Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Film Review (brief) Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Well god-damn: Melissa McCarthy’s acting chops are something to behold in Can You Ever Forgive Me? For writers and readers, this film will charm the pants off of you. Based on the memoir of Lee Israel, a biographer of celebrities, we meet the exasperated agent (played by Jane Curtin, once of SNL fame), the publishing world that thrives on showy white men, and Lee’s one human friend, Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant at his best), an aging gay man who joins her in her desperation. Add two facts: one, she is a lesbian whose ex (played by Anna Deavere Smith of West Wing, The Practice, and Nurse Jackie fame) is sick and tired of her bullshit, and two, her best friend is the obligatory ill cat. Lee turns to crime and booze when her literary career is as moribund as the job she is fired from when she tells her boss to fuck off. Follow her life of forgery and fall in love.

The trailer:

Women of Hollywood: Cut it out!

The women of Hollywood are all about Times Up! and Me Too! and let’s have 50% of all crews be women and all that. Welcome to my world (one we feminists have inhabited since the late '60s).

However, as long they are wearing shoes that cripple them and dresses that don’t fit into limousines and need men to help them up a god-damned half flight of stairs to the awards stage, then something just doesn’t ring true. We know they are walking advertisements for diamond dealers and couture designers and plastic surgeons. But if you’re going to talk about justice, even if you’re only talking about equality and parity (modest goals), then wear stuff that allows you to get from A to B on your own.

I remember when the women’s movement was at its height, there were many stars who turned up in pant suits and jump suits and were actually able to ambulate. Even if the garb is silly and over-the-top like Streisand’s outfit at left, at least she can walk on her own. Cut the crap with all this foot binding and body squeezing and humongous skirts. Otherwise, we don’t believe for a second that you will walk your talk.

When a homeless person asks you for money...

I recently read an article about giving “directly and unconditionally to homeless people” in the UK – something I did when I was living in England and something I do now. For those who aren’t clear about how to respond to folks asking you for money on the streets, here is my take on the matter – including how to decide to whom to give.

Why are people homeless? Here are some theoretical examples:

Lindsay’s husband drained their joint bank accounts before leaving her and their infant twins. She could not pay the rent, so she and the children have become homeless, basically living in her unreliable car.

Timmy’s father threw him out of the house and disowned him when he found out that Timmy is gay. Without any resources, Timmy lives on the streets in a tent he shares with several other lads in a similar situation.

Maryellen only had catastrophic health insurance when she developed early onset Parkinson’s disease and her medical costs drained every cent of her savings after she could no longer work as a waitress. After crashing at one friend’s apartment after another, she has exhausted her list.

At 79, Aliya received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder but as English is her second language, she has been unable to navigate the complexities of Medicare. Without prescription coverage, she is unable to get her meds. Sometimes she gets taken into a hospital for a few days but doesn’t get ongoing care and lands back on the streets.

How I give money

When I got to London to live, at the start of the 1990s, I was blown away by the number of homeless people on the street. My work was in King’s Cross, at that time the center of drugs, homelessness, and petty crime. Every day, from the minute I got out of the subway car, I was being asked for money by people who needed it. I had to figure out how to manage the situation, how to balance my limited ability to give vs the huge need.

My friends were divided between those who said they did not give to individuals, but rather to non-profits serving homeless people, and those who did offer people money on the assumption that organized help was not reaching them.

My feeling is that people who are standing around in the cold (or heat) begging you for money are not on a lark and they are not stupid. They have run into the endless roadblocks to government or charity assistance and may simply not qualify. Homeless shelters are notorious for theft and assault and are often only open certain hours of the day. Services have been cut back and are difficult to access.

I made the decision in London – and apply it here now that I’m living in the States – to decide on a certain amount of money per day that I could part with. I was working a steady job in London and so I put aside £5 per day to give away. I got a ton of £1 coins and each morning would load 5 of them into my coat pocket.

I also decided to prioritize women and people of color, on the assumption that other givers might well overlook them. When my £5 was gone I would just smile, say hello, and say sorry to others who asked.

Here in the States, I am less frequently walking around, but people ask me for money while I’m in my car, stopped at red lights. I keep a bunch of dollar bills in my car to give to those who ask. I do not see very many other drivers doing the same, and almost never someone in a luxury vehicle.

My final word: Don’t be judgmental. Don’t be rude. Don’t make assumptions. If you’ve got a lot more than someone else who is asking the world for a dollar, just give it to them. Once given, it’s their money and not your concern about whether they’re going to buy a drink or milk for their kid. Naturally we want to make revolutionary changes in this country so that the majority of people are not impoverished while a few are unspeakably wealthy, so that people’s basic needs are met by the State when necessary, so that there is affordable housing. But until we succeed in achieving that, reach into your pocket if you are able.

Invisible Nation

I learned a great deal about homelessness, particularly among women and children, from this brilliant book by the author Richard Schweid. If your library does not have it, insist they order it right away – and they will. As one of the most captivating, skilled non-fiction writers in America, Schweid opened my eyes to the unseen impacts – especially on children – of this scourge of homelessness.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520292673/invisible-nation

Jake Katz: May, 1927 - November 2018

My Uncle Jake (Jacob) Katz has died. He is the last family elder of my parents’ generation. My dad, Saul, was always so proud of his "kid brother," who was born in 1927, exactly 10 years after my dad. My uncle was able, with support from the GI Bill and his older brothers, to go to college where he studied engineering and invented one of the first devices to improve the industrial environment by cleaning the emissions from the smoke stacks of the steel mills. (I think I have that right.)

Before he was born, the family looked quite different. My grandfather, a deaf immigrant cobbler,  was married to his first wife and together they had three sons named Harry, Ken, and Saul. When my dad, Saul, was a toddler, his mother bore twins, who quickly succumbed to the influenza pandemic. His mother died right after them. My widowed grandfather needed a second wife and so within a couple of years he married a newly arrived immigrant from the Ukraine, who embraced the older sons in varying degrees and gave birth to Jake.

Jake was a star in high school (Photo: high school newspaper about Jake) before he served in the Navy, got his degree, and began traveling for his work on electrostatic precipitators during the early 50s. While in New York, he met his future wife, Estelle, at a dance and brought her home. They were an outstandingly handsome couple. I remember the moment this show-stopping beauty showed me her diamond engagement ring and I asked breathlessly, “Is it real?”

A wonderful neighbor named Bess down the street made me the first new dress I ever remember owning (I always wore hand-me-downs), so that I could be a fancy flower girl at their wedding. It had a velvet ribbon that tied around my waist – quite the luxurious touch, I felt. The wedding was all the way in NYC, which explained the exotic accents we heard from Estelle and her family.

Jake was one of the few members of my family, along with my father Saul, who wasn’t outright homophobic towards me when I came out. He was a philosophical guy, generally reluctant to talk about anything resembling politics. He wrote a book about smart investing after his early retirement and encouraged me to follow his suggestions when he gifted me his volume.

He was the reigning prince of puns and I’m not sure anyone else will be able to scale those heights. Jake was one of the few relatives who always stayed in touch with me, and whenever I’ve been in Pittsburgh, I’ve never missed lunch with him in Squirrel Hill. In between those infrequent trips, we’ve talked on the phone, at least a couple of times a year, and always with mutual affection. (Photo: From left Jake, Saul, Ken)

It is sobering to lose the WWII generation. It is sobering to now be amongst the elders of my family. It is sad to have lost Uncle Jake.

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

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!!!

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.