The Spiral Staircase

Two Referees at the Great Wall of China Gift Shop

Many thanks to my friend and yoga student, Jai, for giving me a place to go to finish my novel GRAVITY.

Here's a scene I cut from the novel. Takes place at the gift shop at the Great Wall of China. Our heroine, Gravity, has lost her fight in the Women's World Boxing Championships, but is still in the running for the Rio Olympics...

***

Gravity never noticed referees too much, unless they were really bad. Like that old guy who had taken a bullshit point away from her for cuffing in the Junior Olympics, or that mousy lady who officiated in the Golden Gloves and looked terrified to get too close to the action.

The two refs she ran into in the Great Wall of China gift shop must have been okay, because she couldn’t remember anything about them. One was fat and one was skinny. The fat guy was white and American and had thin, sandy hair and glasses. The skinny guy was black and Canadian and bald with a mustache. They would have made good spies, because they had the kind of mild faces that blended into the gift shop crowd. Nobody would ever stop them at airport security to search their luggage. They were just sort of there, like telephone wires.

She browsed the display of post cards while listening in on their conversation out of the corner of her ear. The fat referee was telling the skinny referee that they needed to have something called a “catchphrase.” The skinny referee was arguing with him.

“Catchphrases are unnecessary,” said the skinny guy. “You already gave the fighters their instructions in the dressing room. All you need to do in the ring is clarify what constitutes a low blow.”

The fat ref gestured with a Great Wall snow globe. “You need to assert your authority in the ring. A tag line announces your presence.”

“A good referee is someone you don’t notice,” said the skinny ref.

The fat referee said, “Come on, Warren, do you really want to spend your whole life not being noticed? You’re the best goddamn ref in Toronto, and everybody knows it. I’ve seen how hard you work. That stoppage on the Stevenson undercard? Perfect. Everybody else was shitting their pants about that ring death in Edmenton, but not you. You let ‘em fight!”

Gravity stole a look at Warren. She could tell he was pleased by what the fat ref was saying, but he was trying to hide it.

“And the way you handled that head butt on the undercard?” the fat ref continued. “So authoritative.”

“Thanks, Herschel,” said Warren. “I have been studying Carlos Padilla’s work in the Thrilla’ in Manilla. It’s helped with my rhythm.”

“See!” cried Herschel, pounding the snow globe. “Who else does that? You eat, sleep, and breathe officiating. It’s time you were recognized for it.”

Warren picked up a snow globe and shook it. “They did give me that nice plaque last year.”

Herschel shook his head. “I’m not talking dinky little plaques, Warren. I’m talking big time. There’s supposed to be a PBC card soon in the Bahamas. Amy told Donna that the network guys said they need a ref they can trust for the main event, and Lynn said the commission suggested you.”

Warren looked up. “Really? Me? On a televised main event in the Bahamas?”

“But you need a catchphrase,” Herschel said gravely. “All the big time guys have them. Joe Cortez has ‘I’m fair but I’m firm.’ Kenny Bayless has ‘What I say you must obey.’ Old Mills Lane’s got ‘Let’s get it on.’”

“Mills Lane!” Warren picked up a Great Wall coloring book and leafed through it. “He was a prima donna. Steve Smoger doesn’t have a catchphrase.”

Herschel reached a fat pale hand to pat Warren’s skinny dark one. “Let’s be honest, Warren, neither of us are a Smoger.”

As the two men touched, they looked over and met Gravity’s eyes. She looked away, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping, but the men seemed delighted to see her.

“Gravity Delgado!” cried Warren.

“How you feeling today?” said Herschel. “You all recovered from that bout with China?”

“I’m fi-”

“Mind if we come chat a little?” asked Warren.

“Um…”

But they were already hurrying over to the display of post cards to talk to her.

“Congratulations on winning Continentals,” said Herschel, patting her on the back so hard she choked a little.

“We knew you would make it,” said Warren. “From the first time I reffed one of your fights, I said, ‘She’s a future continental champion. Didn’t I, Herschel?’”

“You did,” agreed Herschel. “And after I reffed for her, I saw just what you meant. Remember I came up to you after the fight and congratulated you and told you that you could be the next Million Dollar Baby?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gravity said. “That was really nice of you, thanks.”

It was a little embarrassing how well both men seemed to know her. The truth was, she had no memory of either of them ever officiating for her, and people were always mentioning Million Dollar Baby to her, so that didn’t ring any bells. She hated that movie. She didn’t understand why the girl boxer in there had to get crippled and die. It was kind of sexist when you thought about it. Rocky didn’t get crippled or die. Neither did Creed. 

Warren leaned in and lowered his voice. “As the third man in the ring, we must of course maintain a certain hermetic remove, so if I haven’t been more forthcoming with accolades, it’s not for lack of esteem.”

“Um, thanks.” She had no idea what that meant.

“You’re the bee’s knees,” said Herschel.

“Thanks!” She didn’t know what that meant either, but bees could sting you, so it must be good.

“Do you think referees should have catchphrases?” asked Warren.

