After this post, you may not hear from me for a little while, given I’ll be out of town, yet again, when really, I’d like nothing more than to just grab a very fluffy blanket, my itchy puppy (that’s not a euphemism), and the nice pile of books I’ve been fascinated with lately. But alas.

When I return, I really need to get back to some visual and multimedia artwork, because my mind is begging me for it, so what I’ll likely do is get started on the full wall project I took photos for in Chicago regarding some of my history, and brainstrom text for each one by one in the journal. I haven’t used this as the creative workbook it’s often served double-duty as for me over the years in some time, and it’s high time I revisit that potent use. I also am beyond behind with photo processing: I have a good six or seven beautiful portrait sessions lying in wait, and you know, right about now, I could use pictures without words for a while.

However, now that I’m nearly finished with it, I have to take a minute to rave and then rave some more about Janice Irvine’s Disorders of Desire: Sexuality And Gender In Modern American Sexology. I swapped my very worn copy of bell hooks’ All About Love for this with my mother’s partner, and it was a very awesome swap (especially since I’ve read that hooks so many times, I can nearly quite it verbatim — that book is the best treatise on love ever written, as far as I’m concerned).

It’s exceptionally rare for me to find books that are really about the sort of work that I do and the history of the sort of work that I do. However mixed my feelings were through parts of the film Kinsey, for instance, I was in tears throughout just because it was so bloody nice to feel addressed, and to see some attention paid to this work. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: working in sexuality is seriously isolating, especially in this culture, with the groups I serve, and when the work you do isn’t “sexy” or entertaining. (And even then, nearly ANY sort of sex or sexuality worker is usually very isolated and very marginalized, but that’s stating what should be mighty obvious.)

But what’s fantastic about the Irvine book is that it focuses in great depth on how much all of sexology, sexuality reserach and sex therapy and education has been strongly biased due to the fact that it has been address of all genders which has been dominated and formed by one: men.

Really, when it all comes down to it, when we’re talking sexuality exclusively, rather than reproductive health, up untl the last twenty years — and really, more like the last ten — it is a field that has been completely male-dominated. Sure, Virginia Johnson was female, but she was in a very secondary position as an assistant to William Masters, and he ran the show, big-time. Shere Hite did work before the last twenty years, but in sexology her work was largely discounted because of her sex, because what she found did not support the status quo and because of what were seen as methodological problems (which, from what I can tell, was actually just her getting called on some of the same sorts of flaws male researchers had in their work, but she was being held to a higher standard because she had to prove her right to do the work simply because she was not male). It’s easy to forget that over just the last ten years, an awful lot has changed as far as women finally having some influence and part in sexology. For instance, I could have sworn Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography had been around for slightly more than ten years, but I just started rereading it again and lo, it was published in ye olde 1999.

It’s always been a bit of a strange balancing act for me to do the work I do and find the space between what is seen as the medical-credible, as well as sexological “standards” and what either clearly or probably are aspects of all of that which are so influenced by gender bias and heterosexism, and where the direct and cumulative observations one makes having done the work oneself through simply stand in total conflict, as do things when you consider the context and the biases afoot. And in this field, as with many, we often see the “science” or the medical speaking over the populace they’re supposed to be serving, stating that what the populace reports to be for them simply isn’t so because the science says otherwise.

I answer sexuality questions nearly every single day, and read personal testimonial and narrative on sex nearly every single day, and have for nearing ten years now. If I was reading, say, in 1965, women saying what they did then (when given the space to say so safely, which was infrequent) and still do now, about the fact that vaginal intercourse alone is not physically satisfying for a majority of them, the “science” would have stood in direct conflict to the women it was supposed to serve, largely because that “science” was dominated by a group of people for whom that was an unacceptable answer, and whose studies were completely skewed by their bias, and whose solutions to that “problem,” when it was recognized, were — as most things are — all about doing anything and everything to preserve the status quo, which, at that time (as if often the case now) were to be sure the nuclear family, the male-female unit and “normal” gender roles were protected. If I were to have said out loud that this conflict existed, or pointed out bias, I would have been laughed out of the room and ripped to shreds publicly.

Most of us know about turn-of-the-century approaches to women’s sexuality, but don’t know, or pass by, the fact that even less than twenty years ago, the new version of nymphomania, sex addiction, was defined as affecting women who did such clearly outrageous things as masturbate, use personals ads, have one night stands, prepare for sex (as in, clean one’s bedroom, choose to wear certain clothing), or engage in sexual fantasy. (Suffice it to say, this behaviour in men did not class them as sex addicted.) And of course, the opposite end of the spectrum, frigidity, would include things like not having an interest in, or satisfaction with heterosexual intercourse, not having sexual desire to a degree that matched that of a male partner, having body image issues, etc.

In other words, there’s often been — and often still is — no middle ground when it comes to women’s sexuality from a medical perspective, and often a clinical sexological one: too much desire is a disorder, too little desire is a disorder, and the criteria for both often overlap, resulting in no healthy manifestation of women’s sexuality whatsoever, save if it is in agreement with whomever the man in question — husband, doctor, greengrocer — just happens to be and whatever he happens to want.

Without digging deeply into the history of this arena, people often forget that even the gender essentialism we see in so much general and sex information now, and what we’re told are male and female diferences and male and female needs arose from gender theorists and sexologists with a huge bias (and too, funders they were trying to keep), and for whom it was an absolute given that one essential part of being a normal male and a normal female was being heterosexual, and that that given strongly influenced every assumption and conclusion drawn on top of it. One of the tragedies of this was that a focus on gender roles in the first place was bastardized from feminist theory, but the way it was applied in sexology was often to do whatever could be done to safeguard sexism and heteronormativity. Grr.

Without examining the history of sexology and sex therapy, we forget that a whole awful lot of it has been outright abusive to women: sex therapy in the 70’s into the 90’s often involved “prescribing” sex with one’s therapist, for instance, or group sex sessions without any foundation of healthy limits, boundaries and negotiation (or even the desire for group sex on the part of the patient).

Like it or not, accept it or not, it’s pretty well documented that sexologists during the second wave of feminism more often than not absolutely reviled the feminists pointing out these flaws, and contributed plenty to the idea that feminism was, in and of itself, anti-sex, because so much of it protested not sex itself, but the way sex was being presented and prescribed by sexology, the media and the medical — all male dominated — at the time. This, for the record, is one very substantial reason why much of second wave feminism is very wary of sexology as a whole, and it’s hardly an invalid concern. I’d say it took me more than a few years to really get that.

And boy, howdy: you want to look at a woman that could stand to toss out her well-worn .45 of “Stand By Your Man,” take a hard look at Virginia Johnson — I knew enough of some of the pretty creepy ways she’d (well, both of them) operated — like with their programs to “cure” homosexuals — but Irvine had some pretty choice quotes in there from her from conferences that seriously made my skin crawl. Johnson seems to me to have been aware that without the wagon she was hitched to in terms of Masters, she wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on, since she could easily see that the few female contemporaries she had who were trying to work without a man or a male organization behind them were quickly silenced and mocked. It strikes me as a pretty classic example of the struggle so many women deal with in anything when it comes to the rock and a hard place of supporting other women without winding up unsupported yourself. I’m not about to let that sort of thing go unquestioned and unobserved, nor say that I think tossing other women under the bus because they’re putting the man who you’re dependent on in some sort of quasi-jeapordy is by any stretch okay, but I do think it’s helpful to take stock of some of WHY this so often happens, especially with work in such male-dominated fields.

(I’m reminded, actually, of the female staffer for Girls Gone Wild who is quoted in Levy’s Female Chauvanist Pigs, who said things that felt flat-out harrowing to me when it came to the utter lack of care and concern for other women, who also clearly seemed to see herself as being in a struggle for their own survival — which she’d justify this with — even if that’s not really the case. The difference between good money and a shitload of money is not an issue of survival, folks.)

It’s been interesting to read this book, because some part of me had actually forgotten why, when I started developing Scarlet Letters in ‘97, and tried to focus on sexuality and eroticism in the latter half of my college years in ‘90, it felt like such strangely uncharted terrain, and like I just couldn’t find that information I wanted and needed. Why, in so many ways, it felt a whole lot like shouting into a void. At the time, not having enough of the background and history, I just assumed I was being a dolt and not looking in the right places: at first, it just didn’t even occur to me that much of the information I was looking for just plain didn’t exist, or that the reason why what I could found seemed so conflicting and unrealistic because there was no woman’s voice at all in the vast majority of the information about women. When I found out that the reason I wasn’t finding much was that there wasn’t much there to find yet, it was pretty shocking to me.

And it has been SO FREAKING REFRESHING to read this book because these are issues and problems I think about and talk about all of the time, but given how specialized a discourse they are, half the time no one else knows what on earth I’m going on about. It’s a dream to have someone else not only addressing this, but going over my head with it at times, and talking about facets of it that I wasn’t yet even familiar with: I relish opportunities for beginner’s mind, and am so grateful when they fall into my lap.

