My Performance Piece

This is what I delivered from memory at the Feminist Festival of Transformational Art. It's assembled from pieces I wrote for various Mothertongue scripts, for my synagogue's prayerbooks, for the heck of it, and for the festival itself:

Hi, there, my name is Dana.

I joined the Festival because I wanted people to laugh at my wit and recognize themselves in my foibles and trials.
I wanted to help the other performers realize their intentions.
And I wanted to hear what they have to say and learn from it.
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So, here’s what I have to say. When I was little, I hated the color pink. It was too girly and feminine, and conflicted with my self-image as a tomboy. Blue was my favorite color then, the boys' color, the color of strength and action.

When I was in law school, a woman friend told me that pink blouses would look good with the blue clothes I usually wore. You know what; they do. Now I'm a fairly butch lesbian, so all of my pink blouses come from L.L. Bean, and my favorite one is plaid flannel.
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How did I become butch? It might have something to do with being raised by single men from when I was nine years old until age 15, first my widowed grandfather, and then my divorced Dad. When I was 15, Dad died, and my brother and I finally went to live with our mother.
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Here are some things my mother said to me:

"When I'm alone, I'm in bad company."
"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."
"Pray for potatoes and pick up the plow."
"They tell me I was a cuddly drunk."

"That poncho is ugly," the one I designed and made for myself out of fake fur.

When we first came to live with her, she said to us, “I figure you’re grown up enough, and I won't try to raise you. I’ll just make meals and write checks from the money your father left you.”

Many years later, she said: "I want you to complete the following sentence: Mother, I hate you because ..." I declined to respond, knowing that I wasn't ready to say, and she wasn't ready to hear, what might come up. My brother, not so canny, had replied - 'I don't hate you, but I don't love you either, since you weren't there while we were growing up.' After that, she never had a good word to say about him.
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In light of that caliber of mothering, it makes sense that I’d be fond of flannel. I'm driven to seek softness to make up for my lack of cuddling as a child. In fact, I have quite a fetish for softness - for really soft sheets, towels, and T-shirts, for fuzzy plants and my cat's fur. My nearly irresistible urge to pat a crew cut - on a man or a woman - or to stroke velvet or fur that's being worn near me.

I also wonder about my thing for silver foxes. From my 30s, at least, I've had a soft spot for women with short silvery hair. So much so that my longest relationship was with a woman 15 years my senior. I'm probably still seeking the mothering that I missed as a child. But now I'm the one with short silvery hair. Hey, maybe I can be the mother that I've been looking for.

Getting back to my father, though, he never remarried after the divorce, but sometimes there was another man living in his house when my brother and I visited him. Only after his death did I learn that he was also gay. So, we never talked about his gayness or mine. Maybe it would have helped me with my lesbian identity. God knows, my years as a Christian didn’t help.

In fact, I’m still angry at the Christian Church because of the damage it did to my developing sexuality. As a little kid, I played doctor with my friends, male and female alike. I got crushes on my girlfriends in school, but it wasn’t until college that I had a full-fledged affair, with my roommate. So far, I knew my sexual activities should be kept secret—but I had no problem enjoying them.

Then, when I got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, I was told that homosexual behavior is an abomination. OK, I thought. I was in love with God at the time, and it didn’t seem too much of a sacrifice to end the affair.

After moving to San Francisco, I started meeting gay Christians and Jews and envied their freedom to be both spiritual and sexual. But I couldn’t just pick up my sexuality where I left it. By rejecting my entire sexual being, I damaged it big time.
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For example, sometimes I “clutch” during sex. I start wondering if and when I’m going to have an orgasm, and then I shut down.

I think, “Am I going to come?” “What can I get her to do that would make me come?” “Could I ask for the vibrator without hurting her feelings?” or “How long before I can just get her to stop?”

Then I try to stop thinking at all, and maybe start up my mantra to help with the rapidly mounting anxiety. I want sex to be fun again.
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I was also left with body image issues:

Two different women look at me from the mirror. The one I see most often has a round face, a pasty complexion, and acne. Her expression is blank; she is plain. The other woman has cheekbones and a chin line. Her skin is clear and she looks wise and confident. She is attractive and I enjoy looking at her.

How can the women be so different? How can they both be me? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is the difference in my head rather than my face? Is it that how I feel about myself affects how I look? Or maybe I just look better at some times than others.
I don't know. But it would be nice if that attractive woman were the one I saw most often. 
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And I’m still working on other issues. I put off doing the things I need to do, and I do other things I know I’ll regret. In short, I’m at odds with myself. I have this committee inside my head, and not only does control shift wildly from one member to another, but sometimes it’s completely deadlocked.

So how do I kindly and gently, and with curiosity and humor, recognize all the recalcitrant parts of myself, and persuade us that we're all on the same team? That we'll accomplish more and be happier if we act together? Perfection ain’t gonna happen, but a little progress now and then would be nice.

I'd like to have compassion for myself when I get stuck in a painful place, instead of beating myself up about it. I'd like to remember that hope can return when I journal, meditate, take a walk, stretch.

Even if I just remember to breathe with awareness. Although each breath is a new one, I'm inhaling molecules that originated in the stars and have been breathed before by many, many people over the millenia since they were created.

Remembering these things helps me realize that I’m just another human being, no better and no worse than others. And that’s enough.
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So now I’m going to close with a hope of mine:

I want to write something with such beautiful images that reading it would lift anyone's heart, would give hope to the most despairing person, would bring a smile or a tear to any face. I want to write a picture so beautiful that it creates in all who read it a yearning to be better, a yearning to live in hope, and the recognition that this beauty is here and now, right here, right now.