Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Wordsmith and Rebel

Both my novel Lillian in Love and my collection Lillian's Last Affair and other stories are now available on CreateSpace and Amazon.

I'm available for interviews, readings, visits to book clubs, being the entertainment at your party, talking about senior sex at your senior center, talking about love in senior housing, and any other creative ways to get the word out about my work.

 

Lillian’s life at 84 is tumultuous. She is moving to Manor House to be near Sarah, abandoning the demands of her own home, which has been colonized by her children. How will she and Sarah deal with the reactions of relatives, ex’s, and neighbors to their romance? How do two old women negotiate new love? Will slow-dancing, vibrators, and pot brownies help smooth the way?

 

“If I’m going to go after one more affair of the heart at 84, I’d better get my ass in gear,” says Lillian, speaking for all the characters in these six stories.

Ruby has a run-in with a waterbed and Catherine tokes her first joint in the bathtub with Victor. Elegant Anna’s introduction to kinky sex is bittersweet. And then there’s the neighbor with the strange attachment to the grocery cart. Sue Katz’s hilarious, tender, and impeccably written stories confirm that age fails to erode our eccentricities or dull our ardor.

Buy Lillian's Last Affair and other stories in paperback on Amazon and in ebook form on Amazon and Smashwords.

 

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Remembering Doreen Gordon who has died at 93

My friend Doreen Gordon is dead at 93. I met her when she signed up for my senior fitness classes at the Brookline Senior Center and she rapidly became the keystone to our community. Not only did she find ways to connect otherwise isolated seniors with each other, she inspired the personality of Lillian, the protagonist in my short story in the collection Lillian’s Last Affair. Well, in one sense. The old-woman-talking-like-a-sailor sense. More about that below. (From left: Doreen, Yolanda, me)

Doreen came from quite a posh South African background, lived a cultured life in New York with her late husband and two incredible daughters Jenny and Amy, and then moved to Boston to be close to one daughter and granddaughter after she recovered from being hit by a damned bus. Doreen was such a petite and put-together woman that between herself and the bus, it was not a fair fight.

To build connection among my students, Doreen began hosting high teas in her fabulous apartment, taking us group by group. Her closest friend from the class, Yolanda, often attended all the groups. We’d have finger sandwiches with salmon and the most luxurious selection of pastries known to human taste buds. I was often tempted to steal the leftovers – friendship be damned – but in fact she often made me up a care package with my favorites: the mini-scones and the crispy almond cookies. (Tea Party: Doreen third from right, laughing)

She used her baking skills to bring joy to every occasion we could find to celebrate, refusing to take money for the ingredients. She picked out the movies for us to see on senior discount matinee day. She told me privately when I was being too hard on someone in the class, or too soft. Doreen and I had what amounted to a secret consultation phone relationship behind the scene of our group. We talked about everyone and everything. She hooked me up with her daughter Jenny when I went to New Orleans for the first time, and Jenny pointed me to all the right places. Doreen invited me a few times to join her to watch the Boston Marathon on the sidewalk in front of her daughter Amy’s house, which is on the route. Amy would have oranges to peel so that we could hold sections in the flat of our hands for the runners to grab. It was on the way home from one such afternoon that my train was stopped at Kenmore Square and we all had to get off and run upstairs. The Marathon bombs had just gone off at the next stop. (Marathon day: Doreen and Amy in center)

But I digress. How did she inspire the character of Lillian? One day in the run-up to the 2008 election, we went to Trader Joe’s together (something we did a number of times). As we crossed the main intersection of Brookline at Beacon and Harvard, there was a man holding a huge sign, a large poster of Barak Obama with a Hitler mustache. Doreen walked right up to him, looked up to his face a good foot or so above her, and hissed, “Fuck You!”

I’m sure this man had already put up with plenty of abuse in that spot in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood, but he never anticipated such a curse from this tiny lovely white-haired woman. Later she told me that she had spent her whole life being prim and proper, but at this point she no longer felt the need to restrain herself. And with that sentence, the character of Lillian was born in my imagination, a woman who perfected swearing late in life.

Life is full of losses as we age, and this is a biggie. I’m only sorry that Doreen, with her love of humans and music and art and travel and good food, had to spend her final period under the regime of tRump. Many in the community which she built among my students pre-deceased her, but next Saturday I will be able to connect with dear Yolanda, with Doreen’s precious family, and with those of us who are lucky to still be around to mourn her.

Gina Ogden: August 9, 1935 – November 2, 2018

My friend Gina Ogden has died at age 83 of stage IV lung cancer at home surrounded by her long-time lover Jo Chaffee, her daughter Cathy and son Philip, and her close friend and nurse Tina, who came from Sweden to care for her.

After her diagnosis in January, Gina consulted a variety of medical and healing folks and decided to forgo traditional Western treatment, so that she would live out the time she had left as joyfully as always. She used complimentary medicine to build herself up for this last period and palliative care to get her through it. We went swimming this summer at Walden Pond. We met for our traditional bi-weekly teas at the Porter Square Independent Bookstore. She gifted me her most sparkling shirt so I’d have a new outfit to wear to the holiday party we always went to together.