Things HAVE gotten better, for sure. But honestly, I get frustrated in this field a LOT, because in some many ways, they still aren’t very good, especially when it comes to women’s sexuality, and to sexuality or identity that is not heteronormative, gendernormative or heterosexual. I still see a majority of young girls being advised on sex by men, without a real effort made to understand that they are reared as and live as girls — if I hear an older man tell young women even one more time how much better casual sex would be for them than a serious relationship, totally dismissing their greater physical risks as well as the cultural climate they live in that punishes them profoundly for anything other than sex in the context of marriage or “serious” romance — and not mentioning, of course, that such a choice also benefits men — I swear, I’ll scream. I see them furnished with information that came primarily or solely through a male lens, and same goes for reproductive health and public policy on women’s reproductive health and rights, without any real examination of that fact, nor an urge to better balance it. Ridiculously, one often has to explain and defined why this is all so problematic, when were the shoe on the other foot, no explanation would be needed, as it would be a very easy — and equally valid — outrage. Can you imagine how men as a class would react if all of most of the information about their sexuality was coming from women, filtered through women, and women were setting up or enabling a system to be sure to keep their voices OUT or muted so that the information (and our unquestioned positions as Experts) could be sure to suit our agenda and personal sexual desires first and foremost, and their sexuality framed in such a way to be sure it always met our needs first?

I still see sexuality information for anyone who isn’t heterosexual prefaced endlessly with statements to us, from straight people, that it is OKAY (with them) that we’re not straight. Phew! We were so worried there for a minute! Sexuality information for anyone who isn’t gendernormative or even biologically XX or XY basically still mostly puts everyone in a space where we still have to choose within a binary system, even when the mere existence of anyone at all who is not gendernormative automatically renders that system meaningless as a default or a given. (I’ll give you that that’s a difficult one to practically handle, mind, and I know I haven’t got it anything close to down either, but when not only is the effort TO move away from that not made, but a lot of effort is put into making damn sure we remain there — heck, there’s a quote from John Money in DOD where he flat-out says that without a binary system of gender, the world would literally fall apart — I still get to bitch, even if I haven’t perfected the approaches yet myself.)

I’ve been asked more than once why I don’t just go and get a medical degree, to up my credibility. Beyond the fact that that’s a pretty silly thing to suggest to someone who is already poor, the fact of the matter is that I don’t want one, largely in part because I know full well what that experience would likely be like for me. For starters, most general and even OB/GYN programs have sexuality segments that, at most, are a few weeks long, and which involve a curricula of books which I have already read: my sexuality library is massive. I know that in many ways, med school for someone like me would be an agonizing process of railing against the machine for a piece of paper which would likely only put me in more debt, and give me no new practical options: I have no interest in directly practicing medicine, in being any more involved in the western medical system than I already am, and in being given a credibility which, while accepted by many, is strongly suspect in my book, because of a lot of the issues Irvine has brought up in DOD. I also know that right now, I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing to be best qualified to do the sort of work I do: I’m having one-on-one, unhurried, in-depth discussions with my “clients,” I’m reading a vast array of material at all times from a diverse group of perspectives, and I’m working in the field doing my level best to observe daily to find the needs had and then serve those needs, not as I determine them, but as those in need are directly expressing them. It’s pretty amazing, really, and the ‘net, of all things, really was the great open door I thought it might have been way back when when it comes to women’s sexual narratives and those of young people: there are certainly still big barriers to that online, given, but I’m not sure any other media has provided as many opportunities in this regard.

In short, over the last ten years, I’ve been getting the best kind of education possible in this arena, an education that I feel in many ways, is ideal and should be at least part of what the “credible” folks are getting to. But as it stands, that’s not often the case.

This book has also served as a really nice reminder for me that I really like the work that I do, quite a lot, and I like the way I am able to DIY it. I’m pleased as punch to be able to do it the way that I do, and what gets me the most down about it isn’t the work itself, but the external problems with it: the culture, history and (what should be) support systems that don’t support it or outright protest it, the problems I have in getting paid, and the fact that it’s very frustrating for me both for myself and for the people I serve that there are so many needless and destructive barriers to finding and getting real, inclusive and unbiased information, even from my back end (no, not THAT back end) here. The last few days, I’ve gone ahead and let myself get back in the groove of doing my job for as many hours as I want to — and this may sound silly — without feeling like I can’t answer question after question and read piece after piece when that’s the work I love to do because I’m not making ends meet with it at the moment. Ms. Irvine was a big help with that, so my hat’s off to her.

(What else has been on my bookshelf lately? As I said, I’ve been revisiting Natalie Angier’s — has anyone read The Canon yet? — going over Toni’s Cycle Savvy, and also getting started with Courtney Martin’ sPerfect Girls, Starving Daughters, which so far, I think is utter brilliance and right on target. Coincidentally per this entry, in her introduction she says that she feared people wouldn’t find her qualified simply by taking the time to observe and listen to tons of women in her life and outside it, rather than getting the piece of paper to be a body image or ED Big Person With Big Paper. Maybe it’s the ex-Montessori teacher in me speaking, but I am so troubled by the process of mindful observation somehow being tossed out of the credible pile, when, in fact, that is what”’scientific” data is supposed to largely be in the first place. It’s also troubling to me to hear casual discussion of how meaningless observation is because of biases or carelessness when, in fact, one can practice observation as a viable skill, and be mindful of biases to take them into account. We’ve got to be awfully careful not to toss the baby out with the bathwater, especially since without first-person reporting and credibility, and sensitive observation, we wind up with exactly the sort of fine messes I’ve been prattling on about.)

posted in Heather Corinna, soapbox, feminism, women, sexuality | permalink | comments (7) »

Since my day began with yet another vet visit and yet another staggering vet bill, there’s really no sense in not going ahead and writing about one of the not-so-great parts of my Chicago trip, since I’m in a pissy mood already.

(Just so no one worries overmuch, Sofia isn’t on her deathbed or anything. The current diagnosis is that due to being exposed to fleas and now-verified mange, she had to both deal with the parasites — and now my cat has to be treated, too — AND the allergic reaction she had to them, and now also, apparently, that allergic reaction has stirred up her food allergies, so she has to have a food switch as well. At the moment, rather than itching herself into a frenzy as she has been, she’s sacked out on the sofa looking very comforted by a huge dose of antihistimines, which I really hope keep working, because the vet says if not, it’s on to cortisone injections. All this with the dog who has never had a single health issue. When it rains…)

I want to open this up by noting that both the book events I had in Chicago, even though one had some serious badness, were easily the best book events I have had so far. Both were apparently record-attendance events for both shops, which made me feel tremendously good. Both had incredible people at both of them who were a joy to meet, and who I felt very lucky to count as supporters and readers of mine.

At the Women and Children First event, we had a wonderful event coordinator and a very nicely diverse turnout. They’d told me that they never did so well with teen-specific events, and so we’d jointly decided to bill the event as a sort of remedial Sex Ed 101 for people of all ages, as well as a signing. In opening the event, I briefly explained what I do when it comes to Scarleteen, what S.E.X. covers, and also gave a relatively short list of what sorts of topics I could answer questions on. My list was essentially this: puberty, all-gender anatomy, sexual orientation, gender identity, birth control, safer sex, sexual response and function, masturbation, partnered sex, general relationships, body image, sexually transmitted diseases, all aspects of human reproduction, reproductive options and other related topics. Overall, I feel like I gave a very clear impression that I was addressing practical, tangible issues rather than theoretical or academic issues.

Most of the audience seemed to grasp that easily, including the handful of young adults that were there, the wonderful older male gay sexual health advisor, my parents and my mother’s girlfriend, the couple friends I had in the audience, a couple grad students and…well, almost everyone.

The only two people who either could NOT grasp that or who perhaps simply did not WANT to grasp that were two middle-aged, white, hetero men in attendance.

Now. For all I know, one or both of these men read me here. If you are one of these men and are reading, and feel I am somehow misrepresenting you…well, that’s kind of too bad, since what I’m about to say here was the impression everyone else there seemed to be left with, too, especially since I could see all of their faces throughout. If I hurt your feelings in any way, know that is not my intent, even though I do intended to be rather direct, and don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be.

I also want to say that one of these men announced publicly about 2/3rds of the way through the event that he had a social disorder. While I still think it was possible for him to behave differently than he did in many respects — or if he absolutely could not, to exempt himself from situations where he cannot control his behaviour — you have to give someone credit for not only being aware of that sort of disability, but for being somewhat accountable for it. Especially since the other man in the audience clearly ALSO had a social disorder — one profoundly worse than Man One did — but I don’t imagine that for a minute he would have even considered that he did, nor that if he knew he did, he would have chosen to behave any differently if behaving differently was an option for him.

Both men seemed to show up with an agenda, to the degree that one even came with prepared notes. Both men didn’t seem to care, at all, that a) they were in a women’s space, and b) there were younger people and younger women in attendance for whom the way each spoke most of the time was seriously disrespectful, purposefully intimidating and big-time inappropriate. And you know, when someone who thinks it is appropriate to sit in a group and talk easily and shamelessly about lubing up for anal sex, fisting or get in-depth about what an HPV wart looks like thinks you’re talking inappropriately, you know you’ve pushed one hell of an envelope.

Both men clearly didn’t want to talk about ANY of the subjects listed, nor let anyone else talk about them, myself included. Both men repeatedly and relentlessly spoke over any and every other audience member.

Man One, with the social disorder, basically was entirely focused on pornography and seemingly on having sex with every woman in the room that evening. I knew it was bad as it was, having watched almost every young woman in there try to get away from him, and having moved away from him as he followed me around the store before the event myself, but only in seeing that a young woman who attended the event who had briefly blogged on it note that she was asked for a lock of her armpit hair by this guy did I realize how bad it really was with him in that respect.

