Two unfinished pieces.  No comments please, here or in actuality, until they are done.

The Fly

And then, after having a good look at the most recent deposit in the done-with basin, which to my delight included banana peels and a few pieces of tofu, I flew over to the window to catch a bit of morning light, while my home’s inhabitants went back and forth with rather too much haste, in what appeared, from my peripheral observation at least, as preparations for a day to be spent in looking decent while doing things which keep one occupied.  This of course, making its way into my all-too-many-eyed vision, was of no interest in itself; but as is the way of me and mine, the flurry of bodily commotion gave my wings to taking flight in elongated circles from one end of the room to the other – if not with God-given intent, then at least for the purpose of making use of such flippant fluttering weblike arms that fill their surrounds with an unignorable buzz.  My circuit carried me over the hardwood floors, around shelves and through doorways, at the threshold of which I had always to take the greatest care in not flinging myself against the metal being always opened and closed – a game which gives me pleasure, which the athlete in me more than insignificantly enjoys.  I say this because – or rather, I should say, this game is always more than insignificant, as, of course, there is always the chance of near or even absolute demise – inattention for the briefest moment constituting the grave and exciting risk that I might be struck and sent spiraling into a corner, to be left, as is the fate of the unfortunate, a twitching, convulsing, regurgitating mess of stalwart cells in the unrelenting throes of life’s last revolt.  It is the athlete in me, the athlete, always scrupulous to take advantage of an opportunity for the renewal of one’s sense of valor, that flings one acrobatic into the bustle of scenes to which I would otherwise consider myself indifferent.  What these fellows are up to, whatsoever it is they’re preparing for, is of no consequence to me.  But that I should be left out of the fun?  That is quite simply out of the question.

After Post-Modernism

6 characters on couches in a dusty wood-paneled living space
-A charlatan
-A libertine
-A didactic thinker
-An indulgent
-A quack
-A yogi

Yogi: Anxiety, fear, the sense of discontentment and unfulfilment.  All of this, on a widespread rise, in very specific ways over the past two centuries, has been a preparation.

Charlatan: Preparation for what?

Quack: For what?
[both in quick succession]
[pause]

Indulgent: For what…?

Yogi: For the end of days.
[A scuffle and series of guffaws]

Indulgent: [After a pause] For what…?

Didactic thinker: It had been proven long ago, and without a doubt, that the minds of such as thee are nary more than a trifle.
[abrupt, lingering pause]

Yogi: Well, indeed… if minds are what count -
[guffaws and giggles, holding up of knees and laughing towards the ceiling]

Libertine: [clearing his throat] Surely not, maestro.

Yogi: Indeed it’s true, and well enough so. The mind is but a -
[his tone ascendant and pontificating]

Libertine: Trap for the unfortunate.
[silence; the yogi raises an eyebrow]

Indulgent: And well enough it is, [leaning forward and pausing, giving himself time to grin warmly at the others in succession, and enunciating with great satisfaction] that a man has but to fill his belly to know the pleasures of a king!
[guffaws and giggles, a chewing of gum and exchange of elbow nudges - friendly banter]

Didactic Thinker: [raising his head to the side with airs of inspired graces, looking off dreamily] Ah, but would that we might – that any place might have such a king that could know the joys of both mind and belly, with a knack for governing to boot.
[slamming of fists on the table, general merriment, pats on shoulders - a few too many congratulations, perhaps, through all of which the yogi, clothed in long robe, sits silent - grinning slightly, of course]

Yogi: That should come to be, should it come to be desired.

Charlatan: [quickly] Oh there’s a lot of things that should come… given the right indication.

Didactic Thinker: [with a somewhat sharp, reprimanding look, pronouncing, with authority] What it takes is a change in values. Certain things must be taken into account.

Quack: The rivers! The rivers and [with a rising fanatical tone] the way they flow!!!
[silence]

Indulgent: Anyway, a good meal could do the fix.

Charlatan: Really there are some things which one just has to understand. A mogul doesn’t look out at the land and say “It would be quite pretty [a rather foppish look on his face at the word 'pret-tee'] to have the run of the land. I should like to start here and here.” [looking quite serious] He puts his foot on the ground [stamps his foot]! He says “This is what’s what, and I’m going to have the go around!”
[a few guffaws and elbow nudges. The quack grabs the libertine's ankle; the libertine pulls away in stunned retreat]

Didactic thinker: [holding his right hand to his chin and rubbing his thumb across his lips, one end to the other] The point, if we may grant that there is one, is that, to state things clearly: it takes more than city lights to strike the darkness of humanity.
[a hush]

Indulgent: Strike? …

Libertine: Well in any event, the night is a long way ahead of us yet, [quite merrily, not quite fauxmerrily] there is much to be said and done between us, [raising his wine glass and gesturing, his brow forward] so here’s to a pleasant enough evening for us all.
[glasses raised]

Quack: Here, here.
[Glasses set down, a little noisily]

-A small dog trots across the stage with a sign sticking straight up on his back:
“ACT 2″

Quack: Right enough, fellows, right enough.