Both men looked at her eagerly. They seemed to care a whole lot what she thought, which made her feel embarrassed again, because the truth was she had no opinion at all.

“I think,” she said carefully, selecting a few post cards of the Qinhuangdao skyline for Auntie Rosa, “that as long as you’re fair, it doesn’t really matter too much what you say.”

“Hah, see!” cried Warren.

Herschel shook his head. “When you go pro, Gravity, you’ll understand. Boxing is a business. It’s not enough just to be technically skilled. You have to make the television audience remember you. You have to be a brand.”

“I’m not sure I’ll change my mind when I go pro,” Gravity said, frowning. What the fat referee had said made her feel sad for some reason. She thought about Andre Vázquez back home, always handing out stuff that said PLASMAFuel, about how Boca tagged everything on Facebook #bocacrewforever, about how they both treated Monster like he was a racehorse or something. Gravity didn’t want to be a brand. She just wanted to box. “But I guess if you think it would help your business or whatever to say a catchphrase, you should. I mean, nobody really listens to referees anyway.”

Warren coughed. Herschel shuddered. Gravity became aware of a sudden chill in the air of the gift shop. She tried to backtrack.

“I mean, I didn’t mean nobody listens. Just that, you know, the boxers are so focused on their fight that it just sort of…rolls over them, you know?”

That only made it worse. Gravity picked up one of the rubber birds from the display case next to the post cards labelled “Shrilling Chickens.” When she squeezed it, it let out a horrific wail.

Warren stood up very straight and said, “Boxers are not the only ones who are focused.”

“There’s three people in that ring, you know,” said Herschel. “And one of them never gets any credit.” He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and began to furiously polish his glasses.

Gravity felt bad. She was still trying to think of what to say to apologize when Warren took his friend’s arm with great dignity.

“Come on, Herschel,” he said. “Let’s go pay for our snow globes.”

 

 

 

 

Chronic Inflammation or What I Did This Week Instead of Working on My Novel

Warning: This post contains inflammatory language, because I am mildly inflamed after a weird week of stupidly arguing about politics with everybody, eating too many sandwiches, and getting zero work done. 

A few weeks ago, a young man at the boxing gym came into my office, very agitated about the unit they were doing on slavery. He is African American and he told me that his teacher was white and that he thought the class was racist. He was so angry that it took a while just to calm him down enough that we could go over the ridiculous handouts he'd been given.

Two sheets: one about the transatlantic slave trade, one about the slave trade during the Ottoman Empire. The writing was extremely strange, like they had been cobbled together from multiple sources, alternating between language you'd find at the Civil Rights Museum "this sweeping tragedy of human rights" and weird shit you'd find in a 1950's textbook "the strong, robust African was the ideal field laborer."

The trans-Saharan handout mentioned how highly prized eunuchs were, which it euphemistically defined as "men subject to mutilation." Now, this kid is 16. Unless he's reading all the Game of Throne novels or getting into the Anne Rice back catalogue, I don't think he needs to know what a fucking eunuch is, and I don't want to be the one to tell him.

His assignment, I shit you not, was to write an essay saying which slave trade was better or worse and why. 

This kid's reading comprehension and writing skills need work. I told him he didn't have to do the assignment but could write an essay saying that both were wrong and why. But I said we'd have to do a great job, because sometimes, when you challenge authority, you have to be even better than if you follow the rules. He never showed up to finish it.

Last week he comes in with a new assignment, this one on the movie 12 Years a Slave. To my alarm, I found myself correcting sentences like: "He rape and beat his slave's." I had intentionally avoided this movie, but I made myself watch it and have spent all week haunted. I'm still shaking my head at the thought of this teacher making 16-year-olds watch this and then just releasing them back into the world.

I hated my middle school Social Studies teacher with a burning passion. I think his name was Tom Fleming. He had worked in the Peace Corps in Central America and was like one of the characters in this old SNL chestnut.

I went to the kind of Quaker school that had out gay teachers (this was in the 80s and so that was pretty remarkable) and held an assembly when the Gulf War was declared so everyone could express our feelings and cry. 

I was down with all that, but Tom was so self-righteous and really almost sadistic, making us sit through film after film about the stages of radiation sickness in Hiroshima and a day in the life of an Auschwitz prisoner. Almost everyone in that class was white and rich. I was one of the few scholarship kids. I remember arguing with Tom, but, like that kid at my gym, I didn't have the sophistication to articulate my critique.

Why did he need us to feel a certain way about history? Was this really education or was it something else?  

Shep Fairey

Shahirah, who has been doing amazing reporting on the Rohingya, has been sending me terrifying articles about the policing of identity politics in fiction. Kirkus recently retracted a star from one of their YA reviews after readers complained about the novel's depiction of Muslim characters through the eyes of a white protagonist. A writer who dared to ask, "I'm Indian. Can I Write Black Characters?" has been eviscerated on the blogosphere, where the consensus answer seems to be: "No. Stay in your lane." She writes:

The debate about whether writers should create worlds and characters based in cultures other than their own is an important one. At its core, pushback in this area serves as a corrective to centuries of colonialism, stereotypical portrayals and racist caricatures. But I worry about how we balance pertinent questions about appropriation with the creative freedom to push boundaries and take risks that are essential to good writing.

