSM1, or The Purple Plague, which will unleash a "host of social consequences," eroding MRIG, ending procreation, and threatening the very "existence and survival of the human race."

CC: (with a raspy, Bill Clinton-ish voice) Picture the war room from Dr. Strangelove, with a giant world map. The virus is spreading, like a tidal wave of lavendar ooze, melting the "core procreative element" from Denmark to Amsterdam, Belgium! Spain! Canada! South Africa! Norway! Sweden! Portugal! Iceland! Then it jumps the Atlantic and hits the Northeastern seaboard of the U.S.--New Hampshire, Massachusettes, Vermont, Connecticut. When the virus attacks the bread basket, air raid sirens go off in an Iowa cornfield--think The War of the Worlds--and the National Guard joins forces with Slovenia to stop this plague!

VW: What names are confirmed on the project?

CC: Well, because of the economy we've had to scale down, but we've got some big money backers, the Mormon Church and other "pro-creative" interests--

VR: But who's named?

CC: Okay, we've got one big star, Arnold Schwartzenegger, great name recognition, looks fabulous in a girdle...

VR: Isn't he tied up with another disaster flick set in Sacramento?

CC: Yeah, but his people say they'll be wrapping it up real soon, by the end of June, or at least before the summer's over...

VR: Very well, who else?

CC: Okay, Kris Perry, think Jamie Lee Curtis, but a little stocky, great dimples, relatively unknown, but has a proven appeal for a certain demographic...and then there's Sandy Spier, think Linda Hamilton in a skirt, with a machine gun and go-go boots, a newcomer to the scene, femmie, but savvie--

VR: So this is a chick flick?

CC: Hell, no! We've got a pair of hunks, one of 'em's kinda Latino or Italianish...think John Leguizamo with Tom Cruise...all the actors are here today...

VR: Is Schwartzenegger present?

CC: No, sir, but his agent is here.

VR: (to agent) Can you confirm his involvement?

AGENT: My client has no comment.

VR: How will intelligent viewers find the plot plausible? Is this virus based on anything scientific?

CC: Yes, this mutable, or immutable, whatever, virus is based on a futuristic historical fiction by D. Blankenhorn, who says that "the threat [of SSM1] is too daunting" to ignore because of the "risk." He says "no one can know [what the consequences will be]." We're hoping to get Rush Limbaugh to do a cameo of Blankenhorn as an alarmist talk jock.

VR: Have others given warnings about this plague?

CC: Oh, many others, but most of them are currently in hiding because of the threat to their lives.

VR: What is the rating?

CC: It is rated "R" to protect even high school children from the horror of the "irresponsibility of pro-creation with a third party." If MRIG were to get into the wrong hands, it could be destroyed, and without it, "society could come to an end."

VR: Will this be CGI'd?

CC: 27 explosions.

VR: Cool! Sex scenes?

CC: Hot girl-on-girl-guy-on-guy action!

VR: How does that work?

CC: More CGI!

VR: Cool! I'll have to get approval from the big boys at Supreme Studios, but I'm giving it a thumbs-up. Let's push for a release date of Christmas, 2012.

Status: Suspect

2010-06-21T16:15:00.001-07:00

Ted Olson Argues for a Traditional June Wedding

Dear Diary,

It's the closing arguments we've been waiting for, and Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker opened by explaining the timing: "June is, after all, the month of weddings." (It's also international Gay Pride month.) But will he pronounce his decision in time for me to find a dress?

Here, in "The City Where People Lose Their Hearts," on the 19th Floor of Federal Court, I sat snug in a pew with my journalistic pal Dolores Flores, a dozen Hastings law students, and a bag of illicit organic strawberries. The celebrity court room had been sealed by 5 a.m., but we'd made the magic cut into the public court room. Behind the hallowed doors a line of not-early-enough-birds wrapped round the hallway.

The lineup of lawyers appeared onscreen, like at a Cal football game, and Judge Walker dubbed them "an impressive array of legal talent." Then the star player, Theodore B. Olson, came up to bat against the voters' reversal of California's legalization of same-sex marriage, arguing that gays should have the same constitutional marriage rights as murderers and child molesters. Putting them in a "special disfavored category" is "taking away the right of privacy and the right of liberty."

Judge Walker brought the white elephant into the room right away: "There is a difference" in that "they can't procreate without intervention of a third party." But Ted Olson said that marriage has never been tied to procreation. Funny how "procreation" was never mentioned in the Prop. 8 voting information. Anyway, there's no evidence that SSM will cause a "diminished procreative instinct."

The Supreme Court calls marriage "the most important relation in life" and Plaintiff Kris Perry says it's the "most important decision you make as an adult. That's why it's so humiliating when you don't get to make it." She and her very sweet, smart, pretty wife Sandy want to make sure that all the little girls living in places like Bakersfield can dream of growing up and marrying, if not the fairytale Princess, at least the Person of their Choice.

And living happily after. Because you know that married women have more fun, right? Oh, sorry, that's blondes. Well, at least married women are healthier? No, it's the husbands that get healthier. But maybe that statistic changes when the wife is married to a woman.

Sandy Stier says she would feel "more secure, more accepted, and more pride" as a MRS. But wait! Is 39 years of reading MS. magazine out the window? What does Gloria Steinem have to say about this? Maybe the fish doesn't need a bicycle, but the fish needs another fish, and the bicycle needs a bicycle?

Ted Olson says marriage is "essential to the enjoyment of life." I shot a look to Dolores, who, like me, professes to be Post-Marriage. Well, we thought we were happy!

"You insecure, unstable reject," she mouthed.

"Stigmata!" I mouthed back.

Outside the Federal Courthouse was the hip City I know and love, but inside was the stifling ambiance of traditional values. "We will be more American if we support same sex marriage," Mr. Olson said in a slow, husky voice, sounding more like Ronald Reagan by the minute.

But also like the southern gentleman Atticus Finch as he invoked Loving v. Virginia, using the same formula from 1967--"the right to marry without limitation based upon (race/sex)." And furthering the race theme, he said that upon emancipation, slaves "flocked to get married." One freed slave said, "The marriage covenant is the foundation of all our rights." But I'm guessing that ex-slave was a man, because 145 years ago women in the U.S. couldn't yet vote, and it wasn't until 1900 that all states granted women the right to own property. In 1869, four years after the 13th Amendment was enacted, John Stuart Mill wrote, "We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband; no less so, as far as the legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called."
From bondservant to Betty Crocker to bra-burners and back. In the Lower Haight in the early '90s, marriage was an embarrassment, so I got a dyke-cut and tried to pass. Only squares cared about status-quo shit like silverware patterns. But 20 years later feminism is out, waxing is in, and everyone wants the right to be a wife, even if it's retro. I understand the financial reasons, but it's sad that we need a Marriage Covenant in order to be accepted by the in-laws and kept up with the Joneses. Traditionally, girls dreamed of "Marriage" because it was the only sanctioned way to have sex, and the only way to leave home. Now we've got college and the Pill, but little girls still dress up like Disney princesses and watch their Jasmine and Ariel and Cinderella DVDs ad infinitum instead of riding bikes and climbing trees.

What we need to overturn is the stigma of being unhitched. We need to overturn Prop. 8 to get members of the Gay Persuasion out of, what Ted Olson calls in his closing words, the "harmful stigma" category. The plaintiffs' perusal of the propaganda shows that the true reason for Prop. 8 was to "protect our children from learning that gay marriage is OK"--and by extension, "that gay people are OK." I'm guessing that I'm Okay, You're Okay is a banned book in schools today. At the time of the Loving v. Virginia case plenty of good people believed that it was against "God's Will" to mix the races. Let's hope that the "nice people" and "good Californians" who voted for Prop. 8 can see that God's Will was Wrong.

Read my diary entries on previous trial days:

Marriage Without Borders

The Orientation of Species

Is Our Children Safe?

They Head South

2010-02-16T19:26:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

When I heard the news about old J.D. Salinger I felt so damn depressed, I had this crazy urge to bond. I was up late drinking coffee with Dali and William Blake. "Didn't you just love Holden, didn't you, didn't you?" I pleaded. Blake didn't care for his attitude, and Dali couldn't get past the old man's bumpy chest (on page 7, for chrissakes).

