A childish mockery of love

On gym saunas, Mieville and Morrison

1

I’m actually surprised to find out it was only last June that I last posted an article. It feels like much longer ago. And so, pardon the self-important preamble, but I think it may be helpful to the many people who started following me during my last spate of “Love Letters” when I was writing as an emerging and born-again lesbian with a husband.

And so, pardon me if this isn’t the sapphic and polyamorous battle cry I should be publishing, and instead a boring attempt to simply get back into writing, one leg through one underwear hole at a time.

Underwear hole. Isn’t that hilarious?

I was sitting in my gym sauna, which is never hot enough and not nude enough for my taste. Fifteen years ago this gym sauna would have been a coven of women-shaped people in nothing but cheap, overwashed towels. What happened to us? Whatever the psychological effect is called, named after a closeted scientist no doubt, I experienced that thing where because it is forbidden I wanted the thing this forbidden behavior was probably designed to circumvent. Because I was in this sauna in my full attire, in keeping with the rest of the steamers, I got horny.

A woman in a perfectly coordinated coral red yoga suit was outside of the sauna covered in sweat, placing a food order over her phone and said:

And can you add an order of those calzone thingamabobs?

The word thingamabob sent me over the edge. I know. The word Thingamabob.

2

I’m reading a lot right now, trying to stay away from my phone and the news. It’s not working. I just read the phone at 2am instead of 11pm now. I want to recommend all of the books I read, not because they’re all good (they really aren’t), but because I want to brag to all of you that I read so many books, and somewhere in the brag I want to enforce that reading books is always a good thing. If you worry the author or the premise of the book is problematic, simply steal the book or look for it passively in FREE piles at the library like I do. That’s how I found Kraken by China Mieville, which isn’t a problem book at all—and in fact I do recommend it especially for fans of highly thought through worldbuilding sci-fi. What made the transaction of picking up the book so challenging is that I’d felt the whisper of a Me Too allegation in my long term memory and couldn’t ignore it. And simultaneously, I knew it was a disservice to Mieville if the accusation was not credible or did not meet the threshold of a crime in my own evaluation. [And yes, this happens not infrequently, because I don’t love excommunication in general and remember when we castigated the gays and the bis and the dykes for shit we think is “fierce” and “radical” today.] This is all to say, I accept the terms by which I must consume books today, and am still able to tell you, “yes, Kraken is an excellent book. Go read it.”

3

In high school, I was elated to be received for an interview at Pomona College where I’d hoped to be accepted into the undergraduate literature program. In the interview, I was asked who my favorite author was. I was dumbstruck, unable to answer the question, for how could one possibly? The interviewer showed mercy after an interminable and cross-eyed pause. “Well, you can name more than one if you’re having trouble saying just one author. Or why don’t you just tell me of any good books you remember.”

Toni Morrison.

I blurted that out because I’d read everything I could get my hands on after my senior year teacher, Mrs. Clifford, assigned us Beloved. This should have been an shoe-in. I could possibly talk about Morrison for an hour. I’d just finished Sula after finishing Song of Solomon after finishing The Bluest Eye. The interviewer’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes! Toni Morrison! Please say more!”

But the strangest fucking thing happened. The very same fucking whisper (pardon my fucking French but I will regret this till the end of my days), the same fucking whisper that interrupted all of my enthusiasm and all of my earnestness and all of my sincerity through high school, college and graduate school…all of the Me inside of me that was choked back until I gave birth to a child and swore not to bequeath the whisper…this fucking whisper said to me: do not give this interview the idea that anything impresses you that much. Do not let people know such a vaunted figure, an author lionized by your beloved English teacher, a woman in the pantheon of academic letters, means anything to you personally. Do not hype Toni Morrison.

I said to the interviewer, “I mean, she’s great, but everyone knows that, I guess. Is that the answer I’m supposed to give you?”

I will never live that down and in my life I hope I only ever join the chorus of enthusiasm for Toni Morrison who deserves a status in the canon per religious sainthood. Not a metaphor. And for all of the writers who loved me despite my childish mockery of love.