Rachel Lynn Brody's Blog, page 22

Story of a Hurricane

I started this blog on Thursday night; it’s now Sunday morning as I pick it up again. 

Thursday night:

It’s been a long week. Sunday night, the NYC Subway shut down in advance of Hurricane Sandy. Parts of New York City are getting back to normal, while other areas are still devastated. My electricity has been out since Monday night, but things could be worse. I have running water and my gas stove works. Since I work in midtown, getting supplies wasn’t too much of a hassle – although lines are longer than usual, everywhere.

Further downtown, things are worse. On Staten Island and in New Jersey, in parts of Queens and Brooklyn, things are worse. (Note from Sunday: The situation in certain affected communities is still not good, but efforts to get help to people in those areas seem to be getting more notice now.)

Sunday, October 28th, my roommate and I stocked up on supplies and prepared to be without the Subway. Monday morning, we went down to the water to look at the beginnings of the storm surge; the park was already closed off, and the pier that usually sits several feet out of the water already had waves at its edges.

As the weather got more intense on Monday night, we lost power and cell signals. My roommate and I stayed up until about midnight, reading aloud from Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf and drinking beer and wine. Earlier in the day I made vegetarian chili, just before the power went out I made my grandmother’s recipe for pizza. “At least pizza will keep for a couple days,” I thought. Work had already been cancelled for  Tuesday, at that point. When the power blew, our frenzy of snacking came to an end: now the plan was to conserve the cold in the fridge in the hopes it would only take a day or two to come back on.

Tuesday morning I woke up before my roommate. No power, no internet. No hot water, though the cold still worked.

At this point in writing, the friend who’d taken me in Thursday night and I started chatting and I put this blog aside for a few days. I’d like to jump ahead, but instead I’ll pick up where I left off. The remainder of this blog is being written early Sunday morning.

I checked the windows: things didn’t look too badly flooded, but my phone wasn’t getting a signal. Without a battery-operated radio, there was just one thing to do: head outside and survey the damage in the neighborhood. I left my roommate a note saying I was going exploring, and headed outside with my cell phone and charger. I got to the corner and said good morning to a couple pedestrians; finally I ran into a man walking purposefully down the avenue and asked if he knew if anything was open.

“What kind of place are you looking for?” he asked.

“Just somewhere I can charge my phone,” I said.

He shook his head. “There’s no power below 30th street,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. He continued on his way and I stood for a moment before deciding to head back upstairs. Once I got back to the apartment I asked my roommate if she’d like to come exploring with me, since we wouldn’t be able to communicate, or if she wanted to stay at home. She decided to stay in the apartment and I headed out.

I walked up to Times Square, through the West Village and Chelsea. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there were plenty of closed buildings and trees down along the way. It was a few blocks before I got my cell phone signal back. Everything was closed. Most stores had signs in their windows from Sunday night – closed from XX time because the subway was shutting down at seven. There were no traffic lights, but not much traffic (yet) either. Eventually I made it to the Marriott, where an upper-floor lounge had plenty of plugs and power – plus coffee. (The Starbucks downstairs was also, it seems, something of a post-hurricane Mecca for city-dwellers looking for a way to spend their time). I drank a coffee and charged my phone and called my parents and chatted with some of you on Twitter, and once I’d rested for a while, turned around and started back on my way home.

Tuesday night was quiet and dark. My roommate and I are both writers, so we set up our candles and projects and I got a bit further along in editing and rewriting Electalytics (by the way, once my mailing list gets 50 subscribers, I’ll be sending out a sneak preview of the first chapter of my novella project). Both of us had work in the morning. By the end of Tuesday, there were loose estimates of power coming back on.

Wednesday I went to work. I was the only one on my team who made it in. Limited bus service had resumed, but the bus stops were mobbed – this got marginally better as the week progressed and the subway slowly breathed back to its current (as of 5am) status of about 80% functionality. I came home Wednesday night and, with no power or internet to distract me, decided to wash my hair. This required boiling water on the stove, dumping it in the tub, and hoping I could finish boiling enough water to take a bath before it all cooled off. I joked to my roommate (over text – by now we’d gotten enough of a signal back in the apartment to be able to send and receive texts, though they were often delayed) that I was going all Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Wednedsay night was Halloween. Bloomberg had already cancelled/postponed the Halloween Parade, and with the power out my roommate and I decided to go for a walk before it got too dark out. We took a flashlight with us.

