Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

New Credenza: It Takes a Village

I am actually decorating my living room – not a thing I’ve ever done before. I’ve always lived as if in a furniture shop, with lovely 2nd hand pieces lining every wall, things I was given or found on the street or bought on the cheap when I needed more stuff in which to stuff more stuff.

First I did a clear-out – what they now call de-cluttering – giving away many of those old pieces, even lovely art deco oak furniture (on left) that I brought with me from England but which have always been too imposing for my tiny apartment. I dispersed all my precious knick-knacks, picked up from places I traveled, or presents from… well, I hardly remember from whom. I even gave away four or five large cartons of books.

I have always lived in clutter and chaos, leading to my practice of going elsewhere to write for weeks at a time. But as I age, and as the airlines have become so dedicated to propagating misery, I’m less enthusiastic about cat-sitting in South London or Las Vegas in order to have a beautiful calm space in which to write my books. Besides, in thinking forward now that I’m in my 70s, there is not a person in the world who wants to be responsible for disposing of my copious possessions: it’s time to get a head start.

My new living room carpeting provided the excuse to do all of this. The carpet is a gorgeous grey that matches my newish little couch. In order to have it installed, I was required to pack up every single thing from every single piece of furniture and pile it all in my bedroom so that the furniture could be easily moved around as the carpet was changed. That made it easier to eliminate the heavy wooden furniture, leaving my possessions in a gazillion cartons. I had help moving those heavy boxes from Barry and Melsen and Bren and Mags over a couple of months. And on the day the carpet was replaced, Barry heroically unplugged every item that works on electricity, marking each wire, and then re-plugged them all afterwards. This was not a job I could have easily pulled off for myself.

For months and months, I have been searching for a long white credenza with simple lines and a lighter, modern look which will provide 80+ inches of storage and be soothing to look at from my desk. But I’ve found nothing to my taste. I enlisted the help of a long-time friend Debi Levine who roams online auction sites. Still nothing. Then my friend Bren, as we sat in front of my computer searching some more, suggested that I try looking for a color instead of white.

And then I finally came across a cabinet, just 48” – but I could easily fit in two – that came in slate blue. After consulting with Bren and Sandy and Jaya and Barry and Judy and Victoria and Sue O, and after seeing it on multiple sites for twice the price, I ordered two. However, it comes in a box and needs to be assembled, a task far from my own skill sets, which tend to congregate around words – spoken and written, dance steps, and my refrigerator.

Debi, however, has golden hands. Her mother calls her The Mastermind. She agrees to come and assemble them. I change my schedule so that I will be around on Wednesday for the promised delivery – intending to put up all sorts of signs in the building’s entrance to convince the delivery people to bring them up to my apartment for a hearty tip. But to my distress, the furniture arrives while I’m out at a Dr. appointment on Tuesday. They are propped up against the building’s wall of mail-boxes in the entryway, each cardboard container twice as wide as me and a foot or two taller, each weighing 99 pounds. Other tenants are buzzing my flat in fury at being unable to access their mail. I appeal to my landlady in the office and she rustles up two of her brothers – my landlords – and they somehow carry both of them up.

Debi offers to come on the Wednesday to whip them together – hoping to finish in an over-optimistic 90 minutes. However, it turns out that each cabinet has about a dozen planks of various sizes and a huge cache of hardware. Undaunted, Debi wrestles the slate blue participants into perfect order, crawling around the floor, bending over them when they resist, standing them up, screwing them tight, and lord knows what. My friend Judy comes over to offer moral support to The Mastermind, joins us for lunch, and helps me haul out the debris.

I have a chiropractic appointment I must leave for at 4:45. Debi has been working non-stop since 10:30 am, with a quick break for my tuna salad and cranberry sauce. The doors are the last piece to be assembled and they have, for both cabinets, been the hardest to subdue. The clock is ticking: 4:20. 4:30. And then, at 4:40, The Mastermind shuts those doors smoothly, helps me move the two cabinets side by side, as if they were one, gathers up her enigmatic tools, and we leave together – her exhausted by hours of demanding physical labor and shrewd problem-solving, and me dazzled by the brilliance of her competence and confidence.

It has taken a village but now my living room, for the first time in my life, looks like a grown-up lives in it. Now it is time to write those books that long to come alive.

