From theonion.com
Did I Write That, or did John Updike?
I'm glad we finally got this out in the open. I mean, "That a marriage ends is less than ideal, but all things end under heaven," right? I believe that's a quote of mine, or one of John Updike's. Would you pass me a menu?
What are you going to have? Oh, it's Tuesday; they have the chicken and dumplings today... though sometimes, the chicken here can be a little stringy, I find. I might prefer my usual tomato stuffed with tuna salad. That and a glass of iced tea... Helen? Why, what's the...? Oh, golly.
Of course I love you. Here, drink a glass of water. There you go. Take my napkin. Wipe your eyes. ...There. Now, what's the matter? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, that's silly. You're only 51. Look at me, Helen, I'm 57. Besides, "Middle age is a wonderful country. All the things you thought would never happen are happening." That's something I said to Bob last week at the club. We were seated at his father's table, under that one portrait of the old scowler—you know the one—and I said, "Bob, middle age is a wonderful..." Wait a sec. You know what? I think that might have been something I read in Updike.
What? Well, gosh. I guess I don't know why I brought you here... I guess I... How to explain... You know, it's sort of like that part from Updike's In The Beauty Of The Lilies. Do you remember? Where it's Tuesday, and Clarence is driving with his wife, and he says, "Helen, I have been having an affair with my receptionist. I want a divorce." It's in the third chapter, I believe. Although, having given it a moment's thought, it occurs to me I may have conflated that with something that happened to me roughly half an hour ago.
Sit down, Helen. Don't make a scene. Now, truth be told, I feel like a heel taking you to this bum diner. But, then, after all, what was I to do? Throw myself face down and weep? Crash the car into an elm?
Say... This is like Rabbit At Rest. Remember? How's that go again? I think it's, "Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went." Actually, no. That was a thing I said.
I said it to Stevie before his commencement. I remember... We stood below the old sycamore. The late spring sun filtered through the leaves and dappled his shoulders like golden coins, or something majestic—like something from the Greeks, or Shakespeare's tragedies. I put a hand on Stevie's shoulder, and I said, "Well, Stevie, most of American life is the"—the quote I just said. Then I said another quote, one of Updike's. I said, "It's not the flowers you don't send, Stevie." It had something else to it, I think.
Oh, waiter? When you get a chance, we're ready to order. Yes, I'm going to have the stuffed tomato, an iced tea, and another napkin. My wife will have a vanilla milkshake. Vanilla milkshake. See... Here on the menu? This. The vanilla milkshake. That's right. Helen? Did you want anything besides a milkshake? How about a plate of fries? You'll enjoy those, Helen. You need to eat. Of course, "People who tell you what to do always have whiskey on their breath." My quote.
Rabbit, Run? I don't remember that being in there.
Aw, Helen, I'll always love you, but we're just... We aren't... You remember us then, Helen? Driving to the office each morning, babying the furniture, cooking indifferent meals—we fell into bed at night like a revelation. I remember the first time I saw you; I was beside my father at the Brauers' picnic. With your hair back and a hundred tiny hairs loose, you had a sort of coronet in the sun. And your shoulders were slightly stooped, but I swear to you they were golden, and Le-Le Brauer said something or other, something about how I had to try Zabar's, and I said, quoting Updike, I said, "I love those fancy groceries. I like the little weenies." That's Updike. Helen, I'm positive that's Updike.
Lookee, our food. Mmph, delicious. What? Oh yes, waiter? We had a vanilla milkshake, as well.
"Say, could you hand me the pepper, Helen?" What's this? Oh, I see. No, I wasn't asking for pepper, I was quoting from an Updike story. Not sure of the title, but it's in The Afterlife And Other Stories. Have you read that? Oh, you ought to. Updike writes prose the only way it should be written. That is, ecstatically.
No, I haven't looked at John Updike's blurb on every Nabokov book published by Vintage. Why?
Group
A few months ago I was invited by some very venerable, very spiritual older women to join a “group”—a sort of theological, scriptural study thing that met once a week to discuss a spiritual text chosen by the group. The reasons why I was asked to join this group is unclear, considering a) I can’t really keep secrets about anything I do and b) my family isn’t exactly what you would call “in good standing” with the other members of our ward right now. Still, my mother tells me that the group is quite exclusive, and that my invitation was an unprecedented honor.
The group is supposed to be secret because the church doesn’t really look well upon private study groups of the gospel. The reasons for this is that, apparently, study groups were very big in the eighties and resulted in a huge number of people leaving or being excommunicated as the result of philosophizing about the gospel without the benefit of personal revelation that comes with individual study. I must admit, even typing such a thing seems kind of embarrassing, as though the church was trying to institute some sort of mind control program. I think, just judging from study groups I’ve had in the past, that I may have to side with the church. Small groups invariably lead to gossip and half-truths parading as doctrine, and that gets messy.
Often group branches out into other arenas. I went to a lecture with one of the ladies about architecture in sacred spaces. The lecture took place in a greek orthodox church and consisted of analyzing synagogues, mosques, and orthodox chapels from architectural points of view.
