Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

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.

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.

From Pioneer to Elder – Squeezing it all into one speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parsimonious Corporations at Pride

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amsterdam & Utrecht Travelogue – May 2018

May 19

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

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

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

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

May 20

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

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

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

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

May 21

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

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

May 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 24, 2018

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

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

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

A few Amsterdam curiosities for dessert:

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

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

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

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

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

Vienna Travelogue -- May 2018

May 15, 2018

Because in the last election, the neo-Nazis became part of the ruling coalition, I decided that I wanted to see gorgeous Vienna one last time before it tilted any further towards fascism. I have been in Vienna two or three times before, but not since the 90s. I find a three-bedroom Airbnb with a rather parsimonious landlady (“Look it up on the internet” was her answer to any question – whether about the phone number of a taxi company or the location of recommended local restaurants). Two friends join me: Jaya, the sculptor from Italy and Sandy, the paper artist from the California redwoods.

They arrive close to dinner time so after a walk around the neighborhood we settle in for a delicious meal at the Turkish restaurant across the street. Two of us are dealing with varied levels of jetlag, so it’s off to bed with a Melatonin and a remarkable novel The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler about Vienna in the run-up to WWII which I chose from a list of books recommended by 20 different Ambassadors about their own countries.

The Tobacconist is relevant on another level. It describes the path to Austrian Nazism, from increasing anti-Semitism to accelerated anti-democratic and exclusionary laws, accompanied by vicious street violence by right-wing paramilitaries and by everyday “true” Austrian assholes. So similar to what we are experiencing in the States.

I’m very aware the Austria has a deep history of anti-Semitism, dating back to 1267 when the church imposed a dress code for Jews, who were forbidden to mix with Christians. We walk through the square in which Hitler (born in Austria) spoke to a quarter of a million cheering Viennese. We cross a bridge to the Jewish Ghetto on which, a local gay couple we meet there tells us, is inscribed the love story of a young Jewish man, sneaking out of the Ghetto across the bridge to meet his lover – until one day when he does not turn up.

Vienna is exquisite and grand – with monumental medieval and baroque buildings (this is the national library). Today the wide sidewalks are divided in half between pedestrians and bicycle riders and no one but us (accident/ignorance) steps into the bike lane. Public transportation is comprehensive – a combo of subways, buses, trams, and trains, so we buy a multi-day ticket. There is even a “queer” ticket on the transportation poster, which apparently includes entrance into various gay male venues. Even late at night, the streets and the underground stations are spotless. It is one of the most prosperous cities on earth and I did not see a single homeless person in the city or on its outskirts, although my friend saw someone asking for money.

Half of the housing is public (subsidized) housing, which is not means-tested. You need to be a resident of the city for five years and get your name on a list. You can pick the district in which you want to live and once you are given an apartment it is very cheap. One woman we met was paying € 400 a month. It felt pretty easy to spot private housing: those facades were highly decorated with sculptures, bay windows, and elaborate doors.

May 16, 2018

We start at the twin museums – a natural history museum and The Kunsthistorisches Art Museum (first photo), built between 1871 and 1891 on commission from Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. At the country’s biggest art museum, we are delighted by an exhibition called The Shape of Time that juxtaposes classic and new art, featuring so many modern women artists that Sandy says that she can only assume a woman curated the exhibit. We also visit the Stairway to Klimt where we have an opportunity to be lifted 12 feet off the ground to get a close look at the work Klimt did in decorating the walls above the museum’s main staircase.

Outside in the park between the twins, we are smilingly accosted by one of several young men dressed in the velvet embroidered formal wear of Mozart’s time. The lad is selling tickets to a show by the Vienna Royal Orchestra at Imperial Hall, which turns out to be a high school at the Beethoven Platz that was built by Friedrich Schmidt, master builder of St. Stephen's Cathedral. The show consists of opera, waltz, and dance. The fellow is so charming with his notebook of photos, his sweet chatter, and his promise of serious discounts, that we three experienced travelers fall for his patter and purchase three expensive tickets, which we immediately only somewhat regret. The show could better be called The Top Ten Arias, Jaya suggests, and we decide not to cry over spilt Euros. Fast forward to the show, which we attend on our last evening in Vienna, we are surprised by the terrific 10-piece orchestra, the two opera singers, and the two ballet dancers who all manage to perform with good humor and great professionalism on a stage the size of a hot-tub.

We accidentally wander into a regional food and beer festival where we have our first sublime coffee and scrumptious pastries for which this city is most famous. I once deeply offended an Italian friend when I told him that the best coffee I ever tasted was in Vienna. Don’t get me started about the apricot strudel I had.