My father is one of those guys who, when introduced as my Dad to who anyone who meets and likes me, people seem to imprint on as surrogate Pop almost immediately. I was pretty well-adjusted about this in my youth, but I confess that there was more than one time in high school when I’d get all happy that a friend stopped by, then feel resentful when they made clear they had come because they needed to talk to my Dad. Harumph. Anyway, at some point, one of the staff there had apparently given my Dad a big bear hug and a kiss on the cheek, after which Man One came up to him, pointed at the woman, and asked my Dad how he could get “one of those,” for himself. I’m not sure what exactly my Dad said to him in response, but the look of disgust on his face was pretty palpable.

Man One would not stop talking about porn throughout the event: in fact, that is all he talked about, ad nauseum, both before the event to me, and during the event, to everyone. At one point, he sat listing all of his favorite porn sites (stating the .com at the end of each very oddly) to a totally unreceptive audience, and when I made clear after a few that I was sure we all got the picture, he kept racing to try and get to the end of the whole list, which he had written down on notecards. I was this close to asking if he got some sort of commission. It was my mother, this time, who asked him to please, for the love of gawd, freaking stop already. I watched a row of teenage girls in the front get more and more uncomfortable the more he went on: it was agonizing, and I did all I could to give them an “I’m terribly sorry” look.

Later on, he also asked if it wasn’t simply inaccurate to say that women didn’t like spending loads of time looking at naked men in print and online porn to the exact same degree men do at women. I informed him that first of all, there were plenty of men who didn’t like looking at women sexually at ALL, plenty of women for whom the inverse also was without appeal (and have I mentioned lately how tired I am of feeling like in nearly every conversation to be had about sex, I must step up and be the Heterosexism police?) as well as people of all stripes who aren’t regular porn users, period. I also let him know that most of the information and statistics we have on this — he seemed to imply that it was some sort of women’s conspiracy that stats always show the primary users of porn as being male — come from the porn industry itself, who tend to be pretty exacting with their statistics, since they’re in the business of making money, so knowing who their primary clientele is is no small matter, nor are they likely to misrepresent the marketing stats, since there’d be no benefit to them in doing so. Unfortunately, letting that question — I should have known better — in started the list of porn sites again, as well as him telling us he was going to share a personal anecdote. Seeing the faces of every single person in there still green from the existing oversharing, I tried to move on to someone else. Very, very quickly.

But alas. Up steps Man Two.

Actually, he was already standing. The event had several long rows of chairs, which everyone there had been sitting in from the start. I too, was sitting rather than standing (something I prefer at events, period, especially events about sex where I’m billed as an expert: I feel like someone in that position standing makes it feel intimidating and power-lordy). But not Man Two. He had been standing in the aisle between all the rows from the minute one, moving closer and closer to me the whole time with a silent scowl on his face while I answered some anatomy of the clitoris stuff, some basic safer sex procedure stuff, some developmental puberty stuff, some how-to-address-how-virginity-makes-some-people-feel-lousy stuff and some issues about HPV and age-matters with the vaccine. I’d asked him twice to please sit down, as had the staff. No dice.

Once he began talking, he kept moving closer, getting louder, and as time went on, I watched spittle form in the corners of his mouth, and his fists clench and unclench. He first started talking by cutting off a male college student, no less — who was a hero of the revolution for bringing his two younger sisters to the event, knowing they had zero sex ed in their family — who just wasn’t clear on what STIs he may or may not have been immunized for, and who also was interested in the status of HPV vaccination for men. I can’t say whether it was ironic, blind and careless, or just plain mean-spirited, but he interrupted that guy, who was visibly Asian, by barking out at me:

“Why does everyone blame the white man for racism?!?”

Umm, okay. We weren’t talking about racism. At all. All night. And, I’m thinking that at that moment, it was a pretty obvious answer since he’d just silenced a person of color right there in that room with his own white, male mouth. Of course, I almost wanted to ask whose fault exactly he thought racism WAS if not the fault of white people, and the whites with the most power, because I was really dying to know this fascinating theory he had, but suffice it to say, I was not about the humour this guy in any way. So, instead, I just calmly said that that wasn’t a topic we were discussing, nor one I felt was relevant to the book and the event.

My response didn’t result in much. He kept moving forward, spittly-mouthed, forehead-sweaty and clenchy-fisted, going on about this. Then there was some intermediary diatribe about how — and put in exactly this language, knowing he had teen girls sitting right in front of him — everyone just wanted to fuck 15-year-old girls and his 15-year-old daughter, but not him. I actually didn’t hear the bit about a daughter in there, my family only mentioned that later. I’m glad, because I don’t think I would have been able to not look beyond horrified at the notion of this poor kid who got stuck with this jerk as a father.

Again, the louder he got, the more I continued to ask him to sit down. And still, he’s not sitting, and still, he’s spitting. Then he starts in on why does everyone blame the white man for everything bad.

I was thisclose to telling him that if right now, anyone WERE blaming the white man for the badness, and the white man they were blaming was him, that would be BECAUSE IT WAS HIS FAULT. I considered telling him that while he couldn’t change his race, nor his sex (well, he could, but I don’t see this guy even remotely wishing he were female), what he COULD change, and what was most likely his biggest problem, was the fact that he was a giant horse’s ass. And that people who may have blamed him for being said ass were likely putting the blame where it belonged, and if he did not like it, not only could he choose NOT to be a giant horse’s ass, we’d all give him a freaking medal for making a different choice at that point.

But you know, there you are, in a public group. You watch the public group get more and more uncomfortable, half of them earnestly looking like they just don’t even feel safe anymore, and you watch them look to you to fix it, knowing that a lot of them want you to say exactly what you’re all thinking because this jerk has effectively terrorized the whole room. But you know, too, that telling someone any of those things publicly, if you did, would primarily be for you, not them, since calling them out that way is likely only going to make them both feel even worse about themselves and everyone else and behave even more badly.

So, if you’re me, the best you feel you can do is to tell him that again, this is outside the scope of the book, that this is a sexuality education book that addresses bigotry a bit, but doesn’t get into any sort of blaming, and that no one in the room is blaming anyone for anything right now (even though they’d have every right to). And then you tell him, more strongly than calmly this time to SIT DOWN. He keeps talking, so you say it AGAIN. This still doesn’t get through, so you then try being a little more direct and say it’s clear he is making every single person in the room grossly uncomfortable, but before you can get that out of your mouth, both of your parents, from opposite sides of the room, take flank positions and ALSO tell him to sit down. Then the staff try and tell him to sit down.

It is at this point that I finally just cracked up laughing, watching the bizarre circus that is sometimes my life, and did a little “Ladies and Gentleman, meet my parents…” which everyone in the room thought was just me being funny, and that the two people in the room I gestured to were just acting like parents, but were not actually my parents for real.

(My mother’s girlfriend later remarked that that was likely in part because when you look at both of my parents, while I may physically resemble them both in part, one wouldn’t assume I’d come from some soft-spoken, but very professional-looking now-blonde, or from some gangly, skinny old Italian. I’m not sure why not, but there you go. She also observed that she thought that some of why these guys went so batty was that they were expecting something from me that wasn’t there — that I was supposed to be, in their minds, some sort of femme fatale, or ball-busting dominator, rather than the short, funny and damn-patient chick in ratty jeans who talks about sex like she was talking about the weather. Who knows.)

Believe it or not, he did finally sit down, but in near-perfect unison, both Man One and Man Two piped up to say they EACH had “anecdotes” they wanted to share with the group. I think at that moment the collective imagination of everyone in that room about said anecdotes made us all wish there was some sort of soap we could use inside our heads.

Thank CHRIST that a half-second later someone else raised their hand so I had someone to call on. For the rest of the evening, the best I could do was look at both men with their perpetually raised-hands, letting them know that I saw that, unsurprisingly, they were not anything close to done, but that as far as I and everyone else was concerned, they’d said MORE than their fair share.

* * *

Honestly, the thing that grated my cheese the most about all of this was that, from everyone’s observations as well as my own, both these guys came into the event with an agenda. Both came in seeming to feel that they needed to tell all of us how it was, and that we were some sort of threat to them. Into an event at a women’s bookstore which has been hanging on financially by a thread, where most of the audience was some sort of minority, be it by age, sex, race or sexual orientation, all talking about sexuality for another marginalized population. In other words, how on earth we could have been any sort of threat to either of these guys, even if we’d have wanted to be, is completely beyond me: I’m not sure there was a single person in there with that power, nor that desire.

I’ll tell you, two, that having survived a couple assaults and stalkers, as well as being someone who has taught self-defense, that my radar is exceptionally good for predatory people. I was exceptionally glad that I was not taking the bus or the el home alone as I would have if I’d still lived there, because I can nearly guarantee that without a doubt Man Two — and possibly, though less likely, Man One — would have been the sort to follow me home.

Some of why behaviour like that pisses me off so freaking bad — beyond the fact that it also resulted in me losing my voice for the rest of the weekend, and feeling like I’d been run over by a Mack truck — is that for fuck’s sake, they were both validating the exact things that both seemed to be saying they did NOT want people to think about men. There were some awesome men in the audience, but those awesome guys are NOT the men anyone was going to leave that event remembering, because the other two made that completely impossible.

More importantly, one of the many reasons that I choose to struggle to keep serving the populace that I do is that shit like this is very real and very common in terms of this populace — teens and women. Interpersonally, politically and educationally, publicly and privately, in everything from their sexual healthcare to trying to negotiate sexual activity they are shouted down and yelled over just like this. We can talk about exceptions to the rule all we want — and by all means, should note that there nearly always ARE exceptions — but this still IS the rule. It’s also a fine example that someone doesn’t have to be the numeric majority to do that: there were but two of these guys, and at least 25 of the rest of us (and I say “rest of us,” because the only other people in the room who were male were — and it was made clear to me by them that they were — either gay or bisexual, of color or homeless), and yet they still found the way to dominate when no one else was fighting them FOR dominance, nor was that anything resembling the vibe of the room. They still attacked, still walked in on the offense, when there was absolutely no cause or reason to: when they were in no danger whatsoever, when there was less than zero threat to them of any sort, save the threat of someone else getting to take their turn speaking about their own issues or questions.