But Wednesday I went over and sat in a room full of ladies at least 30 years older than me and talked about a book we had read on Christ’s parables and the restoration of the gospel. Certain parables, like those of the mustard seeds growing into trees in which birds rest, can be read in terms of the latter day restoration (the birds being angels), etc. But as is typical, we used that lesson as sort of a jumping off point to talk about gospel questions in general. The ladies started talking about Christian scientists, and the role science should play in our testimonies. I was expecting a knee jerk reaction such as, “None,” but was pleasantly surprised as each of the women named bits and pieces of scientific study that had helped strengthen their testimonies. Sister M had just returned from China, and while she was there, she had studied some of the pictograms in Mandarin. She said that there were certain cross-references to the Old Testament. For example, the word for “ark” contains a dove, the word for “temptation” is a woman and a tree. Or something to that effect. She gave me so many examples I am fairly certain I’ve mixed them up. Then there was another woman who mentioned the hieroglyphics in south America that allude to a huge battle between two large tribes that resulted in the destruction of one race—just as the book of mormon says. Than I mentioned countless similarities in after-death experiences. But what I commented on, and the other ladies agreed with, that it is an integral part of our testimony to draw on the facts of science, but we cannot make the mistake in assuming that a) science is infallible and b) those connections are cornerstones to your faith. It’s true that science is the closest thing we have to truth, but science is often overturned, and often. One of the argument that the book of mormon was ‘written’ by joseph smith was that it mentioned horses, which supposedly didn’t arrive in America before cortez. But recently, that finding was overturned, and it turns out there would have been horses in 400bc America. So basing your testimony, or lack thereof, solely on science seems rather pointless, in this respect. It should enhance or at worst allow for questioning, but the truth or lack thereof of a religion should be more intuitive than simply adding scientific facts.
Then we got onto the topic of prophetic revelation. Why is it that the doctrine of apotheosis, which is such an integral part of how we view man, downplayed by the church? We looked at the actual revelation, which was simply a quote by Lorenzo Snow (I think): “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Sister B thought that this was downplayed because we have a tendency to humanize God, to make him more human, and that in turn causes us to lose respect for Him. Sister M thought that it was because it turned us away from our focus—it made us selfish, as if the only reason we should be good is for the chance of ultimate power. And sister W said that she thought it was downplayed so that investigators didn’t get the wrong idea, since it’s such a strange and complex theory that most people aren’t familiar with. I sort of chimed in that while it wasn’t stressed it was an integral part of my testimony, because it coincides perfectly with my understanding of man. I have never bought into the platonic idea that the body was a prison, was corrupt, and only through denial of the body can we ever hope to be better. But I also have never bought into the idea that every impulse the body has should be catered to. That’s why the idea of apotheosis appeals—it allows for man’s divinity, his ultimate perfection, but at the same time, it requires a certain amount of strength and sacrifice to attain. I don’t believe man’s fate is to suffer, nor do I believe he is bound to be a hedonist.
This then that we started wondering which doctrine and revelation should be viewed as integral, which peripheral, and which is give or take. If everything the prophet says is scripture, what should we follow? The answer: whatever the church is teaching now. But why? Doesn’t this seem as if we are constantly scrapping doctrine, much as the catholic church does. And isn’t that something we’re always criticizing the catholic church for? Mrs. B pointed out that different generations need different warnings, and what is emphasized to one group isn’t emphasized in the other. The more specific something is, often the more you can go by the principle behind it, Sister M pointed out. Take in the seventies, the church warned against face cards. This was part of two movements: anti-black magic (ouija and tarot was becoming popular), and also against gambling. You should follow the letter of the law, but really trying to understand and follow the spirit of the law is much more.
It was then that we got into the concept of the plain and simple truth. The idea that, in the gospels, it is more likely that Christ speaking to his father was just that—not in fact some strange breach of physics by which Christ is inexplicably talking to himself. The corruption of the godhead, I argued, comes from an overintellectual view of the scriptures, a theory that can only happen when professional theologians spend hours torturing over problems. Sister M likened the corruption of the concept of the godhead to the arguments used by the crowds when Jesus cast devils into pigs and was accused of casting out devils by the power of Satan.
Then I went home and sat on mom’s bed and imagined what happened if I was wrong about religion, what if after death there was nothing but black. Scary indeed
Behavioral What What
From the Chronicle Review's BF Skinner Revisited
"We recognize a person's dignity or worth," writes Skinner, "when we give him credit for what he has done. The amount we give is inversely proportional to the conspicuousness of the causes of his behavior. If we do not know why a person acts as he does, we attribute his behavior to him. We try to gain additional credit for ourselves by concealing the reasons why we behave in given ways or by claiming to have acted for less powerful reasons. Any evidence that a person's behavior may be attributed to external circumstances seems to threaten his dignity or worth. We are not inclined to give a person credit for achievements which are in fact due to forces over which he has no control. We tolerate a certain amount of such evidence, as we accept without alarm some evidence that a man is not free. No one is greatly disturbed when important details of works of art and literature, political careers, and scientific discoveries are attributed to 'influences' in the lives of artists, writers, statesmen, and scientists respectively. But as an analysis of behavior adds further evidence, the achievements for which a person himself is to be given credit seem to approach zero, and both the evidence and the science which produces it are then challenged."
Freshman Year: Fateful Swans of Never
home, and I don’t feel like updating the CM until I get photos, so I figured I’d do a little more on my life’s history. I’m getting a real Proustian kick out of all of this.
So junior high summer. My inklings towards popular music were confirmed over the summer of my 14 year when I was listening to a smashing pumpkins (“1979”) single and heard a b-side called “Cherry.” The lyrics were so sensual and the arrangement unlike anything I had heard before, that I instantly fell completely in love with Billy Corgan. I mean fell in love. I probably am still in love with him—sadly enough. I will know that I am in love with a man when I can love him more than I love Billy Corgan, and so far that hasn’t happened. I worship this man. So I get home from the trip and I start obsessively collecting magazines, CD’s, music videos. I once stayed up until 2am watching the “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” video on repeat, which still stands as one of the most erotic moments of my life. The band combined my interests of the romantic, the dangerous, the sexy, the macabre. I started getting into other bands with similar images and sounds—Hole, Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, L7, Soundgarden, Placebo. I started adopting the look and feel of these bands, the attitudes and lushness. It sounds very insincere, as if I was mimicking the posturing of rock bands, but actually, it was as if I had found comrades—people who acted, elucidated, and verbalized things I had always felt but could never quite share. A marvelous sort of rushing of emotion, hyperbolic speech and gesture, became de rigueur. I became dramatic and verbose, with more than enough attitude for everyone. By the time I started high school, I was kohled, booted, and ready for blood.