Gina and I were writing buddies: she did close readings of my manuscripts and I did the same for her. We met through a mutual friend, a very successful writer, the late Sarah Wernick. We were all in a writers’ union together, although I did not then know Gina. Sarah and I had an additional connection: she was a student in my senior fitness group. Sarah offered to help me with my proposal for a non-fiction book in exchange for my working privately with her husband, who had Parkinson’s Disease. Even after he no longer wanted to train, Sarah continued to mentor my proposal, right through her diagnosis and treatment for cancer. When she became too ill, she asked Gina to take on me and my proposal for the last round. Gina read the entire proposal and sample chapters that very night – she was a super-fast reader – and we immediately began a tradition of mutual support.

Although we both wrote about sex, our approaches were as different as our personalities – but somehow it all worked brilliantly for us. Once we finished getting out her last book, just weeks before her death, she told me that she had said all she had to say and was ready to go. 

Gina was an award-winning pioneer in the field of sexology and a tireless advocate for everyone’s right to sexual well-being. For her 1994 (blockbuster) book Women Who Love Sex, she conducted qualitative instead of quantitative research. What that means is that instead of asking, as male sexologists always had, How many orgasms did you have? Gina asked, What gives you the most pleasure? Even Oprah Winfrey was curious about Gina’s groundbreaking work and hosted her on her show.

Gina went on to publish 13 books and countless articles, and to create a unique therapeutic system called the 4-Dimensional Wheel. She built a large international community that supports its teaching and growth, the 4-D Network (www.4-DNetwork.com).

As soon as she died, her closest people performed a ritual that Gina had arranged with them in detail, and then several others of us were invited to come break bread, listen to the gentle drumming of her drumming circle, and look at her body. She was wrapped in the expensive linen sheets she and Jo had splurged on decades ago, only to discover that they weren’t comfortable. Jo pulled them out of storage for the occasion and the linen wrapping was closed with several of Gina’s favorite scarves. This was the first time I was ever in the same room as a dead friend, chatting with others who loved her, and it seemed just right.

To learn more about Gina and her work, visit her website here: www.GinaOgden.com

2 Film Reviews in 100 words: A Star is Born & Tea with the Dames

I pretty much hated “A Star is Born,” although I agree that the acting was strong, not the least Lady Gaga. I could not stand the privileged, condescending, petulant dickhead that Bradley Cooper played. His surprise introduction of her to his audience was aggressive if not abusive. His role in life was to disrupt her upward career trajectory (as his fell) with drunken sloppiness, public scenes, and excessive pouting. Kinda reminded me of Kavanaugh. Meanwhile, she enabled, excused, and absorbed his bad behavior. Mostly I wanted him to take a shower, scrub his sweaty face, and wash his slimy hair.

(Scroll down for the next review)

The trailer:

 

The fundamental flaw in “Tea with the Dames” was that it was directed by a man, Roger Michell. He raised the (wrong) questions and topics. This documentary shows four of Britain’s most delectable old actors – Dames Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith – in conversation over cups of tea, apparently shot in a single exhausting day. Michell never asked what it was like to try to find meaty roles for women over the decades, nor did he ask about harassment or pay discrimination. Rather, he was most interested in their relationships with their (often famous) husbands. Missed opportunity.

The trailer:

 

Brief Film Review: Gilda

Short summary: “Gilda” is strangely lacking any emotional impact – I got neither big laughs nor tears. So much was missing (some important voices, an engaging narrative arc) – but most of all her work was missing (except very short snippets out of context.)

I remember the first year of Saturday Night Live. Endearing Gilda Radner had been the very first staff member hired for the show – and for me and many other fans she was at the heart of show, even as she was fighting writer-room sexism to get herself into the skits. She was a total riot!

I remember watching as she got thinner and thinner, although we didn’t know the words for bulimia and anorexia at the time.

I remember when she got cancer, when she came back in remission, and when she got ill again.

I remember when she died. It was shocking. It was painful.

You’ll find very little of the magic of Gilda in this documentary. It’s stitched together in jerky bits and pieces, with many of the talking heads being current SNL comedians who never worked with her or even knew her. I appreciated the childhood photos and commentary – that part of her life was new to me. Unfortunately the tone of the film is distant, dispassionate, more like a resume than the gushy love letter Gilda deserves.

Trailer

Brief Book Review: A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler

A Whole Life is not at all the type of book I usually read – I’m a 19^th Century literature freak. Set in the mid-20^th Century, it was written by the Viennese author Robert Seethaler and translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.

Dark, humid, dank, it tells the story of one man’s life as he lives it – mostly alone – in a wooded mountain valley. He is a man both simple and profound. Despite physical disabilities and injuries, he is strong and resolute, always finding ways to support himself, no matter the obstacles.

The language is unpretentious and rich, dripping with hard labor, and yet the narrative succinctly describes a whole life in just 151 pages. With empathy and benevolence, we meet a man who chooses an utterly solitary life, who adapts to each new impediment, and who teaches us how to face an unwelcoming world. The word in my head as I read the book slowly and over a couple of weeks was “Deep.”

Postscript: Thanks to whoever it was who talked about this book on Facebook. I have a running list of books that have randomly been recommended and this was on that list.

Only Two Micro-Aggressions and One Irritation over a Whole Dance Weekend!

 

I think I’m going to start keeping a count of the micro-aggressions I receive at various dance events. Summer Hummer is my “home” event: it is local, it is run by my own dear teachers, and I know many of the other dancers and teachers, so they’re used to me. As the only 70+ out-dyke leader, this event is as “safe” and fantabulous as any I attend all year.

Here’s the count.

