50 Shades of Gay

I remember seeing my first identifiable lesbian in 1973.  I was in high school and had been crushed out on girls since 4^th grade, but didn’t have the words for my identity.  There she was, Jill Johnston, in all her glory, unapologetic and fearless, being interviewed on the Dick Cavett show at 11 p.m., wearing jeans, a button down men’s shirt, and black work boots, talking about writing for the Village Voice and being a lesbian. I was smitten.

In those years and the decade to follow, we would have said that she was on the “butch” side, and then may have modified that to call her a somewhat “femmy butch.”  Things were much simpler then, very binary.  Lesbians or dykes if they chose to refine their taxonomy were either butch or femme, or butchy femmes, or femmy butches.  Some lesbians were offended by even using these delineations, as they saw them as a throwback to limiting heterosexual roles.  Then there were the outliers like the Patti Smith and Robert Mapelthorpe, impossibly adorable artists whom we labeled “androgynous.”

When I was writing for lesbian/gay newspapers in San Francisco in the late 70’s to mid 80’s, it seemed that every year we were required to add another initial to the community designation.  First it was the “G” for gay community, then LG, then LGB, then LGBT.   Today there’s so many letters that there’s no street wide enough to fit the damn banner:  LGBTTQQIAAP (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual).  

Cut to 2015.  I’m jumping waves in the Pacific Ocean in Maui with my teenage daughter and listening to her explanation of the term “gender fluid.”  She tells me that a gender fluid identifies at any time as male, female, neutrois, or any other non-binary identity, or a combination of identities.  Depending on the moment, or the circumstance, their gender can vary.  Kind of like a chameleon, except I don’t think they can look in two directions at once.

We stay in the ocean discussing the panoply of terms that folks use to place themselves on the gender continuum, within the context of being queer, or not.

There’s genderqueer, (also termed non-binary or gender-expansive), a catchall for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. Those with non-binary genders can have an androgynous (both masculine and feminine) gender identity, such as androgyne, have an identity between male and female, such as intergender, or have a neutral or non-existent gender identity, such as agender or neutrois.   

You can be bigender (male, female), trigender (male, female and/or any non-binary identities), or pangender (a multiplicity of genders that transcends the current knowledge of genders).

Cisgender (often abbreviated to Cis) describes people whose gender experience agrees with the sex they were designated at birth.

Transgender (people who have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex) means that you get beat up for going into the “wrong” bathroom by straight men who despite having a record for harming young children that surpasses any other group of humans, have decided that legislating bathroom access is their top priority.

And along with all these distinctions, come the pronouns. Some genderqueer people like to replace the pronouns him and her with gender neutral pronouns like one, ze, sie, hir, co, ey, or singular “they,” “their,” and “them.” “Mx”is used instead of Mr. or Ms, and in Australia, you can even put it on your passport.

I must admit that despite my best intentions, I often stumble over the pronouns, get confused, and think we are talking about more than one person at a time when we aren’t.   And I did make the mistake of asking if one of my daughter’s lesbian friends had a girlfriend.  “No, she has a boy girlfriend.” I stood corrected.

It’s complicated and nuanced.  And I know that your average heterosexual cisgender person over the age of 30 probably has no idea what I’m talking about.  Although I am beginning to think that there is no such thing as the average heterosexual cisgender person over the age of 30.   That’s because they don’t have a flag!

Gertrude Stein, the quintessential butch lesbian wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose." Celebrating all of us on the eve of pride weekend 2016,  I declare, “A spectrum is a spectrum is a spectrum.”

Irish-Jewish Romance Run Amuck or My Personal Family Scandal

There’s nothing as fun as a family scandal. I first heard this juicy story about my grandmother Sophie about 30 years ago.  In the version my mom told me, her mother, Sophie Chernin, took a bullet meant for her sister Mayme, who was, God forbid, going to marry a goy against the wishes of her disapproving Jewish father.  In the middle of a big fight, her father, Meyer Chernin, in desperation, pulled a gun on her.  Sophie stepped between them, and was shot.  Sophie survived, and Mayme married the goy anyway.

