Dear Friend and Reader:
Overnight Saturday to Sunday is the Aries Full Moon. That’s the Moon in Aries opposite the Sun in Libra. Aries is the sign of “I am” and Libra is the sign of “we are.” This lunation is about the meeting point of individuals and the relationships we encounter. The tune of this Moon as I’m calling it is: how can we be ourselves in relationships, a whole person relating to another whole person, instead of being half of a couple?
As Saturn works its way toward Libra (making its first ingress in just four weeks), relationships will be a defining theme of the next couple of years, so this is just a warm-up.
Saturn in Libra brings in the Aries Point (Saturn will soon oppose the first degree of the zodiac, as discussed in last Friday’s edition), so the conversation occurs at the astrological nexus of our private lives and public discourse. Aries is all about self, self-awareness and on the dark side, selfishness, but then by some cosmic miracle it backs into a very wide dimension where we’re al connected.
With planets gathering directly on the Aries Point (Jupiter conjunct Uranus, next spring) or in aspect to it (Saturn square Pluto beginning in November), the subject will be big news and it will come with many twists, innovations and surprising developments.
Even in the most basic terms, Saturn in Libra will help us clear the decks and identify our most fundamental values; emphasize the importance of human contact; and give us a way to think about the concepts by which we structure our personal lives. Saturn in Libra may serve to highlight our phobia about talking openly about actual relational themes; Saturn almost always takes us into fearful territory for the purpose of getting over ourselves.
Yet when you combine it with an opposition from Jupiter (expansion, culture, ideas, benefit) and Uranus (innovation, invention, revolution) on the Aries Point (the personal is political) we have an image of events driven by many people waking up and discovering who they are. And this will always express itself in relationships, which will stretch and crack open and grow in order to handle the surge of individualistic energy.
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 Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 2, 2009, #786 – BY ERIC FRANCIS |
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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Suddenly you understand something that seemed impossible to sort out just a few days ago. That something would be your own feelings, which were mired in conflicting internal viewpoints and moreover, a sense of self-reproach. If there is anything you’re not forgiving yourself for, now would be the time. You seem to be working through this issue in layers. The last phase involves coming face to face with the part of you that both judges you and is stuck in the past. Whatever you hold in your mind is an idea, and all ideas are subject to change. What you may not have figured out yet is that you are an idea, though throughout your life many people have tried to have a hand in shaping you. It’s time to value your own opinion about yourself above all others.
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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
What if everything in your life, all the improvements you want to make and every issue you’ve identified, hung in the balance on the food that you eat? Any nutritionist would tell you this is true every day of your life, but your astrology says it’s something to consider now. Whether you’re considering how to advance your professional goals or your emotional state (which are related), or how to make your relationship a better place, think food. More to the point, think differently than the food your parents taught you to eat. They didn’t know everything, and a lot has changed since you were a kid. You’re older and you can’t live on your old diet of ramen and ghetto pasta. You need actual flavor and nourishment.
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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
You need to live with the tension for just a few more weeks. Mercury has stationed direct and the Full Moon is about to pass; many people will feel better as these events take hold. In terms of direct results, Aquarius is on a bit of a time delay; as we anticipate Jupiter and other planets stationing direct in your birth sign. Before that happens, I suggest you conduct all your conversations with the utmost care and awareness. People who say casual things to you will reveal profound insights into your life. They will spark off inner processes that get you asking the right questions, and provide a mirror for your most difficult-to-see issues. Note all these things carefully. When your life goes into overdrive in a few weeks, you will be very pleased to have this information.
VIA THE “OUR HOT WIVES” FORUM
I found out today that, as of three months ago (July, 2009), NEWSWEEK estimates that there are over a half-million open (i.e., out of the closet) poly relationships in the United States. Regardless of how NEWSWEEK came by these numbers, this is certainly a solid indication that polyamory is being “seen” as an existing relationship configuration by increasing numbers of the public at large. Polyamory, which has been with us in Western culture for as long back as we can trace but has usually been “off the radar” for all of the reasons homosexuality historically has been, is now in the same place where gay and lesbian awareness was only a fairly short while ago. In the last few decades all of us in the at sexuality community have come a long way and this NEWSWEEK cite is certainly welcome news to me.