I don’t know about other New Yorkers, but for me, this was one of the first chances I’d had to experience the city in darkness – and as we walked, of course, it got darker. Pretty soon it was pitch black out, and we were glad to have the flashlight. Walking across downtown, it occurred to me: anybody – or anything (remember, it’s Halloween and my roommate and I are both writers) – could be hiding in the shadows. Once I said that out loud, our imaginations ran away with us and we beat a trail back to the city’s nearest main thoroughfare.

Cars were backed up from Houston to Cooper Square. Commuters were smushed into buses that weren’t moving anywhere (the featured photo from this blog entry was taken on this walk). The High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) restrictions hadn’t been put into place yet, so traffic was barely moving.

Walking back through our neighborhood, we found a cafe where the owners had set up a generator and had a full menu ready. It was an oasis of civilization. We ducked in, charged phones, had wine and split an order of bruschetta. Next, we wandered along to a cash-only place that had no power, but was still serving beer. We got to talking to the women who owned the place, and even got to watch part of the impromptu Halloween Parade that headed past – a thin line of costumed enthusiasts hanging on to a city tradition. Finally, we stopped at a bar across the street from the apartment and bought a bottle each of Corona before getting a stealth-upsold shot of Jameson apiece – “only,” as we found out once they were poured, nine bucks.

Thursday was when the frayed edges of the week started to unravel. I picked out the things that we needed to get out of the fridge and walked them into work, while my roommate made her second 100-block trek to work in as many days. I found a gym at lunchtime and had my first proper shower since Sunday night. Left work early to make my own (much shorter) hike home. But when I got here, the power still wasn’t on and the apartment was cold; by the time my roommate got home we agreed we’d strike out to stay with friends until things came back together – which was now looking like Saturday night.

Which brings us to Thursday night. We split a cab to Grand Central and parted ways, and I headed further uptown to stay with my old roommate (you may remember her, she was briefly on twitter as @mycoolroommate). I bought us a huge BBQ dinner, we stuffed our faces, and then we watched TV and hung out. Friday was full of silly movies – first NO STRINGS ATTACHED (which I have to say, I quite liked) and then TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL, which if you haven’t seen , you should make time for. Friday night we met up with another friend who’s a bartender, and she kept us in cocktails for the evening.

Saturday morning, the news came out via ConEd’s twitter feed that my network had been restored around 9 in the morning. I made my way home – the subway was already running straight through Manhattan to Brooklyn. I walked home from Union Square to survey the neighborhood, and spent most of yesterday alternating between cleaning up my apartment.

Now it’s Sunday. I woke up at three in the morning (technically four) after falling asleep early last night and spent the last couple hours writing this post and putting photos in the gallery below.

[image error]

 

Stormy Weather

Business more or less as usual after Hurricane Sandy.

Stuff That’s Worth Your Time

Invisible Nursing Woman

Shoshana Rachel (great middle name!) talks about breast-feeding, cleavage and invisible women over at GirlBodyPride.

I Review Tear The Curtain

Earlier this month, I had the chance to interview one of the creators of a supposedly-groundbreaking new Canadian theatre piece. Schedules allowed me to chat with co-creator Kevin Kerr, and this weekend just gone, I was able to see the production in one of its final performances. My review is available through The British Theatre Guide, where I’ve been a contributor since 2003ish.

A Fan Letter To Certain Conservative Politicians

From @scalzi on Twitter. A letter to anti-choice politicians from a satirical rapist. Triggering, yet scathing on the order of Jonathan Swift’s  A Modest Proposal. A skilled piece of writing, whether or not you agree with his political views.

Climate Change

I’ve been following the campaigns, and one thing I’ve noticed is that the major candidates have refrained from significant discussion on the topic of climate change. Earlier this year, I did a project called Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change and I’d like to take this opportunity to suggest that sometimes, fiction can be an effective way of starting conversations on a grassroots level. Short stories include work by Sare Liz Gordy, RJ Astruc, Miranda Doerfler and Eric Sipple.