And for crissakes, you’d think, you’d hope, that one could at least be given a vacation from this sort of shite when you’re doing a mellow event, at a mellow women’s space that’s making room for everyone. But you can’t, and perhaps can’t all the more, because I think sometimes that that in and of itself is perceived as a threat: that women could have a space that IS ours, and have the “power” to invite anyone into that space with the understanding that they are expected to behave like guests and expected to make the same allowances.

And I know, we’re so often not supposed to say things like this, but the trouble is that the reality of these situations bears itself out time and time and time again. To pretend that it doesn’t, or to not speak about it (or feel we’d better not, or to be kind must not) is to deny that reality and to choose to be silenced. Like it or not, if you don’t get it, a scenario like this is a big part of why women want exclusive women’s space sometimes (however you define what women’s space is and who it includes): because every now and then, we’d like to be able to speak and talk without being shouted down as most of us so often are, especially if what we want to say either is — or is simply deemed to be — less important than or in conflict with what the men in the room determine so.

(It feels stupid I even have to say this, but just ’cause: does that mean that ANY white, middle-class hetero male is like this? No. Nor does it mean that had another shown up, he would have behaved this way. But this was the actual situation at hand, and these actual situations happen a’plenty.)

Interestingly, I think it’s the first time my mother has actually understood what parts of my job are like, how much of it flat-out stinks, and how small the payoff is so often for me. As we were driving home, she seemed to first be operating under the assumption that something like this never happens, and I let her in on the fact that this sort of thing happens all the time with what I do, in a lot of different contexts. It happens on the message boards, it happens in my email box, it happens with events and talks I give. In talking to straight, white male colleagues of mine who do similar work about these sorts of things, I have yet to have a single one express that this sort of thing EVER happens to them (not saying it doesn’t, just saying that of yet, no one has reported it to me), while other women I know in the field have stories like this in spades. In fact, much as I hate to say it, of the handful of hetero male sexologists I have met face-to-face all but one or two have not hit on me, made salacious comments to me (or about me, to a partner when I stepped away), or seemed to have even the smallest iota of real respect for me and my work beyond how it or I might benefit them personally. Last year, I had to tell a male colleague in the field to stop asking me to do his work for him (for his profit, and for free on my part) at least five times before he stopped, and even then, he literally sent ANOTHER man to harass me to do something for him. Only in saying to said other man that this was at the point of harassment which I was about to take action with did it finally cease.

But I digress.

My mother was pretty mortified, and since that event, has asked how things are going with the book and Scarleteen in every conversation, whereas she used to ask me about it maybe once a year, tops. Oddly enough, one of the lone positives from the whole fracas was that I actually got to see my mother seriously stand up for me in public — which has not happened in my recollection since 1976 — and not because she felt she was supposed to, but because she wanted to. I also think she grew some respect for me that she didn’t have before.

Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is that my parents cooperated with something. MY parents, who I don’t think have cooperated with anything since 1969, when I was conceived.

My father, of course, was not that shocked: he knows the deal. And my father, of course, made new friends that night, and is now paying attention to the event listings for WCF and asking me about them in terms of if I think he should go to make sure there aren’t any jerks in the audience harassing the two staffers who adopted him. I’m sure there could be all sorts of analysis, gender-based and otherwise, on what my parents each took from the event, but I’m fresh out of analysis today.

The event did sell out of all their cartons of books, though, to the point that they ended up buying the three copies I had with me from me, and sending a few sad folks away bookless. And, of course, we all got to leave with whatever our own oh-so-entertaining versions of the story were, though I think the girl who got asked to give over armpit hair got the shortest end of the stick.

This wasn’t the book event that broke the camel’s back or anything: like I said earlier and in another post, there were actually some other very positive experiences there, and it really was fantastic to be able to have an event in a shop I hold so dear. But I’d already decided that week that after the couple workshops I’d committed to in Victoria for October, and the San Fran trip that same month, that I’d be taking time away from promotion. Not only am I out of funds for it, I’m out of “on” for it, especially since big social events drain the hell out of me to begin with.

And to be honest, those two guys did make me want to take a break all the more. I loathe that result, as it makes me feel like a wuss, but it is what it is. It’s one thing to deal with this stuff online, but it’s entirely another to deal with it up in my face, and that filled my limited quota of it for a while.

I’m also done with it right now, because the far more attractive prospect of friend + bottle of wine just showed up on my door, which beats out pretty much anything, but most certainly kvetching further about this crap.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, s.e.x., rantapalooza, events | permalink | comments (7) »

Mark is finally home.

Road-weathered and bruised, to be sure, but home. Poor guy: not only did he have to wait for an age to have the car fixed after the accident, be trapped in Ohio throughout, then drive cross-country in the same car, but he had to do it during some of the worst storms many areas he drove through had seen in a long time. At one point, having literally just missed a tornado and seen it on the horizon — and thus, already in a panic — he also had the misfortune, at that moment, of driving by a billboard stating “Prepare To Meet Thy Maker!” Yipes.

But he got himself home, and it’s amazing to have him back here: by the time he got back, we hadn’t been in the house together for a solid month, which is lunacy. It’s funny how much another person’s energy can change a place. Don’t get me wrong: this is the nicest place I have ever rented in my life. Loved my last one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis, but for the same rent, to be able to get two offices, a wood stove, a huge kitchen and a big place to garden in a far quieter ‘hood is quite the boon. But it feels different here when I’m living here alone, and not just because it’s far too big for one person to live in. The air in here is different: the vibe in here is lacking, almost as if the house was asleep when it’s only me inside it.

Being able to have him come home — flowers in hand for me (as well as an awesome t-shirt from Iowa’s minor league team), new Uglydoll in hand for the pup — and be able to walk to the market together, cook dinner together while dancing around to the 70’s rollerrink tunes we share a shameless love for, eat on the front porch, and then find ourselves making out on the living room floor before bringing it upstairs was idyllic. Getting to wake up this morning and see him all soft-morning-faced and smiling at me was a rush.

And thankfully, being in the headspace to have any sort of sex last night was a godsend. Earlier this week I was on the phone with my Dad, and he’d mentioned that we must really miss each other. Then, unfortunately, he took it one step too far and mentioned we both must be as “horny as hell.” SQUICK!

Look, I hate the h-word already. It’s always been seriously yuck-making for me, and is one of the few single words that a person could say to me to make me not only not want to have sex, but make me not want to THINK about sex again anytime soon. And your Dad saying it — however open you and your Dad have always been about sex — is well beyond one step over the line. I wasn’t sure I would be able to think about sex for a solid week.

Top that with the fact that I’d spent most of that same day getting caught up with Scarleteen advice questions. I’m never kidding when I say that the work I do is one of the best methods of birth control I know. Listening to/reading/conversing about people’s sex problems and crises all day is about as un-sexy as it gets, and on any given day, just plain borders on — or outright is — tragic. Now, every now and then, it’ll be SO tragic that I crave some sex, likely just so I can be tangibly reminded that the healthy, happy sort does exist. But most days, I have to basically find some time between work and play to exorcise my brain.

It’s all the worse when we get teen users who want to get very explicit about the sex that they’re having. I’m not an idiot, I know full well there are adults out there who cruise Scarleteen and read the posts to get off. I’d love to think there weren’t, because it’s really invasive of the users and what they intend in posting, but there are. And I gotta confess, I either think they’re just not right in the head, or, more likely, that they’re projecting so much of their own fantasy unto those posts that they’re not seeing or feeling the reality of them, because I’m pretty immersed in it and I often feel like I need to wash my eyes afterwards, and remind myself that that’s not anything even marginally related to the sex I have myself.

But thankfully, none of that was in my head when Mark came home last night.

Or this morning, for the hour I stepped away from writing this to crawl back into bed and do a little more making up for lost time.

(Yep, still having times when it boggles my mind that we’ve been together for around two and a half years now and the spark hasn’t dimmed at all. It’s just really surreal. Fantastic, but surreal.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (3) »

I am at the point where I am accepting that it is time to start saying goodbye to my red hair.

The fact that there are moments in which this is earnestly sniffle-worthy — hell, the fact that this is something I even feel a need to publicly mention and invest any emotional energy in whatsoever — is freaking ridiculous.

Ah, vanity: you heartless bastard, you maker of small minds and distractor from far greater things.

I can justify this preoccupation ever-so-slightly by saying that those of us with any brand of red hair are often defined by it, even if we don’t self-define by it. I was born, oddly enough, with nearly gray hair, to the point that my mother had a moment of fear thinking I wasn’t actually alive. In early childhood, I was one of those very light blondes, which soon turned to a dark strawberry. In juniour high, I tried to be blonder, but that soon made way for being pink, burgundy, black (alas, I didn’t look like Siouxsie Sioux as I’d hoped, but rather like Snow White gone terribly wrong), until we came back to just making the red brighter and brighter. So, sparing summers when I was just out in the sun so much, the stuff went almost white, I’ve claimed and amplified my copper for a good twenty years now, and if my appearance is mentioned by anyone, even in press pieces, it’s usually been mentioned that I’m a redhead above all else.

