The Lucky Star
Page 74
THE REPTILE SHEDS HER SKIN
Epigraph: “Therefore, you must be in want . . .”—James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 31 (“The Apocryphon of James,” bef. 314).
Epigraph: “Only the most important things should be clothed in the honor of the symbol.”—Wilhelm Stekel, Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex, trans. Dr. S. Parker (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1930; n.d. for orig. German ed.), vol. II, p. 325, apparently quoting Creuzer from Schlesinger, pub. 1912.
This page: The FBI agent who “rewrites” certain passages of his notes—G. Daniel Lassiter, ed., Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment (New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, Perspectives in Law and Psychology, vol. 20, 2004), pp. 215–17 (Vanessa A. Edkins and Lawrence S. Wrightsman, “The Psychology of Entrapment”), p. 218.
This page: Description of the interior of the transwoman’s skull—Slightly after a visit to the Basilica Santa Maria del Pi, Barcelona, 2014.
SHOW NIGHTS
Epigraph: “I’m terribly critical . . .”—Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Randy L. Schmidt (Chicago: Chicago Review Press / An A Cappella Book, 2014), p. 167 (Silver Screen, December 1948).
Epigraph: “Today’s women who have sex with other women . . .”—Kat Harding, The Lesbian Kama Sutra (London: Carlton Books, 2010 repr. of 2004 ed.), p. 28.
This page: every religion even of love has to be unloving and cruel to unbelievers.—A Freudianism.
This page: Neva’s photos, rifled by Judy—Very loosely based (with embellishments, deletions and anachronisms, on photos in GLBTHS, Linda Welcome papers, carton 1.
This page: Brief conversation on ovarian cancer—Information from Kristine Conner and Lauren Langford, Ovarian Cancer: Your Guide to Taking Control (Cambridge, Massachusetts: O’Reilly, 2003), pp. 55–62.
WITH SHANTELLE
Epigraph: “Things are the other way round . . .”—Bullhe Shah, Sufi Lyrics, ed. and trans. Christopher Shackle (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press / Murty Classical Library of Hindi, 2015; orig. lyrics bef. 1759), p. 15 (no. 8).
Epigraph: “Interest is seldom pursued . . .”—Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays, ed. David Womersley (New York: Penguin Books, 2003; essays orig. pub. 1739–61), p. 302 (The Rambler, No. 183, Tuesday, 17 December 1751).
WHAT THE CAT CAUGHT
Epigraph: “In the face of another’s great excellence . . .”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, ed. Peter Hutchinson, trans. Elisabeth Stopp (New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 7 (no. 45).
Epigraph: “The conscious prayer of the inferior . . .”—George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951; orig. ed. 1924), p. 45 (introduction).
“she who for our sake hid her burning thoughts from us.”—Somewhat after The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Hieroglyphic Transcript and Translation into English of the Ancient Egyptian Papyrus of Ani, [trans.,] intro. and commentary by E. A. Wallis Budge (New York: Gramercy Books, 1999; orig. pub. 1895), p. 101.
Alcman: “Let no mortal fly to the sky . . .”—Gloria Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014 pbk. ed.; orig. pub. 2008), p. 155 (Partheneion text and translation, slightly “retranslated” by WTV).
“Double Domination: Petticoat Punishment”—GLBT Historical Society. Francine Logandice Collection (#2002-04). Carton 1.
believing that Neva might have the power to lift him back up . . .—After Kathryn Springer, The Dandelion Field (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014), p. 285: “It’s like saying I don’t believe God has the power to lift me back up.”
“Remember that you are a son of kings . . .”—Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, ed., The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), p. 391 (“The Song of the Pearl”: “Remember the Pearl”).
“I don’t enjoy my troubles that much to dwell on them.”—Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Randy L. Schmidt (Chicago: Chicago Review Press / An A Cappella Book, 2014), p. 167 (Jack Holland, Silver Screen, 1948).
“I’m unscathed, unscarred, unembittered . . .”—Schmidt, p. 176 (Judy Garland, Motion Picture, September 1950).
