Jill Rants and Raves

spilt milk

I've always liked Thanksgiving as a holiday - more so than any other, except maybe the icon of my occasional Jewish observance-ness - Yom Kippur. Atone, forgive, atone, forgive. Love it. It's when Jews get to do their fevered soul searching officially. The rest of the time it's just restless cosmic Jewish sadness as my neighbor Sally puts it. Sounds about right. Harvey Milk was a good Jewish boy, the son of eastern European parents. And yesterday, on the 30th anniversary of his brutal killing, the movie 'Milk' directed by Gus van Sant opened in San Francisco. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else, and so Susie, Bonnie and I headed to the Castro for one of the showings of the film. It's a good film, it isn't a great one, but it is one that screamed to be made and which should earn Sean Penn an Oscar nomination for a performance which was so compelling it was hard to remember that Milk himself was not right there on the screen. The opening credits are as crude a reminder as there can be that just three and four decades ago (in the era of love and peace and Haight Street) men were being dragged from bars, handcuffed and thrown in paddy wagons for nothing more than having a drink and a cigarette with another man.

The movie is inevitably flawed - how could it not be. It has been years in the making, through script changes, director changes, concept changes and always the question - how much does one show, how far do you reveal Milk's darker side - after all, we need heroes and Milk is one of the great gay heroes of any age - bold, reckless, imaginative, selfish and sacrificial all at once. He was the champion for a movement yet declared that he was just a figurehead, and he was a man who having wandered restlessly in life, found a mission, a community, a purpose. Who knows what he might have gone on to accomplish had he lived. Would he have been effective in mobilising the community early against AIDS? Would he have died of AIDS? Would he have sought higher office outside the confines of the Castro? The terrible truth is - he accomplished everything we could have hoped for in a visionary and more - by dying, and dying a martyr's death in City Hall, along with his ally Mayor George Moscone at the hands of a man who had also started his political life trying to represent the good people who elected him, but was out of his league in San Francisco's electrifying time of change in the 1970's.

The movie is long overdue, yet how more perfect could this timing be in light of the passage of Prop 8? What the history lesson contained in the film provides is a marked contrast between the passionate fight for the civil rights of teachers threatened by the obscene Briggs Initiative (Prop 6 in 1978) and our failure to bring those lessons to the Prop 8 battle. Could it be because 'gay marriage' rights don't even really have the full support among queers? Could it be that we failed to attack the proposition at it's weakest point - the hysteria generated by Prop 8 supporters that our schools would have to teach a 'homosexual agenda' if Prop 8 failed, and the very real truth that we are not present in the churches (of all persuasions, denominations or ethnicities) and that unless you can be where the misinformation exists you have no power to change it.

'Milk' is a major achievement, and gives credit where credit is so very due - to the community that nurtured Harvey Milk, to the individuals who worked for him, to the many who congregated at Castro Camera and made it the hive of gay energy that it was, to those who changed their lives to ensure his passage into history, to Scott Smith who never stopped loving Milk even after their intimate relationship was over and who died of AIDS related complications, to Jack Lira whose personal demons could not be soothed, to Cleve Jones whose own passionate activism was ignited by Milk, to Danny Nicoletta, a photographer whose work is an astonishing archive of 30 years of this community and who I am privileged to call a friend, and many others - and the one dyke clearly identified in the film Anne Kronenberg, whose political savvy and guts brought political power to the first gay man elected to real power in the United States.

Watching the film at the Castro Theatre on the very day, 30 years after Milk was shot to death in City Hall was a perfect way to spend Thanksgiving - among a crowd of people who know just how far we still have to go, and watching a story about how far we've come. Susie, Bonnie and I left the movie theatre walked along Market Street, had dinner in a small restaurant and headed home.

did I hear you say thanks?