Today, my cousin Bruce, who has taken an interest in pursuing the family genealogy, helped set the record straight.  He sent me a series of newspaper clippings from the Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania newspaper, 1927.

Here’s the first headline: 

City’s Irish-Jewish Romance Is Blasted Away

     Mamie Chernin Lyons, Jewess, Gets Divorce from Irish Husband,

     Michael  Lyons, Who Is In County Prison For Feloniously Wounding Her

     in Jealous Fit

The lead of the article reads, “Wilkes-Barre’s ‘Abie-Irish Rose’ romance is no more."

The “Abie-Irish Rose”reference is to a popular Broadway show about an Irish Catholic girl and a young Jewish man who marry despite the objections of their families. The play, at the time (1922-1927), had the longest run ever on Broadway, with over 1300 performances.  Though Life magazine theater critic Robert Benchley panned the play as "Something Awful", "Showing that the Jews and the Irish crack equally old jokes", "People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success," it clearly struck a cord, and went on to become two films (one in 1928, then another in 1946 starring Bing Crosby), a weekly radio series that ran from 1942-44, the basis for a TV series in the 70’s called Bridget Loves Bernie, and inspired the comedy of husband-and-wife team Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

But back to the newspaper account of what really happened.

According to the facts, Mayme, a pretty 18-year old Jewish girl, married Michael Lyons, a 22-year old Irish Catholic guy, in a ceremony performed by a priest, “although Mayme’s parents vehemently opposed her marriage to one not of her own creed and race.” After living together for six months at the Lyon’s family home, Mayme succumbed to family pressure and returned home, deserting her distraught husband. 

A month later, Mayme and my grandmother Sophie, walking home one night from the theater, were accosted by Michael Lyons in a dark corner of East Market and Lincoln Street.  When they refused to speak with him, enraged, he pulled out a revolver and fired 3 shots, wounding Mayme in the chest and Sophie in the arm.  He was arrested and subsequently convicted on charges of carrying a concealed and deadly weapon and assault and battery with intent to kill.

While Michael was serving his sentence  (2 to 8 years) in county jail (he was also forced to pay a $100 fine), Meyer went to court and demanded that Mayme be granted a divorce from her “young, petulant Irish husband, while the latter, sickened and disheartened at the end of his romance, wistfully gazes from behind the bars of his prison cell toward the East Market street home where the young and pretty former wife is basking in the enjoyment of her family life.”

Judge Coughlin, who granted the divorce, at the same time decided to parole Michael Lyon after he served only a few months in prison.

But the story doesn’t end here.  So much for “basking.”

Another article appeared in the newspaper a month later, with this headline:     

“Eloping Couple Bound for West.”

       Michael and Mayme Chernin Lyon Remarried, Would Evade Interference

Two weeks after the divorce, Mayme and Michael, eloped and remarried.  They sent a letter to their families, noting that they were happily married and “on their way to a Western state where they proposed to make their home and did not want any interference from their families.”

There’s definitely something about this Irish-Jewish thing!  My daughter Sophie, sometimes complains that my wife of thirty years, Patricia, who is 100% Irish and vehemently an ex-Catholic, and I disagree way too much and too passionately.   But, hey, we’ve got nothing on my crazy ancestors!   

Postscript: The Lyons stayed married for over 50 years and had five children. They never really went West, only to New Jersey! My grandmother Sophie and her siblings resumed contact with Mayme after their parents died, though the true story of the Irish-Jewish romance run amuck was a confused family secret until now.

Thinking about sexual assault

I am reading the Beloit College Alumni magazine and in it the President of the College, Scott Bierman writes about a topic that is on his mind – sexual assault. He notes that according to national reports, one in five women is sexually assaulted during college and he says, “Some of them have been Beloit students.”

