Saturday Storytime: All Cats Are Gray

I was ten. I was still terrified of what might be hidden under the bed or in the closet or anywhere else that made hiding easy. What I knew of the world that didn't hide from the light was bad enough. What concealed itself must be worse.

I was in my bedroom. Somewhere outside of that, my parents were probably fighting. They might have been taking a break. Somewhere beyond that was a new school, a new set of kids who didn't like the same things I did, who didn't talk the same way I did, who didn't even play the same games I did. Nowhere around me were the water and the trees that always accepted me.

All that mattered less than it had an hour or two before, because I was reading Lore of the Witch World by Andre Norton. I'd been reading fantasy all my life--mythology, the creatures and deeds tales of writers like C. S. Lewis, fairy tales--but this was the first time I held grown-up fantasy in my hands. This was the first time I saw people, and particularly women, dealing with both the trials of daylight (war, displacement, rape, disability, being outcaste) and the half-seen creatures of shadow. And they succeeded. Not easily, but they succeeded.

I needed that just then, perhaps more than anything in the world.

Now, I write fantasy sometimes. At that point, it was written into me. Nor am I alone, which I think is part of the uproar over Ginia Bellafante's dismissive comments about sex being used to pander to women, who would otherwise turn up their pretty little noses at fantasy. We're being told to chose which part of our identity is the valid part. Are we women, or do we like fantasy? It's a silly, impossible question, and we're not going to stand for it.

There is a bit of irony in this for me. The woman who wrote fantasy into my consciousness started writing at a time when "women didn't write fantasy". They did actually write it, of course, and publish it, but they did so under male names. Even Andre Norton, whose name is ambiguously gendered, published her early, science fiction stories as Andrew North.

So in honor of the woman who taught me that fantasy isn't just for children and that the dark can be managed, here is one of those early stories. An excerpt:

Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hours—in the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar-port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her you could spot her—just sitting there listening to the talk—listening and remembering. She didn’t open her own mouth often. But when she did spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words—these will never forget Steena.

She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master-minded machines she tended—smooth, gray, without much personality of her own.

But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon-rites—and her warning saved Bub’s life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slitite. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And, last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars.

All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales. But she wouldn’t take so much as a cup of Canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.

Keep reading.

Duck and Cover

The older I get, the more diverse are the ages of my friends. It provides interesting insight on how rapidly bits of the world are changing.

I was talking to a friend who's about a decade older than I am. I don't remember exactly what prompted the subject, but I think the context was a discussion of fear. He said, "When I was a kid, we did 'duck and cover" drills in school."

I thought about it for a minute before responding. "We never did drills. I think we knew there was no point. If someone decided to push the button, we were just all going to die. Nothing we could do about it."



The conversation has sat in the back of my head for a few months, getting fuzzier in its details, percolating. Then I went to the Atomic Testing Museum on our way to touring the Nevada Test Site.

There was a photo of the children in a town near the testing practicing their drills, outside on the ground. There was footage of how manikins fared in test houses built near the blasts. There was a mock-up of a basement blast shelter, complete with a manikin family smiling peacefully.

I wanted to laugh, but it would have been the wrong kind of laughter, and any kind of laughter at all was not what I wanted to be doing with Japanese tourists (no, really) in the museum. So I stopped a little past the diorama and turned to my husband and the friend taking the tour with us. We're all the same age group for this sort of thing. I told them about the months-old conversation.

They nodded. My husband said, "I checked on a map recently. We're not too bad off where we are now."

I looked at him. "If it were just one bomb, one warhead."

Another nod and a sour face. "Yeah."



The operable phrase when I was in school was "mutually assured destruction." Scads of nuclear weapons as a security blanket. I suppose it's not surprising we found that sort of comfort rather cold. Hey, there's this guy who calls ketchup a vegetable and names his best hope of defense against a nuclear attack after a fantasy with space trappings and on and on and on. We're supposed to trust him to understand the full consequences of his actions. Oh. Yay.

The first day of ninth grade social studies class, American government, my teacher announced to the class that it would be run as a democracy. No, he couldn't tell us how that was going to work because we were going to decide that. No, he couldn't even tell us the scope of the decisions we'd be making as we voted.

I don't do pass/fail scenarios with open-ended expectations.

I think he thought it was cute when I turned in my chair to face the wall. A protest! Ooh! Yay, democracy! I don't think it stayed cute for more than a couple of days, but cute wasn't my point. If I wasn't allowed to transfer into the other "advanced" civics class (the school cut us off after one or two people), he could find out how much of a pain democracy could be. Then he, I, and the school could decide what that was worth for a grade.

Very shortly after the year started, all of the ninth-grade classes participated in a nuclear simulation at the same time. Our class split up into nations. Each nation got a set of scenarios: pressure on the borders, powerful foes--internal and external--posed to pounce on any misstep. As a nation, each group decided on their response: pacific, aggressive, or something in between.

Our class blew ourselves up on the first turn. One hour of contemplation, minus however long it took to explain the rules, and we had a nuclear war on our hands.

On the up-side, that was the end of the democracy experiment. A rather grim teacher announced that at the same time he announced we were done with the simulation earlier than anyone else. I have no idea whether it made a difference to me. Most of my political education came from looking up the background on Doonesbury strips and Chad Mitchell Trio songs and testing the claims of politicians and lobbyists.

The one lesson I'll never forget from that class, however, is how easy it is to convince ourselves that we don't have any other "real" options. That could be because I've never stopped hearing that as a justification for political decisions, particularly for decisions I wouldn't have made.

via

I don't know what difference it made to me or my generation to know it was out of our hands whether we lived or died. It would be easy to claim that the materialism of Generation X stems from nuclear nihilism, but we were too young to set the tone of the 80s. It wasn't people my age buying DeLoreans, Rolexes, and coke in bulk.

I don't know that we even had the words to talk about it among ourselves before the situation became less stark. We don't talk about it now. Talking about our teenage years means talking about social pressures and pop culture. For all I know, it wasn't that big a deal to anyone else.

Except for that long, quiet trip through a museum and two instant nods. Those tell me I didn't live through that alone.

Campus Crusade II

To go with yesterday's Campus Crusade for Cthulhu poster, here's an election special from around the same time. There's even a possibility, as mind-rendingly terrifying as that might be, that this one informed some of my political thinking.