Last Friday (October 2, 2009) writer Eric Francis, in a thoughtful article titled “Aries Full Moon: Relationship News Roundup” http://planetwaves.net/astrologynews/987141605.html, offered yet another indication that, culturally, polyamory is perking along in a very good way.
Eric, who has written prolifically about polyamory for many years now (along with his impressive other credits as investigative reporter, essayist, and photojournalist), said a number of important things in this article, but the one which immediately struck me was:
“I have been having a…conversation within the polyamory community, in which I’ve been active as a writer and presenter since 1997. Polyamory means the capacity or practice of having committed relationships with more than one person, but with everyone consenting to the experience. I’ve been encouraging the leaders of the poly movement that I know to stop using the label, and to cast their message in terms of something of benefit to all people who are in relationships or want to be. For years, I’ve presented at poly conferences thinking, the people who say they’re monogamous are the ones who would benefit the most from this information. And it’s a much larger audience.”
Which, to me, says: “As poly people, the battle for poly self-identity has essentially been won. Now it’s time to concentrate on the next steps: gaining wider social acceptance, and fulfilling our own responsibilities to our society, which means opening the hearts and minds of those who are not, and will never be, polyamorous, but who would benefit from accepting polyamory as a valid part of society, and whose acceptance would, in turn, benefit us.”
Eric’s article on polyamory is bookended by a beginning discussion of the development of gay culture and acceptance in the United States, and an ending discussion of the relationship of all of alt sexuality vis-a-vis the community.
For all of us on this board, regardless of whatever our relationship orientation may be, these are important considerations. We all desire that our communities and our culture accept us as we legitimately are. The articles by NEWSWEEK and Eric Francis, each in their own way, give voice to these desires and signal that the next stage of alt sexuality acceptance by society has begun.
As someone who “knew she was poly before there was a word for it,” it’s a wonderful indicator of brighter new days in all of our futures.
My personal thanks to Eric Francis and to NEWSWEEK.
Hey, I’m trying on hiatus, isn’t working very well.. Farms.. communes, but not in the fucked up hippy way, maybe a bit of self responsibility? We’ve adjusted the Sat./Uranus vibe, we’re looking at a new 84 year (Uranus) cycle, I think this can be projected, consciously, and Kindly.
Look at your necessities, and then Drive the Energy through! All you need is exactly that. What you want is.. another story to be aware of, too look at in the light of realization.
This Earth here is due for some changes.. Create as you wish/care..
(Oh man!, So freakin’ close.. It’s almost tangible, right on the edge of mutation!)
Peace, Love, and Happiness
J
VIA EMAIL
Hello my beloved friend. After reading nearly 1000 articles you’ve written for your daily/weekly/monthly columns, I still gasp at the direct contacts you make in my personal current affairs. You regularly stun me with the beauty of your worldview. Your writing makes me think, remember my values, and continue the quest for goodness and health. Your website provides me with all the news I need, much of the poetry I read, and a huge dollop of the compassion blessing my life. What gifts you give! Thank you, dear Eric, for PlanetWaves and for sharing your search for meaning and beauty with us.
All blessings, Jeanne Treadway
VIA EMAIL
Buongiorno Eric,
Alan here in Lisbon, so that’s Bom dia! Anyway you say it, “Hi!” and Thank You for your last poliamorous, conscious, well meaning, right on target offering. As a person who is not at “home” in either the gay or straight “world” and who loves men and women (and dogs and cats and trees and astrology) and as His Holiness the DL teaches “all sentient beings” but who cannot and/or does not want to fit into any type of social box (love that Uranus/Moon in Gemini conjunction sextile my Aries Sun—for starters), I am so happy to hear that there are other people out there (know a few myself!) who fit into the heart and that’s all they need to make it through life (along with a few euros and such).
Alan Oken
Thank you, Stevie Jay, you took the words right outta my head!
Thank you, Eric Francis, for this godsend of a publication!
Thank you, Mom, for REALLY talking about sex!