Flashback for me, to 1973.  The women students at Beloit College started actively organizing ourselves to prevent rape on campus.  I was in my second year at Beloit, and there had been a series of sexual attacks at this small Midwestern liberal arts college.  We decided to start a Rape prevention hotline and a transport service, so no women would walk alone on campus at night.  

We turned one of the defunct sorority houses into a Women’s Center, and from there, a core group of smart, capable, creative young women became committed feminists.  A bunch of us came out as lesbians.  We brought women’s studies/theology professor, Mary Daly to campus, and when she demanded that men not attend one of her lectures, all hell broke loose. 

We produced a literary magazine, we did theatre productions, we were audacious and vocal and engaged in the blossoming women’s movement.  And we never stopped that transport service.

My 16 year old daughter is starting to look at colleges and I admit, I worry about what college campuses look like today.  National statistics show 70% of sexual assault victims are under 25 and one in four sexual assaults occurs on college campuses.  The U.S. Student Association reports that 13% of college women report being stalked during an academic year.

Obama named a White House Task Force to develop proposals to prevent sexual assault, and Congress is considering legislation. Dozens of colleges and universities are under federal investigation for possible violations of anti-discrimination law in their handling of sexual violence reports. 

As Sophie researches colleges, and before I write that tuition check, I will make sure that we understand the sexual assault policy of the college she attends, and what that college is doing to protect, educate, and support its students.

Here’s what Scott Bierman says Beloit is doing:

“The college has had a “non-intoxicated, verbal, mutually understood Yes policy for several years; we train staff to serve as confidential reporters and counselors for students; we coordinate meetings among male students to discuss their role in prevention and support; and we ask our resident assistants to educate and encourage communication among students. Our student policy committee reviews the sexual assault policy each year and reports finds and suggested changes to student government and the college staff.” 

But Bierman says, that while Beloit has been among those institutions that have adopted and applied best practices to prevent sexual assault,  “like so many institutions we are also confronted with the fact that it isn’t enough.”

What is enough? I shake my head at the culture.  Sure there were drugs and alcohol when I was in college, but I don’t think it was the same.   At parties, girls were not being served drinks with 5 times the amount of alcohol as boys.  Date rape drugs were not around. We looked out for our intoxicated friends, took them home, and didn’t leave them wasted and vulnerable. I didn’t know any guys who thought it was fun to have sex with a girl who is unconscious.  

I shudder when I hear people second guessing victims, and applaud all efforts to address systemic issues of assault and alcohol abuse on our campuses. Most of all, I want my daughter to be in a safe and healthy environment when she goes to college. 

Consciousness must be raised, behaviors and policies must change, Young men and young women must be responsible, and institutions must be accountable.  We can and must do better.

My Yiddishe Papa and Mama

At the dinner table my parents often resorted to Yiddish speak when they didn’t want my sister and I to understand what they were talking about.

After awhile, we finely tuned our 97% Ashkenazi ears to the onomatopoetic funny words that came out of their mouths, and figured out what they were saying.  I was the klayner (the youngest); I keyed right into that word whenever they discussed me.   The other word that raised a red flag was shtup (fuck).  They discussed who was shtupping who, or who was being shtupped,  and we weren’t supposed to have a clue what any of that was about.

They had multiple words for speaking badly about someone, a virtual litany of

insults, many referring to male body parts.   Schmuck, putz, yutz, mamzer, nebbish, nar, schmendrick chmegeggy, goniff (penis, dick, incompetent boob, fool, bastard, ineffective person, idiot, someone full of hot air, thief).  When my dad got really angry with someone, he might tell them, “Ge kakken offen yam.” (Go take a shit in the ocean.)

Whenever we started kvetching, (complaining) that we were bored, my parents told us, “Klup kup on vant.”  (Go hit your head against the wall.)  If we kept noodging (bugging) them, we were threatened with a potch en tuckes, (light smack on the butt) though they rarely followed through.

