Susie Bright's Journal

Sapphire Before Precious— The Lesbian Story Behind "Push"

I've been looking forward to seeing the new film Precious for over a year now. It's adapted from one of my favorite novels, Push, by Sapphire, a woman who has a special place in my heart— she's a poet I published in 1989 in On Our Backs, one of those writers whose little story came into the slush pile and blew my mind. 

Her OOB story is about a woman finding her ex, Fontaine, strung out on heroin. It's called "New Orleans."

I remember my managing editor said at the time, "It doesn't really have that much sex in it—" and I said, "Who cares? She's brilliant and what's there is unforgettable."

I've attached the original publication here.

This was at a time when lesbian authors, to put it mildly, could not get a break. Before Dorothy Allison published Bastard Out of Carolina. Before Sarah Schulman had her novel mooched for RENT. Before Pat Califia was known outside of the queer inner sanctum. Lesbians were the Sisters From Another Planet. 

Remember when daytime talk show hosts weren't lesbians? When no uncloseted lesbian sang your favorite ballad on Top 40? 
 

At the time OOB published Sapphire's "New Orleans," most lesbians were uninvited to any party and unwilling to poke their heads out. The San Francisco Chronicle would routinely run stories about gay power in the city and interview a few men. Seriously. Things had not changed that much since Queen Victoria.

I'm deliberately writing this review of Push before I view Precious. I'm curious to see how much of the lesbian storyline is carried over from the book. The marketing campaign for the movie focuses on a teenage girl brutally abused by her mother, who has borne one "mongoloid" child and has another baby on the way, both a result of rape by her father. 
 

Rough, and true to the plot.

However, the main device of the narrative is that the protagonist is instigated to keep a diary in an English literacy class because she has to turn it in, in order to get her welfare check. Her teacher is a dyke.

When Precious begins her writing, it's a jumble of semi-literate English. It takes a moment to figure out what she's saying. Moreover, Precious has never expressed herself, or spoken openly about anything going on in her life. What rolls out is a cannon.

If Push is about ONE thing, it's this: when speaking truth to power, literacy is your sword. 

 

As Precious claims the written word, her life is revolutionized. 

The English classroom is filled with other illiterate teenage girls and we get to see some of their diaries, too. They're all wonderful. The teacher IS Sapphire. She really did this work for a living and she came out as a dyke to her students, which plays a scene in the book.
 

As disenfranchised as lesbians were at the time, her students were even more invisible. They were the unseen and uncared for. That this class even existed for a time was a miracle.
 

It seems odd to say that Push is a "feel-good" story— but it is! You scream aloud with joy as Precious begins to articulate what she feels and sees around her. Any teacher is going to cry for two weeks because this is what you LIVE for.

Sapphire has famously said that she wanted to write a novel where a young woman's life is transformed without a "Prince Charming." There's no man, there's no diet, there's no beauty makeover. The makeover happens inside and it's all because she TELLS HER STORY. 

I cannot wait to see this.

Below, some insider clips:

Some of you may know Gabby's mother, Alice Tan Ridley, who sings at the 42nd Street Subway station. She was the one who suggested her daughter go the audition. Awesome.
 
 

 And here's a lecture by Sapphire herself, after she won her recognition for Push. For those of us who loved her work before "Hollywood," this is a very special occasion.
 

Sapphire Lecture/Reading, 2007.

And finally, here's the trailer for Precious:

P.S. Thanks to Marcy Sheiner for kicking my butt to track "New Orleans" down! Some day I'll post the pages of  Califia's, Schulman's, and Allison's work from OOB here too. You'all should hang onto those back issues. They're quite rare... we didn't print very many copies and our back-issue inventory was lost in a storage shed disaster. 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Quotations!

"Hiring someone to write your autobiography is like hiring someone to take a bath for you."

—Mae West
 

I am an ardent quotations collector— I collect my favorites on slips of paper, write them on my hand, hoard hundreds on my hard drive. I belong to a brilliant "Quotation of the Day" mailing list that I look forward to each evening like a stiff drink. 

Really, who doesn't warm to the perfect zinger? They're as irresistible as truffles. 

The Internet is filled with "quote" sites, where you can look up anyone, no matter how obscure, and find their most famous aphorisms. 

I've been working on a book project where I find myself in deep quotation-research— and to my horror, I see that I, "Susie Bright," can be inventoried along with everyone else. Yet the "quotes" these sites attribute to me are so banal and fragmented they don't qualify as anything other than DRIVEL. 