Libertine: [thistles the melody of '...sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing...' distractedly, through his teeth]

Yogi: It was unusually hot today… the season is changing. The truth, and how one feels, varies between this day and the last. Such is always the case with the season’s changes…

Didactic Thinker: Verily, verily.

Indulgent: Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a -

Quack: [eyes widening, cutting in between 'is' and 'but'] Stream! Streeem! Stream-y-ing, like fireworks, like the, like the, like… [drifts off]

Libertine: [sipping] They’re apples and oranges… days, nights, the soft fuzz in between… I watched the first commuters come up the stairs from the subway this morning, while I lay slumped, rather comfortably I’d say, against one of those stone monuments downtown. Completely different worlds converge, at that moment, a single flickering present -

Indulgent: Ah, get off it.

Libertine: – in which, [pausing] the just rising administration of the future meets the still floating minstrelsy of the past…

Yogi: And -

Didactic Thinker: But -

Yogi: Go ahead.

Didactic Thinker: But could you face that sight every morning for the rest of your life?

Libertine: I would savor it every time, like a beautiful woman, [gesticulating with three fingers to his thumb, spelling out with relish] each time as though it were the first.

Didactic Thinker: So you say…
[pouting]

Indulgent: Ay. [pause, while he peels a banana] And so says your father, and your father’s father, and by golly, your father’s father’s father too!
[general laughs. The quack pokes the libertine in the kidney. The libertine withdraws, with a not undelighted look of abashment, to the far end of the couch.]

Charlatan: The thing that needs to be decided, [nearly shouting] once and for all, is whether -
[coughing, coughing interrupts - the indulgent, hunched over forward, looks up]

Indulgent: My apologies, gentlemen. Twas the corn syrup in the caramel.
[silence; the charlatan, mouth still open, blinks and sits back in his seat]

Yogi: We are decided on one thing. There are as many approaches as there are pairs of legs walking.

Didactic Thinker: It’s a bit of a masquerade, isn’t it? A bit disquieting at times? [He stares off somewhere distantly] You think you have it all figured out, but go out on the street, and he does too, [pointing into the crowd] and so does she, and she, and he – everyone’s got it figured one way or the other, their own routine, their own shape of smile, their own clothes to stay warm in the summer, cool in the winter, I mean -

Charlatan: It’s a damn nuisance. Nobody’s whole, nobody’s… wholesome. It’s all a damn masquer -

Quack: Meep! [the libertine yawns, the indulgent finishes his banana]

Charlatan: – ade [no pause, the interpolations are subsequent with the word breaks], like you said, a grand operatic sh -

Quack: Meep. [the charlatan looks at the quack now as he continues speaking]

Charlatan: -am, [his voice rising to assert itself] it’s rudimentary and undignified everybody’s fingers in everyone else’s -

Quack: Mleeep [he's looking at the floor, as though watching and talking to a bug there]

Charlatan: – pies, will you quit that!

Indulgent: What are you looking at [said indifferently, without turning to the quack]

Didactic Thinker: Yeah say, what is that? [The libertine, yogi lean in to look] A spider? It’s got long, crusty legs.

Indulgent: Probably been mucking around in all the dust in here [still reclined, staring out above the audience]

Libertine: There’s nothing to be done for it. It settles back in as soon as you’ve swept it up [said casually].
[The yogi closes his eyes meditatively. The charlatan pushes back his shoulders, stiffening and relaxing his posture. The quack has leaned so far down as to look between his legs, underneath the couch. After a moment of silence, the didactic thinker interlocks his fingers and stretches his arms forward, cracking his knuckles. The libertine whistles aimlessly. The indulgent, who has been sipping soda, belches. The others stop what they are doing and look at him.]

Indulgent: Just my humble addition to the hot air in this room.

-A long swan wing, about six feet long, swings from the ceiling, stage right to stage left – shaped rather like a feather, but discernably a swan’s wing. It stops again at the ceiling, having made its 180? arc.