This PW issue, and Stevie Jay’s comments in particular, strike right at overwhelming feelings I’ve had lately that 1) what divides us is getting WAAAAY too much airplay and 2) I want my society to catch up with me! Oh, the squandered opportunities for growth and FUN!
I’m considering moving away from the bible belt as a remedy. I’ll let you know how that goes. I’m pretty sure some inner work would help, too. 🙂
Dear Eric,
Now that I have spell check and am using an actual computer, (I’ve been utilizing my mobile, as it seems I am never at home these days…..sorry about that typo, one of the side effects of bat eyes…and failure to utilize what my blackberry has to offer). I am from a family of 4 lovely woman. My sisters, all of which are my best friends, and myself, were raised in the “established order” as so eloquently put. What was told to me upon starting my menses was that “boys were going to begin to notice me, and that I need to learn the word “no”. WHAT? by the time my mother said that to me I had already had my first orgasm ….however did not change the Guilt factor, that I struggle with to this day at times. My sister Debra, the third child, was gay at birth it seems. The most beautiful out of all of us, that refused, even at the tender age of 3, to wear a dress. She was superman who flew threw our glass sliding doors, she had the drum set, the motorcycle, she was my protector, the one who tied the bandana around her forehead, the one who had the paperroute, and who rallied up the neighborhood to play “cops and robbers. I could go on and on as she was everything to me. She married her first boyfriend and later divorced due to her husband exposing her use of the internet and interest in the gay lifestyle. How she must have struggled her whole life. My heart aches for her feeling of not belonging. Today she is a successful, registered nurse, married to her partner for 4 years now and going strong. What strength she displayed upon coming out.
Now, my recollection of sex education in my day consisted (from what I recall) the sperm fertilizing the egg, I vaguely recall seeing the little fluid drop swimming up stream in a frenzied search for the egg, have to laugh now. I could not wait to get out of school and meet my then boyfriend and do what came naturally to me of course. My point is, although school sex education is extremely important, what it teaches goes against everything in society. The TV, the radio, the magazines, are in opposition. I spend alot of time observing my daughters group of friends, and from what I see, sex is merely the dirty girl. Love, caring, respect, does not seem to be in the quotation with todays generation, at least in my area. Sex education, not only the act, but the lovingness that should be involved should be taught!! That the woman is an object of beauty to be highly admired. There is such a lack of common respect among kids today. Who are we afraid of that we cannot be realistic about sex education. Who is making the fucking rules, and who has the final say. I am now currently going to find that out regarding the schools in my area. Inquiring minds want to know!!!!!
I am thankful for you Eric, I am finally seeing the light in my own search of identity. You have brought issues to the fore and I am seriously researching my own needs and wants. I can only say again. Mere words alone, cannot express the gratitude I feel for your insights.
(surprisingly, my mother, (who back in the day portrayed “Mary” in an established order spring festival, was the most loving and accepting of Debra’s decision.) Baffling but true. A mothers love for a child goes beyond social and religious barriers.
With Love,
Patricia
K writes… ” I just ran across an interesting interview with the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Here is a link to the article in which he (among other things) touches upon the same issues of gender identity that you have mentioned in today’s article (interestingly enough it is posted on site called queerculturalcenter.org .”
It is so interesting to see how people’s lives become perpendicular to their words… the late Felix G-T spent the last 6 years of his life mourning the loss of his lover to AIDS, and ultimately succumbed to the disease himself. You think their sexual orientation had no bearing on their deaths? And that denial didn’t play into that?
Ah well, the 90s. It a crappy decade like that. We lost a dozen *brilliant* queer artists to HIV disease, many of them were Latinos. I don’t hear anyone asserting that he should abandon his ethnic or linguistic identity; that his Mexicanity is troubling or exclusionary.
Black Lesbians from Brooklyn often *want* to be known as such. As Giselle’s letter pointed out, this willingness to make a distinction often *feels* aggressive to anyone outside of the group. But isn’t it equally aggressive when they don’t, can’t see themselves represented anywhere in our cultural body?
VIA EMAIL
Hi there,
I just finished reading today’s PW article, really enjoyed it. В Randomly, I found this opinion column right after reading your piece . . . funny timing and I thought you may be interested:В http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/10/queering-california-education.html
Fits right in with the Steve Jay’s comments about liberals (and conservatives) framing gay/bi people as ‘queer.’