We were encouraged to have chutzpah (nerve, bravery, moxie), except when standing up to them.  “You pishers,” (insignificant person) my dad would admonish us.

On Sunday mornings when my dad took me to his drugstore to work the cash register, he would roll down the window, and intone, “Goyim…..goyim….goyim,”(non-Jews) like a church bell ringing. “Goyim come out and spend your money.” His inventory was in not your tstandard fare.  The more dreck (shit) and shlock (inferior goods) we sold, the better. 

Later in his career, my dad left the pharmacy business.  He had tsuris (troubles) with the anti-Semitic pharmacy board, and they suspended his license for a year.  He then sold tchotchkes (small cheap souvenirs) schlepping (taking a long arduous journey) to yenavelt (Timbuktu) to call on accounts.  He was a master at schmoozing (chatting), part yenta (busybody), part tummler (an entertainer/comedian). He was full of shtick (jokes) and everyone loved him. He’d make you laugh until you plotzed (fell down from extreme excitement). I get verklempt (choked up) thinking about what a special guy he was. 

He would go into restaurants, and when he had to leave his name with the host he would tell them, “Meshuggenah”  (crazy person).  In the next twenty minutes we’d hear, “Meshuggenah, Mr. Meshuggenah, your table is ready.”

My dad was fundamentally a mensch (a kindhearted and righteous person), and he taught us kids to do good in the world.  He kvelled (to be overcome with pride) when I got my first newspaper feature article published.  He kvelled when I got my first play produced in San Francisco.   He kvelled watching his granddaughter play her violin. He would shep naches, (derive pleasure) whenever any of us accomplished our goals. He was my biggest supporter.  My daughter would say the same.

My dad generated mishegoss (craziness).  Mostly good crazy. This isn’t to say that he wasn’t a little fercockt (all fucked up).  His best buddy, a divorce lawyer named Fred and he would line up the six girls in both families.  They’d go down the line saying, “Miskeit, miskeit, miskeit, miskeit, miskeit, miskeit.” (Ugly).  Occasionally one of us would break down and start pishing from de oygen (peeing from the eyes), victims of their relentless teasing.   

While we’re on the subject of eyes, my dad called my mom “dirt eyes.”  She was always cleaning up after his schmutz (debris). My dad had terrible eyesight, without his glasses he could see bupkis (nothing). Unlike my dad, my mother has always been concerned about appearances. She is vain and fashion conscious.  She worried that her daughters, left to our own devices, would leave the house wearing schmattas (rags).  What a shanda (a shame) we were in our jeans and work boots and flannel shirts (which to this day are still my standard attire).

Oy, oy vey, oy vey ist mir, oy yoy yoy (variations of woe is to me) oy gevalt (enough already).  Like breathing, we naturally incorporated into our being these progressive expressions of surprise, shock, worry, and doom.

I learned all these Yiddish words from my parents and now sprinkle them into my language like spices into my favorite dishes.  Since I was little I loved decoding this mishmash of Hebrew, German, and Russian languages, evoking the humor, hubris, and neuroses of my personal and collective mishpocah (family). 

I'll Take Some Sushi on that Bagel

“Oh my god, you’re Asian!” Patricia declared, when the first result from 23andme, my Haplogroup, N9a3, arrived in my email “Your ancestral grandmother was Korean, Uzbek, or Mongolian. You’re Asian! I always thought you looked a bit exotic."

Asian? How could a Russian and Polish Ashkenazi Jew like me (my ancestry composition is 96.7% Ashkenazi with a little Southern and Eastern Europe thrown in), belong to a very rare family of mitochondrial DNA types that all traces back about 23,000 years to a single mutation found mainly among North and Northeastern Asian peoples, and some Slavic populations?  I thought my ancient people would have migrated from Africa, into the Middle East, then onto Europe.