I was trying not to post on here, but I got really excited about this piece and really wanted to show it to someone.  Technically, I didn’t have anything to do with taking the x-rays (except for, you know, volunteering my mouth), but I feel like it’s within my artistic license to call this my own work of art.  I’ll probably make some drawings based on it, too, which was the original idea.  Am I the only one who thinks that x-rays of teeth are hauntingly and startlingly beautiful and fascinating?  Here are some more that I found on the internet:

I was brought to tears today, by the incredible. The badee3  is found in all the expanse of the sky and the earth. And among these universalities are the signs for those who know. I cowered today as I stared out into the hurracine of clouds below me. My eyes reached out to the horizon and caught the last glimmers of red, as time slipped away. The darkness settled in and found a home in front of me, so slow was its arrival that I couldn’t tell you the exact moment it overwhelmed. Thunderous in its silence, I continued to stare out, but my vision returned to me wet and blurred, and weary and worn out were my eyes. My chest was at once hollowed and yet enundated. The water level rose and rose. The leak flowed into my lung, and I gasped for breath as the oxygen was displaced. Higher and higher, with no lung capacity left my cells at the extremities were deprived of their life source and they too gasped their final breath. At the level of my throat, I choked, the pressure rising rapidly. Higher and higher filling my mouth and reaching higher still to the void spaces of my nasal cavity. In need of release it finally reached the valve. And from my eyes did the tears trace the contours of this wrinkled face, down down, down off the peaks of my nose, down to my sacred lips. The tears did not gather anywhere, they formed no resevoir, nor were they fossilized and preserved as an historical record. They just disappeared, or perhaps the humidty was low and they evaporated. Either way the increadible absorbed my emotive state. The empty was filled momentairly by the increadible and a disease was diluted down. The enternal darkness did not disappear, it was just muted. I shall be deaf before too long, and the cells that died in my appendages cannot be restored, so I must make do with my diminished self.

The Warner came to me with clear signs; I did not retreat. I stood as Strong and grew like a palm in an oasis. The vast ocean of sand ebbed away from me but soon I grew too proud and told the other palms I would seek the desert…

Given the recent turns the blog has taken, and given my absence from a lot of those discussions, I wanted to post this article from that underground revolutionary resource NYtimes.com (which is, in all serious, dominated by the droning voices of stagnation and reification: an institution designed to co-opt liberal sentiment into recognizable, limited, and digestible units, but in which a refreshing voice can sometimes be found).  I think that I can’t post a comment with links (did anyone see my last comment?  i think someone with more e-thority than I needs to go in to the dashboard and approve it/improve it), so I’m posting it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27Paglia.html?src=me&ref=general

The article gently hinted at a vaguely class-based or even Marxist reading of sexuality: the problem that she names lies within the current bourgeois regime, and can be seen in opposition to “Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyoncé,” or even “Country music, with its history in the rural South and Southwest, is still filled with blazingly raunchy scenarios, where the sexes remain dynamically polarized in the old-fashioned way.”

(it is worth noting that her perspective is clearly limited to the Western hemisphere: what are we to make of the more rigorous and codified repressions of the Islamic or Hindu worlds, where the bourgeoisie is inarguably more sexually liberated than the controlled classes?  Is this a contrast worth drawing, or does it just reinforce the us/them mentality? )

In general, as a resident of the white-middle-class that Pagalia writes about, I agree with her.  The article spoke to me loudly as a current resident of Brooklyn, where all physicality seems relegated to studio spaces where we practice yoga or capoeira or pilates.  These practices are very nice–I think I’m about to go to a new yoga studio myself in an hour or two–but what of bump and grind lasciviousness?  More personally, how have we (I) become resigned to long periods of celibacy in an urban space teeming with youth and humanity?  Of course there are personality issues involved in that, but I’m becoming more and more aware of the cultural limitations on libidinal expression in the youth culture of the city.  In my opinion, these limitations and repressions undo a lot of the progress that was made by first and second wave feminism and the sexual revolution.  To me, it feels that dating culture is too oriented toward lifelong partnerships, which makes the whole thing feel disturbingly vocational, where sexual choices are made based on notions of cultural and social status.  Which works against me, because I have yet to find my vocational place in this city (beyond my MFA program), if I am destined to have one at all.  This vocational system, as this NYtimes points out, no longer makes a gender differentiation, which is good, politically, but boring, libidinally.  I am happy with and proud of my limited masculinity, but I feel that my masculinity has almost no role to play in my life, more so because of my slight build and small stature.   I feel emasculated.  This feels so good to say that it might be important.

(later on, I’m going to cross-post a version of this post on my blog at www.jedicist.org/blog  I’m newly resolved to use that venue more for self-analysis and expression, and a catalog for constant writing, more blog than public notebook, which is what it has been in the past)

and-from-the-trick-of-it-a-crow.doc

Jed, I think I showed you this poem junior year, when I wrote it — it’s about the same thing you’re writing about, and I thought it might be worthwhile to share it again.  Well, maybe not exactly the same thing, but inspired by the same events.  I think it’s worth noting that I was severely mentally unstable when I wrote this.  I think it’s so much more interesting than anything I’ve written lately, though.  I want to get back to writing the kind of stuff I wrote when I was sick.  The question is, how do you harness the power of mental illness while maintaining a healthy and functional lifestyle?  It really bothers me that it’s double-spaced, by the way, it’s supposed to be single-spaced.  Also, certain lines are supposed to be indented to varying degrees, but the site keeps setting them back to the margin.  Sturgeon, what’s up with that? (Never mind, I just realized I can post the word document.  Look at that for format.)

