Not quite distance and not quite presence

So there’s that moment where I enter the part of the park where the action takes place, if that’s what you call it, action, I mean I see it up ahead, the shadow inside trees and there it is, this guy sucking cock and you know how I need it now or I’m going to die. They are playing shy or uncomfortable or distant or whatever it is that makes them leave this tree right by the paved path like it’s hidden.

And then later, this other guy comes up and says: I want to hug you. And I say: I like hugs. So then we hug, and it’s nice, calming, now I’m tired actually and ready to go and he is telling me stories of guys who mostly like to cuddle, come over to his place and cuddle and then he brushes his hand through my hair and I notice I moved inside, quiet, it’s not quite distance but it’s not quite presence and so I need to leave, not stay in that place of letting them touch me, why? So I say goodbye, and he says: if you see me around, feel free to say hi—which is nice too, rare, and then I’m walking home.

Balance

I get so excited when I open the front door, step inside our purple living room, all this art we've created together, through the kitchen to put my stuff in my room but where's JoAnne? I left a message saying let's go to Bertucci's when I get back, my treat, and everyone loves Bertucci’s, even Sean. I guess I'll take a shower — planes always make me feel gross.
None of JoAnne’s toiletries are in the shower, not even the oatmeal soap but I guess that makes sense since she’s been at Tina’s. Yes, this shower isn’t as nice as the ones at the hotels in Florida, and definitely nowhere near as nice as Ned’s blue-tiled paradise, but at least it’s mine. These towels are kind of ratty — I should get better towels. I’m dry and dressed and every hair is in place andthere’s still no sign of JoAnne, let me check the messages. Oh, a note.
Dear Matt:
Dear Matt?
Dear Matt,
Okay, it's a comma, not a colon — that makes more sense.
I can’t keep depending on you like this.
Why not? I told you it was fine. I'm depending on you too.
I'm moving in with Tina.
You’re what? You're moving in with your sponsor? The same person who you said was as creative as a doormat? You're moving in with Tina?
I'll call you when I'm ready.
When you're ready? What do you mean when you're ready? When you're ready for what?
Love,
Love?
Love,
JoAnne.
Yes, there’s a period at the end, just like that. I keep looking at that period. This is not happening, I keep saying. This is not happening. It's not happening. This is not happening.
Wait, what is happening?
Maybe I'm overreacting. Why am I holding my breath? Breathe — yes, JoAnne, I’m breathing, I’m breathing, let’s breathe together. Maybe there's a message — okay, yes, a message. Oh — it’s just Sean, she wants to go out for cocktails when I get back. She wants to hear all about it. Sean, I've already told you, I don't get cocktails unless I’m eating! And you're never eating — are you ever going to eat?
Okay, I need something to eat. Let me read this letter again. There's nothing to read. I don't know what to do. I call Sean.
Sean, you won't believe this.
What, you're pregnant?
Yes, I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant with twins.
Who's the lucky father?
My asshole.
That's not what I heard.
What? What did you hear?
Relax — I'm just kidding. Sounds like your trip wasn't as relaxing as Daddy Warbucks said it would be. Did your asshole get tanned?
Girl, I was waiting for you.
Let's get cocktails.
I thought you would never ask.
Don't worry — we’re at Bertucci's. Heavy-handed Wendy is working. Sean is actually hungry. No iceberg lettuce salads. I show her the letter. She says is that all?
What do you mean is that all? This is my best friend.
What about Abby?
What about Abby? What about Abby? Really — what about Abby?
Mattilda, you're taking this too hard. It was obvious that she was using you.
What do you mean she was using me?
She wasn't even looking for a job. You were her sugar daddy.
I was not her sugar daddy.
Okay, sugar mama.
I don't think you understand.
I do understand. I just don't think you were paying attention.
What about Abby? You were going to say something about Abby?
She's working at Filene's.
That's ridiculous. She's not working at Filene's.
It's true. Elana Del Monte saw her there. Filene's in Burlington.
Elana Del Monte?
Yes, she's back. She was back. And then she went to rehab. But anyway, I called the store.
And what did they say?
Men's underwear.
I don't believe you.
This pizza is good. You were right. I'm glad I can eat again. I was losing all my baby fat.
You do look better. What happened?
Marinol.
Where did you get Marinol?
I have my sources.
Well, I guess whatever works.
Want a bump?
A bump of what?
A bump of you-know-what.
Sean, I'm not doing coke right now. You know that.
I thought that was for JoAnne.
Sean, you are such a piece of shit.
So you want a bump?
Dinner’s on me. Let's go to Luxor.
Now you're talking.
Speaking of talking, Sean's right, this coke is good. I don't know if it's because it's been so long, or if Michael's connection is a really good connection.
Michael's gone, Sean says.
Gone where?
Jail time.
Are you serious? How long?
No one knows.
Is anyone in touch with her?
Not that I know of.
I always thought she was kind of hot.
I think she had a thing for you.
Really? You didn't tell me that before.
I didn't want you to end up in prison.
Oh, right – you're always thinking of me.
And, speaking of you, if you want to know where to get coke.
I could use another bump right now.
I mean any time.
You mean you want to sell it to me.
You're awfully pretty, but I don't do trades.
When did this happen?
Mattilda, you've been gone for two months.
I guess I'm back now.
Welcome back — tonight it's all on me.
Sean, you are awful.
Speaking of awful, let's go to the bathroom.
Oh, honey — let's go dancing. What’s tonight? Thursday — yes, Paradise, I haven't been to Paradise in so long.
Man Ray.
Man Ray? Don't even say that — we are not going to Man Ray.
The music’s better.
You did not just say that —Michael Sheehan is at Paradise on Thursdays. Michael Sheehan. Are you really telling me that listening to Starship or Huey Lewis or Michael Jackson with a bunch of twelve-year-olds is better than Michael Sheehan. The taxi’s on me. Both ways. You’ve got the coke, I've got the taxi.
Mattilda, they do not play Huey Lewis.
And the News. Don't forget the News.
Or Starship.
What does Starship even sing? I can't remember.
“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”
Oh, honey — they totally play that.
They do not.
Anyway, the Mass. Ave Bridge, give me the Mass. Ave bridge, day or night or whenever, here we go. Another bump before we leave the taxi? Oh, of course — Sean, you're a new lady.
And then that snotty bitch at the door who acts like she hasn't seen me a hundred times, asks for ID. But then Sean says Kelly, Kelly, it's Winona, and Kelly looks up and says Wi-no-no-NO, and she waves us both in, says oh, you're actually cute as a boy! Sean leans over and says let me know when you need a bump. Oh, Miss Thing is moving up in the world.
But the music, yes the music, that's why I'm here – oh, it's been so long. Rush to the DJ booth to drop off our coats and then I'm in the back corner with the dancing freaks like I never left, yes for a second I think oh, I wish I didn't do drugs, I mean remember Paradise on Thursdays without drugs, but I guess the tradition is over and I'm flying in the air with all my old friends and yes, friends is an overstatement, but friends right now oh how I'm shrieking with that new mix of “Walk for Me” so fast you can't possibly walk which is better here with the sweat children, Jon B giving me the usual glare but that's friendly for her, then there’s Elana, a kiss on both cheeks and oh, honey, how are you, I guess she's back from rehab, and then my favorite, Marc of the flying feet and I do a quick spin on the floor right under him, I can't believe that actually worked, he gives me high five, really, high five, can't you do better than that, I kiss his hand and then we’re twirling around and he actually leans on me, I take his weight on my back and lift him in the air and his weight feels so good, now he’s back on the ground and maybe something’s changed or maybe nothing until he swings around and and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him lose his balance until we’re almost falling into someone's arms, who is it, doesn't matter, we're all here, we’re all here together.