Here's an insipid example: "I love turning my daughter on to old movies." Yeah, that's one for the ages! Mark Twain can just hand over his crown!

I guess these shitty quote-sites use some random "search-bot" to grab conversational-bird-droppings according to Proper Names—and that's what ends up in your file. (Maybe some of you know the real story?)

 I am no Dorothy Parker or Mae West, but I have come up with a memorable line now and again. I decided to start my own page of quotes, if only as a rebuttal. 

It's tricky to pick good quoations out, when one is the author— maybe what's significant to me is not of interest to others.
 

I remember an architect's office in West Los Angeles, across the Nuart Theater, once put a quote of mine up on their outdoor marquee, that said, "I masturbated to the Meese Report until I nearly passed out." They took a photo of their billboard at dawn and sent it to me, framed. I never would have guessed that statement made such an impression!

Here's my Susie Quote Page so far. Let me know if you have something in mind to add, or you think I should edit others out. Or tell me what your favorite line of mine is. It can be from books, articles, interviews, or something you overheard me say at a party— I don't care. 
 

Someday, when I'm 70, maybe Bartlett's will come find me— and I'll want my truffle basket to be in order!

Mad Men, Ft. Hood, & the Stupak Amendment: Connect the Dots

 I can't be the only one to make the connection. 

For those of us who who are devoted to the American tele-novella Mad Men, the recent psycho-shooting at Ft. Hood had an eerie plot echo.
 

(Spoilers ahead).

In Mad Men, which takes place in New York of 1963, there's a fictional character named Greg, an aspiring surgeon who disgraces himself so badly in the operating room that he is forced to go into, shame of all shames, psychiatry. 
 

Since I've placed my life in the hands of a therapist more than once, this reaction came as a surprise to me! 
 

Yet among Greg's colleagues at the hospital, the psychiatry career path is considered a "fail." The deep background on Greg is that we already know he is a messed-up dude, a rapist with serious issues who is the LAST person you'd want to be talking to on a couch. 

As the season closes, we learn that Greg has joined the Army where they're desperate enough to take a loser like him and give him a surgeon's scalpel and a badge.
 

 He's so ignorant he doesn't have a clue that Vietnam is his imminent destination.

Meanwhile, in real life, Nidal Malik Hasan, the deranged Army psychiatrist who went on a shooting spree at Ft. Hood, also turns out to be… a failed surgeon. The detail that caught my eye was the anecdote revealed by his uncle, who said that Hasan went into psychiatry after he FAINTED in the O.R. during a routine childbirth. The sight of a baby emerging from a woman's vagina sent Nidal over the edge.

With that clue, something in me snapped.

This was a guy, who by all accounts so far, has never been on a date, and routinely complained to his mosque's imam that he couldn't find a woman "pious" enough to marry, a virgin who would wear a veil around the clock.

Hassan is being scrutinized for any potential ties to espionage, fanatical religious beliefs, and vicarious PTSD from treating so many broken soldiers.

 But this man's craziness is more clearly understood in the context of his severe and distorted sexual repression.

In the midst of this reality-fantasy convergence, another piece of patriarchal-creep rocked the country— this time, affecting more people than Ft. Hood and Mad Men's viewership combined. We witnessed the Orwellian "health care reform" process become derailed by what I call "The Stupid Amendment," a wildly successful Vatican intervention to make sure that whatever health care plan comes out of Congress, it will be engineered to control women's wombs. 

 In other words, health insurance for men, not for women. 

The Stupak Amendment is ostensibly about preventing women from using their insurance coverage to pay for abortion procedures. But making a rule that women's healthcare below the waist is subject to moral review is outrageous. 

Would any of these politicians consider making a health care exemption to the complications of a man's penis? His prostate? His semen? His scrotum? His urethra? Would urologists, like abortion surgeons, be treated like criminals whose entire knowledge base should be wiped out of existence? Would any man be put on parade to prove "rape, incest, or imminent death" in order to prove that he needed a procedure about ANYTHING?

"Pro-life" rhetoric is now used across the aisle, with even the President proclaiming that the federal government will never fund abortions. 

 

Afghanistan annihilation, yes! Abortion, no!
  
 

 Our war-lovin', misogynistic culture cares so little about "life" that the candlelight vigil for the Hasan's victims at Fort Hood had the air of a rote exercise. Here's Wade Goodwyn, from NPR, talking last week: 

The thing I was struck by was... that the vigil was a well-established routine. 