Salinger may not have gotten out much, but last autumn I did happen to spy a tall, dignified nonagenarian in a red hunting cap at Dan & Whit's General Store in Norwich, Vermont. Thankfully his bumpy chest was bundled in a crazy old sweater.

Next day at the office, I still couldn't let it go. The nutritionist sighed. "I read Catcher in the Rye so long ago--it's about baseball, right?" I needed to get my hands on a copy, but none of the book dispensers in downtown Berkeley had one--including the public library. (These indie booksellers whine about Amazon, but they practically force you to go online.) But before resorting to that I hit up Analog Books, the only shop hip enough to stock my fix.

I finished Catcher on the subway, and re-told the ending as I pulled off my Vans. He's wandering around, cold, wet, bloody, drunk, crying, lost, and do any grown-ups help him, or even notice? Is it because he's so tall? "It's Harold and Maude," says Dali. He has to go up in flames before his mother even sends him to a shrink. Only Harold loves an old lady, and Holden loves a little girl. You never even see Holden's parents; they're like the Wah-wah-wah-wah voices on Charlie Brown. All the adults lecture at him in a loop, the same old rap about what a fuckup he is, when what he really is is lonely.

Finally at my Wednesday soiree I find a former Manhattanite and of course he loved Catcher in the Rye. A Midwesterner sipping California wine said, "Too bad he didn't write any other books," and I said, "He did! -- in fact, I'd planned to name my daughter Zooey." Then on the phone, my dear friend Colette, just back from France, gushed (like Sally on the Luntzes), "Oh, I just adored the Glass family!" Bringing to mind The Royal Tenenbaums. Salinger was dead set against sending Holden to Hollywood, but he couldn't be stopped from inspiring a raft of quirky cult films.

Speaking of rafts, I got Dali to read the first page, and he said, "It opens like Huckleberry Finn." (He is a genius, indeed.) In a total nod to Twain, the first-person storyteller addresses the reader directly in an authentic vernacular, skimming over past events to get to the heart of the action. Huck and Holden share a disdain for the phony/civilized mores of their times and try to run away and live naturally, instinctively. Both narrators are compulsive fibbers and sensitive souls, questioning the way the world works, but no one listens or engages. If slavery is good, why do I feel so bad? And where do the ducks go in the winter? Maybe, if they want to be heard, they should stop all that damn CUSSING!

Hit the river, hit the road, escape the constraints, man--let's give Salinger credit as The First Beat Writer. Catcher was published in 1951, the year Kerouac wrote On the Road. Holden's frantic last hours as a preppie feel like they coulda been written on Benzedrine, too. Tie-wearin' Holden was railing against the "phonies" before the term "anti-establishment" was first used, in 1958. He dreamed of hitch-hiking out west, but the Phonies had beat him to Hollywood. Perhaps, like that Gerry Rafferty song, we're all searching for an unspoiled little town -- Quincy? Nevada City? -- or have the Yuppies ruined everything?

Holden flunked everything but English--in fact, he spent his last Saturday night writing a composition for a Princeton-bound jocko who was out making time with Holden's best girl. Kinda the way Nick Carraway watches in the wings as Gatsby woos Daisy. Salinger picks up Fitzgerald's torch when it comes to fakes: just as in Jay Gatsby's library, Holden notices whether the books on a shelf have been read. He cares about good writing, which is why he's so despondent when his literary mentor, big brother D.B., becomes a "prostitute." I wonder if J.D. blamed Hollywood for the descent of the sensitive F. Scott. Interesting how Catcher ends with D.B. in the pictures, and Holden in some loony bin like Zelda.

Catcher may be the anthem for disaffected youth, but what of grieving, loneliness, and the difficult path of a writer's life? Are the same people who are put off by "the language" also likely to be irritated by my post-party depression? As the book opens, Holden has just lost two brothers--one to leukemia, and one to Hollywood. His elder brother, the short-story writer, had been his role model, and the younger, the best person he knew. He doesn't know how to express his sadness in a way that people can hear it. He doesn't know how to forge ahead as a writer true to his craft in a world that rewards pot boilers.

Holden's sinking, but no one will tell him where odd ducks go to survive. As Erich Maria Remarque writes of young recruits sent into the field, "they have very little idea of cover, and ... have no eye for it." It's post-war again, and PTSD hasn't been invented yet. Before Hemingway's set began self-referencing their generation, Remarque had summed it up: "We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial--I believe we are lost."

Marriage Without Borders

2010-02-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

The Final Prop. 8 Witness

Dear Diary,

Hot from a Cowboy Lounge performance at the Freight & Salvage, I unzipped my go-go boots, awoke in the dark, and grabbed a crumpled purple something draped over a chair. My companion put on his belt in the elevator between the 11th and 17th floors, and we made the front of the line. Good thing, as it was lawyers three rows deep to hear David Blankenhorn testify on The Future of Marriage.

After both sides rested, Judge Vaughn Walker congratulated them on the case being "extremely well presented," and Mr. Boies strode down the courtroom aisle like Atticus Finch. I told him I was a fan, and he shook my hand, and said, "It's nice to see you again," as I'd been part of his winning team on United States v. Microsoft. By the elevators I also thanked the blond plaintiff, whose lifestyle so resembled mine she coulda been me, had I chosen to go gay the second time round.

Yesterday, browsing at Half Price Books downtown before going on stage, I saw that the LGBT section had expanded to LGBTQ, and I wondered why we couldn't just use the all-inclusive Q, and my companion mused that to be truly inclusive, straits would have to be added, too, as LGBTQS. Of course, the acronym LGBT always brings to mind a Lettuce, Bacon, Tomato sandwich, now with Garbanzo, Salsa, and ... Quince? Only in the Gourmet Ghetto.

Blankenhorn wore an egg-yolk tie and got some egg on his face. Most notably, he put forth his "Rule of 2" for marriage: each "I do" is two at a time. Now, you can marry five wives sequentially without violating the Rule of Two. It's not a "group marriage" if each ceremony is separate. SERIOUSLY???

Poor, blustering Blankenhorn couldn't accept the concept of testifying versus debating. I could'a been in the studio audience of The O'Reilly Factor. At one point, Mr. Boies pressed for a "yes" or "no" answer, and the witness pouted, "If you're gonna make me choose between those two words!" Yes or No--liberal taunts to taint the tongue blue! Blankenhorn said, "I'd rather tell you what my views are than have you put them in my mouth." Didn't he know he was here to answer questions? Mr. Boies appealed to the bench, and the Judge was rubbing his temples by 9:30 AM. After one particularly ridiculous repartee, Blankenhorn practically cried, "This is not a laughing matter!" and the Judge explained in his most comforting voice, "Mr. Boies is not laughing at you--he's amused at the back and forth...as many of us are!" We took a morning break, maybe to let out the giggles, and my men's room spy tells me the witness was so nervous he couldn't pee.

Mr. Boies started up and said, "I don't want to fall into the trap of making sex boring" and Blankenhorn said, "Maybe together we can do that." The courtroom erupted, and the witness turned red, realizing what he'd said.

[Oh! Must run to hear Todd Sickafoose with Tiny Resistors at the Jazzschool. To be continued...]

When asked about the fact that all of the APAs have endorsed SSM, the defendants' expert said it was the "lobbyists" and "leadership groups" of these associations. What? And when asked whether Maggie Gallagher, a leading opponent of gay marriage, was a scholar, he said that, yes, she was an "intellectually serious person." Oh, you mean the "dictionary definition" of scholar?

Okay, so here's the lowdown on how traditional marriage has always been. Blankenhorn says 83% of societies permit polygamy and prior to 100 years ago, India and China did, too. Then he talked about "polyandry," which is when a woman sequentially marries two brothers, and then "man-boy marriage" for African warriors. (My sister and I dated two sets of brothers--I wonder what that's called?) Anyway, his description of same-sex initiation rites for boys in Papa New Guinea was the best erotica I've heard in a while!

