Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

If We Can't Have Justice, Let's Have a "Lucky Number"

I’m spending the last week of the year house-sitting a charming home deep in the countryside of southern Vermont. There are no neighbors here, no TV, no visitors since the first day. I believe this is the longest I’ve been completely alone in my life, and I’ve been remarkably content. Tonight’s my last night – tomorrow I’m heading back to town to celebrate New Year’s eve with my Boston nearests and dearests.

However, nine inches of snow are predicted by tomorrow midday. My friend called to say that not infrequently a storm up here will interrupt the electricity. He advised me to practice lighting the oil lamps and to put buckets of water near the toilet to flush with since the pumps are electrical. Oh, and the heat won’t work. Or my computers (yes, I brought two). At least I brought a battery-operated vibrator instead of my plug-in magic wand.

If there's a blackout, I've got such a seductive choice of reading that I won’t be at an entertainment loss, although the absolute quiet might get to me. I found on the coffee table a signed copy of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, and it’s been very hard to put it down. Scattered around are all those magazines one always wishes to read: The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books. If my computer batteries hold out, I’ve got the three-CD Doo Wop set from public television I got last Chunukah. Those concerts always make me happy – the kind of happy that moistens my eyes.

It’s been a bad year, both on the global and personal level. Occupations and cancers have been two of the inescapable themes. Certain things get me through: the love of my friends tops the list, but dance is not far behind. So I’ve got a great clip to dazzle you with.

The Nicholas Brothers were kids from Philly who started dancing in the Cotton Club when Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. They are arguably the greatest tap dancers in history, and certainly were an inspiration for generations of tappers. Some people say that Fred Astaire lifted their moves and jealously relegated them to bit parts.

They combined dare-devil acrobatics with precise tap sychronization and made their way over the decades from black clubs to teaching at Harvard and Radcliffe. This is a very early clip of the Nicholas Brothers, when they were just youngsters. It’s pure dance – there’s little sign of the acrobatics that so marked their adult performances, but already their incomparable suave talent is exhilarating. The name of the piece is “Lucky Number” and I give it to you with hopes that if we can’t have world justice in 2008, that at least we’ll have some luck.

Happy New Year,
Sue
p.s. Happy birthday Cousin

Only Those with a Y Chromosome Need Apply

I’m in the glorious, if icy, countryside all alone for nearly a week of writing and reading and I came across an article in the latest Newsweek that so ticked me off that I added this comment to their online version:

“The Peachfuzz Billionaires” (December 24, 2007) is Steven Levy’s clever description of the new entrepreneurs of generation Y. So does that “Y” refer to the male chromosome? Because if all young “geniuses” have peachfuzz, then Levy must actually be talking about the XY half of the generation.

Levy talks about “young people” and “passionate entrepreneurs in their 20s” and he names names, all of which sound like Kevin, Mark and Max. He promises that “there’s never been a better time to be young, technical and working a Silicon Valley start-up,” but he is more honest than most when he reminds us that what really counts is (in his tame euphemism) facial hair.

Film Review: Lars and the Real Girl

An alienated, troubled guy, Lars, somehow convinces a town-full of people to go along with his delusion when he buys himself a “woman” via the Internet, even though Bianca is actually a life-sized doll. His brother and sister-in-law take in Bianca (because Lars and Bianca are too religious to live together) and daily bathe and dress her; a shy colleague loves Lars but accepts Bianca; and eventually neighbors elect Bianca to the school board.

Promotional materials refer to Lars as “a loveable introvert” and “sweet,” but really he is scruffy, self-absorbed and delusional. Why people find mental illness so “sweet” beats me. When Lars is overheard yelling at Bianca in the car for being so busy with her volunteer work, the town’s women are upset by how he is treating her. And I am left wondering who poisoned the village well.

Even the family doctor, played in a brow-knitted monotone by the otherwise talented Patricia Clarkson, somberly sees Bianca (Lars transports her everywhere in a wheelchair) for a weekly examination due to unspecified health concerns. This ruse allows Lars and the physician to work out a few things at his leisure while he waits for Bianca. No invoices seem to change hands and apparently the good doctor has no other patients. Even the professionals – including the vicar – think that abject dishonesty and mass dissembling are just the tonics for our poor loner.

The premise seemed to have a great deal of promise, especially in the hands of writer Nancy Oliver, who did a magnificent job writing the TV series Six Feet Under. The actor, Ryan Gosling, was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his work in Half Nelson (2006), about a drugged-out inner-city teacher who irresponsibly dumps his problems on his favorite student Drey, a 13-year-old African-American who has already had to grow up too fast. Is Gosling getting typecast as a character who still manages to get pampered by the women in his life no matter how dysfunctional, charm-less or estranged he is?

