The J church streetcar runs about a block from my home, so I often ride it when going somewhere that is not car-friendly.
The first time I rode it, I was amazed when the tracks left Church Street and edged into Dolores Park. There was grass on the left of the tracks and a planted hillside on the right. Suddenly I was at Disneyland, aboard an amusement park ride. We had left the paved street behind. Anything could happen.
I eventually realized that the tracks were taking a detour around a hill that was too steep for the train. The train needed to go around the side of the hill, via a winding pair of curves, to avoid sliding backwards. So much for the Disneyland magic.
Just the other day, though, some of the magic returned. The streetcar is articulated; it has a joint in the middle that allows the parts to move separately from side to side and up and down. I was sitting in the back of the car, and was watching the front half as it turned this way and that, and pointed uphill before the back half reached the same slope. Suddenly I was riding a huge serpent, like the sand worms of Dune, as I watched the head sway back and forth, independently of the body where I was. It was trippy.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Saturday, September 24, 2016
BTW, the piece I performed for Lez Writes 2016
I seem to have a little problem with authority.
We kids who lived in the Berkeley hills rode the same number 7 bus to junior high school each weekday morning. We made the bus our own; the driver, not so much. For no reason we could see, he usually parked the bus on University Avenue and stepped outside of it for a minute or two. That did not sit well with me. I studied the door controls, and one day after he left the bus, I closed the door behind him.
He yelled at me to open it up again, and I did. I’ve occasionally wondered why I closed the door on him. I'm usually a goody two-shoes, color inside the lines, kind of gal. Only now, nearly 50 years later, do I have an idea. I've had abandonment issues most of my life. And I think that his leaving us alone in the bus frightened me a little bit and angered me a lot. Step away from us, will you? OK, we don't need you either, so there.
Fast forward through my college years, when I found out I was a lesbian. My very existence defied authority. After I came to San Francisco for law school, I joined associations of gay Lutherans and queer Jews. I found and read lesbian novels. In the back of my mind, I hoped for some lesbian action when I went out of town for a gay gathering. Nope.
The closest I came was at a conference in Minnesota for a gay Lutheran group. I happened to catch the eye of a nice lesbian doctor. Unfortunately, she insisted on remaining true to her absent lover, and my best efforts got me only some very nice necking, a canoe ride, and sunburn.
A few years later, I went to a women's retreat house for a weekend of instruction in meditation and massage. One woman used massage techniques on my inner thighs that would have caused me great embarrassment were I a man. Although straight, she seemed to enjoy exerting that power over another woman. When I happened to mention that I belonged to a gay synagogue, she perked up, and asked me to spend some time alone with her. I enjoyed giving her a demonstration of lesbian kissing and cuddling, but she drew the line there.
Then I went to the West Coast Women's Music and Cultural Festival. Hundreds of dykes camping in the woods, Holly Near, bare breasts. Women hooking up to the left of me, kissing and caressing to the right of me. Into the valley of dykes I marched. But me, my gaydar was so bad that I wound up hanging out with one of the ten straight women at the festival.
Each of the attendees had to contribute some hours of work as part of our payment for the festival. My job was titty patrol. A state highway ran through the campground, and women who planned to cross the road had to be reminded to put their shirts on, lest they risk being arrested.
Did you know that it's illegal in California for a woman to appear in public barebreasted? Men may take off their shirts any old time they want to, but a woman becomes a criminal if she does it. How is it, I wonder, that bare breasts are considered so threatening to the body politic as to constitute a crime?
Is it that poor, innocent, weak-willed men would lose control of themselves and rush like starving beasts to bury their faces in the unveiled and beckoning bounty? Would young children be traumatized by seeing breasts other than the ones they suckled at? Would all women become lesbians? I think it's that bare breasts defy male authority over women. If women control when to reveal our bodies, we might get the revolutionary notion that our bodies belong to us rather than to men. That simple idea would bring the patriarchy crashing in pieces to the ground.
We kids who lived in the Berkeley hills rode the same number 7 bus to junior high school each weekday morning. We made the bus our own; the driver, not so much. For no reason we could see, he usually parked the bus on University Avenue and stepped outside of it for a minute or two. That did not sit well with me. I studied the door controls, and one day after he left the bus, I closed the door behind him.
He yelled at me to open it up again, and I did. I’ve occasionally wondered why I closed the door on him. I'm usually a goody two-shoes, color inside the lines, kind of gal. Only now, nearly 50 years later, do I have an idea. I've had abandonment issues most of my life. And I think that his leaving us alone in the bus frightened me a little bit and angered me a lot. Step away from us, will you? OK, we don't need you either, so there.
Fast forward through my college years, when I found out I was a lesbian. My very existence defied authority. After I came to San Francisco for law school, I joined associations of gay Lutherans and queer Jews. I found and read lesbian novels. In the back of my mind, I hoped for some lesbian action when I went out of town for a gay gathering. Nope.
The closest I came was at a conference in Minnesota for a gay Lutheran group. I happened to catch the eye of a nice lesbian doctor. Unfortunately, she insisted on remaining true to her absent lover, and my best efforts got me only some very nice necking, a canoe ride, and sunburn.
A few years later, I went to a women's retreat house for a weekend of instruction in meditation and massage. One woman used massage techniques on my inner thighs that would have caused me great embarrassment were I a man. Although straight, she seemed to enjoy exerting that power over another woman. When I happened to mention that I belonged to a gay synagogue, she perked up, and asked me to spend some time alone with her. I enjoyed giving her a demonstration of lesbian kissing and cuddling, but she drew the line there.
Then I went to the West Coast Women's Music and Cultural Festival. Hundreds of dykes camping in the woods, Holly Near, bare breasts. Women hooking up to the left of me, kissing and caressing to the right of me. Into the valley of dykes I marched. But me, my gaydar was so bad that I wound up hanging out with one of the ten straight women at the festival.
Each of the attendees had to contribute some hours of work as part of our payment for the festival. My job was titty patrol. A state highway ran through the campground, and women who planned to cross the road had to be reminded to put their shirts on, lest they risk being arrested.
Did you know that it's illegal in California for a woman to appear in public barebreasted? Men may take off their shirts any old time they want to, but a woman becomes a criminal if she does it. How is it, I wonder, that bare breasts are considered so threatening to the body politic as to constitute a crime?
Is it that poor, innocent, weak-willed men would lose control of themselves and rush like starving beasts to bury their faces in the unveiled and beckoning bounty? Would young children be traumatized by seeing breasts other than the ones they suckled at? Would all women become lesbians? I think it's that bare breasts defy male authority over women. If women control when to reveal our bodies, we might get the revolutionary notion that our bodies belong to us rather than to men. That simple idea would bring the patriarchy crashing in pieces to the ground.
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