I worry about this, too. Sometimes I worry so much that I can't write. My YA manuscript has a biracial heroine. It is filled with people of diverse backgrounds and off-color humor, because it's a boxing book and that's the boxing world.

I'm far more worried about the response of adult gatekeepers than the sensibilities of my young readers. I have confidence in my ability to reach young people. I have no confidence in my ability to deal with the morality police in art. That's why I left the academic world after four years at Brown and did anything else I could to survive: cooking, yoga, boxing. The academy didn't teach us to keep an open mind or make things of value. It taught us to win arguments. It taught us contempt for the opposition. 

I was so lucky to find boxing. And I was lucky to be there for the rise of Claressa Shields, the greatest woman boxer of all time. It was a wild ride, and I want to take people on that ride. My novel has to be "problematic," in the true meaning of that word (not the way Kirkus uses it nor the way we used it at Brown), because boxing itself is problematic.

From Merriam-Webster:

Most importantly, my novel has to be fun, because boxing is fun, and because what I most want to do with my words is make people laugh and cry. Not win, except maybe in the sense of winning the endless battle against shame.

via @jfagone on Twitter 

I got mad at so many people this weekend. My wonderful boss, who voted for Trump and yet does extraordinary good for the youth in New York by running our free gyms, posted an argument suggesting that our program was an antidote to anthem protesting. 

The great thing about our gym is that it brings together so many different kinds of people. I've had kids tell me, proudly, "In my country, we throw gay people off mountains." I've heard boys say things about girls that I cannot retype for fear of spontaneously combusting. Yet I've also been treated with more genuine respect there than at the cocktail parties of the liberal elite to which I once fancied I belonged.

The bottom line is, we learn from each other. As that kid who got into Stanford by writing #blacklivesmatter over and over again as his application essay told the Washington Post, "It really is so hard to hate someone you know."

Heather Hardy, via Facebook 

My next rage attack came from comment threads on boxer Shelly Vincent's page about Heather Hardy. Hardy and Vincent are top female featherweights who have made opposite choices about how to market themselves. Shelly's fans were being quite vicious and slut-shaming about what Heather wore to weigh-in for her Bellator MMA fight. I wrote to Shelly complaining about it, and she was kind enough to respond. 

Both women are rape survivors. Both value their roles as mentors to young women. Both are devoted to their sport. They legitimately don't like each other, which is good for business, but sometimes we forget there's a real person on the other end of the Internet. And that she isn't the real enemy.

Heather lost by bloody TKO in the 2nd round.

I fought with two more of my friends.

L. and I argued about whether a woman writing about being abused by Harvey Weinstein constitutes Art. I took the negative position.

J. and I argued because she said, like it was completely obvious, "You're not a feminist, Sarah." Hearing one of my girlfriends say this about me made me feel sort of like Krzysztof Włodarczyk after Murat Gassiev landed a double left uppercut to his face and ribs.

photo: Gabe Oppenheim

J. wouldn't come out and say exactly why I'm not, in her estimation, a feminist, but I think it has something to do with sex. 

I like what Caitlin Moran wrote in How to Be a Woman:

There is currently this idea that feminists aren't supposed to bitch about each other...Well, personally, I believe that feminism will get you so far, and then you have to start bitching...

Because the purpose of feminism isn't to make a particular type of woman. The idea that there are inherently wrong and inherently right "types" of women is what's screwed feminism for so long -- this idea that "we" wouldn't accept slaggy birds, dim birds, birds that bitch, birds that hire cleaners, birds that stay at home with their kids, birds that have pink Mini Metros with POWERED BY FAIRY DUST! bumper stickers, birds in burkas, or birds that like to pretend, in their heads, that they're married to Zach Braff from Scrubs and that you sometimes have sex in an ambulance while the rest of the cast watch and, latterly, clap. You know what? Feminism will have all of you.

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy, and smug they might be.

Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

photo: Jean Manon

On Saturday I went to the aforementioned Murat Gassiev slugfest in Newark, where I had the enlightening assignment of helping the ring card girls climb the ring stairs in their precarious heels. I held the ropes open for them as they ducked through, graceful despite their restrictive black miniskirts, and stood on the apron as they made their darling rounds, elbows hyperextended, permasmiles affixed. Whistles rained down from the Poles in the upper balconies. It was the best view I have ever had of the ring during a pro fight.

Mia and Janine were gorgeous and gracious and industrious and smart. They had to stand center ring during the introduction of the main event, holding aloft the Russian, Polish, and American flags throughout the ring walks, fighter introductions, and three national anthems. Taking into account the height of their heels and the unwavering brilliance of their smiles, this was arguably a greater athletic performance than Steve Bujaj delivered in the main supporting bout. 

 

Champs

Look who rolled though town this week! Claressa Shields was appearing on the Harry Connick Jr show as a surprise to an eleven-year-old who idolized her. But they had a surprise for Claressa, too: her new WBC title belt. It is surprisingly heavy, just like her two Olympic gold medals. 