–

Can’t keep

grinds in the grinder or in the canoe  Lets free

an orchid fire on the swing of things and

if left unattended  mixes up Keats with

Yeats

Said  Keep the mop top post bag   the ding-

eroo   in the canoe

Keep it

at the light hole or the light’ll just roll  On the piss pot where I

will not unless you won’t

Said  See that mountain pass straight west the uptake

indicator-see the grinds out

Is in for a

tracheotomy of sorts  A

peddler

in the almond bush is poised

Flashlight in the back room  Pittance in the oven  Chow mein’s

got a heart murmur nothing scary

I heard the crinkling in the dog’s secret

part  I went in

To get my lungs sewn to the mattress I had to stand on a box

to get to the mattress  Technician purred sweet pumpkin they’d

never come loose  Litter in the nook like tongs all this time

our snow’s been straight

subliming

aren’t you going to breaststroke the lap  Well aren’t you  Aren’t

Isn’t that the officer

Not sure if any of this is what you’re looking for (I tried to provide a wide variety), but perhaps one of them will spark something.  I’ll try to work on some new stuff soon.  Anyway, yes, let’s change the subject and do something active.

Looking at this one now, I realize that it looks kind of sexual, which it wasn’t meant to be in the least.

I’m often rely too much on high contrast, so I was trying to see what I could do with low contrast.

Sketch of excavated artifacts and plaster cast from Pompeii.

I had a weird obsession with drawing abstractions of chests of drawers and jewelry boxes for a few months.  I did some silkscreen prints of them, too.

Owl With No Beak.  At first the fact that it had no beak was a mistake — I was working from a photograph, and I was so absorbed in looking at the shapes of the lights and darks that I wasn’t even thinking about what they represented.  Apparently, I got the darks in the area near where the beak should be wrong, and it didn’t occur to me until after I had finished it that there should be a beak there.  Then I never went back to fix it.  I kind of like it this way, actually.  It’s kind of surreal.

Among the current fury of productivity on this pink site, I felt the need to point us in this direction:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/weekinreview/16fuller.html?pagewanted=1
This is bangkok, not some unknown territory; this is the asian city where I am most comfortable, where I felt fun and loving-kindness.  This is Bangkok, where I have twice gone to breathe easy.  I don’t understand who is fighting who and who is in the right.

Meanwhile, the southern coast is going to be a slimy wasteland for the rest of our American lives due to the incompetence of capitalism.

It’s too late in the day; the process is now unstoppable, the descent is entrenched; it stills my hands over the keyboard and drives me outward into the sunshine.

i would like to write a column along the lines of “Theory in a Modern Context.”  It would be partly a defense of theory, partly a defense of confused american youth, and partly an application of theory to everyday life.  For example, the first column would deal with the Lacanian concept of ‘Metonomy.’  I would argue that this is a concept we can use, taken from language/madness/dream studies (Jakobson/Lacan/Freud) to understand everyday ’styles’ or ‘patterns’ of behavior amongst city inhabitants.  Distinguished from ‘metaphor,’ which corresponds roughly to the Freudian dream-concept of Condensation (two ideas being condensed into one, as in: ship+airplane=ship with wings), metonymy is an act of displacement.  One object, somewise similar to the first, comes to replace the other (ship->sail->cloth). 
 
Metonymy as a styling of life is alternative to metaphor as lifestyle.  Alter-native: born someplace else.  Both should be understood as ‘concepts’ in which each individual life, to different extents at different times, participates.  When someone invests their desires in a job or family, a large portion of their attention goes to these things.  Allegiance to particular forms of enjoyment comes to define, though not entirely delimit, this manner of life.  One knows what types of movies one likes, what type of music.  One has long-term hobbies, and might return on vacation to places of familiarity, year after year.  But rather than describe this too much, I would seek to provide clarity by way of comparison with that manner of living rooted in metonymy.  Here, it is not necessarily as important what the enjoyed activity is, so long as it ‘differs’ from the activity that precedes it.  The principle of enjoyment rests more in variation as such.  Objects of enjoyment or vocations with which we identify our sense of purpose become important insofar as they can be made segments within the flow of an individual’s day to day, week to week, year to year lived experience.  Each particular experience displaces – while interacting, whether as an abrupt switch or unexpected coaelescing with - its precedent.  What is potential in this, and what is, nowadays, more and more often undertaken, is the experiencing of the particular experience as a collective or social experience.  For instance, one watches a show as ”someone watching a show” - whatever this entails – alongside one’s enjoying of the show.
 