1^st Micro-aggression: At my very first workshop this weekend, one woman follower who rotated to me (we change partners every minute or so) flashed me a big, condescending smile and said, “It’s just adorable that you’re trying to lead.” I didn’t respond – didn’t give my usual answer that I’ve been leading partner dance since the late 80s. After we did the exercise, in which she realized that I was an experienced leader, she got completely uncomfortable and the smile was gone. I suspect she was furious that she felt ridiculous in her own eyes.

I would estimate that this same thing, more or less, has happened to me 150+ times in West Coast Swing, but somehow it still drives me mad.

2^nd Micro-aggression: We are lined up in the room off the ballroom waiting for our competition to begin. The followers are in one line; we leaders are in another. There are four more followers than leaders – generally the case. Some stranger man standing behind me pushes me sideways, saying, “Get over there and follow. The numbers aren’t equal.” I brush his hand off me (restraining myself from breaking it) and say, “Why don’t you follow, if it concerns you?” He can’t even comprehend what I am saying, and replies, “I just think you’ll have a better chance that way in the competition.” I’m starting to boil. “How long have you been leading partner dance?” I ask him. He refuses to answer. Just then we are led out on the competition dance floor where I am expected to do my best. Which I don’t.

What can allies do while I’m dealing with these things alone? Ask me to dance. So many dance friends purport to care about me but never ask me to dance. It’s all about the opportunities to dance, no?

Irritation: I have written about this before. Some male leaders experiment on me. They ask me to lead them. These guys do not ask male leaders. Are they repressed homophobes with secret desires to submit on the dance floor? Are they unwilling to publicly expose this desire by dancing with another guy? With me, it’s safe. I’m a woman. Inevitably for me it is like leading a truck with flat tires. They don’t know which hand to give me; they don’t know which foot to step out with; they don’t follow. Sometimes they’ve never followed before. They waste my time. They think I’m there to serve them. Afterwards, they’re just as pleased with themselves as can be: “Hey, I didn’t do half bad!” This happens most nights at least once or twice or thrice when I’m in a venue with strangers.

I shouldn’t have to add this disclaimer, but I will: There are many men who enjoy following and who also follow other leaders – and they are great to dance with. Some of my fave followers are men – because their aim is to improve their following and to enjoy the dance. They’re not acting out a subtext on my dime.

I shouldn’t have to add this disclaimer either, but I will: Summer Hummer was a major blast!

Now I have to ice my knee, soak my feet, and catch up on sleep after dancing until about 3:00am Friday and Saturday nights. I have another dance weekend coming up on Friday, this time in DC and focusing on queer dancers!!!

Film Review: Blindspotting

With just three days left on a year’s probation, after serving time for a felony, Collin (Daveed Diggs) is doing everything he can to follow the rules and make it out of these last days without trouble. However, his best buddy since they were 11, Miles (Rafael Casal), is pretty cavalier about the situation and is raising all sorts of hell. Collin is black; Miles is white. They are both in turmoil over the gentrification of their city Oakland, California.

Trigger alert: There is male-on-male violence, fueled by fear, anger, injustice, and testosterone – although no woman is a target in this film. Made by these two real-life friends and strongly directed by first time director Carlos Lopez Estrada, this film examines with brutal honesty the volatility of the intersection of race and class and masculinity.

The oppressive ever-hovering threat of the police is palpable. The desperation of the women trying to protect their sons is tangible. Patter, slang, and the spoken word weave a verbal tapestry of their pain. And nothing is simple or straight-forward – just like our real lives. The acting is superb. Blindspotting is funny, scary, and humane. It will leave you with a lot to talk about. I very highly recommend it.

The trailer:

 

 

Postmodern Jukebox Disappoints Bigtime

 

First let me declare that I love the Lowell Summer Music Series held outdoors at Boarding House Park, 40 French St. You come early to set up your chairs in a spot where you might be able to see well – the locals are permitted at 7:00am to set down blankets and chairs. Friday there were such torrential rains prior to the performance that when we got there only two hours early, we were able to snag a great location.

I’ve seen some great acts at this Lowell event – notably kd lang. And I was excited about seeing a Postmodern Jukebox concert, having only seen them on YouTube, which is where their founder, Scott Bradlee, made his mark. He’s taken to applying a 1940s styling to songs from many eras. When I think of Postmodern Jukebox I think of standards or songs that will become standards, such as “It’s All About the Bass.”

This concert however, was a major disappointment. The songs were unfamiliar, they had no beat, they all kinda mushed together. There were a series of attractive singers with various vocal tricks – one holds a very long note, another a very high note – but what were they singing? My bestie described them as “flattening down” every song. Not a single solitary song was danceable and I do know danceable. Moreover, outside venues like this always attract those irritating people who crowd the stage, blocking everyone else’s view with their wildly waving hands and the peculiar foot movements they themselves call dancing. The M.C. repeatedly invited people to just get up and dance and – as proof that there was no rhythm or pulse to their music – not a single person stood up.

Postmodern Jukebox has become a homogenous package of various touring groups all dressed up in 40s outfits and singing, well, singing porridge. I’ll just add that the tap dancer included in this cast was fun, but his spins left this audience member wishing he’d come take some West Coast Swing lessons.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post – Collaborative Film Review

This review is a total collaboration between Stephanie Schroeder and Sue Katz.

