LET'S GO FOR IT

Recently something happened to me that I thought never would: I became a patriot. In the dramatic pre-election tension between America’s two parties, I began reflecting for the first time on what is involved in living in this country. In the sweep of time since the winter of 2010, it became clear to me that I was too far along in years to settle for uncertainty and conflict, but to arrive at an assertion of my identity as bisexual, I had to withstand enormous pressures pushing against me. Freedom in this country is a much mangled word. In the gibberish we hear from the campaign trail, for instance, we are urged to take a stand and free ourselves up from paying insurance premiums into a nationally mandated health plan. Or we are to be ‘free’ of ‘big’ or too big government. Yet these same charlatans are all to eager to interfere with a woman’s constitutional right to regulate her own reproductive destiny. Freedom, in fact, is a word bandied around like a ball in a sports game. Poor freedom. Never mind the millions of war dead resulting from the last global conflagration to fight for our freedom from the ideology of slavery. If there is any freedom guaranteed to us in these United States, it is the freedom to forge our own destinies. Sometimes this is not easy. We can comfort ourselves in our living room easy chairs and cast ballots, only to engage in consequent bellyaching when we do not have things exactly our way. Many do not understand that we live in the stream of history at least up to our ankles, without even experiencing the sensation of the flow of time and change. Having cut my teeth on the turbulence of the sixties, I build on a foundation of agitation for social change. This too is part of our legacy of Americans. 2012 will be a turning point for us. I don’t believe our current two-party system of government can endure, considering the poverty of the Republican viewpoint. An educated woman, I cannot even bring myself to understand what tradition they are attempting to uphold. Our constitutional heritage guarantees us the right to change our governance if it does not serve the people. Let’s go for it. We don’t need to use rifles.

THE 'WE' QUESTION

At a meeting of the Rock Tavern Unitarian Society’s ‘Covenant Group’ the other night, one of the attendees was freely referring to ‘we’. I began asking a question and was promptly stopped since I was doing so out of order. At the end came a section referred to as ‘Wishes and Likes’, and said I would like it if people indicated whether or not they were partnered, especially if they used that controversial pronoun. As this was my first attendance at this group, I’d not coherently pulled my thoughts together, and was promptly descended upon. I’d also declared myself to be an ‘out bisexual woman’, and had also thrown that into the mix. Oh, I was told, I look at women all the time and my husband is OK with that. Oh, we have no problem declaring our sexual orientation. (I staunchly objected to that one.) One individual said she’d been married but was now single. “That helps,” I said. I don’t like the hierarchical structure of heterosexual society, or even partnered society, if that can be referred to. I’ve been single most of my life, have had to do everything for and by myself, including a not insignificant amount of suffering. I don’t like people slinging around the fact that they have the comforts of a relationship. It’s that simple.

THE THRUWAY STORE

What does it mean to get killed in war? Up in my neck of the woods, culture is much different than in The Megalopolis of New York City. Recently, I journeyed over to a local landmark, The Thruway Store, located in Walden, NY. My purpose was to bring over flyers, six of them, announcing the War Healing Circle being facilitated by the Rev. Chris Antal of the Rock Tavern Unitarian Society. Earlier last year, due to disturbances in my neighborhood, I’d gone to its sports department with the intention of purchasing a hand gun, discovering that it was something of a local watering hole, a convergence of hunters, sportsmen, veterans and others involved in the military. My first attendance at one of the Circles was an extraordinary experience. There were 8-10 of us in attendance: veterans, those active in the military but also including three of us from The Society. I was ambushed with tears remembering my antiwar activism of the ‘60s and took my turn speaking to that. An Episcopal priest was present who’d done much work with veterans. She told of a young man scarred by war. He’d relocated his family in order to make them safe from him, feeling his withdrawal and moodiness could only inflict damage. And she said she could sometimes see the firefight being played out in his eyes before they would once again fall numb and his attention would once again turn to a television screen. I myself have been involved in studying war, and WWII in particular, for about seven years. I don’t know why. Many possible reasons have presented themselves: I was a warrior in a previous life/lives (even though I’ve told I’d been a monastic); since I’ve felt so embattled with the world myself, it makes me feel less alone; but perhaps it’s primarily mesmerized by the cruelty of how we butcher one another, the unfortunate primary way we seem to make history. Or perhaps it’s because for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted it to come to an end. The first time Rev. Antal came over to counsel with me, he was astonished at my admission that I watched the Military Channel, and then even more astonished at my premise that if society in general, and women in particular, would understand firsthand the experience of being in battle, that there would be a radical shift in consciousness, taking us beyond the ease with which we seem to enter into conflict. Instead of sentimentalizing the returning warrior, we need to reflect deeply on the cutting short of life before it has even had an opportunity of flowering into meaning.