As I said before, if you know who made these, please let me know. I didn't. I've just loved them for a long time.

Campus Crusade I

Things are a bit busy around here, as they always are this time of year. Until I have a chance to finish one of the half dozen or so posts I really, really, really want to be writing but can't concentrate on, here's a fun poster I came across when I was sorting through juvenilia for The Physics Male.



No, I didn't create this. I've just had a copy since college (a rather long time ago). I've searched to find the creator, but without luck. If you know who made this, please let me know. I'd like to give credit and let them know that I've held onto it all these years.

The Physics Male: A High School Ethnography

This is my first piece of writing that first garnered a real response. The first draft of this, written when I was a junior in high school, was passed around, ripped apart, crumpled up, thrown in the trash, retrieved, flattened out, and taped to the chalkboard. I'm posting it here because a number of high school friends have asked whether it still exists.

In order to understand this, you need to know three things: (1) the west wing of my high school housed the arts and sports, (2) my physics club ran the concessions for the high school as a fund raiser, and (3) you don't mess with angry, articulate high school girls. A number of us contributed to this, although the final writing should be mostly my own.

And yes, the guys all read it. Thoroughly.

The Physics Male

The physics male is a strange and hitherto unexplored species. As so little in known about his habits, habitat, and distinguishing characteristics, this has been written to enlighten on the subject of this occasionally interesting creature.

Characteristics
Physics males are most easily distinguished by their condescending attitude toward members of the opposite sex. This is displayed by patronizing behavior exhibited to the same. They are chauvinistic and seem to feel that females are neither smart enough nor strong enough to be of any use. For this lack of understanding, these physics males must be pitied.

They are also characterized by their low mentalities. This is not to say that they are unintelligent--not most of them. But, while few physics males are actually tenth graders, the predominant attitude is one of sophomoric glee.

It is easy to recognize a physics male on the basis of vocabulary alone. It consists mostly of long technical words, which when looked up, do not mean anything similar to what their context suggested, and sexual innuendo with little or no redeeming social value.

Although physics males vary greatly in plumage, fashion tends toward "conservative nerd" (with one or two exceptions). This nerd look covers much territory: anything from suit and tie to the more traditional "plain bad taste".

Habitat
Physics males are generally to be found in the east wing of the building. As a matter of fact, aside from one semi-notable exception, most refuse even to be "caught dead" in the west wing. These specimens tend to congregate in an area called "the shop" between periods. Many remain far into their next class. (How this is explained to their other pedagogues has yet to be discovered.)

There are two trains of thought concerning this all-important "shop". The first theory is that this area is a ritualistic "testing ground" for the young physics male. In this area, they exercise their ever-maturing attitude problems in seclusion until they have become full-fledged.

Still, others hold to the belief that this "shop" is actually nest. Here the still immature physics males find a sort of haven from the "tough world out there". Most experts agree that it is a nesting response that draws them to this area. This nesting response is believed to be triggered by the realization that if such behavior as mentioned in the section on characteristics persists, these males will have a tough time finding someone with whom to build nests of their own.

Care and Feeding
There are only tow main points to be remembered when caring for a physics male. The first is to be sure not to upset his delicate ego. These are quite fragile and bruise easily. Such a bruising can cause the over-excitable physics male to go into strange convulsions (more widely known as temper tantrums). The second is to not overtax the physics male mind. This requires great care, as is most simple to do and can result in a bruising of the aforesaid ego.

Feeding is one of the rare things at which a physics male is quite adept. Given a few quarters and a rather simple pop/candy machine, the average physics male can procure a "highly nutritious" meal. This will consist mainly of the fifth food group--junk, represented most often by Choco Mints, and either Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper.

Play Habits
According to experts on the subject, much of the play in which physics males take part is actually behavior necessary to their well-being. This theory is validated by the regularity with which the physics males repeat so many seemingly purposeless activities. Included in these are three main "sports".

The first of these appears to be the favorite. It involves making lewd remarks to or about any female within sight. The goal of this seems to be to surpass one's fellows in reaching new heights of rudeness.

The second ply is not far behind the first in popularity. It is the ritualistic "money counting" which is discussed in more depth further on.

The third activity most closely resembles the play of normal human children. This is the constant tinkering with so-called "toys". These are, in reality, sometimes complicated and occasionally expensive physics equipment. The theory concerning this particular aspect of physics male play is that this tinkering is an attempt to replace some vital but missing part of the physics male's childhood.

Work Habits
I have searched diligently for any information on this topic. Aside from much talk on the part of the physics males, none has been found. As far as can be determined, physics males do not work in the presence of others. Although it may be that their religion imposes such strict secrecy, it is highly unlikely. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that physics males do not work.

Mating Habits
Here, too, there is little available data. Although the subject is one the physics males themselves discuss at great length (see below), there appears to be little or no practical application. As this situation is so comparable to that of physics male work habits, it is surely not necessary to point out the rather obvious conclusion.

(Physics males live in fervent hope of sharing a physics female--or, for that matter, a chemistry female, choir female, phy. ed. female, etc. However, they take either no, ineffective, or inappropriate action. To ease their frustration at this pursuit, they often resort to creating fantastic stories regarding their amorous adventures. These stories, of course, fool no one but other physics males.)

Common Fallacies
Physics males put a lot of stock in many untruths. Most of these concern females and/or sex. One of the most widespread is the belief that money equals power equals sex appeal. For example, they believe that the one most closely related to the money has the most power. This is shown by the attempts of those with no legitimate connection to the money-counting ritual to "suck up" to the head physics male. One notable example has been quite "successful" (by his own standards) with this method. He feels himself the second in command. One would merely have to look at this person to know that in this case, power is not equal to sex appeal.

Another common fallacy among physics males concerns the way they view themselves. Some feel that they are God, while others, more humble, feel instead that they are merely His gift to the Earth or more specifically, all the females on it.

Perhaps the most common fallacies held by these specimens are reflected in their attitudes toward women. Most feel that women were put on this early only to serve them, that they are inherently less smart, and that they truly wish to be pampered and insulted by turns. This is one of the few groups (as a group) that still clings to these beliefs. Whether this is because they feel to threatened to acknowledge the presence of an equal--potentially greater--life form, or because they are too busy tinkering to notice the same, or both is a subject which requires further study.