One postscript about editing. At an hour and 46 minutes, this film is about an hour and 16 minutes too long. A tight short may have worked, but at this length I couldn’t stop wondering why the film industry has gone the way of publishing: no editing.

Seniors Get Infected, Too (Often)

December 1st was World Aids Day and I’ve been looking all month for something, anything, that took on age as a factor in the HIV pandemic. So now, still disappointed at the end of the month, I’m going to raise the issue myself.

For after all, one of the explanations for how good sex is in the second half of life is that we no longer have to worry about the crap that so vexed us years ago. No one to chide us; no unformed religious fears to grapple with; no laws to stop us for being underage; no kids in class passing ugly rumors that we put out; not even much in the way of pregnancy worries.

However, according to the National Association on HIV Over Fifty (NAHOF), up to 15% of AIDS cases involve over-50s and there’s evidence that the infections rose twice as fast among older than younger people. Read that last line again, please.

Among women who are HIV+ one health project says, 18% are over 50 – and they are disproportionately women of color.

And it’s not only NAHOF. According to The Gerontologist Journal, there’s finally evidence of how little HIV prevention programs are doing for older people. Researchers asked all 50 state departments of public health to send along their printed materials that target older adults. The good news is that they had an amazing 100% response rate; the bad news is that according to those responses only 15 states actually had something to show. In short, only 30% of USA states are bothering about the rise in HIV among people over 50.

And why do you think this is so? Clearly people are making a lot of assumptions about our supposed lack of mattress-bouncing. They think that we’re no longer doing the tumble and so they don’t imagine that we’re at risk. They probably don’t think of us as sexual creatures at all.

I remember how aggravated a friend in her late 50s was when she went for an annual physical. When she asked her doctor about getting a hepatitis vaccination, she was told that it was only necessary for sexually active people. “But I’m a complete slut,” she protested. “I’m sure I’ve slept with more lovers than you this year.”

This is dangerous to our health. Too often, HIV+ older people only get diagnosed when they are already frighteningly symptomatic. With more mature immune systems, this means that we’re fighting an advanced infection with weaker tools. Not many drug studies include older people and little is known about how treatment drugs interact with those for high blood pressure, osteoporosis or heart disease.

We need the education. Many of us discovered our own and others’ erectile tissues long before HIV was an issue and long before condoms were fundamental to anything other than preventing “mistakes.” Many of those who are widowed or divorced in midlife are suddenly out there cruising in the meat market for the first time in decades. They may have little or no familiarity with the risks of 21st century sex or the use of latex. And as drug therapies keep HIV+ people alive longer, older people are even more in need of some attention from the health authorities.

Before the month ends and the New Year begins, think back to all the coverage over World AIDS Day and try to remember if you saw ads or posters with grey haired or wrinkled models. I didn’t see one image of someone over 50 and to me that’s tantamount to neglect.

Welcoming anonymous groping on the subway? I don’t think so.

A Boston Herald column by Margery Eagan yesterday caused me to sputter the “s” word – one I very rarely use. Stupid. More than that: stupid, stupid, stupid! I’ve never liked the word, believing that people are created more or less equal in potential, but suffer from vastly different options and opportunities. Unfortunately, this Eagan has more than her share of opportunities. She’s also a radio host (with the bright, witty Jim Braude) and has been a frequent guest on Fox News and Imus in the Morning. What? It’s not a meritocracy out there in mass media?

Here’s the backstory. This week Boston papers covered the arrest of a 60-year-old family-man from suburban Newton on charges of exposing himself to and committing indecent assault on teenage girls on the subway Green Line for a year. One 16-year-old he had (allegedly) groped caught his photo on her cellphone, hoping to stop his molesting behavior. The story broke on December 8.

Three days later, the Herald gives us Eagan’s astoundingly, well, stupid piece about the supposed practice of welcome sexual groping on the Boston public transportation system. She spoke to one chap (she calls him “non-pervert,” whatever that may be – probably white and professional) who particularly likes rubbing all over women in the summer, when they’re both sweaty and hot.

“But how do you know your groping/leaning/pressing will be well-received? That no one will scream and call the cops?” Eagan asks him, obviously concerned for the poor groper and the trouble he might unjustly encounter. His scientific answer? “Gropers and grope-ees sort of gravitate to each other. I can’t explain how. You just know.”

This non-consensual intimacy is a phenomenon Eagan calls “frodage” – giving readers a paraphrased definition from the urban dictionary. But here’s the dictionary’s exact wording:  “physical contact with the penis, testicles, vagina, breasts or buttocks, while passing another person in a crowd; inconspicuously copping a feel.” Their example, which Eagan quotes, is “I scored some wicked ‘frodage’ on that chick with the nose ring.”

