Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Welcome to My Heart, Mind and Fist

Are you a Consenting Adult? Me too. I’m an activist, author, journalist and blogger, offering frank talk about aging, sex, the Middle East, class rage and ballroom dancing. Over a year ago I single-handedly brought down the McCain/Palin ticket through my book Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter's Guide to Sarah Palin.

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Film Review: How To Survive a Plague

Ever since it was nominated for an academy award in the documentary category this past year, I have wanted to see “How To Survive a Plague,” David France’s fierce film about the activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power ) and its sub- group TAG (Treatment Action Group). The film traces the history of the people who came together in March 1987 in fury and fear to face the inaction of the government, the sluggishness of the pharmaceutical companies, and the bureaucracy of the FDA, in the face of the AIDs pandemic.

People affected by HIV and AIDs were forced, because of institutional apathy or worse, to take the medical science into their own hands. Many of them privileged, educated white men used to being in control, they had a confidence which, when combined with their desperation over the rolling cloud of death, led to an exciting militant and effective activist group.

We get to know them through amazing archival film – this was a heavily documented movement – and watch as some of the bravest fighters slowly lose their lives to the virus. We watch as they adopt radical processes to use in making decisions and developing their strategy – many of them derived from the women’s movement. They change the course of history. They inject patients into every aspect of diagnosis, treatment, and research, and finally – far, far too late for so many heroes – they are reborn due to combination therapies that swiftly reduce their viral load.

Beating back death has been the focus of their lives for so long that actually living is a challenge for which they are completely unprepared. It takes years for some to digest the necessity to find meaning in survival, and to deal with the unspeakable grief of moving on without their friends and lovers, for whom the new treatment came too late.

“How To Survive a Plague” manages to be both deeply moving and factually informative, as it educates viewers about the development of scientific knowledge from the earliest days of the epidemic. Silence=Death, they said, and raised a noise. Their outrageous guerilla theater, fearless confrontations with politicians at the highest levels, die-ins, mass civil disobedience, devoted solidarity, and ultimately their frustrations and organizational splits combine to make a universally admired film about a historic refusal to lay down at the feet of death. Don’t miss this film.

The trailer:
 

A comment I could've done without

It’s been a stressful day. But this was one blow I could have done without.

I’m on my way to teach back-to-back senior fitness classes in Roxbury when I remember that I forgot to take ibuprofen for the pain that doesn’t seem to go away – although it was supposed to go away a week ago – from that toe procedure. So I stop in Walgreens for pills and notice the sign on the door: Today: 15% discount on all purchases for seniors.

I buy the pills and some oversized Band-Aids that I’m wrapping around the toe, and as the young woman is ringing them up, I say, “I’m a senior.”

She looks bewildered at my interruption and says, “Well, duh, obviously, ma’am.”

Film Review: Liberace bio “Behind the Candelabra”

Here’s the bottom line: The only emotion that the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra” provoked in me was annoyance. There was no character I cared about and not a scrap of nuance to tickle my mind. A bio of Liberace – Liberace! – that doesn’t squeeze even a single tear from my usually responsive eyes has problems.

I  just don’t get it. I don’t get the casting and I don’t get the acting and I don’t get the resulting adulation. I haven’t read the reviews, but I certainly have heard the hype. “Behind the Candelabra” focuses on the relationship of young “chauffeur” Scott Thorson and Liberace, the over-the-top glittery piano player who headlined in Las Vegas for many years and who had his own TV show. During the 50s, 60s, and 70s he was the world’s highest-paid entertainer – and he liked to spend his money in very visible ways – from a piano-shaped swimming pool to mink capes.

If you have to settle on one word to describe Liberace, it won’t be eccentric, imperious, or excessive: it would be “fabulous!” He was a fabulous queen who established the template for Elvis, Elton, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. However strong Michael Douglas’ acting chops are, and no matter how many kilo of sequins and bling the wardrobe department gives him, Michael Douglas is not fabulous. Not the way I mean it when I’m talking about Liberace. Not the way that Freddy Mercury was fabulous (now, HE could’ve played Liberace). Not the way k d lang is fabulous (SHE probably could have as well).

And Matt Damon? He plays Scott Thorson, Liberace’s young partner, like a startled deer in the headlights. Not just the first night. Not just the first month. Not just the first year. He’s supposed to be an innocent, manipulated pudgy blond who is bewildered by the furs and the cars and the jewels that he is sucking up like a voracious vacuum cleaner. He’s foolish and bland. His delivery is flat – very, very flat. His sudden outbursts are out of character and out of tune, but he quickly subsides back into mush. Does he give a crap about Liberace or not during the five years they were together? It’s never clear. His sexuality is subsumed into his parasitism. And strangely enough, the movie is based on a book by Scott Thorson, that is, from Thorson’s point of view.

And don’t get me started about Rob Lowe, camping it up with peculiar discomfort as the plastic surgeon Jack Startz. The sleazy surgeon’s job it is to make Liberace look young and make Scott look like Liberace, but he only succeeds in making Scott look like he has perpetually bruised cheekbones. If I were Liberace, I’d ask for my money back.

