Waiting (Nearly 7 PM)

Waiting, sitting and waiting. Hate that hate this. This. Sitting around waiting for a meeting that was supposed to happen almost 30 minutes ago(!) Waiting waiting waiting for meetings tense discussions scoldings repetition boredom nervousness jealousy fear endless bottomless boredom again. And no dinner. Stuck. Waiting.

Nothing ever comes of this. An hour or more of grumpy-parent managers and bratty-worker bees, every one of them waiting for the closing bell waiting for
freedom from
routine
ridicule
remorseless
rapacious
repetition
and red-eyed
tight-lipped
angry
boredom
boring meetings
and waiting still
hating this.

Breathe.
Yawn.
Stretch.
Think slow sweet smooth thoughts.
Dream.

Dream about something else before you flip. Dream about......quiet childhood mornings and peaceful family evenings with Gramma's comfy-bony warm brown knees, her dainty dancer's feet in dirty pink slippers and always her gossamer soft faded rose housecoat, pockets stuffed with folded kleenex, Daily Defender clippings and ancient bobby pins. Her hands on my shoulders, playing with my hair, rubbing my back. So easy in Gramma's company watching TV, refuge from classroom rules and mean girls (daytime) and uptight anxious mom (nighttime). Missing her so much right now. Missing everyday her faded roses, her bony knees, her absentminded murmurs, sighs of resignation, mischievous chuckles and her strong fine hands. Missing everything about her and hating this wait.

Hope there's afterlife after this. Hope I see Gramma and make her laugh again. Hope there's satellite in heaven and Hollywood Squares, The Edge of Night, Gunsmoke, and The Jeffersons are on a continuous loop!

Everybody's Reading Zane

So what do you think of the urban books phenomenon? You know—those mostly paperback and softcover trade novels published by Zane and Triple Crown and the like—even Essence magazine is getting on that gravy train—that are written for and heavily marketed to young black readers? You’ve seen them by now I know, they are a huge publishing trend and tend to feature on their covers either sexed-up, uber-glam young black women, with titles like Whore, Bitch, Around the Way Girls, Gettin' Buck Wild and In Cahootz, or fierce, muscled, broody-looking young black men, with titles like Blow, The Ski Mask Way, Thugs And the Women Who Love Them and A Hustler's Son.

I don’t know quite what to make of this development and indeed there is some ongoing controversy within the library system nationwide about these books, with some librarians simply refusing to carry them and others doing so reluctantly, trying to decide how to classify them and whether to make them available to young readers. We carry a lot of these titles with more coming in every week, and they seem to vary in quality, with some written with some polish and verve, and some pretty raw and crude.

I’ve tried to read a few of them, curious to understand what they’re about and what their exploding popularity means. As a rule, they’re generally trashy, soft-core porn, an updated inner-city twist on the bodice-ripper romance novel, with characters—mostly women; most of these books seem to be aimed at young minority women—who live in a sex-and-violence universe of one kind or another. These books are VERY popular with girls and teen-to-twenty-something black women (and increasingly, the same age group of black males) who assert that they “tell it like it is” about life.

Well… yes, they do. If yours is a ghetto-underclass sort of life, that is. The books do reflect certain bleak realities, though I think more than that what they do, really, is exploit that world, in the way gangsta rap both glamorized and exploited a kind of black life experience, slickly packaging and marketing it back to both the black community and, especially, naïve suburban white kids attracted to an existence foreign to them and unnerving to their parents.

It makes me uneasy that even younger, middle-schoolers are now coming in looking for these books. These kids are always a little shy and embarrassed when asking for help in finding them, as though afraid we’re going to tell their mamas what they’re reading, and they usually don’t even know what specifically to ask for—they never have a title or author name in mind—it’s always just “Y’all got any Zane books?” Apparently one title serves as well as the next, and that alone worries me. There’s a mindlessness in this kind of reading. To me urban books are the literary equivalent of junk food—fast and tasty but not very healthy, especially as a mainstay.