“Police are offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward . . .”—Much abridged and somewhat altered [for privacy] from SFGATE: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Richmond-police-seek-4-in-gang-rape-of-lesbian-3180025.php. [San Francisco Chronicle.] Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer Published 4:00 a.m., Sunday, December 21, 2008, “Richmond police seek 4 in gang rape of lesbian.” Downloaded for WTV by Jordan Rothacker on February 20, 2018.
This page: Nancy Kerrigan from Seattle to Lillehammer—Keith Davidson, Nancy Kerrigan (New York: Scholastic Inc. / Sports Shots: Collector’s Book 26, 1994), pp. 20, 29.
This page: Rosemary Strand “was a cervical cancer survivor”—Two days after her twenty-eighth birthday, Rosemary Strand was afflicted with a particularly painful menstrual period. As a rule her time of the month was merely inconvenient, and although her husband claimed that she got nasty-tempered a day or two before, Rosemary considered that he used her periods as excuses to blame their arguments on her, because she got along fine with everyone else. Her anemic friend Lily dreaded the onset of bleeding, and frequently had to call in sick at the office, where her position was accordingly becoming more precarious. Sometimes Lily had to stay in bed for a day or two; her pains were excruciating, and once or twice a year she had to go to the emergency room for a transfusion. Rosemary was grateful not to be Lily, whom she sometimes suspected of exaggeration. This period, while it annoyed her, did not prevent her from going to work. The flow was no heavier than usual, although the unpleasant sensation continued. She woke up uneasy. Her husband, wishing for a certain something, began to stroke her belly, and Rosemary flinched because her left side felt tender. Insulted, he thought she was losing her desire for him. After breakfast she decided to call Dr. Nisbet, her gynecologist, whom she rarely troubled and who therefore agreed to see her that day. Mr. Peterson, her easygoing boss, made no trouble when she asked to leave work an hour early.—Female trouble? he said with a wink. Dr. Nisbet asked whether everything was good at home. Rosemary said that it was. When he palpitated her left side, Rosemary almost screamed. He diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome. For the rest of that week the pills helped, but then it began to seem that she might actually be getting worse, so she went back to Dr. Nisbet, who appeared slightly annoyed. He referred her to a specialist. Rosemary had to wait three weeks for this appointment. The tenderness on her left side concealed itself unless she was touched. So Rosemary continued to be a star at work, and the only person whom she dissatisfied was her husband. There were dinnertimes when he sat staring at her, and twice he asked if she were seeing someone else. Once she convinced him that the problem was merely temporary and physical—the specialist would solve it—he bore up cheerfully enough. Rosemary felt embarrassed to have to ask Mr. Peterson for permission to leave early again. She promised to come in early on the following morning. He gazed at her for a moment, then nodded. This time he was definitely displeased, as she had known he would be; she had nearly cancelled her appointment, but then she remembered the other dissatisfied man in her life; the very thought of him on top of her almost made her side feel tender. The specialist said she had nothing to worry about. All the same, on the followup appointment he recommended exploratory surgery. Rosemary woke up after a surprise hysterectomy and her sexual desire was gone forever. Her friends told her that she was lucky to be alive. Although Rosemary, who had seen her mother go that way, acknowledged the unpleasantness of ovarian cancer, she could not help but wonder whether the operation had really saved her. In her second year of remission, when she finally weaned herself from opioids, it turned out that the pain was mostly gone, but so was her pleasure. Although she thought that she wanted Kevin inside her, she could no longer get wet no matte
r what he did to her. Although she remained in possession of her clitoris, her orgasms felt unsatisfactory, for cervical contractions never come easy without a cervix. Kevin, who had been patient with her for a very long time, could not help but wonder whether, as he expressed it, something psychological might have happened. Rosemary spread her legs and lay there; it was hardly the same for him, either. Closing her eyes, she could see his face grown cold with disappointment. Another specialist, diagnosing vaginal atrophy, recommended estrogen-testosterone replacement therapy, and that helped a little, but even though his penis hurt her less and she could sometimes climax, she never felt satisfied; her frustrated desire built and built, and she began to get angry at him. They both pretended as long as they could, after which they avoided saying an ever increasing number of things. Just before their twelfth wedding anniversary, she was washing their clothes and found a lipstick stain on his underpants. Rosemary kept quiet. That night when he rolled over on top of her, she burst into tears. At first he tried to deny it, but when she reminded him that they had promised always to be honest with each other, he admitted that he was seeing another woman, and not the first. Seeing his shoulders stiff and his face averted as he sat there on the edge of the bed, the wife felt nothing. Then she heard their daughter tiptoeing past them to the bathroom. Karen must have been listening. Rosemary felt hatred and rage.