These straight actors (Douglas, Damon, Lowe, etc) seem to be thrilled to play queers. Nowadays, playing gay is utterly safe and adds some additional street cred points to their resumes. However, I found them incapable of providing anything beyond the most superficially one-dimensional stereotypes, punctuated with occasional bursts of hysteria.

One actor is to be thoroughly congratulated. Debbie Reynolds, as Liberace’s mother Frances, is funny, appealing, and believable. She was given very little to do, unfortunately, and she was the only woman in the film.

There are a ton of big names involved in the making of this film. Steven Soderbergh directed to a script by Richard LaGravenese, and Marvin Hamlisch did the music. The actors are all big guns. The relationship at the heart of this story was truly bizarre and intense. But because the main actors fail to realistically inhabit their characters, we are left with a lot of promise and very little delivery.

Here's the trailer:

 

Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is a Baltimore treasure housing the art of self-taught artists – many of them working class, some with histories of mental health breakdowns, of exile and genocide, of poverty and exclusion. This is outsider art that leaves you gasping with awe at the dazzling work people can create out of matchsticks or crocheted yarn remnants or broken dishes. Many of the exhibited pieces are sparkly and intricate and wrenching and extreme. This museum honors, among many others, the intuitive art of an American truck driver, a Ukrainian farmer, a Turkish baker, and an English laborer. These artists are not Fine Arts graduates: they are plain, often troubled, folks whose talents plow through the obstacles in their lives.

       The photos are by Dan Meyers and courtesy of AVAM.

Recovery by Anonymous

Stanley Wright constructs from telephone wire a nude life-size self-portrait illustrating the first time he heard and danced to music at age 54. Vanessa German uses found objects to celebrate Minstrel Blood for her Menstrual Show. One well-known AVAM piece is a self-portrait figure whittled from a single apple tree trunk by a British mental asylum patient. His deeply concave tubercular chest and the way his hip bones protrude produce a troubled feeling in the viewer. This anonymous sculptor committed suicide just two years after having been released by the hospital.

When James Harold Jennings’ nerves “went bust” on his tobacco farm, he began constructing complicated large whirligigs from the bits and pieces of machinery laying around. Although his witty work got media attention in 1976, he still lives on the land with no electricity or running water.

Minstrel Blood by Vanessa German

Perched over the main wall in the permanent collection is a quote from Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” But Mary Proctor had a bit of both. When three family members burned to death because of doors that wouldn’t open, she began creating auto-biographical artworks using the doors as canvas, her grandmother’s broken plates as paint, and her grandmother’s wisdom as content.

Emily Duffy’s Bra Ball is a collaborative effort. 18,085 women sent in their bras – and their stories – and she wrapped them around each other to create a ball that is five feet round and weighs 1,500 pounds. If she proved one thing, it is that women hate bras. But then we knew that already.

A “Truth and Reconciliation” project supported by Desmond Tutu gave illiterate women a chance to record their personal testimonies of “the worst day of their lives under Apartheid” via the needle and thread. Quilted, embroidered panels relate potent factual narratives. One self-taught artist who has gained a serious reputation, Ted Gordon, is the headliner in a room entitled OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). A California mental health worker until his retirement, Gordon works with pen and pencil, drawing obsessively detailed self-portraits, his only subject.

Divine by Andrew Logan

The campus of the American Visionary Art Museum is itself a work of art. The exterior is wrapped in a mosaic of broken mirrors and in front of the entrance stands a matching bus, a big piece of mechanical confetti that sparkles and entices you to love it. Inside is the lovely restaurant/bar called Mr. Rain’s Fun House and a museum store, Sideshow Shop, packed with bric-a-brac and shiny objects. Outside is a wild flower garden and a barn of oversized camp pieces, including a 10-foot statue of the actor Divine by her friend Andrew Logan, and a 15-foot fluffy pink poodle. Altogether the mix of outsider aesthetics with playful decorative arts and profound emotional exposures makes AVAM a museum that delivers a magnificent and unique impact.

The photos are by Dan Meyers and courtesy of AVAM.

http://www.avam.org/
American Visionary Art Museum
800 Key Highway
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
P: 410-244-1900

Exercising Solution

Note from Sue: This was sent to me by a student in her 80s with the title "Exercise for Old People." But as I have been teaching elder fitness for a very long time and know plenty of older people who could whup the butts of their juniors, I changed the title to something more general.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax..

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato bags, followed eventually by 50-lb potato bags. Finally, try to lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level.....put a potato in each bag.

Preventative Mastectomy: Do You Trust the Medical Establishment?

Let me start by saying that I know nothing whatsoever about medicine other than what I have picked up from living 65 years. So this is my gut reaction to the issues Angelina Jolie’s NY Times article have raised.

I don’t often take up advice that the medical establishment offers, because I’m old enough to have seen almost all of it reversed. Don’t eat the yellows of eggs: no, do. Use margarine instead of butter, no don’t. Sweet & Low is a great substitute for sugar; oops. Buy pure bottled water; oh dear, it’s just water with a label and a price. Wine? Chocolate? Have a pap smear every single year; no, don’t bother. Mammograms? Who knows. Fosamax, taken by women with osteoporosis for decades to strengthen bones, can cause them to break. The latest reversal I’ve noticed relates to the “evils” of salt.