(Any conclusions to be drawn from this study are left to the individual reader.)

Humor

She was about five weeks old. It was too young, but "Take her now, or we'll take care of her." They didn't mean letting her stay with her mother for a few more weeks. At least she was weaned.

She was the not-very-runty runt of the litter. Black, with the tiniest of white spots on her belly. Her mother was half Siamese, and her father was presumed to be the same Siamese that was her uncle. Being black earned her the name "Humor."

She wasn't happy about being taken away from her mother. She spent the first evening yowling at the top of her lungs. The first night, too. Putting her on my chest, where she could feel my heartbeat, helped for about five minutes. Eventually, she went back into the cat carrier, as far from the bedroom as she could be, with towels over it to muffle the noise and just a little bit of air space left. She was still loud.

Over time, she settled into a bedtime routine that involved lying across the back of my neck and getting her face scritched for a little while before prowling the house, yowling, of course. She'd settle down after a while, but she never did lose the tendency to wander into a corner and yowl like a lost soul. She'd come running out if you called her name, terribly happy to find people, but she spent more time lost in closets than any cat I've known.

Once she got bigger, the routine changed again: demand I go to bed, stand on me and knead in an ecstatic trance until she came to again, then lie down for petting with her face in mine until she got bored. I was Mom.

In fact, I was all her people, and anyone else was viewed with suspicion at best. Strange voices in the house meant she was nowhere to be found, although if people stuck around for long, they might be graced with a glimpse of her. Those who came by often enough might be allowed to pet her briefly. Eventually, she allowed my husband to pick her up and hold her.

She was never the bravest of cats. She ran away when I sneezed, which was sadly and funnily ironic in such a danderous cat. Trips to the vet involved the drawing of blood--my blood--for getting her into the cat carrier the first time. Once we were in the car, she had to be let out and snuggled up on my chest if we wanted any hope of hearing other traffic.

She was determined, though. Enough heat was worth lying across the vanes of the radiator. No matter how many times she was yelled at for playing monster under the bed, ankles were always fair game. When I sat in front of the computer, the back of my chair was her preferred spot, with just a bit of her draped over my shoulder. When I read in the big, comfy chair, she'd settle onto one arm for a little while after enough petting, then wander between me and the book when she decided I'd ignored her long enough. And people food...well, she'd generally stay at a polite distance as long as I was actually eating. After that, all bets were off.

It was the eating that tipped me off. Humor had always been good about telling me when she needed more food or water: meow, wander in the appropriate direction, look accusing until I followed and fixed her problems for her. It took a few days to notice that, while she was getting fussy about her water being dirty, she wasn't making much dent in her food. Last I saw her alive, she was busily tucking into some moist food that I'd given her to tempt her palate.

This morning, the moist food was mostly gone, and she was lying underneath the computer desk, where the warm air from the fan blows. She was racked out on her side , the way she usually slept. Usually, however, she would wake when I walked into the room. Not today, and not ever again.

I made my husband make sure she wasn't just ill. I'm making him move the body, as well. She was the softest cat I've ever met, a medium-hair made up of just the fluffy underfur. I want to remember that, and I want to remember her as warm and pliant, tucked under my chin or curled neatly into my lap. I have seventeen years of those memories, of her being very much my cat, and those are the memories I want to keep fresh.

Oh, sweetest little black cat, how I will miss you. How I miss you now.

Malingering

I was thirteen, which means I was in eighth grade. I hated school for numerous reasons mostly having to do with being a poor geek in a rich suburb in the status-obsessed eighties. I hated gym class for the very similar reason that almost everything was turned into a competition. After all, what better idea is there than making blood-thirsty teenagers play dodge ball (except maybe stranding them on a desert island)?

I liked swimming, both because water was home and because I'd been doing it competitively for a few years in a state where summer wasn't strictly bounded by holidays. All that practice meant that when one of the snobby kids wanted to put me in my place with a swimming competition, they got their asses kicked. Okay, beating one of them while doing the backstroke instead of freestyle was just showing off, but it was fun.

I liked running, too. Like swimming, it was an opportunity to be by myself, even in a class full of other people. I was a decent sprinter and an okay distance runner until I ran out of breath. I never did manage to condition that up properly, despite walking a mile to school every day with a nice uphill section in the middle.

Then I started liking running less. One day, my foot hurt. I didn't remember injuring it, but I figured I must have. I wasn't screaming with pain, but I limped. The gym teacher looked at me funny but let me sit out a day. Then a second day. Then the look was less funny, and I was told to get out there and try.

It hurt, of course, every time I flexed my foot. But I could do it. The pain, just as it had started, never got so acute that I was afraid I was hurting myself more. Sometimes it even waned. Then it waxed again. But I'd already learned I could run through the pain. It was better than that look and all it implied. I even taught myself to walk without the limp.

I think it was the next year that my knees started to hurt. Same gym teacher, though, so I knew better than to sit anything out. As long as I could do it through the pain, the pain couldn't really be that bad, and I shouldn't use it as an excuse. For not doing something I'd like to do until it hurt.

It wasn't until I was sixteen, riding the bus to a more-distant school and no longer required to take gym, that I saw the doctor about my foot and my knees. That may have been the first time I saw a doctor in that period. It may just have been the first time I said anything about this pain that I'd gotten used to living with. I don't remember. Things were complicated then.

It was arthritis. The toe got a whopping huge shot of cortisone, which burns like you can't imagine if you've never had it. A couple hours later, it was fine, a condition that persisted for more than a decade. The knees were more difficult, since my kneecaps are slightly malformed, but I was given exercises to strengthen the appropriate muscles to keep my kneecap from grinding into the rest of my knee.

That's what I'd been living with for three years. That and exercise-induced asthma, but it was even more years later before I figured out that being out of breath after a run doesn't make most people really struggle for air and cough to clear obstructions that can't be cleared. Well, the arthritis, the asthma--and that look on my gym teacher's face that said I was faking it, relying on a tiny boo boo to get me out of work.

I wanted to take the diagnosis back to my teacher and rub her face in it. I still don't know whether I should have. There are so many forces in our society telling us that as long as we can limp along, the only thing that's really wrong with us it that we're not doing it with smiles on our faces.