When you’re red, you can do nothing else to yourself, and people seem to think that you invested as much effort as they did in sprucing yourself up: it’s a great cheat for the lazy primper. When you’re brave and your red, it often feels as if your hair advertises that bravery; if you’re bold and you’re red, it seems to prepare people in advance for your assertiveness, which can be a real blessing.

But it’s going away. My father’s side of the family has a history of going grey incredibly early: his mother was nearly full-on white by her mid-twenties, as I understand it, and my father’s went that way by the time I was in high school. Who knows whather it’s the premature grey that’s hereditary or simply the legacy of trauma and stress. My mother had that hair everyone wants, that gorgeous deep russet stuff, but she’s bleached it for so long that even she doesn’t know when hers went grey. I started seeing white hairs in my twenties as well, but it’s been a slower process for me than I anticipated, which perhaps gave me some false hope.

I say that, but really, I’ve always looked forward to going grey, but in part I realize that’s because I had the silly idea that I’d go to sleep looking like me one night, and wake up the next looking like Emmylou Harris. Hope springs eternal, eh? When it became clear that wasn’t exactly the most realistic expectation, I just figured that the streak of white that had started growing on my crown would get bigger and bigger, until you’d have a hard time distinguishing me from Bonnie Raitt: in fact, when I’ve had my hair highlighted over the last handful of years, I’ve always had Sy just throw more bleach there to make it bigger artifically.

A couple years back, I stopped having any sort of allover color done, primarily because a) I got tired of it ruining my hair, b) red has always been easy for my hair to hold since there’s so much red already in it, but as the red has started to go and the greys began to take over, it would fade out very fast, and thus be a total waste of cash and c) I began to get visible roots (yuck!) because what was growing back in was so ashy. So, I’d only gotten some foils put in twice a year or so, and mixed some henna into my conditioner every now and then: I’m generally thrifty both of out habit and necessity, as well as the fact that I’ve appreciated my decreasing care in what I look like over the years. But even then, the foils with the red have started to look more and more odd to me, sitting next to a weird mix of fading copper that’s now looking more and more gold and the encroaching silvers. In some ways, it looks more like I’m going blonde than grey, which is a strange disappointment.

Yesterday, I came in from gardening and passed a mirror where the light was just hitting that certain way, and my hair was up just-so, in which I was able to see that not only are my temples now filled with white and ashy hairs — which I hadn’t noticed, having been distracted by the greys in my crown — but that it’s clearly all growing in…well, not red, and not even all that reddish. I’ve heard runours before that red-types don’t often go grey so nicely, that we do get this weird ashy stuff, and the color just starts to look more and more muted and strange, but now the proof has begun to find itself in the proverbial pudding. I remember this older woman I taught with who was a red going grey, clearly desperately clinging to her old hair, with her rinses whose color always seemed off and the whole works looking a bit like the red version of those clothes we all tried to dye black with Rit dye in high school, all spotty and mushy and nothing close to black.

I’ve had folks tell me that no, absolutely, it’s not going as much as I think it is, but I think that’s what you’re supposed to say (and I confess that I also bring to this the eagle-eyes of a photographer: we’re obsessed with tonal values). And that’s not what my hairdresser says. When leafing through my hair, and mention is made of the color and the grey, she — and I expect they teach you this etiquette in beauty school — lets out a small sigh and a simple “Hmm, well, okay.” (And as Becca could back me up with, that near-silence is quite the statement: Sy talks more than I do, which is really saying something — I write like this because I talk like this, but if my mouth is usually doing 80 in a 50MPH zone, Sy’s is careening off the highway with screeching tires and a bloody mess in her wake.)

Ladies and germs, this copper-top is going down, and I intend to go down gracefully.

I’ll be in Minneapolis very briefly next week to photograph a friend’s wedding, and because I gave up on trying to find someone here who could cut my crazy hair decently, I’ll be engaging in what has become a very silly habit (that feels very bougie, even though it’s not like I only go there to get my haircut, and it also costs me less to get a good cut there than it does to get a crap one here) of still getting my hair cut by my hairdresser who is now over 1600 miles away. She, too, has loved my hair over the years; I know that she’ll want to toss some red foils into it, but I feel it’s time to decline, and say farewell fuschia, sayonara scarlet, and cheerio copper.

(And heck, I won’t be the first person in this house to lose their red hair: Mark was even more red — by a serious longshot, he had that brillo-pad copper — than me before he lost his.)

I can’t promise, mind, that I won’t backpedal at some point (nor that I’ll win this battle this time with Madame Sy). While it’s silly as fuck to invest identity in one’s hair, or any aspect of one’s appearance or body, given how much flux we’re always in, really, my unruly red mane has been part of me for a long, long time. I’ll likely keep my red ends around for as long as they’ll have me, and if Sy argues that she wants to do something so it’s a more gradual transition, I probably won’t put up that much of a fight. Honestly, I might tell her to hack the whole works off at this point, save that for the first time since maybe the seventh grade, I have a partner who is so in love with my hair — even though he’s usually been a short-hair fan with other partners of his — that his little face crumples at the mere mention of hacking it off. Since I figure I’d react similarly if, say, he wanted to change the canvas of his perfect bottom with a giant tattoo, I get it. I’m not ready to cut it all off again anyway, if for no other reason than the fact that the upkeep sucks with short hair.

Anyway, I’m going to start adjusting my brain, and looking for some good symbolism in silver and gold to get attached to.

…and keep hoping that I’ll wake up one day looking like Emmylou Harris. A girl can dream, after all.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, body image, vanity | permalink | comments (5) »

I had the strangest dream last night.

This makes three times in the whole of my life I have had a dream about Matthew, which is in and of itself so odd: you’d think I’d dream far more often about him.

(Cliff’s Notes for newer readers: Matthew was, effectively, the first great love of my teenage life, and the first person I ever got really close to with even more childhood and adolescent baggage than I had myself: his father offed himself when he wasn’t even two, his mother went insane thereafter and was institutionalized, and he then got tossed into the foster care system where he was molested in three homes out of four. By the same age I left home, he was living on-street, and shortly thereafter became a sort of Chicago punk scene icon. He both saved my life quite literally the day we met by distractedly walking right into each other at a bus stop, was really the first person I even told the whole of my history, helped me get out of my home, and then OD’d on ludes — do people even do ludes anymore?– and blew his head off with the gun his idiot roomie left sitting around loaded, four days after my sixteenth birthday, and eight days after he helped me get out of my house for good. I later found out that had happened on the very minute I’d woken up at four in the morning that day with a start, and that my number was the last on the phone sans a digit: he never completed that call. Suffice it to say, between having to clean up his place afterwards, deal with being the strangest sort of young widow ever, and have my teenage romantic ideals shattered utterly, all while I was trying to get over being suicidal myself, it was a considerable event in my life.)

Until last night, I’d had only two dreams about him: one the day after he died, in which he didn’t make an appearance at all, only his castaway shoes, and then one when I was in Miami with Sabrina in 2003, 16 years after the fact:

(From my journal) “In the dream, I was in some severe trouble, for not doing what a large mob of Shirley Jackson-esque people wanted or expected of me. I’d tried to hide out with my father, but he was unable to protect me. I ended up in a prison, in a terribly small, dirty cell, and in all the cells around me were a million different ghosts, passing in and out of the bars, whispering things I couldn’t understand, but being very assuming, with powerful presence, though they weren’t so much scary as just intense. I somehow escaped, and went though a series of alleys into a dark blue room, through a gold curtain. Matthew was there, instantly recognizable, though he didn’t look like the bleached, tattooed and mohawked 24-year-old he was, but instead how he might look today, sans window dressing — he had one blue and one brown eye as he had then, but plain brown hair, glasses, et cetera, yet was wearing the clothing he died in. And laying upside down (not sure what that means). When he saw me, he smiled big and started weeping, saying he never thought he’d see me again. We talked, catching up with my life, I said something to the degree of thinking he didn’t say goodbye because he didn’t still love me, he assured me he just couldn’t before now but that he’d loved me all the while, from then until now, without ever stopping. Cue a lot more joyful weeping.

After that, a beautiful old African woman in a lot of jewels passed by the curtain and smiled, and Matthew was then smiling softly, wearing purple and saffron robes; he held me in a tight embrace. And I woke up. With a truckload of astonished tears running down my face, just so tremendously grateful and shocked at the whole thing; feeling his protective and loving presence inside of myself so strongly.”

I’d waited a long time for that dream. I’d dealt with death before Matthew’s, but it was one of those where, since you didn’t get to say goodbye, or have any explanation, you go to bed each night begging — and thinking you can magically make it happen — for some sort of visitation in your sleep from the dead. When I was very young, I needed that dream for one set of reasons, but as I got older, I needed it for simple closure, and I got it in that.

In last night’s dream Matthew had come back from the dead. Not as a zombie or a ghost, nor was it anything about some mix-up. Basically, he simply was back, with no explanation as to how he got back whatsoever: he looked old, he looked tired and he seemed to be in a great deal of emotional agony. We didn’t have a prototypical tearful lover’s reunion: in fact, I met him with Mark, and while it was very joyful in its way, and there was the kissing and the embracing, there was something very sad and not-quite-there about it. He’d come back, but with little or nothing to come back to: there wasn’t a place for him as someone still present, basically. I’d moved on, and while elated to see him, and elated there was a way of having him back in my life, there wasn’t really room, and the magic had long since gone: it felt strangely empty.