I give you this long introduction as a way of explaining that I just don’t buy any of it. I did my MA thesis back in the mid-80s on “The Lie of Gender” in which I showed how the absolutist “scientific” declarations of the medical establishment about gender differences (such as brain size) were a pile of hogwash, and how they were all reversed in various ways. Science has yet to find a fool-proof, universal method of establishing gender – perhaps because they think there’re only two. I have observed that science is a tool of the changing needs of the ruling classes. But I digress.

So now they’ve’ve learned about all of these genes– some of them actually OWNED by people and institutions. I mean genes – human genes – that are patented. The science-industrial complex gone completely wacky. But that too is another story.

I don’t trust anything medical that hasn’t proven itself for a couple of decades. I am wary of the new conclusions based on the Genome project. I am wary of anything at all that predicts outcomes based purely on one’s chromosomes. “Female” chromosomes, let us not forget, were the reason (excuse) why we couldn’t run Marathons, own property, work as engineers, drive big trucks, wear pants, vote. They are still the justification in many countries for many limitations: from divorcing a mate to going to school.

Biology, I have written literally hundreds of times, is not destiny. By that I mean that it should not be destiny. Cancer is surely impacted by diet, carcinogens in the environment, access to medical care, and, frankly, we don’t know what else. Making decisions based on a genetic map seems freaky to me. Making decisions based on predicted percentages seems even freakier. Of course, considering the price of those maps, few of us will be opting for elected mastectomies. Angelina Jolie has the benefit of privilege on many levels, from economic to international reassurance of her attractiveness to having a wealthy, supportive partner to so much more. She can do whatever she wants with her body, as far as I’m concerned, and so can any other person.

But if medical science tells me I’ve got an “87 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer” – I’m going to question such precise figures 100% of the time. Science is, after all, a rather malleable practice. Remember, Pluto used to be a planet.

Sorry: I Can’t Stand Mother’s Day

Some of my chosen peeps: Verandah, daughters Emily and Oona, and granddaughter Sadie

Some of my best friends are mothers. To name a few in reverse alphabetical order, there’s Verandah, Susan, Sue, Sandy, Oona, Nicola, Miri, Judy, Flo, and Eleanor. They became mothers in wildly varying ways, circumstances, and eras. Some of their kids are in kindergarten; some of these mothers are grandmothers. My friends appear to have done a great job and right across the board these women are tight with their kids to this day.

But some mothers are crappy people. They are not all pink flowers and sparkly hearts. The annual Mother’s Day assumption that mother = angel is just a little grating for those of us with the bad luck of having been born into the arms of assholes. For the reality is that some mothers are abusive; some are violent; some are strung out; some are resentful of the demands of their offspring; some have politics that suck; some are criminally neglectful. The very fact that someone takes on the parental job does not mean they are suited to it or that they do a bang-up job. It’s easy for many people to become parents – but that doesn’t mean that they are the right people for the job.

From otherwise sensible people, I am reading Facebook comments such as “Blood is thicker than water.” Sorry, just not my experience. In fact, none of those above-mentioned women who are mothers share my DNA and yet they are all a healthier, sweeter  part of my life than my own biological mother ever was. To say the least.

The annual fetishization of mothers (albeit only once a year)  reinforces the gilded mythology surrounding this accidental relationship. Idealizing motherhood can be a way to define women by their biology and reproductive and nurturing functions. There is a reason why mom, her apple pie, and this country’s flag are connected together by nationalists. But when it’s not Mother’s Day, single mothers, poor mothers, mothers with disabilities or addictions are no longer rarefied angels – they return to be considered by these same flag-wavers to be welfare parasites and a social burden.

The related elevation of the nuclear family to something superior when compared to other ways of living annoys the hell out of me. I am well aware that parenting involves many years of hard work – just one of the many reasons why I consciously chose not to have children. But having chosen never to marry or breed does not mean that my chosen communities are lesser, paler, less reliable, or less loving. Or that I will, as I have been told all my life, die alone.

For more people than will admit it, the family was/is a dire and dangerous location and the word “mother” dredges up unpleasant  memories. Let’s not pretend that the very title bestows on the holder some sort of honor. Go ahead, praise your mother and send her flowers – if you like her and she likes you. But don’t pretend that motherhood is synonymous with goodness – or that it is by definition a higher connection than chosen commitment. Mother’s Day? Bah, humbug.

Film Review: STUD LIFE by Campbell X

“Stud Life” was one of three opening films (May 3 at Cambridge’s Brattle Theater) for the 2013 Boston LGBT Film Festival.

In one of her podcasts, the handsome butch JJ places two dildos in front of the camera. One is playfully multi-colored, nearly disguising the fact that it is an artificial cock, and the other is black with an angry red head and strong veins on the shaft. While JJ can’t get her head around the one with a spectrum of crayon colors, she also cannot understand why black dildos seem to only come in size gigantic. “Short and wide” would work better.

The ground-breaking feature “Stud Life” by the UK filmmaker Campbell X takes place in a contemporary East London scene where fine-looking young queers are trying to sort out the place of love and sex in their lives. The film uses laugh-out-loud wit and stark emotional honesty to take a generous view of the complications of romantic commitment. The characters bring a burst of eye candy and empathy to the story. This is a film that gallops along, up and down the emotional spectrum, drawing you into the lives of wildly attractive, good-hearted friends.