So I've learned how to smile, just as I learned how to run and how to walk without a limp. Real smiles, too, the kind that will fool experts. I've learned how to push enough air over the reddest vocal cords to defeat laryngitis long enough to allow the smallest of small talk. I've learned to look attentive when I'm falling-down tired. I've trained, "I'm doing well, and you?" as the automatic response to the polite question that isn't really interested.

Of course, I haven't learned how to feel any better. I haven't learned how to keep from resenting the world zipping past me when I have to stop or the people who can't see through the facade.

Most of all, I haven't learned how to stop feeling like a malingerer when I stop short of running. I know that the best thing I can do when I'm sick is sleep. I know that sitting up will just make my joints hurt more and that my temperature will fluctuate broadly, requiring that I have quite a bit of control over my coverings. I know that migraine-induced vertigo is much less likely to make me nauseated if I don't move around a lot. I know that in the past year, I've used five days of PTO for vacation, and all the rest has gone to sick time.

None of that makes me feel any less like I'm slacking off. None of it makes me feel any less useless when I'm not getting something done. None of it makes me feel that it is any less shameful to limp. And none of it makes me feel any less like someone is going to come along and look at me as though I'm making it all up.

Happy Birthday

I first met my friend James a bit over 10 years ago (well, we'd been in the same place a couple of times before that, but we hadn't really met). It took me several years after that to get to know him, though, and not because we didn't spend a lot of time together.

Mutual friends of ours held--"parties" is probably too formal a word, let's say "at homes"--nearly every Friday night for a few years before they moved out of state. If you knew when and where to show up, the company and the atmosphere were great. James and his wife, Sara, and my husband and I were the most regular of guests. I came to know Sara pretty well and heard plenty about the great joy that was her masters thesis. But James....

James was generally just off to the side with his laptop, typing incomprehensible gibberish. I say that advisedly. There are plenty of programming languages I don't know well, but they don't look like gibberish. James speaks Spanish, Klingon, a few standard computer languages...and machine code.

He was writing an operating system. He was sitting at these, admittedly informal, social events and writing FreeDOS while the rest of us talked about gardening, grad school, writing and general silliness.

FreeDOS was meant to replace MS-DOS, for which Microsoft had announced they would discontinue support. It was meant to allow people to continue to use older software and hardware long after the big money-making machine said they should be obsolete, even if they still had all their working parts.

That's what FreeDOS did. It allowed people who couldn't afford to buy a new computer every three years to continue to operate. It allowed people who still loved their low-res games to keep pulling them out and playing them when nostalgia gripped them. It allowed people to buy a PC with an operating system on it without being beholden to Microsoft. FreeDOS did what it set out to do.

James has been stepping away from the FreeDOS project over the last couple of years. It will run on without him, most likely. There are people as dedicated to the project (obsessed) as James has been. But it's time for James to let his baby make its own way.

FreeDOS is 15 years old today. It's young for most people's babies to be on their own, but it's downright venerable for an operating system.

James, happy birthday to your baby. And even though we teased you about it at the time, it's amazing cool that I had the honor of being there while it happened.

How Deep the Bullet Lies, Part III

This story I've already told, at least the first part of it.

It was a perfectly normal guy who didn't want to let go of me when I was in my late teens. We'd been hanging out, kissed a little bit, but I was done. He wasn't. It took making it very clear that one of us was going to be injured to get him to realize I meant it and let go.

If I had been more intimidated (he was a big Navy boy) or less sober or less willing to risk hurting him or being hurt, there's a very good chance it would have ended in rape. The fact that he was horrified when he figured out I really did mean it wouldn't have changed that at all.

Unlike the events in Part I and Part II of this series, this wasn't a traumatic experience. Quite the opposite. Oh, it was scary enough while it was happening, but the fact that fighting back solved the problem was...cathartic. Educational.

Then, nearly two decades later, I decided to mention it. That was also educational. Not terribly cathartic.

I've had a friend decide to "walk away" over everything that happened in the last week and a half. I discovered that the person whose behavior I asked my friend to look at, thus dragging him into the whole mess, was using me and everyone else to generate controversy and pull attention to a cause he'd adopted. (Why do I believe Jason? This, mostly. It's all too familiar: the big idea, the disregard for whether anyone else has consented to participate or is being hurt, the "regret" that changes no behavior.)

I've learned a few things about myself. I've learned just how stubbornly determined I am to see some things through and to get something worthwhile even out of awful situations. I've learned much more about the limits of how far I can push myself into the territory of using myself up.

I've learned how sane and self-sufficient I sound even when I'm on the verge of cracking. Funny, even. I can't drop all that, apparently. I can take someone apart and lay the pieces out for everyone to see, but I can't lash out (even when it's the kinder option). I can tell someone what I need, but I can't make them feel it. The more that's at stake, the less I'm able to make myself manipulate the situation.

I've learned how far I'll go to protect my voice, including removing it entirely from play. There's only one person who knows how close I came to deleting this blog and walking away from the internet. I found the support I needed and wrote these instead, amping up instead of shutting down, but the outcome was very much in doubt for a while.

I've learned how it feels to be on the receiving end of that off-topic kindness and silliness in the midst of a tough slog. I owe D.C., Ambivalent Academic, Will, Becca, DuWayne and Jason for that in ways I can't quite express. Toaster, too, even if he wasn't specifically trying to lighten the mood. I grin every time I see that cartoon.

But that's enough about me and what I'm taking away from (hoo, boy) the first half of this month. This series of posts was originally intended to say something about the fact that we can't know who we're talking to when we're talking about tough topics like this. I don't know whether it's done that, but either way, it's time to shift the focus away from me. Back to the broader topic tomorrow.

For now, go find something fun to read at the blogs that are supporting Silence Is the Enemy with their page-view revenue. As always, Bioephemera has much that is weird and wonderful. Go read and marvel.

How Deep the Bullet Lies, Part II

I was fifteen and sitting in the back of a pickup truck in a parking lot at UW-Stout on Christmas Eve eve. We'd gotten a bit off track.

On track would have been meeting the guy to whom I was going to "lose" my virginity. Virginity didn't actually mean anything to me, but mine was getting annoying. I kid you not, there were two guys, uncle and nephew but very close in age, arguing over which one of them was going to take my virginity nine months down the road when I turned sixteen and was legal.

