Juxta-pose

Early morning, a.m., seven o’clock. I’m up—not my normal pattern. Jet-lagged. Hungry at strange times, like two in the morning, wanting to sleep all afternoon . . . eyelids holding the notes, fingers slipping from the keys, sketch pencil drawing images of dark brown faces in the land I returned from—well, almost returned from . . . sports cars on clearly-marked lanes juxtapose with rickshaws and water buffalo, pigs and herds of goats, saried women, open-air markets, shacks. The blinker on my thirty-thousand-dollar sports car clearly warns of my left turn. I’m tempted to hit the horn continuously, demanding my right to the small, available paved road; but no dust, diesel, dung fires—no such smells—hit my nostrils, and the road, it is empty except for me and my car. The road is a country road. In India it would serve as a thoroughfare of animals, people, machines and the local shopping mall, complete with open stalls of cattle hoofing and statues of gods and goddesses. Gods and goddesses, tales of Shiva, Krishna, Kali, Durga—their movie stars of religion, myths of great austerities, love, dispassion, tests of purity won by battling demons—the local parental deities assuage their fears and protect them from what is hard, frightening, immoral in life.

No demons in America. No, no—rather, no heroes of love. There are demons. We have a passion for horror, whether it’s demonic creatures from outer space or the psychological terror, thriller of our own psyches. We spend millions of dollars to view the dark side of ourselves. Our children are being trained in horror; it’s a "high" to scare someone. There is a lot of fun in fear. Emotional sensitivity, strength of character . . . where is the instant, shocking adrenaline pleasure of that? You’re a sucker if you feel, you’re only going to get hurt.

It’s still early morning—8:15. I should be in bed, not sitting at my typewriter. I never know what I'm gonna say next. Sometimes I imagine that I’ll write a simple love story that can be made into a movie. Yes, simple. You only get simple—simple-minded—when you use the stereotyped formula characters. Women have to be pretty and dress sexy and want to be taken care of. The men don’t say much, especially about love—they have important things to do with their lives, like solving a mystery, starting or ending a war, or becoming rich through advertising. Then, there is the sexy stuff, watching people breathe hard, the under-the-sheet suggestion of genital licking and sucking.

“Mommy, what are you doing?” Shhh, you’ll never understand it now—wait ‘til you are grown up . . . it’s the best kept secret of adults . . . for adult entertainment we play with and suck each other’s genitals. Remember when you found that out? One word went through our eight, ten, twelve-year-old minds. Yuk! That’s disgusting! I’ll never do such a thing!

Honey, there is a little thing called hormones that makes adults do really strange things. Perhaps that accounts for torture camps, wars and bigotry, you think. You think that you never want to grow up, the more you watch the news and hear the evidence, you know. Pollution is killing us. We have weapons that can blow up this planet a million times over. More women die from being battered by their husbands than by any other unnatural cause of death . . . land wars, religious wars—people kill and maim each other in the names of their righteous gods. Stop! I don’t get any of this. Don’t think about it, you’ll understand when you get older. You’ll find a nice man, have kids and a nice house. Don’t worry, there are a lot of wonderful pleasures in life. You’ll ignore—move to the suburbs—you’ll ignore all the messy stuff of the crazy side of humans. It’ll make sense to you one day. You can do whatever you put your mind to. Well, I’m not gonna suck genitals, you think. I’ll never sink that low. You have a secret destiny, you are sure of it. You will not walk in your mother’s shoes.

