It's like an Airplane

Prairie sex

One of my first memories of sexual pleasure was when I was in kindergarten and I insisted on “staying at home” in my kindergarten boyfriend’s bed, while his brother, my sister and he went out to explore the wild frontier. The babysitter said “Rebeccah, are you sure you don’t want to go exploring with everyone else?” Maybe it was all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder I was reading, but I was perfectly contented to stay in bed in my white flannel nightgown. Perhaps I planned to do some metaphorical bed sweeping. 

Since then, I’ve moved away from the frontier paradigm in my sexual partnerships. But there are times, with certain people, when it all seems so pleasurably familiar to return to. I remember lying in bed in college with one particularly outdoorsy, old-fashioned woodsman type, when he mentioned that one of the tutor couples in our dorm were getting married. It was a simple enough comment. But as I lay my head on his shoulder and glanced contentedly at our hardy, wholesome bodies, I realized that he was telling me this because he was imagining us as a couple. As if we were sitting around the wood stove, as the wind and snow swirled outside the log cabin window, talking of marriage, the price of the new oxen, and the muslin I would buy to make a dress. It was both disturbing and kinky. New roles entered into my roleplay lexicon: lumberjack and buxom wife.

Funny how something that seems so modern can actually be a re-enactment of hot, hot, hot retrogression. People thought it was so liberated and hip that I didn’t want a relationship with my dorky mountain man. Little did they know that we were getting together and reenacting Little House on the Prairie.

*** 

It’s a shame to continue this post by theorizing, but I will anyway. I just want to add, ahem, that it’s really too bad how difficult it is these days to talk about sex that could in anyway be deemed retrogressive. It seems that the whole point of queer theory is that it’s OK if your sex or gender seems somehow derivative of traditional sex or gender, because in making it your own you’re actually co-opting the tradition and inverting it. But that’s not really what’s happening. Instead, anyone who’s doing anything traditional or vanilla are considered totally uncool and unrealized. Like how Judith Halberstam made fun of birkenstock lesbians who barbeque.

To take a page from Linda Hirshman’s fingerwagging, we can’t just say that ‘it’s all good’ and that people can do whatever they want. And I do think that generally people are sexually limited and don’t really get what they want out of sex. But when it comes down to it, all of those above people, and then all of the people like me who get turned on by Little House on the Prairie (among other things), end up exploring their ‘conventional’ desires even less. That’s boring! So much for liberation.

 

Between Hell and Chucky Cheese

Continuing in the tradition of my delayed response time, I will now comment on Linda R. Hirshman's Homeward Bound, which came out at least a week ago and already received intelligent and enthusiastic reviews from Melfenblog.

There is so much I liked about this essay, that I kind of went around with it in my head like listening to music on a walkman.   I liked how Hirshman gets up in the faces of well-educated women and tells them (err, us?) to take responsibility for their actions.  By leaving the public sphere, elite women are essentially leaving society for others to manage.  And you can't just go and do that!  Put aside, for a moment, the arguments Betty Friedan makes (and Hirshman tacitly supports) about how home care work is not meant for mammals (because, oops, there are a lot of mammals who do have to do that work) and focus instead on why it matters that middle/upper class women are opting out.  These women aren't acting in a vacuum.  "A world of 84-percent male lawyers and 84-percent female assistants is a different place than one with women in positions of social authority."  Women's so-called "empowering" choices are "bad for them," and are "certainly bad for society."  What a big breath of feminist finger-wagging fresh air!

The bottom line, Hirshman seems to suggest, is that women are shirking the chance to have power because they don't think that they'll do a good job with it.  "Good psychological data show that the more women are treated with respect, the more ambition they have."  Aside from the other reasons why women leave the workplace (they want to spend more time with their kids, they hate corporate culture), what would happen if women really believed that they and power belonged together?  It's a crazy idea but it just might work.