I had other plans, which included shutting these guys up already. They also included the younger brother of the fiance of a friend of mine. They didn't include everybody but me, my friend, and her fiance's father working until sometime that evening, but they all were. Hence the diversionary road trip until we could pick up younger son.

There was a topper on the back of the truck and maybe a heater. I don't remember it being freezing. I do remember being offered a rum and Coke. My friend, who at eighteen was hoping she was pregnant, didn't drink anything. I'm not sure whether I had a second drink.

I'm not chatty, so I didn't really notice how hard I'd been hit until it was time to climb out of the back of the truck and back into the cab. If I didn't have a second drink and the rum wasn't 151, I was drugged.

He insisted that I sit between him and my friend. Then he unzipped his pants and explained that unless and until I "lent him a hand," we weren't going anywhere.

So I did. I was too intoxicated to think to counter-threaten with the fact that he'd already committed one federal felony by hauling me across state lines to get me drunk. I had nowhere to go, because I was trapped between him and my sober, silent "friend." My one coherent thought was that this would be a very useful time for that passing out thing some people did around alcohol. I did that too.

I couldn't stay passed out through the whole ride home, though, probably because it wasn't safe. So there are nightmare flashes here and there of streetlamp illumination moving at freeway speeds. I remember being back at my friend's house, younger son showing up after work, losing that pesky virginity because it was part of the plan (if not necessarily right then) and because if I didn't follow the plan, I'd have to figure out what else to do.

My friend told younger son a few days later what had happened. It was apparently important to explain to him why I didn't want to date him, although the truth is that he was very sweet but not that bright. She never said anything to me about why she didn't try to stop it.

Every few years, she sends a note saying she'd like to catch up. She sent another one yesterday.

Lessons learned: (1) Letting someone mix your drinks means trusting them with your life. (2) The number of your friends is much smaller than the number of people you hang out and kid around with.

As I said before, I'm writing this now for the one person who deserves to know. I'm posting it because there are a few others who might get something out of it. I've never talked to anyone about it, not for any of (what I assume are) the standard reasons, but because I don't want to spend any more time or energy on it. Even then, I knew people who'd been through far worse experiences and far worse betrayals.

This might be painful to you, which I understand and am sorry about. I still don't want to talk about it. Or hear about it. If you feel you need to write something, Sheril's got some suggestions about where your note can do some good for people who need it, badly. If that's not enough for you, she has some other suggestions about things you can do to help those people. Not all of them involve your money. Do those instead.

How Deep the Bullet Lies, Part I

It was the summer before fifth grade, so I was nine. My father had moved out, for reasons that no one would explain for a quarter century, so money was a bit tight.

We ended up with a boarder. I was nine, so what do I know, but he seemed fairly old to me. I'll guess now that he was in his late forties or his fifties. Friendly guy named Howard. From my mother's perspective, he was a godsend. He took care of us.

He took the whole family out to breakfast on Sundays. I'd eat the pancakes, then go into the bathroom and throw them up. It turned out that I'm sensitive to milk and needed to spend a year avoiding the stuff, but I now eat cheese and ice cream and drink mochas. I don't eat pancakes. I don't let myself throw up either.

He babysat too, when my mother needed an evening out. He would pull out magazines to show my younger brothers, ask them how they felt about what they were seeing. He wanted me to look and talk and show too, but as long as there were younger and more compliant children around, I could refuse. Not get away, because that would have meant being alone and more vulnerable, but not have to participate. I still learned far more than I needed to know at nine, none of it useful for doing anything more than separating me further from the other kids my age.

It stopped after a friend stayed the night and told her mother. Mine wanted to know why we hadn't told her. I don't know that we had any answers, but having been raised to do nothing in bad situations, I'm not surprised.

He went away. I don't think he was charged, because I don't remember having to talk with anyone about what happened. There are plenty of things I don't remember from that age, though.

Lessons learned: (1) Protecting yourself often means failing others who need protection too. (2) Someone will always question how you handle it.

I'm writing this now for the one person who deserves to know. I'm posting it because there are a few others who might get something out of it. I've never talked to anyone about it, not for any of (what I assume are) the standard reasons, but because I don't want to spend any more time or energy on it. There are things that did me far more damage. In all the stuff I carry around with me, this one is a minor scar.

It might not be minor to you, which I understand. I still don't want to talk about it. Or hear about it. If you feel you need to write something, Sheril's got some suggestions about where your note can do some good for people who need it, badly. If that's not enough for you, she has some other suggestions about things you can do to help those people. Not all of them involve your money. Do those.

Why I Care About Rules

Laden, the hilarious thing is that you think anyone other than you and Zvan gives a flying fuck about your "rules" gibberish. And it appears that it is your approach to "rules" has been soundly smacked in the face by the nature of objective fucking reality, no? You do know what it means when you look around you, and you perceive everyone as an idiot and an asshole and a participant in a conspiracy, right?

--Comrade PhysioProf

Leaving aside the factual errors and the ad hominem and the appeal to the bandwagon (I think that's everything), I'd like to thank CPP for this comment. It reminds me that there's something I left out of my original post on this topic--the why.

Why do I care about rules? That one's easy. I spent the first too many years of my life in a house with far too many rules.

We're talking rules like "Kids don't say, 'No,'" and we're talking about applying those rules to two-year-olds. If you haven't spent much time around small children, you may not know this, but "No" is more than just a word. It's a stage of development in toddlers. But that apparently doesn't matter much when it's against the rules.

When I say too many rules, well, my mother used to tell an illustrative story. She'd say that if someone told me to jump, I'd freeze. It didn't matter that not jumping was defiance and against the rules, because no matter how I jumped--how high, how far, which direction--it was going to be wrong. I'd still be breaking the rules. So I did nothing.

So, yes, I'm fairly sensitive to arbitrary rules and to rules that ignore the needs and capacities of human beings and to rules that hinder development and to systems of rules that make it impossible for someone to both act and be in compliance. Not to mention to rules with disproportionate consequences for breakage. They've been there all my life, and it's taken a hell of a lot of work to see them clearly enough to set them aside.

Even if Greg and I were the only people who cared about abusive rules and abuse of rules (and one of the things I love about him is that he got this without me ever having to explain it), I'd still be talking about this. CPP can call it an obsession or gibberish or whatever other words make him happy. It doesn't matter. He can't shut me up by telling me we don't talk about these things. He doesn't make my rules.