It gets worse. She quotes two different commuting women, both of whom she describes as “of a certain age” (!) who find such attacks “flattering.” In a spasm of self-disrespect, one apparently says that she would’ve been offended by such behavior in the past, “But in this day of menopause when you’re turning into a dead moose… at first I’d be amazed. Then I’d be grateful.”

Finally, Eagan ends this stupid piece with an insistence that handsome hunks can do no wrong: “In a word, Brad Pitt can lean and press all he wants. And no woman will ever, ever, accuse him of harassment, either.” Has this Eagan lost her anchor?

I read through readers’ online comments and they were uniformly outraged. One thanked her for giving permission to every sexual harasser prowling the T. I added a comment which began:

I'm a writer and have been focusing on the topic of people over 50 and sexuality. I've got more criticisms of this offensive piece than space, so I'll be brief. The assumption that older women are somehow desperate for even the most anonymous and non-consensual male attention is pathetically off-base.

It took me back to the days when, as a professional martial arts instructor, I developed the first women’s self-defense courses. I always asked women where they felt most in danger and inevitably public transportation was high on the list. They unanimously hated sitting on buses and subways next to men who opened their legs much wider than their seats, rubbing their thighs against the women next to them. Usually the women felt they had to squash themselves into a corner of their own seats to try, often unsuccessfully, to escape this silent, relentless assault. They might try first to push back against his thigh, but this was conveniently taken as participation. Many women just gave up their seats.

I developed a set of self-defense techniques for this situation, by trying them out myself. My first idea had unanticipated negative consequences. First I asked the guy out loud if he had paid for two seats. If that didn’t shrivel his seated colonialism, I said loudly, “Quit rubbing your leg on me, now.” The backfire came from two directions: he’d guffaw that I was too ugly to touch and the men around us would become instantly insulting and hostile. Towards me, that is, not their “brother.”

I found the easiest and most effective technique was to dig up an old-fashioned hat pin, to keep it handy and to hold it pointing at his leg, but within the confines of my own seat. He spills into my seat? The prick pricks himself.

I tried to figure out who this Margery Eagan is and why, despite being born in 1954, she seemed to have missed the 60s and 70s. All I could find for free was her article about her face-lift, dripping in privilege and pathos. “Big breasts don’t always beat big brains anymore,” she ends her report. “In 2006, ladies, you’d best have both.”

In a time when Boomers are demolishing stereotypes about mature sexuality, expanding standards of beauty (“I am a tall, thin, blue-eyed, straight-haired dark blonde,” Eagan brags) and insisting on the primacy of consent in intimate contact, we are not surprised that it’s the Eagans who are given a platform (damn it, Newsweek has Karl Rove doing a column!) and not, well, me.

Pink Punch

The respected UK Guardian newspaper reports on a novelty set of boxing gloves complete with a man-shaped target with a photo pocket in the bull’s eye, wrapped all in pink. This women’s boxing set was going for a mere £9.99 in the UK. But look out. A “men’s organization” – what a unique concept – forced it off the shelves of the Superdrug pharmacy chain (like CVS or RiteAid).

The non-profit ManKind Initiative convinced Superdrug that this item encourages domestic violence against men. Superdrug has not only withdrawn the product and apologized, but has even donated all the money from previous sales to this charity.

This entire little anecdote does my head in. In both the USA and the UK, the culture is drenched in violence against women: in images, in culture, in the living rooms. I decided to check out this Mankind Initiative. How many members do they have? How were they able to so immediately influence this big pharmacy chain when we in the USA can’t even get our local pharmacies to fill legitimate prescriptions for such things as the day-after pill?

I went to their website where I found this explanation: “national men’s charity which is largely devoted to helping male victims of domestic violence and domestic abuse.” The only link on the whole site which worked was – go ahead and guess – the donation page. Their site is apparently being updated, but meanwhile there’s no sign of who works on their staff, where they get their funding and why they’re only “largely” devoted to this issue.

One would think that a pair of boxing gloves plus a target to aim at would be the perfect gift for women, since we’re often in danger in our personal lives. Too many women have no idea what an exhilarating trip boxing gloves can be. The week I got my black belt in Tae Kwon Do in the mid-70s, I started looking for somewhere to study boxing. I was living in the Bay area at the time – my TKD master was in Oakland – and absolutely no gym would allow a woman to sign-up. Not one.