(Photo by Jaye Johnson at Sid Gold's Request Room)

Claressa is nearly as fearsome on the mic as she is in the ring. She said, "Karaoke helps kill my stage fright."

In advance of the GGG-Canelo showdown this Saturday, I have a profile on Coach Abel Sanchez over at HBO's website. This was a peach of an assignment, as Abel is one of the top coaches in the world and a kind, eloquent spokesman for the sport. The entire interview transcript is up at Stiff Jab. 

 

 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I was having too much fun to blog.

Paris was supposed to be a writing retreat, but so many of my friends were passing through that it wound up being like Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.

My hostess Annie was impossibly generous. I felt at home in her sunny one-bedroom in St. Denis, in the shadow of the Basilica. She woke up at 3 AM to work in the metro while I dozed off my midnight dinners. My old buddy Zack, at work on the great American war novel, came out to hear Ethan play jazz.

Debi and I had cheese and rose to celebrate the publication of her stunning book on Guantanemo.

And Rati and I and made mischief, ate fondue, and saw organ concerts.

 

Then I went to Meaux and got tattooed. A few years back, Nicolas had inked an X on my ring finger for my tenth anniversary. This time I wanted something big. He designed a beautiful mongoose and cobra, entwined in combat, that stretches from my hip to my knee. 

Getting tattooed by Nicolas is a 360-degree art experience. His wife bustles about, minding toddlers, while his tweenage son bakes pastry. Nicolas talks soothingly of philosophy while you shudder with pain. There are kittens and chickens and vintage Transformers and beer and Monbazillac and Haribo-infused vodka in a bottle shaped like a skull. And Meaux is the home of brie, so there's also lots of cheese.

Anyone who thinks French people are rude doesn't know the right French people. After all that, our week in London was a little gray. I got a bad cold. Ethan played Ronnie Scott's and I stayed glued to the hotel bar, writing feverishly about Shame for the Threepenny Review. Then we went to Cornwall, where our minds were blown.

Ethan covers the magic of the St. Endellion Festival in his blog post. The Verdi Requiem was probably the best concert I've ever been to. We got to see Billy Budd three times. I read the Melville and stayed up late drinking champagne and talking about characterization with our friend Mark Padmore and the other opera stars. It was a peak experience I will treasure for the rest of my life.

 

Everybody, from the opera stars to the childcare workers, is a volunteer. I wanted to participate and was happy that they let me help in the kitchen. Elsie and I made Stout Cake, adapted from a Nigella recipe. 

I was only back in the gym for a second before I flew to Chicago for one last party. Shah hosted, and Nigel rolled through!

I fell in love with a dog named Winter.

And I officiated the wedding ceremony of my dear friends Corey and Amanda at the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, a secret garden in the heart of Lincoln Park. This was my seventh wedding and the only one to count a blue heron among its guests. Corey had chosen the following James Baldwin quote, upon which I have been ceaselessly reflecting:

"Love takes away the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."

Afterward we went back to the hotel and watched the Mayweather-McGregor fight, and I threw my back out rooting for Floyd. It still hurts. 

 

 

Terminal 2

I'm killing six hours in Charles de Gaule while I wait for Annie to fetch me. Paris, where everyone looks beautiful and even being sleep-deprived in an airport feels luxurious.

I met Annie five years ago in the Paris metro. I was unsure which option to select on the ticket machine, so I went to the window and said to the man working there, in my weirdo French, "It's been a long time since I've done this."

The man laughed and said, "Me, too. It's been a long time since I've done this."

He and his female colleague both came out of the little booth. It seemed like they knew my mom and I would be good for a laugh. The man spoke English, so Mom pounced and was soon asking him if he was Jewish. (He was, from Algeria. Mom asked every vaguely Semitic Parisian if they were Jewish. It was embarrassing but led to some good conversations.) 

Meanwhile, the woman told me her name was Annie and that she was from the West Indies. I said, "I coach boxing in a West Indian neighborhood in New York."

She said, "I coach kickboxing! I was the featherweight champion of Paris."

I told her I had been the featherweight champion of New York for a second. I went and trained with her fighters, and we've been friends ever since. This seemed like a good time to throw myself on her hospitality.

Air France delivered on the flight over with ample wine and a delightful selection of classic Disney movies. I hadn't seen Beauty and the Beast in ages and was kind of blown away by how beautifully it's constructed. 

I remember watching Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete in high school French class. When I came home from school, Mom said, to my horror, "Great movie. Beast represents the penis, and Beauty is the vagina." 

This was too much information for a fourteen-year-old, but it certainly shaped my future critical output. 

Lyrics by Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS just before the film's release. 

 

Tale as old as time

True as it can be

Barely even friends

then somebody bends

Unexpectedly

 

Just a little change

Small to say the least

Both a little scared

Neither one prepared

Beauty and the beast

 

Ever just the same

Ever a surprise

Ever as before

Ever just as sure

As the sun will rise

 

Tale as old as time

Tune as old as song

Bittersweet and strange

Finding you can change

Learning you were wrong

 

Certain as the sun

Rising in the east

Tale as old as time

Song as old as rhyme

Beauty and the beast

 

 

Malingerings

My summer project is to get out of the city as much as possible, ostensibly to write my boxing novel but so far just to procrastinate, hence this blog post, and malinger, which is my new favorite word. 