So, if marriage is "our society's most pro-child institution," who is weakening it? It didn't start with the same-sexers, but with those self-absorbed DINKies, who reaped all the benefits without populating a homestead. Blame those quiet, selfish heteros with sharp coffee tables and flower-filled vases. Why shouldn't gay couples get the same rights as DINKs--cream-colored carpets, and health benefits, too?

The Orientation of Species

2010-01-23T19:02:00.000-08:00

Perry v. Schwarzenegger: And on the 9th day they tried to Rest

Dear Diary,

Even El Niño couldn't hold me back! The sky train floated through a drizzly dawn and I parted a swath of dark grey with my sherbet coat on the 17th floor. The security usher seated me snugly betwixt two cute gay couples, him in a purple tie, her in bowling shoes, and me in the middle like a Kinsey number three.

In front of me was Gwyneth Paltrow, coughing in a trench coat, and before the bench were the two bald pates of Boies and Cooper, who brought the Judge's first sardonic smile of the day with news of another witness withdrawn. Ted Olson sat at the head of the table sucking a yellow marker, and UC Davis professor Greg Herek (social psychologist) settled in for a full day on the stand. Calista click-clacked across the courtroom in an alluring grey suit and Judge Walker said, "More binders?!" with a sarcastic smile, as last week's stack had grown to a wall.

Herek was asked whether gays could marry. The answer was yes--someone of the opposite sex. And what is "sexual orientation" and do you "choose" it, and it is "harmful" to change it, and is there really a stigma against "fucking dykes"?

Sexual orientation is an "enduring pattern of attraction, behavior, or identity." Now, it's possible to have desire without acting on it, or to behave without identifying, or to identify without sex, but it's commonly a package deal. Just as Savage Love says, women are more bi, or should I say they have "greater responsiveness to situational or environmental influence" or "erotic plasticity" or "limber limbs." Gay men claim no choice in the matter, the plaintiff proclaims herself a born lesbian, and in 1929 20% of the ladies at all-girl's colleges were necking with their best friend.

The sexual orientation of women can be understood in the context of relationships, and hence they are "relational," whereas for men, sexual orientation is more sexual.

[Oh! He's home....to be continued...]

Mmmm...next morning...now where was I? Behind Gwyneth's ponytail, but then she turned to sneeze with Lily Tomlin's face. She was reading a German newspaper, or was it Dutch? Perhaps she was on assignment from Amsterdam, where same-sex prostitution is legal, as is pot, which explains why they're so happy, as opposed to Mormons, who are suffering such sour grapes cuz polygamy is not. How come some sinner with a six pack gets to marry a stud muffin but I can't wed my wife's handmaid? Almighty God, it's not fair! King Solomon had hundreds of concubines!

Anyone who's actually read Leviticus knows that "lying with another man" is about as abominable as eating a BLT or petting a ferret. In fact, the concept of "homosexuality" didn't even exist until the late 19th century. The term made the first DSM in 1952 based on hearsay, and was dropped by 1973. If the APA agrees that gayness is not maladjustment, then why are young people being strong-armed into SOCT [sexual orientation change therapy] for reparation? It's not effective: the task force report shows that "enduring change is uncommon." According to Just the Facts: S.O. and Youth, the inability to change is met as a "personal and moral failure." "Treatment" does harm in the form of depression and anxiety. Have these Christian "therapists" taken the Hippocratic Oath?

Stigma is defined as "undesired differentness." Structural stigma is a shared view of society as to who should be devalued. Stigmatized individuals have less control over their lives and less power. Can there be a debate about whether faggots are stigmatized? One in five gay persons report experiencing violence due to their orientation. But here in Federal Court it was all acceptance, with same-sex hand stroking, arm draping, and shoulder-rubbing. Speaking of which, I literally collided with the plaintiff, Kris Perry, as we walked down the aisle for lunch break. She spoke to me kindly, smiling with dimples. Already her wide open collar look was becoming the lesbian fashion sensation.

All this talk of sex had riled up my companion, who pulled me across the street in the rain and pressed me up against the steel grates of the derelict shop next to the cheap Dim Sum and...

[to be continued...]

Back in court in my vintage ripped bell-bottoms I noticed a blond, handsome pair who could've been on a water polo team. Then I saw their resemblance to the other plaintiff, who was wearing skinny kicky zip-up boots, so much more femmie than my doc martens. But for style, the fusion prize went to a lavandar tie on mint.

Then I was nodding for the next two hours, daydozing during talk of first attractions. There was Judy from Lost in Space [the blond sister in a silver spacesuit], then Suzanne, the lanky insouciant second grader with dark dreamy eyes, then David Cassidy--I think I love your feathered hair!--then Malboro Men, then the Mets. Typically, a sexual identity isn't formed until your mid-20s, when you start to think about settlin' down. Even though 42% of all men have had a same-sex experience, much of it happens before age 18. Which brings up the most popular question to Dan Savage: Does that crazy drunken night make me gay? A useful determinant is "enduring patterns of affection" and "current erotic thoughts and feelings."

[tbc....]

Is Our Children Safe?

2010-01-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, on the fifth day

Dear Diary,

Black is in, black suits and black binders, and I'm in the throng of laptops and lavender iPhones, two pews back from a black sportcoat and peppermint-candy collar. Yes, it's the plaintiff, Perry, looking like the cover of the Chron. The court room looks like a GQ shoot, the models buzzed tight with big wavy blow-tops (I'll submit into evidence Exhibit A, the shiny swoop of our golden-coiffed examiner, Mr. McGill).

Dr. Lamb, our expert from Cambridge University, breaks the mould with a beard, and speaks in clipped erudite irony; McGill asks questions like an actor from Ally McBeal; David Thompson, in unfashionable beige, sounds straight out of right-wing radio; but the sexiest voice--deep, commanding, resonant--goes to Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker (think James Earl Jones, but good-naturedly droll). His first and favorite words were Very Well. (Mmm, whatever you say, your Honor!)

The Prop 8 folks breathed a bit o' the old South into San Francisco--damning Lamb for contributing to PBS, pulling phrenology out of a hat, comparing men to Homer Simpson--it had all the theater of Inherit the Wind (depicting the 1925 creationism trial in Tennessee), To Kill a Mockingbird (daughter rape in Alabama), or Oscar Wilde (protect your sons from pedophilia!) Mr. Thompson got Dr. Lamb to concede that men can't breastfeed--have we gotten anywhere yet?

Three big binders, hundreds of studies, and full consensus: children of gay parents are JUST as well-adjusted. But Mr. Thompson wasn't about to have it. He dredged up a definition of "sexual deviation" from, like, the sixties. "The entire psychological community was wrong, wasn't it?" he challenged. Then he waved around some cobwebby pages from Lamb's student days. Lamb said, "You've done a great job for me in bringing up these old memories." By the time Thompson pulled out Phrenology it had just gotten ridiculous. "SO SCIENCE WAS WRONG!?" he sneered, instantly famously. But Dr. Lamb was too much of a highbrow to get ruffled--even you and I know those quacks were pseudo-scientists!

The clock struck noon, Thompson announced a logical breaking point, and the Judge said, "A logical breaking point is as good as any." We streamed out into the hall of the 17th floor of the US District Court, lined with amazing photos of the 1906 Fire and the building of the Bay Bridge. Time for celeb watch--there was Theodore B. Olson from Bush v. Gore, but no sign of witness William Tam, who'd slunk away, in fear for his personal safety (!) after stating that same-sex marriage would lead SF voters to "legalize having sex with children" causing other states to follow and "fall into Satan's hand" (not the wiping hand, I hope). "Even if our children is safe, our grandchildren may not," Tam wrote. Is Tam have safety obsession?

Back in the court room we were three binders down, three to go. Calista Flockhart teetered out in 4-inch heels to pass out another round of 4-inch binders. We the people were too well-behaved to groan, but the Chief was losing patience. DIX113, DIX124, THX1138, tab infinitum. Thompson was trying to get Dr. Lamb to say, "Mothers are Irrelevant," but nothing doing. We were dozing from boredom and cheap dim sum, but one of Lamb's expert talents was the ability to parse triple negatives while digesting lunch. He had this ironic way of raising his eyebrow...and the Judge had this jaunty style of holding a pen and a cup in the same hand, and sipping from the cup with the pen between his fingers and the cup of water or coffee, the pen, jaunty, at a right angle, like a...like a cigar...ette...huh? what?