He’d then gone to visit a bunch of other people who had been in his life before, most of whom I didn’t recognize. But all of their lives had fallen quite apart, in some horrendously tragic ways, but it was all sort of surreal (especially since the color in it was all desturated and greenish, the color old polaroids turn after a while), as if their lives were only like this not because of his death, but because of his coming back or what he was seeing in coming back.

I was trying to comfort him, but in the end, it was Mark, not me, who provided the comfort. He told him that those people were not really who they seemed to be now, but were still the people they were then, were all really doing just fine, or they would be if he’d just let his guilt go rather than revisiting it. And it seemed like Matt’s pain lifted, just like that.

And that was that: I woke up.

It was very strange, but in some way, incredibly beautiful. In some way I interpret it as a symbolic representation of the fact that burdens which I have borne alone aren’t things I have to go alone anymore, or aren’t my sole burdens to bear. It’s also really lovely to have this visual image of Mark comforting Matthew in my head, both of them sitting face to face, hands on one another’s knees, foreheads pressed together, with Mark easing his unbearable pain so compassionately.

(And oddly enough, Mark just rang. Saturday, the car was finally repaired, so he was able to leave Ohio on Sunday. He’s just now getting close to Montana so — gawd willing — he should be back home by Saturday at this rate.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, subconscious life | permalink | comments (4) »

1.) I realized I forgot a couple of good things from the trip. (Yep, still putting off talking about the bad stuff. I reserve the right not to be bitter today.) Like being able to take Mark to Wrigley Field for his first time EVAH with my Dad. After the chamoole finally stopped calling it a stadium, he confessed to having profound penis envy over my hometown ball park. Unfortunately, it appears that for the same reason that Mark’s family asks him not to attend Bengals games because they lose when he’s present, it seems Mark’s visit to our fair Cubbies, beginning with the game we took him to in which Soriano injured himself, had similar results.

Of course, this is the Cubs. Love them as I always will, the only people who need to be in attendance to assure they lose is…the Cubs.

(For the record, it looks as if Mark and I can finally stop saying we’ll do X if he comes home, and go back to when. They were doing the final checks on the car repairs today, so chances are very good that he can get on the road in the next two days so that he can be home by the end of next weekend. Jeez. I told him today that it was getting to the point where I felt this idea we had that the fates wanted us to be together was perhaps backwards: given we started long distance, and by the time he gets home now, will have gone a whole month without being together in the place where we live, it’s possible the fates instead wanted us to be together apart.)

I got to go to the library branch where I spent many a childhood afternoon and hand-deliver my book. Whether they’ll shelve it or not remains to be seen, however, not only did I get a rockin’ Library Journal review which in a couple weeks alone seemed to land it in three times as many libraries as before, my editor today said it looked like we even had backorders for libraries. This makes this girl from the wrong side of the stacks very happy indeed.

2.) For the last two days, I have inexplicably been unable to get the word dirigibles out of my head. Or my mouth: I just had to say it out loud when I typed it, and was glad for the excuse. Thankfully, I remain home alone with my dog, who, while perplexed by my shouting it out at her every few hours, is at least without the power to institutionalize me for it.

While in Cincy, I found Pez Dispensers of both Sully and Mike from Monsters, Inc., which resulted in me pulling out the Mikedispenser and shouting “Mike Wazowski!” Dirigibles seem to have wiped me clean of that, but I’m uncertain it’s an improvement. Can you develop Tourette’s with corprolalia later in life? I know, it doesn’t seem like this is Tourette’s, given that I am not shouting out obscenities, but bearing in mind what exactly I do for my living, and all I hear in a given day, I think we can agree that even determining what obscenities would even BE for me proves a challenge.

3.) I was looking over some photos of friends from Shambala today, and I found myself feeling monstrously old. By this, I don’t mean feeling old in a way that I have changed due to age, but feeling old in a way where I missed a boat that friends not that much younger than me didn’t seem to, which is a big part of why I have zero desire to ever go to Burning Man.

To whit: while I appreciate and dig how glorious those folks look out in the great outdoors with kooky fur and shiny duds and crazy shoes, for the life of me, I can’t dig up even the slightest desire to go camping and have to give half a thought to what I’d wear, what it looks like, or even if I smell, sparing smelling so much I’d be chased by wild animals. Camping to me has always been a wonderful escape from presentation and appearance — even the kind that’s not oppressive in the least, but creative and fun. My joy of camping is really meditative, more about paring life down to the absolute minimum and delighting in simple tasks. I can do it socially and enjoy that, but I often enjoy it even more when it’s largely antisocial: when I’m either alone, or with someone or someones where a minimum of noise and conversation or even interaction is the order of the day. If camping felt like a fashion show — not saying it does for my pals, just that it would for me if everyone wasn’t wearing cut-offs and flannel shirts — I’d feel robbed of camping.

So, yeah: I don’t get it, and not getting it makes me feel crusty. And not in the good, I’ve-been-camping-in-this-gross-but-cozy-salt-stained-t-shirt-for-a-week way.

(Edit: I feel like this may have been/might be read as a jab or a judgment, but that’s not at all what I intended it to be. In fact, I’m envious, and sort of wondering if this isn’t yet one more way I just can’t have a good time where others so clearly can, which has been a bit of a running theme with me lately I’m less than thrilled about. I’d also hope folks — especially my friends — would know me well enough by now to know I’m not one for hidden strikes, but just in case, there ya go.)

4.) When I go to San Francisco for the sexual literacy awards ceremony, I not only get to finally meet my wonderful editor, and not only get to go to the ceremony with her, but we’re also taking a road trip up north a couple days later to spend some time in my favorite area of this whole country with Anne. Renee and I are strongly considering picking up a different bottle of wine for glugging when we get there every winery or so.

We may need to rent a larger car than usual.

5.) As it turns out, Toni Weschler is practically my neighbor, living just a couple of miles away. We had the most wonderful long morning coffee yesterday, and it was just what the doctor ordered; we talked everything from how we feel about giving the youngest women information on charting to book-writing trials and tribulations to birth control to how so many people don’t seem to get that Judaism is often more about heritage and race than it is about religion. It’s just so freaking swell to spend time with other dedicated people in my arena who not only get it, but who got it before I did, and who are also just great to gab with. After all, I learned how to chart with Toni’s first book when it first came out (and as it turns out, at the same age she learned herself: very odd). Suffice it to say, I’m seriously elated we connected and greatly looking forward to doing it again.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (7) »

I have two pleas for cash and/or help for everyone this morning, both things I think that everyone, of every conceiveable stripe, can get behind.

The first came through my email box from the Feminist Majority Foundation this morning. Here’s the email, with some extra information I’ve tossed in to round things out (in italics):

I am writing to ask for your help with a dire situation for women and girls in Afghanistan. One in six women will die as a result of childbirth or pregnancy-related complications. Maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan are simply unacceptable.

What are those rates? According to UNICEF, about 120 to 600 out of every 10,000 Afghan mothers (numbers vary by region) die while giving birth or because of related complications. To put that into perspective, here in the states, the maternal mortaility rate is around one in every 10,000 now. The infant mortality rate in Afghanistan is also one of the highest in the world.

I don’t think that this readership needs me to explain that there’s just no bad in midwifery. While often we hear that prostitution is the world’s oldest women’s profession, that’s a pretty substantial blurring of the truth: it’s midwifery (duh). Midwifery — obviously — not only is vital when it comes to healthy pregnancies and deliveries, but also for educating mothers on doing what can be done to keep themselves and their infants healthy after birth. Suffice it to say, midwifery in any case, but certainly in third world nations, also provides women with a way to connect with and aid each other, which is perhaps secondary, but incredibly critical for any oppressed class. This training also provides education for men on how to be supportive of trained midwives, to boot.

Experts believe that the most effective strategy to reduce these needless and tragic deaths is to train more midwives to assist in pregnancy and childbirth. For only $3,000, a new midwife can be trained in Afghanistan. One midwife will in turn be able to promote the health and well-being of countless Afghan women and their new infants. This is extremely important in a country where the healthcare system in most provinces has been devastated and is not functioning. Electricity and supplies are often scarce. Many medical professionals have fled the country. Most Afghan women, even if they are pregnant, have never seen a doctor. Family planning is rarely available.

And all of this is under U.S. watch — after we promised to provide Afghanistan with a “Marshall Plan” and to free Afghan women.

Understand that despite the promise of that plan, Afghanistan received less assistance per capita than did postconflict Bosnia and Kosovo, or even desperately poor Haiti, according to a RAND Corporation study.

We have an opportunity to help Afghan women and girls by providing funding to train midwives. Please, donate now — as generously as you can — to help train a midwife in Afghanistan. Your support will save lives.

Half of your generous contribution will go toward a midwife training program run by the Shuhada Organization — an Afghan women-led non-profit organization, founded and led by Dr. Sima Samar, which operates hospitals, clinics, and schools in Afghanistan.

This is a pretty amazing organization. And if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to donate to the FMF to help with this issue, but still want to help, you might consider donating to Shuhada instead.

The other half of your contribution will support the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls. Our public education campaign works to increase funding and resources for Afghan women-led non-profit organizations, as well as education and health programs, and to provide support for some 25 Afghan refugee women a year to attend college in the U.S.

Please, while this email is in front of you, make as large a donation as you possibly can. The lives of Afghan women and girls depend upon it.

To donate through the FMF, click here.