 

I mean, this was a pretty big moment for me, but I could tell that the attending crowd had done this before. 

And when we interviewed people, the soldiers and the families, after the vigil was over, they'd tell us, "I've been to too many of these already."

This country cares little about killing all life forms and even less about the welfare of its children. Our atrocious infant mortality rates, hungry children, uneducated children, children with birth defects and developmental disabilities treated like trash… my blood's turned cold.  Watching Congressmen gleefully cheer on the passage of the Stupak amendment, for me, was like watching Greg rape Joan— and worse, to witness her acceptance of it.
 

It reminds me of something I wrote in The Sexual State of the Union:

American boomerangs from "Fear of a Black Planet," a Youth Revolt, a genderfuck coup, to the opposite horror: that of a lone man with a big gun. 

Meet the older, privileged, "had-all-the-opportunities" kinda guy who comes equipped with a bomb, no dates, and a pathologically self-centered attitude. Oh, we'll wish he had only been in the Crips! If only he'd been a drag queen, if only he'd pierced his dick and gotten high on dope! Any of these would be preferable, a million times more humane. 

We can diss a counter-culture, but what are we supposed to do with a counter-human? We can't stand to look at the cult of alienated masculinity and wonder how we got here.

My Halloween Musical Gift to You!

via www.youtube.com

  Tom Waits on "Fernwood 2Night," circa 1977.

One day I hope to use every single one of Tom's lines that he cuts loose in this after-piano interview. 

I will start tonight!

Have a very spooky little evening...

I'll Be Reading My Favorite Judy Grahn Poem Tonight, in San Francisco

  

 

Also showcasing performances inspired by Judy’s writing...

“To The Mother Of All Bowls”

   choreographed and performed by Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers

“The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke”

   presented by Susie Bright

Staged excerpt from The Queen of Swords

   directed by playwright and actress Jovelyn Richards

Reading from “A Woman Is Talking To Death”

   read by performance poet Daphne Gottlieb  

       

And screening footage from...

Poomaram (A Flowering Tree), inspired by“Bread, Blood, & Roses”

   written and directed by Indian filmmaker Vipin Vijay

1976 rendition of “A Mock Interrogation”

   performed by The Wallflower Order, introduction by Krissy Keefer       

  

Newly published book The Judy Grahn Reader will be available for discounted purchase,

and book signing will follow program.

 

In the spirit of the event, costumes are encouraged! Judy will award a prize for the best one!

 

 

The Judy Grahn All Hallows' Eve Extravaganza

October 30, 2009

6:30pm Reception with light buffet

7:15pm Program begins

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th Street, at Mission

San Francisco, CA 94110

 

Free Event

Call 415-826-1300 for further info

Susie's Review of "The Erotic City" in SF Chronicle

"Every San Francisco neighborhood has two characters at each other's throats.

"The "Tweedledums" are the cranks - you see them glaring at your T-shirt from their second-story window. They scream "Pervert!" at two women pushing a stroller down the street; they scold the Catholic schoolgirls to pull their skirts down. 

"Stuffed shirts? They're zealots, and they've had Dianne Feinstein on speed-dial since 1977 to report every affront. Their motto: "Whatever happened to the decent San Francisco, the one where Grandpa could walk down the street without a queer or a hooker blemishing his view?"

"Grandpa was probably cross-dressing at Finocchio's, but we'll save that story for another day..."

 read the rest at: www.sfgate.com

How Erotica Causes Better Car Crashes

On my audio show today:

 How Erotic Audiobooks Nearly Caused Multiple Collisions
 

Listen to an excerpt: Download Pf_suzy_091023_sample
 

Also, on today's episode: my doubts about "the woman who can't stop orgasming"— and a lesbian listener who wonders why her girlfriend won't kiss her from head to toe.

 

Photo Credit: Holly Hunter and James Spader in David Cronenberg's Crash.