Mr. Thompson was berating Dr. Lamb, a developmental psychologist, for not having used a random sample in a study using U.S. Census data. Thompson seemed to be just a little thick. "You don't have a random sample when you sample the entire population," said Lamb. By Binder 5 we were ready to throw tomatoes. I wonder why there is no longitudinal data on married gay parents going back to the eighties. Anyone? Anyone?

Anyway, researchers have found a thing or two in the past 20 years. Kids thrive when nurtured, whether by male or female guardians, whether genetic or not, and kids are harmed by abuse, whether by heterosexual Catholic priests or heterosexual stepfathers. Kids are hurt by conflict, and any relationship can have conflict. Gosh, gay parents are just like any other parents. The only difference is that daughters of lesbians are more likely to become doctors than nurses. Rock on!

Speaking of successful women, Helen Zia, former Executive Editor at Ms. Magazine, next took the stand. She told a moving story of registering for domestic partnership (like getting a dog license) and then getting married in San Francisco. Even though it was later revoked, her brief legal marriage gave her status in society and acceptance in her Asian-American family. Even though I consider myself "post-marriage" (in her youthful zeal Zia had called it "petty bourgeois decadence") I got as misty-eyed as the mother of the bride when Zia spoke of her wife, Leah, as the love of her life. A certain someone reached for my hand, and my heart swelled. Let's hope Judge Walker got teary, too.

Waiting for Starbuck

2009-12-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

The Montauk Interview with Matt Dean

Dear Diary,

Oct. 16, morning

Can lust make sense in a politically correct context? What brings you to your knees? And why am I driving an Outback to the edge of the earth in a nor'easter, with bad wipers, one bar, and a tape recorder? Where the hell is Montauk, and where can one get a good cup of coffee?

Oct. 16, later

The storm has cleared, my dancing heels don't sink in the sand, I'm carrying a basket of goodies, and a hot cup of tea in the other hand. Seagulls squawk overhead as I follow a pastry-crumb trail to a shore-cabin, where I imagine a little wood stove, a writing table, and a novelist hunched over a newly emerging world. I knock, and there he is, shirtless and packed, red hair tousled, blinking in the doorlight, and out of the shadows saunters a cowboy-booted Colin Farrell, who drawls, "Dancing Queen, we were hoping you'd come." I realize I've lost my blouse, like in those dreams, and Colin pulls out a riding crop, and -- damn! -- I wake up with the stiffest neck, parked on the edge of a muddy field, rain pounding the windshield.

Oct. 16, characters

Jonah's the carrot-top with a rower's back, and Spike--well, if you like tall, dark, and forceful, you'll like. Anais is smitten with the author, who writes like Whitman, but he's married, but not in California, not yet. His novel's set in the soon-to-be Pre-Marriage-Equality era, Bush vs. Gore, God vs. Roe, and it's a must-read alongside Leviticus.

I got my hands on an advance copy this summer for a sinful 2-day binge under the apple tree. Agents be damned, 400 is a feast! I lay it down SIS [shaking inside], still bewitched by the climactic pyre and subsequent scuffle, so reminiscent of Roger Chillingworth's spell over the sensitive and tormented soul of Rev. Dimmesdale. Recovering Puritans, forgive me the spoiler, but beware--it's The Object of My Affection meets The Scarlet Letter!

It brought to mind my stint as an innocent at an Orange County counseling center in the '80s, where Dr. _____ tried to un-gay an evangelical personality known for his bright scarves. As I looked for my mother in the DSM-III or graded another MMPI he'd sneak by in a flash of orange or red, and I'd feel so sad, as I did when my roomie smashed all her LPs at that backmasking revival.

Oct. 16, lost

It's fitting that Jonah's creator has retreated to the old whaling coast of Moby-Dick, on an island where the ocean's every which way and no damn good for direction. Which is the lot of our hero--he's alarmingly adrift in Minneapolis, riding out a bitter winter of loss, persecution, and bewilderment. He's forced out of his shell, and comes in from the cold, into the glow of Eliot Moon's fireside, where confused men grapple in comfy chairs. The novel could be titled Fire and Ice, and "O, I've seen fire, and I've seen rain."

Oct. 17, morning

Fifteen minutes before our noon interview I text M.D. from the MTK Cafe on Main Street, and he says, SV ME. Now I'm running barefoot along the breakers, through needling rain, in The North Face Resolve Jacket (mulberry, hooded, $79.95), carrying him a coffee, which is sloshing out, and cold before I rap on the cabin door, which flies open to a chilling scene--empty booze bottles, piles of balled-up typing paper, a dead fire, and the words "troublesome flivver" dripping down the wall. Tied to the desk chair is a dead-ringer for Jack Nicholson (circa 1980), in two pair of socks, a stocking cap, and jeans soaked to the knees. Drive me to a Starbucks, he moans, as I untie the fishing line. Through the window we see Colin Farrell in waders, in the surf, casting out.

Oct. 17, 11:45

I text Matt Dean from the MTK Cafe and say I'm wearing mulberry and eating a muffin. He says he's in a stocking cap and jeans soaked to the knees.

The River in Winter by Matt Dean
It's hot off the press and steamy between the pages!
Gorgeous and meaty!
Curl up by the fire with your angels and demons.

San Francisco Appearance
Rumor is he'll be reading at A Different Light on Castro Street.
We all want a scene with Spike!

The Montauk Interview

He wrote The River in Winter on the San Francisco Bay, on the ferry on the way to the financial district, where he was some sort of genius with gum and duct tape. (As a child he'd figured out how to repair his Olivetti with a thick rubber band.) He's a fellow coffee shop writer (works well with strangers) who started something intriguing (hush-hush) here at the end of civilization.

The spark for the story came from a gay bar in St. Paul; and the motivation to finish from his unabashed partner, Todd. Matt's an atheist cuz the Buddha didn't flirt back, and the moral of the story is to see past appearances. The narrator is erudite, endearingly deprecating, and ready to break into song. In this post-Elton, post-Ellen era, he says, "I want to tap out whole gorgeous worlds."

Read the full "Rolling Stone" Interview here: [future link to Q&A]

Avatar Tails on Amazon?

2009-12-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

I think I just watched two hours and forty minutes of porn, in 3-D and rated PG-13, for nudity and bestiality. Sigourney is back, as a Camel-smokin' Cougar, but her avatar is a blue Twiggy with a tail. Thin is back in, with pert little A's (Salma's knockers are already passe, like so much conspicuous consumption). Everybody who watches this video game is gonna be wanting a tail--will I find a clip-on or strap-on at Good Vibrations on Valencia St.? I want a long whippy pigtail, with tickle tendrils.

Slip on the plastic disposable Buddy Hollies (in plastic packaging, $3.75) and enter a virtual reality of naked savages in the rain forest, with floating jellyfish, big black rat cats, and hammerheadephants. If you can subdue and have intercourse with a flying lizard, you've got a ride across town. The Bluemanoids are a tribe of androgynous acrobatic teenage Amazons: think Artemis or Legolas with swinging braids, war paint, and glitter. It's soft porn to be sure, but, still, won't attentive mothers of the target demographic just freak?

The plot is beside the point--let's call it The Jarheads Must Be Crazy--because Tarzan is hot and the trees so cool, whether glowing with juju or crashing down like the towers. My movie mate, the recording artist Laramie Crocker, suggested that the English parts could be synched up and replaced with Dark Side of the Moon, or better yet, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. But newbies may find the dialogue useful for future online s&m role play.

The natives speak in Papyrus font and the Marines in platitudes (the grizzled guy in the Iron Giant woulda said "Git 'er done" if it weren't TM'd, which would've put the movie way over budget). I don't remember the name of our hero, but thank god he wasn't Keanu Reeves. Sigourney's avatar is stacked like she's never been, and Laramie says, from now on actresses will never have to worry about aging again.