May 17, 2018

At the Leopold Museum we are thrilled at the exhibitions, but painfully aware that only two women artists are exhibited. Besides collections of Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Leger, Chagall, Magritte, Klimt, and Kokoschka, there is a large display of the unique Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Schiele disturbed genteel Vienna with his intensely sexual drawings and paintings and eventually served a month in jail for exposing neighborhood children to his “pornographic” work. His jagged naked self-portraits and his sensuous portrayals of women kissing each other or masturbating are powerful. He died at 28 of Spanish flu the day of his wife’s burial.

Other pieces that stand out for me are Keith Haring’s picture of a man’s huge dick choking himself, and the aluminum Boxman by Erwin Wurm Kastenmann.

The museums are tough on my feet so I suggest we jump on a random tram and start seeing parts of Vienna beyond the exquisite decorated facades of the grand buildings. As we head out to the edges, the buildings shrink and we pass through some industrial parks near which are massive projects of social housing – tall, wide, plain buildings with flat and undecorated windows. I notice the changing demographics of the people on the tram – with workers heading home. We enter the suburbs, with adorable and very individual small houses, some with a modern industrial flavor, some with roofs like a traditional Dutch hat. Further on the houses and gardens grow more intricate until we pass walled-in mansions. The final tram stop is at the Otto Wagner Hospital, an art deco building commissioned by Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph in 1904. Unfortunately, it turns out to have a disgusting if not unusual Austrian history: the National Socialists performed cruel “health” experiments on children, many of whom died there. 

May 18, 2018

Our outstanding dining experience was a spontaneous meal at Das Dreieck, a woman owned-and-operated establishment just down the street from the famous Hundertwasser Village. The environment is welcoming and comfortable, the scrumptious food is created with love, and the waitress Germina is personable and professional. Under various owners, the restaurant has been serving traditional Wien Schnitzel since 1804, but surely the basket of helpful items (from tampons to floss sticks) in the women’s bathroom is a recent innovation.

We catch a bus to visit the Karl Marx Hof, a municipal tenement complex in Vienna. At over a kilometer long, it’s the biggest residential project in the world. Built in 1927, only 20% of the land was used for apartments; the rest was saved for gardens and amenities such as schools, nurseries, washhouses, a library, and a medical center – all of which still remain. From the outside, it appears that every flat has a balcony. Unfortunately, in 1938, according to this plaque on the building, 66 Jewish families were expelled from Karl Marx Hof and many of them were subsequently murdered. Their names are listed here.

For me Karl Marx Hof epitomizes the conflicts inherent in much of Vienna: a history of culture and beauty combined with a nasty fascist legacy that taints even the most progressive visions. Besides the Vienna-born Schubert and Strauss, Vienna (known as the City of Music) was a magnet for other great musicians including Mozart and Beethoven. Many major Jewish cultural figures were escapees from Austrian fascism, including Sigmund Freud, Fritz Lang, and Hedy Lamarr. With the recent Austrian elections, I feel the echoes of bad times and wonder how the United States is going to fare under its present, similarly vicious regime.  

At the airport I have a delicious goulash, a slice of traditional marble cake, and a smooth coffee (my regular fave is Viennese Melange, small espresso served in a large cup with half steamed milk topped off with milk froth.) Airport food never tasted so delectable.

Mother’s Day: Don’t Assume

I had a nasty mother, dead a decade now, and I didn’t want to celebrate her then or now. I myself had no maternal longings, and while I am Uncle to a few youngsters (well, if 30s/40s is still a youngster), I’ve never been mother to anyone. I never found blood to be thicker than water, to say the least. All the ecstatic glorification of the very concept of "motherhood" is grating – and a way to define women by their reproductive status.

Anyway, we all know that mothering is a hard job and often unpaid, but it's easy to sign up for it. So easy that many get the job by "accident." In fact, 45%-50% (depending on which study you look at) of all US pregnancies are unplanned. Accidents!

If you are lucky enough to have yourself a loving, honest, non-violent mother who is still alive, well good on ya. But let us not extrapolate that into some kind of generalization the way Hallmark has led us to do. Some mothers have died, some are locked up, some are estranged, some are aloof, some are hateful, some need to be cared for 24/7. The combination of “Happy” and “Mother” does not resonate for many, many folks, so don’t assume.