Yet I wonder if I’m overreacting, or possibly missing something about the books’ appeal. What are young readers looking for in urban books? Are girls drawn to headstrong women characters who, against daunting odds, manage to make their own success in the world? I notice some of the books feature—mostly as a tease, admittedly—girl-on-girl attraction and I wonder if that is particularly significant to a young minority reader trying to sort out gender identity or sexual orientation issues without drawing too much attention to her (or him) self.

We carry both fiction and nonfiction titles designed to reach out to young LGBTQ readers and in my shelving duties I’ve observed that those books are frequently pulled from the shelves by young patrons but seldom actually checked out (I’m always finding them in the wrong place). My guess is those books, by their very titles and cover art, are considered likely to provoke storms of censure from all quarters; sadly, for minority readers especially, they are thus radioactive. On the other hand everybody’s reading Zane.

Myth

Just finished reading a piece in Time magazine by Joe Klein in which he explores the phenomenon of “Palinmania” (or whatever he called it). As usual Klein is succinct in his pinpointing of the reasons Republican VP pick Sarah Palin has not just electrified the evangelical base but appears to have energized the GOP across the board, and in so doing probably changed the direction of the election. About a minute ago it was Barack Obama and his meteoric political fortunes the media couldn’t stop talking about, now it is Palin, and through her the resuscitation of John McCain and his chances for the White House.

All this, of course, is crushing news for the Democrats, most especially African-American Democrats, who saw an historic January inauguration so clearly we could practically reach out and touch it; now it seems, at this writing, to be slipping away.

I think this is bad news for the country as well. As Klein has assessed, it is nostalgia, in particular a nostalgia for a vanishing, Main Street, “Morning in America”-type past (that in fact never really existed) that Palin—the Sarah Palin we sort of-kind of know right now, at least—embodies for those so taken with her; a Reaganesque nostalgia with a twist: Rosie the Riveter Goes to Washington. She is selling herself—a ferociously determined GOP is selling her—as just an ordinary working mom (from a last-frontier-type state yet) who has made extraordinarily good; it is an Americana fantasy, it is the way Americans, white Americans especially, loooove to see themselves.

And it is an “uncomplicated” America--where people of color knew their place (mostly in the background or out of the picture entirely) and were okay with that as far as anyone bothered to know, an America as it was before those trouble-making, smarty-pants liberals with their radical notions about racial equality and queer identities and women’s rights started stirring things up--that Palin represents.

That America never had to contend with a Barack Obama, an urbane, educated black man with an exotic name and mixed-race life history to match, and what he represents. His is not the myth white Americans, of a certain age and upbringing anyway, know and love. If anything Obama and his candidacy signal a culturally complex, changing world, a world changing way too fast for an America more comfortable with fable than fact.

Race

There's a passage in "Edge of Midnight" (Should that title be in quotes by the way or italicized? I can never remember...), Bill Mann's bio of the late director John Schlesinger, where he talks about reading and listening to Schlesinger's diaries and comes across the director's memories of a trip to South Africa, and suddenly my mind went to race. These were not thoughts about the apartheid of that country, but rather past and recent struggle right here at home.

For some reason I thought about the 1977 broadcast of the groundbreaking mini-series Roots, and the way some (many?) white Americans reacted to it and to the African-Americans around them. I dimly recall a couple of stilted, awkward conversations with white acquaintances about episodes of the show; I remember reading accounts of white regret and discomfort, with a number of people saying stuff like "I didn't know", and rolling my eyes at that--You "didn't know"?? Seriously? So where have you and your relatives been living these past few decades, Pluto?--and my reaction being shared by many blacks I knew: Who are these people kidding?

Coincidentally I glanced at Bill's blog a short while ago and I see he's hopping mad about the way things are going for the Democrats. Wanted to post a comment teasing him about his shit-fit (Along the lines of: I'll bet it's a DREAM living with you, Bill; I'll lay odds Tim's hunkering down in the bathroom or somewhere until things quiet down :-)) but decided this may not be the moment; he's really that upset.