Pretty blond Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) is caught on prom night with her panties down in the back seat of a car with her girlfriend. Her parents are dead and her guardians are convinced that the best thing they can do for her is to ship her to a super-Christian center (“God’s Promise”) that purports to “convert” young people (“disciples”) afflicted with the sin of SSA (that is, same-sex attraction, in the lingo of the converters).

Their methods are strict, ridiculous, and dubious, led by two experts. The slimebaggy, Disney-villianesque, Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) moves easily between manipulation and vicious cruelty. Rev. Rick (John Gallagher Jr.) claims to be a successfully converted ex-gay and, employing his dimpled smile, he pushes the whole narrative of Christian sin.

Their center is no place for youngsters. But when Cameron spies two other residents sneaking a joint, she makes friends with them. Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck) is a captivating character who identifies as Two-Spirit. Jane (Sasha Lane) is a witty and irreverent rebel whose role in the film could have been much more developed. The three of them form a dissident posse, and face daunting developments together.

With the constant drum beat of a nebulous religiosity pounding, the disciples are led through such earnest activities as Christian karaoke, jazzer-size for God, and drawings to diagram past trauma leading to SSA (too much competitive athleticism for girls, over-identification with female family members for boys, smothering parental love or, conversely, not enough parental affection for everyone).

With these young people in uniforms (girls in skirts; boys in pants) as pawns, the adults at “God’s Promise” play out every fascist’s and closet homo’s fantasy. By creating a dictatorship in a real-life setting (a religious compound far from civilization, cut off from reality and communication with the outside world, and without any oversight) these adult despots are free to enact whatever sick program they want with impunity. Even when an outside authority gets involved, he caveats his investigation with "despite the mission of this place," meaning there is no hope, there is no help to stop the abuse of these teens.

The film, which won Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize, is based on a novel set in 1993 by Emily M. Danforth. The director Desiree Akhavan (“Appropriate Behavior”) does a pointed job of nailing the hypocrisy and dangers of these “conversion” therapies, which were debunked decades ago. The film has an unusual number of behind-the-camera women, from cinematography to music supervision.

The film is receiving only limited release in the U.S. despite the top prize at Sundance, and as has been written about elsewhere, may soon be overshadowed by another "conversion therapy" film by a male director, focused on a male protagonist, and with enormous star power. This is another example of the way films by and about women (especially queer women) are often diminished by the film establishment. See "The Miseducation of Cameron Post." See other movies by and about women. And, read more about the dismissal state of queer female sexuality in film in this interview with Akhavan.

TRAILER

 

The Experience of Feeling Normal at Dance

 My dance friends are now used to having a lefty fat old dyke leader in their midst.

There are weekend-long dance retreats with workshops and competitions and social dancing somewhere in the country every weekend. On Saturday, I went to an evening of West Coast Swing (WCS) hosted by a teacher I respect and admire named Angel Figueroa (photo on left). The last time I competed was when I won 2^nd place in the Newcomer division on New Year’s, moving me up to the swollen Novice division – where many dancers get stuck for ages.

When I made the finals on Saturday, my friends all cheered and I was matched with a lovely friend named Brooke. We have studied together with our splendid teachers Bill and Yuna (photo left below) on Tuesday nights for a couple of years. Although we didn’t place – and hadn’t expected to – we had a grand time.

Because it was a local event, I knew many of the attendees. They are used to having a lefty fat old dyke leader in their midst. They no longer make me feel like a freak. Angel, the head judge and host, is a professional who has always encouraged me. Afterwards, two different judges – both pros I work with – gave me private feedback on where I should improve. I was honored to receive it.

When I am with strangers, I have to put up with endless micro-aggressions, from followers and others. People cannot get their heads around the idea that I lead exclusively. They think it is (choose one of the following): cute, creepy, adorable, impressive, brave, odd, repulsive, unusual – the whole gamut. I know this because they tell me so. They think they have the right to question me about why I don’t follow. Because they might have cross-role danced at a lesson or two, some folks lecture me about how I’ll never be a decent dancer until I learn to follow as well. One man in the crowd on Saturday gave me a condescending nod and a thumbs-up. If he was closer, perhaps he would have patted me on my head. Men often feel qualified to judge me because they believe that having a penis automatically makes them an authority on leading, even if they’ve been dancing all of three months. They do not point their thumbs at other men. Once I objected to a professional teacher telling us leaders in an expensive class to “Man up!” and to “Stop with the limp noodle.” Another student in that class gave me a dirty look over my objection and hissed: "Chill! Relax!" He has never walked in my shoes.

Here’s a secret I may be the only one to know. Many male leaders long to follow. They ask me to lead them and I always wonder why I don’t see most of them asking another (ie, a male) leader. Is there a fear of being in the arms of another man?

As my evening passes without aggro, I remember that I’m at an event that just a few years ago would not have allowed me to compete as a leader. On Saturday I felt normal, one of the crowd, just another dancer. Thank you to all my WCS friends who made that happen – especially Brooke, Yuna, Marcus (smiling in center of photo on left), and Angel.

Film Review: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Sorry. Don’t hate me, but I cringed a bit at this film, which Rotten Tomatoes gives a 99% rating. (You know me: always in tune with America.) I was looking forward to it because Fred Rogers was a Pittsburgh boy much of his life and the show aired in early 1968 on my childhood PBS station WQED.

And that’s my problem. In 1965 I left my youth behind in Pittsburgh and by 1968 I was ensconced behind the barricades of Boston radicalism. As I watched this film about sweet (saccharine?) white, calm, empathetic Mr. Rogers, I kept thinking about what was going on outside that studio.