Appreciated your research and hearing various perspectives . . .
Love,
Kristina
VIA EMAIL
Eric,
by some strange synchronicity – and through different channels in the virtual world – I just ran across an interesting interview with the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Here is a link to the article <http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/FelixGT/FelixInterv.html> in which he (among other things) touches upon the same issues of gender identity that you have mentioned in today’s article (interestingly enough it is posted on site called queerculturalcenter.org :).
quote from the part: FOR WHICH AUDIENCE
“Another example: when you have a show with white male straight painters, you don’t call it that, that would be absurd, right? That’s just not “natural”. But if you have four Black lesbian sculptors from Brooklyn, that’s exactly what you call it, “Four African-American Lesbians from Brooklyn.”
k
Eric –
Great article! Don’t even know where to begin and what I write will probably go on and on, but your article was so thought provoking and moving.
Giselle – Thank you for sharing your experiences with us! I know many of us here, I count myself as one of them, experience similar labeling and attempts by society, partners, and people who claim to be our friends to keep us the same and keep us uniform and comfortably placed under how society dictates the way we should be. Instead of embracing us for who we are in that moment and giving us the space to be true to our hearts no matter where it takes us.
I was fortunate enough not to have had an abstinence only sex education in high school (this was in the later 90’s), not that the sex-ed I got was actually useful. But I was lucky to enter those defining teenage years when the internet was really getting off the ground (Though I do remember a time pre-internet. We didn’t get internet at home until I was 15 or 16). The internet allowed me to access all sorts of information about sex from sources such as planned parenthood. It also gave me easy access when I was young to free erotica, which couples really well with masturbation. I was born with the attitude that a) masturbation was a wonderful thing and far better than a pushy guy who would probably give me an STD and b) I was going to be extremely selective about who I had sex with early on since I was determined to have sex with men who respected me enough to use a condom and could actually talk with me about their sexual history. I didn’t pick this up from my parents, sex wasn’t really talked about at home though I know my parent’s had a lot of sex. These attitudes were intuitive, but it did make me a bit of an outsider because I wasn’t dying to let any guy who could say nice things have sex with me. I had empowered myself sexually and taken control of my orgasm, leaving men I was with as an equal participant but not the one from who the pleasure came from. Many of the early men I dated were not ready to handle this concept and as a result I had a rough dating life in late high school/early college.
One memory that I still distinctly remember from High School was a speaker we came to tell us about the difference between men and women and to tell guys how to treat girls nicely. (Apparently, mothers and fathers were not doing a good enough job imparting this wisdom on their children). He told us that men always think about sex, women don’t have big sex drives and guys think about sex every 20 seconds. I remember thinking “How can that be? How can guys have a bigger sex drive than me and think about sex more than I do when I think about sex literally all the time and am always really horny.” It also upset me that some man was claiming to know that women are not as sexual as men. Not to mention he had just denied a large part of who I am – my sexuality. This speaker was just passing on society’s message – You’re a woman. You aren’t as sexual as guys, you are a sexual object.
The list is too long of times someone I consider to be a good friend expects me to be who they perceive me to be and who I was yesterday and denying who I am today. Isn’t that the definition of a friend – they accept and love us for who we are not who we should be. Last year a guy friend, who I considered to be a very dear friend, told me that I don’t have a big of a sex drive as men because I’m a woman and therefore by the sheer fact of being female my sex drive is lower then men’s. What hurt the most was that it was a friend denying a big part of me because society told him that woman = not as sexual as men. He didn’t look at me, really see me and say yes I see you for you and that that means you are someone who was born with a deep connection to sex and sexuality. He looked at me and saw what society told him to see.