Our Marketing Plan : The Publisher Advises a New Author

I’ve attached a list of celebrities we think would be great to blurb your book, so find out their numbers and call them up. Be sure to do all this by Monday, because Sales Conference starts Tuesday. We come back Friday and then immediately on Saturday (!) all of editorial (Janet, plus probably Michelle, her assistant) and I go to the Frankfurt Book Fair for a week. During that time the office will be closed, although to help cover the costs of the Germany trip it will actually be sublet to the John Lindsay Elementary School P.T.A. as a rehearsal space for this year’s fund-raiser production of “The Music Man.” I’m told that this was one of the things that Jason didn’t understand and which contributed to his “condition.”

read the rest via www.newyorker.com

Yes, this is a satire. by Ellis Weiner. But it's so close to the truth that I have tears running down my face in laughter. Laughter, I tell you!

If You Breastfeed, You Cannot Fake It

Today on my IBWSB audio show, I talk about the reality of sex during pregnancy and in the wee, wee hours after childbirth...

Listen to excerpt: Lactation_orgasm_091016_sample

 Also on this episode, "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke" (I'll be reading it live, at Judy Grahn's Halloween event on October 30!).

And... in my mailbag, a husband warns his wife that she better not masturbate.

You can hear the whole show here. 

And if you want to buy a thrifty subscription to my show, it's mere pennies a show...special deal here.

The (Pubic) Shaving Wars

There was a time when a woman couldn't hope to succeed in romance without a hooped skirt... but now her pubic hair coiffure raises the bar higher. 

Listen here: Download Pf_suzy_091009_sample

I am SO old that I remember when a full bush was considered the hottest, most desirable female sexual image possible. I have piles of 1970s Playboy magazines to prove it. —And postage stamps were six cents, child! 

Also on this show, we talk about the Abstinence Pork Barrel, and a woman who needs urgent clit information in the next five minutes. The entire episode is here.

  

Photo Credit: Tee Corrinne, from her famous ISIS series, hand-printed double negative. 

I remember asking her in the 80s, when I was 23, when I was about to publish this photo for the first time. "How did you get that special silvery effect on her hair?" 

Tee laughed at me: "The special effect is that the model is 70 years old." 

You can learn more about Tee and see much more of her photography in my book, Nothing But the Girl.
 

P.S. I am not going to publish any comments nonsense about how this post is "not safe for work." Tell it to Da Vinci.

Rape Case Forces Halliburton Into the Open— But 30 Senators Vote Against It

"The [anti-rape] legislation passed the Senate with a clear majority but 30 Republican members voted against it, including the former presidential candidate John McCain. 

"Among the objections were claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers."

 read more via detailed backstory at  www.guardian.co.uk

 

"When [Jamie Leigh Jones] awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.

"Jones was treated by a US army doctor who gave forensic evidence to company officials. She says the firm placed her under guard in a shipping container and she was released only after her father asked the US embassy to intervene. (I wonder how he even found out?) 

 "When the forensic evidence was handed to investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were missing.

"Jones says she identified one of the men who attacked her after he confessed, but that Halliburton/KBR prevented her from taking legal action against him or the company by pointing to a clause in her contract requiring disputes to go to arbitration.

"This year, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment that would deny defense contracts to companies that ask employees to sign away the right to sue. Ya think?
 

It passed, but it wasn't the slam dunk comic pundit Jon Stewart on the Daily Show expected. Instead the amendment received 30 nay votes all from Republicans.

 "I understand we're a divided country, some disagreements on health care. How is ANYONE against this?" Stewart asked.

 

More from the video clip on Jon Stewart's Daily Show. 
 

 

Here's the 30 Senators who think Halliburton should do whatever they want if it's in the fine print:

 

Alexander (R-TN)

Barrasso (R-WY)

Bond (R-MO)

Brownback (R-KS)

Bunning (R-KY)

Burr (R-NC)

Chambliss (R-GA)

Coburn (R-OK)

Cochran (R-MS)

Corker (R-TN)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Crapo (R-ID)

DeMint (R-SC)

Ensign (R-NV)

Enzi (R-WY)

Graham (R-SC)

Gregg (R-NH)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Isakson (R-GA)

Johanns (R-NE)

Kyl (R-AZ)

McCain (R-AZ)

McConnell (R-KY)

Risch (R-ID)

Roberts (R-KS)

Sessions (R-AL)

Shelby (R-AL)

Thune (R-SD)

Vitter (R-LA)

Wicker (R-MS)

Jason Linkins has more on the senator's "reasoning."

Each one of these senators needs to receive a bronze plaque with the following engraved memo: "How To Prevent Rape." Read it all. It's the first list I ever read that has a toehold in reality.

Maurice Sendak is My Hero Today

Newsweek: What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary? 