 

Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins - A Review in 100 words

Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins

A Review in 100 words

Now here’s a documentary to see, indeed. Molly Ivins started her life of raising hell by resisting her rich authoritarian father. ‘I remember my dad and his friends sitting around fixing the price of oil.’ Later she said, “My teenage rebellion lasted 35 years.” Six feet tall and a devoted intellectual, her young years reading in her bedroom well prepared her to be a rebellious journalist who splintered glass ceilings and spoke truth to power. Her hilarious wit – unfortunately fueled by heavy drinking – and the confidence privileged kids inherit, combined to make her a sterling, popular syndicated journalist and author.

 

100-Word Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I loved this contemporary Japanese novella about an oddball woman who prefers to “under-achieve” by working for decades as a clerk in a convenience store. She is pressured from all directions to marry and to make something of herself, but at 36 she recognizes that the convenience store is the place where she functions best. The rest of the world baffles her, but the store speaks to her. She mimics others to try to fit in outside the store. She tries living with a man – it’s awkward. I listened to this enthralling book in the car and found it fascinating.

Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Editors: Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano

I know little about the subject of mental health and would have been unlikely to be aware of this remarkable book if I hadn’t already been familiar with the ground-breaking work of one of the co-editors, Stephanie Schroeder, who produced this anthology with co-editor Teresa Theophano for Oxford University Press.

It is a rare collection in which each piece meets, in its own unique way, an extraordinarily high standard. The first sentence of the Foreword by Kai Cheng Thom draws the reader straight into real life: “I am several months behind deadline on writing this foreword: first, there were the implications of a mental health crisis of my own, then...”

Each contributor has an intimacy with the issues of mental health that has turned them into self-aware experts on their own conditions. And each has something illuminating to say about what the co-editors call “the evolution of queer identity as it interfaces with mental health.” Because the complications of being queer and needing help are so “downright crazymaking,” they say, they have reclaimed the word Headcase – a term as strong as the writing and the fight for health we go on to read about.

Through personal essays, professional approaches, graphic illustrations, photos, and poetry, we gain an insight into their worlds, not the least the inadequacies of the healthcare system and the often extended but life-saving search for the right medicines. Stephanie Schroeder discusses these both in her essay “Crowdsourcing my Antipsychotic” – a tale that gallops along like a fast-paced thriller, as she fights past a nauseating array of obstacles in her attempt to find and to fund the drug that can save her, despite the indifference of Big Pharma. Such difficulties in getting what is necessary turn up in many of the book’s pieces. J. R. Sullivan Voss’s emotional graphic story “Sisyphus (Or: Rocks Fall and Everyone Dies)” takes us into mental hospitals where torturous over-medication is the rule.

This is not a collection of dense academics nor is it dripping with jargon. It is a showcase of talented, gripping work. Eliza Gauger’s six complex “Problem Glyphs” are personalized illustrations called sigils that play the role, she says, of “a sort of occult advice column.” Some pieces are written by lovers, friends, and relatives of those struggling to gain their mental health. In “Erasure,” Gabriella M. Belfiglio briefly but potently narrates the experience of visiting her precious sister in what sounds like a high security mental hospital. She tells us: “Cell by cell, I’ve been watching her die for more than two-thirds of my life.” Juan Antonio Trujillo in a half a page describes his own mental acrobatics as he talks with delicacy to a fragile friend, in “Border / Lines.”

For many of the contributors, gaining control of their mental health leads to valuable achievements. I was transfixed by an amazing story of intertwined feminist and lesbian self-discovery by a mother and daughter in “Not Our Fault” by Chana Wilson. Co-editor Teresa Theophano speaks with full candor in a section called Stories of Survival. She tells us in “The Family Legacy Ends Here” that “surviving trauma has freed me.” Later she writes, “Emerging from those years of darkness has enabled me to participate more fully and with much more confidence in the organizing and community-building work that is my passion – especially now…”

Against my initial expectations, Headcase is an energizing read, full of pain and wit and joy. I have kept it by my bed and dipped in every evening, to learn, to be awed, and to be grateful. I have asked my local public library to order it and I suggest you do the same. I have one warning however – and it is a problem I see in many books put out by University presses. To save on the expense (i.e. number of pages), the font is miniscule and demanded my strongest reading glasses. The rewards, though, are humongous.

Review: Legal Tender: Women & The Secret Life of Money by Christian McEwen

I fell in love with this book the first moment I held it in my hand. It’s petite – just 4 1/2” x 6” and has just 142 little pages. It fits into the back pocket of my jeans. And it is filled with the most riveting “confessions” by all sorts of women about money.

