Back from Vacation and Life in the Slow Lane

Spent the last week in West (By God) Virginia, visiting my sister and her husband. They have two sons, one of whom still lives nearby with three boys of his own, and, of course, a wife. They own houses and cars and go to church and work every day in health care, so they feel good about what they do to earn a living. This is what most Americans do and do we, the artistic elite, the rebels and the opinionators really understand them? Is this why we have to hug both coasts and laugh at them  while they, in turn, shake their heads at us and take the car in for a lube job while the wife gets the groceries because these things must be done. Did we escape some nightmare or miss the boat? My Coastal friends have much but seem to be missing out on the spouses, kids, and houses. I get a nagging feeling sometimes that...yes, we are missing something that it’s too late to recapture. I’m not talking about breakfast at Shoney’s but the real things. The love of a spouse or a child. I have a friend holding out for the absolutely perfect woman, with an exacting list of her requirements down to her height. Surprise! Surprise! He hasn’t found her after a thirty year search. What about the two or three good guys who bored me in College but would have been great husbands. Where are all those bad boys, those exciting boys? Gone. Gone. Gone. I’m not saying we should regret our lives, but perhaps we shouldn’t be so fast to laugh off the lives of those who are creating the next generation and making a rich and unique life that can be a family.

What is it to be a Man?

Does equality mean we are the same?
Can we ever be the same?
And if we are not, what happens to equality?
We defined manhood too narrowly, my Love,
And now, we are watching its realities rip wide
Through your life.
And I am awestruck that you remain standing,
but I am also not surprised.
Today, you are a man.
You feel the Samurai blood in your veins.
The Viking blood...the Crusader.
You face the dragon alone.
Clear your mind and see the monster.
I remain silent to let you concentrate.
This is how I must be Samurai.
And Viking and Crusader.
It is not my battle, my Love.
You must fight it alone and win it alone.
It is the only way for the lessons to burn
deep into your brain and soul.
Today, you are a man.
And  so am I, despite my female sex.
Because I am strong enough to let you go.
I want to run to you and hold you tight,
but that would let the Dragon win.
So, I remain silent to let you concentrate.
Even if I never see your beautiful face again.
I must remain silent to let you concentrate.
As you will do for me one day.
Because that is what Men do.

Ceci Thought She Would Find Love. Ceci Was Wrong.

I hate self-pity. Whatever is wrong in my life, is my fault. Whatever is right, is to my credit. I am going to die without knowing the love of a man. Oh, don't get me wrong, I have had more sex than even I can imagine, but I have never made love. Not once. Oh, I thought it was Love, Capital L, but even the men I married told me flat out that they did not love me. Why did I accept this? Why did...why do...I agree with them? And now, it is officially too late and I have to accept that. It's not easy. I thought I had accepted it fifteen years ago, but I realize now that there's still that tiny seed of hope that even the Multiple Sclerosis virus can't kill. I wish it would.  Maybe I just want to make love once before I'm in a wheelchair. The last time was bad, really pathetic and he acted like he was deigning to give a pauper the Golden Scepter. More like the Plastic thumb, but he made me feel like it was my shortcoming (joke intended). And now, at sixty-one, it IS all lacking, dying, graying and leaving and I can't say it's not. That's what time does and I am proud that I accept it. Men don't have to accept it. They are surrounded by a sea of "extra" women and can pick and choose. I only want to choose Love...but Love will never choose me. Love will be distracted by the sea of "extra' women and I have to learn to accept it and glory in being surrounded by a sea of Sisterhood. As I say at the end of my play "Tourjours Seule"...what the Hell choice do I have?

Final Half of the 2000 Word Dialogue About my Mother

Lesson Number Two...Always Worry About the Worst That Can Happen.