However, simultaneously I was undergoing a huge amount of stress to be just so. Mom was just coming off of her tumor, and dad was really pushing the grade issue. While college had always been my main preparation, now it became a looming, tooth-and-claw monster. Grades were expected to be perfect, homework perfect, and yet I couldn’t pay attention in any of my classes no matter how hard I tried, I was bored and had to read things over and over and had no ability to follow class lectures. Luckily I had enough of a knowledge base to fill in gaps and guess on tests, but I was floating along with B’s, and that was simply not good enough. So there was this pressure building, and I couldn’t push myself to work any harder, and as a result I became deeply depressed and unhappy.
And then, Laura Terry.
The name still rolls off the tongue, like Humbert’s Lolita. Laura Terry was a young woman that I tripped over in a starlit field during a freshman camping trip. She had red hair, green eyes, the whitest possible skin, blood stained cheeks. She was a fabulous artist-to this day I haven’t met anyone who’s artwork has moved and fascinated me as much as her work. She was a border—I used to come to her room after school—there were photos of all of my bands on her wall, her paintings everywhere, blue cellophane on the lights, the strangest books of poetry and fiction stacked in piles. She got me into Fiona Apple, Ani diFranco, Sappho, and Jeanette Winterson. She painted her nails black and wore as much eyeliner as I did. She was as depressed as me. And I loved her for it.
I connected with Laura Terry in the most amazing, electrical way. Standing next to her used to raise the hairs on my arm. She and I had secrets and understandings, but at the same time I was terribly afraid of her, as one would be with any creature of supernatural force. Her eyes burnt holes into me, and I could never be alone with her without feeling like I was drowning, but in the most exciting way. She was in every respect a siren.
In the rare instance that anyone I knew from high school reads this, I won’t betray Laura’s secrets, so I’ll have to abstain from mentioning any more about Ms. Terry. Suffice it to say our relationship caused me guilt and anxiety which exacerbated my stress. I started cutting myself around January of freshman year. Small cuts at first on fingers and hands, and then I would use the blood to make drawings. I would turn music up full volume in the car and then bang away at my legs with fists in time with the drums, leaving blood stars and bruises all over my thighs. I stuck needles in my vessels and tried to draw out syringes of blood (always unsuccessful, as I had trouble hitting the veins) and then, one night at a church activity, sliced two huge holes in my upper arm that caused such a river of blood I still have nightmares about it. I have huge worm scars near my left shoulder as a result. The church incident was much talked about in our ward, and soon my parents knew about my habits, and once they knew the guilt was so profound I had to stop the masocism.
I began letting out aggressions in other ways. I started a club with my friends called the Black Flame Alliance, which wrote emails about how much we hated life, how we were going to take over the world (milk, TV). These emails would get violent and confrontational in nature. I would pick fights and eviscerate complete strangers. I wrote horrible, mutilating poetry about bondage and murder. I dyed my hair black, I wore torn stockings, boots, and black leather on dress days. There were many concerned parent-teacher conferences. The headmistress routinely read my email to make sure I was not planning anything dastardly, as I was more or less the leader of the BFA, whether by charisma (doubtful) or brute intimidation (likely). The whole thing was a mess.
So mom and dad figured over the summer that it would be good to get me away from my influences—namely, Ms. Terry and my BFA cohorts—so they pushed me into applying for a semester in Switzerland. It seemed romantic enough, and Laura had sent me letters from the Marquis de Sade’s castle in Provence where she was studying painting, so I figured a European vacation was just what I needed for artistic edginess. My aunt also prescribed Adderall to help me with my concentration issues.
The Swiss semester experience ended up being one of the best and worst moments of my life, and was a real turning point for me in many ways. The director of the program was a Nazi, and his son was even worse. There job was to groom us into Ivy League gentlemen and women, and this was accomplished by crushing anything that was seen as being slightly inappropriate. We were told that if we were not social, if we tried to be loners, we would be sent home. If we got fat, we would be sent home. (The girls got many ‘you’re getting fat” lectures, though we were hiking 4 hours a day). If we didn’t dress appropriately, we would be sent home. If we didn’t get high enough grades in our classes, we would be sent home. If we were caught dating anyone in the program, we would be sent home. We were told that our parents were 7,000 miles away, and that they couldn’t do anything, so we weren’t to bother calling and complaining. And yet, many people in the program loved these men (Mr. Robinson and KR), a fact I attribute to Stockholm’s Syndrome.
I was not social, I did not dress East Coast, I was not athletic, I was fat, and I listened to strange music. Needless to say, MR and KR hated me. They criticized me at every opportunity, pulling me aside to ridicule me about my clothes, criticize me for ‘trying to avoid making friends’, telling me to do extra hikes on Saturday to make up for my slowness during hikes on the weekends. The humiliation was so constant and so aggressive that I lived in perpetual fear of those men. So, I learned my most valuable life lesson: schmoozing. My relationships before had been based on my extreme honesty and sincerity. I learned instead that what you feel is not always as important as what you appear to feel. I found out that when I want to be, I can be extremely charming and elicit all manner of confidence from people. So I made friends with the preppiest students, borrowed their J. Crew sweaters, wore makeup, listened to country music and Jamarequi. It became like a game of survival, and I played it to survive as best I could. After a while, I started enjoying aspects of it.