Being thirteen is the closest girls get to feeling their power, to knowing they've got power. It has something, something big to do with being a woman. One day your body tells you that you are a woman, and you are a woman from that day on. You don’t really grow into it over the next several years. If anything, you are trained to ignore that being a woman is so fucking creative and so raw, and so at play with power. At thirteen you know what is fair and what is stupid. You spend the rest of your life being convinced by others that life is not fair and that using your brains is a detriment to having a successful life. Fit in. Be passive, be subtle, be frustrated, be bored. You have a strong inkling at thirteen that you are smarter than any boy you've met. You can see how dumb your dad acts. It’s rough, girl, because in the next ten or twenty years or so, you’re supposed to find a man that you can put all your passion into and his success is supposed to be your happiness. You gotta hype him up—tell everyone he is a 10 in talent and brains, when you are intimate with his every fault, when you know he is scared and lazy. Don’t forget it’s your responsibility to be a 10 in looks, in the sexy department. What you found disgusting at thirteen, he now brags to his friends how adept you are at it. You have some dignity, though . . . you refuse to swallow. He complains that your cunt smells like fish. What does he think he smells like, cinnamon buns?

Sometimes I think lust can be fun without relationship. Most women have fantasies about a handsome stranger who is willing to go down on them and be interested in their fantasies, both men and women. What if we lived in a society in which the rules or codes of ethics were that you can only have sex with a person you don’t know? I think that line of dreaming would suggest a certain maturity that most humans don’t have. I won’t even get into my reasons why. You can follow your own line of thought out if you want to.

So how do you write a love story where a woman doesn’t lose her power when she falls in love? Does she get to know a guy who promises to be her prince and keep her happy for the rest of her life? When those words leave his lips is it time to leave him, get into a Thunderbird and drive off the rim of the Grand Canyon? How does it get more real? After all, at thirteen she already knew the fantasy was dumb, really dumb. But it is her destiny to fulfill it, to make the same mistakes her mother made, to walk in her mother’s high heels. You ever wonder why those monstrosities of discomfort never go out of style?

Most of my friends are celibate. I bet all of them masturbate. That’s their chosen sex style. It’s easiest to please myself, they say, and I don’t have to put up with negative, psychological stuff. I don’t have to feel guilty when I don’t want to. These women have goals of being successful artists, business people, musicians, and adventurers. Most of my friends are in their forties. They have done the family thing.

My own story is interesting. I have been married twice. I was always interested in realizing the full potential of my power—or should I say, powers? It frightened husband number one and husband number two. My explorations of power took me into the realms of mind, emotion, perception. Dreams can teach you a lot about desire and real intention. They confirmed my deepest suspicions, and at times, revealed my hidden loves. I live with my loves now. I couldn’t have imagined when I was thirteen that I would be so lucky. I did sense I had the power for anything. The best love story is one in which you come to love yourself perfectly, happily, and that spills over into everyone and everything you meet.

I had one of those two-hundred-dollar make-overs yesterday. A manicure, a facial, make-up, highlights and a haircut. It took five hours to complete the deception, or illusion, that I am more attractive than I really am. It was a crazy idea I had to photo the whole process and I brought a friend along to do the shooting. I wanted to do a photo essay on the experience. Not the usual before and after conclusion. I wanted to contrast and convey my feelings about my own feelings towards my body or my beauty—as I feel it, not as people see it. I wanted to show that beauty is a feeling of well-being and that wrinkles don’t mean anything—that we have been psychologically terrorized by an idea, a standard that works against a natural cycle of body aging and decay. Spring is always more attractive than winter, but it is a foolish activity to pretend that winter doesn’t have a season and reason of its own. Aging, death, help keep you sober about how you are living your life.

My session started with a manicure and my friend snapped pictures of my hands being painted cherry red. We chatted with the manicurist, explaining that I was a divorcee about to go on my first date since the ending of my marriage a few years ago. Slight distortion of facts, actually outright lie. Could I tell her I was doing a photo essay on how unrealistic standards of beauty make women emotionally nuts and insecure? Bottom line is everyone knows and approves that you are doing all this to attract a sexual partner. I kept thinking—I’m spending two hundred dollars to get a guy in bed so we can suck each other’s genitals. How will I be able to do that without screwing up my make-up and hair? Does my thirteen-year-old daughter know what the outcome of learning to apply eyeliner, lipstick, rouge, foundation, is?