This week I have imposed myself on my former writing teacher in idyllic Amagansett. Steve Friedman is one of those people without whom I would have given up writing. He hired me to assist on Scott Jurek's memoir Eat and Run, despite the fact that I was due to donate a kidney midway through, and he once told me, a propos of my love for the essay form and lack of computer skills, "You are a young dinosaur," which I still use as an affirmation.

"Me Slag no like anything!" 

When I was little, kids used to tease me by calling me "tri-Sarah-tops," which really hurt my feelings but now doesn't seem so bad. Although I lack the distinctive facial horn, I am low-to-the-ground, combative, and nearly extinct.

Here's some other chestnuts from Steve Friedman:

Funny stuff comes in threes.

Things have more power when they remain unnamed.

Write what you write best, rather than reaching for what you admire in others.

I especially needed that last one. We undervalue what comes easily, but the reason it comes easily is because it is ours. For example, I look up to my friend Shahirah, because her writing displays such timeliness and astute political understanding, but I know better than to try to write like that.

Shahirah also keeps me from giving up writing. I have pined for her greatly since her removal to Chi-town, but she is most excellent on the texteses and today inspired me with some words about Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose morning schedule makes me feel marginally better about myself:

CHART
MISS MILLAY
Dec. 31, 1940

Awoke 7:30, after untroubled night. Pain less than previous day.
7:35- Urinated- no difficulty or distress
7:40- 3/8 gr. M.S. {morphine shot} hypodermically, self-administered in left upper arm…
7:45-8- smoked cigarette (Egyptian) mouth burns from excessive smoking
8:15- Thirsty, went to the ice box for a glass of water, but no water there. Take can of beer instead which do not want. Headache, lassitude…
8:20- cigarette (Egyptian)
9:00- “
9:30- Gin Rickey (cigarette)
11:15- Gin Rickey
12:15- Martini (4 cigarettes)
12:45- 1/4 grain M.S. & cigarette
1.- Pain bad and also in lumbar region. no relief from M.S.

I think I like the word "malinger" so much because it somehow feels onomatopoetic, although it can't be, since malingering is pretty much a silent activity apart from the sound of your fingers on the keyboard as you Google your frenemies and the occasional sigh of self-pity.

Claudia Rankine (who is sighing for a much more legit reason) writes:

"To live through the days sometimes you moan like a deer. Sometimes you sigh. The world says stop that. Another sigh. Another stop that. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control these sighs than that which brings the sighs about."

Citizen is a brilliant, beautiful, compressed, genre-defying book that I read on the recommendation of my husband, the misogynist, who sighed a whole lot while he was being trolled.

I'll eventually stop calling my husband "The Misogynist," but not yet, because it's still too much fun. He took a while to stop calling me "The Replicant" after my jump rope injury put me in an orthopedic boot that he claimed made me look like a robot from Blade Runner. This was actually a compliment, though. Because look at Pris.

Coincidentally, I sustained the jump rope injury aboard the same ill-fated jazz cruise on which Ethan became a misogynist by interviewing Robert Glasper. Although maybe it wasn't so ill-fated as we once suspected, because, while I iced my leg and malingered, he spent the cruise composing a suite of music for a new Mark Morris dance called Pepperland that just premiered in Liverpool to great acclaim.

I was lucky enough to catch a dress rehearsal, although without Elizabeth Kurtzman's fabulous costumes. The music is beautiful and strange, for voice, theramin (!!!), piano, harpsichord, trombone, soprano sax (Sam Newsome!), and drums. The dance, like all of Mark's work, is both simple and deep, funny and sad. I can't wait until it comes to BAM.

There are actual roosters crowing as I blog, which reminds me that "cock-a-doodle-do" was the example my sixth grade English teacher, Ferne, gave when I asked her what "onomatopoetic" meant. When I touched down in Paris for the first time, a passenger on my plane cried out "Cocorico!" which is how roosters crow in French. 

My Sanskrit teacher, Vyas Houston, said all of Sanskrit was like that, the sound of the words matching the essential vibration of the objects they signified, even for abstract nouns like satya or ahimsa. I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know that Vyas lived in a world of enhanced connection to sound. In a weekend seminar of 40 people, he would have everyone's name memorized by the end of the morning session, and it wasn't some cheap memory trick. He matched the sound of your name to who you were. When you ran into him years later, he still knew your name. 

"Writing is writing," says Steve, when I tell him all I did today was blog. "Even not writing is writing."

 

 

 

Our Existence Is Resistance - Yoni ki Raat

2015 Yoni ki Raat cast, via Facebook

I was mildly dreading the South Asian Vagina Monologues, but Rati got me a ticket. So I drank some gin and hunkered down for the two-hour show. 