The way you want

When the song comes on that brings you into your body in the way that you want, no not almost, always, the way you want, your body, yes, here, here in the kitchen where music is discovered, no longer that crowded dance floor this is it. But why is this beat different from other beats? How do we know when the space inside spreads out into gestures so wide and frantic and expansive and familiar, oh here it goes again, what is it about this particular beat, the one that’s approaching, I can feel it in my solar plexus, correcsis, tendexis, repunexis — don’t look those words up just the sound, now, now this beat in the kitchen, oh here it is, down into the floor the way arms fling up and out and then it’s over.

A better angle

Yes, the same restaurant, three nights in a row and this time Ned gets tired right away, says he's going to bed. I can tell that he wants me to start something sexual, but the problem with doing something so boring so many times in a row is that eventually it gets harder and harder to do it again. He keeps telling me I don't have to do anything I don't want to, but I know I'll have to do it sometime soon anyway. Seeing him so often just makes me annoyed, like how do I get away? I knew this would happen. I told him this would happen. He didn't believe me.

Tonight's the night for the big gay club, Liquid, Sunday nights just like in Boston. I go over around 2 am and the music’s pretty good but the crowd is frightening, wall-to-wall muscleboys, mostly in their 30s or older. I'm not even dressed up, but I feel like an alien. I try to dance, but it just feels fake. Some guy rolling on X comes up to me and says you look different. No kidding. I'm not attracted to him, but we start to make out. Then he says he's going to the bathroom, will I wait for him, sure. But then he doesn't come back, so I go to the bathroom, which is huge, a whole row of stalls. The handicapped stall is shaking, so I look inside and sure enough it's some guy getting fucked, pounded really but when I see his face it doesn't look like pleasure just like he's not even sure why he’s there, and I realize I'm not even sure why I'm here either, so then I walk back to the hotel, in bed before 4 so maybe I will actually be able to get up at noon like Ned wants to, so we can check out and drive to Saint Petersburg.
Oh, my – St. Petersburg, what are we doing in St. Petersburg? The place where we're staying looks like a big pink castle, but then it turns out our room is in a different building, and that building just looks like your average tacky motel. Ned says he chose this building because it's closer to the beach, and he is right, that is the beach, right out there. The water is quieter here than in Miami, and the sand is so soft. You can even find the kind of shells that I've only seen before in stores.

This was supposed to be a spa, but it turns out that really it's just a resort with spa services. The first day I get a massage, and that's relaxing enough. Then the next day I decide to try a seaweed wrap. I have this idea that you sit in a tub and they wrap you in seaweed, which sounds wonderful, but it turns out that you lie on a hard table and they scrub your body with some annoying orangey apricot oatmeal stuff that happens to contain a little bit of seaweed, and then they wrap you in sheets of mylar, and turn on a heat lamp. I'm probably getting cancer already.

New Year's Eve and we’re going to a gay bar known as The Resort. It’s a converted Holiday Inn on the side of the freeway. Inside, there's a courtyard with a tiki bar, a leather bar, an antique store, even a lawyer's office. There’s a little store selling postcards and a bunch of other crap, including a big road sign that says Manatee Crossing. For some reason it's $39.99, and Ned doesn't want to buy it for me. I say I just want a souvenir of our trip, and he says okay, but I feel like I'm arguing with my father.

The main bar is like every terrible gay club in the world, why are there so many? Disco ball, TV screens, dance floor, stage, mirrors, awful tacky people wearing too much cologne and guzzling cocktails and trying to look distant and someone wants to know if I'm wearing a wig, that must be a wig, that is a wig, right? Half the crowd is wearing Ned's wig, and we toast to the new year with the fake champagne they're handing out. Ned doesn't want to buy a bottle of real champagne, because he doesn't want to drink too much, since he’s driving back to our room at the pink castle — or, next to the pink castle, anyway. At least we’re not staying here. We toast to the new year and he kisses me on the lips; I try not to pull away too fast.

The next day’s our last day at the beach with all these horrible straight Europeans, what are all these Europeans doing in Florida? It's not even the Europeans that were in South Beach, partying in designer clothes — these are the Europeans that are more American than Americans, walking around in straw hats and khakis, holding their kids close when Ned and I walk by. And the restaurant — oh, the restaurant — did I tell you about the restaurant? Iceberg lettuce salads. That's all you need to know.

We go for a walk on the beach after dark and I actually feel calm, the way the waves are so soft here and the sky spreads out in the distance. Until Ned says: I feel like every time I touch you, you cringe. And I can't think of anything to say. We just keep walking, and eventually I say something about how pretty the stars are, that I really do love the beach, that it was nice to get away, thank you.
And then I'm thinking shit, what the fuck am I going to do, shit, it's over. This is my financial stability; how am I going to support JoAnne? I told him that it would fall apart if we went on a trip together. But why did I agree to go?

We get back to our room, and Ned asks if I want a drink. He takes out the mini liquor bottles, and pours me one. And then another. We’re not saying much, just staring outside at the water and he reaches over for my leg. I move closer. I kiss him on the lips. I lick his lips while I look him in the eyes. He moans. I start to unbutton his shirt, move down to lick his nipples, biting just so slightly on the tip of one and then the other. I pull off his pants, his boxers, start kissing the rash on his inner thighs, licking his balls, taking his dick into my mouth.

The whole time I'm thinking: I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you. If I think about it enough, there’s even a beat in my head, the bass shaking the floor. And I'm hard, yes I'm hard, finally, I move Ned's hand over to my balls and he squeezes like this is his toy, he's testing it out and I'm thinking I hate you. I hate you. And then I say let me get a condom. And the expression on his face is like a little boy dreaming big.

When I get back in the living room, I kiss Ned like I'm carried away by passion yes passion. Then I lean on the sofa and I push Ned’s face to my crotch. He still doesn't know how to suck cock, but he likes it when I take charge. Now he's on his knees in front of me, and I wonder what one of those Europeans would see if they looked up from the beach right now. I stand up and smack Ned's mouth with my dick, back and forth and he’s moaning yes, Tyler, yes and then I put the condom on. He says do you want to go in the bedroom?

