by Carol Selick
“What are you doing?” I asked, pushing away his hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why are you touching me? I thought we were just friends.”
“But you want me to. Why else would you take your clothes off? You know you want me to fuck you, Carol.”
Before I could answer, Tom was on top of me and I was too out of it to fight him.
“Okay, just do it!” I said as I felt him slide off my panties. I closed my eyes and prayed he’d come quickly. He did, I didn’t. I fell into a dead sleep, woke up at dawn, threw my clothes on, and went home. Not until I got undressed to take a long shower did I realize I’d left my panties buried under the covers at Tom’s.
I felt utterly disgusted with myself for giving in. What was I thinking when I got into bed in nothing but my t-shirt and underwear? As the day wore on, I felt sad, empty, and lonely. More importantly, I’d lost my only friend in the neighborhood.
I was embarrassed to tell Bruce what had happened, but when I sat down at my Monday night session, he could tell something was wrong.
“How was your weekend, Carol? You look upset.”
“I am. Wait, how can you tell?”
“You’re wearing all black and thick makeup. It’s a dead giveaway.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I knew it was his job to be observant, but I was impressed that he noticed I’d piled on the eyeliner and mascara.
“You’re right, I screwed up. Friday night I was at Tom’s. It was raining, and we were smoking pot, and he asked me to stay. I was wasted and didn’t want to get soaked, so I agreed.”
I paused to put out my cigarette and quickly lit another one. This was even harder than I thought it would be. I couldn’t look Bruce in the eye.
“We’ve been just friends, so when he said I could sleep with him, I didn’t think much of it. But I stupidly climbed into bed with just my underwear on. He thought I was coming on to him and started touching me.”
“What did you do?”
“I should have run home, but I let him have sex with me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was stoned and tired, and part of me felt sorry for him.”
“So, you sacrificed your own needs to please him and did something you clearly didn’t want to do.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.”
“What would you have done differently?”
“I wouldn’t have let myself get so stoned, and definitely wouldn’t have stayed over or assumed he wasn’t interested in me.”
“You’re an attractive woman, Carol. Many men will be attracted to you.”
I felt myself blushing as Bruce’s electrifying words sunk in. Are you one of them? Are you attracted to me? I so wanted to ask him, but I didn’t dare.
“Thanks. I guess I have to be more aware or something,” I finally managed to say.
“Yes, and ask yourself, why am I not worth putting my needs first? Any thoughts?”
“I don’t know. Not feeling good enough?”
“That’s part of it, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Many young women have problems with low self-esteem.”
“How can I get over that?”
“Keep at it—you will. It’s a process.”
I felt lighter as I walked out of Bruce’s office. He didn’t make me feel ashamed or bad for what I’d done, but he didn’t agree with it either. But what made me the happiest was that he said he thought I was attractive!
16
WEEKENDS
Women together have got to be strong,
And follow our freedom and sing our own song.
Be brave and discover the place we belong,
For our art, our life—
Chained and tamed woman’s blues.
After Nina moved uptown and got busy with school, I started hanging out with my Jersey friend Stevie on weekends. She was quickly becoming one of my most interesting friends. Stevie found her new digs on a bulletin board at the Rutgers Student Center posted by an artsy couple, Joe and Sandy, that everyone called Mutt and Jeff. Joe was six-foot-four, with a little slouch, long straggly blond hair, light blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. He was a true gentle giant. Sandy was petite, barely five-foot-tall, with long, dark straight hair and bangs that accentuated her large brown eyes. Their backgrounds were as opposite as their looks. Joe felt right at home living with a bunch of women, since he came from a working-class family and grew up with three sisters. He even let Sandy paint his fingernails weird colors sometimes as a joke. He liked wearing corduroy overalls and plaid shirts and went barefoot no matter the season.
Of course, I said yes when he asked me to be an extra in the original hippie horror flick he was working on for his Senior project as a film major. It sounded like such fun! He wanted me to be a hippie zombie, with white face makeup, blackened eyes, a bandana around my head, and my hair all teased out. My part was to lure a group of curious teenagers to the hills behind a haunted house, where other zombies were waiting to ambush them. But as it turned out, the film never happened.
Sandy grew up on the Upper East Side and her father was a big-deal executive in an advertising agency. She had a thick New York accent and was studying to be a fashion designer. She came up with the brilliant idea to transform a pair of jeans into a maxi skirt by cutting the inseam of the pants and inserting a contrasting color in the center. I proudly wore one of her first creations, made from a pair of purple jeans that Robbie had left behind. I felt hip and sexy whenever I wore it and sometimes a little sad.