I followed the making of this film on Facebook where the filmmaker Campbell X (photo at left), whom I have met several times in London and many times on FB, documented the demanding process of making an independent film by and about young queers. In an email interview, Campbell X told me, "The mainstreaming of queer movies means that we generally see images of lesbians who are feminine and white. Stud Life puts a dark-skinned masculine woman who is sexy and desirable at the centre of the frame – in a way in which people of all genders and sexualities can relate to her story."

JJ’s best friend and partner in her photography business is a white gay guy named Seb. When JJ meets the lovely Elle in a club and they get together, jealousy between Seb and Elle rules. Seb thinks Elle just isn’t right for JJ, but JJ questions his qualifications to judge considering that Seb is always trolling the internet for a spot of rough – that is, for anonymous sexual encounters with hyper-masculine types. Seb rejects the attentions of a doting long-haired drug-dealing college student.

The first time we see them in bed together, Elle is naked, but JJ is wearing boxers and a T-shirt. . JJ is a stone butch, which means that she does not like to be touched. She is unable to open herself up and let herself go enough to let another woman make love to her. Beautiful Elle asks her, “So I can never fuck you? Can I touch you here?” She lays her hand on JJ’s chest, which earlier JJ bound with an Ace bandage, squashing her breasts flat. “But I like licking labia,” the sensuous femme insists with a smile. “Can’t blame me for trying.” Contrary to the visual expectation, the femme takes a lot more sexual initiative than her butch.

Elle tempts JJ into increasingly kinky scenes, taking JJ’s hand and slapping her own face with it. JJ is taken aback, discombobulated, and we realize that in many ways she is an innocent. Her fierceness is mitigated by a kind of naiveté. Another time Elle creates a powerful scene of restraint that has the unexpected appeal of sexual power for JJ, and pushes Elle into tearful gratification.

Spoiler Alert! -- As handsome and full of swagger as JJ is, she is unprepared emotionally to learn that Elle makes her living as a professional Dominatrix. JJ tries to keep up with the variety and intensity of Elle’s desires, but she is unable to handle the news of her lover’s profession and leaves her – for awhile.

Later, in her podcast, JJ wonders why all women seem to want cock: “Either they want it in them or they want it on them.” She recognizes that, “It takes all kinds of sex to make a lesbian nation.” Campbell X explained her approach to Stud Life to me this way: “It would be so tempting to make a film that was mono-sexual – boys with boys, girls with girls – or mono-cultural. But my stories reflect London life, where it is possible for a white gay man to be bff with a stud. Where white LBGT people chat patois fluently though they have never stepped foot in Jamaica. Its mixed up and messy, but fun and sexy.”

So as we follow JJ’s work photographing queer weddings, we meet that rainbow of possibilities. A tall black cross-dressing bride, glamorously outfitted, towers over her new adoring older white husband. Her family refused to attend and he hasn’t heard from his grown children lately.

A lesbian couple who have been together for 25 years bring their lovers to their marriage ceremony. The femme kisses her girlfriend and the butch embraces her lover, a balding man who insists, “I’ve only been involved for about three months. I’m just along for the ride.” He turns out to be a transman. Seb is blown away. “Twenty five years,” he says, “It’s a different generation, innit? We just throw things out and get a new one.”

Not everything is rainbows and hormones. Real life, in the form of violent homophobic lads prowling the neighborhood, intervenes. The demands of earning an income need to come before romantic compromise. The filmmaker does not avoid facing the complexities of sex, the challenges of knowing our own needs and desires, or the dangers faced by butches on the street. Rather, she draws us into a reality that, as distant from our own lives as it might be, has the irresistible appeal of bold honesty and human truth. “Stud Life” is just what a film should be: funny, moving, full of wisdom, and gorgeous to watch.

The 29th annual Boston LGBT Film Festival will continue screening over 120 films at six venues in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge until May 12.

Film Review: The Company You Keep

I admit I was concerned about how Robert Redford would present the politics of The Weathermen and the life of the lefties who went underground in the 70s in his film The Company You Keep. But with the impressive cast he had assembled, I figured that I’d go for the acting.

Redford directs this flawed film – which he has built to focus excessively on his own character, Jim Grant. In fact, Redford hogs this film and if he could act that might be okay. But in fact he is wooden and stilted and he fails to stir sympathy, let alone empathy. He uses the cast’s many big stars as props for himself, when he is by far the least talented actor among them. Each new star in their cameo has a more or less interesting but very temporary part to play.

Beyond a superficial and clichéd approach to Weatherman politics, there are three glaring problems. First, Redford fails to connect emotionally or intellectually with anyone. Second, his physical presence is excruciatingly awkward and the scenes of him jogging all stiff of body and limp of arm made me cringe. And third, the various story lines are never pursued, leaving copious holes in the narrative.

A radical collective robbed a bank. A guard was killed and one collective member did time for that, while others went underground for decades, not all of them guilty. All, except the persistently radical Julie Christie, built bourgeois home lives and careers. As Mimi Lurie, Christie plays the only character who has maintained a grain of the rebel. 