And reading Bill's post, I thought again about race, this time of course about Barack Obama's chances at being elected President of the U.S.

It doesn't look good.

Not that this is the first time I've had this feeling. As much as I've wanted to be hopeful and celebratory, I've nevertheless been very skeptical as to how ready this America truly is to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. This America. Not some mythical reconciled America of the distant future.

The mainstream media has been talking a lot about what Sarah Palin represents for Republicans, especially the evangelicals and (ahem) other "social conservatives." What she brings to the McCain campaign, what she (theoretically) offers the still disenchanted Hillary supporters. It seems to me there is something else Palin offers to those inclined to vote for her--excuse me--for John McCain, something the GOP is fully aware of and in fact counting on, and I keep waiting for the MSM to acknowledge it but, except for here and there around the edges, they're not doing so, at least not yet.

Miss Sarah offers white voters who are not thrilled with McCain but would frankly rather die before casting a vote for a black man, a way out.

She's new! She's fresh! She's young! (Younger even than Obama!) She's a wholesome, small-town, family-values All-American gal!

She's one of us!

Falling Behind

Frustrated right now because I meant to be somewhere else, running a fun errand or two for myself before starting work, but I ran out of time and can't do it now without risking making myself late... maybe Thursday. Hopefully Thursday, since one important thing I want to do is get a gift for my nephew's upcoming birthday. He will be 14 on Sunday.

14. A teenager. It doesn't seem possible that time has moved so quickly. I remember (vividly) when Col was a babe in his proud parents' arms, smiling shyly at everyone, charming everyone around him. I remember when he was toddling but still not talking, fascinated by keys and telephones... especially the afternoon my brother and I watched amused as he set about "locking" every door in the house, including a hallway closet.

"But why that door, sweetie?" I asked him, playfully. "That's just a storage closet, ya know?" He paused to look at me as though considering my question. In that moment my brother--his dad--and I must have had the same thought: if this were a cartoon there would be, in reply, a thought balloon over Colin's head.

As if on cue, Joe provided it. "Things... come out at night," he intoned and we cracked up as Colin grinned.

His other big thing was "talking" on the telephone. Col had a toy phone that had begun to lose its appeal as he noticed his parents taking incoming calls on the wireless grown-up phones around the apartment. So his parents gave him an old, cordless powder blue princess phone and we made a great game of answering it for him when it "rang" asking if he wanted the call or should "they" call back, and then handing him the receiver.

"Her-row?" Col would say importantly, his eyebrows up. Then as he noticed us all eavesdropping he'd turn away slightly and lower his voice to a conspiratorial whisper of garbled baby-babble. I don't think the word "cute" properly describes how sweetly hilarious it always was, but I suppose it will have to do until a better one comes along. And as ever, I'm swept with regret that no one thought to record priceless moments like that... how is it possible that not one of us in that loving circle of grandparents, aunts and uncles had the presence of mind to get a camcorder going?

I remember crisp, sunny days like this one when a pre-school Col, his affectionate black lab Baker and I would wander the neighborhood, searching for Tyrannosaurus Rex bones and the perfect playground (where other little kids were friendly back and you never had to wait your turn for the carousel horse). I miss our Tuesday morning jaunts to the local library for lively read-alongs, and searching Blockbuster shelves for Disney and Land Before Time videos we hadn't seen already a million times, I miss our bookstore trips and joining Dad at The Medici for a quick lunch or a sticky bun snack. I miss backyard games of catch, and watching Little Bear and Magic School Bus episodes with Col, miss putting him down for a nap and reading him a story as he did his best to fight off sleep. I miss... everything.

Now he's taller than me, sounds eerily like his late father on the phone and--last time I saw him anyway--resembles one of the Jonas brothers. I know I sound like my own grandmother saying this, but where on earth did the time go? How could the boy have grown up so fast? And where have I been as he's been doing that?

No Time (Again)

No time to write this morning; have to be at work earlier these days and now I have an unexpected errand to run before going in.