When I talk to my mother, I have not yet finished the sentence when she starts listing everything that can go wrong. “Mom, I finally joined the YMCA today, and...” “You can hurt yourself on those machines.”  “It’s crawling with germs and you’ll never have a healthy day again!” “What if they aren’t insured? Did you check on that? You’ll get hurt and lose your job and your medical coverage and you won’t be able to sue them and you’ll run out of money die living under a bridge.”

Mom wasn’t that cautious when she was a teenager. I remember stories of stealing spare tires to sell to the Wartime rubber drive. She told me that she started smoking at fourteen and had her first engagement at fifteen, to a boy named “Al.” She dropped out of school at sixteen, and the engagement was broken off. Now, when my mother was around nine or ten, and with Great-Grandma Berner feeding her only eggs and Pepsi Cola...Mom made friends with my Aunt, Betty Lou Boring, who was the same age.  And she also was not an Elizabeth, but a Betty.

Betty Lou’s family had a house and Grandma Boring, while being a bit retarded...sorry, intellectually challenged... was a great cook and Grandpa Boring’s alcoholism hadn’t yet wrecked his ability to a living, so they had food and real breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Mom saw the advantage to being Betty Lou’s friend because she was invited to the dinner table. She was twelve years old when the oldest Boring son, Carl, went off to war.

She was fifteen when Dad returned from the Pacific Theater and as he said...he noticed that she had grown up.When the engagement to the mysterious Al broke up a year later, they started dating and, despite the smoking and the engagements, my Mother was a virgin on her wedding night. She was very proud of that...and very angry that my father had been with two hookers in his life.

Poor Dad! He had spent the war driving officers around Honolulu. Yes. He joined the Army, ready to die and spent the entire war in Honolulu.  When the Oriental soldiers of the Fighting 100, the One Puka Puka were sent to Europe, they had to be replaced by Americans and that was my Dad. Motor Pool. Driving officers from bar to brothel.

I mean, come on! The girls felt sorry for him sitting out there in the Jeep all night and gave him a few freebies. Who wouldn’t accept the gift? I’m sure they are all cream of the crop, beautiful and desirable. And I thank them for their contribution to the morale of our fighting men.

Lesson Number Three: Do Not Allow a Man to be Human.

Now, things got confusing when Mom had a second daughter. One daughter was fine, but the second child, the one who demanded to be born despite Mom’s attempts to prevent it, was supposed to be a boy. Mom’s always said that there was “something wrong with me” from the day one. She implied it was mental, but I often wonder if there was supposed to be a wee wee down there, meaning that I could take care of her. Now, she had two girls to marry off to rich men and she was not happy.

Dad decided, the day I became taller, to treat me like a son. I mowed the lawn, I changed spark plugs and I was never trained about hair and makeup and clothes. My biggest flaw, you see, was a 142 i.q. Oh, the cliché! A loner! Reading her books and writing her plays. Advanced Math, which I was terrible at, and Advanced History, where I was brilliant and became an unrepentant Left Winger Liberal forever. Classes full of geeks and nerds and loners. All of rushing home to our rooms at night.

Kathy, my sister, was the twin set belle of the ball with a hundred giggling friends and a busy social life. Therefore, when economics forced my mother to work...God forbid...I was ordered to take over the house at the ripe age of eleven. Kathy had a social life, I did not, so the choice was painfully obvious. I burned the first meal I cooked and was severely chastised for not having food for the family.

Lesson Number Four: If You Don’t Have a Prince, Clean the Hearth.

Mom took the three to eleven shift as her act of revenge on having to work and basically, I never saw her again except for this snarling creature on weekends who sat brooding on the couch, flicking the end of her cigarette and yelling orders to everyone except my perfect older sister, who wore twin set sweaters and dated a steady stream of boys.

My Mother told me bluntly, that I had to earn my keep. They had not planned me but I had insisted on showing up, I had to earn my food and my bed. At the age of sixteen, they stopped paying for my clothing, so I had to get summer jobs at nursing homes and baby sit for children I neither liked nor understood. I asked my sister a few years ago if she had to earn her clothing money. She did not know what I was talking about.