Had someone at 23andme, a company that provides ancestry-related genetic reports and uninterpreted raw genetic data, switched my DNA-rich spit sample? Last year, the FDA made 23andme stop providing Health related reports indicating one’s risk of getting or carrying the gene mutation for various diseases and possible responses to drug therapies (the potentially important medical stuff), so I was suspicious.   

So off I went researching on the Internet, only to discover that my ancient ancestors were part of the Ainu tribe, one of a “vanishingly rare” female line that developed 17,000 years ago in the area around Sakhalin, 
Japan’s most northern island.  Russia invaded the island, and took Ainu women as slaves.  Throughout the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Japan and Russia fought over Sakhalin, and most of the Ainu people were killed off.

Patricia immediately did an image search on women who are in the Haplogroup N9a3, and it returned a bunch of Korean and Japanese women and one blond Jewish woman, who it turns out, is a fairly serious genealogist who wrote an article about belonging to this group.

I even found a Facebook page called N9a3 that offered this hypothesis:

“Ashkenazi Jews, Central Asians (such as Uzbeks) and East Asians (such as Koreans) all share a common N9a3 origin linking back to a single woman who lived in Siberia at least 300 years ago - likely much earlier. Through this woman's children, her lines likely entered into the Ashkenazi gene pool either via a Lithuanian Tatar woman and an Ashkenazi man, or through the offspring of an Ashkenazi traveling merchant and a Siberian/Mongolian woman. Conversely, both Central Asian and East Asian peoples also have historical linkages to the vast regions of Siberia, which could explain why N9a3 is sometimes present in populations such as Koreans and Uzbeks.”

Patricia’s and Sophie’s results came in, and interestingly, they are both of similar ancestral composition (English, Irish, Scandinavian, and other European, in different percentages with Pat being a much higher percent Irish).  Patricia’s Haplogroup, a variation of my N group, also shows Eastern Asian ancestry along her mother’s line, and she’s still trying to figure out how her ancient people migrated to Ireland.  My dad often claimed that Patricia was his “love child.”  Who knows?

While all this ancestry stuff is pretty trippy, I have been more entertained by our reaction to the information.  I was doubtful at first, then very excited to claim my Asian roots. Pat has been compulsively searching the Internet, tracing back her family tree, as well as attempting to interpret her raw genetic data. She would like to have a second career as an epigeneticist.  Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by certain base pairs in DNA or RNA being switched on or off through chemical reactions.  It’s complicated and most likely the way we will be fighting cancer in the future, as is using genetic data to predict increased risk of disease.    

23andme is now working with FDA, and I expect that they will eventually offer the over 200 health reports that they initially provided consumers of their service, once they make it through all the red tape.  Accumulating all this genetic information (Medical Big Data) will undoubtedly produce more advances and increased understanding of the causes and treatment of disease.   So the next time 23andme pings me and asks me to take yet another online survey, I am going to do it, in the name of science, and in memory of my Mongolian grandmas!

Don't Touch That Candy Dish

“I knew they were going to sell the place when I saw a posse of black suited men walking around,” my mom tells me.   “Then someone painted the outside of the building, and I knew for sure someone was buying it.”

A new corporation, Atria, recently purchased the Senior Living community in Scottsdale where my mom has lived for the past year. They immediately changed the name of the place, from Sierra Pointe, to Atria Sierra Pointe, and in the month they have assumed management, the new owners have made several other changes.

Right away, they sent a letter to residents stating that they would honor everyone’s lease, and they would not be raising prices.  But no one seems to trust this.

The new company changed the tablecloths in the dining room from white to black. “Stupid decision,” my mom opines, “The black tablecloths show all the schmootz.”

They fired several of the service staff, and hired replacements. They rearranged the coffee and pastry set up in the front lobby. They moved a clock in the dining room and my mom’s tablemate no longer can figure out what time it is.  She doesn’t like where they moved the clock, and can’t easily see it from her table.