Che Guevera had been executed in Bolivia just a few months earlier while they were shooting the show. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were murdered that year. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam was in 1968. President Lyndon Johnson’s mostly pale male Kerner Commission confirmed the existence of systematic and institutional racism across the country.

While I watched the film, I couldn’t help but think that although Mr. Rogers had a reputation of speaking truth to children – about disability, about death, about feelings – his calm patience and ability to remain entirely unruffled was in painful contrast to the screams and chants and protests of my world.

Many of those oppositional voices on the streets were addressing the real problems of real kids: from poverty to racism to segregated education to gender discrimination and so much more. Rogers’ “thing” was encouraging self-esteem and showering unconditional love – he was an intelligent Dr. Feel Good to the pre-adolescent set, replacing the drugs with thoughtfulness. But as my companion at the film said, “Many children need more than self-esteem to cope.” The world he created seemed to be entirely of kids and those who cared for them all, in a kind of anonymous group hug. I think about my own childhood – with its violence, men exposing themselves, anti-Semitism, limitations on me because I was a girl – and I just can’t relate.

Full disclosure, the show was too late for me as a kid and I didn’t have children of my own, so I never had an emotional attachment to this relaxed, frank easy-going dude with the Perry Como sweaters. Nor did I gain that attachment while watching the film.

One problem for me may be the director Morgan Neville. He made the Oscar winning documentary film “20 Feet from Stardom,” which I also thought was a missed opportunity and which I also criticized. I think his ideas for films are brilliant and his execution kinda meh.

Those who grew up on Mr. Rogers or raised their kids watching the show may feel more moved. This is supposed to be a tear-jerker, but I only sprouted a bit of moisture in the scene when Mr. Rogers is sincerely surprised to meet up with the adult who, years earlier, had been a kickass kid with disabilities on his show.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer:

Rembrandt van Rijn Made me Cry

Happy Birthday Rembrandt van Rijn (July 15, 1606—October 4, 1669)

As a high school junior in a tough inner-city school in Pittsburgh, we were given a choice of three topics for a final essay. The topic I picked was “Does the light in Rembrandt’s paintings come from an internal or an external source?”

For a teenager, that sounded awfully deep. The problem was that there were no Rembrandt paintings in Pittsburgh’s public realm. I’m sure there were some in the private homes of such local ruling class figures as Andrew W. Mellon, Charles M. Schwab, Henry Clay Frick, Henry John Heinz, and Andrew Carnegie. But our museum was more blessed with dinosaur bones in the early 1960s than classic paintings.

And so I pored through art books at the Carnegie Library and deduced that in fact the light came from an internal source. I was completely captivated by this first immersion in great art and converted to a loyal admirer – to this day – of Rembrandt. I am dazzled by his paintings of his Jewish neighbors, his memoir of self-portraits, his biblical scenes, and his culinary still-lifes.

That summer I was one of six poor whites and six poor blacks (poor being quite a relative term in this case) to win a full scholarship to the ruling class Phillips Exeter Academy’s summer school. Among the other outcasts was the daughter of the wealthy UN ambassador from India. She should have been welcomed by the others of her class (Westmorland’s granddaughter among them – this was when he was running the war on Vietnam), but she was neither white nor American. At the end of the term she invited me to go home with her to New York City, where the Nanny was holding down the fort. She taught me how to use Tampax, and I thought of her every time I used one in the subsequent decades.

One day she took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I rounded a corner and came upon a room full of Rembrandts. I was ambushed by awe and love and brilliance. There was a round couch in the middle of the room and, body trembling and senses overwhelmed, I sat down and burst out in tears. A uniformed museum worker, an old man, came over to me. “I’m sorry,” I shuddered. He patted my shoulder, “Don’t worry. This happens all the time in this room.”

Once I pulled myself together, I was able to understand his use of chiaroscuro, the light and shadow that had prompted my high school essay question. As I became an adult, I pursued Rembrandt van Rijn. When I was a college student, I fell in love with the little 1633 painting that seemed so out of character: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. It was one of my go-to thrills when I would drop acid and explore the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston while tripping. Years later, when I was living abroad and heard that it had been stolen in 1990 (never to be found), I took it quite personally.

I have since seen many Rembrandt van Rijn exhibitions, including Rembrandt’s Amsterdam house from 1639 to 1656 and the major works exhibited in that city’s Rijksmuseum. Once in Germany I saw a collection of his etchings that blew my mind all over again. As a kid writing about this marvelous painter, I don’t think I quite understood that I wasn’t alone in my extreme admiration. I didn’t realize that millions of people wondered if the light in his paintings came from internal or external sources.

From Pioneer to Elder – Squeezing it all into one speech

Last year I was in my exquisite local Robbins Library where a staff member had put up historical information about Pride. I found that person, whose name is Rob, and introduced myself. I told him that I lived in Arlington and that I had been in on the ground floor of the women’s and gay liberation movements. Perhaps our library should consult its own members about the history they made and participated in. Moreover, perhaps the library should stock my books.

Rob agreed. So this year I wrapped up Robbins Library’s Pride month events with a presentation on June 28 called From Pioneer to Elder. The problem was located in the subtitle: “One Arlington Woman's Journey from the Birth of Boston's Gay Liberation to LGBTQ Elder Activism Today.” How could I possibly fit in the birth of the movement, the present concerns of us aging pioneers, and my writing all in about 75 minutes?