  I'm in a total giving thanks type of mood this morning even if it is a grey damp morning in this state of grace known as California. Yesterday the sky was an ominous red in the morning and the rain started spitting just as I headed out for my walk with my gang and a couple of extras including a dog that makes me laugh just looking at him - Henry the cockapoo. This dog wags his whole body not just his tail, and then tries to run while doing it. And running dogs can make your whole day seem better. Even in the rain. We headed along what is known as the upper road at the landfill from the plateau which the parks system has ruined with it's attempt at eco-engineering in the shape of a fenced off burrowing owl habitat - in spite of the fact that no burrowing owls have even been seen near the area. In fact the owls I know say 'Albany? Isn't that where the John Birch Society used to hang out? Wouldn't be seen dead in the place' - so as I was saying, we headed out along the upper road and the huge wingspan of a glorious hawk (was it a Red Tail, or a Cooper's Hawk, I'm not sure) ranged above us like a curious companion on our walk and then landed majestically at the top of a stringy bark eucalyptus (which under the native plant fanatics would come crashing down) where it could observe a menu of lizards, ground squirrels or rabbits from it's perch. The rain was easing, I smiled and looked over to my left in time to watch three pelicans plunge, like children doing a belly flop off a diving board, into the still calm waters of the bay.

The shoreline yesterday after a night of rain and a high tide was looking like a stadium after a football game, a mass of nasty debris and a film of grease atop it's shimmering surface. One of the beauties of the Albany Landfill, as it is right now, is that birds and a multitude of insects, reptiles and mammals make use of human discards. Shorebirds wade happily in the mudflats created by the additional landmass of the landfill, blue herons, cormorants and egrets sun themselves, wings akimbo, on a mass of concrete and twisted contorted rebar jutting out of the bay, lizards and snakes lay contentedly on the sun warmed gravel trails (they understand all about the hot stone therapies we pay exorbitant amounts for at day spas) and disappear under a thousand concrete blocks at the approach of human or canine. The gophers tease the dogs from the top of a stone column which might have graced a downtown bank 50 years ago before it was dumped in the bay, and then run contentedly into the warren of underground tunnels created by the mess. This is a kingdom of wild imagination, a place where adults get to act like kids at a themepark. And it never fails to make me thankful.

I came home yesterday and cooked a sort of strange and wonderful saute of italian sausage and romano beans, mushrooms, chard and tomato and sat surrounded by the dogs and cats who share this good fortune, and dug through the netflix. Today, another walk awaits this intrepid band of pioneers and then I'm going to the Castro theatre with friends to see 'Milk'. Susie says we can eat pizza later - has she forgotten I'm not overfond of pizza? I could get upset about what's missing, what I lack, what I wished for and didn't get, what I have lost, what I have wasted, what I fear, what I regret - doing or not doing, who I miss, who I have wronged or has wronged me, the endings, the failures, the lack of.

Or that could wait till tomorrow. Today, the sun came out in glorious festivity for my landfill walk and I'm definitely in a giving thanks kind of mood.

the compulsion of art and politics

I'm having trouble writing my blogs - mostly I'm writing about something particular and my internal alarm tells me not to post it. So I've been writing away - and reading the stuff to friends who tell me (because friends do) 'hey, you're right' - but not posting it for the world to see. But that so goes against my particular grain. I'm not one to keep a diary and put it underneath my pyjamas in the third drawer down, taking it out at night and writing in a tiny script the agonies and glories of the day. And that's been true for everything I've ever 'produced'. Photographs in an album seem to shout to be let out, writing in notebooks stored in a series of efficiently labeled boxes but never shown to another feels like voices trapped in an underground tunnel. It's why the writing on the wall has always appealed to me - in your face, bold, crude and public. It's why 'outsider art', giving a 'fuck you' to the doors of the art world citadels, has always drawn me close. It's why the act and the art of openness is like manna to me. Someone said to me recently ' It's as if you see your work as community property'.