Susan Sarandon opens the film. Her character’s decision to turn herself in is crucial to the story but once arrested we see her just one more time, when she decides she is only willing to talk to the reporter Ben Shepard, played by Shia LaBeouf in the manner of a young, junior Robert Redford – say of Watergate ilk. This character is Redford’s co-star, and the camera is much kinder to LaBeouf. When she is pouring out her story to this kid (we never know why she picked him), the police, apparently out of jealousy that she is talking to him not them (although they are listening in and watching through the two-way mirror) stop the interview and we never see her again.

Same with Nick Nolte and Stanley Tucci and Richard Jenkins and Sam Elliott: they turn up long enough to interact with Redford a bit and to reinforce Redford’s incapacity to connect emotionally with anyone. Then they evaporate from the film. As the head FBI agent, Terrence Howard has a continuing but uninteresting role.

Here’re some bothersome details, many pointed out to me by my companion at the film. Everyone has perfect cell and internet connectivity, even way out in the woods. Laptops load instantly. The ages of the characters don’t match the story line. Redford has a big Reebok symbol on his jacket. Product placement in a film about the Weathermen?!

In the end, almost every single important narrative line is left unresolved. I can’t point to them without giving away too much, but this lack of clarity makes it impossible to understand anyone’s motivation – starting with Susan Sarandon turning herself in. “The kids were old enough,” really doesn’t cut it. Children, in fact, are supposedly oh so important to these characters, but there isn’t a spark of affection in the bunch. Forming a nuclear family is held up as a sign of having grown up – that is to say, of having given up (immature) activism.

Redford couldn’t decide whether he was making an action film, a political film, or a vanity film. In the end, except for Redford’s character we don’t get to know anyone well enough to care about them – and he is gracelessly unlovable.

Here's a trailer:

 

Boston Women are Erased

My particular town is not on lockdown, but the three towns along our borders are on lockdown. I’m as stuck to my various screens as anyone else, and I cannot help but note that once again women are erased by (alleged) male violence. Every time one of these events occur, in whichever country I’ve lived, suddenly 24/7 it is an array of (mostly white) male “experts” – ex-generals, security executives, terrorism experts, cops, military – who fill up the space. They know no more than anyone else about developments, they all belong to the same law-and-order fraternity, and violence is their turf. Nowadays there are some women reporters and anchors, maybe even an occasional woman on the street. Otherwise, women are erased.

The streets are filled with police and military and national guard, very few of whom are women. Press conferences are a parade of the governor, the mayor, the head police chap – none of them are women. Guns and armored cars and bomb disposal teams and surveillance vehicles line our streets. The suspects are men. Only the victims are equal opportunity. I need a break from the testosterone pouring out of cable TV. We all need these “experts” to integrate an analysis of masculinity into their erudition. Violence and war are never going to end until women are not erased from the formula. I need to take a walk.

The Boston Marathon and Other Bombs That Missed Me

Let me start with my conclusion. I don’t understand the purpose of blowing off the legs of Marathon runners and of the families awaiting them at the finish line. But there is a lot I don’t understand. I don’t understand why American dollars are allocated to Israel to turn Gaza into the largest open-air prison in the world. I don’t understand why the US uses drone strikes on Yemen – Yemen! – or why it pretends that Iran or N. Korea is big or bad enough to truly threaten us. I don’t understand why women still make 77 cents for every dollar men make in this country. Or why there aren’t any bankers in jail for destroying our economy. Or why our country doesn’t provide universal healthcare and higher education. Or why Guantanamo is still open. Or why the levels of everyday violence against women and of gun killings don’t constitute a grievous emergency. I don’t even understand why colors – especially pink and blue – are distributed on the basis of gender.

Getting There

Now let me return to the beginning. For the first time I celebrated Boston’ Marathon Day yesterday. My senior fitness student and friend Doreen invited me to join her in front of her daughter Amy’s apartment along the race route. Our little cross-generational gang were located past mile 23 on the 26 mile route – that is , just a couple of miles from the Copley Square finish line. We were distinguished by the line of our out-stretched arms and flat, palms-up hands offering chilled slices of oranges to the passing runners, a tradition Amy and Doreen established years ago.

I had had an annoying journey on public transportation to get there. I didn’t take my car because the whole area is blocked off. Instead I drove to Cambridge, the town beyond mine, and parked in a public lot – it was free because it is a Massachusetts holiday: Patriots day. I hopped the Red Line to downtown Park Street and then went to get on the Green Line to Amy’s place.

There were a gazillion people waiting for the Green Line because, in a twist of traditional Boston scheduling, a Red Sox baseball game is always scheduled for 11:00 on Marathon Day, supposedly so that when the game ends, the Sox fans can pour out of Fenway Park into Kenmore Square – the last Square before the Marathon finish line at Copley Square – to cheer on the runners. So between the baseball and the Marathon fans squashing into the old Green Line cars, we were packed into a crushing public intimacy I could have done without. Relief came at Kenmore Square, where the rowdy Sox fans got off.


At The Marathon

It was an unusually glorious day for Marathon running. Chilly but not cold; bright but not blinding. I had missed the wheelchair contingent, but caught the elite men and the masses of runners. There seemed to be a bumble-bee theme (well, three guys anyway) among men who wore tutus and headbands with bouncing antennae. One guy ran as a hot dog. Many of the women were as sparkly as the bees. Neon running shoes and clothes marked the serious runners.