After months of searching through every basement and backyard gym, I finally found a sympathetic guy who was teaching at a community center in the SF Mission district. Internment in a camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII had destroyed his Golden Gloves career. He accepted me as his student, after hours, privately. The idea of dropping by my local drug store and picking up some bow-wrapped boxing gloves was beyond imagining. I hope some British women’s self-defense group will mount a counter-complaint about Superdrug’s removal of such a useful household appliance.

In Memoriam: Sarah Wernick

A young publisher wouldn’t accept any of Sarah Wernick’s suggested titles, we are told by one of Sarah’s writer friends at Sarah’s memorial celebration. The book was about women’s health and fitness. “We need a sexier title,” the editor insisted. Then later in response to further options she offered him, “No, we need something hotter.” After exasperation replaced her usual equanimity, Sarah asked him, “How about ‘Fuck Yourself Thin!’”

Sarah Wernick – New York Times best-selling writer, publishing guru, activist in writers’ groups, mentor to innumerable writers and a dear friend of mine – died November 6, 2007. Yesterday her husband Willie hosted a memorial celebration that was worthy of her – full of articulate, loving words as only a group of writers can produce; beautiful music from Sarah’s family; and songs from a Workman’s Circle Yiddish choir, “A Besere Velt.”

I went from being a volunteer at Sarah’s standing-room-only fund-raising seminars for our National Writers Union local to being her fitness instructor when she joined my senior exercise group. Here was one of the country’s most successful health writers sweating it out obediently in my class.

One day she offered me an irresistible barter: If I’d give Willie private fitness instructions, she – the goddess of book proposals – would work with me on the proposal for my book about people over 50 and their involvement in kinky and alternative sexualities.

Even though sweet Willie dumped me after just a few sessions, Sarah and I continued meeting weekly. She was never satisfied. “Revision is like peeling an onion,” she told me. “You can keep going a long time and still find something more to peel.” It didn’t matter how kinky the topic, how edgy the material, Sarah’s formidable smarts and vacuum-cleaner mind prevented her from ever being shocked or put off. Her favorite tip from my chapter on sex accessories was:

Ensure there are side tables on both sides of the bed so that each partner can easily access their bifocals.

Her insistence on excellence and her Renaissance-wide curiosity were themes among all the writers who spoke yesterday. When we worked with her, she was like scaffolding around our craft – she could reach into every remnant of awkwardness in a phrase or fuzziness in an idea.

I was thrilled the first time Sarah invited me to a holiday dinner where I got to meet her family and her best friends. Later, I was honored when she wanted my comments on her labor of love – a children’s book she had been working on for years.

One day in 2005 she told me that she wouldn’t be coming to class anymore. She had been diagnosed with cancer. When possible, we continued our weekly meetings, not for work, not for mentorship, just for, as she called it, “human contact.” She felt I was a good visitor to sick people, but it wasn’t that - for me it was just a chance to be with her because by then I loved Sarah very much.

The weirdest part, on a personal level, was that Sarah and my mother were diagnosed with the same cancer simultaneously. They had operations the same day, started chemo the same day and then radiotherapy the same week. I had to write down both of their appointment schedules to hold off confusion. Although I did my duty, I never cared much for my mother, who died in July. In contrast, with Sarah I was devastated by each new negative development.

At the memorial, everyone had their own stories of how Sarah’s half-full take on the world was so not-Pollyannish. Digging deep into her imagination, she found the kinkiness in her horrid treatments, for my entertainment. She asked me to consult my dominant lover about alternatives to the wretchedly uncomfortable restraints they kept her in for her radiotherapy, so that she could help the hospital improve their service.

We were unlikely friends – she was a laid-back intellectual, had an unflappable nature and was married to the same great guy she had first noticed in high school. (I’m a superficial slut who is easily excitable.) And that far from sums up our differences: she was also a successful writer by any standards you want to set.

The memorial celebration turned into many hours of weeping laughter. Willie reminded us of how she called their apartment building’s vacuum hook-up “central suck.” One group of people turned out to be members of one of the very first Internet user groups ever – long before the Web or email. Sarah was the only woman among them, and from their anecdotes, clearly a major force. She was fearless because she knew how to research and to learn.

She also knew the art of friendship and of making every friend feel she or he was her particular friend. I’m proud to have been one of Sarah’s particular friends. And I’m not surprised that Willie ended the memorial with a splendid and delicious spread – Sarah was well-known for her kitchen. I’m nervous about how well I’m going to do without the luxury of her counsel and sustenance.

For a taste of her smarts, check out her valuable articles for writers on Sarah’s website. It suits everything I know about Sarah to continue, even after death, to help other writers.

Here you’ll find a lovely piece from another of Sarah’s mentees.

Click here for the Boston Globe’s obituary of Sarah Wernick.