On Why I Don't Smoke Weed

Ferguson. There was so much I wanted to say. So much has been said already, and I'm not naive enough to think I could say things any better. I thought of so many scenarios that were fitting to discuss. I kept thinking of all that I wanted to write, but everything came down to two major concepts. So, I decided to write about my lack of shock about how the world works, and...why I don't smoke weed. Stay with me here.

The Interwebs are alive with statements about all kinds of things that have happened in my city, in the country, and in the world, that basically begin like this: I didn't realize these things still happened. I didn't think things like this happened in communities like mine. I am in shock. I thought justice would be served.

I'm not here to argue about what justice looks like. I'm here to argue that if you have lived as long as I have, and I'm not quite 40, and you believe that justice usually prevails, that is your privilege talking right there. Yes I understand that people are white, or male, or straight, or living in an actual house or apartment in a developed country, or employed, or physically abled, or what have you. And yet, as people, we live in a society. If we say that we were unaware of the injustices experienced by others--or even by people who look much like ourselves--because it hasn't happened to us SPECIFICALLY, then I will say that our lack of knowledge is, in fact, willful. If you don't see injustice, it isn't because it isn't there. It's because you never had to bother to see it. It is because you chose to look the other way in the face of it. It is because the people affected by the injustice were unimportant to you. It is because you thought that you would never be impacted by injustice, and you also believed that the only thing that mattered is what impacted you directly. If you believe that injustice requires your acceptance to be real, you have proved the point of everyone who sees justice as a goal and a dream, not a birthright or a present-day reality. If you don't see or recognize your own privilege, that is because it isn't necessary for you to see it to benefit from it.

Again, there are so many ways to explain what I mean, but I am going to choose just one--and it is one that will make me exceedingly unpopular, including, or maybe even especially, among my liberal white friends.

Here goes nothing--a decades-long explanation of why I don't smoke weed, condensed into a few paragraphs.

When I was six years old, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I had more than 100 seizures a day and was forced to take poisonous medication that permanently enlarged my liver. As everyone here knows, I've been diagnosed with cancer twice and have done 10 months of chemotherapy. Both epilepsy and breast cancer kill 50,000 or more people in this country every year. I've dodged these bullets so far, but I don't believe there is any reason (such as my "deserving" nature) that one of these scourges would not do me in eventually. But to the point, I have taken medication all of my life because I had to, and I saw what it did to my body. It never appealed to me to do drugs. I figured it would kill me before I could ever enjoy it. So--reason #1. I get that you can argue with me about the logic of my reasoning here, or about how weed would help me rather than hurt me, but when you do that, you are ignoring what I just said to you. You are ignoring my reason, my reality, my personal and probably illogical and arbitrary association with the harshness of drugs and the price I've paid for (knock on wood) good health. You may be right, but I am not wrong. You just never had to live as me.

So, it never appealed to me. Another reason for that is this (and yes, I know this is changing, because I live in society too, and I pay attention): weed is illegal. OK, enter all the arguments about why it shouldn't be--that's what always happens when I say what I'm about to say. I get it. I don't disagree. Prohibition was a bad idea--yes, I know. But WHY was it a bad idea? Because the government helped poison booze to teach people a lesson? Because it encouraged prostitution? Because everything went underground and Al Capone got in on the gig? Arguably yes, all of the above. But while the country waited for the law to change, people went blind, people were prostituted, people died, families and communities were torn apart. You can blame the law, but the fact is, people did terrible things to each other because of the law, and the people most likely to suffer were those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

The fact that weed is "harmless" is not of interest to me. Because I did not grow up in a "white" neighborhood. Because I am amazed every time I ask a white person if they know anyone who has gone to prison for marijuana possession or intent to sell and they say "no." Because I do, and I have, and there are so many people.

How could I enjoy doing something with no fear of consequences that has destroyed so many other people's lives as they sit in prison for doing the same thing? Should the law change? Should sentencing change? AGAIN. NOT RELEVANT. I did not grow up believing that I could do illegal things and get away with it, because I saw so many people punished for minor nonviolent offenses. I've seen so many people punished for doing nothing at all. I once told friends who were visiting that no, they could not smoke up on my back porch, because I lived within sight of the police station. They thought I was ridiculous. Hey Katy, man, you won't get in trouble. It's cool. Nope, not cool. I own this place, and I would be responsible for the long arm of the law coming down on folks here if it were to happen, and I am not even benefiting from what's going on here, and I am not under the impression that laws were made for me to break with impunity because of my station in life. I remember dating a guy who had once OD'd on heroin, and he told me about the people in the hospital, the cops who were there, the pumping of his stomach. He was telling me how lucky he was to be alive and I kept thinking: and you didn't go to jail? They didn't arrest you, or cite you, or anything? I couldn't believe it. Now, do I think people with drug addictions should go to prison? No, of course not. I just think that many of them do. But not that guy. He was white, and from Indiana. So that's reason #2.

Reason #3 is this: Mexico.

Mexico's war on drugs is the blood diamond of our age. Before you pester me with the war on drugs not working! and see the law needs to change! and legalize! and it's not weed in Mexico anymore, now it's heroin and cocaine! I will say this: Of course, yes, sure, and I know that. But also: NOT RELEVANT.

This is the world we live in, this is the society that exists. As long as this is true, we should be willing to focus on those whose lives are being destroyed and ended rather than on our own desires. Dozens of students were kidnapped and presumably killed by a drug cartel in Mexico recently. And this is what I want you to know, to understand, to refuse to shy away from, to agree to see with your own eyes:

All indications are that the drugs that flow through those who massacred those students were headed for Chicago.