“Many monogamous relationships isolate people….And most relationships are governed by the fear of being abandoned rather than the pleasure of loving.” Eric – I couldn’t agree more. Many people use the relationship as a safety net. When you “have” someone it’s far easier to just sit back, ignore your issues and slide through life rather than being forced to address what scares you and to grow into a new place of understanding. You don’t have to strike out on your own, be on your own and really face who you are and who you want to be. Yes – truth, honesty and authenticity are erotic. I loved how you put that. And I love reading all your poly articles because they really make me take a long hard look at my own monogamous relationships and how I relate to my partner and really ask the questions most people don’t want to ask. The more men I date who are stuck and unwilling to face their growth the more I see the isolation you talk about; the fear of abandonment so they cling to past, outdated modes of relating; the inability to discuss relational issues for fear of being forced to look at their issues or that both they and I will realize how unsure they are about who they are. There seem to be all these built in “rules” in a monogamous hetero relationship that govern how we relate to each other. Rules that let many heteros cop out of genuinely relating to one another and this doesn’t allow for individuals to be individuals and form a relationship that works for those two individuals. Rules are so overrated! 🙂
Love, sex and chocolate everyone! And keep standing in your truth!
– Genevieve
Eric,
You have been a seeing-eye-god for me for some years now, the closer we come to where we are going, the more I find focus of my own.
Thank you for this so very much. Your current essay is another step on the pathway next to me – I am thrilled at the direction we are going, the new experiences that are opening up right and left.
P.S. Wishing on a star I could fly in “real life” as I do in my dreams and make it to your photo showing. Perhaps you’ll bring it on the road to LA sometime.
xo
Now on to today’s issue. While I agree that abstinence only programs are disastrous and even sinister, I have to disagree with the Polyamorous folks as well. Not because they choose to have multiple sexual partners; go right ahead if you’re all consenting, but because the topic and the conversation is being structured in a Love-equals-Sex scenario. Obviously, love does not, and should not, automatically mean sex is going to be involved. Of course there are the obvious cases where this is true (family relationships), but the same applies to many other situations where it may not seem quite so obvious, but where in fact, it would be inappropriate (and even a form of abuse, even amongst adults) to express the love one is feeling in sexual terms. This is why when people say “I’m polyamorous” other people think “You’re a cheater” because the truth is they mean “I have multiple sexual partners” not “I love many people at the same time and do so freely.”
“Polyamore” didn’t work in the Sixties for the same reason, and it wasn’t only the women who got sick of it (although they got sick of it quicker no doubt because they were still stuck, in the communes and such, with all the chores they always got stuck with, and weren’t really getting a lot of benefits, practical or otherwise, from their multiple partners either.
I was once in a situation where I could just look at a certain person (my Tai Kwon do teacher) and have an orgasm and also discovered fairly quickly (like immediately) that it was mutual. It was very very tempting indeed. It was if our bodies waved and called to each other as old friends. But here was the problem. He was 33 and I was 17 and he was married. He actually made an attempt to hook up and I was going to go along, but he chickened out and after that, I would not even consider the idea. The reason was because I was going to be leaving for NY and whilst it may have been a fun adventure for me, it would have had much more consequence for him. As it turned out, I met his wife, she got pregnant and I gave their son a beautiful silver cup with a bear on it when he was born. I have told this story to some friends (including my current significant other) and most often people say things like, wow, I don’t think I could have resisted, etc. But the thing is, we had a much better clearer relationship than we would have had had we had sex. And it would have been inappropriate “this time around.” Which leads us to another possibility, sometimes when we have strong connections with other people it is indeed because we “know them from before” but, once again, that does not automatically mean we should be having sex with them.
Thanks again for all your insights.
Mal
Outstanding, Eric! You bring a seldom seen level of integrity to your choice of subject matter, your research, your terminology and (last but not least) to the astrology. This time you raise the bar once again by stepping into an area that is difficult to even talk about, much less act on. But that’s the challenge of Pluto’s current placement, isn’t it. Whether it be the institutions of the established order or the individual’s choices of relating to same, the icy diploid will, at long last, be heard. The axis of this weekend’s Full Moon and the transit of Saturn into Libra are all notes in the progression.
Thank you for reminding us that the “underlying issue is honesty”. Thank you for encouraging us to take responsibility. Thank you for admonishing us to drop the labels and see ourselves in each other. So simple, such a challenge. Yes, we can!
