Mama said there'll be days like like this

Never Done: Saw a new counselor
Never Done: Saw an apartment being rented by someone who sells Nazi memorabilia
Never Done: Bowled 100

Some days you wake up singing the blues and you go to sleep singing the blues. Other days it's more a Shirelle's song -- when you start the day emailing with a guy who sells pristine sheets of Nazi stamps, and then meet with a new therapist, and end up bowling with friends at Chelsea Piers. Mama said there'll be days like like this. "There'll be days like this," my mama said. (My mama was sarcastic, and so am I.)

Yesterday I wrote about the mide (middah) of Separation -- well, mostly I shared what Alissa Wise has written about separation -- and today I want to write more personally, and try to be open about my Never Done and the Mussar process, but without over-sharing. Inspired by my Mussar Va'ad's initial conversation about Separation: Respect in sexual and intimate relationships, I sought out a new therapist, and met with her for the first time. We all have our Achilles heels, and mine, for better or for worse, is in this realm. What happened (and this does feel quite vulnerable to write about) is that I noticed I have been having a hard time controlling my eating. I've had one eating disorder or another (overeating and undereating) for as long as I can remember -- although I've done a really good job of managing the behavior for probably 20 years, and I've felt blissfully free from its pulls for about five years. But like most addictions, you can manage the behavior and still have difficulties, pulls, and unresolved issues that will pop up when things get tough. Or maybe they pop up, like an old friend, to help you notice that things are tough. That's what happened for me. I noticed (through my Mussar journaling practice) that I was struggling, in a way I hadn't needed to for years, to eat in a healthy way. Once I noticed that I hadn't conquered this as thoroughly as I'd thought, I was able to notice that I've never actually gotten help for this from anyone who has special training and expertise in the field. Instead, I've done it with an enormous amount of personal grit, determination, and decisiveness. And speaking of Decisiveness: When you have made a decision, act without hesitation, as soon as I figured this out, I went to my health insurance provider list, found someone who specializes in eating disorders, sexual assault, and sexual identity, and called her. I don't plan to write about the counseling process, but after some careful consideration, I want to be open about my decision to tackle this behemoth, for the first time, with specialized help.

OK, breathe. And moving on ... I found an apartment listing on Craigslist, which I've been mostly avoiding, but this one seemed to have potential, because it was both a three-bedroom apartment and also a mixed-use storefront, all for a reasonable price. When I set up a time to go see it, I Googled the name and email address of the landlord as a safety precaution, because I knew I was going alone. First hit: he runs a store called Collect-a-thon, which sells (among many other things) Nazi memorabilia. You'd think if I was running a Google check as a safety precaution, that would make me pass on the apartment, but I am fascinated with people who are fascinated with Nazis, so I kept the appointment. Keeping the appointment meant emailing with the guy several times throughout the day, because other of my appointments canceled; he was extremely responsive on email, but he never gave me a phone number. When I showed up at the apartment at 4, after agreeing on the time less than an hour earlier, he wasn't there. The building was open, so I went in, and up the filthy stairs, and knocked on the door to the apartment. A nice guy opened, told me he knew Robert was supposed to be showing me the apartment, but that he wasn't around, and didn't know when he would be. But he offered to show me the place anyway. Now, I have been watching Veronica Mars (TV show about a teenage detective) lately before bedtime, and I often wonder -- for all the times she's been beaten up, sexually assaulted, and almost killed, why does she still go into empty buildings, and worse yet, un-empty buildings, with no fear. And yet there I was, like Veronica, completely comfortable going into this skanky apartment, without the landlord, with a guy I don't know anything about. The fact is, the guy wasn't skanky at all -- just the apartment was. And when I got inside, there were six other people in there: his kids, a young woman, a young guy playing video games, and an old man napping. It didn't take me long to realize this was not my new home, so as much as I wanted to meet the Nazi collector, I didn't stick around.

I later got a message from him that said he had been at the health food store when I was there, and got back 20 minutes later, despite the fact that we had an appointment. And I thought Nazi's were punctual. (Josh points out that Hitler was a vegetarian.)