I live in Chicago. I'm sure there are people who are neighbors of mine who buy weed from Mexico; there are definitely suburban kids nearby buying heroin or coke that is funneled through Mexico. You can smoke weed, you can remain free because of it, you can benefit from it. If you are nodding your head to those statements, realize this: You are not dead. Your body is not buried in a mass grave so that someone somewhere living a life that is so safe and secure you can't even fathom it can get high. I used to be able to think of weed as a harmless thing. I know that there is less marijuana coming from Mexico, and other drugs are the hot ones now. But it doesn't really matter to me.

I think about people's faces being cut off their heads and sewn onto soccer balls. I think about 50 people being bludgeoned to death with a single hammer, each one waiting their turn, unable to flee because men with Uzis make them stay. I think of girls getting gang raped and killed and left in the desert and their families never knowing what really happened because they just disappear and no one in authority cares. I think of towns where girls who are still alive have stopped going to school, because drug cartels own their towns now, and it's not safe to go outside. I think about kids in Chicago who are caught up in the drug trade, who are used as pawns so others can make big bucks and live on Lake Shore Drive, I think about kids who can't cross this street or that one because if they do they'll get shot because these drug runners own that corner and those do not. And then I think that all of these people have lived these realities, and the justice that is coming is that maybe this drug will be legalized, and white people who have never faced negative consequences of possession or selling will be able to cash in on their homegrown.

I have never been to Mexico. I don't live in a neighborhood plagued by gang violence fueled by the drug trade. None of my family sits in prison on a possession charge. I have no "disappeared" loved ones. I might be plagued by the threat of sexual violence but I have not had to give up other civil rights because of it. My children are too young to know about drugs.

And yet.

I think about these things, about how my decisions and my reality and my privilege intersects with the reality of the world right now, as it is. I think about how people can't wait for the laws to change, because it's too late for them. I think about people who have seen their lives utterly destroyed over something that is just fun for those who receive it.

I live in this society, in this world.

I cannot un-see those faces on soccer balls. I cannot. I will not. If I were to say "harmless," I would be denying the truth or the importance of those people's lives and gruesome deaths.

I know I might have lost a lot of friends here. I know this might seem a long way off of Ferguson. But to me, it's not. If you are white, or live in the suburbs, or in general live a life of privilege, think about how many things you have done that are wrong, immoral, or illegal, or maybe even all three, that didn't land you in prison. That didn't lead you to be raped or tortured or killed in a hail of bullets. Think about the times that justice served you, and your expectation that it would.

And don't tell me you didn't realize. You just didn't have to, and therein lies the difference.

Consent Part Five: Grab Bag

We've all been there at some point.

Or, at least all women have been there.

You are walking down the street, and you hear someone approaching behind you. You have learned to listen. Is the person running, walking, biking? If you are the one approaching someone else, you know to either speed up or slow down to avoid that awkward moment when you are right next to each other. You wait to hear the "excuse me" or the "on your left" or you say those things yourself. Yesterday, at 3:30 in the afternoon, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood. I was about 4 blocks from home, across the street from a park. I heard footsteps behind me. They got faster and faster and nearer and nearer. I made an assumption. I assumed there was a woman (specifically) walking behind me, and that she was speeding up so she could pass me. But she got really close and I heard no "excuse me."

And then I felt a hand grabbing my ass.

I spun around, shocked and yet not really because that shit has happened so many times before, you know?

And I was looking right at a boy who could not have been older than 13.

He looked mortified when he saw my face. He said excuse me, uh I'm sorry, and then he literally ran across the street into the park. I didn't have time to do anything more than glare at him.

And then I started questioning my own interpretation of what just happened. He looked so embarrassed, it must have been an accident. Maybe he just bumped into me because he wasn't watching where he was going. Hmm. But no, that's not possible. Does your hand ever accidentally form itself into a cupping shape and then oh my god how did that happen there's a woman's ass inside it? I have lived on this earth almost 39 years and that has never happened to my hand. So I knew he did it on purpose, but I couldn't figure out his reaction. I shrugged my shoulders and muttered something to myself about punk kids and then continued on my walk and kind of forgot about it. When Gabe got home hours later he asked me how my walk was and I remembered and said I had something to tell him later after dinner. When I told him this story, rolling my eyes in the process, he had an interpretation that hadn't occurred to me.

"He thought you were a kid, like him."

"Huh?"

"From behind, you looked like a kid, like a young teenager or something. When you turned around he realized you were a grown woman and he got scared."

"OK, that's plausible. But what the hell? So it's ok to go around grabbing random young girls' asses?"

"Well, he thought if you were a kid, he would get away with it. He thought you wouldn't say or do anything."

And therein lies a lesson that boys have learned by middle school, apparently. Young girls are embarrassed and scared and confused when weird and offensive things happen to them, so go ahead and do those things! They're not talking! But these moms, you never know, after more than a quarter century of this shit they might just call the cops! Stay away from them.

And then I started wondering about the thought process in this boy's brain. Was it just a matter of thinking, huh, that's a nice ass, I need to speed up and grab it? Was he trying to intimidate me? Did he think I would giggle and flirt or maybe grab his ass in return?

Now look. This incident was not that big of a deal--at least to me. I have a very thick skin, and even when I know things are offensive or wrong, I shrug them off pretty easily. Some women might have been very upset, others might have been flattered; there are a million possible reactions. I felt annoyed and then indifferent.

But my reaction is irrelevant.

It is not my reaction that dictates that the thing was wrong. He knew it was wrong. He would never have looked so terrified if he hadn't.

And I know that there's a question percolating in the minds of at least some who are reading this. Don't lie. You are wondering:

What were you wearing?