With the Utmost Appreciation,
Len Wallick
Dear Eric,
I haven’t been in touch with you since you did my phone reading a year and a half or so back. We talked about a lot of things, among them flying…I’m becoming a pilot…and my impending, now year-old, marriage. I always look forward to reading your observations about cultural, political, social and sexual behavior, but today’s writing propelled me to the computer.
Obviously I can only relay to you my own experiences in life, which has consisted of a considerable amount of “defending” who I am, what I am, why I am the way I am, what I do, why I want to do it, and where I am doing it. This is true whether the topic is my sexuality, my chosen artistic expression at the moment, my decision to become a pilot, my decision not to have children and, most recently, my desire and decision to get married at 54. This “defense” is literally life-long, and I wonder, as I read your words whether, as human beings, we simply at our cores find it difficult to accept that other people are different than we are…that we are, each and every one of us, on a different and unique path to becoming authentic. I can go back in my history and recall very specific incidents where another person has tried to talk me out of being whoever it is I was being at the time, or out of whatever it was I was doing at the time, all with the vehemence, conviction and absolute certainty that they knew what was better for me than I ever could or would.
When I was 17 I decided to get a Liberal Arts degree from St. John’s College, which does not have fraternities or sororities, is not religious, does not give grades and where you take no tests. Instead you talk and write for four years. This school has an extremely tough intellectual program and virtually everyone in my all-girl prep school told me that I would be ill-suited to getting a job and living in the “real world” if I got such a “useless” degree. However, this was not my first venture into feeling different. My father, who had been blacklisted in 1951 for supposed ties with the Communist Party, died when I was five. Growing up, I did not know one single person without two parents. I recall as though it were today, a classmate of my brother’s (13 years old) asking me, “But how can your father be dead? How do you live without a father?” Already having been branded an outsider, I was not surprised that there was little support for my chosen college. To heighten the situation, the school hardly knew what to do with a financial aid student who did not have much of a family, so they roomed me with another “outsider,” a young woman who remains to this day one of my closest friends, who spent much of her early childhood in foster care. The closed-door conversations among school officials about what to do with the two unfortunate incoming Freshwomen are conversations I would love to have been privy to. The overriding assumption was that we could be in a seminar with people who were unlike us, but we would present more of a problem in a rooming situation, where someone would necessarily have to bump uncomfortably up to the reality of our childhoods having been radically different from their privileged ones.
Two years after I graduated I became the youngest person to be a Director at CBS Records in New York. I was 23. The chatter in the halls was that I had (of course) slept my way to the top, because how could I possibly be that good at something at such a young age? I transferred to New York from San Francisco and lived in the Waldorf and the Warwick Hotels while I was looking for an apartment. I had no friends in the City and spent my evenings alone. Soon enough a woman 15 years older than me, who worked in the Creative Services department, invited me out for an evening tour of New York. Although I had come from San Francisco (Milk and Moscone were assassinated shortly after I arrived in Manhattan), I was nonetheless naГЇve. I honestly thought she really wanted to befriend me. She did not. She was a Lesbian, and 30 minutes into our night tour she stopped by her favorite Lesbian bar in downtown Manhattan to show off her tanned and blond sweet young thing to her friends. They surrounded me. I announced that I was not a Lesbian and the night turned ugly. Not being a Lesbian was an impossibility, like not having a father was an impossibility, like attending a Communist rally without being a Communist was an impossibility, like studying philosophy was an impossibility, like getting my job at 23 without having slept my way to the top was an impossibility. I was told that I would “get over it,” that they, like me, were once into men (some had been married) and that sooner or later I would wake up to my own latent, repressed, shamed, buried and secretive Lesbianism and embrace true sexual freedom that could only be had with a female partner or multiple partners. I never did. I have had a free and expressive sexual life with many individual lovers, but have never had the desire to be with a woman. There is a large community of people who think that never having the desire to have sex with another person of one’s own sex is a denial of our true animal nature, that it is…impossible. I think the definition of freedom is being able to choose what is right, true and authentic for oneself, not what is right, true and authentic for a group or a cultural belief system born of any political movement.
