Diego loves the snow, and the snow loves him. Like his momma, he is happier in colder weather, and in the snow, he is truly in his element, flopping around like the silly puppy he is. As I write this, he sits on his furry tush in the white stuff, doing his guard dogs on both parental units’ sides of his breeding job of watching the N.K. valley… so cute, and – thanks be to Mother Nature or whoever – not barking. What he barks at most of the time, other than to express himself and the occasional parked hunter up the road (we border a large swath of public access property), I do not know. But, today, this morning, in the snow, he is respectful, peaceful, and silent… LET IT SNOW. <3
A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan) died recently, and I felt sad, not solely because she died – she had a long life one can only assume was a good one – but because in all of her writing there is an underlying sadness, a pull of longing and missed opportunities for love and connection, of which her death reminded me. Byatt lost her eleven-year-old son when he was killed by a drunk driver while walking home from school; this loss was experienced near the beginning of her teaching and writing careers, and I believe that trauma informs every page she wrote. How I love it, her work, first brought to my attention by the novel Possession: A Romance, although a romance novel as commonly known it most certainly is not, unless you use a broader definition of romance as a thing of mystery and beauty, separate from everyday life. Possession was one of those books I read in a fever, and re-read almost as quickly, especially those last forty or so devastating pages, revealing a vital secret shared then immediately lost to time and chance. For a year or more after finishing the novel, if I thought I needed a good cry I would pick it up and re-read the last few chapters, because every single time, without fail, it hit me where I live, where I believe we all live: right smack dab in the middle of my heart.
Her quartet about the Potter sisters (hm, now I have to wonder, was J.K. influenced by this?!) begins with The Virgin in the Garden, not a great title taken superficially, but the Elizabethan symbolism folded into the book, yes, that virgin, ER, I, is part of what I love about Byatt’s writing. The series continues with Still Life and Babel Tower, finishing with A Whistling Woman; theyall sit on my shelf to this day because I remember and value where they took me, to a deep place of introspection, inspiration and anxiety, anxiety for Frederica, for them all, because Byatt does not back away from the scariest bits, the nasty dark nooks of life, from sudden loss and profound grief. How could she, knowing what she knew, having lived what she lived?
I love these novels as well because I am one of three sisters, very different from her fictional set (the writer Margaret Drabble is Byatt’s actual sister), in that we are American, and of a different generation by twenty years plus, yet human experience, feeling, and sibling ‘stuff’ is universal, relatable, well-known. When I read them, some thirty years ago if not more, I doubt I had come across many books, any books, good books, serious writing, about the sister bond or lack thereof that didn’t reduce women, sisters or not, to pale versions of what I knew for a fact, and had lived as a sister to two interesting, complex women.
Byatt and her first husband divorced, and Duffy was her second married name, but she continued to write and speak under her previous husband’s name; a complication to which men simply cannot relate. Regardless of names given, chosen or otherwise, Byatt was, to me, an amazing writer, always interesting and deep. She was also a woman, educator, mother, sister, wife, and a parent who lost a child, a club to which no one wants to belong. Rest in peace, Antonia Susan Drabble Byatt Duffy. And thank you.
A repeat post, because I said so and… it’s what got the girl started on this interesting journey started, and and and to urge you to write for the project, or spread the good word and get your friends to do so in your stead… with my eternal thanks.
The First Time – A letter, brief (?) tale, and request to a few of my dearest female friends and acquaintances, and theirs!
Everyone remembers their first time, right? Loving, traumatic, quick, painful, joyous, funny, violent, drunken, stone cold sober, silly, too young, too old, overdue, in a truck, a car, a field, a motel room, the marriage bed ~ all of this and more makes up a slice of our, women’s, first experiences of sex. If you’re experience was anything even remotely like mine, growing up in rural America during the 60s and 70s, ‘the bases’ were attained slowly or quickly over time, and there was constant discussion regarding who had ‘done it’ or not, beginning – as I recall – in middle school. And, by the time I’d ‘done it’, at the ripe old age of 19, I’d certainly visited first, second and third base and also fought off not one but two of my ancient seeming, gross, married with children male teachers, so maybe it was time to hit a home run. And, for the record, I hate sports metaphors, but until we feminist language, here we are – playing fucking baseball, and given one of those two men was my former high school softball coach…but I digress.