Accompanying the public speaking of most writers is a desire to read from their work and to sell books. Combined with the demands of a double-sided topic, I found myself raveling and unraveling the complex threads for two weeks in an attempt to construct a presentation that met the plethora of promises in that subtitle. I did it by cutting out almost entirely the history of the establishment of Boston’s women’s liberation movement – which had prepared us for all things gender and sexuality related – and which was by far the most earthshaking revelation of my life.

Since it was a Pride event, I stuck to the founding of gay liberation – actually mostly lesbian liberation about which I can speak with authority – and jumped to the particular needs and issues of LGBTQ elders. I read relevant paragraphs from both Lillian’s Last Affair and Lillian in Love and sold a lot of books. I even snuck in a couple of my funnier 100-word stories.

But to begin, I had to thank the rainbow assortment of attendees. Rob had told me that these events usually drew between 6 and 15 people. That seemed miniscule to me so I did my own publicity and the folks I know really responded – 49 of them arrived! Here are the broad categories of what was a very mixed crowd – from ages 21 to 82, from life-long activists to people for whom this was their first political talk:

• Good friends, a few of whom have heard me speak and talk repeatedly, turned up nonetheless, one driving from across the State.
• A half-dozen dancers from my West Coast Swing community – which is mostly young and straight and white – came as well. The WCS scene is doggedly apolitical. There are no consequences, for example, for the dickhead who turns up in tRump t-shirts – people seem to dance with him quite contentedly. And I’m sure he’s not alone in his right-wing stance – although he is the most demonstrative. The dancers who came to my event, though, are the sweetest and most generous on the scene.
• Several members of the queer country and ballroom dance community arrived, some of whom I’ve known since the early 90s.
• People from my chiropractor’s office, Chirocare, were there, which was a treat. They are the folks who keep me dancing.
• Lots of other lesbian and gay elder activists cheered me on, even though a number of them have heard me speak and read before. They get my jokes and react with good-natured empathy to my take on aging.
• Several other pioneers represented, including Mark Heumann, from the group of Radical Faeries that joined with my Stick-it-in-the-Wall Collective in 1970 to put out one of the very first gay publications – Lavender Vision; and Marsha Gerstein, a self-defense student of mine back in the 60s. Both of them are active today in the LGBTQ elder community, running the Rainbow Lifelong Learning Institute.
• And there were a number strangers who came because they support events at Robbins Library. Funny enough, I randomly sat next to one of them on the subway two days later on the way back from the downtown demonstration against tRump’s immigration policy.

Because it was such a talk-heavy event, I decided to do a PowerPoint showing my changing hairstyles (not changed very much) and fashion (not changed very much) over the decades. I’ve included some of those images here. And I learned something after about 25 years away from PowerPoint: PowerPoint today is a gazillion times easier than it was when it first came out.

It was exhilarating to have a break from the news, from the growing fascism, from the cesspool that our country has become. It was only part of one evening, but I felt surrounded by “fellow travelers” and that was a balm. I had warned the audience at the very beginning that I do “a shitload of swearing,” and now that Pride Month is over and soon our democracy will be as well, I can only mourn and organize.

Parsimonious Corporations at Pride

The last couple of years I have hung out the windows of the Pride trolley provided for LGBTQ elders, waving at all those lining the streets of the Pride route. But this year my heroic friend, Bren, schlepped two luxurious beach chairs and we set ourselves up in front of the Arlington Street Church with a gang of friends, a bag of bagels and cream cheese, and two plums, and watched the March go by. Yes, yes, I know it is now called a Parade, but indulge me and my memories of hard-fought, dangerous streets.

In the early years – and I was marching from the start – these were protest marches, in-your-face declarations of “out”ness that had never been seen. The contingents were political, mostly based on identity politics or group projects, but all the marchers were brave queers, with perhaps an ally here and there.

Now the bulk of groups seem to be contingents of employees of big and little corporations and of houses of worship. I know this has been going on for long time, but at least in past years we got a bit of branded swag out of their presence – whether it was chapstick or packets of sunscreen or post-its or funny hats or socks or something, for gawd’s sake. Now the swag has dried up. Should there not be a requirement that if you’re advertising at my March, I get something sweet in exchange?

Watching this capitalist cavalcade tossing out, at the most, cheap Mardi Gras beads, (but the majority only passed out steaming heaps of nothing), moved me to exercise my vocal chords from the comfort of my beach chair.

• When Staples went by, I screamed: Throw me a ream of paper!
• When Comcast rolled by, I screamed: Send me lower bills!
• When some Jewish group carrying Israeli flags went by, I yelled: Give me some justice for Palestinians!
• When a church group went by, I cried: Toss me a piece of heaven!
• When Citizen’s Bank came by, I hollered: Donate $1,000!
• When Delta went by, I screamed: Give me more leg room!

But when TJX passed me, I yelled: Thanks for the lovely shopping bag!

Amsterdam & Utrecht Travelogue – May 2018

May 19

The taxi driver at the Amsterdam Centraal Station tries to rip me off. That’ll be €20, he says. What? says I. No way. Oh, says he, I meant to say €10. Turn on the machine, I suggest. Too late, he says.

The delightful flat where we’re staying is up two narrow steep flights of steps and luckily my friend Sue has already arrived and comes to help me wrestle my modest suitcase up. The problem is that the width of the first flight is cut in half by the rails of a Stairmaster. And it is also missing a bannister. Bannisters are essential to anyone who does not bounce up stairs with athletic buoyancy and tightrope walker balance.