Resisting the Assault on America – Part II

Yesterday, I was the MC for a panel I had put together over several months for Boston OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). It was the second annual panel I’ve done entitled “Resisting the Assault on America.” The goal was to identify the attacks on America by the tRump’s administration and the ways in which people are resisting. The panel included labor organizer Jenn Doe, of SEIU Local 509; disability rights activist Colleen Flanagan, Executive Director at Disability Action for America; ACLU’s Board member Holly Gunner; GLAD’s LGBTQ family law expert Polly Crozier; and Nancy Kelly, the manager of the Immigration Unit of the Greater Boston Legal Services. The speakers were brilliant. About 50 people attended.

To start the event, I gave an overview of tRump’s assault on us as I see it. As I wrote my presentation, the flood of attacks overtook my page and it became much longer than I intended. And there was so much more I could have included. Here is what I said:

Good afternoon, friends, and thank you for coming.

When we conducted the first panel on Resisting the Assault on America a year ago, our heads were exploding at the potential reality of life under tRump. He had started his assault from the moment of declaring his candidacy with his vile attack on Mexicans and the slanders he concocted about immigrants. It is a year later and that nightmare has turned into the soundtrack of our real, day-to-day lives. The nightmare has become quicksand, and we have yet to figure out how to save ourselves.

No longer are the deceitful spewings about foreigners just nasty rhetoric – they are now devouring the heart of our domestic and foreign policies. Americans are being deported in cruel ways and in massive numbers, no matter how long they’ve been here or whether they’ve served the US military or have provided social glue in an American community.

Our inflated prison populations are filling the pockets of the owners of privatized prisons, organizations that have contracts which demand from the criminal injustice system high rates of occupancy. Capitalist criminals run the government, while petty thieves and innocent people, largely from communities of color, feed the voracious prison machine. So many women, LGBTQs, and people of color in general are brutally and often unfairly caged.

Our education system is being stripped of all that makes it effective and accessible and humane, while charter and private schools are getting a boost, so as to further entrench white privilege. Teachers are striking all over the country, while the government talks about providing guns, not books, to schools.

It’s pretty freaky to watch our rights as lesbians being threatened by an Administration of homophobes and misogynists. Misogynistic legislators and cabinet dicks force tax payers to cough up untold obscene amounts of money to pay off women they have abused or used. The President is into grabbing pussys; the Vice President won’t sit down with a woman without his wife present – and I don’t know which thing is more repulsive.

Hypocrisy seems to be a key Resume attribute for this Administration in which reproductive rights are teetering on the edge of elimination. The holier-than-thou Fundamentalist Christians call for insane punishments for women who have abortions. Even birth control is under attack. They want to prevent same-sex couples from marrying or adopting. Those same holy men are too often found to have raped young girls, or cruised other guys in public toilets, or cheated on their wives. tRump is their biggest support: Just look at Roy Moore, at the neo-Nazis, at the overseas dictators: they are tRump’s real lovers.

The police are being sold military equipment and seem to have permission to freely kill people of color, unarmed citizens going about their lives. They suffer virtually no consequences for these murders. The very act of protesting – the heart of American democracy – is under attack. Republican-dominated states across the country are pushing laws that criminalize street demonstrations – except, it seems, when they are neo-Nazis marching, rioting, or burning swastikas. One Washington Post headline announced: “Sessions greenlights police to seize cash, property from people suspected of crimes but not charged.” Jeff Sessions has written a memo calling for the death sentence for drug dealers, probably including legal marijuana business owners. The FBI, CIA, and State Department are all in a jumble, while ICE – the anti-immigration militia – runs wild like a gestapo. 

Our free press is no longer free, as the right-wing Sinclair group is steadily buying up local news outlets across the country. The President hate-tweets all mainstream press except for Fox, while the major media players do not admit to their part in getting him elected and in profiting off his lies, while ignoring other kinds of news.

The President has spent 111 days at his own golf courses since he was elected – fully 22% of his time! There he rules by tweet, vomiting out lies and distortions that he buys wholesale from Fox and Friends. He hates Republican and Democratic legislators alike, nonetheless eliciting from both an odd level of compliance. We are all upset, but with his smoke screens, his hysteria, and his viciousness, he has used the simpering Republican majority and his Executive Orders to destroy the life we hoped for. We are exhausted by the barrage.

Meanwhile, the programs that keep us human, that mandate that we look after each other, that we provide support and care for those who need it – and most of us will need it at some point in our lives – those programs are under severe attack. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, health care, home care, Meals on Wheels, school meals, public schools, workplace safety, affirmative action, the Veterans Administration, the American Disabilities Act, and so much more – these are the very programs that make us a civil society. Our parks are being sold for private oil exploration. He has removed us from the Paris Accords on the environment. He is erasing all the regulations that affect big business’s ability to pollute our country.