I won't even bother to answer that question.

I think this incident is pretty minor in the scheme of things. But the overall message is less so.

Let me start by saying that my ass has been grabbed by people more times than I could possibly remember. And by "people," I do not mean boyfriends, lovers, or husbands. In those cases, hands might have been on my ass multiple hours of the day. I regularly get annoyed at Gabe for excessive ass-grabbing. But, I also love him. And I chose him. And I know that he will back off when I glare at him. And I grab his ass in turn. He in fact has his share of ass. A lot of guys, white guys especially, cannot claim any junk in the trunk. Not so Gabe. And yet, a stranger has never grabbed his ass, not one time. Similarly, no stranger has ever touched his stomach, his chest, his face, his hair, the small of his back, his hips, or his legs. All of these things have happened to me numerous times. We are exactly the same age.

When I had long curly hair, it was normal--well, not normal, but common--for people I didn't know to touch my hair. Men did this all the time. Sometimes old ladies did it too. A few times, people (men) stopped their cars in the middle of the street, got out, grabbed my hair, told me it was beautiful, and then went back to their cars. I have had men grab my face in a bar and tell me how pretty I am. On the very first blind date I ever went on, I got into a conversation with the guy about car accidents, because we had both survived bad ones. He had broken a few ribs in his, and I told him about my broken hips and needing to learn to walk again. After dinner, he held the door open for me and we started walking down the street. He positioned himself in front of me, grabbed my hips with his hands, and said "wow! you've got great hips! that accident couldn't change that!" This guy really liked me and we went out on a few more dates and I never, ever let him touch me after that.

You can tell me that this is just small stuff, that none of this matters, that I am overreacting. But I am not writing this to say that I was traumatized by some idiot boy's hand on my ass.

What I am thinking about is how this kind of relentless and unwanted touching and the assumption that it happens all the time and is just a yawning bore affects our nature and potentially changes it.

My mother will tell you that I was never a particularly affectionate kid. My brother loved to be held and cuddled and sung to and to have his back rubbed. I cried in my mother's arms as a baby until she put me down in my crib and left me alone to chatter happily to myself. This overall pattern has never changed. I can be affectionate, but never overly so. Every boy and man I have ever been with has been more affectionate than me. So, that is my nature. But I do wonder if my nature was exacerbated by the constant and unwanted attention and touching. This was at its worst from ages 12-19. It was so bad in high school I learned to walk with my books close to my chest so that one boy with the locker near mine wouldn't grab my breasts in between classes.

That is overtly sexual touching. But the space invasion starts much earlier and is more subtle. Let me use my children as an example. I would say that of the two, Augie is absolutely the more naturally affectionate child. He grabs your face to kiss you. He likes to snuggle and wrestle. Lenny likes to read by herself and give you a little kiss goodnight. Now, maybe they are just like that. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that people have been touching Lenny and getting in her face all her life. Telling her she is beautiful. Stopping her in her path at 2, 3 years old, crouching down, getting right up in her grill and saying what a pretty girl she is and touching her hair. Adults have told her she is tiny, she is gorgeous, she's a beauty. The child is eight.



Then there's Augie. The one with the beautiful curly hair, just like mine was. People comment on his hair all the time. But there is a huge difference.

They never--NEVER--comment on his hair to him.

They say it to me, or his dad.

Men and women notice his hair. They stand aside and let him run around and do whatever he is going to do, and then they remark about it, to some trusted adult. They must think it would seem weird to get in a little kid's face, tell him he's a handsome son of a gun and oh my god that hair while they grabbed his curls. They must think he has the right to move his body and not be stopped in his tracks.

They must realize he's a boy.



We do this in so many subtle ways. We lament how boys are being asked to give up their nature; we wring our hands over it if boys are told to do things we have decided are contrary to their nature like sit down, read, or pay attention. Never mind the assumption that any of those things are true, what interests me is how we think it is such a shame for boys to ever have to do anything that is contrary to who they are.

Because we ask girls to do this all the time. Maybe girls are just as horny as boys, but we teach them not to be. Or, like me, they are too suspicious of people and they don't trust boys or men enough to act out on the promiscuity that probably comes naturally to them. Maybe girls are just as goofy or restless or crazy in their natural state but at some point they learn to tone it down so as not to be so noticeable. Maybe girls look at people's asses, and manage to keep their hands to themselves anyway.

Would it be so wrong to find some sense of balance, where we tell boys to deny their urges and desires more often and girls to pay attention to them? I mean look. We are all human beings with hormones and instincts. But we also live in a society where it matters how we behave and how we treat other people.

I would love for my daughter to be as free and trusting as my son. But she isn't. I see her get smaller in herself when she gets attention for how she looks. And I see him puffing up his chest and reveling in it.

One day, Lenny was lamenting her straight hair. This was mostly because she hates brushing it, and you don't need to brush curly hair. "I wish I had hair like Augie's," she said.

"No you don't, honey," Gabe replied. She said she did, and why not?
"Because people would touch you all the time if you did. You would hate that."
"But they don't do that to Augie."
"No, they don't."

And ain't that the truth.

This is a small story. It isn't really an important one. But it is one that I can tell easily, and that every woman I know could tell just as easily as me. Above all else, there is one thing I regret about the way this story ends.

I wish I had had more time. I would have grabbed that kid's phone out of his pocket and threatened to call his mother.

The World Cup: Not My Kind of Football

I was in the office yesterday, having a particularly absurd professional moment of chaos that eventually turned out just fine, when I walked past a conference room and glanced inside, wondering why all the lights were off but there was sound emanating from the room.