Trailer – Celeste Bright

I’ve mentioned a web series project in previous posts, and have to thank @thepowerobject for pointing me to this trailer. Gorgeously shot, the editing and music take you along for the ride – I’m going to pop in the first episode and see what I think of the product. This is part of my research on form and webseries; while I’m still trying to make it through Aidan 5′s full season, learning the language of a quality webseries is coming to the front in my ever-revolving priorities binder.

Ack. I just said binder, didn’t I.

We’re about ten days away from Election Day and voters in key swing states are already heading to the polls. If you spend time on “Twittah“, you already know my views, so I won’t bore you. Politics are, however, relevant, because of my new writing project.

Electalytics.

Back in June, I had the idea for a novella that would look at the mechanics of a modern-day election, in scifi-punk terms. Having read a lot of cyberpunk in my teens, and growing out from the ongoing progress of my AI Anthology, Electalytics was meant to give me a chance to express some anxieties about the current election cycle, as well as the framing of political action/content within what I felt (and still feel) to be outdated models – all within a technopunk framework.

Electalytics started off as a challenge – could I write 30K words in a month? By July, I was still shy 2.5K, but I had the solid basis of a piece – and since then, I’ve been editing and refining the story. It’s lost mass and gained focus, and I’m excited to be offering a free look at the first chapter to the first 50 people who sign up on my mailing list. We’re about halfway to our subscription goal, so sign up for the free promo.

Also, come November 6th? Vote.

Rachel Gets Interviewed: ANY OBJECTIONS and “Millennial Ex” in Glasgow

I wrote a play called Millennial Ex last year, shortly after marriage equality was legalized in New York State. Over the course of the last year and a half or so, I’ve been working with Matthew McVarish to take Millennial Ex and build out a larger program of work for premiere at the largest LGBT theatre festival in the UK: Glasgay 2012.

The show, which includes work by writers from the US, UK, Canada, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and more, is intended as a snapshot of LGBT marriage equality issues around the world. If you’re in Scotland this weekend, I highly recommend you check it out.

Otherwise, you can learn more about the show in this interview I gave on the Glasgay blog.

 

Edit: Within minutes of posting this blog, I was made aware of this recent news development in the story of a gay couple who was refused a room at a British B&B several years ago. Thanks to @MishMashInk for pointing out how ANY OBJECTIONS is relevant to the questions being raised in the real world.

An Interview with Kevin Kerr: TEAR THE CURTAIN in Toronto

Jonathan Young and Dawn Petten in Tear the Curtain. Photo by David Cooper.

If you’re interested in boundary-pushing multi-media theater, Toronto is the place to be this October. Why? Because Vancouver’s Electric Company has pitched up to open Canadian Stage’s 2012-2013 season with their multi-media extravaganza, Tear the Curtain.

I’m looking forward to seeing the production later this month, and was able to interview Artistic Director and co-creator Kevin Kerr in advance of their opening.

From the show’s press release:

“…the production follows Alex Braithwaite (played by [Jonathon] Young), a jaded theatre critic in a gritty film noir rendition of Vancouver in the 1930s, as the advent and popularity of the “Talkies” threatens the existence of theatre. When Alex falls for the screen siren Mila, he’s caught dangerously between two warring mob families: one controlling the city’s playhouses, the other, its cinemas. Alex tries to tear through the artifice and war between these art forms without selling his soul – or losing his mind. Devised as a detective story, the plot unravels on stage in a seamless blend of filmed and live performance, leaving the audience to decipher which medium they are seeing.”

Below, Kevin Kerr discusses the changes the show will undergo as it moves to Toronto, how social media has affected the marketing of productions like Tear the Curtain, the play as a site-specific piece, and more.

RLBrody.com: How is the show changing as it moves to Toronto?

Kerr: We love the opportunity to revisit, tune, and improve upon a work when we have a chance like this, so started by going back to the script and revised, tweak, found cuts, and in some cases entirely re-wrote scenes we weren’t satisfied with. There were then some adjustments to the film with some new edits and trimming. And that meant some changes in sound and the score. The new venue also required some adjustments in the set design to deal with different dimensions. And because the precision required in the relationship between the film projection and the set there was some strategizing around the technical aspects of the projection in the Bluma. The result, we feel is a tighter, stronger piece overall.