I found myself dipping into this pearl of a book, reluctant to finish it. Each woman speaks with the kind of candor that it is rare to hear on this subject. I remember my own mother’s fierce sense of privacy about money – a subject she thought it was rude to bring up. Even when I was applying for college scholarships, she wouldn’t let me see the financial forms she filled in. “It’s none of your business.” My only hint came when my brother, after they had put him through a few college degrees, got his first job. “He pays more in taxes than I make in a year,” my dad said, half with pride, half with resentment.

Money. I was happy to hear other women own up to hiding $5 in every coat pocket, every backpack, every drawer – I do this. I call it my Holocaust syndrome – my “just in case” stash.

Some women talk about how growing up poor impacted their attitude towards money. But remarkably, McEwen even gets people to talk about inherited wealth. Lydia Richardson Pratt, a millionaire from an old money family, complained (boo hoo) that “coming out as lesbian was way easier than coming out as rich.” She brags about how much she adores being affluent.

I liked the bartender who tossed all her change into a big container. “But when I’m really panicky, I’ll sit down and roll my change… You know, I’ve paid my taxes through change I’ve rolled by hand!

A gambler introduces her comments this way: “Most people would rather tell you about blow-jobs they gave to strangers on the highway than talk about money honestly.” She admits that, because of her addiction, “Every day was like torture. I woke up every day and was completely freaked out.”

A freelancer speaks for all of us who write or act or draw or drive for our living: “I think that anyone who works in the freelance world has an inner bag lady who is ready to haunt her.”

Christian McEwen is a writer I have admired since her days in the UK when she was producing very early lesbian anthologies, including Naming the Waves and, with Sue O'Sullivan, Out the Other Side, a book I nearly wore out reading. This little volume Legal Tender from Bauhan Publishing is an utter delight, condensed from 50 interviews, and presented like a gift. Order it here http://www.christianmcewen.com/shop/.

 

An Interview with author Stephanie Schroeder, co-editor of Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Stephanie Schroeder – writer and peer advocate – and her co-editor Teresa Theophano – writer and social worker – have brought together 38 important pieces of writing on the topic of LGBTQ mental health today in their anthology Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness. Stephanie is known for her hard-hitting socially-aware journalism and one other book, her moving memoir.

The enthusiastic reception of Headcase is reflected in its reviews where comments call it “ground-breaking,” “poignant,” “terrific and essential,” and “a diverse democracy of voices.” I spoke to Stephanie Schroeder about the process of putting together such a pioneering work.

 

Question: How did you and your co-editor meet and decide to work together on this project?

Stephanie Schroeder: When Teresa read my memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide, it resonated with her. She had originated the idea of Headcase and then reached out to me. We hadn’t met before. We’ve been working on Headcase since 2014 and it has been a dream collaboration. We agreed on everything, from the vision to the submission guidelines to the final choices out of hundreds of submissions.

 

Question: Now that the book is out and you have just finished a national book tour, are you still friends?

Stephanie Schroeder (on left in black shirt): Yes! Not only have we stayed friends, we also plan to co-write another book focusing on LGBTQ suicide.

 

Question: How did you decide what to include in Headcase?

Stephanie Schroeder: We chose selections on the strength of their writing and content. We ensured a broad demographic around age, race & ethnicity, sexual orientation & gender identity, socio-economic status, geography, and diverse viewpoints. Some are grounded in an anti-psychiatry position while others are from a more conventional treatment viewpoint. We included essays, poetry, fiction, visual artwork, and a 13-panel comic written by a young transperson who documented their days in the hospital for mental health issues.

 

Question: Why is this anthology necessary?

Stephanie Schroeder: Because LGBTQ peers and consumers of mental health services are under-represented in the literature. Most books are written by professionals for professionals or clinicians for clinicians. We believe that LGBTQ peers are experts about our own care. And in fact nothing like this book has ever existed before. It is truly a vanguard work in the field of mental health literature.

 

To learn more, check out the Headcase anthology online and on Facebook:

www.headcaseanthology.com

Facebook: Headcaseanthology

Review: ayiti by Roxane Gay

Gay’s short stories – some very short, some traditional – are compact, hard-hitting, spare, and strong. This debut collection ayiti is quickly read, but stays with you, clinging to your nerves and your heart. Written from the perspective of a woman in the Haitian diaspora, it introduced me to an intimate glimpse of Haitian life. One of the longer and more formidable tales, “Of Ghosts and Shadows,” reminded me painfully of my own experience of teenage girl love. I only knew of Gay’s essay collection Bad Feminist and her social commentary, but now I am going to consume all of her fiction and memoir.

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

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.

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.