No, I say, let's do it here, on your hands and knees, and he turns around on the carpet, facing the balcony so I can see something beyond this room. The condom is on, and I'm still hard. Ned's on his hands and knees, and I'm thinking I hate you I hate you I hate you as I slide my dick in his ass, as I slide my dick in and out really slowly at first, yeah, I'm saying, I'm going to take my time, do you want me to take my time? And he's moaning yes, Tyler, yes. I’m pushing all the way in and upwards and then out and then slowly going faster and yeah, now I've got him on his stomach, my hands pushing down with all my weight but I need a better angle so I pull his ass up and start slamming it, I could come right now but then I slow down again, yeah, this is good, oh yeah, I can't believe how good this feels right now, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, damn, oh yeah, oh, and when I come I’m practically screaming I mean I’m not even pretending now it’s real and I can hardly believe it and Ned’s still moaning even though I've pulled out and for a moment I think shit, now I’ve really messed this up, but then I look at his eyes.

Watch out, world – as of today, I'm back at work on my new novel, which takes place mostly in Boston in 1995/1996 although the part I'm about to work on takes place in Miami...

I'll be posting what I'm writing soon, so don't get this fiction confused with my reality, okay? Here I go…

The next moment

I’m not sure anything could be more relaxing than a walk through the Seattle nighttime drizzle with the air so fresh and everything so soft yes this is the softness that I love. Except, the next day, when it’s suddenly sunny and I’m in the park taking off all my clothes and sitting on the bench by the reservoir in my boxers to take it all in, eye mask and sun hat as well, of course, and then I’m walking back to my apartment and I think: I love this place. And, that actually happens a lot here, on my walks. I love the little white flowers with yellow centers growing out of the grass, the trees with branches that cross the street and then oh, those pink flowers up ahead and so much green green green yes green, how could I ever live without this green?
So I love it environmentally – it’s a good balance for me, this neighborhood, my walks to the park and back, different textures for my feet and eyes. And it’s when I’m by myself, these moments of loving it here, usually, so what does that mean exactly? How do I stretch those moments into everything else, that’s the challenge, in the this town so entrenched in a middle-class mentality that people talk about gentrification as “increasing the density,” and brand-new buildings filled with tiny efficiencies are described as affordable housing. There is more here than this middle-class mentality, but it’s so so hard to find. And I find myself with middle-class dreams, walking into an open house in a building I’ve always fantasized about, 1920s Frederick Anhalt Tudor-style building and wow, it’s even more gorgeous than I thought with paned glass windows on two sides and air streaming through, even a window in the bathroom and a real kitchen, laundry in the back stairwell which seems a bit strange and a fireplace, who needs a fireplace, but really, these floors, the original floors and so much light and the trees right outside the windows.
Over to the post office with Beth to rescue my mail and then there is more to catch up with and the sun is going down, maybe down enough that I won’t need sunglasses, no not yet, maybe soon, maybe soon another walk and more air, I can feel it coming in through my windows, of course, but also cigarettes and pot and laundry detergent or fabric softener but now it’s fresh, right now, and I don’t know if any of this would really be different in the middle-class dream of condo ownership, right? I would have certain things like my own laundry, but who knows if the neighbors right downstairs with smoke in my breathing space, right? Soon I’ll be ready to start working on Sketchtasy again, back to mid-‘90s Boston, and what will that mean for how I feel here? Only two days back, and already I got that sensation of loving it here, in those moments, and I didn’t really have any of those moments in San Francisco. Maybe just once, walking on Post, flooded by so many walks on that exact corner and the texture of the light as the sun started going down and suddenly oh, so much to remember but it didn’t make me feel calm really, maybe calm for a moment or two, maybe a few blocks as I stopped up on Bush to look at that view that used to soothe me, wondering if it would still be the same, it almost was, in that moment, but then there was the next moment.

Oh, look – here I am talking about City Lights for their 60th anniversary…

Here I am talking about writing, risk-taking, experimentation, and one of the only pieces of wisdom I ever got from my abusive family in the 60th anniversary City Lights video podcast series…

Back

Immediate impressions, after getting off the train in Seattle. First of all, the station has been renovated after 20 years and it is white, white, and white. Gorgeous too, in spite of all that white – although they have to do something about the tacky seating from before the renovation, 1970s office wasteland. I must return for a photo shoot, bright on white.
Driving down the 12th Ave. gentrification strip, I almost can’t believe I live in this city – so pristine, cold, empty. But then we cross Pike, and I look at one of the ugly ‘60s apartment buildings that’s so familiar and yes, this is the neighborhood that I love. And when we get out of the car, I can’t believe how big the trees are, this one has leaves that go all the way across the street and I didn’t even notice it before. The air downtown was nothing much, but here already it’s so fresh.
And then later, a nighttime walk and everything is so dark, especially a few blocks away where it’s smaller buildings and then it starts to get wealthy and again it feels alienating like really, I live here, here, why? But then Volunteer Park and oh, yes, oh I can’t believe this is so close all these trees.
And yes, even a hookup in Volunteer Park that’s incredible, starting with making out right away and going into that place of frantic calm connection and I even get all three things I was thinking about, starting with the making out, the one that I thought wasn’t going to happen but then look, I’m so glad I thought it through ahead of time. And the sucking cock. And even him sucking me off and of course he’s visiting from Berkeley, only here are a few more days, but what a welcome, this must be an omen, it must be, right? I will not look for more too soon, I promise — I know it will only get worse.
And then the walk back, and I’m thinking about how environmentally I love Seattle or at least my neighborhood, how I’m so sensitive to my immediate surroundings, like I could be 10 blocks away and hate it but right where I live it’s perfect. Except culturally I don’t know: Seattle is so bland and middle-class, people so frightened of most of what’s supposed to make cities splendid: connection, random connection, at least contact, on the street or wherever, crossing paths, making new ones, building something from these gestures. I think I can find what I want anyway, the worlds that mean something to me, they are here too, and now’s the time to figure it all out, I think.

A beautiful review of The End of San Francisco in Maximumrocknroll!!!

It's in the June 2013 issue, and here's an excerpt:

"This autobiography is a story of the way people fail each other, whether out of malice or exhaustion or just not knowing how to be there. It’s a chronicle of the ways that we need each other, and the way that need can be turned around, inside-out, torn in all the wrong places but still the only blanket that you have. It’s about critiquing out of love and loving despite critique, despite failure, until you can't do it anymore, until you genuinely feel as though an entire city has come to an end."