Having thus introduced metonymy, I would explain how this concept becomes applied in two ways: as metonymy of the one, and metonymy of the other.  I would begin with the second, because there’s more theoretical background there.  Metonymy of the Other expresses itself in lifestyles where an evolving cycle between circles of friends, lovers, and a generally varied indulgence of taste (musically, culinarily, and in terms of what we do ‘to pass the time’) becomes the source of pleasure more than the individual pleasure-sources themselves. Now, any person place or thing in which we forget ourselves and to which we return for pleasure, leisure, or emotional reciprocation is an Other. The Other is the receptor and reciprocator of our desires.  A spouse or lover is an Other; a preferred form of intoxication is an Other; a favorite tv show, sports team, or otherwise visual pastime (movies, video games, Facebook &c.) is an Other.  In this sense, metonymy of the Other is a sort of re-alter-nativity; a re-birthing somewhere, in something, else. It is also something which can become ruthless.  
 
It would not be difficult to summarize the ‘Other’ in a paragraph, with citations to Lacanian, Freudian, and various other theories.  The ‘One’ would be more difficult to pin down.  I would say that it is alluded to in the way certain rather circumlocutory thinkers write – Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and recent thinkers like Badiou and Agamben, for instance.  Having given some idea that the ‘One’ is the directional, self-conscious, autobiographizing self with which we nearly all identify (the Freudian ego/conscious, as opposed to the unconscious, with whom we might say that artists tend to ‘identify’), I would turn to a delineation of the correlating procedures of metonymy.  Rather than referring to the emotional and pleasurable Others, metonymy of the One involves the displacement of purposiveness as such.  Whereas a metaphorical approach to our adult conscious life involves allying oneself with major goals, a set of principles, a career track along which one will progress, &c., metonymy of the one is, once again, more concerned with variation.  That one’s goals have changed at different times of one’s life; that now these and now those principles or ethical codes are taken up as one’s own; that a plurality of vocations are undertaken, experienced, and passed on from, with or without a ’sense of completion,’ becomes more important in this manner of living than an allegiance to particular pleasures, vocations, and the sense of fulfilment through a story of oneself that these then to purvey.

I would avoid specifics, as well as reactive language (i.e. all use of the words Morality, Religion, Tradition, Patriotism) Or rather, I might in one sentence associate these with ‘metaphor,’ but without any hint of irony or otherwise liberal snobism.  This would effectively be a defense of ‘metonymy’ as such, but merely as something implicitly condemned by invasive forms, both overt and unconscious, of hegemonic exclusivity. I might try to trace how metaphor and metonymy involve different methods of identifying oneself with reality.  Lived metaphorically, identity is formed through allegiance or ‘bonding’ with a close set of familiar people, places, and things to which one returns, for most of one’s life, for pleasure and a sense of fulfillment.  Metonymic identity is more a matter of catching oneself up in objective flows of desire (the desire to watch this type of movie, the desire to hear that type of music, the desire to gain this and now that sense of fulfillment).  What is the aim here?  To ‘know what it is’ to desire that way?  To gain some ‘metaphysical’ or ‘transhistorical’ sense of a desire-flow’s genealogical presence?  Metonymy treats time as a game in which the permutation of its segments is experienced as more intensely desirable than that the success of these segments be known in advance.  But I would like to avoid saying these things, and focus on the difference between metonymy of the One and metonymy of the Other — because there is no point in setting metonymy above metaphor, or metaphor above metonymy. Both sides will always tend to justify themselves.  Moreover, everyone lives in both ‘manors.’  Simply to describe them, and then to make metonymical alternativity understandable in a theory that a layman could understand, would be the aim… such that a reader might be urged to become aware of his habits and choices in a way proactive to the expression of her (pre)individual desiring-subjectivity.

In honor of Mother’s Day.

I.

Mommy is wearing a grey suit.  She has on a gold necklace, the one that looks kind of like paper clips linked together but prettier.  She’s wearing gold earrings and bright red lipstick.  I watch her frown into the mirror.  She scratches her bald head like she itches all over.  Then she puts on her wig.  She looks down at me sadly.  I have to go to work now, she says.  I start to get teary.  Don’t cry, she says.  You’ll have a good day at school, and I’ll be back before you know it.  Don’t go, I hate school, I don’t want you to go.  Now I’m sobbing and I can’t breathe.  She turns away.  I have to go, I’m sorry, I have to go.  I grab onto her leg as she walks toward the door.  I have to go, I’m sorry sweetie.  I love you so much.  I’ll be home before you know it.  NO!!!  She gently pulls me off her leg.  NO!!!  She walks out the door.  I cry and scream and press my nose up to the screen door and watch her walk to the bus station.

II.