A bunch of dudes (yes, all men, at least at that point) were watching the World Cup. In the office. You know, utilizing company resources and stuff. With no fear of repercussion.

I love the World Cup for that reason alone.

I'm no fan of the sport. I don't know why. I still call it "soccer." I think it's like baseball. You have to grow up with it to love it, and I didn't grow up with soccer--I grew up with baseball. I grew up with the other kind of football, the one that is admittedly badly named. Anyhow, I do not love the sport itself. I have nothing against it--it just doesn't capture my interest. In that way, to me, it's kind of like...golf.

But I love everything else about the World Cup. I love anything that can take people outside of one cultural moment, like meeting/office culture, and bring them into another cultural moment, like sport. I love that people all over the world are watching the same events at the same time. I love that people lose sleep. I love the way I get information about the games through social media.

But most of all, I love the World Cup for the memories.

Exactly 20 years ago, Chicago hosted the World Cup. I was 18 years old and had just finished my freshman year of college. I came home for the summer and began working at Kroch's and Brentano's, a famous old Chicago landmark right in the heart of the loop, back when bookstores were a THING. That flagship store was huge. I have some extremely vivid memories of working there, all while collecting my $5 an hour and standing on my feet for 9 hours straight, realizing that I don't actually like people, or that at least I don't actually like CUSTOMERS. I remember:

the guy named Mike who was my closest "friend" at the store. He was a little older than me, maybe 22, and was already a vet, having served in the first Gulf War (remember that one?) when he was just a teenager. I remember how I could tell, even at my age, how hard it was for him to re-integrate into society after being in the army straight out of high school. He brought the same boring lunch with him every day: flavorless beans and rice. While the rest of us downed our lunches in 5 minutes and spent the rest of our 25 minute break outside smoking or blowing an hour's worth of wages on coffee or just walking around the park, he spent the whole time doing pushups. He woke up at 4:30 every morning, or so he told me. And, every single day, he "coincidentally" met me at my train stop to walk me to work, even though he took a different line. He walked me to the train after work every single day as well. If my boyfriend was meeting me, he would casually walk away as if that had been his plan all along. I was too clueless to realize why he did those things, though it should have been obvious, especially that one time when he

had my back as I got my revenge against the customers who harassed me while buying their porn. Kroch's was a major distributor of newspapers and magazines, and had more periodicals than any other single store in the country (or something like that) at the time. Twenty years ago, before Internet porn, men bought magazines. They bought Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler and Playgirl. They bought the French, Brazilian, and German versions of those magazines, all of which were hidden behind the register so they could not stand in the store itself jerking off to porn. Some of those men would be extremely embarrassed as they stood in my line and asked me for the porn they wanted. Those men got even more uncomfortable as Mike glared at them and muttered things about how they should have had the sense to get in a different line. Others lived for those moments. You see, the international porn magazines had naked women right on the cover! You didn't even need to look inside. So some dude would say, hi honey, can you show me that French Penthouse? And I would have to stand there holding it while he looked at that and at my 18 year old self. UGh. The worst. But then, a wonderful cultural icon named Tonya Harding decided to make the world's first truly infamous "sex tape" by filming herself having sex with a really crappy video camera...and then selling STILL PHOTOS FROM THE CRAPPY VIDEO TO PENTHOUSE. And then people pre-ordered this crap, and awaited its release with bated breath. And then the dudes came into the store in droves, asking for their special orders, and I spent an entire day selling porn to suits who were going to go jack off to blurry pictures of felons in company restrooms. By about 2 pm I had had enough. So when the really cocky, flirty suit WINKED AT ME, I looked him up and down and realized he had no briefcase and no jacket, so therefore nowhere to hide his magazine. And Mike nudged me, giving me a signal, and smoothly hid all of our paper bags from view. And I told the dude we were fresh out of paper bags. Here's your see-through flimsy plastic bag, sir. Now your boss will know what's up.

Ah, Mike.

But not everyone was like those guys. When I say we had more periodicals than anyone, I mean it. We had newspapers from all over the world, in dozens of languages. We had regular customers who would come in once a week to buy seven days worth of four different Arabic-language papers. Those customers had special shelves dedicated to them. We knew when they were on vacation. We knew their names and their families' names and we knew many of their stories. There were other regulars (regulars, people. regulars in a bookstore) who came in every morning for LeMonde. My little brain was always full of stories about all of these people, walking around with bundles of newsprint, trying to find a way to connect back home in a time just before those connections you could touch with your hands would become irrelevant.

And then, there were the people who came to Chicago for the World Cup.

The jerseys! The colors! The swearing in 27 languages! The women who wore white blazers! The men who wore short shorts! The young men who had no interest in porn because they were buying every single newspaper from Spain just for their country's version of the sports! The children who would have to console their parents over the outcome! The fathers who just assumed I loved football and would earnestly try to overcome the language barrier to talk to me about it, reminding me that the world was filled with people like them and like Mike and like the penthouse guys!

My God.

It was beautiful.

I've had a lot of jobs. I've even kind of made a career for myself. But I will always remember working in a bookstore for $40 a day when I was 18, discussing the news of the world with people from every corner of it, watching them fall to their knees screaming GOOOAAAALLLL, clutching crumpled papers to their chests as they grieved and rejoiced for places I had never seen. When you mention the World Cup to me, that's what I see in my mind. And I am 18 again, and the world is a very, very colorful place.