In the Belly of the Bush Years

2009-11-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

He sings like Johnny Cash on acid. He writes in triple entendre. He calls his sound psychedelic-gospel-pub. It's double-aught-nine, and Laramie Crocker's Crazy is the double make-out album of the year.

The first disc, Redemption, is Kerouac's On the Road meets Dante's Inferno. It's a wild western turned horror flick. It's epic and eclectic, acoustic and electric, personal and collective. It's biblical, danceable, and archetypal -- it's a concept album revival. It's Freudian and Pink Floydian. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a face can launch a thousand ships, then this album is a thousand page thriller.

But foremost it's a road trip, starting up with a straight-ahead country tune, but soon taking a detour into psychedelia. The vocals bring to mind Jeff Buckley -- with some bottom, or James Taylor -- with John Bonham. The compositions are lush with wanderlust: surprising turns, melancholy harmonies, and primal cries rising to anguished release. You'll feel inclined to swing a stein, dance a jig, trance out, make out, or cry your eyes out. Jazz, bluegrass, industrial, barbershop, and the unexpected major seventh – it's all there.

Redemption is the Hero's Journey in a 10-song Tarot spread, first the Fool, then the Devil, then the Tower. Like Bilbo Baggins, Laramie Crocker is the reluctant hero, thrust into more adventure than he bargained for. His foray could be called Hell and Back Again. At the core of his chronicle is a sniper hit to the soul. How do you cope with trauma-shock? The answer is in the songwriting. Laramie is a mythic storyteller, using music as the language of the unconscious. Imagistically, his tale is a Jungian heyday, with monsters and caves and all the symbology save a cigar.

The album opens with Wanderstomp, a lively cross-country romp. The road beckons, nature calls, and our hero responds with a hopeful yodel. With a pickup truck as his chariot and a dog as his guide, our hero ventures into the green beyond. “I don't know where I'm going” sings the Fool, two-stepping slap-haplessly into the Hero's Journey. Well, when you're already as west as it gets, you go east to find yourself. But look out! "There's a hole in the ground, and the skyline is strange."

Friends, as he's falling down the rabbit hole, he's calling back to you, remotely, from the future, telling you the blueprint of his journey, how it's gonna be okay. There's tragedy, but the storyteller's still yodeling. As he fades into echo we're left with the chugging of a train across the plains, the thumping of a heartbeat.

Together the 10 tracks tell a story of hope, loss, and healing, threaded with duality, and peppered with black humor. The lyrics are infused with the imagery of nature: the life-bringing sun, the idiosyncratic moon, the daylilies of heaven and the plastic of hell. We are moved by the cycle of seasons—death and loss with the falling leaves, the quiet hibernation of winter, green buds emerging with new life in the spring, and the warm sustenance of summer. There is an ever-present and sometimes ironic theme of duality: east and west, ambivalence and resolve, life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell, hope and heartbreak, destruction and rebirth, perp and victim, agent and observer, accuser and accused.

Read Part I, the Interview

Jack and Jill on Apple Hill

2009-10-24T09:02:00.001-07:00

To fetch a pail of apples...
Jack was whining and
Jill was whining and
Mom bought them cider donuts.

Dear Diary,

It's not that I don't like small children -- I adore them! It's the mothers who are horrid.

Yesterday found me in Gold Country, amid glorious Aspen bursting lemon-lime, peachy, and pumpkin, taking a country drive over Apple Hill under blue skies. I was looking for a quaint orchard to pick a peck of apples. Ah, the autumn air was crisp and cidery-sweet!

I spied a farm and crunched into the gravely lot, only to be halted by a brigade of SUBs (sports utility buggies) engaged in a logistical equipment operation. I rolled up my windows against the shrill gaggle.

I was starving and eager to bite into my annual caramel apple on a stick! I walked past hay bales to a little booth. “What toppings would you like?” asked the woman. “M&Ms, peanut butter chips, or rainbow sprinkles?” What, was this a frozen yogurt stand??? “Would you like Wedgies? They're easier to dip and chew.” I reiterated my desire for the Classic. But she couldn't resist serving it upside down in a styrofoam boat.

I strolled with my caramel apple past a face-painting booth (pleeease, Mom?), a pumpkin patch maze (kids caught without a ticket will be fined $5), and the littlest row of corn (planted for posing, not eating). "Conor, look at mommy! Conor, say cheese!" As I took my last bite (the large grannie was sweet and crisp, yum!) I wandered into the shoppe, where I hoped to buy a bushel of apples. But there were none for sale!

Digusted, I drove on to a "pick-your-own" ranch, and entered the preciously rustic barn, decorated with hanging scales and bric-a-brac. There were apple pies ($15), apple butter ($9), apple chutney ($12.50), apple donuts ($4.95), apple turnovers, apple relish, apple sauce, apple cider, and more -- everything but apples! I signed a release form and picked up a bucket, but was forewarned: it was pretty picked over. Had I miscalculated the season? "Oh, no, it's just that we're so popular!" Judging from the chichi gift items, I had a different explanation. Sure enough, the apple trees were bare, but I managed to collect a paltry pound from the ground. (I hesitate to give you the name of this enterprise, because they don't need any more popularity!)

I'll spare you the details of the other family ranches, farms, barns, orchards, gardens, and hilltops. Let's just say they're all on to the same game: face painting, whining, candy, cameras, and holiday gift shopping.

Finally, I found Apple Land -- "U-Pick-M." An old-timer met me on the big front porch. I picked up a bucket, and he went to fetch me a pickin' stick. "Now, don't yank," he said. "Just tug gently. The best ones are at the top." The orchard of dwarf and semi-drawf trees (many of which he planted himself over 26 years) was empty of shoppers and bursting with Granny Smith, Fuji, and Golden Delicious apples. The sun was warm as I wandered along the rows and pulled down plump organic apples. There was a restful silence and twittering of birds (in the classic sense). I'd never had so much fun in an orchard! (...excepting a certain one in Vermont.) Feeling like Jill in braids, I swung my bucket on back to the farmhouse to weigh in.

And I couldn't help imagining how much fun a child could have here: lifting up the picker and reigning in the highest apples, running down the rows, taking bites from fallen Fujis, chasing birds, looking for worm holes, filling up the bucket. I would have loved to hear some squeals of delight. I remember joyful picking from Grandma's backyard apple tree in Colorado. But, alas, this orchard was not "child-friendly" -- there were no "toddler activities" or photo ops or $5 treats or face paint.

I met Wes back at the porch and admired his platform scale, "Fairbanks, Patent No. 9." It was from Alaska's gold rush days, 167 years old, and though certified annually for accuracy, the setting has never been changed! I'd hand-picked 14 pounds -- a good bushel. (And a good deal, at one dollar a pound!) He put the load in a paper sack and I carried it off, reassured of humanity.

Alternative Pants

2009-10-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Saw the hippest black bell bottoms & boots on BART -- must cut flares in yoga pants immediately -- and knew our train was heading in the right direction. City Hall sparkling, the farmer's market bustling, and a cute skinny hipster couple necking up front of the 19 Polk. In response to a telepathic request, I was hefting a box full of The Mentalist's Handbook, a piece of practical esoteria from Wonderella Printed.

Way South of Market I joined the black-stripes-n-square-glasses set and entered APE, the Alternative Press Expo. At the Wonderella booth (wonderella.org) I met the Mentalist author, Clint Marsh, who had the aspect of minding an apothecary shop. He showed me some delightful booklets by a Reginald Bakely, one called Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop (I daresay a topical choice for the Berkeley urban survivalist movement). The hit of the booth was a smooth, touchable wooden canyon sculpture (could it be for sale?), which opened to a hot-off-the-press book of mystical Sedona desertscapes. The author, Will Cloughley, had a fine eye for color, as he noticed my strawberry hues. We chatted about our days on the Hill with Mayor Art Agnos, and his coffees with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (darn, Roma and Trieste were the wrong North Beach caffes!) I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Bakely, but there was no sign of him.

