December | 2008 |

MIDWEST, USA-

Dear L:

Before I left Madrid this past June, you had sent me a correspondence which had this as its final paragraph:

Please write. Write sometime and tell me things about your crazy country, full of enormous highways, tall cities, weird people, strange drinks (like Dr.Pepper, the most disgusting drink ever made after cicuta, I guess), blonde girls, cute dogs, creepy perfect neighbourhoods [sic], great writers, great musicians, great…and a long etcetera of lights and shadows of that hard to understand country you come from.

That’s quite poetic L, right there at the end with the lights and shadows etceterrata. You must be something of a writer yourself and-being Spanish-you write quite well in English. I know because I try to write in Spanish and it is widely considered to be the final and most difficult faculty to master in any second language.

Tomorrow I return to your country.

I’ve kept a numbered list of things that have caught my attention over the past 10 weeks.

Many of these things have occurred over the past five years since I’ve been gone so what I’m observing are not necessarily changes that have occurred overnight.

I hope this suffices to recap my summer sojourn back in Freedomland**.

1. Flags.

This country is so jam-packed full of flags, it’s alarming.

I relate this because your country is virtually flag free compared to the US.

Many other countries I’ve visited don’t seem to have this flag fetish.

What gives?

After 911, the flag industry raked in so much cash over the course of several years that even the steady descent into widespread unpopularity that the president has experienced hasn’t even really affected their presence.

I offer a personal example: My mom spent around 1000 dollars erecting a flagpole replete with a brand new red-white-and-blue flag atop and the accompanying lights.

Some say freedom isn’t free; I agree, it–or at least the symbol of it–appears to cost about a grand.

I took pictures whenever I could over a 10 week period.

Without even really trying, I took over 50 photos.

My assumption is this: Many US citizens feel that the USA is–without question–the best goddamn country on earth, and in order to announce their pride to every other citizen they see, they pump flags like fists at rock concerts.

I read once that given your country’s history of dictators and royal tyrants, Spanish people inherently despise and distrust any institution that governs their lives.

So showing national pride isn’t something you want to do that readily.

Maybe in a few decades (if we’re all still collectively kicking), when America’s self-asserted world dominance in the world has been weakened, its citizens won’t be so quick to sport flags that to many in the world mean the complete opposite to what they mean to US citizens.

(If you don’t understand what the above statement means L–and I assume you probably already do– read a little bit of Noam Chomsky, peruse Zmag.org or even just listen to any Rage Against the Machine song.)

2. Automatically foaming soap.

(I call it autofoap or even just foap.) All over this land in both the public and private spaces I visited, autofoap has taken the US by storm (por huevos).

Somewhere in the course of the past five years (most acutely in the past two or three) regular liquid hand soap was replaced with autofoap. Apparently, it removes the burden caused by non-foaming soap.

It’s lather-free.

I wonder what this means, if anything.

It could mean we’ve reached new levels of laziness or that the general public was extremely jaded on the old liquid hand soap, so much so that this subtle and clever move has us entranced. Will the US ever go back to non-foaming hand soap or is this foap here to stay?

A good question.

Answer: probably.

What’s next, L?

Sustainable energy?

Self-driving cars?

Water bottles that automatically unscrew their lids, crawl up your arm and pour their contents down your throat for you?

3. Coca Cola with vitamins. This is actually somewhat of a spin off caused by Red Bull’s steam-rolling of the energy drink market. When I was here a few years ago, I remember there being the normal variety of soft drinks along with Pepsi and Coca-cola drinking waters. Now there is virtually no end to what’s on offer.

Actually, that’s not true: There are two kinds offered. One offers vitamins and minerals and one offers only antioxidants. Of course the vitamins are rather sparse (only 25% of the daily recommended value of B6 and B12 and niacin – what the hell is niacin anyway?). The other one is mixed with green tea. Now if they could only find a way to fit a burrito in these cans, I’d consume them like Spaniards do olive oil and cigarettes.

4. Pharmacies have overtaken the corners of many cities throughout the Midwest (and presumably the rest of the nation).

Farmacias in Spain are everywhere as well, but they seem to only sell drugs that are purport to improving health or allaying pain.

Pharmacies in the US have a small back corner section where you can fill your prescriptions and a capacious mini-supermarket design of row after row of generally useless shit…

OR shit you can buy at any general store or supermarket.

When I left five years ago, these pharmacies were in existence, now they are taking over street corners all over this great land.

It’s good to know that when you’re getting low on your anti-depressants you can also pick up some stationary, cigarettes and any other last-minute school supplies.

5. On July 5th, 2008, the temperature was oppressively hellish around the mid 90s with heavy humidity.

Every public place I entered today – the library, supermarket, pharmacy and a restaurant – were all frigid.

In the restaurant, I actually looked down to find my nipples hard.

I should have brought a sweater with me in the dead of summer.

So, L, why is the temperature of American air conditioning so high, you ask? I used to think it was so people would eat or shop as quickly as possible and then get the hell out so someone else could do the same thing quickly. Maybe not. Maybe an obese population requires unusually high temperatures indoor.

This temperature extremity is alarming for a reason I wrote in my first TNB piece and which I don’t think I can restate any more clearly:

The largest source of greenhouse gases is electric power generation.

Air conditioners use around 1/6th of the electricity in the US and on doggishly hot summer days, they can use up to 43% of the peak power load.

So as the environment gets hotter, we’re going to need a lot more air conditioners to keep the indoors cool.