I was never able to keep up on the hiking—at first I was too fat, then too exhausted—and by the end of hiking season (November) I was 5’10” and weighed only 115 pounds, and was too malnourished to put in the energy. I stopped my periods and I looked gaunt.
In winter I studied with John and Robert Kennedy’s ski instructor (scary and excellent), becoming an expert skier by the end of the trip, skiing down the Matterhorn to Italy. I chased many boys named John who did not return my love. But somehow, in those months, I became stable. I took etiquette classes and learned that wearing one’s emotions obviously is not necessarily a virtue. Honesty is important, but one conducts oneself in society so as to show courage. To assume that everyone’s happiness is easily won is rather vulgar. But as I was learning to compartmentalize, wear suits, have proper dinner conversation (I could write a book on the Swiss semester dinner etiquette courses we had EVERY NIGHT), behaving in every way like an adult, Laura was sending me letters. Beautifully illustrated, soul crushing letters. And I knew that I couldn’t balance a healthy life if she was in it. When I went back to school sophomore year, I didn’t handle things gracefully.
A continuing Pained Adolesence
I tended to gloss over the seventh and eighth grade aspects of junior high (about the time you dropped out), because they annoyed me and were a time in my life where I was sort of happy, but nothing very special. In fact, I am much more interested in reminiscing about the plunge into complete despair that was my freshman year. But there are some important developments of my 13 and 14 year old self that are worth mentioning:
1) The development of celebrity crushes.
As I raced through puberty like a cheetah, so to did my libido. Hockaday was single sexed, and church was divided into male/female, so I did not interact with boys from a period of about 12 to 18. As a result, to fill this niche, I developed a series of rabid, fanatical celebrity crushes. I had elaborate fantasies of how we would meet, and usually how he would declare his love in some public place in front of all the girls in my school. I usually cast myself in the role of hidden treasure, an unpolished diamond waiting for a man to realize my full untapped potential. The romance would usually progress something like this:
a) infatuation--seeing a celebrity in a movie or reading a magazine article that created a sense of complete adoration
b) research- every movie, every magazine article was systematically researched and poured over for information that would lead to make the fantasy element more real. When internet became popular, than internet was used to look up and print huge amount of photograghs
c)romantic love-said celebrity becomes my fake boyfriend. I wait for tv interviews, look for even the smallest mention in the tabloids, dream intricate dreams
d) acceptance-flaws are ineveitably pointed out and the passion cools. This is the 'marriage' stage. Begrudging, sweet compansionship
e) overthrow--a new celebrity enters the stage
To the best of my knowledge, my celebrity crushes have been in the following order: David Bowie, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Billy Corgan, Nicholas Cage, and Russell Crowe. I can still remember some of their birthdays.
2) The grooming of the perfect child
As the eldest I became the protege--I was the prototype, the surrogate son, the vessel for vicarious goals and wishes. As such, there were certain expectations--academics were never high enough, extracurriculars never glamorous enough. I was given Aeschyles, Socrates, James Joyce, Kafka--all at the age of about 13. I was on the debate team, i was pressured into x, y, and z. not to say that i didn't enjoy it, but it was work all the same.
3) The traveling
In order to be a well-groomed child, certain things were expected.Though we were never to be out of financial problems, our standard of living had gone up by the time I was in middle school to allow me to take tennis lessons again, allow me to travel most importantly. When I was 13 I was sent over to Rouen, with only a year of french under my belt, to live with a french family. I spent two weeks with the family, a small amount in retrospect, though at the time it seemed like ages and ages. I was so tramuatized I used to sleep with my mother's copy of "The Woman in White." I then spent another week sightseeing with a mix bag of kids, a few of whom were from my school: Paris, Mont St. Micheal, Tours, what have you. That week was the best week, as I was around people that spoke english. I felt very adult, very cool, very independent, and that was a great feeling. The tour instilled in me a healthy hatred of the french as a people, with a simultaneous love of their culture, a dichotomy I still struggle with. I also went back the next summer to Ireland and Wales, the next year England, and so on and so forth--nealry every year, a few weeks to a few months were spent in Europe, which created yet another border between me and everyone else, as I picked up weird ways of talking and global ways of seeing the world which, at a time when all anyone was talking about was how awesome Texas was, seemed hardly a reciepe for popularity.
4) Renewed interest in the gothic
I started getting crazy into Anne Rice Novels in the 7th grade, after a classmate gave a report on Interview with the Vampire. It was an obsession that didn't bate until I was almost ready to go to college. The homoerotic overtones, the blood, the S&M, the rock star arrogance--it was so exciting, sexy, and romantic. I have no doubt this series had a huge amount of influence while I was at a stage of forming sexual mores.
The one thing all these bits hae in common is a general push towards a much more adult, much more serious personality than I had wanted. I was turning into a little adult, and there was an enormous amount of unspoken pressure to act according to certain expectations. This pressure was naturally of the best intention, which made any rebellion seem selfish and quite embarassing. So I kept trying to be popular, kept kept trying to be a good student and a well spoken, articulate lady. Which made, at least for my parents, freshman year so inexplicable
My Middle Years, 11-15
Does it seem like I'm glorifying my life too much? I hope not. I feel like I'm Proust, taking my own mundane existance and holding it up as if it would be the source of unlimited interest. Feel free to ignore this at any time--it's simply a reference tool for any questions you may have as to why.
