Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Travelogue: Writing in Vermont (April 22-25, 2010)

THURSDAY APRIL 22, 2010
I have to fundamentally change the first chapter of my otherwise acceptable novel – my agent says so. But where does a struggling writer find the space in life to sit and think. My daily life certainly doesn’t offer me much of that. But luckily my niece and nephew do. They offer me their nearly-completed new home in Vermont in the midst of the community to which I’ve long been attached. As I happen to have a four-day weekend (spring break), I grab their offer to sequester myself in the woods, during this glorious (if intermittent) Spring.

I pack, I prepare food in advance, I ringfence the four days and I’m ready to hit to road. Until, that is, I get that bad feeling about my clutch. Well, not mine. The clutch of my hasn’t-been-right-since-the-day-I-adopted-it Toyota. I had the clutch done four years ago when I had to replace the transmission and now it’s already slipping on me.

My mechanic gets in my car, drives 10 feet across his lot and declares the car grounded. There’s no clutch left. This was yesterday. He says he’ll start work on it immediately and that it will cost me $1,000. I hear the figure and my whole body twitches as I see every other dream (ipod, netbook, linen pants, Wise potato chips) move out of reach. I remind him that his shop promised me the clutch from four years ago would last a lifetime. He reminds me that the mechanic who was prone to such ridiculous promises no longer works for him. Then it turns out that the fly-wheel is likewise highly kaput – another $205.00.

He calls Enterprise and they come to get me for a rental car. Another $32.00, tax included. I move the irreplaceables out of my car into the rental: my 30s/40s/50s CD collection for teaching my seniors; my borrowed GPS; my large bag of talking books from the library.

By the time the car is ready, one half of one precious writing day has evaporated. I go over, pay the man, leave the rental car with the mechanic, and take my car back home. I load up one of my apartment building’s stolen shopping carts with enough food for a month, enough clothes for a fortnight and enough books for a long cruise and transfer them to my car. I’m more than ready to depart when the cell phone rings.

It’s the rental guy to say that he has the car back, is charging my card and did I leave some stuff in it? I spend 90 frustrating, traffic-logged minutes going in the opposite direction from Vermont to pick up the aforementioned valuables.

Finally I’m on the road. I’ve got a talking book bio of my favorite author Jane Austen to listen to, but as soon as I put in the first disc, I realize I’ve read it before. No problem. I’m excited to have Zora Neale Hurston’s (on left) 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, read, no less, by Ruby Dee, but once I put it into the CD player, I recognize that I’ve heard that also. However, before I can change it for one of the other five books I took out (knowing myself and my sieve-like memory), I’m drawn in by Ruby Dee’s brilliant reading and settle in to listen.

I arrive well after 5:00 and sweet neighbor Nan, who lives in a snug, expanded former chicken-coop, helps me lug my stuff into the house. Only a blooming if fragile magnolia tree separates her place from that of my niece and nephew. I do a tour of the premises, locate the microwave, the kettle, the toilet. It is one of those composting toilets, Nan explains, although I’m not sure what the implications of that are. It flushes with a foot pedal, which requires standing on one foot, and I say to Nan that without strong holding bars, that makes it a questionable fit for elders and anyone with balance issues.

I set up my computer at a small square table in the main bedroom. There is a mirror to the side of this make-shift desk, so that out of my peripheral vision I see movement every time I shift in my chair or tap my foot. Having, in my day in Vermont, confronted everything from bears to skunks to rodents, it makes me jump, so I shift the mirror a few feet.

There’s a sheep pen (is that what it’s called?) outside my window where I write, and its occupants are highly responsive – I’d almost call them nervous. They run in a gaggle every time a car goes down the hill. Farmer Judy raises some of the best meat in New England, it is said, and she does it right below me.