RLB:  How well do you feel the video trailers communicate the feelings, moods and experiences your audiences undergo during a performance of Tear the Curtain? Do you feel there’s a risk in trying to communicate the feeling of a live performance through the 2D medium of a computer monitor?

Kerr: I think the trailer communicates fairly well the tone and style of the piece. Of course the filmic component of the piece is particularly well represented and the trailer feels a lot like a contemporary feature film trailer and it showcases nicely the quality and success of the film-making and Brian Johnson’s beautiful cinematography and Kim’s brilliant direction.

But it’s really impossible to authentically capture the effect of the show in performance — video is never satisfying in the its representation of theatre, and in this case I feel it’s even harder to understand the exact nature of what you’ll see and its effect on you. But I think because the trailer draws exclusively from the film, but watching it you know it’s for a piece of theatre, I hope that it teases at least with a promise of something really exciting and perhaps prompts the viewer to question, “how exactly are they going to do this? What will it look like in performance?”

RLB: Can you talk a little about the social media outreach that’s gone into producing and then touring Tear the Curtain? How did the rise of social media (Twitter, Vimeo, etc) change the process of marketing the play from what it might have been if the production was taking place ten years ago?

Kerr: For starters, it allows a more active dialogue between audience and the company, with our audience being able to follow and share and inject their enthusiasm into our process. It makes promoting or marketing a show much more personal, even with something as simple as the act of commenting on our facebook wall, or twitter account, not to mention the capacity for audience members to engage each other in a dialogue around the work this way.

And visually oriented platforms like vimeo, youtube, flickr, etc. are ideal arenas to share this project (and our other works) as the play is so visually spectacular. The film component of the piece makes for great footage to share on video hosting sites (as seen with the trailer) and production stills are easy to share this way as well on our website and via facebook and twitter, etc. And we’ve worked hard collaborating with our partners at Actors Equity to rethink some of the old models and restrictions around use of imagery or video footage from a work, as the developments in social media have really provided a great way to promote not only the show, but the artists who are literally irreplaceable in the piece.

RLB: From what I’ve read, there’s an interesting relationship about duality between the space and the content of Tear The Curtain in Vancouver. GayVancouver.net talks about how “Vancouver’s Stanley Theatre was transformed into its dual historical personality, as both a venue for film and theatre.” Can you talk about the piece as a site-specific production?

Kerr: The play began with a commission from the Arts Club Theatre, which has a few venues including the Stanley. When we were imagining what we might pitch as a project, we started talking about the Stanley as favourite venue of ours and as we chatted about its interesting dual identity in the city as a once grand old cinema from the golden age of movies, and now this beautifully restored live theatre, with all of that vintage charm, the spark ignited. It felt like a perfect opportunity to take our ongoing exploration of a tension between mediated and immediate performance to a new level with a pitch to create a true film/theatre hybrid where both mediums shared equally the weight of telling the story.

So the Stanley became a sort of character in its own right as we started with the space in our early explorations of possible content. And research into its history and certain specific details (like that it was supposedly originally envisaged as a vaudeville theatre, but quickly rethought as a movie theatre before construction began; or that its first movie was Lillian Gish’s first “talkie” called “One Romantic Night” adapted from a stage play called The Swan; etc.) began to give us clues or touchstones as we started to develop the story.

So the dual identity of the building was a departure point to the dual identity of the form of the piece (film/theatre), which itself reflects the content: a character who is faced with a crisis of a fractured sense of self and caught between the forces of the avant garde and the mainstream — each one dangerously seductive in their own way.

RLB: When someone talks about “pushing the boundaries of conventional theatre”, what do you think those boundaries are? In what ways is pushing those boundaries a conscious choice, and in what ways is it something that happens because of the subject matter? (Particularly in relation to immersive theater experiences, such as Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.)

Kerr: I suppose conventional theatre (as we understand it in Canada) assumes such things as the primacy of the text (or the spoken word or the playwright); the separation of the audience from the aesthetic of the production; the narrative neutrality of the venue; the adherence to a unified genre, form, or style; the notion of a packaged “season of plays”; the actor as some sort of shape shifter, channeler, or avatar that becomes the character; the design as embellishment or illustration; the director as interpreter (over creator) among other conventions.