Knowing that I'd just finished Moby Dick, Marsh pointed me in the direction of Two Fine Chaps, who had an eclectic array of "printed things." Their hand-made accordion last chapter of Moby Dick was exquisite. At last I was able to discuss the ending with someone who had actually read the book (ahem). Haunting noir acrylics caught my eye at the table of Cabron.us. The artist's storybook of paintings -- ancestral ghosts -- is seductive and chilling, a must-get! I saw Ted Rall's nametag, but I didn't see him. So I asked his boothmate whether he disliked Obama (the awkward hedging confirmed the obvious).

"Fave of Show" was Maureen Burdock, for her feminist graphic novella Marta and the Missing/Marta y las Desaparecidas. I loved her image of an embrace around a Saguaro cactus; she told me the women got a kick out of it in Africa, too. I felt in her work the universality of female experience. Plus, her heroines are bad-ass! If I'da known she came all the way from Santa Fe I would'a charlar'd with her longer!

Back in the Civic Center station, the talk was of Tchaikovsky, but I wasn't listening. I was absorbed in storyboarding on little pink post-its.

Follow your Dope

2009-10-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

A lifelong eschewer of 5-year plans and housewifely ways, I've prided myself in following my passion, and after last night's talk, it's all too clear: I'm a dopamine fiend. Yesterday's eve I strolled with Dali through the neighborhood under a waning Harvest moon, stopping for a cappuccino before settling into the warm and lovely Hillside Club. The wood-beamed Tudor hall was full with a lively and intelligent aura, the crowd atypical in a way I couldn't explain. "I'm outnumbered three to one," whispered Dali, and then I noticed all the women. (If you shop at the farmer's market and discuss Outliers over Merlot, you're in the pocket.)

Po took the podium like a talk show pro, with a silvery mop and a delivery echoing Garrison Keillor. The topic was NurtureShock, a new book by the guy who gave us Silicon Valley start-ups and mid-life start-overs. Are you shocked to hear that peer pressure is a social advantage? Or that a kid's math skills increase ten-fold when he's playing with Pokemon cards? Guess what -- we learn more when we're in love. Which explains why I know so much.

Po Bronson's advice to parents? Chill out. You can push all you want, but they're not turned on. You can test for giftedness, but you're wrong. Their brains aren't even formed yet! How 'bout we give standardized drilling the boot and let kids follow what makes them feel good -- dopamine. You see, once we know how good it feels, we follow our passion. Bronson seems to have followed his -- from bond trading to career changing, and now the neuroscience of child development.

Over the rainy summer in Vermont, I read Why Do I Love These People, a collection of tales about families who left an unshakable impression on Po, and touched me, too. As I waded in rushing creeks I imagined the mother pulled under in a whirlcave, watching her life change before her eyes. I am drawn to transformative experiences. They stimulate me and enhance my graphic categorization abilities. I feel the dope rush right now, writing this. I really don't want to do the dishes.

I remember Po from the creative writing program, in the bygone days of short-shorts (stories), before Lestat was Tom Cruise or Frances Mayes was Diane Lane. I'd say he hasn't changed much in 15-odd years, but I'd be lying like a teenager -- he's gotten smarter.

Love in the Time of Ritalin: The Art, part III

2009-07-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

All day under the mango tree Erich Fromm explained the art of loving to me (The Separate Sex) and all night by lantern light I captured his treatise under my bug net canopy (Terms of Endearment). And so it came to be manana, with cold lime soup and my burning questions.

Anais: Is the dream of falling in love just a delusion, then?

Erich: This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man.

Anais: But you say that in so striving to connect, we merely conform and become the same?

Erich: Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking--and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof for the correctness of "their" ideas.

Anais: You intimate that love, not Xanax, is the antidote to angst. So why are we all so anxious?

Erich: Love is by necessity a marginal phenomenon in present day western society.

Anais: But isn't love natural? For instance, I have a passionate nature.

Erich: To love somebody is not just a strong feeling. It is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

Anais: You said that "practicing love" doesn't depend on a love object. How can you recommend daily meditation as the number one secret to being a good lover?

Erich: One must learn a great number of other--and often seemingly disconnected things--before one starts with the art itself...an apprentice in the art of piano playing begins by practicing scales. If one wants to become a master in any art, one's whole life must be devoted to it.

Anais: So we transcend just being in the mood for love. Yet you don't make the practice sound like very much fun!

Erich: Love being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, it requires the development of humility, objectivity, and reason.

Anais: Are you calling me narcissistic?

Erich: I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs, and fears.

Anais: Hmm. Love as you describe it seems to take all the charge out of eroticism. How do you explain chemistry?

Erich: Inasmuch as we are all one, we can love everybody in the same way in the sense of brotherly love. But inasmuch as we are all also different, erotic love requires certain specific, highly individual elements which exist between some people but not between all.

Anais: You come off a bit prudish in your description of erotic love as heterosexual.

Erich: Just as physiologically man and woman each have hormones of the opposite sex, they are bisexual also in the psychological sense. They carry in themselves the principle of receiving and of penetrating, of matter and of spirit. Man--and woman--finds union within himself only within the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity.

Anais: Isn't it limiting to say you can "fuse yourself fully and intensely with one person only"?

Erich: Well, I have only one--I mean, we are all part of One; we are One.

Anais: You're evading.

Erich: Maybe you don't understand paradoxical logic.

Anais: Okay...let's talk about sensitivity.

Erich: Bodily sensitivity is relatively easy to experience because most persons have an image of how it feels to be well. The same sensitivity toward one's mental processes is much more difficult, because many people have never known a person who functions optimally...never seen a loving person, or a person with integrity, or courage, or concentration.

Anais: Aha! So I am trained by family members who express their feelings of pain and insecurity with certain mental perceptions. How am I to know this is not normal?

Erich: In order to be sensitive to one's self, one has to have an image of complete healthy human functioning--and how is one to acquire such an experience if one has not had it in one's own childhood or later in life?

Anais: Women think men don't care if men don't respond "emotionally"--meaning with jealousy, or mood-matching. We haven't seen that a calm, rational approach can take our needs into account.

Erich: If one thinks of the great works of literature and art of all ages, there seems to be a chance of creating a vision of good human functioning.

Anais: Here's the problem with the so-called "Sensitive Guy." He's so attuned to the spiral of his own melancholy that he can't be sensitive to my needs.

Erich: One is aware, for instance, of a sense of tiredness or depression, and instead of giving in to it and supporting it by depressive thoughts which are always at hand, one asks oneself "what happened?"...and not to rationalize them in the thousand and one ways in which this can be done.

Anais: A sad thread throughout my life is the feeling of not being truly understood. And the longing for my loved ones to share more deeply so that I can fully understand them.

Erich: But inasmuch as the desire is to know all of man, his innermost secret, the desire can never be fulfilled in knowledge of the ordinary kind, in knowledge only by thought. Even if we knew a thousand times more of ourselves we would never reach bottom. We would still remain an enigma to ourselves, as our fellow man would remain an enigma to us.

Anais: So that explains why I'm never satisfied!

Erich: The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is to know God by thought, to make statements about God. In mysticism, the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and is replaced by the experience of union with God.

Anais: So is mystogomy the outcome of monogamy?

Erich: The longing to know ourselves and to know our fellow man ... is the mainspring of psychology. As the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love.

Anais: This is so profound for me! So in those areas where I can't understand, or can't accept (despite endless processing), I must love.

Erich: In the act of love, we can know.

Anais: You say that the art of loving requires the act of faith. Do I need to get religion?

Erich: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton were all imbued with an unshakable faith in reason. Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise. Nietzsche said, "Man can be defined by his capacity to promise."

Anais: Nietzsche deepens my understanding of "I do."

Erich: Love is an active power.

Terms of Endearment: The Art of Loving, part II

2009-07-09T12:16:00.001-07:00

Dear Diary,

It's 100 degrees at 4 a.m., the macaw is squawking from the portico, but I must feverishly capture the clarity of Fromm's terminology before all has melted into emo soup!

The Basic Elements of Love ::
The Attitudes of a Mature Person

Love:
The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth, and freedom. An activity practiced only in freedom, never as the result of compulsion. It is primarily giving, not receiving.