26 Things My Husband Thought Were a Good Idea at the Time

Next weekend is Gabe's 39th birthday. For the third year in a row, I will be on a business trip at that time. Well, actually, weather and flights permitting, I will be home the night before his birthday, but he will be left with all of the end of school year drama and planning while I miss the last day of school, and the reality is that I will probably arrive home from Dallas with little more than some cheap souvenir for him, and then the next day is Father's day, and MY GOD. There's no time. So. I'm writing this now. When Gabe and I met, we were 27. Lots of birthdays have passed since then. He spent his 35th birthday at the oncologist's office with me, helping me make my chemo game plan the first time around. I've written him birthday letters and even lists about what I like about him via my blogs before, and I could get serious like that again.

Or not.

Everyone knows we have this weird little household going on over here. It's not like I have to search hard for material if I want to talk about something absurd. Most of the time Gabe doesn't mind being fodder for that material. And the reality is that while I could talk about the absurdity, I could also talk about the stupid or hurtful things he's done or the really meaningful things or the really useful things like teaching our son to pee sitting down, and of those choices, this seems the most appropriate. So here goes. Off the top of my head, here are

26 Things My Husband Thought Were a Good Idea at the Time

1. Trying to save a tree branch by propping it up with some twine and scotch tape.



2. Forgoing the oh so unnecessary trips to the body shop and overly investing in duct tape and post it notes to keep his car held together.



3. Speaking of that car, taking a really long time to pick up the babysitter before one of our dates, because on the way over there he somehow managed to pick up a hitchhiker and tried to sell that dude said crappy car. And no, thankfully, the hitchhiker and the babysitter weren't in the car at the same time.

4. Taking Leona's up on their challenge to see if anyone could eat an entire slab of ribs along with an entire order of lasagna. The prize for achieving this? An enormous free ice cream sundae. We don't speak of that night.

5. Answering the door wearing nothing but boxer briefs, or, worse, boxer briefs and a bathrobe, leaving him looking like one of those porn stars from the 70s with the chest hair on display and all.

6. Telling our daughter that beauty is not really important, because after all, what would happen if you fell in a vat of acid and your face got totally messed up? You'd still be the same person.

7. Practicing circus tricks:



8. Deciding to ride his bike to the dentist's office. At night. In February. During a blizzard. It didn't end well.

9. This seems to be a theme, but hanging laundry on the clothes line in the backyard. Without any pants on.

10. Buying me a year's supply of cheap winter gloves, in May, for Mother's Day, because "you can never have too many."

11. This:



12. And this:




13. Again with the boxer briefs (maybe that should be the title of this post?): running outside in his skivvies and robe at 5:30 in the morning, shaking his fist and screaming at the newspaper delivery guy "STOP DRIVING OVER MY LAWN!" like he was 107 years old.

14. Not calling his new girlfriend after they had sex for the first time. So she called him instead and said "this isn't a movie. stop being an asshole." Of course, he later had to remind her that the first few times they slept together, she didn't let him spend the night and just kicked him to the curb afterwards, though she claims no memory of that ever happening.

15. Telling his new girlfriend he would have babies with her...after they had known each other for two weeks.

16. Planning an excellent third date, complete with stops at Dunkin Donuts, an ice cream shop, and a drag show.

17. Hiding the engagement ring in a hot dog, except it was too much pressure, so he balked and had to hide it in his pajama pocket and ask me if I would "marry him anyway."

18. Asking a fisherman for help after we had locked ourselves out because we were having sex outside at midnight, and it was pitch black and again with the boxer briefs, but this time he was also wearing water shoes that he found sitting in the lawn, so he walked right up to the lake, flagged down the lone boat, and said, "You look like a big, strong guy. Maybe you could help me." After which he got back in the house by climbing on this guy's back, then scampering up a 2x4 the guy had braced on the outside wall, until he could bust the screen in with his elbow and do a backflip through the window into the house. And then he had to bribe the guy with a whole case of beer to get him to leave and stop looking through the house for his wife, who at that point was hiding in the closet. OK so that's a longer story than I have room for here.

19. Telling the guy who was in line behind him at Planned Parenthood waiting for his vasectomy that he looked "pretty good for a guy who was about to have an abortion."

20. Shoveling our driveway while wearing the Superman footie pajamas with the cape.

21. Falling asleep playing Candyland.



22. Placing his deodorant on the kitchen counter and a box of triscuits in the shoe tree.

23. Hiding condoms all over the house "just in case," including in houseplants and a crayon box.

24. Giving me this card for my birthday. On the inside it says "don't let the bastard win."



25. Hoarding dark chocolate from Trader Joe's at the neighbors' house so I wouldn't find out how bad his addiction was.

26. Allowing me to publish this.

Happy 39, baby.

Consent Part Four: The Things They Said

I have been wanting to write this for a while, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Actually, there is a much larger piece I would like to write, but I don't have the bandwidth in my mind right now. That piece would be about what we consider to be the "right" kind of victim of sexual abuse, including the "right" kind of response that such a person should exhibit. But I get tired just thinking about that. Also, I have thought about writing about what the perpetrators of various acts have said to me, but I don't think their voices really deserve to be heard. So instead, I'm going to do this: I'm going to give examples of things that were said to me by OTHER PEOPLE, many of them female, some of them adults, some of them police officers and other figures of authority, when I tried to tell about something that happened to me. It is because of these types of responses that I decided I wasn't talking. It's bad enough to experience something you know is wrong; it's worse being told you are lying or crazy or just to SHUT UP about it already. It's bad enough having something happen once, but the reality is that most girls and women and yes some boys and men too have so many of these things happen to them over and over again that it begins to seem like something that is just par for the course, an inevitability, and THAT, my friends is how silence is perpetrated and the rape culture continues.