Verandah, my life-long friend the poet, whips up some dinner at the main house (on left) after her daily yoga fix and I skip across the yard to partake with her and Emily, V’s wonderful younger daughter and Oona’s sister. Verandah has unfrozen some of the indescribably scrumptious beans she grew last year. She’s waiting till the last frost passes before getting in her garden this year. For dessert we hang out and have a chat.

At bedtime I have a long conversation via Facebook’s chat function with my partner. There’s no TV, no phone and no cell phone signal whatsoever in this area. It’s one of those ironies. The rural environmentalists among the locals stopped cell towers from being erected at the very start of the cell phone age. So nowadays, the people most likely to be stuck in a snow drift in the dark are unable to call anyone for help. I hate these instant message functions – whether it’s FB or Skype or anyone else’s. There’s that delay that causes people to write simultaneously about different topics, with the next lag turning their “catch-up” into confusion. Plus, all these sites are so public and permeable, one hardly wants to say “Kiss kiss,” lest one be arrested for public lewdness.

I make my bed in the bedroom with the fewest windows and lay down to read Muriel Barbery’s remarkable The Elegance of the Hedgehog. But alas, I’m invaded by wildlife. Lady bugs crawl up the wall, around my reading lamp and all over my glass of tea. One appears on my sheet and while, taken as an individual, each may have the reputation of being adorable, I’d prefer to sleep alone.

FRIDAY APRIL 23, 2010
I’m alternating between eating and working and have made a dent in my work. To impose self-discipline by setting myself up for public shame, I write on Facebook, “I'm sequestered in the Vermont home of my niece and nephew to write - I've got deadlines, so if you see me on FB, spank me.” I get some great replies.

From the window, I see my friend Gilbert driving around on his lawn mower across the road, manicuring the lawn of his renowned restored schoolhouse (rent it for your next vacation!), and I run out for a hug. Unfortunately, besides getting it from him, I got it from a swarm of black flies too. Now all the floaters with which my left eye is afflicted appear to be black flies and I’m constantly swatting at nothing. At least that is my optimistic take on things.

Later this afternoon I am no longer optimistic, having talked to Susan (partners with Gilbert and an amazing book binding teacher and bookmaker – no, not that kind) and heard the stories about the tics in tall grasses. Lives ruined by Lyme disease, from which it can take years to recover. Tall grass is everywhere. What constitutes “tall” anyway? This is the country, for gawd’s sake. There are also an awful lot of stories around, from multiple sources, about rodents, and that freaks me so much that I’m not taking it beyond this sentence.

I pick my way gingerly to the main house where I shower and have dinner with Verandah, a founder and mainstay of this amazing community. We eat and talk with the intimacy of 45 years of friendship before I return to the little house to sleep.

SATURDAY April 24, 2010
I hardly sleep, what with my anxiety about possible unwanted wildlife housemates and my regular worries piling on. I awake at 3:30am with the overhead light still on and then nod on and off, reading and thinking about this pesky first chapter. Eureka! I figure out where to put a piece of essential narrative that bogs down the opening chapter; turns out it fits well into Chapter 4.

I seem to be the first one up in the neighborhood, although once I’m getting my breakfast of fresh farm eggs and baguette together, I see Farmer Judy striding along collecting some temporary fencing she’s used for the sheep.

Threat of disaster. After listening to BBC news online (all about the economic crisis in Greece) via the Internet, I somehow wander to Hulu.com and am unable to resist the prominently displayed episode of "Private Practice" that I missed on Thursday. Next thing I know it’s 9:30am and I better get my ass in gear.

I have finished coping with the opening chapter of my novel, I’ve completed and posted a complicated blog about identity politics, race and the fluidity of sexuality and I have outlined a job proposal. I dress for dinner. Susan and Gil (house on left) are having me, Nan and Judy over for Gil’s famous enchiladas. Combined with Susan’s avocado green salad and a tart/sweet dessert of lemon sorbet with blueberries, it is a feast indeed. Best of all, we move out to their huge deck overlooking their jewel of a pond (see photo left below) and sit around an iron fire pot staying warm despite the near-freezing temperatures under an incomparable sky.