I was trained to serve. I was trained to feel bad about my mother’s horrible life and that all I was fit for was to take care of her. And the only way I could make her happy was to lie and say I didn’t mind. It was fine. Sorry, I burned the pot pies.

Lesson Number Five: It is up to Me to Fix Your Life



There is nothing so selfish as claiming to care and to love. Ergo, you want to change the object of your affection to something better, something happier, something more that suits you...all right! Suits me. Me. Me. That suits Mom.

To truly Love is to accept. "Love alters not when it alteration finds." I repeat Sonnet 116 over and over but do I really believe it or is it just to make myself look better? And the sad part of this is that all the lying and begging and improving is that I have twice had to leave the men in question and I left them in tatters, unable to function. I did all the work and paid all the bills and they were left more helpless than ever. To say "be a man", is something both men and women should aspire to as it makes us feel more human. We survive on our own and sometimes as equals, but never when I am the Mother, easing the way far too much. Sometimes, I have simply not let my men be men. I have not let them find their own way and feel their own success. I destroy with Love and that is a terrible fault I should apologize for the rest of my Life.

There’s nothing more liberating than realizing that all the lessons you’ve learned...are wrong. They have taught you through error. Through disaster. And I can see them so clearly. They’ve been drummed into my head and all the words stand out as WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

I was reborn. I am my own Mother. I was finally able to learn.

It flew into my life last July. Like a wild California Condor. As noisy and as free. Don’t try to stop it. Don’t try to fix it. Beautiful! Oh, yes, the creature is in great danger, but I will not interfere. I will not try to fix it or help it. It has to find its own way through hills and valleys that I can’t comprehend. Don’t translate what it’s saying...let me just hear the Music of its call. If it wants to light on the ground near me and let me touch its feathers, I will, but if it just wants to show me the spectacle of it flying overhead, then I count myself lucky. I wrote this piece of verse to show the new lessons I am learning on my own, with the help of true friends.

No More Deals. No More Expectations:

You know what The Deal is.
It means, if you Love me...
You will do x, y, and z.
So, if you do not do these things,
you do not Love me.
It’s not that difficult.
Just do the x, and y, and z I choose
What are they?
You shouldn’t have to ask.
If you have to ask...
You do not Love me.
So, I leave.
And have nothing.
But why does anything at all have to happen?
What a lovely mind.
What lovely hands.
That I want to stare...
Does not require the same of him,
But if I sit quietly and undemanding,
I will never have to turn my back.
Scream Feminism as loud as you like
Age makes a woman less desirable.
Weights, running, botox, dye.
You’re still the same.
Read.
Paint.
Think.
Enjoy the Freedom.
Enjoy the View.
Of his lovely hands.
And ask nothing more.
How sweet it then is,
When he chooses to do something for you.
Especially if it’s not on that damned, silly list.

Like Mom says...Susie has a vivid imagination.

The First Half of the 2000 Word Monologue About My Mother

Lessons I Learned From My Mother The Hard Way

I’m probably the only woman coming here tonight without a whole lot of positive things to say about my Mother. Mom has always been angry...and no, you can’t you tell her to stop. You can’t understand what she’s been through, because she’s decided that it is the worst life that has ever happened to anybody in the entire History of Mankind. I know. I know. Slavery. Holocaust. The Plague. You and I know they were worse, but Mom only knows what she knows, and it was pretty rough.

Mom has no nice, noble memories of the Depression or of her Mother, Sylvia, who got pregnant when Good Girls didn’t do that. And that’s where the lessons start. The story I heard, which, by the way, Mom will deny I ever heard, and then quietly take you aside and tell you that she worries about my “imagination.” The story, which I have no reason to create from thin air, was that Sylvia had two boyfriends, an Irishman and a Ukrainian, and in 1930, before DNA tests, the Courts had to choose one of them to be declared as Father. Irish or Ukrainian? Irish or Ukrainian...who was it? Ukie boy loses! Irishman off the hook. And I think my cheekbones show their wisdom.