When I wrote 'Any Woman Can' in 1974 it was because my anguish was busting through the seams of my skin. And my first act on finishing it was to give it to women who I felt could take it to the world outside of me. When I photographed the Fiat Ad with the graffiti in 1979 and published it as a postcard it was because the world needed to see the anger and the humour, not just those who walked past the refaced billboard from Farringdon Road tube station to their offices. When I had the opportunity to publish a collection of my graffiti photos in 1982 I jumped at it and when I was told that it had become the most shoplifted book from a number of bookstores that season, I couldn't help myself - I smiled. (And before you get all upset about the plight of independent bookshops, I don't think I was the cause of their downfall). In 1986 I published a second book of graffiti imagery. In between I had fallen madly in love with a women's rock band, the Mistakes, and almost - almost - managed to parlay their sweet and sour, post punk, pre grunge political love songs into a major success. We were told we could be the next Martha and The Muffins (remember 'Echo Beach'?).

In 1986 I threw away my one real opportunity to have a different kind of career. I was offered an amazing job working for an London arts funding agency - overseeing their photography grants. I sat in the interview and said completely honestly ' I need some security, I need a change, I love the idea of helping new photographers, new community groups achieve their goals'. The day they offered me the job, I got a call from a friend, actress Miriam Margolyes (who coincidentally had been the first to play the lead in 'Any Woman Can'), who pleaded with me to come to the States for six weeks to stage manage her touring theatre show about Gertrude Stein. I called the arts agency, and asked whether they could wait for me. They said they really couldn't. I took the short term fix. I left for New York the next week. I arrived to San Francisco for the first time in my life two weeks later. Had a passionate affair with a woman in Berkeley. Went back to London. Persuaded a publisher to give me an advance for a book to be photographed in California. And came to the good old US of A. That's me. Can't really see into next week.

In 1996, after years of photographing women making out in public places, the book of lesbian erotic photography I co-edited with Susie Bright, 'Nothing But The Girl' was published - ironically by a British publisher.

And I'm not sure where the last 10 years or so have gone. Well, I... yes I am sure. I discovered what happens to homeless people (and their beloved animal companions) when a city begins to deconstruct an encampment, I found out just what level of cruelty can exist in our municipal animal shelters - both towards the animals and the people who love them - and especially when they are run by law enforcement agencies, I got a quick civics lesson in city government when I led a successful bond measure for a new animal shelter, and discovered that curious sub culture of people loosely called 'animal rescue'. I discovered the Albany Landfill. Or did it find me? It's been a wild ride. And as ever, a wildly public one.

Now, my head is itching again, but it's itching from the inside, I feel I want to tear my head off. I am in my mid 50's and I'm scared senseless of being alone, of never earning quite enough, of never producing anything of social import ever again, I'm desperate to get back to photographing the community that nurtured me when I first arrived here, I'm trying to write a second play - 34 years after the first, I'm anxious to get my book about the Albany Landfill done and oohed and aahed over, I'm trying to see past next week. 

And there's the odd thing - for someone who really does have a hard time seeing into even the closest future, I've come to accept that sometimes it can take months even years for the seed of artistic vision to show even the slightest green shoot above the busy dank soil. If only it were not such a compulsion.

civil unions for all. marriage for the few. works for me.

Maybe it's a g g g generational thing, maybe it's that the shackle of marriage has been (and still is) used to oppress women since it's inception, maybe it's that I have just enough personal experience of the bitterness and hatred engendered by divorces and separations, perhaps it's just that I am bewildered that lesbians are now fighting over custody of the cats and dogs. Basically, I am mad as hell that the stupid reactionary idiots in the Mormon church and other right wing pervs have made this into a battle we have to sign up to fight, goddamn.

LGBT civil rights are no small matter to be resolved sometime in the future, I agree with that, of course I freakin' do. Equal protection under the law is and should be even more American than apple pie, no argument there. But equal simply doesn't mean the 'same', and wouldn't it be a great thing if something called the equal rights amendment had actually ensured womens full protections and advancement in our society, huh?

Marriage is a tool of religious control of women - and if it was so sacrosanct wouldn't divorce have been banned? If (heterosexual) marriage is the vehicle for procreation and the success of the human species was so freakin' sacred how come so many of these superior beings are dumping their children under new laws which absolve them from their responsibilities?