 

None of these conventions is inherently wrong, and we’ve exemplified them all at various times in our works. But I think we’ve also deliberately challenged them all regularly. Often it is primarily because the piece demands a break from convention, but it also conscious choice — a recognition that theatre is a living changing organism that suffers when stuck looking back; that many of those conventions can exclude the audience, or maybe worse pacify, and they can also oppress the creative process and limit the artistic conversation which wants to keep up with an accelerating world. Most importantly, we want theatre to be something that celebrates and manifests our connection between each other, that excites and provokes our active imagination, that recognizes our the beauty of our living and temporary physical forms, and that acknowledges us all as the constant inventors of the world we live in, moment to moment.

 

Thank you to Kevin Kerr for an interview that sheds a lot of light on the process and product associated with Tear the Curtain’s Toronto production. The show runs from October 7-20th, opening the 2012-2013 season at Canadian Stage; the production will take place at the Bluma Appel Theatre in the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (27 Front St. E). Tickets range from $24 to $99 and are available by phone at 416.368.3110, online at www.canadianstage.com, or in person at the box office.

Look forward to my review of Tear the Curtain, coming later this month. Subscribe to the blog to make sure you don’t miss it, and check out the show’s video trailer on Vimeo.

Scary Story “10 Mississippi” Gets Reviewed

Last month, the short story “10 Mississippi” was released as part of Writer’s Week over on Emily Suess’ blog. The story was written as a round robin, with contributors including Johann Thorsson, Len Berry, Claire Ryan (who helped with the “I Wrote This” redesign!) and me.

Today, the piece received its first review – and it’s a good one! Here’s an excerpt:

“For anyone who spent their childhoods sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories, this twenty-two page thriller is sure to remind you of those tales.  The plot is simple:  three kids perform a dare which entails knocking on the door of a supposed haunted house and staying on the porch for ten Mississippi’s.  Also, the terrifying neighborhood dog plays an integral role in the storyline.”

- Caviar Dreams

There’s still time to pick up a copy of the book here, and it’s available in all e-formats.

Is There Any Reason to Hang On To Old Business Cards?

My first New York City job was in an office where everybody – even me, the new receptionist – got business cards. When I left the job three years later, I still had over half of the box I’d been given.

That box is still on my shelf. Is there any reason I should keep hanging on to the cards I was given? What are they, other than funny, curious relics of a job I’ve left behind?

How does one reuse old business cards? Any ideas? Or do they just head into the recycling bin?

…Hope everyone’s week is moving swiftly toward the weekend.

The Neverending Writing List

As we creep ever-closer towards the end of the year, it’s natural to look back and take stock of the plans I made, and which ones came to fruition – hopefully with just enough time left in the final quarter of 2012 to kick my butt into gear on a few of these projects.

The year started with a rush and a bang. My short story, The Tell Tale Tech was selected to launch a week of tributes to Poe, over on The Veillee Blog. Next, Sare Liz Gordy decided to put together “Sassy Singularity” – an anthology of short stories about strong single women, and my short story Sweetheart, kicked off that collection.

The next month, Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change came out. Millennial Ex, a ten-minute play about marriage equality, was given Honorable Mention at a festival in the US before later being picked up as the centerpiece for ANY OBJECTIONS? the upcoming Glasgay Festival in Glasgow, Scotland. (I also have another dozen or so plays from other entrants to read through before the selection committee makes its final decisions.)

I put both Restaurants are Rated Out of Four Stars (a foodie romance, which appeared in RJ Astruc’s collection, The Fat Man At The End Of The World, several years ago) and my first Edinburgh Fringe play, Playing It Cool up. Ran a promotion for that on Kindle Select last week, and the play was both downloaded and reviewed favorably by many. Miranda Doerfler and I oversaw the publication of Haiku of the Living Dead, Zombie haikus collected from contributors around the internet.

I started a Pinterest and a Tumblr and a Goodreads account. I learned how to use InDesign well enough that I could make book covers that weren’t completely embarassing (you can see an example on the Playing it Cool cover on Amazon). I edited Eric Sipple’s first novel, Broken Magic. Got a couple interviews about my work published on a few different websites. Helped organize a massive political protest along with Eve Ensler and grassroots activists from around the country.

You’d need chocolate, too.

But it’s not enough.