Our corner flat is above an intersection of two canals, so the views are splendid – from the windows and from the balcony which is big enough to sit on. The life on neighboring houseboats is endlessly engaging. The sunsets last for hours, until about 10:00pm.

Walking down the street, we meet two gay men who are in front of their house with a dog and two of the longest-haired cats I’ve ever seen – apparently called Maine cats. We get to talking with Sean and Clarence and it turns out they own a restaurant just a few blocks away called Small World Catering. We promise to visit it soon.

May 20

First thing in the morning I do a wash and discover that there are two soaps for the machine, one for dark clothes and one for whites.

We set out for a stroll around the hip Jordaan neighborhood, where it is Open Studios weekend. The studios are marked with bright flags and in the process we meet some really interesting artists, all ready to chat and show their art. One woman is in a low-rent municipal studio, but she has to pass an assessment every five years in order to hold on to it.

Amsterdam’s city council decided last year that 40% of new homes must adhere to social housing rules, meaning the rent is capped at €710 ($825) a month. Another 40% must target middle income households with rents of around €850 ($988) per month. The rest is private housing with no limits. Private rent for a one bedroom can easily top €1,500 ($1,743). However, I did meet people who had rent-controlled apartments that were privately owned. To put that in context, the average Amsterdam salary is €48,005 ($55,700) and the two biggest industries are IT and tourism.

In the early evening we head to our new friends’ Small World restaurant where we delight in tongue-thrilling bacon & avocado sandwiches slathered in a secret mayo sauce. We drink an apple/lime/ginger treat and then pig out on a lemon tart, the rousing tartness of which makes our hair stand up. It is all so delicious and they are so friendly and kind (slipping Sue a huge brownie as a gift and me a lemon muffin) that we know it will be our go-to spot. Next time you’re in Amsterdam, you must lunch there and tell the guys “the two Sues” sent you.

May 21

On the trams in Amsterdam, the seats assigned for people with mobility issues are upholstered in a completely different color and pattern, with icons of those who are welcome to plop down. Brilliant! Young healthy people rarely sit in any of the designated seats the way that one sees in the States constantly.

I know about the trams because after a profoundly arduous walk to the Centraal Station, we finally buy our 4-day travel cards that allow us unlimited access. With those in hand, we go to the back of Centraal Station where there is a free ferry east to Buiksloterdijk. The most memorable part of this rather uninteresting ride (about 20 minutes each way), is wiggling my way right up to the front rail for the best view, only to have the water slosh in up to my ankles. I only brought one pair of shoes to Amsterdam, but because of the sun and heat, no harm, no foul.

May 22

We use this rainy day to check out the anthropological Tropen Museum, an exquisite building built around a monumental hall circled by three floors of galleries. The permanent collection centers on slavery and its aftermath. The Dutch have, of course, a rather nasty colonial history – and I believe this museum is an attempt to understand and communicate about it.

The two exhibitions on display during our visit are fascinating. “Fashion Cities Africa” is crowded with dramatically posed manikins wearing cutting edge contemporary clothing from a range of African cities – including Casablanca, Lagos, and Nairobi. There are video clips and giant posters of designers explaining their vision and the latest fashion trends. The new influx of donated clothing from the West starting in the 1960s figured heavily in some of the most creative confections – pieces that were sliced and diced and combined with African fabrics to create looks that are utterly modern and challenging. Hip-hop meets French couture meets political pride all ends up on the runways. Absent from the commentary is any recognition of the gay influence on fashion in general and African fashion in particular.

The other exhibition, Body Art, looks at the myriad ways in which people alter and decorate their bodies, reflecting both their culture and their individualism. One riveting short film shows older women from Myanmar with blue tattoos all over their faces, done when they were about 9 years old. The point was to protect minority girls and women from assault by making them unattractive to their enemies. But as time passed and the political situation changed, they were left disfigured and alone.

Another short film features a Holocaust survivor and his grandson. We see that they have matching tattoos, for the young man has had his grandfather’s tattooed number inked on his own arm. The elderly man is grateful for what he sees as his grandson’s gesture of honor. He also feels it is a way to sustain the memory of the Nazi genocide. Another display looks at the damage corsets did to women’s bodies – from breaking their ribs to fracturing their spine to damaging their internal organs to the point of stopping their periods.

A lovely restaurant in the Tropen Museum serves up an elegant potato soup for me and an Indonesian peanut soup for my friend, warming us up for the rainy trip back to where we are staying.

We only ate soup because this evening we meet two close friends of my very dear friend Vicki – Madi and Donald – and dine sitting outside on the terrace of a restaurant they both like. The conversation never flags and Donald is as charming and engaged as Madi is witty and interesting. Donald says that since it is against the law to be racist or sexist towards someone on the street, he is convinced that Amsterdam people would intervene. Madi is a bit skeptical. Later, when I mention my involvement with LGBTQ elder rights, Donald says he has heard of a number of initiatives by aging gays and lesbians organizing group housing situations in Amsterdam for themselves. I want to come back and do a whole piece about that one of these days. It is a lovely evening and Sue and I stroll back to where we are staying after a stop at the grocery for whole milk yogurt and pretzels

May 23

We take a day trip to Utrecht, 25 minutes away on the comfortable, roomy Dutch trains. We are immediately enchanted with the town, which has been recommended to me by my friend Michael who used to live there. With a population of about 350,000, it’s the 4^th largest Dutch city. The city center is ancient: there’s even evidence dating from the Stone Age. With surviving churches built in the 1200s, Utrecht is considered the religious heart of the Netherlands.