So, there I was on Nantucket Island, chambermaiding at a bed and breakfast, sharing a sloped, cramped attic room with my best friend from college, my twentieth birthday looming on the horizon (I could not, not, not still be a virgin at twenty!!), when along comes sweet, horny, handsome Raoul, which was his actual nickname. We’d met near the end of my 1st semester sophomore year at Syracuse University, and the attraction between us was powerful, but – and it was a big but – he was leaving for law school in California in 5 weeks, cramming in as much partying and academic wrap up as was humanly possible, with no time left over to court a skittish nineteen-year-old. But, big surprise to me, he kept in touch. His letters, as I recall, were long and funny, full of looping curvy words written in thick blue or black ink on page after page of white paper. Raoul was lonely in California, was having trouble settling in, making friends. He visited over Christmas, driving to the Catskills from northern New Jersey for a night. What a champ! Dinner with my family?! Jesus Effing Christ he was brave. He tried to get me into bed that night, but I was so terrified of ‘doing it’ – of my mother, and the roof of our house blowing off if I were to do something so transgressive (thanks Catholic purity culture, which gives evangelical purity culture a damn good run for its fucked-up money) – I shook, literally shook with fear, and it didn’t happen.
Fast forward to a warm June, on gorgeous Nantucket Island, and a house literally full of available beds for romping and humping, and here he – my hero(?) – is! We finally – I finally – did it. But not in one of the many rooms available, nope. We did it in that cramped, sloped ceilinged attic room, in my twin bed with – at my insistence – my best friend in the other twin bed, pretending to be asleep. More on that later.
And.
It was great. I absolutely loved it. I still do. Sex. Yummy. So much fun. Best thing you can do with your clothes on or off, in my opinion, with someone, or alone. Where-ever the fuck you want to do it, with whomever you can convince to do it, within reason! Consent is everything. Everything. And please for-fucks-sake don’t be fucking animals or anyone under 18 unless you are also 18 or less, again, within reason. But I digress. Sex. So much fun. Co-ed wrestling, more fucking sports metaphors, was my new favorite sport – with a lovely big bang along the way, if your sparring partner knows what-the-fuck he is doing or if, though not always, like some lucky females, you’re just naturally orgasmic.
So, of course, the very next day glowing with triumph (the girl who lived!) I called the boy I actually loved back in the Catskills, to tell him I had had sex, finally, that it was so much fun, and that all I wanted to do now was to have sex with him, and that I loved him, whatever I had said, and lied about, months before, but his wicked step-mother picked up, bit my head off as per usual, saying he wasn’t home (liar!), and I hung up the phone never to try again. And, yes, I was actually going to tell this sweet young man I had already injured that I’d had sex with another man, that it was so much fun, so great, which would have gone over like a lead balloon, right, so she did me a favor even if she was a total, nasty, cock-blocking bitch who’d hated me for a decade by then for who knows what reason other than women, women my mother’s age, including my mother – although not all of ‘em! – seemed to hate me in general. But I digress.
I write this, and share it with you because I wonder if any of my friends were brought up, as I certainly was not, to think about sex positively? To love, really and truly, love their bodies? To celebrate their curves and planes, their hairy legs, or clean shaven ‘pins’, their impending or current cycles of menstruation (‘you know this doesn’t make you a woman’, my mother said, when I got mine), and the power and profundity of menopause, as well as the hot flashes, which – for many of my friends – continue for years and years? I wonder if any of my friends or friends of friends, were raised to be curious, in a good way, about sex, or cautious on a logical, sensible sliding scale, curious too about their own sexuality? And I wonder if my friends and theirs were able to examine ubiquitous images and representations of female sexuality, and if, additionally, anyone was able to see female sexuality as partly or wholly positive, or at least not as negative or necessarily, inherently manipulative, vulnerable, weak? In my family, female sexuality was the unspoken white elephant in the room, a virgin elephant who was also, somehow, required to be eminently desirable, sexy without being sexual, gorgeous without being too gorgeous or threatening, a sexy-nice-not-too-sexy girl objectified into unattainably attainable by marriage alone status. I’m exhausted just by writing that, my own experience in this area was so fucked up, and complicated. My father openly admired women’s bodies, loved them, and he loved, loved, loved porn, but – he was married to a morbidly obese woman who clearly hated her own body, hated it. They, don’tcha know, were both virgins when they married at twenty-seven. And, the story went on, their wedding night was glorious! Amazing! Perfect! As was their marriage, only – well, there’s always more to the story, ain’t there? Among numerous other crazy-ass role models and complicating factors.