My first memory of Texas is standing in an airport watching my mother's feet while she had a miscarriage in an airport lavatory and hearing her cry. My second memory is of standing on the front lawn of our Texas house and feeling like my foot was on fire only to look down and see that I had stepped on a fire ant pile. These two incidents are perfect book-ends of my time spent in this godforsaken state.
Our furniture had not yet arrived when my mother became extremely ill. I had no books, there was no place to walk to, and I had two children to take care of while my mother was bed ridden. It was the highlight of my week if she pulled herself up long enough to take me to Sam's Club, where I would by dozens of whatever cheap books they had and then read them in a matter of one or two days. When my father came down he took my mother in to get X-rayed and it was discovered that what had been her baby was now a tumor, and she had to have a hysterectomy. While my mother underwent tests to get rid of her tumor, at the age of 11 I had control of the house and everything in it, and I got to play mom and undertake a huge amount of responsability. For a long time we assumed she was going to die, and as I had no friends (when one moves every year, one's family becomes one's friend), I had to wise up to the fact that the only thing stable in my life was about the be taken from me. It was at that moment, that summer, that I came to the conclusion that everyone in my life was, at some point, bound to leave me or let me down.
Luckily, my dad called some people at Harvard who had done advanced work in this field, and by employing some new procedures we were able to remove the tumor--now a bundle of hair, eyes, and teeth--without removing the womb. She was able to get pregnant with Jordan the next year. By then I had already started retreating into sci-fi and sixites counter culture music; I played with my chemistry set and had long Q&A sessions with my dad where he answered any questions I had about science, history, or literature. I made no new friends, as children in dallas do not play outside in the streets. They have soccer practice. My new school was about a year behind my old one and completely contrary to my learning style. It emphasized rules rather than learning, margins over clarity. As a result, I threw myself into learning to master Texas social rules too keep myself from going completely crazy. I was told at school that I would go to hell for being Mormon. I was told that peace signs were broken upside-down crosses. I made friends with boys first (I could take a punch, so I had an automatic in. The other girls resented this, but befriended me because I was close to boys, and in the fifth grade, boys were becoming an interest). I had been wearing bras off and on since the age of 9, but now at 11 it became the source of embarassment, having developed too quickly. I tried out for choir but was never good enough to get a solo, which destroyed my confidence. I fell in love with many boys, all who ignored me romantically, all who went after my best female friend, lead skank Cathy Dixon. One even screamed when I tried to kiss him on the last day of school. I beat people up and I hung out with a kid who picked the scabs from his head wound (tumor also) because he was jewish and I missed hanging out with jews. I made fun of a dumb poor kid because he wore the same shirt every day and he wasn't a good reader. I often came to schoool sick and threw up in front of people. The stress of so many new schools was beginning to catch up.
And then my parents sent me to another school.
At 12 my parents sent me to the Hockaday School for Girls, one of the top private schools in the nation. Previously, my only friends had been boys, so going to an all-girls school seemed like suicide. It was at this time also that my parents had the idea to build a house. While in retrospect they claim that building the house wasn't a big stress for me, they were wrong. They fought about grout, tile, insulation, windows. The builder ripped us off, and they fought about that. They were always meeting with architects, always out of the house. And with a brand-new baby, I had to pick up the slack, I had to babysit and clean because my mother was never around.
Then after the builder ripped us off we had to move into an apartment to save money. The apartment was much too small for our family, and I never had any privacy, which doesn't seem like it would matter unless you're 12 or 13, and then you want your space. We lived right by a highway and a tollway so I wasn't allowed to leave the apartment. My first year at private school was a disaster--I was (not as, but still) poor, I rolled my socks down and buttoned my shirt up to the top and had woody allen coke glasses and could only communicate through rough and tumble sports or the overtly slutty ways of the girls I used to hang out with. Hockaday girls were rich and coy, and none of them wanted to be with me, nor did their parents want them to be with me (and believe me, many girls told me about their mom's disapproval of my family). The year I went to Hocakday only 6 girls were accepted: Ib, who later went on to be one of my best friends, Leigh Notestein, at first an enemy (we went to public school together and were in different circles) but in high school, a friend, Jenna and Barbara Bush (later to be the first daughters), and some other girl of no significance. Ib and I became friends because we both took french and couldn't catch up (other girls had 3 or 4 years of the language in lower school), both of us were poor, and both of us were ostracized-she because of race, I because of religion.
As a result of lame public schooling, I was at least a year behind on everything but English. I worked very hard, but between the house-building, the new baby, the money problems, and the apartment-living, I didn't exactly blossom. Finding me socially awkward, many girls took their anger out on me. One put a poster on my locker saying I was a great person, than made fun of me behind my back when I was visibly delighted. The Bush twins took every opportunity to make fun of my taste in music (beatles? rolling stones? the four seasons?). I spent my free moments, my recesses, and my lunch hours in the library with other book worms (Gwyneth Gravelle, among others) reading as much escapist literature as possible. I must have gone through 10 books a week. I liked horror mostly--Louis Duncan, RL Stein though absurdism like Louis Sacher also delighted me. Gwenyth was really into Dune and Dragon Lance and tried to get me into fantasy sci fi (I preferred ray bardbury and "Star Trek"), which I took up for a breif period but ultimately disliked.
I made friends slowly with however would have me. Often the foreign students--people from Eastern Europe like Zoya, Eva, Sanida, people from Africa like Ib, Jewish girls and exchange students like Sung Yeoung from Korea--these are the people who I made friends with. I spent a lot of time by myself, talking with adults. Some girls had their boyfriends call and invite me to a dance as a joke. I cried a lot.