This page: Details on the “calculating child killer”—John Glatt, My Sweet Angel: The True Story of Lacey Spears, the Seemingly Perfect Mother Who Murdered Her Son in Cold Blood (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016), pp. 200–202, 218, 290–91, 308.
JUST KISS ME
Epigraph: “My only desire is to make love . . .”—Norman Johnston, Leonard Savitz and Marvin E. Wofgang, ed., The Sociology of Punishment and Correction, 2nd ed (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970; orig. ed. 1962), p. 474 (David A. Ward and Gene G. Kassebaum, “Homosexuality in a Women’s Prison”).
This page: Tale of the “numerous sex acts” upon the fourteen-year-old girl—Coal Valley News [West Virginia], Wednesday, May 6, 2015, pp. 1A, 5A (Fred Pace, “Boone grand jury indicts 53 people”).
“she’s less simple.” + “She’s stretched awfully thin.” + “Judy’s finally losing weight.”—David Shipman, Judy Garland: The Secret Life of An American Legend (New York: Hyperion, 1992), p. 175: “She was slim and talented but strung tight like a violin string—quite different from the happy little roly-poly who sang her heart out at Grauman’s Chinese Theater” (Helen Rose, on Judy Garland, 1945).
This page: The tale of Never Despise—The Threefold Lotus Sutra, trans. Bunno Kato, Yoshiro Tamura and Kojiro Myasaka, with revs. (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co., 1995 repr. of 1975 ed.; orig. mss. ca. 4th cent.?), p. 291.
This page: rerun about an ingenuous young bride—Based, of course, on the plot of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca (New York: Avon / HarperCollins, 1971; orig. ed. 1938). The cited passage is on p. 271.
This page: shall it ever be told of her that she would speak?—After Job 37:20.
THIRST
Epigraph: “Therefore, if I may not draw from the fullness of the Fountain . . .”—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (New York: Penguin, 1987 repr. of 1952 ed.; orig. Latin version wr. ca. 1413), p. 193.
Epigraph: “Jesus said, ‘He who will drink from my mouth . . .’”—James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 137.
This page: the more she could suffer for the lesbian’s sake, the more pleasing would she become to her.—Thomas à Kempis, p. 86: “The more he can suffer for His sake, the more he will be pleasing to God.”
This page: Lynda Koolish’s photograph of Margie Adam—Carol Ascher, Louise DeSalvo, Sara Ruddick, ed., Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about Their Work on Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 113–22 (Lynda Koolish, “This Is Who She Is to Me: On Photographing Women”). When I was interviewing lesbians for this novel, I was enthralled and inspired to hear in their testimony about the ladies they loved confirmation of Koolish’s words (p. 116) that “what I depict as beauty in women is a kind of responsiveness—forthrightness, expressiveness, internal strength.”
This page: believing that the old lady had spoken all.—Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, ed., The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), p. 196 (“Three Forms of First Thought”): “Now I have come the second time in the likeness of a female and have spoken all.”
This page: healthy topless young women driving nails, & c.—Somewhat after an event in Albion, California, in 1972, as described in: GLBTHS, Linda Welcome papers, carton 1.
This page: the faraway mother of a voice.—Barnstone and Meyer, p. 196: “I am alone and undefiled. I am the mother of the voice, speaking in many ways, completing all.”
This page: Judy Garland’s nightmare—Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Randy L. Schmidt (Chicago: Chicago Review Press / An A Cappella Book, 2014), p. 111 (Carol Craig, Motion Picture, June 1941).
NEVA AND THE BABY-KILLERS
Epigraph: “He shall come forth by day . . .”—The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Hieroglyphic Transcript and Translation into English of the Ancient Egyptian Papyrus of Ani, [trans.,] intro. and commentary by E. A. Wallis Budge (New York: Gramercy Books, 1999; orig. pub. 1895), p. 433 (“The Judges in Nerutef”).