Maurice Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.

via www.newsweek.com

This whole interview is delightful. Wait'll you see what he says about Mickey Mouse.

Hot Air and Prison Cash

Now that the economy is suffering, there is talk of reforming the prisons, of reviving the discredited concept of rehabilitation, of letting some prisoners out early. Some people have even mentioned doing away with the death penalty because of the exorbitant cost to the state of guaranteed appeals.

 For those of us who have endured a generation of policies intended explicitly to inflict pain, this has a surreal quality to it. After all, it was only a year ago that the state authorities were planning the next phase of prison expansion. 

Obviously, all the passionate arguments that have been made about the moral wrongs of mass incarceration, of disproportionately affected communities, of abysmal treatment and civil rights violations were just so much hot air. Only when society ran out of ready cash did prison reform become worthy of serious consideration...

via kenneth hartman at www.nytimes.com

Obama's Not the First Surprising Nobel Peace Prize Winner

"President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, only eight months into his term. It's a bold—and some might say strange—move to fete a president who's still in the beginning of his diplomatic career. After all, Arizona State University didn't even think he was ready for an honorary degree. Who knows what else he has in store for the United States? One thing we do know: Obama is likely to order thousands more troops into a warzone within weeks. 

"Although many past winners seem beyond dispute—Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa come to mind—some were controversial at the time, while others did things that undermined their reputation after being awarded the prize.  Here are a few candidates for the most dubitable awards in Nobel Peace Prize history..."

see the list via blog.newsweek.com

 
I found this list of "Seven Surprising Nobel Peace Prize Winners" when I googled the name of "Henry Kissinger" this morning.

Sure, I wasn't expecting this Obama pick, but I became incapable of genuine award-shock after Kissinger won the same thing in 1973.

I lost my innocence when Kold-War Kissinger accepted this medal— with the blood of Indochina dripping from from every thread of his coat. It was an Orwellian moment in my 15-year-old mind at the time. 

Perhaps naively, I still hold the Nobel science awards in respect, but this "peace" prize seems to have nothing to do with pacifism or non-violence. 

If I were Obama, I'd be embarrassed; I would call a special press conference and give my "medal" to some unsung heroes who put their bodies in front of the bayonets every day and never waver: "Lay Down Your Arms." 

I'd nominate several of my local neighbors, actually-- activists you've never heard of, who are a great deal closer to the ground on "peace efforts" than ANYONE who's won this international prize.

(My neighbors do things like volunteer for Amnesty International, they work ceaselessly against the Cuban embargo, they volunteer at the local hellhole called the Juvenile Justice Center, they're organizing a bike ride of thousands of women across the Middle East... and some just have a pretty great record of "making love not war"— all of which beat any elected US congressman I can think of lately).

This year's award seems to be a "Thank God You're Not George Bush" Crackerjack Prize. I imagine Obama would've liked to achieve his stature without such a miserable comparison. Well, he could always start today... by bringing the troops home, just as he promised long ago.

Betty Dodson Writing on Her First Abortion

"That August when visiting family and friends in Wichita, I fell madly in love with Tommy, the boy next door handsome ideal I'd known for years. That fall Tommy moved to New York to study law and our summer affair continued hot and heavy. Upon my girlfriend's advice, I was using spermicidal jelly applied with a plunger before having sex, which worked until the night I ran out and we had sex anyway. Although he pulled out before he ejaculated, the "rabbit test" came back positive. When I told him I was pregnant, he asked, "How do I know it's mine?" I was so crushed that he thought I'd had sex with another man that my love turned to hate in one blinding flash.

"After making embarrassing phone calls using code names, I finally found a person to help. With five one hundred dollar bills in my purse, I met my contact at the Stage Delicatessen on Sixth Avenue. Fay, a well-dressed married woman in her forties, explained their operation had to move around like a floating crap game to keep the cops off their trail. The night, we drove to Jersey City my heart was barely beating. We walked up three flights of tenement stairs and entered a small kitchen where a white metal table sat in the middle of the room- a bare light bulb glared overhead.

"There were several women present. I was introduced to a large woman named Mary who was the doctor. When Fay said a few cross words to her about drinking, she said she'd only had one beer to steady her hand. Dr. Mary turned to me with assurance that she was "a good doctor" and I didn't have to worry. One woman present just had an abortion, and she was still alive, so I hung onto that as I lay down on the kitchen table while Dr. Mary aimed a gooseneck lamp between my legs. Fay held my hand and gave me a washcloth to bite on while my cervix was opened without any anesthesia. I was told not to move so the metal instrument wouldn't puncture my uterus. The cramps were so intense that my body broke out into a cold, clammy sweat, but I never moved or cried out.

