by Sky Gilbert
Listen to me. She was the villain. Has anyone ever done a fucking study of mothers? We get a dumb rep. And by that I mean a good one. In other words, we can never be really bad because we’re mothers. But mothers are the worst; worse than any knifing or torture. What that fucking bitch did to me! I know you’ve heard this story before. But before, I always gave the nod to your suggestions that perhaps it was not true. I let you think it might be exaggeration. Well, I’m not exaggerating.
I was there. I was tired, I was worn out, I was eight years old and I was complaining about the vaudeville act. To my mother, this was heresy. I had good reason; it wasn’t just that we were going to have to get up early the next day and haul our asses to some godforsaken town outside of Pasadena to do an afternoon show. It was because the last time we performed there the crowd was terrible. There was no one there — and the sad little group that finally turned up abused us. They fucking threw things at us. I mean, people don’t like the act? Fine, big deal. We all don’t have the same taste. But do they have to throw things?
And so my mother wakes us up with the “Upsy-daisy, girls! It’s never too early to shine!” She knew I didn’t want to get up that morning. She just loved torturing me with her fucking fake cheeriness, loved making me unhappy. It’s as simple as that. Now, why would that be? You know, there are some women who just don’t like other women. No, it’s true, they don’t. And these women-haters are not necessarily femmes fatale. Jesus, I’m the femmest fucking fatale there is, and I love women — especially if they’re smart and have a fucking edge.
I used to love Marlene. I couldn’t stand June Allyson. But the difference is so easy to see. You put the two of them together and it’s evident. But, you know — one of the reasons might have been Marlene’s clit. June Allyson didn’t even have one; I doubt if she even had a boat, never mind the little man in it. But Marlene had a gigantic one; it was like a small dick, I swear. She showed it to me. (Noël Coward was very impressed with it, by the way. He offered to go down on her, but Marlene said it would be incest.) Marlene wanted me to go down on her. But then again, Marlene wanted everyone to go down on her. I’m really not into that. I mean, I like women, but . . . And she absolutely understood. I think she was just pulling my leg. She really liked to shock people. But, boy, did that broad like blow jobs. I think that’s all sex was to her — just getting a good blow job. She used to tell me stories about Mammy going down on her. You know, Mammy from Gone with the Wind — Hattie McDaniel. They met on the set of Blonde Venus. The whole movie was about sex, sex, sex — and debasement. So, sure enough, Hattie starts winking at Marlene. She said that Hattie knew right from the first moment she saw her that all Marlene wanted from life was a good blow. Hattie said that some women, just from the way they wave their cunts around, might as well be wearing a sign saying, Gimme a blow job now!
Well, anyway, Hattie really got off on Marlene’s oversized equipment. I must say, this story made me love Marlene. I didn’t hate June Allyson because she was a woman. I hated her because she was boring. I didn’t love Marlene because she had a big clit and was, therefore, a man. Don’t go all essentialist queer theory on me. Anyway, Marlene wasn’t a man. She was all woman and full of the business. And she was so smart and so nasty — but in a good way. She could make mincemeat of awful people as she would not say one good thing about them. She loved tearing them to shreds. She did it with that Nazi drawl of hers and made it sound like she was sending them to a concentration camp.
But there’s a kind of woman — usually the pinched June Allyson kind, and the kind like my fucking mother — who congenitally hate other women. Who knows why? It’s probably innate, some crazy genetic thing. I know my sister Virginia was not too fond of women either, so maybe she got it from my mother. Well, this kind of woman is always jealous, always competitive — like a man, actually — around other women. Okay, so now imagine a woman like this with three fucking daughters. What luck, eh? Well, of course she’s going to torture them. I used to feel so sorry for my father because he knew she hated us; but there was nothing he could do about it. I mean, mothers back then — and even now — those manipulative hags can do no wrong. Those evil bitches, someone should rewrite the book on mothers. Mother’s Day should be Hitler’s Birthday, and hey, how should we celebrate that? Get Hitler a nice card, congratulating him on his crimes? Why is it that women don’t commit as many crimes as men? But oh, they do. They torture their children — it’s called parenting.
So that morning we were in some sad and sorry hamlet near Pasadena on our way to another matinee. And we had to get up early after a late-night show. But mainly I couldn’t face getting hit with the tomatoes. You know, years later Sue, Virginia and I would laugh about the tomatoes. But at the time it wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t funny. And I wasn’t having a tantrum or anything, Jesus, I wasn’t lying on the floor doing a Helen Keller. I wasn’t being a fucking child star; I wasn’t even a fucking child star at this time. This was completely before Hollywood. I was just the prettier, cuter sister who could actually sing. Now, I may have been crying, but it wasn’t fake crying. And believe me, I know the difference.
I got up and packed my suitcase and sat on it. As I say, I was crying. And Mother was in a rush like she always was. And there was a schedule. And there was just me in the room. My sisters were already in the car waiting. It was a very sad room — the room I had slept in with Sue the night before. I remember there were two single beds, and a painting of a brook and a stream and a church. A goddamn church. And there was a lamp that didn’t work on the bedside table. And, of course, a Bible inside the table, and bedspreads that had that kind of grubby feel. You know, not exactly dirty, but not exactly clean. There was only one tiny round window, and it was also dirty. And there was a rug on the floor that had some sort of biblical scene woven into it.