Epigraph: “Then the female spiritual presence came . . .”—Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, ed., The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), p. 171 (“Three Forms of First Thought”).
The Gnostic Scriptures: between us and the light above there is a veil . . .—James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 175 (“The Reality of the Rulers”): “A veil exists between the world above and the realms below, and shadow came into being beneath the veil.”
This page: the Grand Inquisitor improved Jesus’s work, and the Prophet Muhammed later did much the same.—These comparisons derive from Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Theory and History of Literature ser., vol. 40, 1997), p. 184.
“In almost every large city, one can find a particular tavern . . .”—Frank S. Caprio, M.D., Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism (New York: The Citadel Press, 1954), p. 61. A page later comes an even more sprightly passage: “There are many people who visit New York City and are curious enough to inquire from taxi drivers as to where they can go to see the ‘female queers’ that they have read or heard about. Many of the upper social circle refer to a tour of such taverns as ‘going slumming.’”
ALMOST FLAGRANTE DELICTO
Epigraph: “Wanting-to-know is an offspring of the desire for power . . .”—Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Theory and History of Literature ser., vol. 40, 1997), p. 179.
Epigraph: “Here, a barbed wire entanglement . . .”—Courtney Ryley Cooper, Ten Thousand Public Enemies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), p. vii (preface by J. Edgar Hoover).
This page: a photograph from what must have been the 1970s—Somewhat after: GLBTHS, Linda Welcome papers, carton 1.
“Police say they are investigating an assault . . .”—Much abridged and somewhat altered [for privacy] from Georgia Voice (https://thegavoice.com), May 26, 2014, 10:54 p.m., Dyana Bagby (https://thegavoice.com/author/dyanabagby/), “Trans women brutally attacked on Atlanta’s MARTA,” downloaded for WTV by Jordan Rothacker on February 20, 2018.
“I can’t help but feel like one of them T-girls was instigating the fight . . .”—Much abridged and altered from REPLY: jem, May 30, 2014 (https://thegavoice.com/trans-women-attacked-atlantas-marta/#comment-This page:).
THE LUCKY STAR
Epigraph: “But I’ve always said that I was born under a Lucky Star . . .”—Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Randy L. Sc
hmidt (Chicago: Chicago Review Press / An A Cappella Book, 2014), p. 89.
“A woman’s natural quality is to attract . . .”—Mrs. H. R. Haweis, 1878, quoted in Amy de la Haye, A to Z of Style (New York: Abrams, 2012 repr. of 2011 British ed.), p. 88.
This page: the rarely fortunate case of a woman who is instructed by Truth Herself—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (New York: Penguin, 1987 repr. of 1952 ed.; orig. Latin version wr. ca. 1413), p. 30: “Happy the man who is instructed by Truth itself.”
“Neva, don’t forget how fucked up I am. I’m lonely! Please help me all the time.”—Thomas à Kempis, p. 119: “. . . I pray you remember the toil and grief of Your servant, and support him in all his undertakings.”
“the conversation gradually assumed the tone best qualified . . .”—Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (London: Vintage Books, 2014 [w/ many misprints]; orig. pub. 1814), p. 423.
ONSCREEN
Epigraph: “In those days, I thought you achieved a state of loving . . .”—Manoah Bowman, Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2016), p. 220 (Wood’s diary-memoir of 1966).
Epigraph: “We have been that mind, but we have never known it.”—C. J. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, with Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, rev. trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press / Bollingen ser., 1990), p. 138 (“The Interpretation of Dreams,” wr. ca. 1961).
Epigraph: “There may only be perhaps one . . .”—Bowman, p. 206 (Wood’s diary-memoir of 1966).
DIVINGS OF A MERMAID
Epigraph: “Two women very much in love . . .”—Colette, The Pure and the Impure, trans. Herma Briffault (New York: New York Review Books, 2000 rev. repr. of 1996 ed.; orig. French ed. 1941), p. 119.
Epigraph: “We lose our identities quickly in what we’re doing . . .”—Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Randy L. Schmidt (Chicago: Chicago Review Press / An A Cappella Book, 2014), p. 218 (Judy Garland, Coronet, February 1955).