Next up: While I was in Ohio, we spent an evening out with Mark’s brother Andy, who is an utterly amazing and visionary public school educator of special needs, middle-school inner-city kids in the worst part of the Kentucky/Ohio border. If I’m recalling the conversation correctly, around 70% of his students wind up in the criminal justice system in adulthood without intervention and education, and these are the kids of kids (especially given many of them aren’t white) that conservatives in that region label “dead-end” kids and would just throw away. He’s come up with this insanely smart mixed-age classroom idea for this year (and there I sat, the ex-Montessori teacher, smirking to myself to see another inner-city teacher, like Montessori herself was, come to that conclusion), as well as an additional system that I won’t recount here yet so that he can get it all implemented first. We were talking about how vocabulary is a real problem, and I had an idea that I think might be helpful. Yes, I was the materials-making queen when I was a classroom teacher: it was one of my favorite parts of teaching. I love this sort of brainstorming.

Know those word magnets you can put on your fridge and make silly poetry and the like with? What if those were made to be far bigger, so that they could live on a magnetic-paint wall, the kids could see them easily from pretty far away, and also enjoy the fun, oversized nature of them? You put basic words in there to make basic sentences with, but you also put some synonyms and antonyms in there too, with more complex words. So, let’s say that one kid has already used the word “good,” and another kid wants it for their sentence, so a teacher can easily pull out the word “beneficial” and explain it means the same thing, giving the kid a way to learn some good vocabulary actively and organically, as well as without feeling like he or she just got lectured or schooled.

I’m going to talk to Andy today about the best way to get donations to him — suffice it to say, their budget is beyond dismal — and will add that information when he does. But I also thought I’d pool all of you to see if anyone worked at/owned a print shop, or knew anyone who did, to see if we couldn’t find a shop willing to donate the printing of these full-stop, or provide a discount in creating them.

Addendum:I have had some awesome users with some excellent ideas that are totally doable for this for Andy, sans donations. Thanks so much, y’all!

(More from me later on other things, but just wanted to start the day with these two items: they’re important.)

posted in activism, feminism | permalink | comments (6) »

I don’t want to deal with the bad parts of the trip just yet. I still feel a little shellshocked about it, to the degree that when telling my Dad just about the car accident on the phone today, and he started talking about lawyers and all that, I completely snapped at him, which is something I very, very rarely do. Yesterday, today and likely for the next couple of days, I just want to enjoy the bliss that is being back in my own place, in my own bed, with my own dog, and with the ability to almost completely control who I see and deal with in a given day without any wild cards. For the most part, I’m curling up under the covers like a kicked puppy.

I also don’t want to talk about the shite because there were some really good things amidst all the yuck.

Like, for instance, getting to spend the day with one of my favorite living contemporary artists, including a lot of walking, touring her around the Art Institute, a lovely dinner at Reza’s, and hours and hours of nonstop conversation and mutual admiration. We also planted a tiny seed for a possibly great idea in the not-at-all-near future, and not only is it a good seed, it’s plain old wonderful to be planning something with someone as overextended as myself who completely gets that saying you want to do something a year or two down the road with them is not only not unreasonable, but ideal. Laurie is so very many kinds of brilliant and glorious, and if I hadn’t have started that first full day of the trip with her, I may well have lost my mind before it was over.

The Early to Bed event was absolutely fantastic. We had parents, sisters, a clergy student, an adolescent public health administrator, teachers and friends of teens, all clearly there because they all gave that much of a shit. One thing I’ve been coming to realize a lot lately in terms of the struggles I’m having with Scarleteen is that it isn’t problematic just because I work with sexuality. It’s also — and perhaps just as much — because I work with a population that, for the most part, no one, sparing companies wanting to gather teenage cash, could care less about. If I did the kind of work I do for small children with cancer, rather than with teenagers with pregnancies or STIs or body image or gender dysphoria or sexual trauma or just plain agony, I’d be in a very different place. So, when I find myself in a room full of people all dedicated to doing what they can to be supportive of teens and do what they can to help them out, it’s very feel-good for me. That event ended up tackling some serious topics, but also being more stand-up comedy/put-people-at-ease Heather than the WCF event later in the week (and I’ll get to that event at a later date).

The winner of the best exchange for the evening was a mother asking if she needed to be concerned about giving her 12-year-old too much information. To give an example, she described hearing her and a friend getting into a giant argument in the basement, and had gone downstarirs to see what the fracas was about. When she got downstairs, her daughter, in a huff, said, “Mom, is it ANAL sex or ABLE sex?” My response (before I addressed the larger issue of TMI and why it’s really not something to worry about in this regard), was that it likely depended on who was having it, really.

Extra bonus? My Aunt Ginny showed up. I told a few people there that night about the fabulousness that is my Aunt Ginny, but for y’all in the cheap seats, I have loved this woman since the first time I met her when I was around seven years old.

She’s an aunt by marriage, in my mother’s side of the family. Understand that my mother’s family — especially my now deceased grandparents — was incredibly traditional and insanely stifling, on top of being abusive. Even at that young age, it had already been made very clear to me that I did NOT belong. In fact, in looking through family photos with Mark at my mother’s house last week, I found a photo of me at around 2 or 3, on the farm, with my mother seeming to introduce me to a black sheep. If that photo had had a word blurb, it would have said, “Heather, meet the black sheep. Black sheep, meet Heather. I think you’ll get along famously: you have a lot in common.” It’s one of the most symbolic childhood photos of me I’ve ever seen.

There was a family dinner that night, and I remember all this to-do about some big scandal with my uncle’s new wife. The Very Big Deal? That she MADE him do the DISHES. Gasp! (I didn’t get it, for the record: while I have plenty of valid beefs about my childhood and upbringing, one I do not have is that we had very fluid gender roles between my folks, to the degree that my Dad was the stay-at-home parent in my early childhood, and my mother the breadwinner.)

This given, even before she showed up, she seemed very, very exciting, and very appealing, since I’d already figured out that anyone my grandmother and grandfather really didn’t like was usually exceptionally cool.

When she finally appeared, she showed up in this somber, sober house of buttoned-to-the-chin people in these crazy black lounging pajamas with feather boas at the cuffs, crazy black hair all over the place, and sat telling off-color jokes to a completely unreceptive audience for the whole of the evening. I was in LOVE with her: she was the first woman I had met in that family who I wanted to be when I grew up. (She tells me that the feeling was mutual: she saw a wee ally in me right off the bat, and ever since, if one of us gets stuck at a family gathering without the other, we’re seriously bummed.) She’s also one of these women who seems to excel at absolutely everything, even though she is fickle as hell. She’ll decide she’s going to do something career-wise totally out of nowehere, with no background, wind up doing better than the folks with the background, and just when she’s peaking, she gets bored and moves on: it’s like she’s managed total non-attachment, effortlessly, to the stuff most folks are highly attached to. Plus, she’s the mother of teenagers who are actually bummed out when they can’t hang out with her: talk about an anomoly.

Last she told me, she was thinking about starting a heavy metal band next. I can’t tell you how much I love the idea of a metal band made of fifty-something suburban mothers: I want to hear a handbanging, screeching anthem about menopause or grocery store parking lot traffic so badly, it makes my uterus ache.

So, Ginny showed up, and we went out for drinks after the event with she, my friend Erika, a friend of hers, and one very awesome event-goer.

Who, FYI, I filled in on something Very Important to Know about book events, and that is this: there are two kinds of people who wind up at drinks or dinner with you after events. There are the one or maybe two people who are so cool you invite them along — that was her — and then there is the one, and it usually always seems to be one, who not only do you just find at the table with you without having invited them at all, but who is inevitably the absolute LAST person from an event you’d invite. Now, I’m not sure there was even anyone at that particular event who would have been in that latter group, but I’m glad we avoided that all the same, especially since NOTHING ever seems to make those people go away. NOTHING.

We stayed out late. Very late. By the time Ginny came back with me to Erika’s (after winning every woman in a ten-mile radious over completely, as is her way), it was 2:30 in the morning, and after she passed out face-first on the couch, Erika and I stayed up until four. The only downside to the evening was that for the first time since I moved away from Chicago, the whole evening left me feeling very homesick (and a little tipsy, but that part was nice).

Let’s see, what else…?

Millennium Park for an afternoon with my Dad. I ended up tearing up watching so many happy kids play in the fountain, in part because something else I’ve realized lately is that unlike when I was doing classroom teaching, I don’t really get the good stuff with the bad stuff in terms of my “students.” I mostly get the crisis, their hardship, their agony. For sure, I do get to see them often feel better about it, and feel better over time, but it’s incredibly rare for me to get ONLY the happy bits without the awful ones.

Much-missed time with my mother’s partner, who somehow manages to be one of the most brilliant women I know — and who also works in a challenging arena: she’s a Holocaust scholar — but also the most hilarious. To whit, after the WCF event Friday, we met Mark (who came into town a handful of days after I did) at an Italian banquet hall doing karaoke in La Grange, where my mother now lives. Until you have seen a Kenosha-bred, polish-sausage eating, femme in a butch body (her self-description), doing Baby Got Back flawlessly, with drunken suburbans fawing all over them, you haven’t seen nothin’.

Some time with my mother was good: but that’s more complicated and for another entry. same goes for time with my sister and some of my mother’s family.

At the WCF event, not only do I believe I have started a new friendship with an exceptional woman, one of the attendees came up afterwards to get two books signed and explained to me — while apologizing for it, of all things — that I was the role model and shero of she and her closest friend in college and grad school, and that my work had inspired them beyond bounds to work in this field. It’s not so much what she said, but the look on her face when she said it. There’s something amazing that happens sometimes when you’re just as touched to meet and connect with someone else as they are with you, for entirely different reasons, and she made my whole week, easy.