“The inmates are a buzz,” my mom reports. “It is all anyone talks about.”

The chef has left (was let go?), and the food staff has all turned over.  Complaining about the food is a full-time activity at Sierra Pointe.  My mom’s dinner companions can’t seem to find anything on the menu that they like.  They ask to be served half-orders, but they get too much food. The food is overcooked, undercooked, too spicy, not spicy enough. “I’m the only one who likes the food,” my mom says. “I can always find something to eat.  If I don’t like the specials, I can order a piece of salmon or a filet.  No one is starving here.”

They took away the candy dish at the lobby reception desk, but after my mom’s friend complained bitterly (she liked to take a handful of the candies and hand them out to her friends at dinner), they put the candy dish back.

They have notified the residents that they are going to monitor the air-conditioning usage in the units, and in common areas turn the air-conditioning down a few degrees. My mom’s bridge buddies are so angry they are going to draft a petition to the management demanding no temperature changes. “Has anyone actually noticed that the rooms are too warm?” I ask my mom, who brings a sweater with her when she ventures out and about the building because she often is too cold.  “Not yet,” she reports.

Change is not easy for most people. We do not like being surprised by changes.  We want to know about an impending change in advance and understand the rationale behind why a change is going to be made. Change can represent a loss of control.  We need a comfort level with the change makers and and ideally would like to be involved in the change process.  Change can threaten our self-esteem.  We may have to step out of our comfort zone and do something new and different. Most of us are creatures of habit.

There is tons written about how to manage change.  Yet so few organizations get it right.  I am pleased that my mom is responding to her situation with a calm skepticism.  She has adopted a wait and see attitude.  “Some changes will be good; others not so good,” she says. “If I don’t like things here, I can always come to California and live,” she says.  And that would be another big change for her.  One that I look forward to.

Progress not Results

“You have to do a reset,” I told my wonderful 65 year-old cousin, Brook, who is recovering from Pancreatic cancer surgery. 

Brook was lucky that his cancer was operable.  He (like Steve Jobs, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg) had a Pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple procedure). The surgery is a tough one, taking place deep in the gut.  His surgeon removed a neuroendocrine tumor, as well as part of the pancreas, and parts of nearby structures including the small intestine, bile duct, gallbladder, and the stomach.  Then everything had to be attached and reattached.

There were complications after the initial surgery including leaking from the various connections among organs that the surgeon made, bleeding and an infection. His doctor did a second surgery to address these issues.

So now, Brook, a very active and fit guy, is knocked on his ass big time. He says he has no energy, and he’s having a hard time eating (he’s lost 15 pounds of weight that he didn’t really have on his body in the first place). He is struggling to readjust to his day-to-day reality. He gets depressed and impatient with himself.  He just wants to be back to his 100%.

I reminded him that he can’t view and measure where he is at in the same way.  He needs to give himself at least 9 months to come back; and during this time, he needs to be assessing the delta between where he is today, and where he is tomorrow (or where he was last week and where he is today). He must embrace the progress, not the result (his idea of 100%).  There may be setbacks and breakthroughs along the way.  And he’s going to have to adjust his expectations around these as well.

I gave him the analogy of how teachers and schools are evaluated by the test results of the students.  This is completely the wrong model for assessment.  Rather than measuring the results of test scores, what should be measured is the progress each student has made during the year.   Brook recently retired from being a Community College Administrator and prior to that was a Guidance Counselor for many years. So he knows what I’m talking about and agrees.

The healing intent of the body is real. It needs to be accepted and worked with, not against.  It takes a whole lot of energy to heal. 

Brook told me that he had walked 1.6 miles on the treadmill the day I spoke with him about all this. He was arguing with his wife Nina, the consummate hiker (she can do 20 miles a day without batting a eye), about not wanting to take a nap, even though he needed one.

“Brook,” I said. “Celebrate that 1.6 miles. And as a reward, give yourself that nap.”