I had to get home to teach a writing class, so around 2:40 I got back on the Green Line. However, as we pulled into Kenmore Square, they stopped our train and told us to get off and out of the station. One transit cop downstairs told me there was an emergency and that the subway system was being closed. But out on the street, another told me there had just been bombs at the finish line in Copley Square at 2:50. Our train would have next passed through Copley on our way to Park Street.

Kenmore Square was chaotic, with Marathon runners who had been stopped from continuing a few more blocks to the finish line milling confusedly with Marathon supporters and Red Sox fans – the game had ended earlier. Cops and other emergency folks barked out contradictory orders, when you could hear them over the sound of uncounted emergency vehicles going by. There were the usual ambulances and police cars, but also a long row of speeding dark cars with subtle emergency lights that I never identified. The FBI?

Getting Home

I was disoriented, but finally decided that I would head towards the Boston University Bridge, cross over it, and get up to Central Square where my car was. But how? At the bus stop there were about 40 people and no sign of any bus. So I tried to hitchhike along the Commonwealth Ave. route I had hitched many times in the 1960s when I was an undergraduate at BU. Two drunk Sox fans teased me – “Hitch often, do you?” – but in a good humored way. I explained that I had to get to work. But the drivers of the cars had not yet heard of the bombings, I suspect, and didn’t even look at me, let alone stop.

A miracle. From somewhere a taxi pulled up. All 40 people leaped on it, but the tipsy Sox duo got there first. They had a quick consultation with each other and then – the second miracle – they waved me over and gave me the cab. I yelled to the crowd, “Anyone going to Cambridge?” but no one was and I took the taxi to my car and my car home.

On the way home I called Barry, who had not yet heard about the bombings, so that he could check on his kids. While we spoke, Judy texted me to see if I was alright. My cell phone was working only intermittently, but she was on Twitter and was able to fill in the picture of what was happening. She heard that the whole subway system was closed; that BU was on lockdown; that shortly after I crossed into Cambridge, the bridges had been temporarily closed (we heard nothing to confirm that later). I felt that my timing and my luck had collaborated.

As I stepped into my apartment, Allegra texted from Amherst to check on me. I hurried to my computer to post on Facebook that I was back from the Marathon and that I was okay. I was blown away when about 50 people “liked” my message and another 20 wrote comments. The phone never stopped. Miri called from Israel. Sue called from London. Jean and Kaz and Liz wrote from England. Tracy called from LA and Tomer from DC. Larry and Linda wrote from NY. And many others. I felt rich.

My students arrived and we watched the President’s rather generic message before settling into our writing exercises. When they left, I bounced around both the local and national news – which had pre-empted other programming – but other than more details about the injured and murdered there was little that was new. It was all homilies and clichés, the same video loops.

I listened to BBC on the radio, where they were describing a tidal wave of solidarity messages coming from such places as sub-Saharan Africa (which has produced a number of Boston Marathon winners), the Wisconsin Light Brigade, and prayers and love from the Beirut Marathon. It is a shame that the mainstream American media failed to acknowledge these gestures. For after all, the Boston Marathon – the oldest in the States – belongs to the world. There were participants from 96 countries yesterday – and all of them had a piece of the pride and the distress. Those folks were absent from the news cycle, except for anecdotes which showed how hospitable Bostonians were being – a good thing.

Other Bombs

This was not the first bomb I missed by a mile or two. After all, there were 20 bomb incidents in London during the 1990s when I was living there. And in 1996, when I was staying in Tel Aviv with my friend Miri for a couple of weeks, I had a close call. After shopping at the main shopping mall, Dizengoff Center, I had walked the few blocks back to her place. I took the elevator up to her apartment in what is now called Rabin Square and just as I got into the living room there was a massive explosion. I could see the smoke out of her picture windows. A suicide bomber had detonated himself in the pedestrian crosswalk I had just passed through minutes before. Thirteen people were killed; 130 were injured.

The personal chaos then was a bit different. One after another Miri and her family and her closest friends arrived to her apartment to try to find everyone else. The phones were down and there was no such thing as Twitter or Facebook. It took several hours for everyone to be accounted for. Yesterday, in contrast, I was able to assure most of my peeps of my personal safety almost instantly. My traffic on Facebook, email, texts, and calls gave me a sense that there are people out there who care about me and have my back. And that is priceless.

I only hope we can all show the same empathy for the people around the world who are suffering similar tragedies, too often at the hands of our own US military. As Gary Younge, writer for The Guardian, tweeted: “I'm up for us "All Being Bostonians Today". But then can we all be Yemenis tomorrow & Pakistanis the day after? That's how empathy works.”

Ageless Erotica - I've got a story in this anthology

Ageless Erotica, Edited by Joan Price (Seal Press, 2013)

I’ve got a story called “Beyond the Double Doors” in this anthology.

I have been writing about ageing for about a decade now. I had a sizzling non-fiction book about people 50+ and their involvement in alternative sexualities all ready to go about six or seven years ago, but no publisher would buy it. As I have noted many times, with all the consolidation among publishers, a huge proportion of older, experienced, senior editors (read: high salaries) were replaced by young employees. That means that when these people hear about swingers or kinksters or sex-toy users the age of their parents – or grandparents, they don’t think: big market! They think: ewww.