Tell me. Tell me, if you will. Tell me what happened, to you. How it happened. Where. When. Write it out and send it to me; write about your first time. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it’s meant to be ‘Post Secret’ (https://postsecret.com) but for women only, for the purpose of telling our stories in a safe, 100% anonymous (or not) space for eventual publication, yes, publication – initially on line, via wordpress – to demystify, clarify and expose what women and girls actually experience via anonymous (or not) true tales of how, where, and when we experienced our first time. From our perspective, sans romance novel bullshit, and with a truckload, boatload, stadium full of compassion for the vast messy panoply of what women and girls’ actual lived experiences are, and were, and very probably always will be.
Because. Ignorance is not bliss. I know this. So, think about it. Or, toss this in the garbage those who are receiving by snail mail, ignore it, fuhgeddaboudit, or – pass it along to a friend who you think might want to participate, or delete it, burn it, forget it, leave it in a drawer or unopened email for years and then respond, or not. Up to you. Your choice; consent and willing participation are essential. Send me whatever you write and however you choose to write it via snail mail to PO Box 331, New Kingston, N.Y 12459, or better yet for transmission and reprinting purposes, via email at earthwalker@catskill.net, and I will treat your tale of joy, woe, or some combination of the above with the respect and generosity you deserve. When and where and with whom did you have sex for the first time. Or the first time with loving intent? Or the first time sober? How was it? Did you enjoy it, or was your own enjoyment not a part of the equation? Was it great, embarrassing, hilarious, ridiculous, awful, terrible, or none of the above? What else – context, family, culture, religion, history – made it as impactful, or not, as it was?
And.
The truth is, I asked my best friend to stay in the room while Raoul and I ‘did it’ in the summer of 1979 on that gorgeous island in the Atlantic Ocean, an island that was as far as I had ever been from my family in my entire life, because I thought I was going to die. Not that I could tell her that, explain myself, not at the time, and not for many, many years to come. I thought I was going to die because I wasn’t a virgin at all, even if I had to believe I was, because my mother and my church told me I had no value unless I was a virgin up to the moment I was ‘deflowered’ by a man, the man: my eventual husband. And, if you’re not one of my friends, but rather a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend reading this, I still ain’t married to that flower-picking, plucking, inherently heroic and entirely mythical creature. Oops.
My actual ‘first time’ was as an eight-year-old child, when my cousin – who was sixteen – had sex on me and at me; he raped me, in a field on the farm where my dad and his concurrently, and he and I sequentially, grew up. Endless View farm. A part of me, a former version of myself, died that day because he, my cousin, chose to kill me, to kill my child self, kill my trust, murder my faith in family and in love, by forcing his fucking selfish fucking desires on me. I kept and buried that secret for decades, only – I couldn’t quite keep the corpse of that little dead girl underground. It was she who shook with literal fear the night Raoul visited over Christmas break; it was she who lied and told the boy I loved I didn’t love him; it was she who put herself in danger time and time again for years thereafter hoping to die for real, big time death, or to somehow breakthrough, back to life in full. She remains with me today, and it is for her and the thousands of girls and women like her, living and dead, including my poor fucked up mother, that I initiate this project, this experiment, this attempt at leveling the playing field of fucking, of sex, of fuckery, and of love, and love, and love, which field has been, for most of history, limited to, dominated and defined by, narrated, mythologized, had its lines drawn by, and ruled – – by men.
Perhaps you have a similar story. Perhaps your first time was magical, amazing, glorious like it was for my virginal mom and dad*, and in the telling, and living, that is enviable, and worth letting your daughters and granddaughters and anyone out there in this increasingly connected world who is wondering how it – the first time, or any time for that matter – can be. Perhaps your first time is best captured by poetry, Haiku, or limerick, a text chain, a short song, a fable, a novel, or a quick confession on the back of a postcard – just be aware that I will be editing for length, and clarity, while doing my utmost to respect every nuance, word and syllable of your lived experiences. Women and girls, including trans-women and non-binary folks, are all invited, are all intrinsically a part in and of this experiment, this quest of mine, including our lesbian sisters, mothers and daughters, because we know that men’s gazes, and dicks, aren’t so important they define all sexual experiences by virtue of being present, even if they’re omnipresent in our lives because – well, because the patriarchy.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for considering participating. I believe there is immense power in story, and story-telling, in sharing our tales, and I hope you will take part. Deadline? I send this out at the beginning of 2023. If you’re interested in participating, see if you can get your contribution back to me at PO Box 331 New Kingston, NY 12459 or earthwalker@catskill.net by January 2024 or – if it gets to you late – June of 2024! With my thanks. Or, burn this, and forget about it, also with my best wishes and good cheer.
And.
