Karen on the Brooklyn Bridge

Karen Beth Hunter took this picture in July of 2005. She stopped for a moment as she rode her bicycle over that bridge in order to do so.

(This entry is still a work in progress, but it feels right to publish it, even as I work on it, if only for the picture. The elegy I wrote in Karen's honor, "Cardinal n30491 requesting clearance for takeoff" is one of the first entries on the blog. I wrote it in March, 2006.)

---Almost every day for most of the months of July and August, Karen rode her bicycle across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Serendipitously, the very first artwork her parents bought together was a sketch of the bridge, which hung in her den/dining room. Most of the time, actually, we ate on the deck of her apartment which had a view of that bridge and of the city. We caught about 80 percent of the fireworks on the fourth of July and invited about thirty people over to share the event.

---She took a small, digital camera with her when she rode, though most of her work had been done on a traditional camera which she treasured. The digital camera was smaller and lighter, by far and she still managed to take beautiful shots. She was wrong – she wasn’t a craftsperson, but a true artist. She could see like no one I had ever known and she saw in huge frames. She’d become fascinated, in fact, with huge pictures. She took several of the water on the beaches of the Bahamas. We had wanted to develop one in poster-size and hang it on the wall of the bedroom, but we didn’t get to do it. Again, serendipitously, she saw a street-side exhibit of photographs with that idea in mind in Soho. She took me to it, shortly after and insisted we hold hands like friends do as we walked. Feeling a little jealous, I don't think I was as generous as I could've been with what was actually a terrific idea--holding hands. Enjoying simple touch and affection as we walked.

(A little before July 4th 2004, I put out an ad on Craig’s list titled, “Lost in Space”. I was only looking for a friend – someone willing to go on small adventures in the city with me. My closest friend had been ill for some time and could no longer leave her home often. Another has a child who has become the vortex of her life. And I could not keep up with the third of the group, whose salary was much larger than mine. Within about twenty minutes of posting the ad, I got a response from “Annon” who claimed to be willing to meet even though this probably would be akin to the “blind leading the blind”. She had just left a terrible relationship, one feature of which, I found out later, was that it had isolated her from anyone but her partner’s friends and family. My initial response was to correct the spelling of “anonymous” and ask for the name of this still unidentified person. She quickly apologized for being so out of touch with things as to not know when it was appropriate to give one’s name. And she appreciated the correction. She told me later that she liked my snappishness. She was a good writer and she loved words.

The emails lead to a meeting which included a long conversation in the rain after a visit to the Brancusi exhibit at the Guggenheim (where she claimed that her photography was craft, not art). It rained our next meeting, too. Before long, rain or not, we were always talking with each other. She was extraordinary and it was she who acknowledged that there was an attraction between us. But, my adolescence always precedes me and I was never enough in my own body to be a full partner. I was/am afraid to be more than an idea, perhaps a sketch -- like many of my generation, I'm good at impressions.) We were always the closest of friends, regardless, and, except for time at work, and small vacations she took without me, we were almost always together. Oddly, we drove over the bridge many times, but I never biked it with her. Being as heavy as I am broke, I could never ride a bicycle which actually moved anywhere and did not adjust with me as I lost my breath. )

---The evening of Sept. 11, 2001, Karen walked across the bridge alone with her now-ex partner. A psychologist, she had gone down to counsel people and allowed her partner as an "assistant" though she could not really do anything except stand away while Karen worked. The two walked in silence over the Brooklyn Bridge on their way home.

---Karen loved that bridge and she loved Brooklyn where she had built the greater part of her practice and where she could find all sorts of good food, and finally, an apartment with a view of the city, in the urban paradise Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Dumbo, as it is known, also came with its own central, lesbian restaurant which features live country and folk music, which she also loved.

---Karen would walk her bike home with me from the gym or her office. I tried to ride it once, but it was too tall. I found that very odd because Karen wasn’t more than an inch or so taller than I am. Perhaps my problem also lay in the fact that I remember my training wheels fondly. She beat me home even when I took a cab or train. Home being her home. She never quibbled, however – it was our home because it was a home which she felt comfortable sharing and was the natural extension of the community she created just in knowing you. Having company -- being together as simply as in a playdate was essential to her. She often said she wished she had a partner who always brought people over so that even when she wanted to sit alone and read there would be people nearby. I trusted her completely, as I suspect her patients did because it was the natural response to her presence. I know she could be nervous, over-excited and Tigger-like in impatience. But, she was incredibly easy to be with, to tell your heart to, as it were.

---Being on a bridge is much like being in a plane in that you are suspended. I liked being in the air with her and I liked that feeling of nesting in mid-air between places and above the ocean. For Karen, I think, in the Brooklyn Bridge, there was also the promise of the enchanted urban carnivals on one side and the quiet on the other. Dumbo is immensely quiet though it looks onto so much activity.