The rest of it, interesting as it is, is less so for Hirshman.  Women want to be with their kids.  The corporate world blows.  Suck it up, she says.  Well-educated American women with financial resources really have the world at their feet.  Dirty house?  Husband who won't take care of the children?  Fucking figure it out, she says.  Don't go whinnying into a well-upholstered domestic corner, clean as it may be.  Yeah!   

Well, it's not always that easy.  For one, the kind of corporate career that Hirshman wants women to pursue really does take a heavy toll on their search for balance with their families.  Yes, I know, the whole "balance" stumbling block.  But, just to be clear, we're not talking about take-out Chinese food for dinner as Hirshman suggests.  We're talking about 12 to 15-hour days.  This means not getting to see your kids, with or without the dirty house and the take-out food.  Women seem frustrated with this, and they have good reason.  Not all of us can be retired Brandeis professors. 

And, oh, by the way, corporate culture has little meaning.  This was the frustration elite women expressed in their interviews with by Lisa Belkin in the New York Time Magazine's opt-out article from 2003.  Many blithely pursued corporate careers and then left when their kids were born, citing matters of the heart.  I remember how angry I was about those stupid Ivy-educated women who woke up one day and didn't like working at their corporate firm.  You don't feel passionate about your corporate work?  Maybe you should find some work that you find worthwhile.  Certainly the world could use you.

But Hirshman has even less pity than I did.  She doesn't seem to care whether women get their blood sucked out and then have kids, find themselves, and want to leave.  One thing it would be nice to hear from Hirshman is a qualifier: it's not always power on its own that's so great.  Maybe women need to see the larger good in gaining power before they go after it.  Sure, being at home can re-ignite passion about life, but pursuing a meaningful career can do this too.  To Hirshman's three rules: 1) Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, 2) treat work seriously, and 3) don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry, I would add a fourth: 4) pursue work that you're passionate about.  I'm not saying everyone has to be activists, or even pursue, horror of horrors, "social justice" work.  But there seems to be room here for other kinds of meaningful work that these women aren't thinking about.  And, to echo Hirshman, it's their responsibility to get their shit together!

To be fair, women don't just fall into home care because of the reasons Hirshman describes.  They also do it because they want to be with their kids, and because an all-make workplace pushes them away.  These are compelling complaints.  But in the end, they are still complaints, and I remain firmly in Hirshman's camp.  These problems really don't give anyone with such a great education any excuse.  If you abandon your firm to be with your kids, it seems like you're leaving Hell to go to Chucky Cheese.  There has to be a middle ground.  And these women (us?) are smart enough and have enough resources to figure it out. 

Some naive and potentially offensive thoughts about breast cancer

For some reason, probably related to the news I received recently that my co-worker has a three centimeter lump and lymph nodes so swollen that her breasts are turning red, I have been doing self-exams in the bathroom at work.

This practice kind of makes me nauseous.  I am a big fan of breast contact of most sorts.  And when you're in the shower, it can be a little more pleasant.  But there is something about applying finger pressure to softness that gives way to vein and then muscle and bone that makes me so squeamish.  Especially since it is supposed to be normal to feel all sorts of lumpish clumps of veins and swelling that is only tissue, but who knows how normal really?  Jesus, get me out of my body right now!

On a more thoughtful note, there's nothing like breast cancer, and many other sicknesses, to suddenly cast a blinding spotlight on the amount of intimacy in your life.  Although not a particularly good example of this, breast cancer nevertheless seems so exemplary because it is apparently about breasts, something that are supposed to be intimately treasured.  (This is of course, really only about women who survive breast cancer.  You're lucky if the only thing you lose is your breasts.)  I mean, how much does finding a huge lump in your breast mean that no one (you included) has been paying any attention to those things?  Is breast cancer supposed to be such a calamity, on top of the thousands of women's deaths, because no one is paying attention to breasts?  This would sure be ironic. 

[At this juncture, how could I possibly pass up on an opportunity to recall those stupid email flyers that some Harvard undergraduate group sent out, about how "everyone likes breasts" and therefore you should attend their ridiculous event whose proceeds happen to go to breast cancer research.  Probably the group should have invited a breast cancer patient to the event so that everyone who "likes breasts" could feel her up and then drop some money into the pot.]