"At the time, I was going to art school at night and working part time as a fashion illustrator. I shared a large apartment with three other women on West 55th Street. A housemate's mother was visiting and since I'd told everyone I was in bed with a cold, her mom kept covering my chest with warm Vic's Vaporub. Meanwhile, I think I'm bleeding to death from an illegal kitchen table abortion!

"The second day, still bleeding, I called my roommates doctor who said he'd lose his license if he treated me. His only advice was to go to the emergency room of any hospital, tell them what had happened, and be prepared to get grilled by the police. No thanks! I'd rather go ahead and die than squeal on the women who had helped me. On the fourth day the bleeding finally slowed down.

"After an experience like that, you'd think I would have asked myself, "What is this thing called love?" But I didn't. I just fell into it again, and again, and it was always accidental- similar to stepping into dog shit walking the sidewalks of New York. Not only did I fall in love again but I also got pregnant two more times which convinced me that I was mentally unbalanced. Instead I was just another foot soldier, a sexual virile young woman caught up in the Romantic Love Wars..."

MORE... via dodsonandross.com

Jon and the Cadavers

I think you've heard me talk about my lover/partner Jon Bailiff before. He's a painter and printmaker. 
 

In 2008, Jon was studying anatomy and entered the Cabrillo College Anatomy Lab to draw a series of cadaver portraits, mainly in quill and ink. 

It's is the first body of artwork to come out of the Cabrillo Anatomy Lab— and something most of us haven't seen outside of a brief F/X in a Hollywood movie.

Jon's drawings of the axial-skeleton are now published in Dr. Tom Sourisseau’s Anatomy Lab Manual in perpetuity. (Brag, brag, brag!)

 

We were so excited when a few weeks ago, Professor Ron Milhoan of Cabrillo’s Painting and Drawing Department asked Jon to mount a one-man show of his life drawings and paintings this October 10th.

I know many of you are far away, but I  want to invite you to view Jon's paintings and drawings featuring: 

• Nudes 

• The Cadaver Portraits

• Cattle Marker Paintings

• Santa Cruz Landscapes

Saturday, October 10, 2009

9AM - 4PM

Cabrillo College Campus, Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA)

Rooms 2015 & 2020 

Map

10am - 11am
  

Drawing Clinic 

Paper, ink, and brushes provided. Limited space...

Call (831) 480-5110 to reserve your spot 

11am - 12pm
 

Drawing in the Cold Room

 Jon will discuss his medical studies and artwork with the cadavers

2pm on.... Susie pours drinks

 

Bareback Horse Racing, Pine Ridge Rez

My partner Jon has been building his first cob structure— an outdoor oven, that you could roast a kid in, or bake a pizza. He's been checking out every book and video in the library on the subject— including a funky-looking DVD called Happy New Era - Wounded Knee 2005. 

The DVD cover says: "A group of five women and one wheelchair (?) travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as volunteer labour to build a 'cob' house from the ground. Over the din of the ever-present wind, the camera captures the flavor of a building site like no other."

I assumed it was a DIY documentary with instructions on how to mix the clay, the dung, the straw. Something for the serious cob dweeb. Jon told me it's by Johanna Parry Cougar, the infamous Santa Cruz ’cob Lady.

I wanted something more exciting for Friday night.

Jon was sore from "cobbing" but was game for anything. We decided to go drinking, mess around downtown, and then see the opening of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.

I was yearning for a vicious satire of capitalist insanity, something at least as rousing as Sicko. Make my blood boil! Release the hounds!

But it was nowhere near that. The movie was a muddle, despite poignant moments about pilots for pennies, teenage prisoners sold for cash, and "dead peasant" insurance policies. 

The rest of the movie was ruined with massive dithering for 2+ hours. We limped home, wondering what bucket had hit Moore in the head. 

"Now what are we going to do?" Jon said. After his Herculean tasks that day, it seemed too sad to call it a night.

"We could watch the cob video... " I said. Why not, the evening was toast.

"Are you serious?"

"Sure, we have to watch it before it gets overdue; I'm game."