We are briefly detoured by a stop at the Keek (pronounced “cake”) café for grilled cheese sandwiches on dark delicious homemade bread and a special sharp cheese made in the Netherlands. We wash it down with their lovely homemade lemonade and head to our primary destination, the Utrecht Centraal Museum.

We start our exploration of the museum with a major exhibition of the work of Jan Taminiau (born 1975), the most prominent Austrian fashion designer. He is very outspoken on his sense of aesthetics, and talks explicitly about his design process from inspiration to creation. His dresses are over-the-top, intricate, complex, and gorgeous. The museum employees are proud of him and we are told more than once that he designed for the Netherland’s Queen Máxima, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé.

We also visit the exhibition The World of Utrecht, which gives us a genre and historical overview – lots of amazing furniture, paintings, and architectural models of the Dom Tower and the Rietveld Schroder House (where we are headed next), as well as the popular and mesmerizing doll’s house.

Our main goal, though, is to tour the Rietveld Schroder House, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. When we find out it is actually located across town (but administered by the Museum), they call us a cab and we race to get there in time for our 4:00 tour. This remarkable house was designed by the famous Utrecht architect Gerrit Rietveld in full collaboration with the owner, Truus Schroder. (They eventually moved in together after his wife died.) Schroder designed the extraordinary, adaptable, multi-use interior, and Rietveld built it all and designed the exterior, based on the ideals of the De Stijl design movement. It’s a masterpiece.

The interior and its contents move and transform. A chair is a table. The walls slide open. The windows can be disappeared to such a degree that it is hard to distinguish between outside and inside. It is magical and practical at once. There are echoes of the work of Mondrian, another member of the De Stijl art movement and group, with squares of primary colors, and vertical/horizontal design in both the interior and exterior.

I was interested to see the first English lesbian novel (and the first I ever read) The Well of Loneliness (1928) on Schroder’s bookcase. Our tour guide explains that Schroder considered herself a feminist – and perhaps more to the point, her daughter was a lesbian.

There is so much more to do around town but we have no time to explore, other than checking out some other buildings in the neighborhood that Rietveld built. I am determined to return one day and stay for several days in Utrecht.

May 24, 2018

We spend our final day at Amsterdam's Waterlooplein market, first established in the former Jewish Quarter in 1885, when it was closed each Sabbath. The main thing we are after is the famous French fries which one dips in mayonnaise that a vendor has been producing in her little trailer for many decades. She shows each new customer the tattered front cover of a newspaper which awarded her Best Chips some time ago. I’ve eaten her potatoes on virtually every visit to Amsterdam.

The stalls have the usual mass-produced flea market fare, tons of t-shirts, piles of wallets, and a bit of jewelry. I have no intention of buying anything until I see a sweatshirt that was begs me to take it home. The shopkeeper wants €35. Not for nothing did I live in the Middle East for 14 years. What about €20, I ask. He is disgusted, says I should go away, that’s less than he paid for it wholesale. I feign departure. He throws up his hands. Okay, for you €30. I want to be friends, I say, let’s settle in the middle on €25. He’s perfectly happy, I’m perfectly happy, and it has been an honorable negotiation.

We take our final stroll around the center of Amsterdam, passing City Hall, the Dutch National Opera and Ballet, and cross over the River Amstel. We’re heading for Small World, our new friends’ restaurant, where we not only eat another bacon/avocado sandwich, but also stock up on nibbles for our trips home – Sue to London by train and me to Boston.

A few Amsterdam curiosities for dessert:

Like Vienna, the toilets are built with a plateau under your butt and a hole for water in the front of the bowl. Your poop falls in a pile, apparently convenient for checking the state of your health, while the paper somehow falls in that hole. When you are ready to flush, you can pick a button for pee (half-flush) or poop (full-flush) and send it all twirling down.

The toilet paper comes in rectangles, not squares, so you tear off many fewer units.

After my first visit to Amsterdam in the 1980s, I have never rented a bike. The transportation culture is totally different than in the States. The small roads and the major parts of the wide sidewalks of the bigger roads give absolute priority to the bicycles. The bikes themselves are the type I love – no cross bar, no complicated gears, and the handle bars are upwards, allowing you to sit straight. I did not see a single racing bike. During rush hour, there is a skilled tight flow of hundreds of bikes. Tourists too often mess up that flow. At other times, people ride in twos and threes chatting. No one wears a helmet, because no one is racing and because it is the bikes that rock the roads. People are able to move big loads or give a lift to their children or friends. A sliver of the sidewalk remains for pedestrians, who also need to navigate the immense lines of parked bikes. The cars fit in where they can, but do not have right of way. This trip, for the first time, I saw SUVs and Mercedes and other large cars on the streets of Amsterdam. They looked out of place.

Gay people seem to walk around hand-in-hand without the slightest sliver of concern.

Across from the Small World restaurant is a “coffeeshop” – i.e., a place to buy weed. It has the charming name of “Relax” and the woman who works there is very friendly. From her we got a recommendation for a nearby Thai restaurant that we thoroughly enjoyed. Twice. And whenever I poked my head in she’d ask, “Lost or hungry?” My answer was often: “Both.”