HUDSON VALLEY SANGHA

Allow me, to my own relief, to turn from painful introspection to a new hopefulness. As life has tossed me around from one spiritual community to another, or if you will, from one set of pews to another, I’ve finally found a resting place at the Greater Newburgh Unitarian Society, located in Rock Tavern.

There were almost Biblical overtones in the way I’d been led there by a well known, local activist emeritus—I believe the quote goes somewhat like “whither thou goest…”. Just as with other very close friends and allies, she led me through the dark tunnel of earlier this year until now at its end, I am regarding a landscape containing some entertaining and even exciting prospects. Stirring the pot of my own bisexuality, both at the LGBT drop in center in White Plains known as The Loft, as well as floating some ideas at The Society, it would appear that not only a monthly Bi Brunch, but perhaps also a more inclusive gay group may be forming in Newburgh. The possibility that this might ultimately morph into a service organization for the entire Mid Hudson region would rearrange the entire sociology of the region. As of now, there is a two-hour journey by car between the two drop in centers in White Plains and Kingston, with nothing in between. In what I expect will turn out to be a series of conversations between Rev. Chris Antal and myself, he helped me connect with another ‘B’ in the congregation. Now that arthroscopic surgeries have been performed on both knees, starting the Brunch at a local diner is a mos def beginning in February, with my Bi support group facilitator helping with publicity. Too, the exchanges between the man who has said he would be my ‘minister’ if I liked, look as though they may well prove life changing. It’s taken a while to get my bearings with him. A fellow parishioner and I both made the observation that it is almost like meeting with a holy man, he seems so utterly unable to function, relate or communicate on other than the deepest of levels. Our first conversation felt like walking over a mine field, or perhaps a better characterization would be the sensation of falling off a cliff. With only a casual reference and a brief exchange, the most profound explorations open up. Whew! I’ll see him on Saturday for an unexpected Christmas Eve service, suggest we meet again at the end of next month. In an unrelated development once again underlining my philosophy that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ I’ve begun initial conversations with a nudist colleague about opening up my house as a Bed and Breakfast, offering him a commission if he sends up business room the more populated NYC vortex. It would be the Belle Terre B&B since that is the moniker he gave my humble estate. The property is in excellent condition, and the woman from The Society who’s been helping me with some housekeeping is prepared to be the first, and perhaps only necessary employee. For the first time this year there were no prospects for renting the room, and since necessity is the mother of invention, let her give birth to an entrepreneur!

CONNECTING THE DOTS

I guess this topic has mainly to do with health issues and medical care, although I think it has implications beyond those concerns. I don't know how many times I've repeated to friends and health care providers both that I work with a homeopathic physician, have since January '09. In doing so, a pattern emerged due to an unfortunate series of illnesses about which I first consulted with my OB/GYN. With my thinking conditioned by medical science, I stubbornly equated the pain I was experiencing with infection, not an unreasonable anxiety. Unremitting pain can easily provoke panic, and in my case, led to much laboratory testing and high tech imaging, with no conclusive results. Culturally, we are presented with compulsory behemoths, among them the conventional practice of medicine. In the pattern I referred to, once all laboratory assays were completed and I was still afflicted with pain, I would then consult with Andrew Franck, the homeopath. Referencing other cultural models of medicine, he was able to diagnose and treat. In one stunning instance he recognized a disruption to the Chi as it would more naturally flow through the energy channels of Chinese medicine, what we very tediously refer to as 'acupuncture meridians'. Anyway, in a more recent visit this summer, he advised me to "get in touch with my body", a rather remarkable prescription. Walking out of the Healing Arts office nonplussed, it wasn't until an idyllic moment of sunbathing on my back patio that I did exactly that, and realized that my body itself was a remarkable instrument of healing if only I could trust it. You can bring the horse to the water but you can't make it drink is an old saw. In another one of these serial illnesses, I pleaded with urologist number 1 to please understand the chain of events as I understood them leading up to my symptoms. Arguing with this individual was futile, and I had to move on to another medical office before I was satisfied that my anxieties and concerns had met with the corresponding appropriate examination and tests. Ultimately it was once again Andrew Franck who diagnosed what turned out to be a stubborn abdominal spasm. But by this time I'd gone through five months of pain. Too, I've put myself through a lot of unnecessary turmoil relationally with others. My tendency seems to push right up to and beyond my own boundaries of comfort in an effort to reach out, but my generosity in assigning attributes to people who then prove themselves uninterested in responding to me often turns around to bite me in the ass. There are some who would then cynically assert that any attempt at establishing loving relationships is futile. I'm not one of them, but I'd like to think I've learned something about staying safe. Sometimes we need the help of others to make sense of the world, to 'connect the dots', as it were. Staying free and autonomous better enables us to engage in the reality of others, but there is just as much legitimacy in walking away from those who can't assist us understanding what happens to us in life and why.