I do.

Harmony and Subversion

Most people my age grew up with parents who listened to the Beatles. I didn't, and it shaped me in some interesting ways. The most obvious is that I don't care much for the Beatles. I do appreciate that they were great songwriters, but I usually find anyone else's arrangements of their songs more interesting than theirs.

The band that most closely took the place in my life that the Beatles filled in friends' lives was the Chad Mitchell Trio (later the Mitchell Trio). They instilled a love of minor-key melodies in me while impairing my sense of pitch for years with the harmonies on songs like this:

Four Strong Winds

But we've been through that a hundred times or more.

They were very political and used both compassion and satire to make their points, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. The material they chose pointed out the hypocrisies on both sides of the political fence.

The Battle Hymn Of The Republic Brought Down to Day

Our might is marching on.

The Draft Dodger Rag

I hate Chou En Lai, and I hope he dies...

They sang about civil rights and the realities of war, commercialization and commodification, political corruption and assassination, global paternalism, history and, of course, love. Understanding what they were singing about was right up there with figuring out Doonesbury for getting myself a political education. They sang songs in several languages. They worked with excellent musicians but never let making beautiful music get in the way of making great songs.

Yeah, knowing the Chad Mitchell Trio is about half of understanding my approach to music and a healthy chunk of understanding my approach to life.

Stage Kiss

I almost didn’t get cast. I was friends with the director, Greg, who invited me to read for the part. Then he couldn’t decide whether he liked me in the role or just liked me. Luckily for me, his assistant director liked me too and told him to stop dithering.

As an aside, Greg had a better than average reason to be wary about me. The night we met almost destroyed his reputation on campus.

Get the rest of both stories at Quiche Moraine.

Electric Blue

The first time I saw the fiddle, it must have been brand new, or nearly. We were both new to the band, him as a musician, me as audience. And dancer.

It's the kind of music that demands all your attention when you're dancing. Songs in things like 17/12 time, with half-improvised breaks and bridges and plenty of competition between the band members to keep things fresh from show to show. Every song a new rhythm. Every bar a potential about face.

You can't think about this stuff. You'll fall behind. You have to watch, and you have to guess where it's going next. You can't be drunk, either. A drink is fine--it keeps you from trying to think when you shouldn't--but too many and you'll be lost, only good for pogoing like too many people in the crowd. No good for dancing.

Watching the stage, it would have been impossible to miss the fiddle. Electric fiddle, electric blue. Almost as many pedals as there were on the guitar.

There was the constant question of when the mass of black, curly hair would finally get caught up in the bow or the strings, but it never did. The other question was how such virtuosity on that tiny instrument came out of such huge fingers. They couldn't really move that quickly and precisely, could they? Why, that pinky ring was big enough to fall off my thumb without help. I know. I tried it.

The thing about watching the band that closely, about dancing when everyone else is moshing (well-placed, unpredictable elbows can almost always buy you room), is that the band notices you too. Something about the grin when you're following a new song and doing it well maybe. Or just knowing that you're there because of what they're doing, not because you just wanted to get out.

He called me "Grandma" because I told him I didn't date younger men. It fell into the category of silly lies, since we were two weeks apart in age. Still, it did what it was supposed to do, and gracefully. I don't know that we ever talked about anything that wasn't related to music or the band. We had a lot more to say to each other when we were a little further apart, separated by the edge of a stage.

Then, after a few years, the other fiddle player came back, and the blue fiddle went home. It wasn't the same. The other guy was good, but...well, it was just a fiddle.

I've seen the blue fiddle only once since then. It wasn't such a uniform blue anymore, worn to the wood in spots, and the hair was gone as well. The fiddle was still electric, though, and we still didn't have to talk, just play and watch and dance. If the rest of the band had remembered how to play together, it could have been perfect. As it was, it was almost enough.

Still, not quite. At least (at least!) one day of every year, I miss that electric blue fiddle terribly.

Today is that day.

A Eulogy in Food

In the beginning, she cooked for me. In the end, I cooked for her.

The food my grandmother cooked for me was the staples of the fifties, food from cans and boxes, but she made it work in a way I never did. Her au gratin potatoes were creamy and cheesy. Her casseroles didn't taste alike, even though cream of mushroom soup was the main ingredient of all of them. Jello salads behaved for her. None of this two inches of fruit on the top and none in the bottom.

The food I cooked for her was improvisational and made from scratch. A couple of ham and pork shoulder bones taking up room in the freezer. Turn them and the leek ends into stock and add...hmm, what have we got? We froze some of the ham. Potatoes, I think, for starch and onions and corn to add some sharp and sweet notes. A little paprika, just because. Call it soup.

She'd cooked for more than seventy years but always talked toward the end about all the new things she was eating. My grandfather said the same thing, but his tone was more of relief than wonder. For me, my grandmother's cooking was the comfort food of my childhood. Unlike a lot of food I ate as a kid, I don't hate it now. I miss it.

I'm going to miss her, too, even though we had about as much in common as our cooking styles would suggest. I'll miss the fidgeting and fussing. I'll miss the worrying about everyone and everything. I'll miss her never quite getting that the fact that we could take care of her meant we could take care of ourselves. I'll even miss her perpetual wonder that my husband and brothers cook just as well as I do.

I'll miss the cookies every Christmas, but I'm happy to know that they weren't store-bought cookies this last year. They were, sometimes, in recent years. This year, she found the energy somewhere. That consoles me almost as much as knowing it was one big stroke that took her, instead of all the tiny ones that got her mother.

Just over a day with some brief confusion but mostly unconsciousness. Knowing that helps. Knowing that my grandfather will need easy-to-prepare food in her absence helps a little more.

Time to go cook. It's a different kind of comfort food.

A Year on Propranolol

The part I remember best is waking up with my head down on my arms. On my desk. With the voices around me, it only took a moment to figure out where I was. Oh, crap. I decided I must have fallen asleep at work. What could be more embarrassing than that?

Then I remembered.

I know the science on propranolol, emotion and memory is all terribly last week, but I've never promised or even particularly tried to be a current events blogger. Also, I still owe Juniper a blog post, and while this isn't that post, it gets at some of the later stages of how my emotional life changed from child to adult.