Seventh grade I sort of decided I had had enough, and started taking little steps to coolness. Cut off my hair, wore my socks rolled up like everyone else, unbuttoned, loosened up. I had learned how to study, was in advance Math classes, was taking extra curricular geography, etc. I never managed to catch up with french though. In order to make myself more socially acceptable I started sifting through my friends, slowly removing some that were holding me back socially (Gwenyth, Sung Yeoung), and aligning myself with more easy going and funny girls--Bonnie, Meg, Ib, my Eastern Block. Most of those friendships splintered off by high school, as I was never rich enough or had enough connections to warrant friendship. But those that stuck it out with me, I stayed friends with to this day.
The lease on our apartment ran out around the start of the 8th grade, and I was forced to live with my grandparents while our house was finished being built (my paternal grandparents had moved from Pheonix to live and die near us). It was the start of the deteroriation in my relationship with them, as my grandfather was so mean to me, and my grandmother so passive and complaining, that I lived an independant existance, though constantly annoyed, constantly interrupted. People at church, taking pity on my backwards taste, started passing me tapes of Hole, Nirvana, and Marilyn Manson. I started listening to modern rock radio. I had no real impression when kurt cobain died, but on the first anniversary of his death, I was very moved. I got my ears pierced and started wearing jewelry. Cut my hair dyke short which in retrospect, was a bad decision, as it started the rumor mill turning for the rest of high school. But by the time I had graduated from junior high, I was in possession of a group of real female friends for the first time in my life, and I was in all the most advanced classes again (my 6th grade marks were not so good). I was in a good place to be entering high school, so its funny that my freshman year turned out the way it did.
A brief history of my young life in under 30 minutes, revised
In my hurry to type this up, I had a shocking amount of spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as anachronistic memories, so I'm going back and patching some things up.
In order to understand me, Serge love, I suppose one must understand naturally the situations that caused me to become the person I am. As I start work soon, I will try as briefly as possible to outline the freudian explanations as to how I arrived comme ca.
Both sets of my grandparents married because they had to--maternal because of a "premature birth" situation, paternal because both were too old/plain to find anyone else. Both my grandmothers married men beneath their own class, which is perhaps what caused the strange sort of man-worship in their sons and a complete disinterest in their daughters-a way of compensating by creating heros to idolize. Both sides were LDS, though my maternal family babtized in rather late in my mother's life and have never been what one would call 'active.'
Though they met and fell in love at a church dance when they were 13, my parents were not faithful during their long 7 year courtship. My mom cheated on my dad at 13, and my dad found love in the arms of several girls. When he was 16 my dad fell in love with his debate partner, a non member introvert named Glenna, and got engaged to her at 18, even graduating early to go to the University of Missouri to be close to her. My mom was engaged to 4 other men. They started writing on his mission though, knew they were meant for each other, and got engaged when my dad caught Glenna cheating on him. My parents will be the first to admit that little more than lust and gut instinct induced them to matrimony.
My parents were forbiddden to marry because my mom was 'too low class' and my father was 'a homosexual communist', but when they threatened to elope my extended family begrudingly went to the wedding, hiring a drunk photographer as a way of really digging it in. My mother did not want to have kids, as her mother was emotionally and physically abusive, but after a set of religious experiences which I will not explain, my mother made the decision to stop taking birth control and I was concieved the next day. Interesting, as one is supposed to be unable to conceive until at least 6 weeks off of the pill.
I was born in Kansas City, MO on vacation but quickly brought to California where my father was just finishing up his degree from Stanford, where he transferred after marrying my mom. Though brilliant in her own right, my mother never finished Ricks College because she hated classes and the rules the school required, such as 'no gambling', 'no swearing', 'no smoking'-about half way through her freshman year she shaved her head, dropped out, and moved back in with her parents. To put my father through school after they married she worked alternately as a groundsman for TWA (the first woman to do so) and as a cashier in an upscale hollywood grocery store.
When I was about 1 I was moved to Washington DC where I would remain 4 or so years while my father got his medical degree from George Washington University. We lived in my aunt marlene's basement. She was a child pschyologist who was docile in nature-truley angelic, but when roused to anger was perhaps the most terrifying creature under the sky. Aunt Marlene, also a Northwestern graduate, had the misfortune of being a brilliant LDS girl, and as a result could never find anyone bright enough to marry. In the end, she compromised and married the one man who was an intellectual challenge, a charming, well educated, brilliant freudian pyschologist. Though Uncle John was an atheist, he promised to have repsect for his wife's religious beliefs. He did not. A spoiled only child, John had a violent temper, an alcholic temperment, a distrust and dislike of the mind control of religion. I remember cowering from him, his drunken abuse, the way he used to beat my cousins and swear at me and threaten to do horrible things to us if anything was broken or out of place. It was later the example set by this relationship, which I remember perhaps the most clearly of any of my early childhood memories, that convinced me to never marry outside of the church.
However, both my aunt and uncle were excellent pyschiatrists. While both of them tried to heal my mother's childhood scars, I was raised in a hippie-like enviornment of organic foods and Samoean dogs. Ken Starr was my neighbor. I played with my cousins, JD (my age) and Jenny (4 years older and an excellent artist-an inspiration for my later art interest). I watched imported Japanese cartoons, unicorn movies, or shows JD wanted to watch: GI Joes and Transformers. My playmates were masculine, (Jenny was often in school), but as a result of the hippies, I grew up in a gender-free enviorment with no real sexual rules (Boys don't wear that! Girls don't act like that!), though mom did tell me I had a prediliction for giving strip teases (age 3!) to the neighborhood boys. That I blame on the high level of testosterone I must have inherited from my mother, who has an abnormally high sex drive.