Also reading so many Daily Kos comments to Palin's speech last night--very lively and insightful stuff (The commenters, not Palin. She's a nasty little snot)--turned out to be more time-consuming than anticipated.

More later, if I'm not too bushed (Ugh. Let me find another word, quick) tonight.

Wednesday Morning Pages - E-Mail To A Friend

Christ almighty, G. I don't know what to make of this, do you?

At first I was delighted because I thought this VP pick so patently ridiculous that I was convinced McCain had, in effect, handed the election to Barack Obama. This is perfect, I thought, this is almost too easy!

But now I'm starting to worry. Maybe it is too easy... Palin IS a ludicrously unqualified choice, and this DOES say troubling things about McCain's judgement (or should) but will the mainstream media (always bending over backwards to try to disprove "liberal bias") allow McCain, Palin and the GOP to get away with spinning and lying their way past the hypocrises and contradictions?

The MSM after all have been such admirers of John McCain's "maverick" persona that they've seemed unwilling or unable to admit to themselves (and thus to the American public) that McCain has not been that person in years if he ever truly was. And then there's the Democrats, with their uncanny talent for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." Will Democratic leaders actually find a way to blow it, to screw up what should have been--after 8 years of the train wreck that has been the Bush presidency--a cakewalk to the White House?

Even more importantly, will the American people use common sense, recognize the disaster-in-the-making of a McCain-Palin administration and vote accordingly? Or will lingering racism about Obama and self-delusion about John McCain's supposed "experience" sabotage us? I'm just wondering if in November this country will give the Europeans yet another reason to shake their collective heads and wonder--again--what the hell the Americans are thinking.

When I consider all of that, I'm not sure of anything anymore

Tuesday Morning Pages - Away From Her

On my walk this morning thought a lot about a sad, small, funny Canadian film I stayed up much too late last night watching, Away From Her, which was written and directed by Canada's multi-talented--and amazingly young--Sarah Polley, Christie's friend and former co-star, and is based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain."

Away From Her stars Julie Christie, stunning as a well-to-do woman named Fiona who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease, and the pouchy, shambling Canadian actor-director Gordon Pinsent, excellent as her anguished husband Grant, a retired university professor with a past history of philandering. Olympia Dukakis is in the movie also and she is just devastating as the angry, grieving survivor spouse of the nearly unrecognizable Michael Murphy, remarkable in a wordless performance as a man physically and mentally wrecked by the disease who nevertheless forms an intensely emotional bond with Christie’s Fiona. I am making note to find Away’s haunting soundtrack, or at least k.d. lang’s mournful rendition of Neil Young’s plaintive classic “Helpless.”

My goodness, how old is Julie Christie now? I think this year she is or will be 67. Or 68. It’s hard to comprehend this. I keep remembering Julie Christie as the belle of the swinging sixties ball, radiant in iconic films like Darling, Dr. Zhivago and Petulia, I keep seeing her carefree and freewheeling, swinging her hand bag like a little girl on holiday as she ambles along a London street in her debut film, 1963’s Billy Liar. John Schlesinger was her best director, with Richard Lester coming a close second. (You may dispute me on this, for all the good it will do you.)

Christie is still radiant. There’s that moment in Away From Her where she is standing in her home gazing pensively out a window and her long beautiful hair is loose around her shoulders. Her husband, watching her with a mixture of love and dread, calls to her. She turns to him and her blank reaction to his question freezes him to stone, then suddenly she gives him a wide warm smile—she understood him perfectly, she was only teasing. With that familiar broad smile and the luxuriant hair softly framing her luminous face, even the way she wears that big striped blouse (68 or no Christie still has the figure of a coed and looks fabulous in those expensive sweaters and tailored slacks), she is once again the winning, winsome young girl who was once the pride of Mod Britain’s Carnaby Street. Even the ravages of time, real and cinematic, can’t diminish her.