Mature Love:
Union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality.

Care:
The active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.

Respect:
The ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. The absence of exploitation.

Knowledge:
Penetrates to the core. "It is possible only when I can transcend the concern for myself and see the other person in his own terms...The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love: this act transcends thought, it transcends words...Only if I know a human being objectively can I know him in his ultimate essence."

Responsibility:
"My response to the needs (expressed or unexpressed) of another human being."

Object-Love and Not-Love

Motherly Love:
Unconditional affirmation, instilling the love for life. Care for growth, and want for separation.

Fatherly Love:
Conditional, merit-based, competence-enhancing and expectation-driven.

Brotherly Love:
Love between equals. "We are all one." Lack of exclusiveness. Compassion for the stranger.

Erotic Love:
Craving for complete fusion. "Erotic love is exclusive, but it loves in the other person all of mankind, all that is alive."

Self-Love:
"The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other being."

Selfishness:
Not productive. Interested only in self, judges everything from its usefulness to him, feels no pleasure in giving, incapable of loving. Empty, frustrated, unhappy, and snatching.

Neurotic Unselfishness:
Depressed; does not consider oneself important; behind the facade, hostile toward life; loved ones are anxious and criticized.

Narcissism:
The earliest stage in human development. The experience as real only that which exists within oneself. The inability to see people and things as they are (objectively) and to separate them from the picture formed by one's desires and fears.

S&M:
Passive symbiotic union (psychological foetal attachment).

Practice of Love : : Conditions for Loving
Supreme Concern with Mastery of the Art

:: Practice discipline, concentration, patience throughout every phase of one's life : :

Discipline:
Not practiced like a rule imposed from the outside. An expression of one's own will. It is felt as pleasant. It is a behavior one would eventually miss if one stopped practicing it.

Concentration:
To be able to be alone with one's self (without distractions such as smoking, radio, etc.). Meditation exercises. Focus on what matters in the moment. Avoid triviality. With others, primarily listening. Live fully in the here and now.

Patience:
"If one is after quick results, one never learns an art." A child learning to walk.

Activity:
The productive use of one's powers. Awareness, alertness. The attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity.

Be Awake:
To not be bored or boring.

Sensitivity:
A "state of alert equilibrium" regarding one's state. To notice without spiraling or rationalizing.

Giving:
(not "giving up") Is the highest expression of potency. "Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness."
The most important sphere of giving lies in the human realm: "He gives of that which is alive in him."

Rich:
Is not he who has much, but he who gives much. The hoarder is impoverished, regardless of how much he has.

Faith:
What is required for the process of emergence, birth, waking up. Conviction rooted in one's own experience and the confidence in one's power of thought, observation, and judgement. Rational faith is rooted in productive intellectual and emotional activity. "Having faith in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love." Faith in potentiality. Faith in others culminates in faith in mankind. The basis of rational faith is productiveness.

Irrational Faith:
The belief in a person or an idea based on one's submission to irrational authority. The acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority say so.

Faith in Oneself:
A condition of our ability to promise. An awareness of an unchangeable core in our personality. Without faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened and we depend on others' approval for the basis of our identity.

Equality:
Oneness, each a unique entity, man and woman equal as opposite poles; as opposed to contemporary sameness and standardization.

Objectivity:
To think with reason, with the underlying emotional attitude of humility.

Courage:
The ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment.

The Separate Sex: The Art of Loving, part I

2009-07-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Roll over, Geisha. Student of the Kama Sutra, put down those scissors. I've just met the most practiced man in the West, and he gave me all the free love a gal could handle outside the bedroom (or should I say art studio?)

I was in Mexico City for a modeling gig, and Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social theorist, was overseeing the photo-shoot. While I posed as Eve by the mango tree, he sidled up to me and said, "There's no shame in your nudity, you know. What you're feeling is an awareness of your human separateness." Actually, what I was feeling was sultry! Tropical juice dripped down my sun-drenched skin, and my ringlets drooped in the humidity. "Lift your left shoulder and open wider," he said. "Show the essence of your receptive feminine polarity."

Adam was hot in the predictable way, but Fromm had the irresistible look of an intellectual, with wavy dark hair, a high brow, and Huxleyesque spectacles. He was readying his latest treatise, The Art of Loving, for publication, and theorized as I took bite after bite. "Most people respond to the anxiety of separateness with alcohol abuse or conformity, but love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." I wanted to try out my German in response, but my mouth was full of mango and he shushed me: "English is the language of love."

I'd been holding a standing pose for an hour. "What we call 'falling in love' is the sensation of the collapse of barriers. 'Standing in love' more accurately depicts the activity of loving." I was ready to collapse from the heat. "Primitive tribes practiced communal orgiastic rituals which kept the anxiety and shame of separateness at bay." Fromm winked: "What happens south of the border, stays south of the border."

I arched my back over a branch where Fromm had draped a rubber snake. "Perfect!" shouted the photographer, "Hold it!" Fromm continued, "People mistakenly believe that 'love' is about finding the right 'object' to love. Which is as absurd as an artist claiming he will be able to paint beautifully once he finds the right object to paint." "Bellissima!" cried the photographer.

It turns out the art of love has more to do with meditation than negligee. "Twenty minutes of breathing, every morning and every evening," says the master. "Be fully present in every activity. Listen. Concentrate, and you will be awake. Avoid trivialities. Avoid cliches. Avoid boredom. Avoid bad company."

Bad company -- ? Like who? I asked. Zombies, he said.

Nora who?

2009-06-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

As someone who browses bookstores more frequently than spouses have sex, I'm proud to profess absolute ignorance as to the identity of "America's most popular novelist" (according to The New Yorker, 6/22/09). She is B&N's "top romance writer" and grossed more than John Grisham or Stephen King, both of whom I can't claim not to have known. I once stalked Grisham along the chic walking mall in Charlottesville, Virginia, and lingered behind him in line as he ordered a wet cappuccino. Tall, trim, salt and peppered, he cut a fine figure in tweed. Now, Stephen King! Of course I read Carrie, his first, when it came out in '74. Chilling and fitting, as I was a shy blonde with a Bible-thumping mother, just like Sissy! King made such an impression that I dressed as Carrie for Halloween of '89. In a powder-blue prom dress, waist-length hair, and dripping blood, she was the hit of Castro Street!

Today I browsed around in Moe's and Shakespeare & Co. on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, but I've still spied nary a one of the 182 novels by Nora Roberts. I must thank The New Yorker for making the pleasure of her acquaintance, and for giving up such hilarious quotes as, "This ain't Paris." And speaking of Paris, tonight I will be attending the premiere of Cheri, the film version of the book by my favorite romance novelist, my dear cherie Colette!

Ladies be trippin'

2009-06-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Whatever footwear were they wearing? What is the Shoe Code for the Secretary of State, Sarah Palin, and the Supreme Court nominee? [cfm's] Isn't it strange that broken bones are par for the job if you're a woman who wants to catch a plane in Washington? [with a hot ass] Wal-Mart and foot-binding, it's the American way.

Lush, Trippy, Audacious: The Treehouse Studio Interview

2009-05-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I was on a treasure hunt for Treehouse Studio in Berkeley, Calif. where I expected to find a lanky singer-songwriter dangling on the cusp of stardom, if not an oak branch. I was without an address, but spied the little wood gate and ducked under a canopy of climbing roses into a veritable shire, a lush green English country garden with a trellis of white clematis, exotic apricot-colored azaleas, blossoming plum trees, and a profusion of roses. A picket-fence vegetable patch lay past a compost heap the size of a haystack. A brick path led me to the porch of a 1904 cottage, where a stately bed was laid to wait in the open air, I mused, like a gun in Act One. "Allen Ginsberg could have slept here, had he slept around," he confided later (as his property backed the demolished cottage of Ginsberg's short stint as a grad student).