People said these things to me after I tried to tell about a variety of incidents: molestation as a young girl; what I understand to be sexual assault now (when I was growing up, there was rape or no rape--nothing else short of penetration "counted"), threatened gang rape, stalking, propositions from a teacher, various kinds of sexual harassment (at school, at work, online, on the street) etc. While none of these things happened to me at the hands of any of my chosen partners, some of these things were done by people I considered to be friends or trusted figures of authority. And then, I eventually tried to tell someone. And they said these types of things to me.:

I guess it's a good thing you weren't drunk.

What were you wearing?

Why were you in that room with them?

Oh, you are so conceited!

(eyes rolling): Stop looking for attention! (I also heard, "you always get all the attention!")

If he didn't physically assault you, there's nothing we can do about it.

You're overreacting.

He was just being friendly.

That's impossible. I've known him since I was little.

It's normal for him to think that way, even if he's an adult.

What did you expect?

Big surprise! I mean, look at you!

Someday you'll wish you got those kind of remarks from men.

You should be grateful.

But isn't that how you see yourself?

You must be used to that kind of thing.

Why don't you cut your hair?

Well, you DO look older.

Well, you DO look younger.

What does Gabe (or insert name of current boyfriend) think about that?

Why didn't you call the police?

You were lucky.

This happened such a long time ago. Aren't you over it yet?

GET OVER IT.

I could go on, but do I really need to do that?

There are two things that are coming to my mind right now. One involves the things that were not said, the things that were not done. When I got called into the Dean's office in high school because I had ditched so many English classes, she was furious and confused. I told her this: Every single time that Mr. X substitutes, I will turn around and walk out the door. I will ditch every single time. And I was practically begging her with my youthful defiance to ask me why, but she didn't. She didn't say a word. She gestured for me to leave her office. And she never again called me back in or threatened to punish me if I ditched.

And then I am thinking of that moment right after the little voice in my head told me I was trapped, that it was hopeless. I was being held by two boys, both so much stronger than me, one behind me and one in front of me, both of them holding one of my arms so I couldn't fight and both of them taking my clothes off and undoing my bra and abusing me with their other hand while other boys did nothing or stood there laughing or started walking over to me while I screamed. When the boy in front moved one of his hands so he could unzip his pants the little voice in my head said "now's your chance" and somehow willed my little fist in my suddenly free hand into a ball for the first time in my life and I punched that boy square in the mouth. And I can hear his words all these years later, and I can see the hate-tinged surprise on his face as I successfully ran away:

"What a fucking bitch."

The Lost Boy

She spent 35 years looking for him.

35 years of growing up, growing older, having children of her own, making the decision and the sacrifice to raise her son’s child when he turned out to be too young, immature, and, yes, maybe even dysfunctional, to do it himself. Thirty five years spent wondering about a baby boy she knew only briefly and then never saw again.

It was 1976. Winter. She was 20 years old, idealistic, anti-establishment, a card-carrying member of the communist party living in a co-op in the Midwest on a beautiful plot of land overlooking a large lake in the midst of a university campus. There were a handful of children living in the co-op, and they all considered the children to be their own, to some extent. That was part of it—the collective mothering, the responsibility and desire to look out for one another. There was only one infant, an adorable boy who at 8 months old had lived among them for maybe 6 months.

One day, she heard crying. She heard it, and expected to hear it stop. The crying only intensified. She went to investigate, running through cavernous hallways with no central heating, to the room the infant boy shared with his 25 year old mother. She wasn’t there. The windows were wide open, letting the cold and even the snow in, and still, she heard crying.

He was there, in the crib, wearing nothing but a wet diaper. Shocked, she grabbed him, changed him, closed the windows, rocked him and covered him in blankets. She fed him a bottle. There was no sign of his mother, not for hours. When she finally returned, she turned on her in a fury and demanded to know how she could leave him like that. He could have gotten sick! He could have died!

And the baby’s mother said: “He needs to learn how to be alone.”

She sat there, stunned, knowing what she must do. Someone came to get him a few weeks later. She didn’t see him again, not for 35 years.

How could she know what she had done that day? How could she know that she had, perhaps, instilled in that boy a sixth sense, an ability to ask for help and to find someone who would be willing and able to care for him? How could she know that he would be raised with unconditional love by other family members until he was taken away, by his mother, at six years old? How could she know that the little boy would find others like her: his mother’s boyfriends, his friends’ parents, legions of people, who would help to raise him over the years?

She could not know that. She knew nothing of him. She had no idea if he had survived. And then, someone came up with the idea of a reunion for the still-running co-op. That was it--her chance, her excuse, to finally find the lost boy. He was hard to find, off the grid almost, but eventually she had success. An email was sent. Days later, he responded.

He was alive.

He lived less than 200 miles away. He agreed to attend the reunion with his wife and children.

He had a wife and children.

She was, of course, thrilled at the idea of seeing him again, having thought of him so often over the years. But in some sense, seeing him mattered less now that she knew he was out there in the world living out the promise of his life.

He arrived with his family, looking out of place in sensible clothes, with no piercings or tattoos, pushing a stroller and holding his daughter’s hand. She brimmed with illogical pride. She gave a tour, talked to them at dinner, asked a handful of polite questions. And then, as he wandered the grounds with his children, she pulled his wife aside and said this to her:

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see that he grew up.”

And she couldn’t help but tell his wife the story of that cold room in February, a story that boy had never heard. And his wife smiled knowingly at her, suddenly understanding the chronology of his placement in his grandparents’ home at 9 months old, realizing she was talking to a woman who had saved her husband’s life, in more ways than she might ever know.

She looked for him for 35 years.

Once she found him, she could let him go, as she did that other time, though it broke her heart.