This will, in turn, make the outdoors even hotter.

If you love air conditioning, this is definitely the place for you.

6. 99% of Americans constantly confuse Spanish culture with Mexican culture. Stephen Colbert, famed American satirist for his hilarious fake news show The Colbert Report, devastatingly revealed his own ignorance one night (but was safe because only 1% of the country knows about this) by putting Spain on the new terror list watch.

Since Iraq and North Korea are no longer on the Axis of Evil, he said, we’re going to have to pick another country to put on it. He started reading some headlines, found that Spain extended legal rights to Apes. (This is a true story.) After lashing into the mere idea of it, he blurted out, “Taco Shells? Freedom Shells!” The crowd roared with laughter.

I mentioned this to some friends who watch him and they immediately said that he knew what he was saying and that the joke was kind of double joke, referring to US backlash against France’s rejection of supporting the US’s invasion of Iraq. It was also, they pointed out, a joke making fun of people who think taco shells come from Spain.

There is no doubt in my mind that Colbert is one smart guy. Satire at this level is rare and very welcomed. But he really didn’t seem to be making fun of people who think tacos come from Spain AND people who supported banning the word french with fries. It felt like–at least in the moment–he really thought tacos came from Spain.

And this is unsettling because it has been my experience with pretty much every other American who hasn’t been to Spain.

Currently, in pretty much every way minus the language, Spanish culture is very distinct from all countries in Latin America. This means that your people don’t eat Burritos every day because it is not Spanish cuisine; it means that you, L, or your countryfolk don’t wear Pepé Gonzalez sombreros or play mariachi music, that “Oh, no I haven’t been to Spain but I have been to Cozumel” means nothing; Tortillas are not made of flour or corn but eggs and potatoes and Jennifer Lopez only speaks Spanish, is not Spanish.

I’m not positive about this L but I think this is a cumulative effect of American’s general ignorance of world geography largely caused by their own bloated and unjustified sense of self-importance, Mexico’s adjacent placement and that the language spoken throughout all Hispanic America (i.e. all countries south of the USA minus Brazil and the French colonies) is the same language spoken in Spain. Oh yeah, it’ also used as an adjective for anything that comes from Spain, as in Spanish wine. This trifecta of reasons has even America’s foremost satirist confused.

7. American politics = Hollywood spectacle.

It’s unfortunate but true. It’s less about what you say or what you mean and mostly about image and perception.

I’m afraid we are doomed for the rest of our lives to have to endure corruption on such a widespread level.

I am very willing to lay down my keyboard, get grassroots and take up arms in front of the white house, demanding the power be given back to us, the American people.

But only if many other people are.

Do you think anyone is with me, L?

No, me either.

Let’s hurry up and wrap up this correspondence so I can get back to checking my email and sharpening my cynicism.

8.** Why I call the USA Freedomland? I call the USA Freedomland because it’s virtually impossible to listen to any of its politicians speak without overusing the word freedom. In fact, they speak in vast excesses of loaded terminology like democracy, freedom, terrorism, etc. If you check out Publicrhetoric.US, you’ll see an analysis one of Bush’s last speeches on Veterans Day. Freedom outnumbered the second most common word, security, by more than 2:1.

Freedom was used 21 times while security only reached 10.

It has become such a loaded word in the USA that it has essentially become meaningless. If all I did was listen to its political speeches, I would have to draw the conclusion that the USA invented freedom.

Not only did they invent it, but they are coveting it like Tokein’s ring.

They will let other countries have it, but only if those countries allow Starbucks and McDonalds in.

These companies are icons of freedom, or free or open (American-friendly) markets.

When I visit the USA, I don’t see freedom so much as excessiveness and apathy.

Compared to most European societies, it seems like a immature and jovial population that is dedicated firmly to its football (or sports in general), driving, working, gas, fast food, being the best, buying in bulk, celebrity worship, reality television and its disposable and iconic to-go coffee cups.

Every one has these.

Recycling is optional.

We are hellbent on freedom at all costs.

Whatever that means.

And we want to make sure that you and everyone you know is aware of this.

America, with all its faults, is at once the best and worst this world has to offer.

I highly recommend you visit someday.

All the best.

Dating’s a bitch.

And this is the time of year when it’s easier to plop in front of the TV with a bottle of Veuve and watch a House marathon rather than suffer through, as the only single person* in the room, the forced jollity of holiday events. You start to miss the days when your mother pestered you about your dating life. Anymore, she just slaps on her Colorform smile, tells hyper-enthusiastic tales of others – who got married even older than you – and passes the twice-baked potatoes with a heavy sigh; resigned to the fact that the children born to your siblings are going to be the only grands she’s going to get.

(*For the record, no, my widowed grandmother does NOT count, thank you very much and besides, evenshe has a boyfriend, so suck it!)

But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been “out there”. I’ve tried. Honest I have. I’ve just gotten the fuzzy end of the lollipop more times than I care to count.

For example:

An Evangelical jazz drummer proposed marriage twice, only to break off the engagement. Twice. Both times as dictated by God who audibly spoke to him on the bank of a lake in Texas. A scientist told me the morning after our first night spent together, that, while I looked ‘just fine’, my BMI still indicated that I was technically obese. There was a chef who would only have outercourse, even though the relationship had progressed to the apartment-shopping phase. And let’s not forget the lawyer whose break-up speech proclaimed that I was comfortable to be around, and made every event an adventure, but I just wasn’t ‘thunderbolts and lightening’.

Ahem.