Inevitably, while watching the movie I thought of my maternal grandmother, Mary, who died in 1990 in a suburban nursing home, a clenched and shrunken shell of her former vibrant self. The Away From Her DVD is of course preceded by the usual annoying barrage of coming attractions but there is also a PSA for the Alzheimer’s Association featuring a collection of celebrities that includes Dukakis (whose mother died of Alzheimer’s), Dick Van Dyke, Vivica A. Fox, NBC News’s Natalie Morales, Frasier’s David Hyde Pierce, and actor Victor Garber, who lost both his parents to Alzheimer’s. Both parents, my God… Just how epidemic is this ghastly disease?

Away From Her makes me want to go back and try again to revise and expand "With Grandma, In Winter," a short piece I wrote a few years ago. I abandoned previous attempts because it just wasn’t coming together and after awhile I was afraid I was only ruining the original essay. Maybe now I can do it. I don't know.

I miss my grandmother; miss her sheepish little laugh, her strange, distinctive gait, her quirky conversation, the unique pleasures of her company. So many things evoke her memory and our past times together—just walking up Woodlawn Avenue past our old apartment on 54th Street does that, or wandering through the stately gardens of St. Thomas Apostle and then on toward the Friendly Club, her favorite “keen-ager” hangout. Spiked Christmas egg nog. Zane Grey paperbacks. The Music Man, My Fair Lady and The Untouchables. The drycleaner on the corner and the theologian bookseller—I see echoes of her everywhere, anywhere I look. But it’s such a melancholy feeling; echoes are not enough. I want her back, as she was, before bewilderment and paralysis enveloped and consumed her, before she began to disappear right in front of our eyes.

The final scene of Away From Her simply shatters me. For any who have yet to see this lovely little movie I won’t spoil it for you with specifics, except to say that the ending is all irony and heartbreak and a very black humor; you thinking That’s it, time to let go, pack it in and try to move on—only to be surprised and hauled back again to what you thought irretrievably lost; and now where are we? Where are we now?

Morning Pages - Labor Day Edition

Summer is over or nearly. Thank Christ. That’s strange, I know—I was so looking forward to summer and now I’m glad to see the back of it. But there have been certain benefits to the warmer temps—are my waist and hips really smaller since I started the morning power-walks? (Thanks, Mom!:-D)

So frustrating though, on these walks. This morning as I’m huffing and puffing toward Washington Park all sorts of interesting thoughts pop into my head: imaginary conversations, a flood of memories both funny and painful—and I could write none of it down because I was out of doors pumping those arms and legs, trying to get some me some serious metabolism boost.

Now that I’ve showered, and dressed for around the house comfort, and am sitting at my desk ready to write—I’m drawing a blank. It never fails. I may have to invest in a micro recorder or some kind of mini equipment I can take with me so that I can record my morning walk musing to transcribe later on because this is getting annoying. Anne Lamott suggests always having an index card and pencil or pen with you so that you can at least jot a few key words that will help you recall later whatever it is you noticed or thought about, but I don’t like the idea of having to slow to scribble things. I’ll try the tape recorder—something compact and tiny—and see how that works for me.

One thing I do recall muttering to myself about today is remembering my much younger self being afraid of people figuring out my queerness. Not sure what brought all that back. There I was, the twenty-something me, working as a teller at the Peyton Place that was You Bank, trying desperately hard to keep my balance as some co-workers (especially women) endlessly prodded and poked at me these uncomfortably personal questions and the males--some of them--did their best to catch and hold my attention. Cops especially, working security duty. Which was the case years earlier at Playboy Inc. as well. (And there's that police officer who comes into the library, and a security guard here in my building... just what is it about me that so attracts law enforcement personnel???)

God, I was so frightened.

Of so many things, of pretty much everything. I was so tightly wound and so neurotically fearful of anyone noticing how little interest I had in whatever it was girls were supposed to care about. Certainly by my twenties I’d (finally) begun to look like a girl, and I truly enjoyed feeling more attractive, more womanly—two or three years earlier while still living in California I’d finally ditched the teenage eyeglasses for contacts, bought some flirty summer dresses and serious heels, and wandered into a Merle Norman shop (“Get Your Face Made Up For Free!” chirped all those glossy before and after magazine ads) and learned at last how to pretty myself up. It was quite the transformation—for the first time in my life I was a very glam girlie girl.