Eventually, flanked by Nan and Judy, we stroll back along the country road. Nan’s headlight (held on her forehead by an elastic headband) keeps me safe and the popcorn she makes back at the little house in a very cool popcorn popper is the best nightcap.

I sleep from 12:30 to 7:30, blessedly.

SUNDAY April 25, 2010
The day is overcast and it’s hard to believe that tomorrow morning I will wake at 6:00 in my own bed to hasten to work teaching senior fitness. As I perform my morning ablutions, I pack away each item into one of my bags.

Nan and I take an hour to visit some friends who live over the mountain. It’s the first time I’ve seen the fab new home of Chuck (Charles) Light, a filmmaker, and the musician Patty Carpenter. The latest album of Patty and her Dysfunctional Family Band is simply addictive. The songs on “Come Over” were written by Patty and Verandah.

Every time I am up here in the community I am warmed by the assembled talent, by the sense of solidarity, by the self-created lives and by the beauty. Balanced against the four-footed party crashers and the flying, stinging, biting pests, my Vermont peeps will always win out. Luckily I don’t have to be sad to leave this time because I’m returning to the community next weekend for our annual May Day celebration.

Footnote: A couple of days after I left Vermont's sunny and exploding Spring, the temperatures crashed and, as Verandah wrote, there was "snow on the magnolias."

Credit: All the Vermont photos are by Barry Hock, used with permission.

Not Gay Enough? Or Not White Enough?

Non-gay? Not gay enough? Why oh why is the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance witch-hunting its own members? The LGBT community has plenty of problems without cannibalizing itself: there are attacks from religious fundamentalists of all persuasions and from Fox Snooze; there is inaction around LGBT issues by the Obama administration; and then there is the Catholic Church blaming its criminality on queers.

Let the Advocate introduce the story:

Three Bay Area amateur softball players are suing a national gay sports association for alleged discrimination after officials questioned their sexuality and disqualified them following a 2008 championship game.

In a rare instance of an LGBT legal advocacy group suing a gay organization, the National Center for Lesbian Rights on Tuesday filed suit on behalf of the players in U.S. district court for the western district of Washington. According to the complaint, NCLR alleges that the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAAA) broke state public accommodations law by enforcing a discriminatory rule that only two heterosexuals can play on each team.

So one team accuses the other team of having too many straights. Let me pause there, because this concept boggles the mind. What’s the issue? Do straight athletes give a team an advantage? Are they likely to be superior to gay athletes? Short of a sophisticated deconstruction of how homophobia in sports and the bullying of gay athletes affects that group of sportspeople overall, we can only wonder at the self-hatred contained in that assumption. Next the NAGAAA hastens to grill the accused. How is this witch-hunt conducted?

Following the game, five D2 players were summoned one by one to a windowless room filled with more than 25 people and questioned by NAGAAA delegates about their sexuality. “There was a six-person panel, but the rest of the people there had no business being there,” Rowen said. “This was a room of people assembled because they wanted to see this go down.”

Charles and co-plaintiffs Steven Apilado and Jon Russ said that NAGAAA officials read definitions of “heterosexual” and “gay” and asked which word applied to them. When Charles answered both, an official allegedly told him, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” When asked the same set of questions, Russ declined to answer.

Of course the packed room and the nasty interrogation in front of a couple of dozen onlookers is a bit macabre, but my curiosity is aroused by the idea of any group being confident of knowing the precise “definitions” of straight and gay. Seriously, there is no agreement whatsoever on these categories, not the least because they can be fluid. The nature/nurture (born/made/choose) debate over sexuality is far from resolved. The outlaw/assimilationist concepts of non-straightness will always remain a fault-line in queer discussions.