Despite all of that, I persist. I am a hopeful romantic. I cling desperately to the knowledge that, in the words of Fivel Mousekewitz, “Somewhere, out there … someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight”.

Bolstered by this ridiculous ongoing fantasy, I recently joined an internet dating website.

(I know… Please don’t judge me.)

Truth be told, however, that lawyer was wrong. I am ‘thunderbolts and lightening’. I’m no gentle summer shower – I’m a torrential downpour. I’m outspoken. Bossy. Tact isn’t always my forté. I’m a career gal. A broad. I’m definitely more Yentl and less Hadass. Fanny Brice. K-k-k-k-k-katie. (Pick a Streisand character… any Streisand character…)

But knowing that Barbra, for all her chutzpah, is a certifiable bitch, I got to thinking maybe this time around, I should soften things a little. Resolve to e-volve and use the internet for its Powers of Good: To help me finally find my Avigdor.

In order to do so though, I would need to get back to some basics. Take a refresher course and revisit some fundamental Junior League principles. Try and be a lady…

… for once.

So I turned to one of the classics:

Let’s see what advice Betty has that can help me in 2009…

1. Shut up and dance. Got it. Moving on…

2. Note to self: Wait 24 hours (or until sober) to e-mail, text or tweet.

3. The girl should make the move??? What??? Clearly Betty’s never read The Rules.

4. Good plan. Don’t let the guys know that you’re seeing more than one at a time. That’ll be our little secret…

5. If I don’t speak to men I’ve never met, how the hell is this internet dating thing going to work??? I think Betty needs to rethink things for the next edition.

6. Call me a cynic, but I think I’m going to be hard-pressed to find a Yankee who will perform his ‘manly chore’ for this nice Southern transplant…

7. So I suppose I shouldn’t keep ruling out those guys from Staten Island, eh? You never know. Underneath those velour tracksuits, they might be swell.

8. Listen, Betty. If the guy doesn’t like me for who I am, then he can go fuc— (Deep breath…) Manners… manners…

9. Then how is he going to know I like him???

10. See #9.

Thank you for reading. I had a lovely time. So glad you came. I do hope you’ll call again soon!

– – – – –
Images (used without permission) from Your Manners Are Showing © 1946

Everyone in Germany talks constantly of illness. It is a country of hypochondriacs and a country of contradictions. The same person afraid of a drafty house will sit outside in winter, wrapped in a blanket and drink beer. Fresh air is good for you, you see. The person who rides his bike for exercise will do so while smoking a cigarette. Explain that one. And while a healthy lifestyle includes ample exercise, vegetables and bio-grown food, that exercise is tempered with plenty of smoking and drinking and veggies that are more often than not deep-fried and/or covered in cheese. The aversion to actual medicine seems to come from a real distrust of the unnatural. Herbs rule the day and are always the first line of attack. No wonder everyone’s sick all the time!

My brain feels like one of those toys you have to push to make little bright objects bounce around in a clear dome over a loud grating noise. Or a bingo dispenser, lots of stuff cluttering around and occasionally something comes out. Or a garbage can at a rich person’s house or in a knick-knack store that’s going out of business. You can see some good stuff in there but when you reach in you have to cringe past some gross gunk like banana peels and uneaten noodles and worse and you feel your way in the dark to find the valuable bits that can be wiped off, de-grossified, salvaged for future use.

Not to be dramatic. I just can’t sleep so I’ll see what I can find in here (pointing to head.)

1. At some point in middle school I went to a party where you could have your photo put on a drinking cup. My friend Steph and I had two photos taken of us, and then each one put on a cup. In one photo I looked really good and Steph looked okay. In the other photo Steph looked really good and I looked okay. I wanted the photo where I looked better but Steph said she wanted that one- why would she want to have a good photo of herself rather than one of her friend?

I forget what we decided on, but I felt vain and still do since if I were in the same situation today I’m pretty sure I would still want the better photo of myself.

2. A few weeks ago I took a road trip to New Orleans with my friends Charlotte and Wilmot. To pass the time in the car we played what turned into a sort of game- “Who Would You Rather Hook Up With?” It was usually hit or miss, with many questions getting the answer – “Duh, of course (so and so).”

The fun was in thinking about the preferences of the person you were asking, and coming up with the perfectly balanced pair, balanced in either desirability or repulsiveness, and eliciting a “Hmmmmmm” or an “Ew!”

One of us wondered wether you could take all of someone’s answers and put them into a computer program that would figure out the perfect match. Wilmot began, “But wait! Rebecca, you said…” and I was somewhat skeptical of whatever he was about to say since he doesn’t know me as well as Charlotte and so had asked me a lot of “Who Would You Rather” questions where my choice had been obvious to me and Charlotte.

But he continued, “You said before that you would rather hook up with C over H, right?” Yeah. “And I’m pretty sure you picked H over G right?” Uh huh. “But didn’t you also pick G over C? You’ve created a circle! Or a triangle.”

Wait a minute. I thought about it and he was right! I don’t know how Wilmot had stored all of that information over the past several hours. But I kept going over it in my head and it was true. The answers had to do with the real-life context for each choice but it still blew my mind- and Wilmot said that my triangle would definitely be an obstacle for our computer program.

It’s really slim pickins in here today…what else?

3. I first heard the phrase “slim pickins” in the movie “Lady and the Tramp.”

For years I thought the word “Buick” was a synonym for car, just like automobile, rather than a brand. This is because when I was around five I was watching “Annie Hall” with my family and during the scene where Alvie is trying to kill a spider with a tennis racket and says the spider is the size of a Buick, I asked, “What’s a Buick?”