Let’s talk money. The stock market is twitching every which way. The 1% own half of the world’s wealth – that is, they have the same wealth as 3.5 Billion humans – and that’s still not enough for tRump’s gang of crooks. Although it’s not new to the tRump era, race plays a big role in class, and this Administration is straight-up racist. This disparity is local too. According to the Globe, “The median net worth for non-immigrant African-American households in the Greater Boston region is $8.”

For those of us who are in the final third or quarter of our lives, we fear that our lifelong plans are going to be derailed – and in many ways they already have been. We did not expect – after all we contributed to justice movements – to watch fascism creep over this land. We’re out on the streets with protest placards that say, “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit” – and it is very scary.

But there is resistance. The Women’s March, organized mostly by young women, drew an immediate line in the sand. They were inspired by the young lesbians who had earlier founded Black Lives Matter, a new type of resistance with a broad explicit inclusion of LGBTQ folks. Teams of law students and lawyers raced to the airports when tRump tried to ban Muslims. The Dreamers who risk losing everything are on the streets protesting the elimination of DACA and the dire restrictive policies against immigrants, not the least the horrific for-profit detention camps. I follow the creative NY group: Gays Against Guns (GAG)! Thousands of women are running for office, pissed off at what this government is trying to do to us. And the #MeToo movement, founded by a Black woman, was embraced by women of every age and race. The elementary and high school youth are raising a powerful voice about gun violence. They’ve already made the leap from school attacks to general community danger from guns, and I hope their next leap will be to create a peace movement against the horrid violence the US military either perpetrates or supports around the world. So much of the world is suffering. And so many are fighting back.

Today OLOC is honored to host this panel of five amazing women to talk in depth about some of these issues. Thanks so much to everyone for coming and for all that you do.

Thanks too to Bren Cole for the photos.

My friend Linda Greenberg has died

This is the letter I wrote to my friend just hours before she died. Her husband Jim, who cared for her for many years, read it to her and said that she sent her love to me. I'll put in the link to her obituary at the end for those who want to learn more about her.

March 13, 2018

Dear Linda,

When Jim told me that you are gravely ill, I remembered back to when we first met. I was working for a huge British non-profit that promoted full-time volunteerism. I had just been promoted to developing international partnerships. As my parents lived in Pittsburgh, I decided that a partnership in Pittsburgh would be just the thing to pay for my flights for yearly visits.

Through the University of Pittsburgh, I found you in your Oakland office just a block or two from my parents’ apartment. There you were sending young people to Europe to be nannies. Organizationally, it was a perfect fit. Personally it was mutual love at first sight.

We began sharing hotel rooms at European conferences. It took us a bit of time to work it out – you with your stream-of-consciousness chatting and me with my need to sit in silence and write every day. But we fell into a pattern smoothed by love. One time in Paris you arrived later than me and when you came into the room, you had a perplexed look on your face. “I was unable to get my bag off the luggage carousel,” you told me. You were such a seasoned traveler that this made no sense. Later we realized that this was one of your first symptoms.

That night we went out to a brasserie that you knew and I had the best steak I had ever eaten. Little did I know that it was only one steak of many that I would savor as a result of our friendship. Every time I visited you in Pittsburgh, Jim would grill me the best steaks in the world. I certainly have always dined well at the Greenberg café!

Speaking of meat, when my parents heard we were meeting up at some European conference or other, they came by your house, despite having never met you, to ask you bring me a Kosher salami they had brought for me, which of course you did.

On one visit, we went shopping for eyeglasses for your daughter – then just a teenager – in a part of Pittsburgh that was being yuppified and reinvented. You re-introduced me to my very changed hometown.

I’ll never forget how you turned up at my dad’s funeral. It was such a special gesture on your part and looking up and seeing you there during my eulogy was incredibly comforting. But then generosity is one of your strongest cards. I have luxuriated in your basement accommodations more than once at your invitation.

You’ve met many of my closest friends – from Barry to Sandy – and always welcomed them into your home. I appreciate your ability to embrace new people, which is probably one of the reasons you were so successful at your work. Then too, there is your tenacity. Long before “She persisted” became a feminist cry, you fought for your rights as a person with a disability, becoming an expert in your field. We even formed a non-profit to propagate your knowledge and to introduce children to a person in a wheelchair ready to share her story.

I’ve learned tons from you, but most poignantly, I’ve been showered with love from you. I thank you and kiss you and miss you.

Always,

Sue

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/postgazette/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=188456857