And how could she know, really? How can any of us know the impact of our best and most selfless actions, the ones that make us afraid, make us sad, make us question whether or not we have done the right thing?

She could only know if someone could tell her. She could know if she could see him now, refusing an invitation to go out with the guys because he would rather be home with his family. She could know if she could see him get up from the couch, kiss his wife, and go upstairs to help his son settle down, his son whom many fathers might think was too old to be called sweetie. She could know if she could hear him sing softly to the boy until he fell back to sleep.

She could only know if someone could tell her.

So, I will tell her: Thank you. And me too. I am awfully happy to see that he grew up.





(He's under that pile of kids, somewhere...)

Proposed

So, I got engaged yesterday. To my husband. As some people know, I decided a few months ago that we've been through so much together that we should get married, again, on or around our upcoming ten year anniversary in October. I mean, by the time Gabe and I had known each other 3 years, we had both changed jobs, I graduated from grad school, we bought and sold a house together, got married, and had a kid. It went like this:

Meet at 27, date for 7 months, have conversation about living together wherein I told him that I had no motivation to give up my independence because I loved living alone, unless it was for something more permanent and he said, yeah I thought maybe we could get married. So, move in together at age 28 after dating 8 months. Get officially engaged at age 28 after 10 months of dating in a way that will become an epic and legendary story in your family. Sell your condo 6 months after getting engaged and buy a house in a neighborhood you had never even visited. Change jobs before than even happened. Get married at age 29 because you didn't want to get married in the summer when you both would have been 28 because you thought oh how about October no one gets married in the fall because you are a clueless mess when it comes to anything like WEDDINGS. Get married almost exactly a year and a half to the day after you met, and have a kid less than a year and a half later.

It was meant to be, I suppose, though I'm not sure what that means. I reminded Gabe yesterday about a conversation we had when we had been dating two or three weeks. For some reason, after a Wilco concert, he decided to talk about relationship deal breakers. For the life of me, I can't remember how this conversation started. But I said, well I have had a lot of relationships, including one really long one, and it's different when you enter in a relationship when you're 17 versus 27. You know more about what you want, and you don't want to spend years trying to find it. You figure it out quickly. He kept pestering me about what my dealbreakers were until I finally said, well, for example, I think I want to have kids and so if someone didn't want that at all, I would believe him. He said he didn't want to have kids. I figured it was too early in the relationship to talk about such deep things when we were having fun so I said, we need to talk about something else. On went some random conversation until we had almost reached the car (we were walking along Michigan Avenue this whole time). Out of the blue he said, well, I guess I might change my mind if I met the right person. I said huh? What are you talking about? and he said, I mean, about kids. If I met the right person I would feel differently. Like, I would have kids...with you.

Two weeks in, and the deal was basically sealed. Who knew? Later he told me that he REALLY knew he wanted to marry me when we had been dating about two months and we went to Baraboo, WI for his 28th birthday, and as we were sitting watching a particularly glorious sunset on the beach, I said some nerdy shit about orbital motion. Ah, the REAL way to a man's heart.

The thing is though, I'm not sure we really enjoyed the PROCESS the first time around. We were so clueless and so many things happened so fast that we just ended up fighting over stupid things and almost ruining everything. Gabe felt some weird pressure about how to be the right kind of husband, I wasn't sure how to be a wife, and we were dramatic and ridiculous (more him than me--that's just the truth). Our wedding was great, our kids are great, but I think we felt like we were in a whirlwind and so there was the DRAMA.

And then...there was the REAL drama. You know, the cancer. The cancer that CAME BACK.

There was death, looking right at us, lingering in the corner right next to life. And there it was...AGAIN. So many things have happened. And yet somehow, through all of that, the initial drama, the kids, the cancer...it's like we've been on a really, really long date for the past 11 years.

All that stuff people say happens when you've been together a long time? It hasn't happened. It's not like 6 years in, I figured out he could be annoying. I knew that shit immediately. It's not like we stopped going on awesome and epic dates, because our awesome and epic dates look almost the same as they did when we met. We used to bundle up and go on walks to the park to play catch with a football in the snow AS A DATE. The guy took me to a drag queen show on our third date and we went bowling and to high school football games and...yeah. the same. We still have sex every day. That whole part where he starts to ignore you or neglect you? Huh? Are there other people who aren't married to eternal adolescents? OK, well, not in this house. I mean, the guy was all excited and giddy yesterday and he still is, and he is all "I am so excited! I can't believe it! We're getting married." I don't have the heart to tell him we've already BEEN married for more than 9 years. At dinner last night, he told me that with a few exceptions--cancer and some drama he had caused himself by being particularly stupid--this, what we have, is all he ever wanted.

And while everyone knows that I will never say that cancer brings people closer together, in some ways, it has. We don't love each other more because of cancer; we love each other more because we have seen each other at pretty much the absolute worst and here we are, both still around. We have learned to appreciate the huge differences between us. I mean, someone has to be emotional, someone has to cry, someone has to be nurturing, and it sure as hell ain't me, babe. Someone has to be a stubborn, manic badass, right? Can I take that role? Thanks. Also, there is this. And by this I mean THIS. Blogging has enabled me to say things to my sentimental, always complimentary and sappy and cheesy husband that I would never say out loud, not because I don't love him, but because that's how I am and how I have always been. I know he appreciates that, and it's good for me to give that to him without having to change myself. Plus, now I know he's attracted to me even if I'm bald or my breast has been cut off.
And we both roll our eyes at some of the stuff that made us annoyed with each other before, and we roll our eyes at other people's weird drama as well, because at some point down the line, SHIT GOT REAL, and we stopped inventing problems.