I’ll never forget that room.
So there I was sitting on my suitcase crying. My mother comes back up to get me. I was ready to tell her I was sorry for crying, and fully expected to do my duty and go down to the car. But no, when my mother saw me she was livid. Sometimes I think my mother actually resented me because I was such a nice person. There are people like that, you know. They feel bad because they’re not nice people, and so they hate people who are. The bad people who are just fucking bad are actually not as evil as the ones who wish they weren’t. Evil people who are just evil will leave you alone. But the ones who feel bad about being evil and wish they weren’t — they just love to torture nice people out of jealousy.
So she opens the door and sees me there. I swear she didn’t miss a beat, she just started her act. My mother was a very good actress, really she was. She didn’t get much of a chance to show it in vaudeville. But when the chips were down, man, you didn’t have a chance with her. Nobody did. She could turn it on and off like a fountain at Versailles. She took one look at me and she went completely dark. It was like a cloud passing over the sun. She said, “I’m sorry to see you’re crying.” And I fell for it and sniffled and said, “I’m sorry too.” Then it was serious shit, completely terrifying, and she knew it.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot and you’re a drag on the act,” she said. “But audiences like me,” I said, hopefully. “Sometimes they like you,” she said, “but the problem is you can’t take it. You can’t handle it. You’re no good on the road. You’re just a pain. So I’m sorry to do this to you, darling. But we just can’t have you in the act anymore.” I didn’t understand. I asked her what she was talking about. “I’m leaving you, I’m leaving you here in . . .” I remember now; the name of the town was San Gabriel. That’s right, like the angel. “I’m leaving you here in San Gabriel,” she said. I’ll never forget those words.
I was confused. I said, “Mother, how can you leave me here? I’m your daughter!” Then — I swear it — I was seven years old, remember? Well, maybe eight, but I was a young eight, at least emotionally. And remember, my father was already livi
ng in a shack. And my life hadn’t been too secure up to that time. All I really had was being onstage and singing with my sisters, and, of course, having audiences love me. So I couldn’t believe that was being taken away. But my mother really seemed to mean it. She said, completely seriously, “No, we’re going to leave you here, honey; we’re going to leave you in San Gabriel.”
And this is the part that sounds completely crazy now, so many years later. The idea that I would actually believe that my mother was going to leave me in that lousy one-horse town sounds crazy. But at the time I truly believed her. I said, “Mummy, how can you do that?” And she said, “Sometimes parents leave their kids. Daddy left all of us. Now I’m leaving you. That just happens sometimes. You’re a pretty girl and you can sing all right. Maybe someone will adopt you. And maybe, when you work for them, you won’t complain so much and you won’t be so much trouble, and everything will be all right. But right now, I’m going to have to say goodbye.” By then I was starting to get hysterical. She pretended to comfort me, which made it even more real: “Don’t worry, honey, I’m sure you’ll be okay.” At this point she had closed the door and locked me in the room — those old rooming-house doors could be locked from the outside. Well, that was it. I was alone in the room. And as far as I knew, because I was eight years young, it was forever or until someone found me. Of course, I started screaming and yelling, and my mother, God love her, that righteous bitch, let this go on for at least an hour. We almost didn’t make our gig. She almost made us miss our gig so she could teach me a lesson.
I remember how I used to hate it when people would praise us, and she’d say, “I never spank them, you know, I don’t believe in corporal punishment.” No, she didn’t. She was a good mother. Instead of spanking us she delivered the kind of torture that makes you wish you’d never been born. I will never forget what it was like when my mother left me in that room. Therapists talk about abandonment issues, and with most people it’s just abandonment in theory. They think their parents don’t love them and might threaten to leave if they didn’t measure up. But my mother invented conditional love. She made it perfectly clear that she wouldn’t love me if I didn’t measure up. And, in fact, there was no point in her loving me if I didn’t sing like a trooper and turn up on time. Her standards were high. And when it came to vulnerability and weakness and all the good emotions — pity and love — well, she didn’t have time for any of that shit.
So you have to understand that when you make threats like you did, it must happen: you turn into my mother. I know I’m supposed to leave that behind. But some things you can’t leave behind. Jesus, it’s not fair for you to play on that kind of shit when you know the story. I know I’ve told you before — you know how sensitive I am about being just left. What do you want me to do, get down on my knees? You know I can’t anymore. I couldn’t even give you or anyone else a blow job.
You know what triggers all this shit? The fact that you demand I come up with an organizing argument to prove to your satisfaction that my attachment to Dash and his work is not neurotic or psychotic or whatever. What’s going on here? Aren’t you my friend anymore? I swear, if I could see your face it would make all the difference.