From there it was a quick jaunt to Crown Heights to pick up this week's soup swap soup (German winter cabbage caraway soup, with dumplings) from Benjy, and off to go bowling at Chelsea Piers. I had given Josh a Groupon for bowling a couple months ago, and he invited Serena and Graciana bowling. Normally this wouldn't have made it into my Never Done blog, except that I won for the first time in my life, and I also bowled (exactly) 100 for the first time. I don't know what it was, but I was bowling some serious strikes and spares and 7s, 8s, and 9s. (Mixed in with some gutter balls, for old times sake. Tshuve.) I think I was in a pretty zen space about bowling. When it was working well, it felt very controlled and mechanical. I would take a deep breath, tighten my abs to protect my back, focus on the center of the lane, take three steps and ..........................................$@#$%^&*@#!!!

Which felt like a perfect ending to an intense day.

I finally took a Zumba class

Never Done: Took a Zumba class

This time for real. Maybe you remember that the last time I tried to take a Zumba class, the teacher was a sub, and she was actually teaching her own improvised Cuban dance class to Zumba music, and all the regulars were grumbling "that's not Zumba" and crashing into each other, and I left early and ran on the treadmill and had some realization about decisiveness. Well, this time there was a real Zumba teacher, and she was wearing a hot pink t-shirt that said Zumba instructor and everything. I jest, but she was great. She didn't say a word the whole class, but her physical communication quotient was extremely high. She moved clearly, with athleticism and grace, and always took the time to indicate where she was going next.

And I did a pretty good job following her. Every now and then she did a sequence I couldn't do (my knee doesn't bend all the way, so sometimes I had to stay more upright than her) or one I couldn't follow (I couldn't always see her from where I was) but I never felt bad about it. I just caught up when I could, and got those hips wiggling with the best of the Zumbies. (I just made that up.)

Basically, Zumba is a dance class, which is why their motto is "Ditch the workout! Join the party!" I can't say that it felt like a party, but I did have a good time. I love dance classes, particularly the way that physical memory kicks in, and reminds you how to separate your hips from your waist, or your knee from your thigh. (After all these years, I still have a hard time separating my torso from my waist. Maybe one day I'll get there.) Hmmm, interesting. This week's mide (middah) is Separation: Respect in sexual and intimate relationships. I know that's a different kind of separation from separation of the torso from the waist, but still, dance and sex are certainly related activities. At least in Borsht belt routines.

Typically in Mussar, Separation is about the separation of the self from lewd thoughts, and from forbidden, unhealthy, or unsanctified sexual relationships. Rabbi Alissa Wise approaches the mide of separation differently from how it's traditionally interpreted, writing:

For some of us, we need to be separated from pain and hurt around our sexuality or sexual identities. Maybe we have been victims of sexual assault, maybe we have been targets of homophobia, maybe we have internalized messages about sexism or misogyny, maybe our gender identities has been rendered invisible by a rigid gender binary. For others of us, we are still searching for our sexuality and our own desires and wants. Some of us need to be separated from the confusion caused by messages and images of sexual objectification of women, by the pervasiveness of sexual violence in our culture and media, by ideas of masculinity that are too violent, of femininity that are too submissive, or of our culture's fear of gender non-conformity. Some of us need to be separated from feeling disconnected or embarrassed about our sexual desires.

Some of us need to be separated from actual relationships in our lives that aren't serving us. Relationships where we lose our desires and ourselves. Where we prioritize another's needs over ours, or where we prioritize our own needs over another's. Relationships where we are subjected to harsh judgment or criticism, or where we are being emotionally, physically or sexually abused. We need to be separated from being lied to be our partners, or from breaking our partners' confidence by having intimate or sexual connections with other people outside of agreed upon understandings of non-monogamy.

Some of us need to be separated from our own tendencies to hurt people we are close to, from our own patterns of manipulation and aggression with those we love and are intimate with.

We are all sexual beings, and our sexual needs and desires are real and often powerful. We need to attend to them just as carefully and thoroughly as we do any other aspect of our lives.

I understand if it feels like I took a sharp left turn in this post, when I connected the separation of the hips from the waist to the separation of the human from our full sexuality, but it's often hard to bring up the topic of sex. Why should it be any less awkward in a blog? And now that I've blurted it out, maybe I'll find it easier to write about the hip wiggling we do when we're not wearing any Zumba brand cargo pants.