My mom said “It’s a car.”

So, be very careful what you say to your children.

I saw the movie “Murder by Death” for the first time last week and decided I want to start using the word “malarkey.”

That’s it for now. Goodnight, sweet Internet.

When I was thirty-three years old I interviewed several gay men as part of a sex research project being conducted through the AIDS Organization where I’d started working as a “Public Sex Environment Outreach Worker.” Most of the men met me at my downtown office. First names were all I knew. I asked them a series of questions about their life, their sexuality, their coming out process, then let them talk. Some went on for hours. An opportunity to tell their story, to be heard, was all that many of the men needed. ,I listened to them as I’d always wanted, when I was a teenager, someone to listen to me.

One mid-50’s man asked that I interview him in his home. Emery lived on the main floor of an old, three-story walk-up near the outskirts of the city. The long, dimly lit corridor inside his building smelled of cigarettes and fried food. I knocked on Emery’s door and when he opened it, the first thing I noticed were his eyes, their kind, youthful glint that seemed to contrast against his lined face, like cracks in the earth of his age-toned skin. He smiled and invited me into his sparsely furnished room, the room of his life, with a single bed pushed up against one wall, and a mini fridge and hot plate on a blue laminate counter against the other. Next to his bed were a stack of yellow egg cartons upon which were several paperbacks, a framed black and white photograph, and a nightlight. We took a seat at a small foldout table in front of the window where we began our conversation almost immediately.

In 1960, when Emery was twenty-five years old, the Canadian Public Service “purged” him from his job for being a “practicing homosexual.” Soon after, his parents sent him to Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute, the Psychiatric Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which had been at the forefront in Canadian psychiatric education and research. Emery spoke openly about his involvement with the Institute, and about its Director, Dr. Ewen Cameron, a former head of the Word Psychiatric Association, who had been awarded funds from a CIA front-organization to conduct brainwashing experiments on innocent civilians, both Canadian and American.

“Can I ask you a question?” Emery said, interrupting his own story.

“Of course.”

“You’re gay, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay with that? With who you are?”

“Now I am, yes.”

“You’re lucky.”

“How so?”

“Growing up in a different time and place the way you have. Back then we were all considered mentally ill. Cameron thought he knew how the human mind was wired and what he needed to do to fix it. He hooked us up to electrodes, gave us drugs like LSD or sleeping pills. Massive electroconvulsive shock treatments, sensory isolation, insulin-induced comas that lasted months on end.”

“Why? What was he trying to do?”

“Wipe our brains clean of all thought, and identity, including what he thought was our neurosis. Break us down so that he could build us back up again, his own way. Imprint a new, healthy identity on top of our blank minds. Depatterning: that’s what he called it. Most of what happened to me personally I only read about years later, when I finally got a hold of my hospital file. I have no real memory of any of it. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to have gaps in your life. Years, literally stolen from you.”

I wanted to tell him that I did know what it’s like, but I listened as he continued.

“For months we were confined to the Institute’s ‘sleep rooms,’ not just homosexuals but married woman, straight men, all of us wearing headphones and listening to taped messages, endless taped messages, sometimes sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Everyone’s tape was different, depending on what your problem was. I thought I was a homosexual: that was my illness. Cameron’s goal was to erase my brain of all association with homosexuality, and replace it with my innate heterosexuality. So his theory went. We became like children. Grown men and women: incontinent, with no past life. By the time they released me in 1962, I was a shadow of my former self. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t process information, or make decisions. My memory of the 50’s and early 60’s, well, of my life–it was gone. Wiped clean, like a chalkboard. Everything, I had to reconstruct everything, my entire personal history, from pictures or slides, from stories people told me, or from letters that I wrote or received from family and friends. Everything about my former self was a mystery. Erased. Except for my homosexuality. I was still attracted to men.”

So reflective of my life was Emery’s description of his that it took all my effort not to sink back into my past. Nine years earlier I’d started therapy with psychiatrist, Dr. Alfonzo, after my family rejected me for being gay. Within months, Alfonzo presented me with conflicting causation theories, including that an incident of childhood sexual abuse had “created” my attraction for men. Believing that my homosexuality was based in anger and driven by pain, Alfonzo said that by releasing my anger and by feeling my pain, I could undo the knot of what he termed the error of my misguided way of thinking: the erroneous belief that I was homosexual. To facilitate treatment, various antidepressants, sedatives and an anti-psychotic, even though I’d never been psychotic, were prescribed. Doses increased rapidly. So too did the medications’ side effects: dry mouth, difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, involuntary twitching, constipation, urinary retention, weight gain of over forty pounds. Weekly injections of Ketamine hydrochloride, an animal anesthetic, soon followed, which were administered before reparenting sessions with a surrogate mother who, according to Alfonzo, would imprint a new, “healthy” identity onto my child self.

When it became clear, after four years of therapy, that my attraction for men wasn’t diminishing, Alfonzo ordered me to bottle and to sniff my feces whenever I saw a man I found attractive. Then he threatened to hook my genitals up to electrodes in order to “retain” my penis, and added a fourth tricyclic antidepressant to my regime of now over 600 milligrams of daily medications. Any light that had remained alive in me was switched off, as if the fire in the furnace of my body were being extinguished by medication: erections were eliminated, fantasy and arousal, eradicated.