Now, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1930’s, they called people things like “The Ukrainian.” My illegitimate Grandmother Sylvia’s mother was Minnie and her father was “The Swiss”, and that’s all I know of him...except I do have to wonder if it was a literal seduction or an actual rape. The line between the two, in those days, in that small town, was very thin and usually broke in favor of the male. Who knows what relationship my Grandmother had with either the Irishman or the Ukrainian...but the Hunkie, as they were also often called in Johnstown, got caught.

And so, Sylvia and Oskar Molchin married by Court Order in the Year of Our Lord, 1930 and then, she gave birth to Betty Jane. Not Elizabeth. Never Elizabeth. My mother is Betty Jane. Oskar couldn’t wait to get out and ran for a divorce when my mother was two years old. Sylvia, facing starvation in Depression 1932, had to marry someone, anyone. Any man. I believe that his name was Brownstreet or Brownstone, or something with a Brown in the beginning. I believe they had other children, whom I have never met. Half uncles and aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews whom I have never met. And if they don’t want to track me down, they can all happily go to Hell.

I was told that the new family moved to New York City in 1938 and old number two did not like Betty Jane Molchin,  another man’s child. I was told that they lived in poverty with little food, but I don’t know if there was abuse involved or if Betty Jane wrote to Elvina, her Great-Grandmother, (the one who arrived after the Johnstown Flood) about the problems. My sister knows the details because she is a Nurse and it’s all right to tell a Nurse, but not a Playwright. Not a question so much of Angels of Mercy, but that I stand in front of an audience and tell family secrets. Like I’m doing right now.

At any rate, I was told that my Great-Great Grandmother, Elvina, at the age of seventy, all four feet eight inches of her dressed in widow’s black, got on a train to New York to bring back my mother And for this...for keeping her out of starvation...for this...my mother never forgave her. She had to believe that Sylvia wanted her and would have fought for her if Elvina hadn’t interfered. But, I know better. Sylvia wanted to stop fighting with her husband. Sylvia had to keep her husband. She didn’t want to starve.

Logical or not, my mother never forgave her Mother. She did, however, get one lesson out of it. You had to have a man. Even if you sacrificed a child, you did it to keep that man. I know. That sounds ass backwards, like she would have learned to fight for the child, but the child had no income. The child could not take care of the Mother. The man had a salary. The man had the final say. The man ruled the roost. And you needed someone to be taken care of because you were female.

Lesson Number One. A woman is nothing without a man.

My Mother does not believe that a woman should have to work for a living. My Mother does not believe a woman should drive a car. She should be special. SHE...she be special. My Mother should, for once in her life, be so special that someone would want to take care of her. And damn, if she didn’t find it, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I would have loved to have my older sister, Kathy, the Nurse, help me write this, but she pretends not to hear a subject she does not wish to discuss, and Boy, is this ever one! She totally accepts my Mother’s concept that she had the worst life ever and gives her total sympathy. Kathy never questions. Kathy accepts. I can’t. I write plays. Anyway, my Mother returned to Johnstown, a hamlet still recovering from a second flood that was almost as bad as the first but at least did not involve a rich man’s dam falling on top of them. Just the rising river. Rising and rising till it could only spill into the streets and knock things down, but at least it did not involve a rich man’s dam falling on top of them as it did in 1889.