The giraffe

So I’ve been thinking about what happens when I eat, how I leave my body, how all the energy goes to my head, the first thing I notice is that my chin lifts up a bit and head leans back. And then when I think about it I just feel so sad, so hard to stay in my body, I try the breathing awareness practice from somatic therapy but it’s too hard to do with all the time. Too exhausting. So I try to focus on one or two things, maybe the feeling of my feet on the ground or the weight of my pelvis on the chair or just breathing into the back of my neck and that’s what makes the chin lower, but then right away it’s back up.

An investigation: a realization. How hard it is to eat, still, even though I do it all the time. When does Nathan ask if he was behind me, my father, how do we get to this place? I don’t know because I didn’t write it down right away. Was he behind you a lot, Nathan says.

When we were playing and I was in his lap and I felt safe and that’s when he raped me and what’s the point of feeling safe if that’s what always happens? And then I’m sobbing sobbing sobbing and sobbing so much sobbing on the phone just from breathing into the right places, the places in my body where everything gets stuck, sobbing on the floor of the bedroom in the place where I’m staying in LA, sobbing during this phone therapy session.

Another session, today: how those times when I would go to a trick feeling so exhausted and somehow I would go deep into my body, out of my head, right, out of my head were now I’m realizing I mostly reside, still, after all these years of trying, trying not just to be my head but then still, here I am again. And then when I would leave, I would walk outside in the air suddenly so fresh and I would think oh, I love it here. Or, rushing into a cab on the way there thinking how, how am I going to do it? And then afterwards, another cab, looking out the window and thinking oh this is so relaxing.

What was there in that transformation and then I look up at a bottle of something on the top of the refrigerator in place where I’m staying in San Francisco, this terrible place and it’s a bottle of some kind of oil or vinegar but specks of something sticking to the side and suddenly there’s that incest flashback feeling but why, why now? I don’t want to look at it.

What is it? Death, dead bodies, guts, blood, why now?

And I still don’t know, exactly. But, by the end of the session I can look at it again, I can go up close and read the ingredients: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, canola oil, roasted garlic. Garlic — it’s just garlic. But I still can’t look at it. So I hide it behind a piece of paper.

How to be able to talk about these memories, all of it, how to talk about it I figured out long ago but how to talk about it while feeling it, without going to that traumatized place, that place of re-traumatization. Somehow we get to the comforter I had as a kid, all the animals that I liked so much because they didn’t hurt me: the giraffe so tall but it could see everything but no one can touch it, those cute hippos in the water, alligators so friendly, the mice under my bed, these were my friends. They knew what was happening, I didn’t have to explain, I don’t have to pretend that I was okay.

Then there was the scary blue blanket, navy blue, that eventually we have to get rid of because it was filled with faces, eyes, monsters, it wanted to suffocate me so how do I go back to those cute hippos, this resource, at one point I went back I mean at that point when I went back I looked for that comforter, the one with all the animals, but it was gone.

There were sheets too, now that I think about it, and those are gone too but that’s not the point, the point is that childlike excitement I feel when I think about those animals so soft, everyone gets along, no one wants to hurt the others, we can all feel and maybe even heal.

A part of something

So I’m walking over to Jefferson Park for my daily visit to those huge eucalyptus trees, a walk through the mulch that makes my feet feel better, breathing in the eucalyptus and listening to the birds. I’m wearing my sun hat, of course, I’m so glad I brought a sun hat, what would I have done without it? Headache drama, for sure.

And there’s someone yelling hey from across the street and to the left, oh it’s that guy I used to see all the time in the Tenderloin, cracked out and yelling hey, hey! He liked my outfits, and called me Tweety, which was kind of annoying after a while, but there’s something so intimate about the way he greets me today, when we haven’t seen one another in a few years I don’t think, unless I ran into him a year ago when I was visiting on my last tour.

He’s complimenting me on my outfit again, what is he saying exactly, just an exclamation, an excited expression and then when I get to the park I’m almost crying because of that familiarity. It’s tempting to think that as a white person with a certain amount privilege walking through the streets, that the interactions I have with people like this guy, a black guy struggling with drug addiction and who knows what else for at least 10 years, that these quick interactions that have always meant something to me, it’s tempting to dismiss that meaning as maybe something only in my head. A meaning that says we are both part of his neighborhood, together it’s us, maybe, sometimes.

And then I’m startled to see how this guy recognizes me so quickly, yells out to say hello again and how this does make me feel a part of something, a neighborhood or a time of my life, makes me feel like crying, I am crying, a little. Maybe this will be a day of crying. And I’m thinking about how I haven’t run into any random person who I know on the street, and how I haven’t wanted to, but whatever this brief interaction means, it feels reassuring.

Michael Pollan's nursery of democracy

Michael Pollan, on Democracy Now, tells us that the “family meal” is the “nursery of democracy.” And then he goes on: “it’s where we learn and where we teach our children how to share, how to take turns, how to argue without offending, how to learn about the events of the day. I mean, I learned all this at the table. And if kids are spending all their time in their rooms, you know, passing through the kitchen, nuking a frozen pizza, they’re missing something really important.” Now, I don’t know about you, but almost nothing was more horrifying to me as a child than the “family meal.” My parents screaming at one another, screaming at me and my sister. Every meal was another battle: I learned how never to breathe while eating, how to hold everything in, act like this isn’t going on, when will I get away? Will I get away? Can I survive? Is it possible? Maybe I can exist without a body, that’s what I wondered, retreat into my head a certain kind of escape. I’m guessing my experience is just as common, if not more common, than the one Michael Pollan rhapsodizes over, and it strikes me as a certain kind of arrogance, not to mention a deep lack of awareness, when he acts as if the abused kids, the queers, the freaks, those of us who were rarely if ever nurtured at the kitchen table, those of us who fled to our rooms not to eat frozen pizza, but with a mad desire to escape, that somehow we do not exist. Pollan’s invocation of the nuclear family as a model of care actually prevents the kind of communal intimacy and accountability that we all need and desire, that very few of us really experienced at that kitchen table so devoid of nurturing or democracy.

Honey, it keeps coming – check out this gorgeous review in Bookslut!!!

Such beautiful description and analysis and intimacy and recognition and expression, what a joy to read!!!!

A glorious review on HTML Giant!!!

Who knew I would do so much crying while reading reviews of The End of San Francisco? And, that it's because they're so good! This review in HTML Giant in particular -- politically, emotionally, intimately, and structurally engaged in such deep levels -- what more could I ask for?

Just to see

Oh, I feel so terrible and sometimes writing makes me feel better, so that’s why I’m writing, why I’m writing right now although I don’t have the energy to write what I really want to write about how sometimes writing makes me feel better. And then what do I feel? No, too soon, don’t check so soon. That feeling in my head, what is it: cloudiness, brain drain, pain, vibration towards the temples, dark dreaming, car horn, okay, like I could just go to sleep right now but I’m meeting Jen in 42 minutes, would it be possible just to sleep for 20 minutes and then get back up, should I try it, should I try it just to see?

A beautiful review in Lambda Literary!!!