A lot of creative people hung out at the house and I never knew who was going to drop in. It was in South River, less than a mile from the New York bus stop and a few miles from Rutgers. The house was an old, rundown two-story colonial on a corner lot surrounded by overgrown bushes and trees. Sandy and Joe occupied the two upstairs bedrooms, using one room as a studio. Stevie had the large corner bedroom downstairs. It was big enough for the double bed with the light blue wicker headboard that she bought at a garage sale. By the window, her artist’s easel proudly displayed her latest painting. Next to her room was a smaller bedroom where I stayed. A stone fireplace was on one wall in the living room and an old upright piano stood against the wall next to the spare bedroom. It was probably too expensive to move, so the previous tenants left it there. Some of the original ivory keys were chipped, and it needed tuning, but it was good enough for me to bang out some chords and accompany myself.
Stevie loved music, too. Although her main talent was in the visual arts, she was taking blues piano lessons from a middle-aged professor who gave private lessons at his house. She was really into it and practiced every day until his jealous wife called and told her not to bother coming back until she put some clothes on. It was what Stevie wasn’t wearing under her skimpy halter tops that bothered her teacher’s wife. Like me and most of my women friends, Stevie had “burned” her bra and liberated her breasts. She did have a thing for older men, though. She was having a hot and heavy affair with one of her other married professors but was thinking of breaking it off. She was growing tired of her backdoor man’s 1:00 am phone calls, 2:00 am knocks on the door and 4:00 am door slams.
“It’s all so cliché,” she said one Saturday afternoon as we sat at the dining room table drinking tea from mismatched floral cups and saucers bought at one of her recent garage sale trips. “Young, naive coed has affair with older, married professor, waiting for him to leave his self- described miserable marriage,” Stevie yawned, as she flicked an ash from her newly acquired long, black cigarette holder. She was trying to look sophisticated but she wasn’t fooling anyone. Her suburban upbringing was just as sheltered as mine, no matter how many posters of Greta Garbo and Lauren Bacall hung in her room.
“Let’s write a blues song about it. You’ve gotta let it all out!”
“Yeah!”
The
next weekend, Stevie handed me a sheet of yellow-lined paper with lyrics on both sides in red ink. Her angry words nearly leaped off the page. We called it “The Angry Woman’s Song.”
Well, you can have your wife and that crazy life
Of not knowin’ where you’re going or what you’re living for.
And all I gotta say is that mine’s a different way . . .
You know I want to be free from all that pain and strife.
Close the door, Daddy, and go back home to your wife.
For sure, this song will give Stevie the guts to break up with her bad-boy professor, I thought, but I was wrong. A week later, his wife caught them in a New Brunswick hotel room not far from campus.
“Do you think he wanted to get caught? You know, the whole guilt thing?” she called to ask the night it happened.
“Maybe. I’m learning in therapy that the unconscious is very powerful and it can influence us in mysterious ways.”
“Yeah. Why else would a smart man like him do such a dumb thing? How could he leave the hotel info on a pad by the phone?”
I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I was thinking, How could a talented, beautiful, smart woman like you do such a dumb thing as sleep with your married English professor?
“You know you’re better off without him. He probably wouldn’t have left his wife.”
“Yeah, but the sex was amazing!”
“You know what they say: Is the fucking you’re getting worth the fucking you’re getting?”
When I saw Stevie at the South River house the following weekend, her newest creation was sitting on her easel. It was a large charcoal drawing of a woman in a long black dress with one arm up in the air making a fist. Wrapped around the wrist of her other hand was a broken chain falling from her waist. Her head was tossed back and her thick dark hair was flying freely. Her mouth was open as if she were shouting. She was the very embodiment of defiance, freedom, and strength. It was one of the most powerful pictures I’d ever seen. I stood there for a few minutes, caught up in its raw emotion. It spoke to me in a way that went straight to my soul.
I turned around and saw Stevie standing in the doorway, arms folded, with a rose-colored fringed shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She was waiting for my reaction.
“When did you do this?” I asked her.
“The night Paul and I got caught. I stayed up all night drawing and drinking tea.”
“Nothing stronger than tea?”
“No. I didn’t want to water down my feelings.”
Just then Dani Melber walked into the room. She and her husband Rich had lived in the house before Stevie moved in, and she still liked hanging out here. She was the smartest woman I knew and my first friend who was actively involved in the women’s movement. At the time this seemed ironic since she was also my only married friend. She spoke fluent French, played classical piano, and was working on her second Masters.
Dani was only five feet tall, but the big, dark bun piled loosely on top of her head made her look much taller. She was a force to be reckoned with. She had an opinion about everything and everyone, but nobody minded, because she was so smart and tried very hard not to hurt anyone’s feelings.
“Oh my god! Oh my god! This is a masterpiece!” Dani cried, spotting Stevie’s picture. “It’s everything we’ve been fighting for! We are that woman!” She bobbed her head yes with such excitement that her bun almost toppled over.
Inspired, I ran to the piano and improvised some blues chords. Dani and Stevie were right behind me.
“I’ve got to find a melody that goes with your picture,” I said to Stevie, trying out chord progressions.
“Yeah!” Dani yelled as she danced around the room à la Isadora Duncan. “So chained and tamed, chained and tamed, so chained and tamed!” she sang, then gave out another drawn-out Yeahhh that sounded even breathier and sexier.