There were two ways you used to be stern with me. One was when you were defending your boundaries. I know you have a lot of them. When you were doing that, it was serious and scary. It was all about you, and I would have to dig my heels in and obey because you were more scared than I was (even though you would never admit fear, just show the anger). Then there were the times when the littlest smile would creep onto your face, because it was not about your issues at all. Your boundaries weren’t threatened; you were just trying to help me and teach me some lesson. I could tell by looking at you that you were just being stern with me because you loved me.
Okay, you aren’t her, all right? But it’s hard for me to remember you aren’t my mother when I can’t see your fucking face. I resent your reaction to the Dash King business — it brings up all my mother bullshit. There’s something about Dash that interests me. So? Can’t I flirt with ideas occasionally? Can’t you have unconditional love for me and accept that without demanding every observation be a chapter of a fucking PhD thesis?
Of course, you know I can go there. I can switch over in one second, and I can be the professor, the Doctor. That’s what I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life turning myself into. My academic record is, as you know, a great comfort to me. But sometimes I wonder if that’s all there is — which is an old Peggy Lee song that I really wish I’d recorded before I died. You see, I’m not superstitious about tossing out remarks that bring up the past, because that’s the whole point of being where I am today, of doing all this work, of my relationship with you. I will no longer be examined at every moment and tested. The tests are over.
Okay, okay, I hear you. You’ll tell me that testing me is caring for me. That I never learned to care about myself because I wasn’t properly parented. Yes, yes, it’s true. I don’t know how to respond when people are critical. Tests are good, and it’s not about unconditional or conditional love. You are not not loving me by asking me to justify myself.
Okay, so here goes. I will try to answer your question. You want me to tell you why I’m obsessed with Dash.
It’s not just an irrational emotion. It’s not some force from the past drawing me back. Yes, there may be a theoretical basis (or perhaps I should say, paradoxically, an anti-theory theoretical basis) for my pursuance of the Dash King papers. Perhaps I’ve been on thin ice with you — because of the antiqueness of his obsessions and their possible relationship to my past. Also, I know you rejected all that queer stuff long ago with the rest of the world. Now we live in a post-theory — or what has been postulated as post-theory — era. And we are, in fact, moving into what might be called the post-post-theory era. I am perfectly aware of that. The truth is that my interest in Dash King can easily be related to the post-theory position. I know post-theory was justified long ago, but perhaps not in this particular way.
All right, I am willing to go there, unafraid. In fact, that should be my theme here: unafraid. I am willing to go into dangerous territories. And you are, in effect, daring me. So I will. You will probably say that what I am about to postulate has already been said. Fine, but have all the implications been explored?
The implications become clear in this next Dash text. It’s about the perils of deconstruction, of theory, of constructionism, of fantasy, of fiction. . . . It seems to me that the death of homosexuality was a kind of suicide. Speaking of implications, homosexuals (and specifically intellectuals like Foucault) are implicated in this. Dash clearly has issues with Foucault. Yet I would argue that his view of the world is Foucauldian — Dash is involved with the construct of sexuality, though he would deny homosexuality is a construct. But his life and his letters prove to us, so blatantly, that it is.
Let’s begin with the dangers of theory (which have been well documented). I am interested in looking at extreme skepticism. Here’s one, just to pick a random example: post-structuralists once went so far as to question Galileo’s theory of gravity as a truism. Science tells us there have been different concepts of gravity. We know that Aristotle, when he witnessed gravity, witnessed a stone seeking out its natural place. Galileo, on the contrary, witnessed, in the movement of the same stone, the gravitationally induced movement of a pendulum. These are two different views of reality. And traditional history, before post-structuralism, would have us think that Galileo’s view was the correct view, and that Newtonian physics (based on Galileo’s theories) had transcended the ancient Greek view, which was mired in superstition. But post-structuralism would have us look at the two approaches to gravity as different constructs that are equivalent in value, suggesting that each view is acceptable in its own context. Neither is more right than the other. But we can see the weakness in the post-structuralist position. What does it leave us with? A world in which ever
ything is a construct, where there is no “there” there; where there is, in effect, no reality, only relativity. Philosophers are now certainly toying with the theory that there is “no reality,” and some are going further with it. I know you have done some research in that area.
I am struggling with it. I see the perils of post-structuralism, and post theory that would deny reality. I am one of those who is — as you may have already guessed — still attracted to reality. There, I have let the cat out of the bag. I am attracted to reality. Is that the “first principle” that you wish to challenge? Well, go ahead. Or are you going to say that the reality principle is okay for some but not others? That it has dangers for people like me, people with addiction issues? We are attracted to the real world. This means, for us, doing drugs in the real world. This means living, in other words, in a fantasy world in reality, rather than living in cyberspace, a completely fictional world. But cyberspace would be a much safer place for us.
This brings me right back to the idea that I am some sort of special person. And I thought the idea was for me to forget how special I am (which I mainly have done). I thought I was supposed to simply function as an academic, to function within that particular reality. There is also, I think, a fallacy here. The implication that arises from the notion that I can’t handle reality, or shouldn’t be attracted to it, is that all reality is sordid, or sexual, or dark, or sad, or dirty. But why need it be? Why can’t reality be me sitting — or attempting to — at a desk and working on theory or anti-theory? I am, for one, willing to accept that reality.