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s long awaited memoir... will rip you open; crack your rib-cage and pour glitter into your heart... Brutal and brilliant, the memoir weaves in and out of time, bringing readers into the intimate details of Sycamore’s adolescence and early activist days. Never defaulting to tidy recounts, cleaned with the passage of time, Sycamore invites readers to share in the complexities of growing up and finding yourself. Sycamore doesn’t shy away from pain, terror, or disappointment… There is no rose-colored revisionist memory here. Expertly, Sycamore tells not only the story of her past, but also gives a glimpse into the world of anyone who was ever young, idealistic, and too queer.

Grounded ungroundedness or is it ungrounded groundedness?

Maybe this sounds dramatic, and maybe it is dramatic, but one of the things I’ve realized since I’ve been in San Francisco is that this is the only place that has ever felt like home for me. Twice. Once, for a few months in 1994 before I left the first time. And then, from around 2001 to 2005 or 2006, when I really felt the potential of creating relationships through activism in Gay Shame and elsewhere. Now it mostly just feels like loss, but still there’s a certain kind of familiarity I don’t feel anywhere else. Sometimes that familiarity just feels like longing, but then there will be certain blocks, especially parts of the Tenderloin where I used to walk and I’m flooded with some kind of grounded ungroundedness.

I’ve been gone two and a half years and already I’m a different person. I can’t stand walking on all this cement, not having other options. I don’t understand why there aren’t more trees around, like in Seattle, or a little bit of grass in the sidewalk or even just weeds to soothe my body a bit. I feel more distant, just walking around, maybe that’s what ungrounded about the grounded moments, that when you walk around in a more dense urban environment like this that’s just the way you interact. The way I interact. And I don’t want to interact that way so much anymore.
Plus how exhausted I feel, although I feel exhausted everywhere. But here

I feel exhausted, and think oh, I should call someone, but then none of the options sounds like what I want and then I feel disconnected. I guess that’s what it is here: disconnection. That’s what it feels like, mostly. Disconnection from the place where I once felt so connected. Now I can look at it, and see where that happened, and mostly just feel distance.

A wonderful conversation about The End of San Francisco on the BOMBblog...

Here it is...

A wonderful review in Truthout!!!

Here you go...

"Corporate sleaze," oh my -- an impressive new piece by Glenn Greenwald...

Glenn Greenwald is an extremely eloquent critic of state tyranny, using his training as a lawyer to relentlessly disassemble the hypocritical claims of corporate governmental powerbrokers (even though he still seemed to be supporting Obama when I saw him speak shortly before the “election”). But, at the same time, Greenwald is almost dogmatic in his support for the gay marriage agenda – this seems an unfortunate example of allowing self-interest (he is in a spousal relationship with a Brazilian man) to block self-awareness. In other words, he never makes the obvious connections between his critique of institutional power and the gay establishment’s obsession with accessing that same power through a never-ending obsession with marriage and military inclusion, hate crimes legislation, etc. But, here in this brilliant and scathing piece in the Guardian, he finally seems to be making those connections. Could he become an anti-assimilationist critic, after all?

A wonderful interview on Flashpoints!!!

Flashpoints has long been one of my favorite news programs because they dispense with that horrible illusion of “objective” journalism and instead present something nuanced and incisive. In the past month, I’ve had the honor of being on the program twice! This time I talk with host Dennis Bernstein about The End of San Francisco, the violence of assimilation, crying as resistance, childhood trauma, and more…

A delightful interview on KALW's Out in the Bay!!!

Check it out here...

Let me pause here and say I'm excited!

I'm excited that people are responding to The End of San Francisco in such delightful ways, hooray! I'm on a roll – to more and more and more…

And, on that note, a wonderful Q&A in the San Francisco Bay Guardian...

And, just in time for my reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Sunday at 7:30, a piece in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the daily paper!

Here it is...

And, a beautiful event pick in the SF Weekly!

“Leave it to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to have us all excited about the end of San Francisco… Her writing is furious and unlike anything you’ve ever read… Drunk on language that ought to be incomprehensible but is somehow piercingly lucid, [Sycamore] wails elegiac for the dream of a transcendent queer culture once glimpsed with such promise here.”

A fantastic review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian!!!

“Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — outspoken queer anti-assimilation activist, genderblending thriftstore style icon, archetypal Mission District character, huge-hearted den mother, insufferable gadfly — is the posterchild for all that was culturally alternative in San Francisco in that pierced-lip poser decade, while at the same time possessing one of the loudest voices cutting through the bullshit clamor back then and questioning it all. She's also a brilliant writer… Her new memoir The End of San Francisco from City Lights Books is written in such a hypnotically elliptical style (summoning City Lights' Beat poet legacy) and contains so many spot-on observations and era-damning epigrams that anyone who lived through the period described will cling to its pages while wishing to hurl the book at a wall in embarrassed self-recognition. Searing, funny, maudlin, elegiac, infuriating, and confessional, The End of San Francisco is a deliberately disordered collection of vignettes dealing mostly with Sycamore's span living in the city… Along the way we get drug overdoses, AIDS, lesbian potlucks, heroin chic, crystal meth, ACT UP, the birth of the Internet, the dot-com boom, the dot-com bust, mental breakdowns, outdoor cruising, phony spirituality, Craigslist hookups, hipster gentrification, Polk Street hustling, fag-bashing, shoplifting, house music, the Matrix Program, crappy SoMa live/work lofts, "Care Not Cash," gallons of bleach and hair dye, and processing, processing, and more processing. It's definitely not a nostalgia-fest: Juicy passages about SF club history, '90s queer life in the Mission, and Gay Shame's internal dynamics and gloriously kooky pranks… are accompanied by an Oprah-load of issues including chronic pain, incest, personal betrayals, anorexia, depression… This, then, is the tenderness that drives [Sycamore] to keep speaking out, despite the personal costs. As we weather another dot-com boom of homogenizing gentrification, The End of San Francisco is a timely reminder of the community that can spring from resistance.”

"The End of San Francisco is the opposite of nostalgia"

Oh, my – I cried so much reading this gorgeous interview by Jessica Hoffmann in the Los Angeles Review of Books. To speak, to be heard, to search, to fail, to hope, to fail again, to search more...

Jessica says, in part:

"Can memoir be honest, emotionally or otherwise? Is counterculture actually possible as a way to live? What happens to those who dream of a radical queer community when the dream fails? Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s latest book, The End of San Francisco, is a despairing memoir of loss — the loss of the dream of radical queer San Francisco, the loss of formative friendships, the loss of personal and political innocence. Written in a free-associative style and merging personal and social history, it is — like all of Sycamore’s work — innovative both formally and politically… The End of San Francisco is the opposite of nostalgia. Nostalgia is fundamentally conservative, and its conservatism is often embedded in the form in which stories are told. The End of San Francisco seems to me radical, not just in content, but formally, in insisting on other ways of remembering and documenting."