Another two years of so-called therapy would elapse before I’d stand naked in front of my bedroom mirror, staring at a sad and pale reflection of my former self–at my body, bloated from years of overmedication, and into my thirty year old eyes: dark and sunken and unhappy. There would never be a heterosexual in me waiting to emerge; instead, I became more like a shell that had had its innards scooped out.

Thirty years separated Emery’s experiences from mine, but the similarities between what he went through with Cameron, and what I had with Alfonzo, were shocking. The psychiatric community may have ceased classifying homosexuality as an illness in 1973, but beneath the banner of gay liberation and political progressiveness, as I had learned all too well, beat the hearts of some of its practitioners that still treated it like one.

Emery walked to his egg carton bookshelf, picked up a picture of a young man with greased black hair, sea-blue eyes and a dimpled smile.

“His name was Jim,” he said, displaying the framed photograph with pride. “Such a handsome man, don’t you think? His parents sent him to the Institute. To help cure him. By the time he left he was physically and mentally impaired. Like a vegetable. They killed him, but left him alive. Two years later he killed himself.”

Emery dusted the frame with his shirtsleeve and replaced it back on the egg cartons. “There’s more than one way to murder a fag,” he said. “Cameron was an architect for genocide.”

Question after question raced through me. I wanted to ask Emery about his road to recovery, whether he’d ever found love, or forgiveness, somehow reconciled himself with his past. I wanted him to tell me what I could not figure out for myself. But before I knew it our interview was over and Emery, visibly shaken, was ushering me out his front door.

I was scheduled to hand out condoms in the park that night–the “public sex environment outreach” part of my job. It was also the part of my job I liked the least, that seemed the least productive. At least it would have been for me, had someone handed me a condom through all the years, as a teenager, that I’d had sex in parks. Not to mention all the sex I’d had in cars, and public toilets, bathhouses, parkades. Condoms, I knew, would not have saved me from my self, my use of sex to fill a void, the hole inside my heart that became, with every passing year after the year I was sexually abused as a child, like a crater in my soul. But part of our funding at the AIDS Organization depended on the number of condoms distributed, so I distributed as many condoms, as many “safe sex packets,” as possible. At least the men liked the flavored lube.

The park seemed busier than usual. Nighttime brought with it the need for sex, the need for something, and everywhere I looked, once my eyes adjusted, shadows of men, like hunters, roamed back and forth between trees. My routine had always been to wait until a man approached me along the trail, then to tell him that I wasn’t there to “play,” but as an outreach worker–would he like to talk instead? That night, however, all I thought about was Emery, the years he’d lost to ignorance, to hatred, years that he would never get back. His words “There’s more than one way to murder a fag” echoed through me as outside, all around I heard the sounds of ravaged, hungry souls, breeding in the dark. The memory of Alfonzo was with me too, as was the knowledge that whatever he did to me I did to myself. Six years of trying to change myself had taught me that I could not change, and yet I’d tried. And tried. Like stabbing myself, I’d tried to kill that part of me, and in the process, almost killed myself. I had been both the written word and the eraser erasing itself. If Alfonzo was a monster, then when I met him there were monstrous demons inside of me just waiting to emerge. I was Pandora’s box.

I left the forest before distributing my quota of condoms. Back home, alone, naked and in bed, Emery’s phrase “an architect for genocide” haunted me to sleep. And before I opened my eyes the next morning, not yet awake but not still asleep, balanced liminally in between, for a moment I thought I heard someone next to me in bed crying, sobbing.

I awoke to realize it was me.

In the last two weeks, two TNB writers have written about masturbation (thank you Smibst and Marni Grossman). Why not make it a threesome? Tis the season, right?

Specifically, I’d like to focus on the vibrator.

I was 29 when I visited my first actual sex toy shop. I went with a couple of girlfriends from my kung fu class to look for Valentine’s Day gifts for our men. Together, we were trouble.

First, there was V, the dark-haired Filipina-American who had spent 8 years in the army and who could arm-wrestle any man stupid enough to challenge her under the table. I have broken up fights between her and overzealous guys at dance clubs on more than one occasion. Second, there was M, the ample-chested knockout who never failed to turn a head with her screaming feminine vibe. She has also been the cause of a few scuffles at dance clubs – but perhaps for less confrontational reasons. Third, there was me, their plump friend, Bess.

So there we were, marching into Ye Old Sex Shoppe on 28^th Street (otherwise known as “Fascinations”), and winking boldly at the pre-adults working the counter as if we had just stopped in to get a bag of chips and a vanilla Frappucino out of the refrigerator case.

“Can I help you with anything?” asked a zit-faced attendant somewhat ambiguously.

“Oh, sure,” replied V with a firm nod, “just looking for a sex toy.”

“Do you guys carry those?” joined in M.

“For sex,” I added, late as usual on the scene.

The attendant smiled a crooked “I have just the thing” smile and led us through the store. Past the lotions and games. Past the sticky videos. Not quite to the fake pussies. He stopped at a table filled with a menagerie of items. Aside from the obvious “penis” theme, the collection was comprised of all sorts of dangly, delicate things. Flowers. Fairies. Hearts. Like something I would find under glass at Gramma’s house.

“The latest in vibrators,” he said, grabbing one by the shaft and holding it up for our examination. It was pale green and coated in a soft rubber. A hummingbird emerging from a flower was poised in mid-flight, its beak at the ready.

“It’s for your clit,” he explained.

I raised my eyebrows at V and repeated what he’d said very seriously, “It’s for your clit.”