The sashes thrown open to the changeable air, I wandered in a green door and met the dressmaker's dummy, scarved, (size 9). Swords, hats, and walking sticks rested in the antique hall tree. On a piano were the crumpled sheets of Beethoven's Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia, and atop that a big Irish bodhran. There were bean bags, and gig bags leaned against vertical surfaces, like an Invasion of the Guitar Snatchers. The cozy cornerpiece was a wood-burning stove, set in the artist's hand-cut Vermont green slate, and accented in African lake-bottom.

I followed my fate up the staircase to a little door at the top. I pressed it open, and saw him swaying there, head-phoned, his back to me 'til he saw my reflection in the screen. He had a voice like Johnny Cash, a jacket like James Dean, and hands like the Statue of David. Pajamas on his drum kit, shiny go-go boots on the speaker (ladies size 7), and windows wide open "to let the green in." And a redwood, and skylights, and sunsets, and palms, and raccoons going monkey-style in a little forest. He handed me my headphones, and by the second track we were tangled in black cords.

We awoke on the rooftop with a cup of chai and a hankering for gourmet pizza (4-cheese zucchini-portobello-kalamata-basil). We made Meyer lemonade with crushed mojito mint (weeds, really), and the earphones went back on for a full listen dance party of Crazy in the garden. Laramie Crocker delivered on his promise to record the double makeout album of the year. The first disc, Redemption, is a lushly-layered Hero's journey through the Bush years, a dark-soul yodely roadtrip of the unconscious, very slow-danceable. His musical odyssey, years in the making, came together in a studio session where four improvisers became a band for three days. The musicians connected together in mood, finding the spaces to shred and groove.

The second disc, Stereoville, USA, came into its own while mixing the first, a sort of primal byproduct. Trance out to air raid sirens, howling wolves, and swirling lollipops. This one's all Laramie (and his virtual sidekick, Echo Boy). Sweet, deep, dire, funny, and kissable!

All is beautiful in Treehouse Studio. At night it glows with party lights. L.C. is saying, "some are gorgeous and perfect, some are fucked up and rock 'n' roll." No, not women, his guitars! The favorite and the fragile are displayed on stands. He says, "I keep my basses out to teach me." His main jumbo Guild is there for composing and general good looks. And for my gear-head readers: he uses the latest in singer-songwriter technology, the digi 002 rack, and on top of that, a vintage 70s Kenwood amp. And here, in this moment, some seriously mesmerizing looping device.

Read Part II, the Redemption Review

Razzamajazzed

2009-04-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I am not humming, I am twinkling, I was visited by aliens, our bodies were buzzing as one. I think I was just inducted into the Secret Brotherhood of the Frei. They've been lying to us about the Break! I was down under downtown in a little room at the Jazzschool with Raz Kennedy and his circle of rapt students. Raz is superloose and wise, with the likes of "breath is the flipside of a phrase." Before the session was over, we were moaning and mooing like cows. This Cool Cat is spot-on and handsome, but as perfect a gentleman as a conjurer could be. The student who caught my eye was a tall, dark hipster in tight pinstripes and vintage "Life in Hell" t-shirt. He told me he was putting the finishing touches on the double make-out album of the year. My intrigue must have been showing, for he made me an invitation to his Treehouse Studio for a pre-release listen. Oh, how the roses are bursting along my evening path!

Abominable Bacon

2009-04-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

In the afterglow of Iowa's kindly nod to same-sex marriage, my publisher friend asked me to do a review of the controversial book most oft quoted by opponents of gay rights. It was written some time ago, but has gained renewed notoriety with its brutal language about California's new hot button issue.

My friend put me on a plane to the Near East, and provided me with an interview outfit, a gauzy, sari-like number which nicely let in the breeze and showed off my hips. Upon landing I was whisked into an armored car and sedated. I awakened on the back of a camel, in a traveling tent of animal skins held up by poles. Then I was blindfolded, pushed through layers of pelts, and led into a cool, shady tent with burning incense. An apparition took shape in the shadows -- a stern sultan guarding the breach with a butcher knife! This had all the intrigue of my tryst with Salman Rushdie during his fatwah!

There was a disturbance of ox hide, and our hirsute author emerged from a back chamber, scrubbed clean and dripping water. He was balding, with an impressive unruly salt 'n' pepper beard, and a powerful chest. He'd been washing up after preparing a big barbecue. He still smelled of blood.

He took me noiselessly from behind, a giant hand clapped over my mouth, and whisper-growled a warning: if I made a sound, both of us would have to die! Afterwards, over a savoury luncheon of lamb and pigeon kabob, very lean, we talked about his book. I asked him about the seasoning, and he said, "Didn't you read Chapter Two?"

Leviticus is the third book of a pentology by Moses Levi, and has been widely translated. Its Latin title (meaning The Book of the Levites) has the singular epic ring of such titles as Atonement by Ian McEwan and Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick. Like Lord of the Rings, this series follows an unwitting band of seekers on a quest, in this case, for a piece of arable land to settle. Leviticus, the rule book for a sect of priests who make burnt sacrifices (so Mayan!) is parts Farmer's Almanac, Boy Scout handbook, First Aid kit, Joy of Cooking, Emily Post, Hints from Heloise, and Dr. Laura. In short, it is an obsessive-compulsive survival manual for a luckless nomadic tribe lost in the desert.

This manual contains rules, abominations, and rituals for ablution. For unatonable acts, there is banishment and capital punishment.

In this tome of over a thousand verbose sentences (yes, Mose, I've skimmed 'em all) there are a paltry two of current interest. But if Christians agree that to "lie with mankind, as with womenkind" is a defiling abomination worthy of death, they must concede to a host of other abominations, which are expounded in much, much greater detail.

ABOMINATIONS

It is an abomination to eat rabbit, seafood, bacon, ham, or escargot. It is also an abomination to eat any meat fat. The cost of lobster tail is exile!

It is an abomination to take an oath of office, or make a marriage vow.

Same-sex napping? Abomination! Shrimp cocktail? Abomination!

Some etiquette abominations: 1. Garments: Never wear a linen and wool blend! 2. Millinery: If you go to church without a hat, you will DIE! 3. Grooming: Absolutely no beard-trimming allowed.

It's the death penalty for anyone who has an affair, enters a sanctuary bare-headed, or works on the day of atonement. What were you doing last September 28?

What if you slept with your wife while she was menstruating? Tough luck, buddy! Take a hike into exile, you know the rules!

Learn all the tricks for removing those tough stains. If you sat on the same couch as a menstruating woman, you've got a lot of washing up to do. How to get clean after your period? Make a burnt offering of 2 turtles, or 2 young pigeons.

Speaking of which, the next course, turtle soup, was absolutely divine! After washing my hands 20 times I dipped some unleavened bread into the broth. Such sweet savour! I've never had anything like it, even at Arnaud's!

What's in the Sky of Aught-Nine

2009-03-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

A lot has happened since my last entry. The sky is falling, but the seas are on the rise, as are vegan bistros. Politically, we're in a holding pattern of Code Orange, so one is forced to dine at a restaurant in order to access a toilet. The Pope has just announced that condoms spread AIDS, and the Feds have strong-armed librarians into banning children's books printed prior to 1986. Water is the new suspect substance, replacing anthrax ... psychoanalysis is out, replaced by Xanax ... and now fairy tales replaced by phonix! A study this week found that the devoutly religious demand the costliest end-of-life-prolonging procedures, which Dali says is a true measure of their lack of faith (read fear). Yesterday Dali awakened me with his desire to shoot down the "sky-rats" thwacking overhead (a usual indication that the Marines are in town, and middle-aged women in pink are yelling about peace), his chocolate eyes shining in the morning sun of our sleeping nook, which he popped out on the roof-top like a wacky glass sculpture. In our "treehouse" we're one with the birds, the breeze, the patter of rain, the chatter of apartment dwellers, the buzz of dissent. Feeling hungover from last night's writers salon, where talk got hot, civil liberties vs. facism, and a Zen street guy booted out because he thought Dali had threatened to shoot him. Now Dali has banned my salons from his cottage, because he's afraid of freaky street trash. Which is funny, since William S. Burroughs, his beat hero, is not only a street-thief, but also shot his wife. And Dali complains about the banality of polite talk. I think I'll ask him how he's enjoying the beautiful spring weather today.