The real separation of church and state would be if we no longer assigned any rights or responsibilities or state issued benefits to couples 'married' under some sort of religious oversight. Civil unions would be required to obtain the benefits, and if you also want to have your partnership sanctified in a place of your particular worship - good on ya. Go for it.

Whatever the GLBT 'movement' is right now, it appears to have an absence of leadership in much the same way we were led from behind Bill Clinton over 'Dont Ask Dont Tell'. If the idea of lesbians and gay men in uniform dying for their country hadn't caused the Pentagon and their right wing allies to get their jockstraps in a twist, the rest of us wouldn't have had to put our armor on and fall in line behind a policy that most of knew was misguided.

Same with 'marriage'. Civil Unions for All. Leave marriage for the few.

the pink triangle in my soul

  One of the most disturbing visual memories of the Prop 8 battle was the video footage of a supporter of the Proposition evoking Hitler and the rise of fascism in Germany and making the mental leap that our struggle for gay marriage rights, which has pitted us against certain churches, was the same as attacks by Nazis on the Catholic church.

Poor Hitler. He would be livid at the way in which his pure vision for an Aryan Nation has been degraded by the kooks who have no intellectual defense for their hatred and so dredge up the most terrifying period in recent history with which to demonize their opposition.

A few weeks ago, I walked past the spot on Unter Den Linden in Berlin, where hundreds of thousands of books deemed anti-social, deviant or anti German, were burned in huge pyres, surrounded by smiling men women and children whose minds had become perverted by a state which fueled differences over similarities, which bred hatred over unity, and which had persuaded an entire nation that neighbors and colleagues were now enemies out to destroy the very core of your being.

The Prop 8 supporter knew exactly who he was talking to as he conjured up fears of churches being destroyed, of Christianity being outlawed, where godlessness would rule our schools, and the Holy Trinity faced extinction - as homosexual teachers forced your child to wear a condom in class, or underage girls were encouraged to engage in unspeakable sex acts with a donkey, or god forbid, your child could choose evolution over creationsim. If Prop 8 were defeated, it seemed, we could expect heterosexuality to be banned, and the Bible burned on huge bonfires.

He evoked the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller who was an early supporter of Hitler but who began to understand that the political apathy of the German people could lead only to the suppression of individual rights and the collective rights of whole communities. Niemoller had difficulty remembering when exactly he wrote these words but he asked that this be the 'official' version - and at no time did Niemoller envisage that churches of any kind would be at the forefront of depriving human beings of equal protections under the law.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

The 2008 campaign will go down in history as a turning point for America. But not only because much of white America voted in unity over the past, not just because a new generation of Americans voted and not just because a new form of campaigning using new technology revolutionised the election.
Unfortunately 2008 marked the renewal of a form of anti intellectual hatred not seen since the says of Mr Himmler, Mr Goebbels and Mr Hitler. The words 'elite', 'intellectual', 'teacher' and 'journalist' were burned across the airwaves as if upon a new bonfire of fascism.

I was uncertain of what tattoo I wanted next. I know that my father, who never carried the burden of a concentration camp number on his arm, but whose family members did, would have been shocked that I would even consider a tattoo. But now, it seems clear to me. A pink triangle burns ever brighter in my soul and will grace my arm soon enough.

did anyone say 'lesbian sex'?