I still can't say what switch flipped between my junior and senior years of high school and took me from deeply depressed and anxious to moderately functional. My social circle hadn't changed much, but the individuals I hung out with within the circle did. It might have been the one newish friend who I knew wanted something from me but who didn't reject me when it wasn't something I could give. Come to think of it, I can't imagine how that lack of rejection could have been anything other than critical.

Whatever happened in high school, time and success and independence were all very good for me. So was Ben, although that is, again, another story. Eventually, depression was brief (still despair-deep, but brief) and tended to be set off by triggered memories.

The anxiety never went away, though, as might be expected. (Ed, I promise. I'll keep reading you even if you stop posting about my life.) I still haven't learned to fall asleep properly when anything remotely exciting is happening, much less anything where people are relying on me. For most of my life, the time before sleep has been filled with obsessive deconstruction of the prior day and planning for the next--or fiction. I prefer the fiction.

Waking life was hardly free of anxiety either. As an adult, I've been one of the people whom others look at and ask, "Can you do this?" Usually it's something I haven't done before, so I'm as curious as they are. I rarely say, "No," but this tends to leave me with big unknowns in my life, big opportunities to disappoint. I'm not fond of disappointing people.

I was over 30 before I realized it, but I'd been getting migraines on a very regular basis since at least junior high. I didn't know that's what they were, because in a way, I was one of the lucky ones. Only a few migraines a year actually hurt. For the rest of them, the debility came from strange visual and somatosensory effects, hypersensitivity and confusion.

I love my doctor. When I walked in with a big list of symptoms that could, even in this day and age, get me labeled "hysterical" and said, "I think I get migraines, although mostly they don't really hurt," she pulled out her PDA and started checking off symptoms rather than immediately referring me to a psychologist. We tried a few drugs for treatment of symptoms, including some stunningly bitter pills that dissolved on the tongue. They worked, but they were nothing that insurance was going to cover at the frequency I got migraines, and they did nothing to cut down the frequency.

Then she asked me how I felt about abortion. She already knew I wasn't planning to have kids, but she wanted to be sure I wouldn't feel compelled to carry to term if I accidentally became pregnant while on propranolol. If I would have, she'd have prescribed something else. The idea of congenital defects was obviously quite disturbing to her, pregnant as she was.

With a few more checks of my blood pressure against the lowest recommended pressure for the drug (I was borderline), she sent me off with strict instructions to either come in or check my blood pressure with one of the in-store cuffs every few days for the next few weeks and a six-month prescription. Six more months were to follow if it helped and didn't produce undesirable side effects. After that, with a little luck, I'd be migraine-free.

Believe me, I checked my blood pressure. Getting used to propranolol felt almost as strange as the migraines. I felt so light. It wasn't lightheadedness, except when I stood up too quickly. (I learned how to get out of bed slowly, in stages.) I was just light.

It took me a while to realize I couldn't get really upset if I wanted to. I could still recognize things that were wrong, and I still acted to fix them. I just didn't do it riding on a wave of righteous adrenaline. I could get angry and act angry, but I couldn't feel the same degree of anger I was used to. Flooding my body with adrenaline no longer produced any noticeable results. My reputation for calm in the face of chaos became more than just me putting on a calm face to keep others from freaking out and getting me going. It was now true.

The same thing happened with anxiety, of course. I didn't get any less ambitious in what I attempted, but facing failure no longer raised all the ghosts of failure past. I can't tell you whether I thought about my childhood during that time, thus stripping it of the negative emotions attached to it. I can tell you that the longer I spent without anxiety, the further away those memories got. That anxious kid became less and less someone I knew. I'd already trained myself not to think of my childhood often. The drug removed the emotional triggers that kept me remembering whether I wanted to or not. It let the present run on uninterrupted.

Maybe that could have been a bad thing, an unexamined life and all, except that I'm nothing if not introspective. Not only had I mined my memories for the lessons they could provide, but I had lived in them far longer than they deserved. Distance was a mercy and a pleasure.

The propranolol got rid of the migraines, too. Mostly anyway. I still get them occasionally, just as I haven't completely trained myself not to respond to non-immediate threats with a burst of adrenaline, particularly around election time. And I still haven't learned to sleep well.

Still, a year on propranolol was one of the best things I've ever done for myself, even considering the waking up at work.

I'd been sitting at my desk, having just raised my soda, when someone came around the corner to ask me something. I quickly swallowed--too quickly, setting off one of those pointless but painful esophageal spasms. Pretending I wasn't about to gasp with pain, I turned to listen to my coworker. When I felt the roaring in my ears, I took a couple of deep breaths to hold back the black, but it was too late.

People look at you differently when they're afraid you might drop on them at any time. A bottle of prescription drugs and the explanation, "I swallowed funny," don't quite cut it. They gather around. They want you to lie down and take things easy and reassure them several times a day for the next several weeks that, really, you feel fine. No, really.

Yes, passing out at work because your blood pressure is low and doesn't respond well to pain is ever so much more embarrassing than falling asleep.

Taking Off the Act

Thursday morning, my iPod was speaking to me. In a half hour walk to work, three songs all talking about the same subject--acting.

Is there anybody in there in this self-inflicted tomb?
If you peel away the layers, is there someone in this room?

Of course, they were all talking about it because I was already thinking about it. From an email I sent earlier in the week:

I've never met an actor who wasn't in character backstage as well as on. They're just different characters. That's what makes acting as a profession so simultaneously appealing and appalling.

Successful acting requires that you be someone else for a while. It isn't enough to speak the lines and to make the gestures called for in the script. We've all seen the sort of dreadful productions that result. You don't have to dive into the excesses of some of the method actors, but you must at least put on the mannerisms--physical and vocal--and the body language of the part.

There's no way to do this without being affected by it. It calls for an understanding of a fictional character that few people take the time to find. The mannerisms and body language change your emotional state every time they're rehearsed or performed. Try practicing smiling in front of a mirror until you can put a sincere-looking grin on your face on demand. Then do it again where you can't see your reflection smiling back at you. You'll still feel happier for doing it.

Of course, most acting isn't about being happy.

As an actor, if you're any good, you end up living little pieces of the lives of all of your characters. You rehearse them in a way you don't practice being yourself. You explore them and spend time with them in a way that the world tells you is a selfish thing to do on your own. If you act, you have to enjoy being someone else. You don't have to enjoy being yourself.