This issue of what constitutes “straight” got exposed for the slippery identity it is during the days of community outreach around HIV prevention. Organizers found that many men who got off with other men totally identified as “straight” – they were often married to women, had children and lived their lives as pure heterosexuals. The problem was that they were also having anonymous sex with men in parks or restrooms or club backrooms. A whole new concept of sexuality was developed in order to try to reach those guys with information about staying safe. They were known by the literal if awkward phrase: men who have sex with men. Would they fit into NAGAAA’s concept of “straight?”

Women, too, fudge the idea of straightness. In many countries (including sections of the USA), homophobia prevents women from acting on their real lesbian feelings. Many women marry because of heavy social pressure. In some cases, gay men and lesbians agree to marry in order to act as each other’s beards – their cover for secret queer lives.

Narrow identity politics may be good for kick-starting a new movement and raising a formerly unknown consciousness, but it ain’t a vehicle for the long-haul. Human sexuality simply does not adhere to “narrow.” A single-issue perspective blocks out very real social intersections. Perhaps that’s why many LGBT groups appear unable to live up to the B (bi) and the T (trans) and the L (lesbian). That leaves a very particular G group.

But wait! Unsurprisingly, the plot thickens:

The three plaintiffs in the case were voted to be “nongay” and were subsequently disqualified.

Two white players from D2 were also questioned about their sexual orientation but were not disqualified. NCLR alleges that race may have been a motivating factor in the decision to disqualify its clients (two are African-American, and one is of African-American and Filipino descent).

So, only the people of color couldn’t make the queerness grade, is that it? I have seen the distasteful line: “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series” quoted dozens of times on Facebook and in articles, but nowhere have I seen a discussion of this sad saga’s racial element. Just as so many women and men homos seem to have trouble embracing bisexuals and transgendered people, and as a portion of gay men forget there are lesbians on the earth, so too is this movement reluctant to look seriously at the racism that queers of color face within it. 

As I searched for images to accompany this posting, I found a series of posters (left) for what appears to be a very gay softball team in California, where all of this came down. There were posters of individual models – hunky men caressing their softball bats, and there were posters (left below) made of a collage of the various gorgeous guys. All of the models appear to be white. Was race the real issue in the first place?

Some interplay of race and gender and sexuality seems to have short-circuited the sanity and principles of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance. Get a grip, people.

TV Review: The Big Gay Sketch Show

The third season of "The Big Gay Sketch Show," started this week on Logo TV - the gay network. It is one of the few ensemble comedy shows still surviving, and in the past has sometimes been a welcome hoot. I reviewed the new season for EdgeBoston.com, with some mixed feelings. I was surprised to see how television-based so many of the new routines seem to be. As I say:

Many skits are take-offs on popular television shows and once you see The Big Gay Sketch Show apply its queer laugh-stick to these shows, they’ll never seem the same. The comedy crew’s rendition of the cast of The View is pretty spot-on, if a bit unfair to Joy Behar. The comedians’ version of Ru-Paul’s Drag Race features a rather crazed group of contestants, but is especially insightful about the production values and lighting techniques of the competition show. Paolo Andino does an impeccable impersonation of Bruno Tonioli (the Dancing with the Stars judge known for his exaggerated emotions).

You can find the whole review here, or check out the excerpt below of the last two paragraphs.

Will we see any take-offs of the gay community itself? Will Julie Goldman [photo on left] ever play a butch again - or just more drag queens and middle-aged women with bouffant hair-dos? It is so rare for depictions of butch dykes to get public exposure, that having a bull-dagger on-screen was always one of the special treats of the show.

Has The Big Gay Sketch Show jumped the shark and become a parody of itself? Has it moved so far into slapstick that the unparalleled queer wit to which it was born is getting lost in the guffaws? Season Three will surely answer these and so many other pressing social questions.

Willie Nelson Appearing Openly Stoned on Larry King Tonight

It’s all over the news that Willie Nelson – stoned – is on Larry King Live tonight. In this clip, below, he answers King’s voyeuristically excited questions about smoking. I don’t know about you but for perhaps the 2nd or 3rd time in my life, I’ll be watching Larry King this evening.