Our personal shopper then proceeded to turn it on for us. Handed it to M like a pair of size 7 black pumps.

“Good God,” she said. “That beak isn’t getting anywhere near my clit.”

She handed it back to him, pinched between two vibrating fingers. He turned it off, visibly hurt. Excused himself to help a customer wearing a black trench over combat boots and bearing multiple facial piercings.

After that, we headed over to the lotion section. Contemplated edible undies. French maid costumes. Chocolate body paint. Didn’t bring the vibrators back up for a good 15 minutes. When the subject finally did come up, it was touched on with a derisive humor. The pale green. The beak. Was that an orchid from which it was emerging or a Black-eyed Susan?

Touchy subject, vibrators. Kind of embarrassing. Got one? Sure. A whole collection. I got them from your mom. Right.

According to one study, however, this has not always been the case. In 1999, Rachel Maines published an eye opening study called “THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM; “HYSTERIA,” THE VIBRATOR, AND WOMEN’S SEXUAL SATISFACTION.”

In a nutshell, for centuries – possibly millennia – women have been assumed to not be able to reach orgasm during normal intercourse. As a matter of fact, women were thought to not be able to reach orgasm at all.

What women were subject to, on the other hand, was a disease called “hysteria.” This disease involved a variety of symptoms, including “excitability, mood swings, insomnia, and restlessness.”

Once diagnosed with hysteria, women were then prescribed a treatment from doctors, which involved genital massage in order to effect a “paroxysm.”

I had to read that part twice when I first came across it, so here it is again. Women went to their family doctors or midwives in order to receive genital massage to help bring them to a paroxysm.

Not an orgasm – women don’t have orgasms – paroxysm.

Women would go into the doctor’s office, hike up their skirts, remove pantaloons, and allow the doctor to rub their clitoris until they cried Mother Mary.

Nuns and unmarried women in particular were encouraged to go for regular treatment. They used aromatic oils. There was no shame attached. It was a medical condition. Many doctors of the day believed that nearly 70% of the female population suffered from this affliction.

Naturally, this epidemic was becoming a bit of a problem. Think about it. The ugly spinster comes in once a week for her paroxysm. She is awfully slow about it. Sometimes it takes the doctor nearly an hour to effect her paroxysm. The doctor is losing time and money. Other tragically afflicted (hotter) patients need his attention. Something needed to be done.

Thus was born the first of the automated vibrators (Cleopatra and her “calabash of bees” doesn’t count). There is evidence that shows that vibrators were used as early as 1860 – run by water or foot pedal.

But when the Chattanooga arrived on the scene, the history of the vibrator would change forever. Here is a lovely description of the device:

“The Chattanooga…stood nearly 2m tall and required a couple of men to operate it. Being steam-powered, the engine of the machine was located in a small room and two men shoveled coal into the furnace and monitored the steam temperature, pressure, and thrust required to drive the Chattanooga. The engine room was separated from the doctor’s room by a wall which had a hole in it. A mechanical arm extended from the engine through the wall and into the consulting room where the doctor controlled it and used the vibrating arm to administer the appropriate genital massage to the grateful patient.”

By the turn of the century, the vibrator was battery operated and was the fifth household appliance ever to be electrified.

Toaster? Check! Sewing machine? Check. Vibrator? You better believe it. Electrified before the vacuum; before the iron. The vibrator had even become a popular gift – touted as a great muscle relaxer, of course.

So what happened?

Porn, for one thing. As soon as movie producers realized they could make money by selling sex, it was only a matter of time before the vibrator made its first appearances on the big screen and smuttied up the whole vibrator industry. By the 1920s, a vibrator could scarcely be found on the shelves. It wasn’t until the 1960s when they made a reappearance and were suddenly viewed as a power symbol.

As for the “disease” of hysteria, well, it was finally recognized in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association for what it really was – sexual frustration and not something pathological.

And as for my little visit to the sex shop, it ended as can be reasonably expected. I became pregnant with my first child. Actually – funny story – so did M. Which leads me to the moral of my little story:

Whether it’s pale green, pink, pocket sized, comes with hanging daisies and emerging hummingbirds – buy the damn vibrator.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a maleficent ex-Vegas lounge singer with an overactive middle finger that ultimately caused him to get kicked off Survivor, Project Runway, and Dancing With The Stars all in the same day.

“The boys and girls are one tonight.

They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.

They take off shoes. They turn off the light.

The glimmering creatures are full of lies.

They are eating each other. They are overfed.

Tonight, alone, I marry the bed.”

-“The Ballad of a Lonely Masturbator” by Anne Sexton

There’s a masturbator in the preschool class my friend Kat teaches. She fondles herself at nap time and sometimes at the little round table where the class eats graham crackers and sips apple juice. The child’s two-and-a-half and she’s getting it regular. She’s taking matters into her own hands and she’s getting the job done. Satisfaction? Absolutely.

Color me impressed.

Kat has promised to ask the masturbator for some tips. I wait with bated breath.

* * *

I like masturbation in theory. It’s efficient. It’s self-sufficient. No messy interpersonal drama. No emotional entanglement. Just good aerobic fun. And there’s opportunity to accessorize. To dress up your pleasure with a vibrator or a dildo. The choices! Silicone, latex, pastels, neon: the kinky catalog of possibilities is endless.

The thing is, I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it. Orgasm- clitoral, vaginal, mental- has remained tantalizingly out-of-reach.

And believe me, I’ve reached.