I've had an interest in the Pine Ridge Rez since the occupation at Wounded Knee in the 1970s. The Red Tide, the high school underground newspaper I was part of, got arrested crossing state lines trying to bring supplies to the AIM members in siege.  

All those years later, Pine Ridge is still the poorest reservation, (in the world?) with searing teenage suidice rates, and the average life expectancy for a man: 47 years. Yet some of the most brilliant minds and bodies of all of Americas' histories come out of the Oglala Sioux tribe, so I figured if there was cob-building going on at Wounded Knee, it was probably something surprising.

There is no cob-making in this video. There's no instruction. They talk about it, but the footage never gets past building the trench and the original rock foundation. The camera runs for a few days, most of the time with the sock off the mike, so you only hear the wind screaming instead of the dialog. At any minute, you expect the camera to be abandoned under a coat.

We kept glued to the screen, not knowing why. The howling wind hypnotized us. The camera's eye swerved out of a rock trench and bang— there were horses on screen, beautiful ponies, hanging around a grassy backyard/parking lot, just like dogs. There were two babies in diapers sitting bareback, calm as pie. 

I put my glass down. The bareback races had begun:
 

That's the most beautiful riding I've ever seen... no, I don't mean just the riding. The relationship between horse and human family. 

Something survives attempts at genocide; of course I know that. It's centuries old. Most of us are so far away from having any glimpse of it.

  

Here's a longer clip, for the full cob flavor: Building with the Lakota in Wounded Knee.

Are Antidepressants Chilling Your Orgasm?

Check out these numbers: nearly 190 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed in the United States last year, according to the National Institute for Mental Health. 

Antidepressants are put into groups based on which chemicals in the brain they affect. Susie discusses several antidepressants - including Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft - that are called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). 

Are you taking one of these? Susie looks at these drugs' sexual side effects, including loss of libido.

via Susie's audio show at www.audible.com

You'd think I would've shut up about SSRI's already, but no... it's the gift that keeps on giving...

Listen to an excerpt:  Download IBWSB_091002_SSRIs

Thanks to all the commenters here last week who inspired such a great discussion. The entire show is here.

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break— Dispatch from the Art Fraud Desk

Several months ago, I heard from an artist, now living in Mexico, who once contributed to On Our Backs when I was Editor in Chief. 

I know her as the photographer Barbara Levine. I thought her photographs were beautiful and considered her part of the erotically literate, wry, creative lesbian scene that came out of the SF Art Institute in the 80s. 

Twenty five years after our OOB connection, she called me from her new home in Mexico and told me she'd authored a new book on a cache of hitherto-unknown work by Frida Kahlo. Boxes of journals and drawings and letters… a whole treasure trove. 

I was amazed… it's the discovery people dream about. You go up in the attic and find a Rembrandt. 

She told me all about the amazing circumstances and how the work came to be verified and embraced by the Kahlo experts and relatives. She said that she'd love to have me review the book, help market it, spread the word around, blurb, etc.

Barbara didn't know this, but I had a deep interest in Kahlo's life since the 70's, because of her political work and and association with her next-door neighbor, Leon Trotsky. I visited both their homes when I was very young and shared a real passion with my father for her life and work.

The collection Barbara discovered reveals a great deal of sexual candor-- more so than Kahlo is already known for. You could see how some apple-polishers would flinch. To me, it would be a pleasure to discuss her sexuality and art with so much more to draw from.

What Barbara did not tell me… was that this collection, and her book, was plagued with doubt about its authenticity. She didn't tell me that the estate of Frida Kahlo considered it a fraud. She led me to believe the opposite. Since I thought it was Princeton University Press, I assumed it was peer-reviewed. It isn't… it's a NYC press called Princeton Architectural, which has nothing to do with the university.

I got to read about all this over the weekend in The New York Times. The work is being called out as a fraud and the principals are being sued by the Kahlo estate. They're livid. The estate could be wrong of course— they have a lot to protect— but they have legitimate questions. They clearly weren't drawn into a consensus pre-publication.

To the Times, Barbara acknowledged that the works authorship remains somewhat of a mystery, but that the collection is remarkable no matter who created it. She said:

"[It] hovers between fact and fiction. As a landscape it’s incredibly beautiful. I kept coming back to the same thought: If this is completely inauthentic, if Kahlo or somebody close to her had no hand in this, then who would make such a compelling fictitious archive?"

Yes, WHO indeed? 
 

It's "Meta-Kahlo!"

More dithering here. So very different from our phone calls months ago.
 