Mommy is really sick.  That’s what everybody says when they think I can’t hear.  She doesn’t go to work all the time anymore.  Sometimes she’s so sick that they won’t let me be around her, and then I cry and throw a tantrum and everyone acts all nice to me.  Mommy carries plastic bags around to throw up in everywhere she goes.  She doesn’t have any hair anymore and she has to put on the hair monster.  That’s what my brother and I call it.  Mommy laughs when we say that.  Mommy says she’ll get better soon but then everyone gets quiet.  Sometimes I crawl into bed with Mommy after school and all we do is lay there together.  She lays under the covers, I lay on top of them.  She says it makes her feel better to lay there with me.  I like making Mommy feel better.

III.

Mommy goes to work everyday now and doesn’t come home until late at night, sometimes after midnight.  I think she’s getting better now.  I still get sad when she leaves in the morning.  My whole body feels sore from crying.   Some days I refuse to go to school and she lets me go to work with her instead.  Those are the best days.  We get to ride the bus from Queens to Manhattan and ride the elevator all the way up to the 32nd floor.  All the lawyers let me push the buttons.  All I do is draw and write stories and play music on my keyboard and spend time with Mommy all day.

Rape and rape culture are things that I’ve been thinking a lot about for a long time, particularly the past few months, and the following represents a few of the thoughts that have been floating around in my head, though there’s so much more to say, which will perhaps come out in later writings. I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come, especially once I start my volunteer job as a rape crisis online hotline operator.  Slut-bashing is something that I was inspired to revisit after thinking more about the words slut, whore, and bitch, and I thought it was a natural tie-in to rape culture.  Few of the thoughts represented here are particularly new or original, though they represent a process of discovery for me.  I originally wrote this dialogue with character names labeled, because I couldn’t keep track of who was saying what, but I took them out in this version after reading your comments on my last piece.  I think I actually like it better with names, but I’ll take your advice for now.  So long, Anne and Ivy. 

Information and ideas for this piece were gathered from The Sexist (blog in the Washington City Paper), Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio (after whom I took my pen name), The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN), Jezebel (web publication), and Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation by Leora Tanenbaum.

–

So how has your hotline training been going?

It’s been going really well, thanks for asking.

Is it really intense?  What’s it like?

No, not yet.  I’m sure actually working the hotlines will be intense, but the training has been pretty… I don’t want to say dry, but definitely not “intense” or emotionally trying in any way.  In fact, I’ve had the opportunity to read lots of transcripts of actual conversations between volunteers and visitors to the online hotline, and I’m constantly surprised by how much less emotionally charged they are than I would have expected.  But I’m sure that once I start talking to survivors myself, I’ll be taken aback by how emotionally invested I get.

Yeah, I think it can be a really challenging job.  I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to do it, to be honest… So what kinds of things do you learn in training?

Well, you learn a lot of basics about the different kinds of sexual assault and abuse; special issues that arise for certain populations, like ethnic groups, children, adolescents, the elderly, LGBT survivors, men, people with disabilities, etc; basic technical training; how to deal with suicidal visitors; specific techniques for communication — that sort of thing.

Do you feel like you’re prepared to start working the hotlines?

Well, not quite yet.  I still have to go through a fourteen-hour in-person training.  But I feel like I know a lot more than I did before.

You know what always makes me sad about rape victims?  Or, I’m sorry, I should say “survivors,” right?  How often they blame themselves for what happened.

Yeah, it is incredibly sad.  Self-blame and guilt are some of the most common reactions to rape and sexual assault.  But what I think is even sadder – and, of course, infuriating –  is that society blames the victims, too.  We live in a culture where rape is excused for any number of reasons – she was drunk or on drugs, she was wearing a short skirt, a low cut shirt, stiletto heels, too much makeup, she was flirting, she’s promiscuous, she’s a prostitute, she’s slept with the rapist before, she was in a bad neighborhood, she was at a frat party, she went back to his apartment,… the list go on and on.  We don’t find fault with the rapist, but with the victim.  It is almost as if we are saying, “what else could the rapist have been expected to do in this situation?  She was in his apartment, she was wearing that “slutty” outfit, she was drunk, she was flirting… He did what was in his nature to do.”  By the way, I’m sorry to make it sound like all victims are women and all rapists are men.  That’s definitely not the case.  But the sad fact is that about 90 percent of rape victims are women, and 98 percent of rapists are men.

Right, it’s important that we don’t forget that men get raped, too, and that sometimes women are rapists.  But more often than not, rape is part of a system which controls and subordinates women, and that’s important to keep in mind when thinking about it.  Anyway, to go back to what you were saying, the whole issue of human nature is really interesting in this context.  People are always invoking the idea that men rape because they can’t control their sexual urges.  That’s such bullshit.  Men can and do control their sexual urges everyday.  You don’t see men whipping out their dicks and humping coworkers in the middle of the workday whenever they get horny.  People – men and women – rape because they want power over their victims.