There are projects I want to do that still aren’t done. And I wanted them to be done before the end of the year. There’s my AI collection, which will take both The Tell Tale Tech and Sweetheart and pair them with a number of original short pieces pondering alternative and artificial intelligences. I have partial drafts and sketches for a number of these shorts, including some pretty extensive drafts. But there’s more work to be done there.

Next, there’s Electalytics, the 30K novella I said I’d write in thirty days back in July. Currently hovering at about 27.5K, I’m tightening up the rest of the draft before going on to write the final parts of the story. I had wanted this piece to be up in time for the 2012 elections, but at this point I think it’s safe to say that would require rushing it out. So I’ll pick my way through it carefully and I’ll keep making slow progress.

There are two more projects I would very much have liked to complete this year, including the play that kicked me off down the AI collection road, a full-length three-hander called Process0r, about collaboration and language and technology.

So what gives? What’s holding me back? Why aren’t all these pieces done so I can scramble ahead to the next thing?  Aside from the blog updates, the social network building, being interviewed, contributing to charity fundraisers and more?

Life. That’s what. That messy, wonderful, horrible, ever-drumming thing we call life. The saying talks about the best-laid plans of mice and men, but writer’s best-laid plans often go astray as well. Coping with this fact? Not something I do especially well. When I have a plan, I want that plan done. And when it doesn’t get done, I start getting agitated.

So that’s what the next three months are for. It might seem as though the things I’ve already done this year would more than make up for the pieces I still want to finish – but they don’t. When I distill the list down and hold it up against the “life” things happening between now and December 31st, it looks a little like this:

1. Finish the first draft of Electalytics.

2. Create covers for Stuck Up A Tree and Mousewings (video), so I can put them both up on Amazon alongside their fellow Edinburgh Fringe play, Playing It Cool.

I want to add, “Finish AI Anthology” and “Finish Processor” to the list, but given the two solid goals mentioned above and a third, more ephemerous goal I haven’t been specific about, I feel like sticking those two on the list would be a great way to get overwhelmed. So for now I’ll save those two projects for 2013, which – as far as I can tell – still offers twelve months of unspoken-for time.

This is a totally realistic plan.

Right?

Creepy Creepers and the Creeps Who Excuse Them

Pic gakked from paulocoelhoblog.com.             Creepy, huh.

Today, my friends, we are going to talk about some particularly heinous sexism, of the “It’s okay for men to be creeps because genetics make it so they can’t help being creeps” variety. What sparked this? A blog entry I read earlier today. Here’s a delightful little nugget:

“So ladies, next time some lecher is staring at your breasts instead of making eye contact, don’t get indignant; he can’t help himself. It’s in his genes, and he just wants to share them with you. It’s evolution.” - Evolution, the Visual Ape

Read the post if you want. You’ll be treated to x-rays, photos of oranges, mushrooms shaped like mammary glands, and particularly offensively, the idea that men just can’t help it when it comes to reining in their baser instincts.

Well, I call bullshit. You know who thinks it’s okay to stare at a woman’s breasts because he’s aroused in the midst of a conversation?

A creeper.

You know who thinks it’s okay to tell women that wanting to spread his progeny (i.e. make you have his babies) is justification for treating her with a lack of human respect?

A creeper. (Or maybe Todd Akin.)

You know who thinks it’s okay to belittle other men by saying, “Today, his [aggressive rapey creeper] progeny vastly outnumber those males who are aroused via the other senses, a group collectively referred to as “sensitive men.”?

A creeper.

A child in a man’s body.

Someone who thinks his desires – particularly his desires for sexual gratification – should be the top priority in every situation.

Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Here are the behaviors women endure because of Creepers who think the above are all just “part of evolution.”

“Because if I had to list every time a guy…

grabbed me, groped me, cornered me, pinched me, rubbed up against me, called me a “bitch,” a “whore,” a “cunt” (and I love it when they append “stuck-up” before the noun; as if that’s the insult), called me “opinionated” (’cause… women shouldn’t have one?), “confrontational,” “unladylike,” told me to shut the fuck up, told me I could never be good enough, that I was stupid, fat, ugly, that I “ought to make more effort in the looks department,” that I should wear clothes that “emphasize (my) assets,” that I “should have kids by now,” deferred to my male companion, spoke mostly to my male colleague, ignored me entirely or deigned to talk down to me, assumed I was incapable, assumed I couldn’t learn, treated me like I was deaf, or mute, or an idiot, or an object, catcalled or whistled at me, acted as if I were nothing but a disembodied pussy and tits, talked over me, shouted me down, looked past me, looked through me, tossed off a sneery “whatever,” took credit for my ideas, thought “no” meant “oh jeepers, shucks, I meant ‘go ahead’,” tried to infantilize me, tried to shame me

…seriously, y’all.  We would be here FOREVER.”