Just in time for my Bay Area events, a wonderful review on the KQED website!!!

“The End of San Francisco could be the most insightful break-up memoir the city has ever received.”

A special flower

Everything smells like urine in LA today — there couldn’t be this much urine in the world, could there? It must be something in the air, but what? A special urine flower blooming? Maybe just because it’s 20 degrees warmer in the morning today, 80 instead of 60, maybe that brings out all the elegant aromas. I guess the urine just stays there in the street because it never rains, even in this grass, and I’m on my way to get cucumber juice, even though thinking about going into that health food store and standing with everyone else waiting for juice sounds awful, but guess what? Here I am on the street afterwards, and already I feel better. Hooray for cucumber juice! Maybe I will actually be able to go on a walk in the park today. That’s my favorite thing in LA, Griffith Park, driving there with someone and then going down the path. The same path, mostly, the one up to the observatory, because the others I’ve tried are too steep. This park is so big it’s astonishing, how big is it? So big that you drive to a different neighborhood and there it is again, what park is that? Oh, really? Really.

Who knew? Amber Dawn and I discuss sex work, surviving abuse, cycles of violence, the perils and potentials of queer community-building – and, of course, our new books – in The Advocate!!!

Check it out here

And, in advance of my Bay Area events, a lovely interview in the SF Weekly...

Here you go...

Engagement

This is a great audience, I realize that right after I start reading and everyone is laughing right away, even laughing it things that I didn’t realize were funny but that’s the point of a reading: the engagement. And then, right when the story shifts, boom, the energy in the room is so dramatically different; even though it’s my writing that’s doing this, it’s almost too dramatic to feel at all. This part about when I first remembered I was sexually abused, how it comes through talking about first finding other queers and freaks in San Francisco in the early -‘90s and now I’ve read it a few times at readings and it always surprises me how much I feel it when I’m reading it and I guess that’s the writing, translating into the reading, and my sister is here at this reading too so that’s intense, also a new friend who might be crying and I keep wondering what would happen if I started crying, it would ruin the performance of the writing, right? Or, would it? I keep wondering.

And then the questions: so intimate and layered, this is a really varied audience in terms of age and gender and race and even perhaps sub/cultural affiliation. I keep talking about vulnerability, that’s what happens, that’s what I keep feeling. One person who’s just fled a childhood home in the Inland Empire, asking about the vulnerability because I said something about how as a kid I learned to cultivate invulnerability in order to survive, but now it’s vulnerability that I think will help me most and she wants to know when I first learned that. I guess when I first remembered I was sexually abused, when I was 19.
And I also talk about nostalgia as violence. Because the early-‘90s in San Francisco were the most formative years for me but I don’t want to create a mythology of a golden age. Yes, that’s where and when I learned how to create outsider queer culture on my own terms, how to find others like and not like me, how to dream of accountability intimacy and negotiation and relationships created through desire, desire created through relationships, the politics of desire, the politics of relationships, relationships through politics, all of this. But also it felt like everywhere people were dying AIDS drug addiction and suicide, it was a desperate time and I don’t want to erase that desperation.
Every time it is a desperate time, for those of us trying to self-actualize in a world that wants us to die or disappear. Or wants to swallow our creativity into a lifestyle product. The myth of a golden age prevents us from imagining new possibilities in whatever age we live in.

And I’m talking about Patti Smith’s Just Kids and how she perpetuates this myth of New York in the ‘70s, that she was just hanging out and somehow propelled into the upper echelons of permanent stardom. That doesn’t happen to people who are just hanging out. It doesn’t happen to 99.9% of people who are trying to make it happen. There are many flaws in the book, but perhaps the most egregious ones in me is the way she keeps the mechanisms that propelled her to stardom invisible – she was just in the right time at the right place, right? We can never be there, will never be there, again.

And speaking of that place, the Chelsea Hotel where so much of the mythmaking of Just Kids takes place, someone tells me after the reading that Patti Smith is actually part of the business partnership attempting to evict all the remaining residents. These are the dreamers that didn’t make it to start on like Patti – the ones who have survived, that is. I need to find out more about this hideousness – somehow I didn’t expect the figurative violence of Patti’s mythmaking to manifest itself so blatantly. More to think about – the clarity that touring gives me about my own work and its place in the world, I will think about all of this more.

Pricking my head in different ways

Yes, a cloudy day but I look at the weather forecast and how can the chance of rain be 0%? Oh, the desert – but then I’m driving with Emerson to North Hollywood and what’s that burning smell — oh, no, it’s the air. All of that haze is smog. I’m inside the KPFK studios doing an interview for a whole hour, but then outside for just a moment and my voice gets all scratchy. Although my headache is actually better without glare of the sun, until the next day when it’s smoggy again but the glare is back. Oh, it was so nice not to have to wear sun hat for one full day, even with so much poison pricking my head in different ways, oh here it comes, here it really comes, I better lie down.

A lovely article about my reading at Loyola Marymount, in the campus newspaper…

Here it is...

The dead father

On the way to Loyola Marymount I have one of the moments where I can’t believe all this is Los Angeles – highways going on and on and on and it really does feel like we’re in the middle of nowhere still this is the city, I guess. People are right that the air is better over here on the West Side where you can smell the ocean, softer too and I walk over to a viewing area on the campus, thinking maybe I can even see the ocean but instead it’s just a cliff overlooking an area where everything has been torn down to make way for a new development.

The school looks like country club and I can’t exactly tell how people are reacting during the reading, but then afterwards there’s a professor who asks how many books I brought, and she says I’ll take them all, and then gives them out to other professors and students, and this one student comes up to me who was sitting towards the back, someone who I really couldn’t gauge at all but now he’s so animated, telling me about the books he read in high school because that was one of the questions and how what I was reading really opened his mind.

And then a conversation afterwards with several professors and one of them says every once in a while we give an award for someone who really stimulates us to think in new ways, and he pulls out a book that he had just recommended to me, Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father in first edition hardback, he must have gone to his office to get it. The Dead Father because that’s how my book begins. Donald Barthelme because, well I will know once I read it.

Strategic

Pay attention to the way the trunks of the palm trees look so smooth, but when you touch them actually they’re prickly. The part at the bottom that looks rough is actually softer. Look how tall they are, two huge ones in front of a tiny house. Pay attention to the ivy climbing all the way up that one. The cute houses on this street. Side streets: that’s the key. Avoid the bigger ones, too much noise and then everything is ruined. Maybe Los Feliz Boulevard for a block so I can walk toward the park, yes the big pine trees, the pretty old buildings but no, I can’t take it, turn around. Stay on the side streets. What’s that up ahead? Hillhurst. Maybe I can cross to the other side. No, too noisy, turn around. Oh, those red feather duster flowers dripping off that tree, touch them. Oh, so soft – do you think they could really be used as settlor dusters? Moist too, I like the moisture. LA is a difficult place for me, but this is a good intersection, Welch and Dracena, turn quickly off Vermont like I’m fleeing the traffic and when I get back just turn quickly into the building and the glass door closes, noise in the distance but still so bright inside the courtyard, sunglasses.