My dread was three-fold. 1. I was already sort of depressed and didn't want to sit through sad monologues about sexual abuse that would make me face my deep inner feelings. No. Deep. Inner. Feelings. 2. I didn't want to hear poems about people's vaginas being beautiful flowers or their menstrual cycles being flowing rivers, because that makes me throw up in my mouth. 3. I didn't want to experience weaponized identity politics that recalled jazz trolls.

But Rati is a refined and soothing presence, my sister from another reality. As she and I settled into our seats at Dixon Place and read the trigger warnings in our programs, the gin and company began to improve my outlook. 

Word had spread about Yoni ki Raat, now in its third year. Audience members traveled from as far as Boston and Philadelphia to hear this "transformational storytelling performance project that seeks to give space for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean people experiencing gender oppression to share our stories."

My dread evaporated as Kirin took the stage, a cherub with a soft bare midriff. She performed a beat poem on the beauty of queer love that borrowed mischievously from Christian hymns.

Miranda peeled skeins of colored gauze from her wrists and dropped them to the floor as she lamented shedding her Guyanese accent to fit in with American schoolmates.

Benaifer, whose bio informed us that she was one of approximately 190,000 Zoroastrians in the world, spoke of being abused as a girl and how it trained her to hold her body in a way that hid its femininity. I thought of my own mother and my private theory that getting abused made Mom raise me to be more masculine: If I didn't present as feminine, I wouldn't be in danger. Benaifer recounted a fresher abuse, this time transforming it into a triumphant revenge fantasy, complete with costume change.

Sabrina took the stage, holding a jar of honey, which she compared to sex: It's sweet. You can have it. It never goes bad. The nonviolence and simplicity of the image made me wistful. 

The power of Yoni ki Raat's collaborative process lifted up these individual stories, which had been workshopped over a period of months. The material was well compressed, and the stronger performers strengthened the weaker. Sure, certain aspects of the show made me roll my eyes, like the snapping to indicate approval and the mandatory sharing circle at the end, but I also kind of dug them. It was like being back at Brown, except with better costumes. And there were no poems about the menstrual cycle.

My favorite was Dee, whose preferred pronoun is "they" and who began with, "My girlfriend was sucking my dick the other day..." and proceeded to recount humiliating childhood visits to a waxing parlor and humiliating encounters on the street with strangers who shame Dee for having a mustache. 

Amazing how memories of psychological pain linger in the body. It made me think of the book Citizen by Claudia Rankine. She writes brilliantly about the racism Serena Williams has experienced on the tennis court, how each new bad call jolts Serena out of tennis time and into some old dead zone:

Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness -- all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games. 

Under the influence of new bad calls, Serena reacts as if to older ones. "She says in 2009, belatedly, the words that should have been said to the umpire in 2004...Now Serena's reaction is read as insane."

The question is, how do we break out of that nauseous loop? How do we play each point as it happens?

I think it has something to do with recreating the moment of insult, except safer, bound, witnessed. This time, you vow, you will connect instead of dissociating. Boxing can be about that. So can sex and storytelling.

Yoni ki Raat wasn't exactly art. It was a collective ritual of healing. Everyone was invited.

The other day, my friend Chris and I were talking about whether it's okay for a white author to write from the point of view of a person of color. Chris was saying that being a woman was, in itself, an inherently incomplete identity. Nobody ever feels like they are woman enough.

This was something of an epiphany for me. I've always felt like I am not a real woman, but I had never actually considered that *every woman* feels this way. Chris said he thought it was the same with being black or Dominican or South Asian: There is no monolithic experience of race or gender. Authenticity is a myth used to manipulate and demoralize us.

When the performers of Yoni ki Raat clasped hands and took their curtain call, I marveled at the assembled beauty, which represented so many ways of living and loving. Draped in red, black, and gold, their bodies were indistinguishable from what they held. Victory, at least for the moment. 

Bittersweet

Fun week of parties to celebrate this new anthology. Deadspin and Soho House were great hosts. 

I'm honored to be included among these fabulous essays, including Charles Ferrell's Why I Fixed Fights, Carlo Rotella's poetic profile of BHop, and a meditation on stylishness by Gabe Oppenheim, which cites this masterpiece:

Everybody is always saying boxing is dying, but it never really dies. Maybe something that is always opulently in the process of dissolution is the ultimate subject for a writer. Most things die before you can say goodbye. 

Here's a poem I ripped out of the Threepenny Review:

 

 THIRST

 

The miraculous warmth that arose so implausibly from rock had, within it, thirst.

*

Thirst made by a glimpse that is, each time, brief.

*

As if, each time, that is all you are allowed.

*

The way back to it never exactly the same.

*

Once you have been there, always the promise of it.

*

Promise made to beguile and haunt, you think, residue of an injunction that is ancient.

*

Not only ancient, but indifferent?

*

Half the time when you pursue it you fear that this time, out of distraction or exhaustion or repetition, this time it cannot be reached.

*

I hope you're guessing Orgasm, or Love, or Hunger for the Absolute, or even The Sublime—

*

History littered with testimonies that God gives his followers a shot of God; then withdraws.

*

The pattern, the process each time the same.