* * *

Jay knew that I was orgasmically challenged and he took it upon himself to rectify the situation. It was a vanity project. He would be the man to break through my defenses. He’d be the man to storm the castle. And so he poked. He prodded, he sucked, he licked. He bobbed up and down like a seal at Sea World. For my part, I made what I hoped were sexy, satisfied moans. “Oh. O-oh. Oh!” I tried to arrange my face in a simulacrum of blissed-out beauty. I sucked in my stomach. I worried that I had not waxed enough. I noted with displeasure the dark little patch of hair I’d neglected on my thigh. Jay fingered. Jay rubbed. Jay stroked and Jay dug his stubby fingers deeper into my unyielding spinster’s vagina.

I appreciated his efforts. Really I did. I showed my gratitude with half a blow job and a complimentary appraisal of his manhood. “I’m no expert,” I said, “but it looks big to me.”

I wanted to please him. My pleasure was secondary. An afterthought.

* * *

Freud would have things to say about me. Krafft-Ebbing, too. I’d be pronounced frigid and my unnaturalness would be studied and written up. Cosmo would suggest 97 fail-safe tips.

But the problem- for me anyway- can be found in Woody Allen’s famous pronouncement on the subject: “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.” What happens if masturbation is sex with someone you loathe? Can you ever make love to yourself if you don’t even like yourself? Or do your ladyparts wither and die on the vine? Are you left always wanting?

* * *

I envy that masturbating moppet. I envy her lack of inhibitions and I envy her unabashed embrace of pleasure. More, I envy her innocence. At two, she hasn’t yet learned that she’s fat and ugly and wrong. She hasn’t learned to pluck and tweeze and groom herself into someone else. She doesn’t yet know that, if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll play dumb and act coy. That boys don’t like girls who talk too much. Who have opinions. Wants. Need.s She doesn’t know to say that math is hard and sure, we can do it on my parents’ bed. She has no idea that she’ll fake it to spare his feelings.

She is joyful and she is free. Tickle me Elmo? You bet your ass.

Neurosyphilis. Recently, in an attempt to keep my brain occupied (read: prevent utter mental paralysis) while my agent shops my novel, I decided to begin researching my next project. So now, instead of lying awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, pondering the terrible economy and my dumb luck to finish writing my book this of all Novembers, I am lying awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, pondering my awesome luck at being born in twenty-first-century America where no one ever gets neurosyphilis.¹

That’s right. Neurosyphilis. I teach early British literature at the local college, and after another semester of teaching Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, for some reason I’m finding myself inexplicably fascinated with the darker side of Tudor England. Picture it. Turn-of-the-seventeenth-century London. A place without antibiotics. Southwark, the red light district. Where a man strolling out of one of Shakespeare’s plays could walk into a brothel and purchase a woman’s attentions, along with the disease which was known at this time in London as the “French welcome” for the low low price of (that’s right, sir, step right up, sir, she can be yours for) only ten shillings.

Dear Wine Guys,

While I can honestly say I have few regrets about leaving New York City, in all sincerity the loss of you is one of them. German wine sellers don’t understand me. This is a culture centered around thin, white wines, perhaps dictated by the Berlin demographic. But as you well know, I am a red-blooded, robust American woman, complex and full-bodied with hints of sweetness largely overshadowed by my dry sense of humor. You seemed to sense all of that immediately and I felt a kinship with you that has never been equaled the world around. Oh Wine Guys, don’t at least one of you have a desire to learn German?

I so fondly remember the bygone days when I strolled in after work and with but a look, one of you accurately assessed my mood and began collecting bottles you knew without a doubt I would enjoy. So rarely were you mistaken and each visit promised something fresh and exciting or simply comforting when I returned home, ever a reminder of your careful attention to detail and knowledge of my innermost self.

It has been a trail of tears for me here in Berlin traversing from one store to the next, ever hoping for the connection I felt with you. I have tried every wine dealer in my district, daily venturing farther and farther afield, ever hoping for that certain something. Time and again I am disappointed. Each night I return home with wine described to my liking on the label and yet lacking in flavor, body and levels. I am a coloratura soprano, after all; I need as many notes in my wine as my music. Thus far, it is not to be.

Tonight was the worst of all. The storefront showed promise. Inside a wine tasting was in progress. The clientele seemed by all outward appearances to be educated, cultured, and true wine lovers. The wine selection was displayed beautifully and the patroness, ah, the patroness, she was like a beacon in a storm. We spoke of colors; she used words like Kraftig and Trocken, music to my ears. I felt a spark, something I haven’t felt in months, not since you. I was certain she could be what I had been searching for, the connection, the understanding, the chemistry. I followed her through the shop in a haze, nodding and smiling as she expounded on the large, round flavor contained in this bottle, yes only a little more than I wanted to pay but it would be well worth the expense. I admit, I may have been too easily swayed. Can you blame me, after such a drought?

I rushed home, bottle in hand and a smile playing at my mouth. This was certainly the beginning of a beautiful relationship. The corkscrew, the perfect wine glass, the pop as the cork came free, 10 minutes to breath although I was finding it difficult, the pour, the swish and finally the sniff. I knew immediately something was wrong. Where was the assault on my nose? Where was the flowery beginning, the tobacco, the raisin, the smoke, the oak? I swished again only hoping I had not been aggressive enough. Another sniff and the following sip with the bouquet, if you can call it that, still in my nose. I rolled it over the tongue front to back and nearly spit it back out, it tasting bitter with my disappointment rather than what it was, simple and boring, far too thin to be interesting and singing John Cage instead of the Rachmaninoff I needed. And with that, the earlier ember that burned only moments before, died.