Now Joan Price, who brought out her book on senior sex Better Than I Ever Expected about that same time, has given us this selection of erotica by and about people over 50. I’ve published a great deal of erotica and porn in my day (under a variety of names), so this seemed like a good fit. I just received my copies of the book and am about to start delving into other author’s goodies, but I thought you’d want to know about it as well.

Joan circulated a funny review by Roz Warren of the book that you can see here.

Here’s the table of contents, in case you find some of your favorite writers. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION by Joan Price
TO BED by Erobintica
SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE by Nancy Weber
DOLORES PARK by Dale Chase
INVITATION TO LUNCH by Donna George Storey
OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF by Susan St. Aubin
LADY BELLA by I.G. Frederick
HAND JOBS by Kate Dominic
SMOOTH AND SLIPPERY by Doug Harrison
TONY TEMPO by Tsaurah Litzky
BETTER THAN VIBRATORS by Cheri Crystal
AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS by Dorothy Freed
MY NEW VAGINA by Audrienne Roberts Womack
TRAIN RIDE by Harris Tweed
AT THE WANE OF THE MOON by Bill Noble
PEAS IN A POD by Maryn Blackburn
ENDLESS PRAISE, TIMELESS LOVE by Linda Poelzl
THE HOTEL LOUNGE by Skyler Karadan
COMING FULL CIRCLE by Cela Winter
GEORGE by Lorna Lee
IN THE MEANTIME by Miriam Kura
MR. SMITH, MS. JONES WILL SEE YOU NOW by D.L. King
JAGUAR DREAMS by Evvy Lynn
TOAST FOR BREAKFAST by Cheyenne Blue
BY THE BOOK by Rae Padilla Francoeur
BLIND, NOT DEAD by Johnny Dragona
AFTER DINNER EUPHORIA by Peter Baltensperger
THE WACKY IRAQI, THE SHAMAN LOVER, AND ME by Erica Manfred
BEYOND THE DOUBLE DOORS by Sue Katz
MORNING by Belle Burroughs Shepherd

Walter Mosley and China Miéville and Karl Marx

Walter Mosley and Me

Marx. Capitalism. Racism. Cockroaches. All were fair game when Walter Mosley, the beloved and versatile American master of fiction, and China Miéville, one of Britain’s leading writers of “New Weird” fiction, shared the podium at the recent Distinguished Writers Series event at Wellesley College. While they come from different generations, countries, and literary approaches, both are literary “bad boys.” Their shared radical attitude towards society provided a firm common ground for the event.

Mosley read from his new book Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery in which Easy is resurrected from the almost-certain death readers had found at the end of Blonde Faith (2007), assumed to have been the last in this series. While he’s tackled redemption many times, Mosley told us, this is his first work of resurrection. Wearing red glasses and red socks, his signature hat pushed slightly back on his forehead, Mosley was a familiar and captivating presence.

Walter and China

Miéville read an as-yet untitled, unpublished short story full of scary fantasy images reflecting his horror at Cameron’s Britain, where “tradition” is used to explain away all sorts of political and cultural nastiness. “As soon as something is justified as traditional,” he observed while talking about an annual “Darkie Day” that is held by Cotswolds residents in black face, “alarms must go off.” Miéville’s complicated tattoo covering his muscular right arm and shoulder was balanced by what I swear were tattoos of huge cockroaches crawling up his strong left arm. This would not be out of character as there is not only a Cockroach Tree in one of his books, but he actually, in a speech last year, said of the novel that it is “tenacious as a cockroach.”

A Q&A followed the readings. In response to questions about genre, Mosley pointed towards capitalism in the creation – for marketing purposes – of the concept of narrow genres. While there are some formulaic genre books, he said, capitalism “grabs on to that and erases differences.” By constructing simplified categories that ignore the subtleties, the profit-seekers can more easily make their sales pitches. Both writers regularly trample across genre lines – Mosley writes detective novels, literary fiction, erotica, and political essays; Miéville’s books are a mix of fantasy, horror, suspense, and steampunk.

Like the concept of genre, Mosely said, race is also a social construct, especially the very American notion of the white race. Having been raised by a Jewish mother and African-American father, Mosley is used to dealing with the often-ignored complexities of race. In a recent interview in the Buffalo News, he said: “I understand racism, but understanding racism is like understanding a rabid dog. I mean, it’s a rabid dog ¬– it’s going to bite you. But to make that a major part of your philosophy would be defining yourself down. It would let the rabid dog that bit you to define who you are. Yes, race is a part of my life, but it does not run my life. I have a really good life.”

I asked both writers about Marxism, for China Miéville’s PhD was on Marxism and International Law, and, as I pointed out to Walter Mosley, I had not as yet found a single one of his novels that did not mention Marx at some point, although I admitted that I was far from having read every one of his more than 40 books. It was a way, he said, of “keeping his finger on that place” – a way of keeping social commentary front and center, even when it was not an explicit part of the story. He does, however, write political essays, and is working on one about the environment now. Miéville identified himself as a “red” and referenced the spectrum of left affiliations from communism to anarcho-syndicalism, but also said that he saves explicit politics for the podium. He did talk about the painful cuts to social services being made in the UK, calling them a kind of bitter, mean class revenge by the privileged on poor and working class people.