Another mood swing

So much light and so little oxygen, is that what causes all my mood and energy swings here in Los Angeles, a roller coaster indeed. I’m doing the awareness practice I learned in therapy to try to figure out what I do when I eat, I think I pull in my whole upper body, everything goes to the back of my head and I’m thinking about this while I’m chewing and then suddenly I feel so sad, crying while I’m eating and yes, last night I didn’t sleep as well, but maybe also this is what awareness means. Israeli journalist Amira Hass, apparently the only Jewish-Israeli journalist who has spent the last 20 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank, so she can’t imagine real change in her lifetime. And I’m walking down the street, trying to find something pretty. That’s the problem with LA, or one of the problems: everything is so ugly. Accept those little birds, chirping anyway, and wait, look at that flowering purple vine climbing almost all the way up those tall palm trees, another mood swing.

The allure

I don’t think I been to a 7-Eleven in years, but there’s one a block from where I’m staying in LA so I figure it would be a good place to get toilet paper, right? I can’t believe that the company that makes Charmin actually manufactures smaller rolls of toilet paper, and calls them “regular size,” and then 7-Eleven sells this atrocity for double the usual price. And, at the register, you want to buy a Powerball, or something lottery bullshit with a name like – they ask every customer this, what a racket.
But, the good news is that I make it to Griffith Park. It turns out that yesterday I was only a few blocks away. I get to the entrance and I don’t know where to go exactly, not to the golf club, that’s for sure, how about this path up a hill and oh, after a few turns up a steep sandy path I realize this is it, this is why people love this park, this is why people love LA, I actually get it. Because it’s like you’re in the desert, you look in one direction and the mountains, in the other strange shrubs and all these birds chirping and wait, no way, what is that, a dear, a deer crossing the path in the middle of the day and I’m in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, really?
Even the air smells like air, dry, way too dry, but still air in that familiar desert way that isn’t my climate, that’s for sure, no more living in the desert, but still, up here it’s gorgeous and I wonder where the infamous Griffith Park cruising take place, in my mind it’s somewhere near the observatory which is up there but maybe I made that up, I’ll have to ask someone because I can certainly see the allure of cruising in the middle of the day in this amazing fantasy world.
Oh, and there’s the skyline – no, don’t look at that, it’s ugly. Back to the dry earth and the bending trees, especially this little area with so many chirping birds. Oh – and, lizards, so many lizards. I only saw lizards twice the whole time I lived in Santa Fe, and I’ve already seen three today. Isn’t that supposed to be good luck? This park, I can tell, it must be good luck.
Remind me never to go into an optician again to look for sunglasses – they bring out all these ridiculous things, I mean ridiculous because they cost 300 or 400 dollars, they should get together with 7-Eleven and their overpriced mini-Charmin, that’s for sure. The problem with going to the park is then you come back down and really, this, ugly streets and cars speeding by and oh, I’m exhausted again.

Oh, look – a lovely staff review of The End of San Francisco at Elliott Bay Book Company!!! Thanks to Dave Wheeler for the props, and Meghan Storms for sending the photos…

Arranging the vertical blinds

Pretend that this blustery wind blowing trees and dead leaves and pollution and dust and dirt and who knows what else, this blustery wind blowing everything into my nose it seems, trying it out completely as soon as I step out the door, pretend that this blustery wind doesn’t remind me of the desert. Even though I know this is supposed to be desert too, without all the water diverted from everywhere. Pretend that I don’t notice all these cars, the ugliness of this street like a highway, every major street in LA feels like a highway.
Okay, the trees, yes, notice the trees. Those big tall pines, I don’t remember noticing those in LA before. And what are those weird skinny evergreens that grow so tall but not wide, we had some like that in Seattle but different. The roots of these other trees, not evergreen, pushing through the sidewalk, I always appreciate that.
The problem with a map of LA is that everything looks manageable. A few blocks — is this really a few blocks? I’m walking towards Griffith Park, but I don’t think I’ve gotten anywhere yet. Oh, I see what Jessica means — up here the street becomes more residential, look at those trees with the trunks twisting almost like braids with the big flat green-brown leaves, they’re familiar but I’ve never them huge like this. In the median strip: trees with red spiky flowers like birds.
I should be in the median strip, it’s bigger than the street, which isn’t that small: much bigger than the sidewalk. So much grass, cushion under my feet. So many ugly mansions, kind of like the apartment buildings earlier although I know I’m supposed to say it the other way. How much further is the park, I don’t think I can get there. I call it Northwest realness when you lie down anywhere in the sun and take off your clothes, I think I will try out the median strip, even with all the poison on the grass into my skin, yes it feels good and I’m so glad I brought the eye mask.
I’m trying to think of this sudden light sensitivity as a temporary change — I’m discovering strategies for coping, it’s always good to have strategies. These will be useful once the headache goes away, to keep it away. To keep myself healthy.
In between the last paragraph and now, I had a Feldenkrais session. It was great, but now I’m exhausted. Probably more in my body, and my body is exhausted. Wow – there’s so much wind the vertical blinds are blowing everywhere, and I can’t keep the sunlight out unless I close the windows. I don’t want to close the window, because I like the air. The sound, the sound of the vertical blinds slamming against one another, it’s so irritating.
I was going to say something about cucumber juice. That’s what helped, earlier, when I was walking back from lying in the sun on the median strip, and I found the health food store Jessica mentioned and it was much better than I expected, the store, I mean, and I ended up getting cucumber juice, something I would only want in Seattle in the summer, but this isn’t Seattle and it totally shifted my mood, I wish I could go back there now, not back for more cucumber juice, not back to that health food store, I mean I will get back but not right now, just back to that shift.
But first I need to rest, yes rest although I think that’s what I was doing, just doing with Feldenkrais, right, but no, Feldenkrais is work and rest so I guess I’ll rest and get ready for the sun to go down you can go on a walk without a sun hat, or maybe I’ll need the sun hat anyway and that will irritate me because it will mess up my hair after I just washed it, but whatever, I’ll take irritation instead of headache, or instead of this headache and the irritation, a different irritation, oh, and I wanted to mention how as soon as I got off the train, no not as soon as I got off the train but as soon as I got outside in front of the train station, is soon as I got outside in front of the train station I had a sinus headache, right in between my eyes and the good part is that I thought oh, this is a different headache, a different one than the one I’ve been getting, although why would let the good part? I guess better than this headache, and when will this wind stop?