Just because it deserves a second mention: my mother’s partner. Baby Got Back. Don’t believe me? Ask Jen (who it was also so wonderful to see: it had been too long).

I also went to Chicago with a photo project in mind. The plan was to take photos of places which were important — good stuff, bad stuff, the whole gamut — in my childhood and adolescence. Given how much places change, and knowing already that a few locales of import already were going to look very different, my goal was/is to take photos to build a large wall piece of many small photos, posted with (and I still need to figure out how to engineer this) brief summations of what happened there, and why that given place was important.

In doing this, I had to go to a few very difficult places to revisit. But the biggies were the hair salon where the man who cut our hair molested me at 11, and then the site where I was gang assaulted at 12. Before I’d moved from Chicago, even driving by those places was beyond difficult, and often resulted in me breaking down a few blacks later, feeling fearful and traumatized all over again.

But this time — perhaps I’ve simply had enough time or distance — not only did I not break down, but I was even able to stand right in the parking lot, right where I was assaulted, without tears, without feeling scared or triggered. In fact, I felt incredibly strong standing there, as if a car could even pull in and hit me and it’d bounce right off as my feet and legs were firm and unmoved. It was an unexpected response: I’d prepared myself to feel very upset and vulnerable, and it just didn’t happen that way at all.

In addition, I got to see the house that was my hell, where I also had expected to respond badly. But the house that was so awful for me clearly had a loving family living in it for whom it was now a haven. There were beautiful, joyful chalk drawings all over the sidewalk, and things left astray on the walk, in the accepted disorder of a creative, lively childhood, which made clear that the life being lived there was a good one. It felt like what had since been lived there had somehow washed away the badness, which left me feeling just a few more steps closer to free.

Also? BOTH my parents came to the WCF event. Both of them being in the same place at the same time is an incredible rarity, and while I accepted from childhood that I was never going to have that thing where both your parents were in any way a unit or pair, that it can happen at least every decade or so, even in a limited context, with limited contact, is a luxury and a gift.

I got to see my favorite ex, his kids and his partner, who I like a whole lot, twice, once by myself (though I nearly slept through it, since it was the morning after the night out with Erika and Ginny, where I couldn’t determine if I was hungover from the booze or from my aunt), and once with Mark. That second visit, they’d caught a small mouse in their house. They’d named him Springy, due to how he kept bouncing in the big jar they had him in, but I felt more comfortable calling him Mr. Springy, since I felt it was a bit presumptuous to be so familiar with him when we’d only just met. Since Judy was heading out to Michfest with the girls the next day, and had no time to get out of the city before to set him free, I took on the job myself, knowing there was a forest preserve by my Mom’s on our way back. As it turned out, we went in the wrong entrance, which was labeled as government property only. Mr. Springy and I had a small moment, and I felt certain that he was well up for not only going out on his own in the woods, but infiltrating the government at the same time. I expect great things from him: fight the power, Mr. Springy.

In Ohio, I got to meet both one of my longtime Scarleteen volunteers as well as one of our most active All Girl Army bloggers, both of whom drove some distance to see me, and both of whom were just as exceptional as I had thought them to be. While I can’t exactly call it a perk, upon leaving the coffeehouse for a smoke, I had a man on the street feel the profound need to invent a song and then loudly rap it, singing the praises of my ass. Really, I don’t even think he meant to be lecherous (my backside has inspired — if you can call it that — some odd behaviour from people for a long time, many of which found themselves clearly infected with, and rather embarassed by, Tourette’s), but I did have to explain that no, I didn’t want him to stop because I was ashamed of my bottom, but because I would rather that it wasn’t brought to the attention of the whole of lower Cincy at the moment.

Seeing Mark’s family was also a big perk: I really couldn’t ask for a more loving adjunct family. It was also a perk to see his old Appalachian grandmother: the lady loves her Bible, but she’s also a serious spitfire, and she likes to wink at me a lot.

Best conversation of that family dinner? One of Mark’s brothers was talking about how his little dog Randall had saved his life by barking right before a truck nearly ran him over.

Grandma: Well, I know what saved your life.
Brother: What?
Grandma: Jesus. Jesus was looking out for you. Jesus saved you.
Brother: So, Jesus speaks to Randall. Awesome.

* * *
Those’d be the highlights. I’m sure I’ve missed a few things in there, but in less than an hour, I’m heading out with Fish to go and see Patti Smith, which is just the very thing for me right now (please: as if it ever couldn’t be). A goddess-in-the-flesh (and homage to black sheep everywhere), a good friend and a couple of cocktails will do me quite nicely.

posted in Heather Corinna, family, surviving abuse, s.e.x., women, events | permalink | comments (5) »

I am finally on my way home at the moment, which is a very good thing because I desperately need a vacation from my vacation.

Lest I give the wrong impression, the trip wasn’t really intended to be a vacation, so it’s fair to say that it was unrealistic on my part to expect one. It was intended to be a trip primarily for book promotion, but with places chosen for that promotion where I could spend time with friends and family and — I’d hoped — I could also get a little R&R.

About that.

I can’t even figure out where to start with this one.

Do I start with the honor killing drama — nope, not kidding — that ensued in Chicago on the one day I’d decided to schedule nothing at all and just have some downtime with my mother and her partner via her college friend, and how our day turned into the three of us scrambling to help this woman? Or, perhaps, with the two men who came to the feminist bookstore event, one with enough of an agenda that he actually had notes prepared, and another whose spittle I watched accumulate in the corners of his mouth, while he raised his voice, clenched his fists, barked at me relentlessly about why I blame him for everything (this nonsequitur in the midst of my merely trying to answer some poor 21-year-old kid’s practical question about confusion on what STI vaccinations he may have had) and refused to sit down? The Minneapolis bridge collapse on the second day of my trip? Maybe I start by explaining that one peril of doing what I do is that even when not at promotional events, nearly everyone will drag you aside to make their sexual confessions to you, including your family members? On the other hand, it’d be a highly dramatic entrance to instead start with the car accident Mark and I got into when a woman ran a red light and flung our car (Mark’s new car, I should add, the one he was supposed to be driving home on Monday, so now lord knows when he can come back or how) across a few lanes as we were on our way to the airport, where I was no less than completely elated — and obviously, rather delusional in thinking the state of Ohio would let me leave — to finally be going back home?

I’m far too sleep-deprived to figure this out right now. I’m okay — and Mark is okay — but I’m sore, pissed and very, very sleepy. So much went on, and my head is so foggy, that it’s looking like the only thing to do is to divide the (mis)adventure into parts once I get home. Or a couple days later, after some therapy (AKA, cupcakes, pug-hugs, a glass of wine and a date with my vibrator). And sleep: precious, precious sleep. I can at least be sure that for the next few days, it is highly unlikely I will have any insomnia to deal with: it’s hypersomnia I expect to battle, and I intend to wave my white blankie flag gladly at the first sign of its troops.

Ideally, I’d start by sleeping on this first flight, since we woke up at 2:30 this morning eastern time, after a luxurious three hours of snoozing, for the two-hour drive to the Lexington airport to catch this 6:30 flight. Alas, the way the flights worked out, I’m on this puppy for only an hour and a half, then to Detroit, then — and I expect all my fellow smoking readers to gasp in horror alongside me — unto a nearly five-hour flight to Seattle.

Suffice it to say, I’m trying to save my sleepiness up so that I can use it for as much of that flight as humanly possible because if I’m not unconscious on that flight, I may well chew my way through the seat in front of me.

Or maybe not. I am so beyond ecstatic to be heading towards my own bed, my dog, my garden and some seriously being-left-the-hell-alone (though given how things have been going, I’m trying to maintain a certain nonattachment to ever actually getting back there). That isn’t to say that amidst all the mania, there wasn’t some good stuff in there too, there was. I’d just really, really and truly, had loved to have one single day over the last eleven that was a) anything even slightly resembling relaxing, and b) without even the vaguest whiff, let alone the ripe stench, of any sort of drama whatsoever.

Thank christ that I had some very key boons throughout:
1) I had a housesitter who went SO far beyond the call of duty — including staying on extra with no notice whatsoever — and who I trusted so implicitly that I didn’t have to worry a single minute about the dog, cat, garden or anything else that lives in our place.

2) Within a mere 24 hours of leaving, it appears a bunch of misogynist assholes felt the profound need, as usual, to plaster the Scarleteen boards with spew at myself, the female volunteers and the female users there. I only found this out via a Google alert to a user’s blog, took the most cursory glance at the disaster before I shut my laptop, and decided that for the whole rest of the trip, I was simply going to let my volunteers do their job, hope the site didn’t implode, and walk the fuck away from the thing full-stop for the whole of my trip. Which I did.

3) My two book events were actually the best/busiest events I have had so far. Both sold out of all the books, to the point that the WCF event bought three extra copies from me I had in my bag to sell more, both packed the places, and despite the bitter men who decided to try and make me their personal whipping boy, both were really solid events that I deeply enjoyed most of, even though by the second one, I’d broken my voice and sounded like Tom Waits as an adolescent boy for the remainder of the trip.

4) The Detroit airport has a bar: a bar where one can smoke. There’s not a whole helluva lot of good things I can ever think of to say about Detroit. Now I’ve got one.

And they’ve just announced that we are now getting ready to land so that I can put my bottom in that bar, where I fully intend to have a very large cocktail at an hour of the morning where I’d otherwise only be drinking if I had gotten started doing do the evening before. Then again, in Seattle time, I woke up when it still was the evening before. Bottoms up.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, events | permalink | comments (3) »