Did you know that breast cancer survivors who have undergone mastectomies often suffer from phantom breast sensations post surgery?  Breasts are so important that when we lose them, we have ghost breasts!  Aside from the pain and suffering associated with breast cancer, and the dysphoria and depression women often experience after having mastectomies, how much should we care about breasts?  For many women, breasts help them define their sexuality and their identity, and I think this is awesome.  But wouldn't you be pissed if, after all of that time you and others spent doting on your breasts, that you then had to lose them?   I think I would feel sad about losing such a big part of me, and then I might feel angry that breasts are such a big deal to my identity after all. 

What is perhaps really at stake is whether women can get over their bodies.  I don't mean reject them, I mean more just being less scared of them.  Of course, there will always be squeamish people like me.  But if women started touching themselves and each other (ahem) more, a lot would be a whole lot less mystical and scary.  Take home message: breast cancer kills, don't forget your monthly self-exam, and while you're at it, masturbate more too!    

darkness and bikes

This blog started after I read Maddy's column about losing electricity in her apartment, and because I wanted to write about how I like speeding my bike Renata through Somerville at night (always armed with the appropriate bike safety equipment).

Biking often feels like an opportunity to set yourself apart.  You're more than a non-car, you're a rebel motor.  And you get to swerve and dodge, and make hand signals, all in the name of safety and environmental politics. 

A few weekends ago I went out at night to the fire escape at Ilana's work in ny.  If you climb up several floors, you will come upon a Small Uncharted Land (the "roof").  It's a soft asphalt expanse, and there are curves, rises, and jumps like in a skateboarding park.  And there are bright skyscrapers towering all around. 

The dark is so much better than the daytime.   There are whole worlds out there that are brought into relief by darkness.   Breezing through the wet streets of Somerville at night is so much better than in the vanilla-winter sun.

When it gets to be this season and certain things are offered to you, like falling in love, warm light, showers and baths, sex, you can start getting dependent pretty fast.  And having any of that taken away can be devastating.  It was something you promised yourself you would have.  As Ilana has put it: "I'm leaving work after dark, my whole day is already over. But at least I have this."

Biking has largely saved me from this feeling recently.  It doesn't make me more cynical about love and showers, it just makes me realize I need them less than I thought.  It also leaves me in an eyes-half-shut, wild hair kind of feeling that's a lot better than some recent love and showers that I have had.  I end up thinking less about loss and more about how I'm an explorer, dirt on my face, sweat on my brow, weaving through black wet streets, waving an rebel motor flag as I go.             

Scranton is for Lovers

It's another one of those weeks. It rains. I bike to work, and when I'm not biking I walk on unfamiliar legs and mistime street crossings, imagining I can zoom in front of the oncoming car or swagger in the street corridor like a bike that takes up space.

Last year at this time I was running around fever pitch for MoveOn (and, of course, my country) in Scranton, Pennsylvania for the prez campaign.  By this time, I had set up shop in the attic of this nice house in the hill section, where the college professors and the liberal Scranton gentry live. 
Every night at around 9pm, three Dem volunteers would arrive in my "office" and try to talk shop with me. That was because they were sleeping there. Little did they know that MoveOn organizers operated on the Karl Rove Theory, which, summarized, meant that we were not supposed to tell Anyone about Anything, and if a volunteer was ever disorderly or drunk, they were a spy.  In fact, if my boss had known I was leaving them to sleep in my "office" every night, I would have been sacked definitely.   

I didn't sleep there, though, which was also against the rules.  I slept a few blocks away, in an old
beat up Victorian that someone built when the coal  was still flowing.  The whole neighborhood was like that.  Apparently the area had a lot of deadbeat drug dealers living in those drafty Victorian houses.  I bet you can imagine how cold that house was, despite the layer of cat and dog hair that lined the rooms.   But it was still pretty dreamy.  In Peter's bedroom,  if you lay on the bed with your head on the pillow and looked out the window, you could look down over tipping cupolas into the town. 