The LA Times art critic has seen the materials first-hand and has some interesting thoughts, including his critique of the "Frida Kahlo Industry." Excellent questions, and again, something I should have been drawn into before asked to lend my name.

I wish she— and her publisher— had been as frank with me as they've been with reporters. I would have shared my enthusiasm for such mysteries and we might have talked about how she intended to handle the repercussions, and so on. I would not have promoted her book as the Real McCoy.

Here's the last thing I received from her publisher before the scandal broke:

Every once in a long while the unlikely happens—210 Weegee photographs and letters are found in a trunk at a Kentucky yard sale; a rare book dealer discovers Diane Arbus’s photographs in an archive amassed by a collector whose interest was the midcentury Times Square attraction Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus

—and now, a collector of photograph albums and scrapbooks happens upon the diaries, letters, and other personal belongings of Frida Kahlo, collecting dust in an antique store in a small colonial-era town in central Mexico. 

It seemed inconceivable to author and former director of exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Barbara Levine, after decades of exhibitions, auctions, books, and movies, unknown Frida Kahlo material could still be found anywhere, much less a shop in a converted textile factory. “Well, if you don’t believe me just come along,” replied her traveling companion...

Yes, inconceivable! Was that the Easter Egg?

For the record, I'd like to remove my name from this book's promotional efforts, since I was recruited under false pretenses. I am a minor victim of the bullshittery. I don't like my name getting attached to grifting get-rich-quick schemes… no one does, right?  I didn't make my name as PT Barnum.

As some of you know, this is not the first time I've been led to trust a friend—from a common underground, counter-culture past—who had something original to bring to the world. I was one of the first editors hoodwinked and crank-called by the notorious JTLeroy, aka Emily Albert.  I wrote about that debacle here, and my feelings today about this hot mess are exactly the same.

Why is being yourself so unfashionable?  It rarely gets to the Times-level of exposure, but I deal at least once a month with plagiarism that never becomes "successful" at its own exploitation.

As soon as money is involved, the self-invention and quackery goes through the roof. With the Kahlo book, the difference between whether it's Frida or Fake Frida is… whaddya think?… millions and millions of dollars.
  

That's where the Meta Meets the Road.

Right now I have a stack of manuscripts on my desk, from dozens of authors, who would like me to blurb their book, help them find a publisher, consult on marketing their baby, write a review.  

Should I write all these authors back and ask for their birth certificate and trial transcripts to prove that they indeed have written the story they put their name to? Should I send a postcard to everyone: "I assume you've plagiarized this work until proven otherwise?"  How are you supposed to function as an editor if your working premise is that everyone is "on the con"?

When Barbara asked me how she could compensate me for my work on her book, I asked her if I could have a couple prints of the self-portrait photographs we published in On Our Backs in 1985. I've never lost my attraction to them. She said she was touched, surprised that I wanted something of hers. 

Yeah, that's what I want. Favor de no estar chingando. I want Horton, not Mayzie: "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant."  I am a faithful editor and I hope that hasn't become as absurd as a wooly mammoth sitting on an egg.

 

Unrepentant Miscarriage in Wisconsin; Twits Jump Ship

Early last week, Penelope Trunk posted on her Twitter account, "I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f***-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

via abcnews.go.com

Trunk's candor resulted in more than 70 of her Twitter followers jumping ship -- a consequence that Trunk told ABCNews.com she found surprising.

The Wisconsin resident said that her attempts to schedule an abortion in that state turned into a bureaucratic nightmare when she attempted to go through her insurance provider. She subsequently made an appointment to have one in three weeks in Illinois. But within three days of the appointment, she miscarried, she said.

"I thought a lot of people would be responding about having to cross state lines to get an abortion, but a lot of it has also been [about] whether you should be sad about miscarriage," Trunk told ABCNews.com. "I think the issue surrounding the three-week wait is controversial, but not the relief."

Trunk, who has two children and has recently had a divorce, said she had already experienced a miscarriage before her two children were born.

"The first time I had a miscarriage I was sad about it, and it was a very typical experience," she said. "But I think it's limiting that it's only OK to talk about miscarriages if you're sad about it."

"If the public at large had to face up to the fact that not every miscarriage is met with a vale of tears, that could have a dramatic impact on how we regard pregnancy, abortion, and women's diverse experiences with our reproductive functions," wrote Amanda Marcotte in the women's issue blog, "XX Factor."