So, we're having some real fun with it this time around. I'm going to wear an actual white dress, maybe two of them. He's going to get a tux this time (I've never seen him in one!). We're doing this whole shindig at our house, and we will probably order fried chicken from the grocery store, buy a sheetcake from Costco, and walk down either the hill if it's nice out or the stairs in the house if it's not, together, to the orchestral version of the Buffy the Vampire theme song once again, and we are doing this all on the 30th anniversary of the day I got hit by a car and lost the ability to walk, so it will be ALL US. And our kids.



I picked out a few rings online that looked kind of engagement-like; this is hard, since I hate the diamond industry. So I showed these to Gabe--because he said at the very beginning of this whole thing that we can't get married again because he hadn't proposed to me (again) yet. At some point he apparently picked a ring and ordered it--a white sapphire. He made plans for us to see the Joffrey Ballet on Valentine's Day. I had a sneaking suspicion he might propose to me then (ten years ago, he proposed the week before Valentine's Day because he thought that would be too "typical." See what I mean? We were taking ourselves WAY too seriously). I got him a Valentine's Day card that involved sharks eating people and laid out the card for him at the breakfast table, with the kids' cards too.

Everyone else opened everything, and I thought I was getting nothing. We were eating cereal, all of us in our bathrobes. Gabe whispered to Lenny and she went running downstairs to the basement. She came back with a big pink construction paper envelope. Inside was the construction paper card Gabe made me, next to a construction paper package. I opened it, and there was a ring inside. Gabe was down on one knee and he was crying. He looked like he wanted to say something and didn't know how. And then he said "Kate, you're the most amazing woman I've ever met. Will you marry me?" The kids sat there looking both excited and dumbfounded at the same time. I laughed and said yes. And then I read the card. It was signed

"Love, Gabe. Your once, current, and future husband."

We will see some of you on October 11. Be ready.

#Parenting

Ah, the Internet. The place where you can read all sorts of advice. The place that makes you feel like you are doing everything WRONG. The huge space that enables everyone to compare themselves to everyone else, where you don't own anything, where other people can always judge you without knowing a damn thing about you.

The place where people talk about how to be mothers.

Every time I read something about this, I develop feelings. Feelings of surprise, confusion, isolation, and determination--but never envy nor guilt. I realize I am a different kind of parent than many parents, that my life has shaped itself differently, especially in the last three and a half years, whether I like it or not. And while I might feel somehow APART from other mothers and parents, I don't feel guilty, not about any of it.

That alone makes me weird. Women seem almost hard-wired into guilt, in a way that men are not. In all honesty, I don't have time for that.

I'm not sure I am the right kind of parent. I am impatient. I spend a lot of time alone. I never used baby talk ever for a moment in my life. I always figured that my babies were just tiny versions of adults. I've taught my kids blackjack and how to shake their booties. I swear in front of them. I take to bed when I have chemo, shut the door, swat them away. I spend time writing. My husband and I invariably exhibit too much PDA in our house. I don't do hair, or crafts. I'm not sure how women are supposed to behave. I don't like sharing my kitchen with anyone. I read the newspaper even when they are yelling for me. I'm not particularly nurturing, though I am an expert in the art of distracting others away from their fears and troubles. I have an obscure, nerdy job and my entire career has laid outside of the trajectory of where anyone thought I would go. I'm no room mother, no corporate bigshot, no drama queen. The closest thing I've ever read to describing a parent who reminds me of myself is in Tina Fey's Bossypants, wherein she describes her father after he discovered her slashed face in the alley. He threw her into the car to get to the hospital, put his hand on her and said: "Don't speak."

Holy shit...that's ME.

What does it mean to be a GOOD parent? How can you tell? When do you know you are failing? If you collapse on the couch after dinner or tell your kids and husband they are on their own for basically the entire month of March because, you know, THE BASKETBALL, are you going to parent purgatory?

See, I always figured that wasn't the case. Maybe my biggest failing as a parent is that I'm a storyteller, and I assume my kids will be storytellers too. So if my husband becomes a basketball widower every spring, rather than focus on the near term reality of me yelling at my son "get that curly head out of the way of my TV!" I focus on this: The fact that someday, my kids will be talking to each other or someone else, and they will tell a story about me lying on the couch and screaming at the television for an entire month and they will say something along the lines of "remember that? what a trip!" They will remember what the couch looked like, with its thousand blankets and rips in the upholstery. They will remember bringing me a La Croix. They will remember the games they played with each other and they will remember learning how to keep stats and they will remember their father feeding them spaghetti three times a week.

They will remember us, this little family unit.

My daughter will always remember the one time a year I volunteered at her school, to teach poetry, to get the kids to write poems. It will be around her birthday, and I will bring cupcakes and I will do this as long as it is allowed. I won't be the one serving snacks at functions or offering myself up for bus duty. I will be the one who will take that day off of work to talk to little kids about IMAGERY.

It doesn't matter if you stay at home, work outside of the home, if you are a single parent or married or if you are a man or a woman or a neighbor or grandparent or whoever you are raising that child or those children. It doesn't matter what you are good at or where you fail. It matters that you show up, but even that doesn't matter every single time. I have decided that the following is true, and it's the Internet, so therefore, who can question my authority?

The best thing you can be for your kids, the most important thing you have to offer, is this:

Be interesting. Be memorable. Be a person outside of them, so that they can see how it's done. There are a lot of different ways to do this. You have to love them--that is definitely a requirement. You have to feed and clothe them and help them find their way. You can be so many things, but remember this:

Someday you will be a story, and that's all you will be. Make it a good one.