I'm a good actor.

No, my love, we can't be friends
In fact I liked you much better
When you'd just pretend.

The days of declamation and broad emoting are gone from most stages, and the places where they still find homes are mostly in comedy. Even so, characters in modern theater and film are just a little bigger, a little simpler than any real person. Simple is seductive. People like simple.

If you act, it's all too easy to find the right simple character for any situation. Few and far between are the people who have the time and inclination to get to know you in all your complex, contradictory glory. It's much easier to figure out what your audience wants and to give them only that. More rewarding too. Fewer fights. More praise.

There are a few problems with this, of course. One is that everyone wants something different of you. An audience of one is very manageable. More than that, and which audience do you serve? Whom do you please, and whom do you disappoint?

Beyond that, few and far between doesn't mean nonexistent. While you're performing for the people who want you to be predictable and easily categorized, what happens to the others? They aren't the sort to appreciate a shallow facade, you know. Can you act a more complex character for them? Can you drop the act entirely, and what's there when you do?

I'll dance for you, pose for you
Take off all my clothes for you
Speak your words, sing your song
I'm up for auction, going, gone!

When you've gotten used to generating your behavior from the outside, it's very difficult to relearn how to let it come from inside again. All of the voices in your head are yours, but none of them is you. Almost everything you do has become associated with a character, a person who isn't you. What's left for you to build you from?

I don't know whether it can be done while you're still acting. I can't imagine giving up that immediate approving feedback of individual performance while still indulging in the mass approval that is theater, but maybe someone else could do it. My process required misanthropy, solitude and a certain ruthlessness, for which, ironically, acting had prepared me beautifully.

The first step was deciding who was worthy of being my audience and ignoring (hard to do at first) or avoiding (much easier) everyone else. Whom did it please me to please? That doesn't sound like much progress, but it was, because what it really meant was who pleased me?

It's a question that took years to answer, and the answer changed drastically over time. This is where the ruthlessness came in. I've abandoned or let lapse more friendships than I really care to think about. There are only two things that reconcile me to that. One is that it was necessary. I couldn't find another way to do what I needed to do. The other is that it was successful. These days, I mostly add friends.

I don't avoid people much anymore either. Ironically, I'm still acting around the mass of humanity. They're still never going to appreciate complexity and contradiction, and I'm still giving them what they want. Only now I'm doing it because it's easier for them. And I certainly don't do it all the time.

Now I'm willing to stop to think about what it is that I want, how I think, how I feel. Now I'm willing to risk disagreement and disapproval, even (or especially) from the people I give a damn about. I'm willing to be that geek who will stop in the middle of a sentence to try to reconcile the three tangential thoughts that just occurred to me. I'm willing to be awkward and persuasive and flirtatious and serious and sympathetic and argumentative, because all of those are who I am.

No act. Just me. And that feels pretty good.

If you peel away the armor is something underneath
If you look below for hidden treasure underneath another layer
Are you hiding underneath the skin

How to Destroy Your Childhood

...with YouTube.

Watch what Microsoft's Songsmith does to "White Wedding."


And to "Eye of the Tiger."


Watch Kermit cover Nine Inch Nails (warning: cannot be unseen).


Then cower in the corner.

Sam & Max Rules

A bit more than a decade ago, my husband and I played a bunch of LucasArts adventure games. Remember, this was pre-Episode One. Pre-Grim Fandango not being released for Macs for that matter. LucasArts was still okay then. In fact, they were pretty cool.

Sure, the Indiana Jones game was kinda dull, but Day of the Tentacle was a geek's dream. Personally, though, I preferred Sam & Max Hit the Road. It's still the most surreal game I've played, although Psychonauts came close. But even Psychonauts' meat circus (really) didn't quite compare to the combination of conspiracy theory, circus freaks and roadside attractions that was Sam & Max. Gator Golf, anyone? A bigfoot underground? How about a rotating restaurant atop the world's largest ball of twine?

Still, my favorite part of the Sam & Max gameplay was the dialog. It was menu based. All the options tended to be snarky, but there were a few that would get a person decked in real life. Really funny, but nothing you'd actually say unless you wanted to end the conversation immediately.

The first time we came across one of these, we looked at each other, figured out how much progress we stood to lose, and picked the least helpful option. It got about the response we expected--a nasty, angry (silly) retort--but then the weird thing happened. We still had all our other dialog options left. There was no penalty for being nasty. This made a lot of sense in the game, since Sam and Max were both psychotic, but it took a little getting used to.

From that point on, we always chose the funniest, least productive dialog first. After all, if we picked the less-funny, productive stuff, we moved forward in the game and lost our chance at the funny.

Then we went even further. We decided we liked playing by Sam & Max rules, so we adopted them in real life. No penalty for the funny first response, even if it isn't very friendly.

I don't recommend this for everyone*, of course. It takes timing and a good sense of how much distance must be kept from the truth in order for something to be funny. Most of all, it takes both a willingness to explain and a willingness to listen when a joke goes awry.

For example, my husband has recently discovered caipirinhas and likes to have one in the evening. We even bought an ice crusher for making them. Since he had a final this weekend, he's also been studying most evenings. Last week, as he was making a caipirinha and preparing to study, I joked that he was going to need to bring one to his final.

He got a little huffy and declared that it was one drink over several hours and--oops. I stopped him and invoked Sam & Max rules.

Then I explained. He's never taken a psychology class, but luckily, that doesn't mean he doesn't know anything about the subject.

"You know how context aids memory--you're more likely to remember something in the same circumstances you originally encountered it?"

He nodded.

"Okay. This is one of the things that get mentioned in a variety of psychology classes. Every time it's come up in one of my classes, there's always one student who just has to say...."

He grinned. "So I guess I should bring beer to my finals."

"Exactly."

Thus was disaster averted. But that's the thing about Sam & Max rules. You can't play by them with someone you don't trust or who doesn't trust you. You can't play with someone who won't explain when the meaning isn't evident, or with someone who won't take explanations at face value, or with someone who can't tell when the joke falls flat. Playing by Sam & Max rules takes a lot of work.

But when it works, it's very silly fun.

* It's taken me time, but I have eventually come to realize (not understand, mind you) that not everyone's life and friends are a traveling comedy routine.