* My dad was not a virgin when he married my mom; he visited several prostitutes in NYC before being shipped overseas to France during the Korean War. I found this out when I was in my mid-forties, when I put my increasingly demented mother in a nursing home, and my dad came clean.
And.
If you decide want to share your name, your age – or any other information that you deem pertinent – as a part of this experiment, that also works for me, in fact it adds to what I hope will be the collective power of the project. If you don’t mind sharing via email, do so – as well as send along any questions – to earthwalker@catskill.net but those who wish to submit anonymously should do so via snail mail. And if you want to tell me, literally tell me your story, while I listen and listen, and make notes, email me and we’ll work it out. Thank you.
Or, rather, who was he? Fred Copeland was a white male, a Baptist pastor, a twice married father of three, and a Republican who was elected and re-elected as Mayor of Smith’s Station, a small town in Alabama. His nickname was Bubba; everyone knew him as Bubba. Another interesting thing about Bubba Copeland? He liked to wear women’s clothes in his spare time, which makes a few of the above facts tragic, because not only was he cruelly outed by a conservative Republican muckraker, the so-called Christians in his regional Baptist synod responded to his being outed with judgement, calling his dressing in drag ‘un-Biblical behavior’ among other characterizations, instead of showing compassion and love, or even just patience, curiosity, concern. These factors ended in Mayor Bubba Copeland taking his own life. He was forty-nine years old.
Drag. What exactly is the big fucking deal? In some states, the whackos on the right are making it a big deal because they can, safe in deep red states where they control their districts, discourse and policy making. Unfortunately for Bubba, he liked to dress in women’s clothes and he lived in the deep south, in Alabama, a state which, in 2022, passed the following laws regarding trans children and gender: Senate Bill 184, a law making it a felony – punishable by up to ten years in prison – to provide gender-affirming care, which is recommended by pediatric medical associations and guidelines. SB 184 also requires educators to “out” children to their parents should they reveal gender dysphoria or queerness, which would include, one presumes, a desire to wear non-gender conforming clothes. Another law Alabama passed was House Bill 322, a law that bans K-12 students from using bathrooms and school facilities consistent with their gender identity. Additionally, the law bans conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for grades K-5, similar to Florida’s recent “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill.
In other words, Alabama is a state that has shown hostility toward gay and trans people, and in April of this year, Alabama introduced a law (HB 401), which reads “Any sexual or gender oriented material that exposes minors to persons who are dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, or are stripping, or engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing, presentations, or activities, including but not limited to topless, go-go, or exotic dancers, or male or female impersonators, commonly known as drag queens or drag kings.” This is not a place where a person – anyone who is not straight and gender conforming – is safe in being who he or she is, particularly after being exposed publicly.
How is it possible that wearing a blond wig and heels in the privacy of one’s own home so deeply threatens other people not living in the home (if his wife is okay with it, who TF is anyone else to judge), that narrow-minded bigots believe they have to out, shame, and punish a fellow human being in this way? I don’t get it. I do not understand the level of hatred this innocuous behavior, dressing up – which granted, I did professionally for many years – engenders in these folks. Why is what someone else wears – women, girls, trans people, drag queens, etc. – anyone other than the wearer’s business? Do their eyes burn when they see a man in a wig and dress? Do their souls blacken when a woman dares to wear a man’s suit and tie, or a skirt so short you can see the thong or bathing suit she’s wearing? Of course not. Threatened, ignorant, rigid, binary tyrants, haters, and losers. No wonder we love Halloween or a costume party so much; it’s when anyone who wants can take of the mask of conformity and have some fucking fun, however that is defined.
We all wear masks. In astrology it’s generally designated as the aspect revealed by a person’s rising sign. I have Leo rising, the sign ruled by the sun, concerning public events, politicians (Clinton and Obama are both Leos), the theatre, and the archetype of the father. My mask is of a big, sunny, extroverted personality but, under the mask, my essence is introverted, reflected by my actual sun and moon placements, both in Cancer, the sign ruled by the moon, the archetype of the mother, concerning the home. All I wanna do is stay home, y’all, however bright and sunny my mask might be! Taking our masks off, in intimate relationships and settings, is essential to having a full and happy life. I have always wondered what it would be like, feel like, to wear a suit and tie daily, imagining that necktie as a kind of noose, constricting my ability to move and breathe. We all wear masks, but a truly integrated life requires that we find friends, lovers, family, clubs, community where our masks aren’t needed, can slip, are relaxed and abandoned, if only for a short time. Fred Copeland loved his community, but did his community love him back? I wonder. Perhaps his death will move the needle. Perhaps not.