And I loved it. Try to imagine how much.

Then I started to realize the kind of attention I was attracting, very amorous attention I really didn’t want and didn’t know how to turn aside or side step gracefully. Oh I liked the compliments when that’s all they were, particularly from a stranger passing me on the street or a fellow passenger on a bus ride—people I knew I’d never meet again, never have to deal with. This was true even with the occasional jerk, some idiot who obviously thought I was obliged to melt with gratitude and immediately hand over my address and phone number and who’d then snarl Fuck you bitch when I declined. (Yeah, that’ll teach me. Asshole. )

But things got a lot more complicated when the tribute was coming from men I worked with or men who were neighbors, people I couldn’t shake off so easily. Some of these guys were so determined and persistent that they’d wear me down and then I’d go on these hellish dates where every minute, all through the movie, all through the dinner, and especially near the end with the stroll to the door, I was jumpy and on edge. (What if he tries to kiss me? He’s going to try to kiss me, I can feel it! What the hell do I do if he kisses me? What if he tries to do more than kiss me? Why did I agree to this? What is wrong with me? and etc.)

I would get so mad at myself, trying to will myself to relax already and just enjoy the stupid evening, you know, it’s not that big a deal, it doesn’t mean anything, you’re not marrying him for Chrissakes!, trying to calm myself with the thought that I was under no obligation to do anything I didn’t want to do or to allow to happen anything I didn’t want to happen. Sure they wanted sex, they all want sex, so what? (So do you, but not with them.) You’re in charge, Lorraine, I’d tell myself, remember that. You’re driving the bus. If you don’t like what happens next, kick ‘em the fuck off! You’re the boss!

I was the boss.

Yeah. Right. Sure I was. On these dates I never felt less in control—of anything, including myself—in my entire life. I felt like a hostage, truly, like I could make no boundaries, and had no real right to say no. I’m shaking my head as I type this, remembering my pathetic attempts at setting some ground rules: We’re going Dutch. Or, how ‘bout you pay for the tickets and I’ll pay for the gas and pick up the dinner check. Dessert's on you, fine. I would be firm on this, and these guys, they’d give me that savvy look, they'd smile and go, Yeah okay. Whatever you want. And then flatly refuse to let me pay for anything when we were actually out and about, all with the supposed unspoken understanding between us (most of the time but not in all cases) that if he paid for everything while we were out, I of course owed him a little sumthin’ sumthin’ when we were in (my place, his place, a locked parked car; wherever). It was unnerving, and when the date was over and I'd made it home unscathed I’d be absolutely drained, like I’d survived a perilous crossing through a land mined war zone.

And it didn’t help one whit that in those years damn near everyone around me, by which I mean well-meaning friends and family, would cheerfully get all up in my business, rooting for certain guys and wanting blow by blow accounts of everything that happened when I went out with them, including wanting to know when I planned to see the guy again. They would try to arrange dates for me, pushing me at these guys, talking them up, and teasingly dismissing my embarrassed protests that I didn’t want that kind of help, honest. If some moonstruck guy was pestering me with phone calls and I got cranky about it I’d get scolded for being mean and hurting his feelings. What about my feelings?, I’d sulk, guiltily. What about what I want instead of what everyone else seems to want for me? I felt surrounded.

Eventually, I’d get pissed off and fed up with feeling cornered by the assumptions and expectations of the whole hetero world. I didn’t have the guts to be honest, even with myself, especially with myself, and I’d go into tailspins of fury and resentment, glowering and snarling at anyone who got too close or asked too many questions. Fuck Hetero World—fuck everybody. And fuck me too, for being such a wuss (albeit a glamorous, cherry red chapstick wuss), for wimping out on myself and letting everyone else dictate who I was supposed to be.