I got a henna tattoo of a friend's face by a man dressed up as a creek

Never Done: Got a henna tattoo of a friend's face by a man dressed up as a creek

I went to see Taylor Mac's new play, A Walk Across America for Mother Earth, and during the intermission, he had three participatory activities, and in the hopes that something would be something I'd never done, and I could write about it, and also in the general spirit of community building that Taylor works so hard to create in his theater, I did all three. 1) I got my photo taken with me holding a protest sign (We're here! We're queer! And we're not going shopping!") which someone is going to Photoshop onto a background and email to me, and 2) I ate popcorn with nutritional yeast on it (which I have done many, many times, but never as a recreational activity in a theater intermission,) and 3) I got a henna tattoo on my arm. By a man dressed up as a creek. His name was Alex Franz Zehetbauer, and he played a creek in the play, in a gorgeous costume made by Machine Dazzle. And when he asked me what I would like as a tattoo, I said I'd like him to make his depiction of Taylor Mac. He started, and then got called to sing an intermission song, so he wiped it off, and jumped on a makeshift stage, sang his song, and came back to me with renewed focus and creativity. He drew two glamour eyes with big long lashes, and a full mouth with a sweet smile. It was (is) a wonderful, wonderful portrait of Taylor, and whats more, while he drew it, we were drawn together under the paper, balloon, and fabric canopy of his creek costume, in an intimate moment while he drew our friend on my arm. Which is precisely what Taylor does best. He gives people opportunities to connect in safe little zany ways. And when we do, we're forever changed, and connected. Which is what happened for him when he went on the walk that inspired this play, although I'm not sure all the opportunities were safe, but they did connect him with people, and they did teach him to tell himself the truth, and they did change him forever.

That was a natural end to the post, but it's not the real end. Because Taylor's play made me remember (tshuve) a time in my life when I was also walking across America. Only I was hitchhiking across Britain, going from music festival to music festival with the Green Roadshow, which was the traveling contingent of the Green Party. We set up an environmental bookstore, and a steam sauna, and someone had a wind energy display, and my friends Loppy and Sheena and I had a little alternative tea house, where we served all sorts of herbal teas, and our motto was "We don't serve proper tea, 'cause proper tea is theft." It was a thrilling and heady time for me. It was 1985, and I was 22, and I was far from home, and I was started to define myself by what I didn't want to be (as were many of the characters in Taylor's play) and by what I did want to be, and I was falling in love with a woman for the first time, but it was unrequited (she was in love with a man) and I was smoking too much hash, and I was playing chess with the Pogues, and I was playing a lot of music, and I was busking (playing music for money) on the streets in between festivals, and doing anti-apartheid street theater, and I was on the inside, and that mattered to me -- not a paying customer, not a consumer of the festival, but providing something, a service to the people, camping and caravanning and muddy and at Glastonbury, Glastonbury! And also, I wasn't on the inside at all, because the people I was with were not taking me with them from festival to festival, but letting me hitchhike on my own, which was not safe, and which ... was not safe. Men I hitched rides with tried to hurt me. More than once. Even when I finally told my friends I needed help, and couldn't hitch alone any more, and someone found me a ride with a family, the guy in the family brought his wife and kid home, and then was taking me to the train, and stopped the car and tried to hurt me. I got away from him, but ended up on the road again, alone, and when the next car came by, I was too scared to get in, but I took the next ride, and that guy drove to a bar, got drinks, and drove me in the wrong direction and also tried to hurt me, but his pants were literally down at his ankles, and mine were on properly, which made it much easier for me to run, so I grabbed my bag and I ran, but I left my wonderful musical instrument from Greece that I had so loved playing, and I left some other stuff that I used to miss, but can't any more remember, and I got away safely, and walked a very long way in the dark, and finally came to a place where I used a pay phone and called my friend in London and said I was done. I had been on the road for about two months, living this alternative, radical, environmental, "community" life, and I wanted it to be right for me. I wanted it to be everything I believed in. But I was unsafe, and I finally admitted it, and I left -- first the Green Roadshow, and then the country. The only thing I remember doing when I got to London was going to a tea house and having "proper tea" -- black tea with milk and sugar. I remember that I savored it.

I was quite taken with the deep parallels between my 1985 journey and Taylor's play about his 1992 journey. The character Taylor plays admits toward the end of the march that he ate meat -- something I wouldn't do for another 2 years -- but for ideological little me, drinking tea was just as transgressive. It wasn't always safe for his characters, just like it wasn't always safe for me, but it taught me to tell myself the truth, and it did change me forever. A part of me is still the ideologue I was back then, so when Taylor creates a lobby full of radical love and connection, I say yes to his invitations, and I stand inches away from the glitter on Alex the creek's cheeks while he imagines Taylor on my arm, and now we'll always have those moments together, even after the henna fades.