Strange side effect of the passage of Prop 8 - pretty freaky rise in hits on my blog where the topic is 'lesbian sex'. What, are they all checking in to find out stuff they didn't already know? Huh? Here's the deal. We have sex, a lot of it in the first nine months. Sometimes there's lots of weird toys involved, and harnesses, a fair amount of lube that comes out of bottles, some oral sex, some anal sex, occasional phone sex (though lesbians are never apart long enough to have phone sex), some tying up, tying down, bossin' around, nasty trash talking, saying I love you even if you don't mean it (why is it some women want you to say I love you during sex - and then add 'say it - even if you don't mean it'), there's a bunch of great butch cock around, some of us are better at this than others, there's those that like fisting, those that don't, those that are stone, passive, dominant, submissive, aggressive, femme top, butch bottom, those who keep their jeans on and watch as they fuck the woman they love (or don't) underneath them, those that kiss a lot, and those who don't, there's some major effort at coming at the same time and some who grab the vibrator after their girl has come, to do it themselves. There's butches that enjoy watching a girl go down on their cock and there's others who don't, there's girls who love going down on a hairy mound and there's those that dream about a woman getting waxed. There's fingers and tongues and nipple clamps, and pulling on piercings, there's biting and holding someone down, and putting your hand over their mouth and telling them to be quiet, there's restraints and cuffs and how she gives in, and the feel of your knee between her legs, and the sensation of how she melts when you push her against a wall and run a hand up her skirt, and how she looks like a deer caught in the headlights and tells you there has never been anyone like you, anyone who did this to her, like you do it to her. And if you're a simple butch (most of us are) you believe it. There's her hand on the back of your neck as you drive her car, and you glance over and her skirt is up by her thighs, there's the look you give her as she walks in, late, to the restaurant, a totally forgiving look like she's the best thing to come through that door, and the sense of anticipation and the sharing food and hoping you stay awake long enough. And we're not supposed to write about this stuff except in very trashy lesbian sex magazines or in the after hours Craigslist ads that we all pretend we don't look at.

We get up and have coffee, make bacon and eggs and french toast, and walk the dogs and call our mom after we shower. We take the kids to school, and take public transit to work, and pick up the laundry, take the trash out on the right day, move the car on street cleaning days, vote for democrats, buy Subarus because they advertised mercilessly in gay magazines showing two moderately cute preppy lesbians in North Face fleece, with a yellow lab. We teach your kids, assess your credit worthiness, drive ambulances and give the local homophobe CPR after he collapses in his office, go to college, and earn as much as you do, we decorate our homes on Halloween and have the best trick or treat candy on the block, we try to eat organic, go solar, paint our homes with eco friendly paint, donate more to local non-profits than yer average Joe, volunteer at the local animal shelter, shop at Ross, Safeway and Whole Foods when no-one is looking, just so we can see where lesbians are picking each other up these days, we get tattoo'd, spend time on Facebook and LinkedIn, eschew MySpace as low rent, go dancing, sign up for yoga classes, buy more running shoes than we need, fight about where to go on vacation, argue about what colour tile to use in the bathroom and whether you are contributing as much to the relationship as your partner thinks you should, a lot of us are on anti depressants anti anxiety and anti anything pills (not me by the way) and we are continually setting up our friends who have just ended a relationship so that they can start the process of the sex above and we can get some vicarious pleasure from it. There are some of us who desperately want to be married but are scared shitless by it, and others who have been married too long and are scared shitless to get out of it, and those that are married and have affairs.

We are, in short, much like anyone else. Except. We don't have the same civil rights as everyone else. And from what I hear, we have way more fun in bed.

Repeal Prop 8. Reform the Initiative and Proposition process in California. Make constitutional amendments subject to a 2/3 majority.

so, who voted for Obama AND for Prop 8?

Ok, ho hum, it was anticlimactic on the night. That's Ok. This election is full of symbolism and I'll let real political pundits analyse away - oh, by the way, why is it that many American politicians, most radio talkers and callers and quite a few well educated Americans say 'pundiNts'. It is PUNDITS. The most notable use of the word pundiNt was during the Veep speech by lipstick bullydog Sarah Palin, which should have been a clue that she gets her talking points from right wing radio. Maybe the Obama Presidency can shepherd in a new era where pundits are called just that and tenets are not called 'teneNts'. What is with the extra 'N'? Huh?

I'm as happy as the next person that America swung as dramatically as it could. And aside from making some facile comment about what kind of puppy the kids might get to take to the White House, I can't think of a single thing that hasn't been said or is going to be said. It won't be a pitbull. Or a bichon. I'm thinking yellow lab.