During the ensuing 30 years I had relationships with many men, none of whom I wanted to marry, and with none of whom I wanted to have children, in spite of two pregnancies…and two abortions. I became, variously, an actor/director, designer, businesswoman and writer, and at every step of the way I have been asked by women and men, gay and straight, young and old, of every color in the rainbow, “What? You’re straight and not married? What? You don’t have children? What went wrong?” About becoming a glider pilot, I do not have one single female friend who hasn’t said, “What would you want to do that for? You’re going to kill yourself.” Needless to say, there are only two women at the glider club I joined in Virginia.
When my husband and I decided to get married – we reconnected in 2007 after not having seen one another for 36 years – the disbelief and shock among my circle of friends (male and female, gay and straight) was so thick you couldn’t cut it with a knife if you tried. “You can’t get married. You’re a role model for not getting married,” or “Well…you’re going to finally leave your job now, aren’t you?,” or “You’re not going to leave your job now, are you?,” or “You’re not going to leave New York, are you?,” or “Well, you’re finally going to leave New York and move to Virginia with Brian, aren’t you?,” or “What do you mean you’re not changing your name?,” or “You’re not going to change your name, are you?” And it goes on and on and on and on. When I visit Virginia, I got a lot of “What? You’re going back and forth to New York? How does your husband feel about that?,” as though how I feel about it is completely irrelevant.
The point of all of this is to query out loud how is it even remotely possible for most people to know themselves, who they truly are as individuals, safe from a plethora of cultural projections, expectations, needs, judgments and prejudices, if they are constantly being enlisted, lobbied, wooed and pursued by individuals and groups who need others to be like them because they themselves are probably uncomfortable being whoever it is they are being? The brilliant Terrence Real, somewhere in his book, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming The Secret Legacy of Male Depression, says that when we are uncomfortable with ourselves we try to convince others they are exactly like us in order to make our souls comfortable with being different (If you are like me, how can there possibly be anything wrong with me?).
This resonated when I reflected back on reading my father’s FBI dossier, in which a husband and wife “team” testified that my father’s belief that poor children should be educated proved that he was a Communist. They said that they had never met anyone who believed in educating poor children, let alone poor black children, and that belief alone was a Leftist belief and therefore made him a threat to our government.
When I was talking to my mother about Dad’s FBI file, she told me about a train trip she and Dad had taken with me to California when I was about four years old. There was a young black boy I would run up and down the halls playing with, and suddenly I was struck by the difference in our skin colors. Apparently, I stopped in the middle of the aisle and loudly announced that he should wash up before dinner because he had a “dirty” face. I had never seen a black person before. My parents were rebellious and my mother certainly didn’t stop after my father died. When Albuquerque’s first black doctor arrived none of the white families would see him. His practice was entirely Hispanic. My mother dragged us all up to his office and announced that we would be his first white patients. He remained our family doctor until he retired.
New Mexico, where I was raised, after the War was a hot bed of radicals who simply wanted to be free. My parents’ friends were Lesbians, Arabs, Italians, Greeks, Jewish, Unitarian, Sufi, Buddhist, you name it. But we didn’t talk about it. They wanted us to see people as human beings, rather than as a particular kind or sort of human being. It never occurred to me that before I got married many of my friends saw me as “single, white, heterosexual, childless, independent and sexually free.” I saw myself then, as I do now, simply as a person living my life as true to myself as I possibly can. Now, to many women who needed me to remain single, and to many men to whom I am no longer sexually available, I am, apparently, a repressed, imprisoned, tied down, boringly monogamous, compromised and in-denial-of-my-true-self married woman, who is doomed to sexual monotony, misery and, ultimately, divorce.”
Wow.
I am writing a book on my father, who died in 1959. His life was about the freedom to be himself as he saw himself, not as others wanted him or needed him to be. Were he alive today, fifty years later we would have a lot to talk about .
Thanks for listening Eric, and for your insightful, thought provoking and always interesting and passionate writing.
Giselle
I absolutely identify with thid article Eric, as I was one of “those” experimenting. With my best friend. Not only did we not talk about “IT” to each other, I was plagued with feeling that something was wrong with me. Today I am a lover of both men and woman. And I’m okay!!!