“That’s it, Chained and Tamed Woman’s Blues!” I said.
“I can’t believe you got all this just from my picture.” Stevie flipped her shawl over her shoulder and turned towards the kitchen. She looked detached and cool, but I could tell she was pleased by the way her voice sounded a little higher.
“Anyone want a cup of tea?” she asked, glancing back at us.
The next weekend when I came back to the house, Stevie’s picture was hanging over the piano. Dani and I got inspired to finish our song, and it almost wrote itself.
Chained and Tamed Woman’s Blues
Straightjacket night, blanket so tight
Wrapped up in a woman who’s waiting to fight.
Burstin’ with something, knowing the time must be right
For her art, her life—
Chained and tamed woman’s blues,
So chained and tamed, so chained and tamed,
So chained and tamed—Aah, aah, aah . . . yeah!
I guess you’re wondering what I’m smiling for.
I used to be a prisoner, but not anymore.
I’m breaking, breaking, breaking through every door
For my art, my life—
Chained and tamed woman’s blues.
It might break my heart to break my chains,
No one knows my pains, my pains.
I love you so, but I’ll love you more
When I own my soul, and not before.
So chained and tamed, so chained and tamed,
so chained and tamed—Aah, aah, aah—Yeah!
It might break our hearts to break our chains,
But oh the gains, the gains, the gains,
We’re breakin’ through, we’re wanting more
Than the life we’ve lived before.
17
DEMO
I live my life like a song, I’m a dreamer. So long!
I began my life with lullabies, now I’m saying my goodbyes.
My music is what I feel, it’s the only thing that’s real.
If I wanted to make it in the music business, I’d need to record a demo. My problem was coming up with the money. Then Joe made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He’d pay for my demo tape in exchange for being my manager/producer. I couldn’t believe my luck!
When Stevie told me he had a “business” on the side, I knew exactly what she meant. Her housemate, Joe was a small-time drug dealer, mostly marijuana and occasionally cocaine—no big deal, pun intended. Musicians and drug dealers went together like disc jockeys and payola. Money was money, clean or dirty, and nobody cared where it came from as long as the music kept playing.
I agreed to record five original songs: four women’s blues songs a la Laura Nyro, and a lighter one a la Carole King. Joe knew some musicians who were willing to do the recording in exchange for “free samples.”
Everyone was excited for me and my father even sent me a couple of song ideas. He was reaching out, trying to connect in ways I could relate to. I rejected the first set of lyrics:
Spaced out like a bird in flight,
Spaced out like a runaway kite . . .
Space is my reality, a spiritual mentality . . .
I had to admit, though, that the second idea had possibilities.
I live my life like a song, I’m a dreamer, so long,
I heard lovers sweet, sweet songs
And I had to follow, right or wrong . . .
I put a catchy melody and rhythm to my father’s lyrics. I thought “I Live My Life Like a Song” might have commercial potential, and I wanted to appeal to a wider audience, not just broken-hearted women. But I was going to include “Chained and Tamed Woman’s Blues” and another original blues song. The upbeat song I chose was the one I wrote for Robbie, “Honey, Let the Good Times Roll.” Maybe something positive would come out of our relationship after all.
I wrote down the lyrics and chords and sang and played all five
songs into my Panasonic cassette recorder. The next weekend, Joe brought the musicians to the South River house. They looked like a motley crew, half awake and kinda quiet until Joe passed a joint around while we listened to my tape. Then they picked up their instruments and the fun began. I got good vibes from the keyboard player. He was a cool-looking black dude, with an earring in one ear and thick leather bracelets on each wrist. He was a music major at Rutgers and classically trained, but could he play the blues! “I dig your songs, Carol. I can really feel you.”
The drummer and bass player played around with different rhythms. “Playing music is like flying a plane—takeoffs and landings,” the drummer advised as he took a big toke on his joint. “Let’s work on these intros and endings.” I nodded, trying to suppress a smile. I’d only sung with a few bands so far and still felt like I had to prove myself. Sometimes musicians copped an attitude toward singers who didn’t play an instrument in the band. But these guys were the real deal—they liked my songs and it was clear that they weren’t just phoning it in. We went through the songs, spending a lot of time on beginnings and endings. We avoided long solos since the demo was meant to showcase my songs and my vocals.
I was flying high! My songs were coming to life and I couldn’t wait until the actual recording. The rehearsal went so well Joe scheduled the recording session for the following week. One of his “business associates” had a studio in his parents’ basement.
I felt happy and fulfilled on the bus ride back to New York. For the first time, this feeling had nothing to do with being in a relationship. My music was a reflection of my experiences and it was uniquely mine. It came from a part of my soul so deep that no one could take it away—not my parents or my old boyfriends or even Bruce.
As I got closer to the city, I thought about my last therapy session. I’d told him how I ran out on big-shot manager Mark Leonard, and that he’d said I was making the biggest mistake of my life.