The job had terrors.  My boss made me do jumping jacks on my cell phone from my satellite office of one (which gives you a sense of my conscientiousness -- you don't have to do jumping jacks alone when no one's watching, but I did).  There were nightmarish early mornings in Allentown when we would sleep in the rental car outside the office waiting for our delinquent boss to arrive.  There were also, of course, the billion times that people hung the phone up on me or said "I'm voting for my president!" and the times I would canvas and people would literally start foaming at the mouth with their Kerry hatred. 

All of this notwithstanding, the hell of it was part of what I fell in love with, because nothing would have been so good if some parts of it hadn't been so goddamn bad.  Scranton is a shithole, but I loved it.  And I liked knowing every inch of it.  It made me want to get embroiled in county politics, shake up the complacent union members, end the Irish-Catholic cronyism, walk the precincts myself.  Every week we would have NE Pennsylvania volunteer conference calls, with people identifying themselves by precinct, "I'm Betty Sue from Troop Precinct, Lackawanna County," "I'm Miles from Allenton 2-3."  The sense of place was suddenly so much more grand than I had ever really understood before.

In case I jinx myself with this new posting spout before it begins, I'll end now.  Maybe I'll have more to say on the subject before Halloween.    

Tel Aviv Tummy

Today I went to the beach in Tel Aviv in a string bikini.  It was the first time I had ever gone anywhere with my tummy naked.  I kept looking down at it for viewings.  I think it did all right, maybe I will take it out again sometime.

There is something about being an American visiting Israel for the first time that I hadn't expected: the summer camp/Disneyland aspect.  You keep meeting people you know (or at least, if you travel with more well-connected and more comfortably self-identified Jews, you meet people they know).  You stand around in little groups, in the heart of Jerusalem, talking about how the person you just met dated your roommate and slept on so-and-so's couch.  Then these people sleep on your couch that night, and the cause of Zionism is further strengthened by your newly brokered bond of friendship.  Even if you hadn't meant it to be. 

I keep getting this strange feeling that some crazy pro-Israel American Jew back home is clapping her hands together with delight to see all of the friends I'm making and all of the fun I'm having.  A young proto-Jewish girl, meeting other Jews, in Israel!  Looking up her (very) distant relatives in the phone book!  Learning Hebrew!  Don't get your hopes up lady.  Don't think this means I'm going to go all Birthright on you. (It's pretty nice isn't it, that I get to be both at the same time?)

Since I've been here, I've been to shabbus lunch with Bronfman Fellows, I've been to the West Bank. I've seen a house in a Palestinian camp scheduled to be demolished, I've seen a new house for a Palestinian family built where an old house had been destroyed.  I've met just-married American Jews raising money for a Yeshiva on the West Bank, and I've met way-left Jews who won't buy a coffee at a cafe because they don't want to support Israel. 

Not to bring everything back to my tummy, but it reminds me of the playground/playgirl aspect of it all.  Difficult to reconcile me flaunting my bod on the hot beaches of Tel Aviv with my blood-curdling experiences going outside the checkpoint.  I ponder this, as I sit in the air conditioning, the edges of my American credit cards glinting as they peep out of my pockets.         

 

tales of a wandering half-jew

Today Potvin reminded me that when I go to Israel this week, people are going to ask me what I am doing there.  What's my deal?  It's a good question.

I have several hats I could wear.  Am I a non-Jewish girl visiting her Jewish friend and soaking up the culture of the Holy Land?  Am I trying Jewish history/Jewishness on for size to see if it fits my indecisiveness, if my soul will suddenly roll over and start to tremble?  Am I rolling with the punches, saying "slikha" in the crowded streets and bumbling my Hebrew like other American Jews?   

I have very strong tendencies to lie about how Jewish I am, and somehow I don't think that's going to fly in Israel.  All of the deceptions stop now: I have no idea what I'm getting into.