And so dearest Wine Guys, it is with a heavy heart and a bland palate that I sit down to write you this futile letter. I feel a fool hanging on to what cannot be and wish so fervently that I might be writing in victory rather than defeat. It is always most difficult to be the one left holding a candle as others move forward and ever farther away. I wish you no ill, certainly. Our parting was void of malice, after all. And I hope desperately you will welcome me back into your loving embrace when next I am home. I can only hope that by that time I have found again what I lost not so very long ago and can appear in your doorway head held high, carrying a bottle you don’t recognize. A gift from a thin, bland, white woman you no longer recognize. Ah well, at least I’ll be thin!

All my love,
C

Okay, so when I wrote the story of the suckling pig that I cooked in 1973, many of my kids said they wish they could have been there. I took this to mean that surprising them with a whole Miami-Cuban Pig Dinner for Thanksgiving would be a terrific idea. Since the Cuban Pig Dinner is traditionally a Christmas feast, I had some trouble finding a place that supplied them. I asked my friend Keiko Fernandez who is half Japanese and half Cuban and lived in Miami most of her life, if she could find out for me. She called her uncle. He gave her a number of the very best place of all. I called them and they were very nice. There was a bit of a language problem since I learned French and Latin in High School and my attempts at learning Spanish have been disappointing. Yes they had Cuban pigs, but the smallest one was 45 pounds. There were 8 for dinner that night, so I thought a minute. Well, since we need leftovers for the next day I thought it would work.

“Do you provide any sides?” I asked.

“Sides?” he said.

“Like black beans and rice and plantains?” I explained.

“Lady, this is a pig farm. We just have pigs,” he explained.
“Do you have a truck?” he asked.

“I have a station wagon,” I said.

“Lady, do you understand that you are buying a live pig?” he asked.

“You don’t cook the pig?” I asked.

“We could slaughter it for you, if you want,” he said.

“Oh, wait. Stop. I made a mistake. I am very sorry to trouble you,” I said. “I don’t want to bring a live pig home. Even if you do the slaughtering, I have no way of cooking a 45 pound pig. Do you know of where they actually cook the pigs for you?” I asked.

He gave me a few numbers.

I had almost given my Mastercard number to a man who was going to load a live pig onto the back of my station wagon. That was a close call. If I had actually bought a live pig, it would have to live in the back yard. We would have to name it. It would be another pet. I know my Goldens, Brooklyn and Kimchee would love it, but would he love them? Would the pig eat our Koi? I don’t know how Miami Beach authorities take to a live pig in your back yard. I’m pretty sure Victor wouldn’t want a pig for a pet. They get pretty big.

I finally found a place that made Cuban Pig Feasts. I asked several times to make sure that the pig would be cooked. No one can say I don’t learn a lesson. Again, the smallest pig was 45 pounds. Still a bit on the large size for 8 people. The only problem was that the Cuban place was closed on Thanksgiving, so we would have to have the official Thanksgiving on Wednesday, leftovers on Thursday and the usual sushi feast on Friday. Everyone would be here on time so the great surprise was on. The kids did not know what the surprise was, but they knew Thanksgiving was moved up a day.

I have to say that Timothy and Victor and I really enjoyed the meal.

Kate, the sushi-vegetarian, was a really good sport and ate mac and cheese and vegetarian black beans and rice from the dinner. Never a word of complaint. Sara, Lonny’s girlfriend, likewise, seemed to enjoy the meal without a word. Then there were my other children. Ben announced he didn’t like Cuban food. Lenore made a variety of faces implying disgust all during the meal and basically did not eat. Lonny said nothing, but he did make some faces also. Understand, there was a beautifully cooked, 45 pound pig, rice, and black beans, sweet plantains and Caesar salad. Lots of it.

Except for Tim and the girls who are not blood relatives, all the kids acted as though the meat that they usually eat comes from a plant, not an animal. They were all squeamish and offended that the whole body of the pig was on the table: legs, tail, and especially the head. They wanted pork, not pig. I learned that day that none of my children would be carnivores if they were forced to kill their own food or, even see the dead body of their food. I raised, for the most part, weenies.

Then it was Thursday. Lonny was the first to say it:

“When are you going to start to cook the turkey, Mom?” he asked.

“Lonny, there isn’t going to be a turkey this year, remember?” I answered.

“But. But, it’s Thanksgiving!” he insisted. “We have to have turkey and two stuffings and mac and cheese and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and Kate’s green bean casserole,” he said. “And apple pie that is cold. You know I don’t eat warm fruit,” he added.

“Well, I guess you’re out of luck, because it’s leftovers today,” I answered.

I left the kitchen and saw Lenore.

“Lonny expected to have a full regular Thanksgiving today,” I complained.

“Well, Mom, we all expected to have a full Thanksgiving dinner today. It’s Thursday,” she said. “Thanksgiving,” she emphasized.

So next year the kids agreed we would have an almost traditional Thanksgiving, on Thanksgiving day, with the caveat that no one really likes turkey, so we’ll have a huge rib roast instead, two stuffings, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, Kate’s green bean casserole and cold apple pie.

No more surprises. Traditions should not be fooled with.

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Comment by Melissa |Edit This

2008-12-06 09:46:46

Oh Irene,,, I told you about the half a pig that my neighbors tried to put in my oven. That I turned all shades of green. You could have had half a pig and a turkey.

Melissa

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