Locally, the candidate I volunteered for, Jesse Arreguin, has become the youngest Berkeley Council Member in recent memory and aside from his support of Norman LaForce, who was elected yesterday to fill the vacant board seat of a woman who despised him, on the East Bay Regional Parks Board, I am totally stoked about Jesse's victory. Norman is a strange man who hates people using parks almost as much as he hates dogs using them.

And then there's Prop 8. What to say? There were a whole bunch of people who voted for Obama in California and who also voted 'Yes' on 8. I guess the concept of equal rights for ALL is just not quite clear in some minds. I think marriage is problematic (no shit), in spite of my sentimental 'I wanna get married' blog the other day. And I feel much more comfortable with the idea of a civil ceremony carrying the same rights and responsibilities as traditional marriage. But look - marriage exists for one part of the community, it should exist for the other, it's sort of simple. And that there are people who voted for the 'hope' 'change' and 'audacity' program of Obama's campaign, but couldn't bring themselves to see gays as their equal - well, it's a problem dude.

The breakdown of the voting will tell us more - about who and why they voted out of fear. Next time. Next time.

Meanwhile, I still think the American election system is broken. I still believe in radically reducing the number of propositions and initiatives on the ballots, I think Ralph Nader has finally become as irrelevant as Ross Perot, and personally, I don't think Sarah Palin has any future at all in American politics.

voting in the nude

There was a small news item buried amid the huge hurly burly of big election issues that made me smile. And I've been needing to smile recently. A nudist colony had put in a request for a polling station on the colony grounds so that the naked could vote without having to put a piece of clothing on. I like this. This is the complete transparency in government we've been longing for. But where would they put the "I voted" stickers?

Yesterday I took advantage of a break in this vile disgusting horrific rain (shall I tell you what I really think of wet weather), to walk a precinct for a local candidate here in Berkeley. Jesse Arreguin is running in District 4, to replace long term Councilmember Dona Spring who died in July and whose absence in this ever more conforming town will only grow more acute as time goes by. What makes this an especially important district for a progressive to win is that much of the downtown area sits in this district, and with developers and the University carving up Berkeley in a profiteering feast, Dona's legacy is that the simple needs of neighbourhoods should always come first.

But the rain is back with a vengeance today and it sits on me like a bully in a playground. I'm having to fend off demons in my head telling me that I am always to blame for everything, I'm watching my friends get married at an alarming rate and I'm filled with a convoluted set of conflicted feelings. I, who have never had anything but alarm bells go off at the very idea of marriage, am wondering what it would feel like to have someone look at me that way, and promise wildly unrealistic things. Contemplating what it would be like to have someone focus on me in that 'there's no-one else in the room' kind of way is not helpful to me right now, and I should know better. I'm in a confused dazed sort of 'wha'happened?' mood.

Tomorrrow, Barack Obama will become the President elect of the United States, Democrats will gain a dizzying number of seats in the House and enough in the Senate to make a real difference, in California I think Prop 2 will win, Prop 8 will lose by a gay hair and 4 could go either way, and in the East Bay there will be little change except that my property taxes will go up. Jesse should become the youngest council member in Berkeley, and the only Hispanic. And for a short time everyone will smile and give way at intersections instead of running each other down.

And we'll be left with a spitoon full of brown slime - the remnants of a political campaign season which has seen Adolf Hitler, Nazis, Karl Marx, Communism and the Brownshirts evoked just a few times too many and the word Muslim become an even dirtier word. I do wonder whether Dick Cheney's endorsement of McCain, right at the end of the campaign was intended, by the neo-cons, to be the final nail in the coffin of this fundamentally decent man who who will go down in history as the man who proved bipartisanship will never lead to the White House.

And me? Seems my biggest failure on the campaign trail of life was to never be able to admit that I really did want to get married and look her in the eyes and tell her I would wrap my arms around her whenever she is scared and that she is the only woman in the room. I'll be less maudlin tomorrow. As long as it stops raining.