*

There,—

*

...then, not there (withdrawn).

*

Each time you think that you can predict how to get there the next time, soon you cannot.

*

The singer's voice, the fabled night the microphone captured her at the height of her powers—

*

You have been the locus of ecstasy.

*

You have been a mile above the storm, looking down at it; and, at the same time, full of almost-insight, obliterated at its center.

*

Creature coterminous with thirst.

 

—Frank Bidart 

 

 

We Live in the Age of the Feuilleton

My bff, a beautiful writer concerned with serious matters, is forever forwarding me articles like 17 Dicks You Wish You Could Get Your Hands On and Why I won't date hot women anymore. I try to keep from clicking, but I can't resist.

I was trying to explain to her why this makes me want to throw my laptop through the window, but I can't do better than this quote from The Glass Bead Game. Hesse writes in the voice of futuristic historians:

...in the course of the aforementioned Age of the Feuilleton, men came to enjoy an incredible degree of intellectual freedom, more than they could stand. For while they had overthrown the tutelage of the Church completely, and that of the State partially, they had not succeeded in formulating an authentic law they could respect, a genuinely new authority and legitimacy. Ziegenhalss recounts some truly astonishing examples of the intellect's debasement, venality, and self-betrayal during that period.

We must confess that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. It would seem, moreover, that the cleverer among the writers of them poked fun at their own work. Ziegenhalss, at any rate, contends that many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. Quite possibly these manufactured articles do indeed contain a quantity of irony and self-mockery which cannot be understood until the key is found again. The producers of these trivia were in some cases attached to the staffs of the newspapers; in other cases they were free-lance scriveners. Frequently they enjoyed the high-sounding title of "writer," but a great many of them seemed to have belonged to the scholar class. Quite a few were celebrated university professors.

Among the favorite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore titles such as "Friedrich Neitzsche and Women's Fashions of 1870," or "The Composer Rossini's Favorite Dishes," or "The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans," and so on...When we look at the titles that Ziegenhalss cites, we feel surprise that there should have been people who devoured such chitchat for their daily reading; but what astonishes us far more is that authors of repute and decent education should have helped to "service" this gigantic consumption of empty whimsies. Significantly, "service" was the expression used; it was also the word denoting the relationship of man to the machine at that time.

tr, Richard and Clara Winton  

My Husband, the Misogynist: Ethan Iverson, Robert Glasper, Boxing, and Me

It’s been a rough few days in the Iverson-Deming household, what with this whole the-Internet-thinks-my-husband-hates-women thing. If you’re not up on the fray, while Ethan and I were on the dumb jazz cruise and I was laid up with a torn calf muscle – and if you take only one thing from this post, let it be this: DON’T JUMP ROPE ON A BOAT – in between waiting on me hand and foot, bugging me about finishing my novel, and composing a suite of dance music, Ethan interviewed three musicians for his blog, including Robert Glasper.

Glasper told my husband:

I’ve seen what that does to the audience, playing that groove. I love making the audience feel that way. Getting back to women: women love that. They don’t love a whole lot of soloing. When you hit that one groove and stay there, it’s like musical clitoris. You’re there, you stay on that groove, and the women’s eyes close and they start to sway, going into a trance.

The Internet exploded with outrage, calling this “vile sexism.” At first, people weren’t so much blaming Ethan, because he hadn’t said it himself, although some suggested he should have cut it from the interview. But what blogger in her right mind would cut a money quote like that? It’s not hate speech. The only reason to censor something like that is if you have a vested interest in keeping Glasper out of hot water or if you’re writing for kids.

Boxer Emile Griffith (Getty Images)

I had a nice conversation on the jazz boat with Robert Glasper and Terrence Blanchard, who were lounging poolside apres-gig, about the tragic life of the gay boxing champion Emile Griffith. I can tell a misogynist the same way I can tell a professional escort: their eyes glaze over during conversation because they have no use for me. Glasper wasn’t like that. I see his comments as a window into the erotic impulse in a male performer.

Obviously it’s sexist to contend that women are uncritical listeners who just want to groove out and don’t appreciate esoteric art. Woman=matter. Man=mind. An age-old equation every female intellectual needs to stare down at some point. I tried to explain that to Ethan right after the shit hit the fan, but he was already in defense mode and couldn’t take it in.

I watched with mild alarm as he posted successive updates, entrenching his position. I agreed with him that people were overreacting, and that this kind of thing led to Trump's rise. But I also recognize that this argument can lead to dangerous places. We do need to pay attention to how we speak.

I think Ethan would have apologized immediately if the critique came in the first instance from women with a stake in the music or men who were civil. But that’s not what happened. The quote was pulled out of context by jazz boys fighting for turf. It was batted back and forth with sporting glee until people he’d never met were Tweeting asking if he thought women should even be allowed to play jazz.

If you’ve never been subject to an Internet shitstorm, you can’t understand just how fucked up and deeply personal things get. I got trolled by the nation of Ireland during the Summer Olympics, because I fired off a dumb Tweet about boxer Michael Conlan. By the time the two hundredth Irishman has called you a stupid cunt who knows nothing about boxing, you’re not in the mood to apologize.  