Willie Nelson: how do I love you? Let me count the ways. The last time I saw Willie live –2001 if I recall correctly – I was knocked out by his unassuming attitude and his sense of equity. Some aging stars – like Tom Jones – are used to getting women’s knickers thrown towards them on-stage. At the show I saw, women walked their undies down the aisle to hand them to Willie and he in turn removed an item of his own – like the red scarf around his forehead or a hat – to offer them something in exchange.

I love Willie’s battles with the authorities, his open dope love and his exquisite voice. I love that for decades he has been touring with his older sister Bobbie, who accompanies him on piano. He continues, at 77, to tour, record and do fundraisers.

Why do I love him? Oh those braids! I was always a sucker for braids.

Willie is no hypocrite and he’s no chilled-out stoner: he’s an activist. He’s worked for NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) for many years and is a trustee of the Dayton International Peace Museum. He’s been involved in environmental struggles for decades, is a mainstay of FarmAid, and is one of the key investors in a bio-diesel company.

I found out on Wikipedia that Willie was a passionate supporter of Dennis Kucinich’s primary campaign. “In January 2008, Nelson filed suit against the Texas Democratic Party. Nelson alleges that the party violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution when it refused to allow co-plaintiff Dennis Kucinich to appear on the primary ballot because he had scratched out part of the loyalty oath on his application.[12]”

But most urgently, there’s his music – his voice and his guitar. Check out both on this lovely clip of “Funny How Time Slips Away.”

Willie is not slowing down. There’s Willie’s 2006 song release: "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” his musical push for gay rights (see the clip below). He had earlier become an AIDs activist after losing a close friend. In 2007 he founded the “Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute.”

Here’s his "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” put to some Brokeback Mountain footage, as I couldn’t find any decent footage of Willie singing these amazing lyrics. (Click on the youtube link)

Long live Willie Nelson!

Oops. I Missed Palin in Boston.

A friend of mine caught part of Sarah Palin’s speech on the Boston Commons today and sent me this photo (on the left, ahh, sideways) and this email:

I couldn’t hear too well, but I could see her red smudge in the distance. It was a big crowd with a generous sprinkling of counter-demo signs. One of my favorite tea party signs knocked Obama for destroying "capitolism." Another criticized Congress for not respecting that "the people is" right. I guess they really are right: public dollars spent on their education weren’t very well-spent.
 
[Note: Microsoft Word auto-corrected “capitolism” – oops, did it again – which makes me wonder if the Tea Baggers will go after Bill Gates next.]

I have been feeling guilty all day that I did not go downtown and counter-demonstrate. Buses of Tea Baggers have been brought in from surrounding States on this, the penultimate stop of the Tea Party Express. With Palin as the keynote speaker in Boston, there seemed a special urgency to get down there and say – ah, what?

Having written the first-ever book critical of Sarah Palin, Thanks but No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin before the elections, I find that those 28 days and nights of research and writing drained me of all further interest. Nothing is new – except that her platform is growing as fast as her bank account and that we’ve learned that besides a honking fee, private jets and luxury digs, she requires two bendy straws on the lectern when she is hired to speak.

I didn’t want to schlep downtown just to be offended. Instead I took a walk in the sunshine with my old/new friend Judy. We did, though, watch Palin on television. She opens with her, “Do you love freedom?!” bit and continues with her “Drill baby drill” routine. You see? Nothing is new.

Only now, in the face of Obama’s constant shadow-boxing, there’s a bit more irony in the situation. He’s agreed – in exchange for zilch – to everything he imagines Palin and her peeps want. He’s going with discredited energy strategies – nuclear and off-shore. He has given a massive national bailout to the health insurance industry – despite their already astronomical profits. He’s ignored promises to queers, signed away more of women’s rights to make their own health decisions and is moribund when it comes to his promise to engineer a solution to the impossible situation of Palestinians.