---The bike path to the Brooklyn bridge is a long one and it swings around parks and traffic. Yet, once on the bridge, I imagine there is just that feeling of suspension. The sound of your own traveling. Of "being in the wind," which Karen once said she enjoyed.

The Dobbs is on TRUTHOUT!

Get out of town! There's an article by Lou Dobbs on Truthout.org. I guess he misses Randi Rhodes...AND HE SHOULD. Next Jack Cafferty on Truthout.org as he has already come around. Then Chris Matthews, then Wolf Blitzer...maybe they'll all shout, "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!"

Among the points The Dobbs makes is that the NAFTA treaty is not ratified. Did you know that? Does your union know that?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072706D.shtml

Israeli Outrage

Just wanted to spread the word that many Israeli's are protesting their government's actions. For an article on the most recent rally (I think), go to
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0724-05.htm

Insuperable

The internet is loaded with progressive information and spirit. So, here we are "reaching out" to each other, emailing our congresspersons and never leaving our homes. Is it necessary for us to leave to make a difference? Can we change the world from our laptops?

I'm not being critical. All of this communication cannot be bad or all bad. I just feel suddenly like a kid whose parents said, "I'll think about it." Or like a student whose been told, "Keep up the good work." I'm encouraged with no real courage of my own, which is my fault. I'm in an insuperable depression and my fur-kids, Henry and Larry are trying their best to get me out of it.

Urgent reading

In addition to going to the Randi Rhodes show site, doing all the homework and looking especially at all the information on "Clean Break" please read Dennis Kucinich's "Prayer for America"
http://www.kucinich.us/speeches/20020217_prayer_for_america.php

Burning Habits and why theater is still worthwhile

I just came back from watching Blair Fell's play Burning Habits which is performed in several episodes at Dillon's bar in NYC. Just when I was feeling as if it is irresponsible to create art at a time when so much inequity exists at basic levels, the play reminded me of how important theater really is to our culture. Onstage, all of the revelations I consider so novel are taken for granted -- The Catholic Church, the homeless, gay bars, deaf mutes and musical theater all collide -- and, of course they do. Last year, when (my) Karen and I saw it, we were astonished by the wisdom spoken offhandedly between the jokes and the high campyness. There was one line which I can only paraphrase, which basically stated that, at a time when things are so wrong, one's only choice is to be an outlaw. The clarity the piece brings to the undercurrents of power and torture in our schools, our families and our struggling cities is incredible. And of course, it's incredibly funny. Where else will you see the ghosts of lesbian nuns, a southern housewife and rich ladies who are the true archetype for Karen on "Will and Grace" (not my Karen, the television Karen).


Sadly, Burning Habits closed. For information on when the show might re-open, and to join the mailing list go to: www.burninghabits.com

Starbucks-crossed cultures

Photo by Karen B. Hunter, August 2005.

For the past two nights, I have had someone get ahead of me in line. Before that, someone splashed a Passion Fruit tea --

400,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon and I'm about to describe a store full of twenty and thirty somethings who pause to find out what flavor of tea was splashed onto a homeless woman who wandered into the Starbucks at Union Square. Actually, I mean to prove that the two events are not so far apart. I do not pretend that I have experienced anything like the horror which is going on in Lebanon, or even the smaller one in Haifa.

But, this is the third night at which I have been at a Starbucks which served as a crossroads for tourists, somewhat gainfully employed Gen x-r's, y'ers, their children and the homeless. The Passion Fruit tea was lobbed at a junkie who crossed in front of a woman on the bathroom line. Tonight, another woman banged furiously on the door of the bathroom after I had just entered. She was clearly homeless. It struck me how the very hip, young Japanese tourist behind her seemed to just take things in stride. As if seeing the slow disintegration of American cities is described in Fodor's.

There was nothing in me which could turn the woman who was banging at the door away, however. She was just looking for a comfortable semblance of a place to be private. I was paying for that privilege and she was just taking it. Too much of my life is spent this way -- paying for time. I take cabs so that I can sleep a little longer, pay for expensive coffee so that I can sit with my computer and do work I could do at home without the distraction of bed and in a space which is kept visibly clean and in pace with trends I cannot really afford. My comfort has become a fashion statement, and the irony is that it is directly conflicting with the immediate needs of others, some just students who have years before they consider the relative value of the money they are spending, and others who use the frenetic distraction around them as a camouflage so that they can relieve themselves in private.