A few days into the pile-on, Ethan really started to unravel. He came home from a gig on the verge of tears because he was getting lost in the forms. The idea that he had hurt so many women he didn’t even know was really painful to him. Real feminism isn’t about tokenism or irreproachable usage: It’s about valuing female power and intellect. It’s about the way Ethan treats me, my mother, his teacher Sophia, his female students and collaborators, and the great women musicians, writers, and dancers he reveres.

Let me tell you how we met. On New Year’s Eve 2001, the saxophonist Bill McHenry threw a costume party. I went in my (extremely unflattering) amateur boxing gear, including my mouthpiece and abdominal protector. It was like that scene in Buffy where Willow wears an Inuit snowsuit because she doesn’t understand that Halloween is a free pass to dress like a slut.

When I got to the floor with the booze, I saw this bald guy, deep in his cups, whose nasal Midwestern voice floated to me across the brownstone.

“I have no patience,” he was saying, “for these narcissistic male writers like Updike and Mailer and Roth who have no use for women.”

I was astonished. It would have been love at first sight, except that I didn’t think anyone who got drunk and complained about misogyny in literature could possibly be heterosexual. Instead, I thought, “We are going to be best friends.”

He is still my best friend, and he turned out to be straight!

I was very glad he ended up apologizing about the interview, and Ethan was, too. I think it humbled and strengthened him. At the gig the other night, he soloed with a freedom and sadness I hadn’t heard in a long time. If you wanna play the blues, you gotta pay the dues. And we don’t get to choose what they are.

photo: Sue Johnson

The other day at the Barclays Center, I watched featherweight champion Heather Hardy improve to 19-0 to an empty stadium. Hers was the only woman’s bout on the card, and they made her go first, off TV, so that she took her ring walk while the doors of the venue were still closed and her sponsors waited outside in the cold. This despite the fact that she sold $37,000 worth of tickets, far more than anyone on the card. They put the kid from my gym who was having his very first pro fight – and who was not, as a male prospect, required to sell any tickets – in a favorable position near the main event. That is misogyny.

I watched the fights from the nosebleed seats, because I’ve quit trying to get press credentialed. The only time in my twenty years of involvement with boxing that I’ve consistently gotten great access was when I was fucking this male media executive who knew nothing about boxing. A couple years ago, my membership application was rejected by the Boxing Writer’s Association of America. I wasn’t trying to win an award or anything; I was just trying to be a member of the only trade association in my craft.

Check out the condescending rejection note they sent me, and bear in mind that I’ve published three novels, won a Pushcart Prize and McDowell Fellowship, got cited in Best American Essays and Best American Sportswriting, won the NYC Golden Gloves, assisted in the coaching of multiple national champions, and wrote for NBC’s boxing coverage of the London Games:

Dear Sarah,

I’m sorry to report that the membership committee has voted against admitting you to the BWAA at the present time. No one person was responsible for this decision.  It was a consensus reached after discussion among all committee members.

The act of writing a hundred or more articles about boxing does not necessarily qualify an applicant for membership.  We look for articles that are full journalistic work.  We look for variety.  And we look for articles that evince a full understanding of what goes on behind the scenes as well as on-camera.

Your love for the sport came through in your application and you have plenty of background.  I encourage you to look at some examples of what the BWAA considers to be exemplary writing about boxing and absorb the ways in which the authors try to go above and beyond in their fact-finding, their analysis, and their use of language. Links to many award-winning boxing articles from the past several years are here: http://www.bwaa.org/writingawards.htm

Best of luck with your continued writing about boxing.  Just like it works in the ring, the best way to move up the ladder is to keep working at it. Applicants may reapply for admission after one year.

Best wishes,

Cliff Rold

You can bet I will not be reapplying, if only because I’m scared of what I might do to Cliff Rold if I run into him at the yearly banquet. The BWAA has four women out of 115 members and they’re all in the non-voting category. That is misogyny. And when I’m crying with impotent rage over some bullshit like this, Ethan is the one who holds me and talks about Virginia Woolf. I would have thrown in the towel years ago if not for him.

My tenth anniversary tattoo

Is it misogyny when one of my male colleagues tells our fighters, “Don’t punch like a girl”? I guess. He’s using “girl” to signify “weak person who doesn’t understand how to generate power from the lower body.” It’s sexist language, but I know what he means, and I know he’s not talking about me. I’ve seen the respect he accords his wife and daughters and the few serious women boxers who have come through our doors to train. So I pick my battles.

When his language is particularly egregious – or when there are actual girls present – I pipe up, but I avoid direct attack. It is very hard to change someone, and (as I wrote in the following post on the Women’s March) nobody learns when they feel shamed and backed into a corner. People learn when they are calm enough to take in new information.

My husband blogs for free, even though we’re being priced out of our apartment and I am a financial albatross. He pays for his interview transcriptions himself and spends hundreds of hours every year researching and editing. He does what he does out of love, so I think people will forgive him.

Haters gonna hate. If even one more person learned where the clitoris is, my team won.