Although I was young I clearly remember growing up in the basement without windows or heating. I saw a monster there-a black shape next to my bed with two bright green eyes. For the rest of my life people have tried to explain this away, but I am sure of its existance, which may help explain my interest in the supernatural. Moving away from Washington DC was the saddest moment in my life and would be the start of a pattern of uprooting, as I was always snatched away just as I was fitting in and making friends.
For a few months my parents moved back and forth between Cambridge and Paris. I remember both vividly, I remember my mother being depressed, and I remember being yelled at. I started developing a soothing and peace-maker-like personality to avoid being hit. My mother didn't get on antidepressants until I was 11 or so, so I had a lot of time to hone the skills of avoiding setting people off. I still hate tempers, and I will never allow myself to be hit.
At age 5 I moved to Tucson, AZ while my father had his residency at U of A. I remember liking the desert, liking my grandparents (lived in Phoenix), liking the quiet danger of wandering off (death by thirst, scorpians, coyotes, flash floods, etc) which made natural exploration all that much more enjoyable. There were few if any girls in the neighborhood, and the only people my age were little boys. Boys that skateboarded, liked sports, played Ninetendo. So I played Ninetendo, tried to skateboard, vandalized buildings, caught and hurt animals, got in fights, whatever, because that's what the gang did. One of the neighbor boys-Conrad, about 11, who I had a huge crush on- locked me in a closet when I was about 7 and made me take off all my clothes and lie down on his naked body until he counted to 100. For a long time I thought what had happened was molestation, though recently I have come to believe it a silly childhood game with limited pyschological trauma (no violence, no real intrusion, more like a game of doctor than anything) other than a rabid fascination with male genitalia and sex. I can never remember there being a time after that incident where I did not think of boys.
I was put in special natural science courses in school and taught myself to read around the age of 5. My father, who always lived vicariously through me, pushed me to excel at all the sciences, as he had excelled at them growing up. I won the state science fair competition for a project (which mouthwash cleans germs the best?) that was later declared a biohazard by Arizona State University because of its live samples of bacteria grown in dishes and subsequently destroyed. I won my first poetry contest at 8. Quickly mastering the classroom computers, I spent hours writing long stories about Christmas or playing math games, and often my teachers left me alone instead of participating in class. Unlike most bright kids, I dug school and wasn't bored, but rather made it fun and was thankfully given enough leniancy to make my own challenges. I had a little posse of girlfriends in addition to my boy friends, but invariably my mother felt my girlfriends were too trampy, but I always liked them because they were popular and wore cool clothes, and we listened to the same sort of bands--Madonna, Roxette, MC Hammer. My mom listened to metal like GnR and Bon Jovi, so I listened to that music too--my favorite album when I was 8 was Aerosmith's "Pump". As a result of being poor and having a lot of MTV in my childhood, I gravitated to things that were dirty, angry, scary, or new. But this desire was just beginning to percilate--it wouldn't become developed for several more years.
When I was babtized at 8, only 2 people came. The average Mormon babtism has over 10-20 people, 10 being the absolute barest. This started the beginning of a life-long fear that if I have a special gathering, people will not show up.
After Arizona my mother needed some money to help pay off my dad's debts, so we moved to California--LA area--so my mother could go back to work for TWA. We lived out there about 3 months. My aunt Rosemary came to watch me (maternal aunt). Rosemary hated kids, she hated LA, she hated work. As a result, I spent every day in a small, roach infested apartment with one old 4 channel tv that only had reruns of mash and the Brady Brunch, and I spent my days completely bored out of my mind, praying that I would be taken to the park or taken for a walk, but i never was, Rose just spent the entire time on the phone talking with her boyfriend. Half the time she would forget to feed me. The only thing of interest was a balcony I wasn't allowed to go out on. There was a tree outside with these strange fruits that looked like potatos. My mom picked one for me after work once and I played with the strange hollow plant every day until finally Rosemary threw it away. The incident in the apartment was, strangely, one of the most tramautic times in my life.
After the second grade my parents moved us to Chestnut Hill in Boston. The neighborhhod was old and Jewish, and we lived in a split level house that was over 100 years old and full of lime-green and orange carpeting. The family that lived below us had a crazy thirtysomething daughter who was obsessed with Zorro and had a black mustache, and I hated her because she would never shut up. She was like the neighborhood phantom--incredibly pale, always lurking out of every corner. The house was constantly cold and we couldn't afford heat. The basement was dark and full of long shadows. I liked the strange green trees and the strange plants edible plants--chives, onions, crab apples, and I made friends with strange neighborhood kids, but my friends were odder, less popular, more nerdy. I had to get glasses around this time which made me feel ugly and dorky, and I wasn't a dork, I was cool, all my old Arizona friends were cool. For the first time I had something to prove; I slapped some kid (Brian Epstein) who thought he was so smart because he could add fractions and was in private advanced math and I couldn't and wasn't, and one day he said something to me about how I had screwed something up and I hit him. Then I lied about it. That made the problem worse, and the resulting parent-teacher conference shook me up so badly I vowed not only never to lie again (when it could be helped) but moreover, to always be the best in everything so I wouldn't have to go around slapping people. My teacher Mrs. Struthers was a scary, tyrannical black women who had hideous breath and would always yell at me. Her violence did teach me, however, to sit still and pay attention, something the Arizona school system forgot to pass along.