My Anarchist Life

Interestingly, it was during a conversation with my pharmacy that I remembered, with all the drama of everyday life, that I was an anarchist. Perhaps the details are unimportant, but in being presented with a choice of colors for a night ware accessory, I chose black and red, pointing out that since I was an anarchist, why not. Over the years, and in my attempts to accommodate the more drearily conventional organizations I had decided to involve myself with, I’d forgotten. Mensa, and church organizations, even those more liberally religious, had dampened my fervor. But once I began to reflect on it I realized this powerful body of thought, with its emphasis on individual autonomy, was the ribbon tying together the pattern of risks I’d taken in my own growth. As a student at the City College of New York, I’d slogged my way through the alphabet soup of orthodox left organizations, finally accepting an invitation to attend a meeting of the campus anarchists. This proved auspicious as guests such as Tuli Kupferberg and Murray Bookchin, both now passed on, held forth. Through this aperture in my budding life as a political philosopher, I found my way into the New York Federation of Anarchists, dining on macrobiotic casseroles in the evening, then taking the First Avenue bus back to mom and dad later on. I’m now remembering passed Federation member and poet Alan Hoffman, then residing in a rear top floor apartment on Avenue B. With an elision of time allowing for a mental/emotional harrowing in my struggles with my family, I later became involved with Steve Brownstein, a subsequent member of what became known as the Anarchos collective and lived with him directly below Alan in the same building. This was in turbulent, revolutionary antiwar years of ‘67/’68, and I became involved in the beginnings of women’s liberation. As a founding member of New York Radical women, I helped formulate the principles of consciousness raising, moving us across the boundary from personal examination into the sphere of political action and thought. The idea of the individual as the repository of the way society is ideologically constructed moved me into the formulation that “the personal is the political.” That made it easier. It wasn’t just us anymore. We were caught in a snare of imposed thinking and role playing and it became increasingly clear that the only way out was through the vector of social change. I also participated in the lesbian feminist community in the early ‘70s as a ‘woman identified woman’. http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/wlm/womid/ Another elision of time, and I dove into the cauldron of cultural change holding sway in lower Manhattan in the mid ‘70s. Once again, I was caught in the doldrums of having survived a sojourn in another hothouse of personal/political growth and was ready to move on. It takes time to find others, but soon I became part of what was a powerful cultural transformation. Now, having become a member of the Hudson Valley Diaspora, I am increasingly aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is not going away, but instead is burgeoning into not only a community, but a neighborhood, movement and culture. I’ll be in The Megalopolis in November. Maybe I’ll have the opportunity to check it out.

THE GAY OCTOROON

In the Kern-Hammerstein musical Showboat, the onboard actress Julie LaVerne is found to be in an unlawfully miscegenous marriage by virtue of being an octoroon; or, as Wikipedia elaborates, “someone with family heritage of one biracial grandparent, in other words, one African great-grandparent and seven Caucasian great grandparents.” The separation from her husband results in a cascading tragedy, beginning with her removal as an onboard entertainer, and ending with her combing gambling halls and dives, struggling to find the men who can help her survive.
This racial trope interests me as a bisexual woman. In my life, I’ve been torn apart emotionally and mentally in what was presented to me as a compulsory pigeon-holing in dualistic sexuality, i.e. the need to be one or the other, gay or straight. All gay people in the sandwich acronym we’ve acquiesced to: LGBT, struggle with the exclusion from heterosexuality and its privileges. There is a risible game, played differently at the different poles of socially acceptable sexual preference, with the common quest being to discover or identify who is homosexual. For straight folks, the result will be a shift in perception away from acceptability. For gay folks, the perception of homosexual preference constitutes an enhancement. But those of us whose lives have led us to some gray middle area expose ourself to a hazardous distortion of identity.
For me, bisexuality has always represented the autonomy to love audaciously. Moving away from a confining sojourn in the early ‘70s lesbian feminist [separatist] community, I became involved instead in the New Wave of cultural exploration of that time. In the 2008 release of The Universe of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf reflects on how everyone from that time was either bi or gay. Yes, I remember it well. Bisexuality often fares well in the hothouse of intentional community. But the exposure all gay people experience in the ultimate necessity to endure and survive in a heterosexual world involves the navigation of what is often a harsh and unforgiving reality.
The workplace for one, unless one has a cache of fabulousness for an entre into the world of the arts or fashion, is largely a heterosexual environment. Perhaps real, perhaps pretended, but nonetheless one that needs to be ‘gone along with’. In our cemented, monolithic culture where marriage is the apex of an heirarchical pyramid of acceptability, those of us who make different choices fall to the bottom or perhaps through the cracks entirely. If we are enjoying the privilege that makes us acceptable hires, provides us with promotions and upward mobility, makes allowances for us to circulate socially and rear children, what would make us take the risk of a same sex relationship? Is there ever any room to move back and forth? The flamboyance of drag and the exagerated feminity of male gayness presents a face to the American public frivolous enough to have gained acceptance. But what about those of us who don’t want to put on a show?