In my neighborhood, most of the people my age stay indoors when they are not working. They have cable and anything else which can be paid for monthly and delivered. For the lower middle class, our leisure time is spent almost without motion. I cannot blame those who succumb fully. It's going into the "city" which leaves me vulnerable to needing a place to sit and think -- to be enticed into spending what initially doesn't seem like a lot of money just to be "out". I can no longer afford plays -- the very purpose of a life in NYC. Yet, I have refused to accept my sentence to my apartment, my podcasts and my DSL. I read in the NY Times today that some Israeli's are having their bomb shelters wired for internet access. The author took that as a sign that they understood this would be a long conflict. And I imagine an entire world of people lucky enough to have shelter afraid to leave it, with the rest of the world wandering through Starbucks, and other temporary places of refuge, in continued conflict over bathroom lines.

"Safe in the City" is more like it...

I’m not one of the “a-girls”—Nina, Adina, Dana and Maria. That group can be found at a bar on the Upper West Side, or one in Chelsea or Williamsburg. They’re the single women with good paying jobs who go out with my friend Prentice. I’m one of the “n” girls, “Denise, Shannon and Robin.” We’re the crew she studied with in college who went on to work in jobs you’re supposed to do “for the love” -- teaching, psychology and social work.

Prentice has brought us together at her many annual parties. (Once a year, Prentice throws a big party for everyone who has invited her to dinner so that she can save time and also because she cannot cook, but you won’t notice that if you are plowing through the crowd for a mélange of finger food, most of it store bought.) One thing we have in common though is a long string of dates with men who, let’s just say, seem to want to cuddle. And that’s it.

Now, no one in either group is “fast,” at all. In the moments when we have time to email, leave voice messages or text message, we actively seek out relationships which have futures. We’ve all done the various electronic matchmaking games with little or even less success because we still don’t know how to lie well enough. On the rare occasions in which we actually meet someone who is able to complete what Prentice calls, “the three steps of dating” and make it from card exchange to actually planning a date, we try very hard to be interested in the gentleman. We listen carefully to his stories and we observe if he listens to ours. Somewhere between the first date and several months later, we all have noticed that, whether the guy listens or is just a good faker, few of our men do more than make basic moves. They hold hands and sometimes they go as far as to simulate activities close to those you can do alone in the safety of your own home. They seem to be eternally “safe” and unwilling to make a single decision. This does not mean that they will avoid meeting your parents or your friends – they are glad to tag along, if only because it is sometimes easier for them to say, “yes” than “no”. But somewhere after the dating process gets comfortable—even after one night of something close to passion, the guys we have been meeting literally fizzle out sexually. For the two of us who are bisexual, we have found the same to be somewhat true of women, but hey, the phrase “lesbian bed death” has a long and storied history.

Marrying these men is not the answer. A few of the members of both circles have actually married some of these guys and found that, even in the twenty-first century, it is possible to be involved in a union which isn’t officially consummated. One of us is still married to the guy anyway because they share an apartment which neither can afford alone. We’d call them “Will and Grace,” but they’re not as affectionate. More like “Tom and Jerry.” I’m not sure which is the mouse or the cat, but there is definitely a chase to the death involved.

Looks are not a factor here. Prentice is a size “one,” I think and dresses like the corporate version of “La Femme Nikita.” (Read: Catwoman, but with an Ann Taylor charge card.) Meanwhile, the one of us who has had the most “intimate” relationships has been told she aspires to the “Michael Moore look”. (Read: Wonderwoman plus fifty pounds, a baseball cap and a wardrobe which is part-Kmart, part-Eddie Bauer.) Even those of us who have no credit at all, have only a resemblance to a distant-great-great aunt, and whose stairmaster is made of subway stairs, can occasionally get lucky. But, we can’t tell what the occasion is….

We know that this problem is not just limited to us as we have heard more stories about “men who just lie there” than we can tell, even if we use the free nights and weekends on our cell phones. Worse yet, we can pass around – and frequently do – the detailed email correspondences noting the continued inability to choose a restaurant, a movie and his lack of suggestion or even intimation of anything risqué. Many of us have had more flirtatious email relationships with our bosses. Or our creditors.

Is it that they, like we, are evaluating the situation and asking themselves if the person they are with is worth the deepest kind of personal risk? Or have men traditionally bragged not just about their conquests, but their interest in sex out of some bizarre effort to, perhaps, put women on their guards and somehow take the pressure off of themselves? (Meaning: Make us feel like they are predators to make us defensive and then blame us for being careful.) Either way, even the most traditional of us would like to feel that the man she dates is actually interested in getting close to her. What we most fear is that we have reached a point where just being “safe in the city” is so hard -- securing that rent-stabilized apartment or the co-op we can just barely afford, maintaining our jobs for as long as we can before another “Reduction in Force,” re-building our skill sets and finally, finding the ideal wallet for our metrocards -- that we are now all too afraid to do more than hold hands with the person who might someday be on our life insurance policy. Remember, I said, “might be.” Hasn’t happened yet to any of us…