My father used to have to moonlight over in a MA suburb, and the only thing to do in the whole town was go to Marshall's or go to CVS. Since I hated shopping, mom used to leave me in the car, sometimes for 4 or 5 hours. After a while, I started developing a method of entertaining myself in a locked car, through which I would tell myself stories or make up elaborate movies in my head. As you may have noticed, there is a pattern of me being left alone in places for huge periods of time with nothing to do, which for someone as curious as I am is tantamount to torture. By this time, I had 2 sisters, so I was alone, and I was babysitting, and I had to entertain myself and two children.
The most pervasive problem throughout my childhood was money. We were on welfare for a long time, we never had proper holidays, we never went to the movies or ate out or did anything. This is partly to explain my rabid desire in college to go downtown, go out to eat, go anywhere. While my parents still found the money to give me tennis lessons and occasionally go to Europe, everything was tight, and I was always hyper aware of everything we spent, as my parents often stayed up late fighting about it.
After one year in Chestnut Hill, we moved to Brookline, as a friend of my dad's rented us his house. I liked this area better, as it had a forest behind it with wild rasberry bushes and an insane asuylum behind it. I used to poke about the forest and discover dark and scary things like abandoned sheds. It was a very gothic, robert-frost place to live, and the basement was filled with strange boxes. I was always sure a murderer was down there. While my dad continued to teach at Harvard, I went to a new school. This time, all my friends were popular, but for the wrong reasons: They were black boys, and all of them intimidated the other kids in class by the way they talked. It was a cute machismo thing, and I could talk pretty mouthy myself. My white friend, Zach, couldn't control his mouth either and swore all the time. My teacher put me in the desk next to him so I could help him out, and I taught him to study, and eventually he ended up being an honor student (he called to thank me two years ago, which was very sweet). Zach was my first boyfriend--he used to take me down to the basement of his house and curl up next to me while we watched "Nightmare on Elm Street." My girlfriends were unpopular geeks like Allison, the tennis star, or popular hos, like Julia (no, not my sister Julia). I began to see that as we grew older, cliques became more firmly settled, outsiders more distrusted, and the people who would accept new people such as myself would be ore and more strange and outsider-ish themselves.
I took woodshop and played basketball. My friends dressed me up in the best of early nineties fashion and took me to a dance where no one danced with me. Boys and I were beginning our strange dance of misunderstanding. I was put in advanced reading classes where I had to skip class twice a week and take additional high school classes in english. I read the books but never participated in the conversations about said books, as I found that gay. I was placed by the school district in special creative writing classes, which I found awesome. To this day, I appreciate the public schools I went to for their ability to reach out and excite me about education. Most of these programs were later labeled elitist and cut from the curriculum.
And after two years, our families debts became to severe, and we left Boston. And as an 11 year old weed, I was uprooted again to Texas. Thus ends my young life and my thirty minutes. Time for work.
I haven't forgotten you, but I'm still dealing with Massive Headwound Harry here. Give me another day for my response, love? Cheers
A little bit of this, a little bit of that, duh duh buh dum duh
My reasons for not seeing nudity in movies has nothing to do with my aversion to breasts, per se-if so I could turn my head during dozens of movies. While that is part of it, it's a side bar. I have no problem with the nudity in "Orlando" or "Room with a View", for example, and have out of curiousity's sake have had my fair share of "Playboy" and "Playgirl" thumbings. No no, the main reason I don't see movies that have nudity is because I'm a feminist. Nudity always means female nudity, sex seens always means breast shots. These shots are always done for the purpose of bringing male viewers to the audience, or done because the male director doesn't feel comfortable with male nudity, or because male nudity is 'distracting' for an audience who has been spoonfed the notion that male sexuality is humourous or disgusting. These attitudes are disgusting, and I will not keep contributing money to film makers who are trying to make more money by selling female titty shots to 13 year old boys. I'm not even going to get into this subject, or I will become uncontrollable and start smashing the keyboard.
as Byatt is the most brilliant woman alive. I am so glad I pushed to the end of her "Little Black Book of Short Stories" because the stories keep getting better and better as the book progresses. Her stories are so dense and gothic that they tap into my love of both magical realism and Jane Austen, and it's instant enchantment. One story in particular is called "Raw Materials" which is about a failed writer who teaches creative writing classes to boring people who write stories about murders and rape as therapy. The teacher stresses that writing isn't therapy, and becomes thrilled when one of his students begins writing about how to blacken a stove. The teacher reads the story allowed, and the class hates it because there is "no coherent narrative." The teacher enters the student's story about stoves in a contest, and it wins. He bikes over to her house to tell her and discovers her naked and dead on the floor, with years and years of scratches, bruises, scars, burns, and scabs all over her body. SHe had been secretly tortured for years, finally being slit across the throat, and yet her writing was always about stoves and laundry. The story was so elegant, poignant, and profound--I can't even verbalize my feelings on the truth and elegance of this story. And in an interesting twist, it was the only story the critics universally hated in her collection. Also worth the investment is "Stone Woman", about a woman who slowly turns into a collection of mica and lava after the death of her mother. Since my short stories are about a woman who gets eaten by crows or a car accident or vomiting lungs, Byatt speaks to my macabre. I am presently stewing on a story about a woman who becomes a cathedral.
Since chapter 1 is short, want to read chapters 1+2 for next Sunday?
So when do you want to start with the Divine Church? I think we should have the deadline for our weeks reading/posting be Sunday (appropriatly). I finally finished Byatt's "Little Black Book of Short Stories" which was well worth the push to the end. The best stories were kept for last. Let me know when you want to get low, as little john would say