The mutual admiration of the two writers, so different in presentation and on the page, was a reminder that a shared perspective and a devotion to the same craft are enough to draw together two authors and their enthusiastic audience.

Book Review: Toni Morrison’s Home

Home, Toni Morrison’s latest book, is a potent swift-moving novella. Race is the pot in which it is stewed, but we are only served the stew. It is a love story about Frank Money, just back in a very damaged state from the Korean War, and his sister Cee, abused and passive from a young age. The siblings have been the only source of real love in each other’s lives. Murder haunts their childhood and traumatizes their adulthood, and terrible truths come to light bit by bit, like a ghoul climbing out of a grave, limb by limb.

Home is a compelling read that makes you feel that Morrison has got compact, powerful stories just brimming from her imagination. While the ending of the book is, in some ways, a bit pat, the story reminds us of how human damage is chronic and contagious, and of how loving support is an anchor in a world of racists and sexists and men of violence.

I was lucky enough to see Toni Morrison speak at Northeastern University a couple of months ago, where she read from Home. I wrote a piece about the event, but cannot remember where I published it. Here are three paragraphs from that piece:

I saw Toni Morrison speak this afternoon. Can you believe that she was born in 1931 – that in a few weeks she is going to be 82 years old? She was brought onto stage in a wheelchair and gave her brilliant presentation sitting down. Her slouch hat almost entirely covered her eyes, so that when she looked up and we could peek under the brim, the radiance of her eyes nearly matched that of her dazzling smile…

From the moment Toni Morrison was wheeled onstage, she held the standing-room-only crowd completely and entirely in her hands – and she was clearly used to the attention and the adulation. She read from her latest book Home, infusing her prose – always constructed from everyday words – with the emotion and flow of genius. This is a woman who has won every conceivable literature prize and national honor, but who maintains her wit and giggle.

Most revealing was the question and answer session… When asked how she achieves her books’ unique points of view, she said, “To take away the gaze of the white male. Once you take that out, the whole world opens up.” She suggested that this is a common approach of top black women writers, but not of African-American male writers, who are more likely to be wrestling with a prominent white male character.

 

Upside-down Computer

It is the evening before I leave for a writing retreat in L.A. and I’m wrapping up some work before meeting Stephanie and Bambi for our bi-monthly three-way – as in dinner, tonight at my local Turkish restaurant. I’m just finishing the formatting for a complicated newsletter when suddenly my whole screen – or rather what I see on the screen, that is, the visual, not the hardware – goes sideways.

Sideways! I’ve owned my own personal computer since about 1985 and have never before seen the visual on my screen take a 90 degree dive. I lay my head on my worktable to try to manipulate the mouse cursor to the “undo” button and eventually succeed only in undoing the last work I did on the newsletter, which had been a big cut and paste. I am desperate. This is my new, expensive laptop and I’m going all the way across country tomorrow to write on it, but it has laid down all horizontal and won’t budge. I’m in trouble. The girls call from their car to say they are approaching the restaurant. I must abandon my dizzy screen to go meet them.

At the near-empty restaurant we are settled into our table by a sweet young waiter named Mahmut – I’d put him in his early 20s – who has arrived from Turkey only three months ago. His tentative English is heavily accented and his service is impeccable. I chat with him about Istanbul, where I’ve visited two or three times, and he is overjoyed to hear how I loved it. I order stuffed eggplant, which I have had many times here, while Stephanie has the veggie moussaka and Bambi gets grilled lamb wrapped in roasted eggplant.

My phone rings. It is one of the students from my senior fitness class to say that another student, Connie, who has been in intensive care since a seizure on Friday, has died. This is the 9th or 10th student I have lost in the past half year and so much loss has been depleting my emotional stores, and making me all the more determined to write.

Once I unload this news on my friends, we go around the table with our personal updates, and I tell them about my computer and how I have no idea what I’m going to do about it being askew. And I complain about the approaching snow storm which threatens to delay or cancel my flight. Bambi and Steph also “share” – to use the modern vernacular – as we eat. We are the last customers in the restaurant and when our coats are already on, Mahmut reluctantly speaks to me in a quiet voice.

“I wasn’t listening in. I hear you. About your computer screen. I can show you how to fix it.” His reluctance to offer is a fear that we will think he was being nosy about our conversation, the sweet lad. He takes me over to his laptop – an Asus just like mine, with Windows 8 as well – and explains that he is a software engineer. “Look,” he says, hitting control+alt and the directional keys. He makes his screen view lay down, stand up, turn over – just using those arrow keys. My life will never be the same. One more miserable, redundant monster, one more imposed threat from the beyond has been eliminated. I will forever know how to return my computer to the upright position. Well, until Windows 9, I guess.

We now spend time chatting with Mahmut, exchanging blog/twitter/email/linked-in info. He says helping us with our computer problems would be a great way to practice his English. Stephanie asks him why her laptop is not being read by any printer since she updated her antivirus. She also tells him that she is a career counselor – and then explains what that is and how she might be of use to him. I feel he is lonely and that he’s had fun with us, three loud short-haired American women of a certain age. I rush home to straighten out the picture on my computer and to focus my angst on the storm.