– Mere Smith on Everyday Sexism. (highly recommended post)

Now, maybe the author of Evolution: the Visual Ape thinks he’s being funny with his post about why he just can’t help being a Creeper. Some of his commenters seem to think that was his intention. I didn’t laugh. You know why?  Because everything he says in his post is justification for why some men think it’s okay to subject women to the behaviors Mere listed in hers.

And this guy isn’t just belittling women with his post. How about lines like: “Most women tolerate this reaction from their men, not because they believe the common refrain that it’s okay to look but not to touch, but because they have come to realize that there is no hope of altering this behavior. ”

Fuck that shit. Women tolerate this reaction from men (“theirs” or otherwise) because if we tried to fend it off 24/7 we’d have no time left to deal with the rest of our lives. Because we can either get into physical altercations and verbal arguments multiple times in a day, or we can shrug and say, “Fuck that, I have better shit to do.”

What’s more, I know plenty of men who don’t gawp at my cleavage every time I speak to them: smart, articulate, interesting, “sensitive,” manly, virile guys who know that the way to prove you’re a man doesn’t come down to sticking your dick in any hole within reaching distance, but by treating other people like human beings.

But no, this blogger says, men just can’t do that. He justifies visual lechery, normalizes it, saying it makes more sense than olfactory or aural stimulation because:

“A female walking around in the hot African sun, covered with hair, unable to bathe properly because soap is still several millennia away, is not likely to smell like Channel (sic) No. 5. Have you ever seen chimpanzees in the zoo? They play with their feces? She probably smelled like L’ Air du Shit.”

“Unable to bathe properly.”

“Covered with hair.”

“Smelled like L’Air du Shit.”

Now women are chimpanzees?

Well, the writer of this blog is a creep. A creep trying to justify creepiness under the guise of bullshit pseudo-science that blends just enough jargon with just enough “layman’s anthropology” to put together a blog that excuses being a lechey creep.

If, that is, you’re a creeper.

Like Riding a Bike

What’s that charming poster behind the bike helmet? Why, that’s the poster for the reading of HOT MESS we did back last Spring!

When I was little, I used to like riding my bike really fast. I liked feeling the wind and speeding along and my heart pounding in my chest and working at the pedals really, really hard until I just couldn’t anymore and I’d coast.

As far as I could.

A couple years ago I had my parents bring my old bike down to the city. I knew I’d have to have someone go over it before I rode it again. This weekend, I finally got around to getting it fixed up. The tires were a bit bent, so they got straightened out. The chain was tested and came up with a gold star. The brakes were fine. We replaced the tubes and when I mentioned that the back tire had a habit of going flat, the mechanic suggested a couple bucks’ worth of tape around the inside of the tire, under the tube.

I didn’t have a bike helmet yet but I let myself indulge, and pedaled awkwardly home on the sidewalk, praying this didn’t wind up being a ticketable offense. The key to my bike lock had gone AWOL, so I couldn’t really go anywhere anyway.

I started looking for a helmet online, getting a few simple recommendations, but the plethora of choice was still completely paralyzing. On the advice of a friend, I popped into a sporting goods store and bought the cheapest thing they had that was certified and also fit my giant head. That was yesterday.

Today I went for my first bike ride in about ten years. The sun was setting over the Hudson and I teetered on my bike and tried to figure out the etiquette of riding in the city, sharing a path with scooters and roller bladers and pedestrians.   And I pedaled and braked and went around tight, right-angle corners, and every so often I got a clear moment and could take a look out over the water.

I reached a point where I thought, better head back now. And as I pedaled my way back, the paths were quieter, with the commuters largely having made their way to their destinations. Fewer people on the path; more opportunity to ride faster. Pedaling as hard as I could.

And then…I could coast.

Sign up to my mailing list for news about my new projects, as well as events, submission opportunities and more.