The Internet Cannot Replace Reality, No Matter How Hard we Try

Perhaps the Wikileaks excitement is one of the final throes of the Internet madness. Nothing will be a secret ever again. We may as well stand in the street naked screaming all of our secrets and thoughts and after awhile, no one will care...and I'm starting to think that's happening now. For some of us, who are shy and isolated, social networking provides that cliche...that mask and protective shell we can blossom under. Writing used to do that, but it's so hard to get produced or published. But you can do it on the internet, even if it's just like this...unseen by anyone. I have gotten behind the mask of a few people and let them behind mine and I wonder now....was I taking this all too seriously or did I learn those personal things only contact can tell you and make better friends or ruin carefully set illusions that can never be rebuilt or forgiven? I am going out again today to meet people, but I know that I will not be aggressive or friendly enough. I cannot use a secret name or a mysterious photograph to hide me. One of the fun things to watch on Facebook is a game I call Passive/Aggressive Facebook. It is a terrifying game for those with nerves of steel and too much free time. Posts are loaded and erased. Comments are altered. Stalking among the Profile page actions run rife and everything is denied. I have to take a shower and go into New York City today. If the Big Apple isn't enough for me, I really have to get some more hobbies.

I Have Not Yet Begun to Write

At another one of the Oppressed Majority (Women) Seminars in New York today, I was brought to a realization about one thing and it shook me to the core. If you come in to sell your script and it is all about you, you will fail. The script is not about me. It is about the actors and the director. The designers. And most importantly, it is about the Audience. I often say that a Playwright is the only artist forced to present a canvas in which she has not used all her colors. The actors are, say, the red and the set is the blue. We cannot begin to perceive what the finished play will look like until it is framed in a theater and yet we must make the reader and the listener get where we are going and what we want. We have to make them picture it vividly.  A play is not a picture in a frame. A play isn't even a movie that is set in stone, and, while shown to many audiences, is not flexible. Every performance of a play is its own work of art because of the actors and the audience. The laughs will happen in different places every night. I remember seeing an actress performing "Suddenly Last Summer" the day after she had gotten terrible reviews. She burned the building down! She heard what they said and she made Williams sing. And that's what theater is, children. One performance at a time. I thought I had good plays. I thought I knew what I had to do. I have not yet begun to do it for you. Watch.

Love and Other Things We Don't Understand

I lie when I'm in Love. Maybe that's the problem. Perhaps I should be the Saucy Wench, the Impish Tease, the Task Mistress, and not my usual pile of Clinging Goo. I want the other person not so much to feel better but to feel better about me. There is nothing so selfish as claiming to care and to love. Ergo, you want to change the object of your affection to something better, something happier, something more that suits you...all right! Suits me. Me. Me.  To truly Love is to accept. "Love alters not when it alteration finds." I repeat Sonnet 116 over and over but do I really believe it or is it just to make myself look better? And the sad part of this is that all the lying and begging and improving is that I have twice had to leave the men in question and I left them in tatters, unable to function. I did all the work and paid all the bills and they were left more helpless than ever. To say "be a man", is something both men and women should aspire to as it makes us feel more human. We survive on our own and sometimes as equals, but never when I am the Mother, easing the way far too much. Sometimes, I have simply not let my men be men. I have not let them find their own way and feel their own success. I destroy with Love and that is a terrible fault I should apologize for the rest of my Life.

I Haven't Opened the New York Times in Two Months

I don't know exactly what is going on with my brain, but I no longer care about the news. I no longer know what news is as it has been so warped. Even the television seems to have no relevance. It's obvious from the elections that the electorate is not interested in facts and did the people who voted for Obama think that they were only allowed the one vote? Where did they go? I get the impression that everyone is sitting around waiting for a miracle. The lottery or a rich spouse. OK, I'm on Social Security and I pay a lot, but I have medical care. My apartment is warm and the only flaw is the woman upstairs is going insane and walks back and forth 14 hours a day which will eventually make me insane, but it's relatively cheap for NY area. I have too much food and am attempting to lose weight. At this rate of expenditure, my money will...probably not run out enough to force me on to Medicare. I have decided to ignore the Multiple Sclerosis and pretend I can walk. But is that all there is? I have a novel and now 4 plays in the works. (What I learned from my mother contest. Great! Let's see how inspiring negative lessons can be.) But have we given up on Social Progress? Have we given up on truth? Are the bigots and know-nothings winners. Come on, Leaders! I need someone to follow since Obama lost the air.