Exactly.  One of the things they tell us in training is to remind survivors, when appropriate, that rape and sexual assault are crimes of power and control, not sexual crimes…  My ex-boyfriend once said to me, “I bet if prostitution were legalized, there would be less rape.”  I feel like he was completely missing the big picture.  I don’t think one has anything to do with the other.

You know, to go back to the whole victim-blaming thing for a minute… I just remembered something.  In college, a friend of mine was raped, and she went to the campus health center to see a counselor.  When she told the counselor that she had been drinking and using drugs the night that it happened, do you know what the counselor said to her?  She said, “don’t beat yourself up about it too much.”  Can you believe that?

Oh my god, that’s horrifying!  I didn’t need to go through hotline training to know that that’s NOT what you should say to someone who has been raped.  You always, always, always tell the survivor that it’s not her or his fault.  How obvious is that?  And this person was actually a trained counselor working at a university?

I know.  I told her it wasn’t her fault, but I think it was really damaging to her that she made the effort to see a counselor – which was a big and scary step for her – and was made to feel even worse about things.  And the fact that the message that it was partially her fault was coming from someone with authority — a trained counselor — was especially damaging.  It just goes to show you how pervasive the victim-blaming culture is.

I was reading this recent post on The Sexist about how, recently, a convicted serial rapist came out and said that he hoped his victims learned a valuable lesson from his crimes – to keep their doors locked.  And the interesting thing about the story is that newspapers ran the headlines and everyone acted all shocked that the rapist was blaming his victims for not locking their doors, as if getting raped was their own fault.  Amanda Hess, who writes the blog, pointed out that people express that very same sentiment all the time, and no one blinks an eye.  It’s just that when a rapist says it, suddenly people find it abhorrent.

That’s so interesting.  I guess it’s just that it’s socially unacceptable to actually explicitly support the rapist, but it’s acceptable to implicitly support rape culture.

Right, people like to think that they don’t support rape, they just think that women should be more “careful” about how they dress and act.  But when you make excuses for rape, what you’re really doing is saying that rape is brought on by the actions of the victim, not perpetrated by the rapist.  It’s like saying rape is okay because the victim has provoked it, or allowed it to happen.  The basic argument of victim-blaming, after all, is that the victim has essentially given her consent by way of wearing certain clothing, acting a certain way, being in a certain place, etc.  Or if she has not essentially given her consent, she has given up her right to consent.

Where do all of these attitudes about how women dress and act come from in the first place?  For instance, this preoccupation with “sluttiness”… Why are we so concerned with how promiscuous a woman is or how provocatively she dresses?  It seems that adolescents are particularly preoccupied with this sluttiness thing, as evidenced by the whole slut-bashing phenomenon.  Not that adults don’t do it, too.  My lord, they do.  But adolescents seem to become mired in it to such a dangerous extent.

Yeah, I remember all the slut-bashing that went on in my high school.  I was reading a few chapters in a book about slut-bashing for my Child Development class last semester, and I find the whole phenomenon so interesting.  Girls are being tormented just because they’re considered sluts… and do you know how they come to be known as sluts?  Some of them have sex with boys, doing the same thing that most of their peers, who are doing the tormenting, are also doing. But most of the girls who get labeled as sluts aren’t even having sex!  Sometimes it’s just the way they dress.  And most of them get labeled as sluts for other reasons… Maybe they just have big boobs or big hips, or men just find them attractive.  Maybe they made out with a boy who some other girl likes, or maybe some other girl’s boyfriend has a secret crush on them.  A lot of it has to do with jealousy amongst girls.  Sometimes a girl who’s been raped is labeled a slut.  It’s all so fucked up, and young girls end up batting depression, alienation from their peers, and, in the worst cases, sometimes committing suicide as a result of it.

You know which part of it I find the most interesting?  The whole big boobs, big hips thing.  We seem to think that large breasts are in themselves offensive.  You know, some of the major networks, I think it might have been Fox and ABC, refused to air a commercial recently for a plus-sized lingerie company featuring women with large breasts.  They said the amount of cleavage showing was too obscene.  The same networks air Victoria’s Secret commercials showing just as much cleavage!  What they really meant was that the size of the women’s breasts was too obscene.  And what all of it really shows is that we have this deep-seated fear and hatred of women’s bodies being too womanly, of women themselves being too womanly.  We go out and call them sluts because we need to take their womanhood and their power away from them.

That’s exactly it!  Slut-bashing is just another crime of power and control, and, of course, one of the many ways that women are kept subordinate.  But what’s interesting is that, while rape is most commonly perpetuated by men against women, slut-bashing is more often perpetuated by women against women.

Yeah, you know, I’m not really sure what to make of that.

Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that girls are taught from a very young age that they are expected to be both the virgin and the whore.  They’re constantly presented with conflicting ideals of sexuality, and they’re under so much pressure to act both parts at once.  I think slut-bashing is one of the manifestations of this pressure.  They feel ashamed of their own sexual impulses and experiences, so they transfer this shame to their peers.