He’s played non-stop pathetic kissy face with Palin’s ilk, and has failed at every single solitary gesture without exception to get anything but aggro in return. Sarah Palin seems truly beloved to these capitol-haters. And now all the heavies from the Republican Party have given up their resistance to her fundamentalist know-nothing populism, knowing that she might be their best white hope.

It’s always harder to be in the opposition when the Democrats (or Labour) are in power, undermining you at every turn, joining forces with the opposition – even when the opposition isn’t joining back. Why is Sarah Palin so popular? Because she asks the questions that hurt: “How’s that hopie, changie thing going for ya?”

Watch Dancing with the Stars? See what I saw?

Louis Van Amstel, the Dutch champion who is a professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars, just more or less (I think) came out. He and his celebrity partner this season, the powerful actress/comedian Niecy Nash, did a dance about a love that has been forbidden by the powers-that-be. He commented, more than once, that he was in that situation himself and could not marry the one he wanted. His words were charged with emotion.

Dancing with the Stars has a shady homophobic history, not the least the head judge Len, who adores the butch boys excessively - likes to dance with them too; but who despises the anti-butch guys. I wonder if there is going to be any fall-out.

Am I the only who saw this? Could I be misinterpreting?

Explain this concept to me: “More Sexually Active Than 60s Women”

A load of bullshit mythology about the “swinging 60s” seems to have led these researchers awry. A UK study was widely reported to claim that young women today are three times "more sexually active" than women from the 1960s.

This was – from all the hoopla in response – supposedly a big shock. I’ve been left scratching my head wondering what they’re really talking about.What do they mean by “sexually active?” 

They mean, unfortunately, quantity of partners. According to Carnal Nation, here are their findings in a nutshell (no pun intended):

Women in the so-called Noughties between 2000 and 2009 had an average of 5.65 different sexual partners by the time they were 24. Almost one in 10 of those asked claimed to have slept with more than 10 different partners.

By contrast, women who were in their early twenties in the 1960s had an average of 1.67 partners, and women of their mothers' generation, aged 24 in the 1970s, had 3.72 sexual partners by the same age.

Note: If you’re as puzzled as I was about that last group (“women of their mothers’ generation”), after a dozen readings I suspect that the “their” refers to the “Noughties”. In other words, classic Boomers aged in their 20s during the 1970s (whose children are the Noughties). The generation in their 20s during the 60s would be slightly older – around 70 today.

The study was sponsored by Lloyds Pharmacy and involved 3,000 women. But based on the reports I’ve seen, it is riddled with assumptions. They talk about the “swinging 60s”, but most of the 1960s (trust me) still belonged to the 1950s. Contraception for single women in Massachusetts, where I lived from 1965 - 1972, wasn't even legal. There can be no free choice, no liberated “swinging,” in the absence of women’s access to birth control.

According to PBS.org, in 1964, the year before I lost my hetero virginity, “Eight states still prohibit the sale of contraceptives, and laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut still prevent the dissemination of information about birth control.”

Information!!

In 1967, “Massachusetts liberalizes its birth control laws, but still prohibits the sale of birth control to unmarried women.”

Only in 1972, well into the women’s and lesbian movements, “The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in Eisenstadt v. Baird that a state cannot stand in the way of distribution of birth control to a single person, strikes down Massachusetts law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried women.”

So much for the “swinging ‘60s.

So what about that sexual activity? I am as “sexually active” today, at 62 years of age, as I was in my 20s, but this study wouldn’t agree as all my activity is carried on with the same partner - or alone. If by active, this study means not quantity (let alone quality!) of getting down and dirty, but rather quantity of partners, then what exactly are they measuring? Monogamous couples and frisky masturbators seem to be cut out of the equation. Or am I missing something crucial?

The opportunities and context for young women today are so different than those of women who were getting it on in the 1960s – a turbulent time of change and challenge and economic promise – that even with some decent concepts of sexual activity, I’m not sure what we can learn from such a study.