Stocking up on moisture

The moss in Eugene is different than the moss in Seattle – much paler, almost a pastel green instead of the deeper green I’m used to, it makes some of the trees look like ghosts. Yesterday I walked a mile in pouring rain, luckily there’s a washer and dryer where staying. I guess I’m stocking up on moisture before LA, or before the 28-hour train to LA. Oh, the 28-hour train – I hope I survive.
I’ve survived so far, but this is a bigger test. Those long trains always destroy my sinuses, and will that make me incapacitated by the headaches again? Here I wear sunglasses even in the rain, but what about the sun in LA, what will I do there? I did bring a sun hat, that’s been great so far. I actually feel better rather than worse. I think the new homeopathic remedy I started right before I left Seattle is helping. And, hiding from the sun, the glare, at all times of day. Of course the rain helps my allergies too, probably there won’t be any rain in LA. Different allergies.

Maintaining

A question from someone after the reading in Eugene: how do you maintain hope?

A good question: sometimes I don’t feel like I’m hopeful at all. But I still believe in the same ideals as I did 20 years ago, or similar ideals, does that help me to feel hopeful? Even when everything turns into a sham, over and over again, even when everything fails me?
No, that doesn’t sound right. I have retreated more into myself, my own interior world, but I don’t want to. I still want to connect. I still want that dream of community, not as some amorphous thing you join or belong to, but you create with friends through activism and relationships and caring for one another.

Strangely, maybe I do feel more hopeful for these connections, these
sustained relationships, when I’m on tour. The intimacy of connection in the moment, through this work that I’m putting out in the world, through this vulnerability and openness. Is that hopeful? I don’t know.

And, the student newspaper at the University of Oregon…

Mattilda Berstein Sycamore doesn’t like to be called gay. Instead, she prefers the term queer – a word that she believe carries a stronger connotation of the kind of all around liberal defiance she hopes to embody .

A beautiful piece in my neighborhood paper…

“The book is a radical alternative in its own right, foregoing a linear narrative structure and telling stories of some the world’s outsiders: queer people, sex workers, drug addicts, anarchists and others.”

In the moment

I’m in Eugene. I walk to a park down the street, and at first I’m not sure why there were all these brown patches of grass in the middle. Then I realize oh, wetlands, this really is a swamp. It’s not a pretty park, but there are a lot of chirping birds. I sit in the rain in my sun hat and sunglasses, I’m so glad I brought this hat because even in the rain the glare is hurting my eyes.
Moments I want to remember from this tour, already. The looks of recognition in people’s faces, sometimes literally recognition of exactly the moments and people and places I’m talking about but more often a recognition of our common histories, of similar experiences in similar places. The feeling of closeness and intimacy when people come up to talk to me afterwards. All the stories and hugs, I love all the stories and hugs.
The affirmation when someone comes up and says I’m nervous because I’m a total fan girl, I quote you all the time, every time I write something I quote you. Or someone I met five years ago on a different book tour, who says: I went out and bought for your book, and the changed my life. This is what makes touring so important: feeling the impact. So often I feel incapacitated, overwhelmed, barely able to function, so it’s important to feel that softness and hope too, right?
An older guy and a younger guy who come up to me in Portland, and the older one says thank you for your bravery and truth-telling. Truth-telling was in the exact word, but I can’t remember it exactly. Something that means truth-telling. Bravery and honesty, I think that’s what it was. And he said: your work could be so important to so many youth. Which means a lot to me, because so often we’re told that youth need positivist bullshit or glossy lifestyle brochures.
At my Portland reading, I notice that I could actually start crying. It’s the part where I’m talking about San Francisco in the early-‘90s, and remembering I was sexually abused. Of course I told this story so many times, but now I’m actually feeling it, I guess that means my writing is working. But I don’t want to start crying while I’m reading, right? Maybe later, during the Q&A. But of course it passes. What would it mean to start crying while I’m reading? Would it ruin the effect or enhance it, and does asking this question already limit the possibilities for my response? In the moment.

Flashpoints Radio!

I did an interesting interview on Pacifica's Flashpoints Radio last night – mostly about marriage and military assimilation drama, and the host, Dennis Bernstein, was nervous that people at the station would go after him for the show, but then he opened the phones to listeners (a rare event on the show), and people overwhelmingly called in to support my critiques, hooray! Here's the show archive -- I come in about 35 minutes into the hour, haven't listened to it yet so hopefully I sound okay...

One question at least

Sometimes I feel like whenever one health problem starts to calm down, something else starts to flare up. Like this morning I wake up with the most horrible intestinal bloating, I mean it’s hard to walk, hard to stand up, hard to do anything but get back in bed, and why? I keep thinking, why? What did I do yesterday that was different, was there something that was different?
And I realize oh, feldenkrais, I went to a great feldenkrais session and why, why now? Why when I do something to help myself, to keep myself in balance, to prevent too much pain on this tour, something soothing and calming and uplifting and grounding, why then? And I realize oh, in the session we were doing all this work around breathing into the belly and that’s why. Because when I breathe into the belly, everything gets stuck, I’m not sure why, maybe something with the diagram but this has been going on for so long and lately it has felt a little better until waking up this morning on this cloudy soothing day except now it feels sad, I feel sad and oh, there’s some explosive gas coming out, that’s helpful, helpful for this pain, but how to get the rest of it out, that’s the question, one question at least.

A review of The End of San Francisco in Velvet Park…

“Shirking the idea that time unfolds linearly and our lives are both affectively lived and narrated chronologically, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's The End of San Francisco gives us memoir as "an active process of remembering" to be experienced simultaneously by author and reader. At its core, The End of San Francisco is a narrative of emotions loosely tied together in constellations of events. It's a trippy read—in multiple senses of the word—but at the same time profoundly honest and raw.”

Makes connection possible

There’s so much to write, and I just started his tour. There’s so much to write, but the voice software is not cooperating. Like I just started this tour yesterday, and I already missed my first train. But then, thanks to problem-solving by Alex West an Meghan Storms, I found a ride with people I didn’t know and we ended up in Olympia, where I hadn’t expected to go, we ended up in Olympia on this gorgeous faux-spring day and everyone was so friendly, it was like a dream of what Olympia could be, everyone stopped in the aisles of the coop to say hello to one another and then you have any random people that actually meant something and then we got Portland much later than my original plan but it felt special in the way that a sudden connection in a moment of possible crisis makes connection more possible, and that’s what touring is about, right?

I want to write about all the different birds and flowers and the way people are so much friendlier in Portland and Seattle, I mean people on the street, and what does that mean? There were kids outside an elementary school who waved hello. Several middle-aged straight guys who stopped me to compliment my outfit. Yes, it’s a sunny day in the Northwest, or almost sunny, which is the same thing, since it’s the Northwest, the people are not this friendly in Seattle, not even on a sunny day and I want to write more but damn this voice software is really a mess right now, maybe it just takes time to train since this is a new computer.

A gorgeous interview in the Huffington Post!!!

Here it is...