That makes a lot of sense, I guess… Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever called you a slut?

No one’s ever said it to my face.  I’m sure someone’s said it behind my back at one point or another.  I’ve gotten looks from other women, though… you know, that kind of disapproving look-you-up-and-down-with-disdain kind of look, or that kind of dismissive you’re-a-piece-of-trash look, or that get-the-fuck-away-from-my-boyfriend-you-whore look.  I’ve gotten lots of those over the years.  That feels like it’s own kind of slut-bashing to me.

Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about.  Women can be cruel with their eyes!

Have you ever been called a slut?

I have.  I’m not really sure why, either.  I never thought of myself as being promiscuous or dressing provocatively or anything like that, but I guess it usually doesn’t have anything to do with those things, like you said.  I wish I had known that then so I could have made more sense of it.  Anyway, it was pretty damaging.  For, like, a year, I didn’t go near boys because I was afraid of what people would say.  I would stay home from school a lot because they were always whispering about me.  It was awful.

My god, I can’t imagine.

Yeah.  But then I got to college, and I finally came into my own.  I realized that having a sex life did not make me a slut, and fuck what anybody else thought.

Oh!  I just remembered the one time someone called me a slut to my face!

Oh yeah?

Actually, no, he called me a “whore”…  It was my freshman year of college, and I had gone back to this guy’s dorm room after a frat party.  He had seemed nice enough, but looking back on it now, I don’t know why I ever would have done that, considering I didn’t want to sleep with him.  It’s not something I would ever do now.  Anyway, so I go back to his room, and we make out for a while.  We’re laying on the bed, his hands go up my shirt, and that’s about as far as I want it to go.  Then he starts unzipping his pants, and I tell him to slow down.  He starts making advances, and I keep saying no.  Finally, after things get sufficiently awkward, I get up to leave, and he’s clearly disappointed and angry.  As I walk out the door, he yells after me, “you fucking whore!”  The irony nearly killed me!  I was a little shaken up by the whole experience, and that was the last time I ever went back to a guy’s dorm room after a party, but the word didn’t really phase me that much.

In that situation, you almost have to laugh at the word!  I mean, he desperately calls you a whore because you won’t have sex with him?!

I know, it’s ridiculous.

Do you know that in some ancient goddess-worshipping religions, “whore” was a title akin to “priestess”?  And “whore” is associated with the word “puta,” which in Vedic means “pure” or “holy.”  See, the word has this whole rich, empowering history behind it.  We used to use it to put women on pedestals, and now we use it to kick them into the gutter.

How did that happen?  How did we get here?

Damned if I know.

All I know is, I think doing this hotline thing is going to be as much about my own healing process as it is about the survivors’.  Because I feel traumatized everyday by the fact that I live in a country where someone is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes and 1 in 6 women will be raped in their lifetime.  And I live in a relatively safe country.  In South Africa, approximately 1.7 million women are raped every year, compared to less than 300,000 here.  I’m not trying to be overly dramatic, I admit that I live a rather privileged life.  But sexism and rape culture are very real threats to me, and I feel their damage intellectually and emotionally on a daily basis.  I mean, I feel scared walking down the street alone at night.  I feel scared the first time I go back to some guy’s apartment after a couple of dates.  I feel scared all the time.

I couldn’t agree more.  Sometimes just being a woman in this world is a traumatizing experience… yet isn’t it also the greatest experience there is?  I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Yeah, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, either.  To be a woman is to be inextinguishable.  We are raped, abused, called sluts and whores, harassed on the streets and in the workplace, passed over for promotions, practically made slave laborers in the household, discriminated against in countless ways, … and yet we continue to thrive.

Well, you and I continue to thrive.  Let’s not forget that it’s not always such a happy ending for all the women out there who don’t have access to the resources and support we have access to.

Right, well, that’s why the hotline is so important.  It’s the first step in getting people access to resources so that they can move forward.

Right, but the online hotline is still only for people who know there’s a hotline, feel empowered enough to call, and have access to a computer.  Or a phone, for the phone hotline.

Of course, I know, we’re not talking about saving the world here.  But I think the online hotline makes a big difference for a wide demographic.  You can live anywhere in the country, it’s absolutely free, it’s completely anonymous, which makes discrimination less of an issue.  Plus, the online hotline is so easily accessible for children and adolescents.  IM is the language they speak everyday… and they don’t show up in person at rape crisis centers as often as other survivors, probably because they can’t drive, so it’s essential that the hotline meets their needs.  Anyway, I think the hotline is a really good starting place for getting people the resources they need.

I think you’re gonna be great at this.

Thanks!  I think the survivors will survive and so will I.  That’s what women do.